A Place to Call Home (9 page)

Our whole clan went to every high school football game but especially to the first one of each autumn. That night was one of those delicious, barely past summer evenings when the warm air has spicy currents in it and the moon rises full and ripe over trees flecked with the first few hints of gold and red.

Along with related families, such as the Kehoes and the O’Briens, Maloneys and Delaneys provided about half the team, plus a good portion of the marching band and the cheerleading squad, too. Josh had been a star quarterback in his day, and Brady a pretty fair place-kicker. Now Hop was a tackle, Evan was a tackle, Harold and Arlan were tackles. Maloney and Delaney boys were part of a long tradition of running over people.

The Dunderry High School stadium squatted solidly on the side of a hill facing a football field ringed with a slate-gray running track. Huge moths swarmed in the hot white beams of overhead lights and danced in the glow from the concession stand beyond the track’s far turn.

It didn’t take light to draw me down to the track. The lure of candy would do it. I was a moth after sugar. I flew with a small, flashy gang—we thought our wings were five feet wide and bright orange, but I’m sure to everyone else we were just giggling, nickel-size flutter-bys.

“I’m going to be a cheerleader when I get to high school,” Rebecca announced as we sashayed along.

“Me, too,” Violet chimed.

“Not me, I don’t care,” I said. I’d already flunked out of the small-fry-league cheerleading tryouts three years in a row. Something about wanting to add new moves each
time I performed a routine. Cheerleading was serious, regimented business. They would take away your pompom license if you improvised.

“I’m not gonna be a cheerleader.” Tula Tobbler spoke up firmly. “I’m gonna be Alvin’s manager.”

We all looked askance at Tula. Elfish, with skin the color of chocolate, she stared back at us from under a stiffly styled cap of black hair with bangs and curved-under ends that wouldn’t so much as flex, even in a strong wind. No Afros for Tobbler children, because Tobblers were big on conservative traditions, just like Maloneys.

In fact, though nobody talked about it, Tobblers were Maloneys. The doors to our two worlds might be connected by no more than a single hinge, but we were connected nonetheless. When people looked at a dark-skinned Tobbler, they might not see even the hint of it, but he was there, deep in the Tobbler past, a great-great-uncle of mine, a red-haired, pale-skinned Maloney.

A roar came up from the packed stadium behind us and the band blared the Dunderry Panthers’ fight song, and we all turned to watch an enormous, long-legged receiver spike the ball in the end zone.

Alvin Tobbler, Tula’s brother, was the brightest football star, black or white, ever to carry a pigskin across green Dunderry grass. “See?” Tula said, grinning. “Alvin’s gonna play for a big college and then he’s gonna play for the grown-up teams one day. And he’s gonna be rich. And I’m gonna tell him what to do with his money.”

We all nodded solemnly and walked on. Any dream was possible for Tobblers, because they had some mix of African and Irish magic in them, and if you doubted that, all you had to do was go where we were headed and see it up close.

Next to the concession stand, Tula and Alvin’s grandpa worked at a small card table piled with apples. This was something he volunteered to do at every game, his way of cheering for Alvin.

Boss Tobbler was an apple man. His orchards stretched across stair-stepped hills outside town, and every Tobbler in the county worked for him in the autumn, harvesting apples and selling crates filled with apples from a roadside warehouse, plus every homemade apple concoction known to humankind—cider and fried pies and bread and jellies and cookies, to name a few—there was no end to the Tobbler apple kingdom.

His first name really was Boss. He was short and muscular, with patches of tight gray hair on his thick forearms but not a speck on his head, and when he took off the limp fedora he wore year-round, his scalp gleamed like an eight ball. He’d been a sergeant in a black platoon during World War II, he’d won a Purple Heart, he had a year of divinity-school training, and he was a deacon of Dunderry’s African Methodist Church.

He and Grandpa Joseph had hunted and fished together since they were boys. They’d both served in the war, they both hated stupidity and meanness, and they were both as sweet as honey, once a person got inside their hive. Grandpa called him Boss T. Everybody else called him Mr. Tobbler, with an emphasis on the
mister
.

A fantastic aroma rose from the apples and the melted caramel bubbling in a stew pot on a hot plate. A small crowd watched, awed, and as we sidled up to its edges, a familiar sense of awe settled on us, too.

