Before My Life Began (49 page)

Her voice shifts, the sarcasm dropping away. She would be there with him if she could, she reminds him, but they agreed that he would be the one to go and she would be the one to stay home with the children. Still, their agreement doesn't stop her from feeling frightened and frustrated, from telling him what she feels. If he weren't so upset and frustrated himself, she says, it might even occur to him to be flattered by her jealousy.

The store lights flash on and off. Nicky taps at the glass. Aaron tells Susan that he'll call her again soon, that she should try not to worry, that he loves her. He'll write to her in the morning, he promises.
Not
for publication.

Aaron and Nicky leave the store, get into Aaron's car and drive out of the parking lot, onto the main road. Nicky leans her head against his shoulder.

“You're nice with your kids. Your voice gets so warm when you talk with them,” she says. “If I were one of them I'd just want to rub against it and purr. You like being a father, don't you? I mean, it's very
important
to you, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“You like family life.”

“Sure. Doesn't everybody—everybody who has people in their family they love?”

“I wouldn't know. But your wife—Susan—is she good to you?”

“Most of the time.” Aaron laughs. “We
like
each other. That helps.”

“Do you still love each other too?”

“Yes.” Aaron turns off onto a dirt road, checks the rear-view mirror. How can he explain it to Nicky—how lucky he feels to have found Susan, to have the life he has? He sees a pair of headlights turn in behind them. “You'd like Susan. She'd like you.”

“No she wouldn't. I saw her picture. She's too beautiful and sophisticated for me. She probably went to one of those fancy girl's schools where they teach you how to serve tea.”

“She looks like that kind of woman, but she went to Smith College because it was free. She grew up in Northampton and she was allowed to go there because as a resident—” He glances into the rear-view mirror again. The headlights are larger, closer. He thinks of an owl's eyes. He presses on the accelerator.

“I mean, does she know what a good deal she has, married to a guy like you?”

“I'm no saint. You don't know everything, Nicky. You don't have to live with me day after day.”

“It doesn't matter what you say. Nobody's easy to live with who amounts to much.” Nicky takes a deep breath. “Oh I may not know a lot, but I know that men like you don't come down the pike every day and that I never had a crush on anyone this bad. Shit. Leave it to me to pick a happily married man who's old enough to be my father.”

“Not so. I'm only twenty-nine—I'll be twenty-nine in September.”

The speedometer passes fifty. They are still three miles from Rose Morgan's house. Aaron tries to remember the roads, to figure out if there is a way to cut back so that he can head for the S.N.C.C. headquarters in town.

“I'm still a virgin, you know.” She moves away from him, her back to the door. “There. I said it and now you know and now you'll feel responsible for me, right?”

“We're being followed and I'm going to try to make some speed. I only wish I knew these roads better. Damn! Hold on—”

Nicky sits up straight.

“Don't fight them, Aaron. Promise me that? If they catch up with us and do nasty things to me, don't fight them. Promise. Promise me now.”

“Shut up.” Aaron floors the gas pedal. The car lurches over a rise in the road so that their heads bang against the car's roof. The road is dark, without houses.

“I won't shut up. I'll be a broken record. I'm very talented at repeating myself. You have to promise me not to fight them. Promise me that if they catch up with us and try dirty things with me