Mr. Tobbler rolled the crank handle on an apple corer. Curlicues of red apple peel dropped to a mountain of apple peelings that covered his shoes and climbed halfway up his pants legs. He popped the peeled apple from the corer’s clamps, deftly sliced it into pieces with a razor-sharp paring knife, spread the slices on a paper plate, and dribbled liquid caramel over them.

Then he presented the plate to a waiting member of his audience, a man who stood way back as he tucked a dollar into the coffee can on a stool in front of the table, a man who reached for his caramel apple very carefully, because
nobody had the courage to stand inside Boss Tobbler’s circle of helpers.

Hundreds of yellow jackets flitted around him. They crept over the apple peelings, they swarmed lazily around the corer, they perched on his shirt and his hands, they clung to the wiry tufts of brindled hair on his thi
ck
forearms.

But they didn’t sting him. They never did, according to local legend. He’d made some kind of magical, dignified peace with the small, hurtful creatures and they knew it. And they respected him.

“Granddaddy,” Tula said softly. “Will you fix us some candied apples?”

Mr. Tobbler nodded solemnly. “But I’m not gonna let y’all stand back like babies anymore.” He slid a fresh apple into the coring vise. The yellow jackets hovered over his hands like the tiniest fairies. “Y’all are half grown now. You know there’s nothing to be afraid of. Fear is what stings. Come on. Come close.”

Rebecca and Violet refused to budge, but I edged forward and Tula did, too, because I guess she knew we had a double dose of magic between us. I moved in slow motion, my heart in my throat. Yellow jackets feathered our wrists, our hands; one lit on the nail of my forefinger and sat there calmly, rubbing its head with one tiny front leg, like a cat cleaning itself.

I expected to feel needle-hot stingers at any second.

“Now there, they know you got good hearts,” Mr. Tobbler whispered as he handed us two filled plates. “They know you’ll share with ’em.” Victory! I sighed with relief as we backed away. My personal yellow jackets left my skin delicately.

“Wow,” Rebecca murmured.

Violet had her hands clamped to her mouth. She just stared at us. We said our thank-yous and dropped two dollars in the can because Mr. Tobbler donated the money to the school’s booster club.

And then the four of us retreated hurriedly. Even Tula looked happier once we were out of yellow-jacket range. “No problem,” I lied proudly. “I wasn’t scared a bit.” I popped a caramel-soaked slice of apple into my mouth, chewed it, swallowed, and looked around to see who might be admiring me.

There was Roanie, standing just inside the shadows on the side of the grassy hill above the concession stand.

I halted. Whether his gaze was admiring or not, I couldn’t tell. I could never quite tell what he was thinking behind those gray wolf eyes, his scrutiny as sharp as a ten-penny nail. He stood with his hands in his pockets, one long leg angled out to the side.
I like the shadows, I want to be right here, don’t mess with me
, everything about him warned.

At fourteen he was as tall as a grown man and about as wide as a board. He was stuck with cast-off jeans and work shirts from the Dunderry Civitans Thrift Shop, and his enormous, patched, red-flannel shirt was instantly familiar. Grandma Dottie had donated a bag of Grandpa’s work shirts to the Civitans. It looked like a tent on Roanie, but I considered it a good sign.

“Come on,
come on
, Claire,” Violet urged nervously, tugging at my arm.

“Why’s he looking at you?” Rebecca whispered. “He oughta know better than to look at a Maloney.”

“He knows I’m not gonna sting him.”

Tula grabbed my sleeve. “He sure might sting
you
.”

But I knew that wasn’t true. Hypnotized, I climbed the hill toward him, every step catching the breath out of my lungs. Roanie straightened, his head came up, and he frowned.

Rebecca called, “We better go tell Aunt Marybeth! Claire? We gotta tell your mama!” From the corner of one eye I glimpsed her and Violet and Tula take off toward the stadium.

“Get on back,” Roanie called out, glancing around uncomfortably. His voice was deeper than I remembered from
Christmas. I wanted to shout,
I grew two inches over the summer
, but my mouth wouldn’t work. “Git,” he ordered firmly. “Little peep, I don’t want no trouble.”

My heart broke. I stopped. When his expression grew darker, I spouted, “I’m not scared of yellow jackets. How come you’re scared of
me
?”

“It ain’t right, you chasin’ after me,” he said gruffly. “You’re just a half-pint. You ain’t got no idea how it looks. Go on.”

“You’re not so old!”

“Hey!” a voice called behind me. I turned. My cousin Carlton, who was a senior that year, so big and fleshy even the football coaches had given up trying to sweat a game out of him, was glaring up the hill at us. A half-dozen of his cronies were with him. They weren’t football-burly types either, but they were big enough, and mean enough, in a crowd.

“Get down here, Claire,” Carlton yelled. “Leave that white trash alone.”

Nothing, no one, could have changed my mind then. I plowed uphill and planted myself beside Roanie. I realized later, when I replayed the whole mess in my mind, that the instant I stepped out of the light and into the shadows with him, he went on guard in some new way, braced against the world beyond us both, his hands clenching by his sides.

“I said …” Carlton tilted his head back and raised his voice, “leave that white
nigger
alone!”

Carlton uttered the word that separated one small part of the Maloneys from the rest. A word so petty and disreputable that it wasn’t allowed in our house, not ever, for any reason. It was a fighting word to whomever got hit with it, black or white, and Grandpa always told my brothers and me that if we ever used it toward any soul, we could never look the Tobblers straight in the eye again.

I dropped my plate. “You gonna take that?
You go knock the chickenshit out of him
! I’ll tell everybody why you had to do it.”

“Get out of here, Claire.” Roanie’s voice was low, dangerous. The look he focused on Carlton could raise bruises. “I pick my own fights.”

“But … but you can’t let him call you names like that! You never let anybody do that! What’s the matter with you? Go on! Smack him! I know you’re not scared of Carlton. You’re not scared of anybody!”

What a little idiot I was, weighing my pride against his, not understanding what I added to his misery. I don’t know what he would have done—probably just turned and walked away—if Carlton hadn’t suddenly strode up the hill. “I swear,” Carlton hissed at me, “at the rate you’re going you’ll end up down on Steckem Road with the McClendon whores.”

He grabbed my arm. I lurched back and kicked him in the shins. He gasped a shocked sound.
Whaaaf
. Then he shook me by the arm, hard, just once.

Because then Roanie was on him.

There are boxing fights and there are dog fights. One is careful and cushioned and mostly sane, the other is a wild, tearing, close-in jumble of fingers that claw into soft spots and bare-knuckled fists that land with cracking thuds.

That’s what Roanie gave him, driving him down the hill, Carlton falling, trying to punch back, yelling. If it had ended there and ended quickly, it would have been as brutally neat as a big dog snapping at a fly. But Carlton’s slack-jawed friends joined in. One on one they’d never have had the guts to tangle with Roanie, but they had enough courage among them to gang up on him.

So there he was, struggling inside a circle of swinging fists and knees, his head jerking back as a fist slammed into his jaw, his body bowing forward as someone punched him in the stomach. Grown men ran toward us, yelling at the boys to stop it. Mr. Tobbler bolted from behind his table, thick arms pumping, yellow jackets parting like a cloud around him.

But I couldn’t wait for reinforcements, Roanie was getting
clobbered. I launched myself down the hill, scrambled atop Carlton’s bucking back, and sank my teeth into the nape of his neck. He squealed like a hog and shook me off.

I fell under the moving pistons of arms and legs, a hard shoe stepped on my hand, and then, as I tried to get up, Carlton drew back his fist and my eyes crossed as my whole horizon filled with fist, just before it crashed into my mouth.

I woke up with my head in Mama’s lap, Mama yelling for Daddy to get a cup of ice, and blood streaming down my chin. I was dimly aware of a large crowd around us and of the band playing the fight song again, somewhere where people were still watching the football game.

I lay there on the shadowy hillside, addled, shivering, and moaning, my mouth on fire. Mama dabbed my lips with the hem of her skirt. Roanie, I thought woozily. What happened to Roanie? I looked up into Grandma’s calm blue eyes. “Marybeth,” she said, “she’s lost a couple of teeth.”

“Oh, my lord!” Mama cried.

Teeth? Something like hard pellets tickled the back of my throat. I retched onto Mama’s lap like a cat coughing up a hairball. Two bloody specks fell out. I touched my tongue to the aching top gap in my once-precious smile, went “Aaaaah,” with embarrassment, and collapsed on my back.

Grandma plucked my teeth up and wrapped them in a handkerchief. “They’ll go back in,” she promised Mama.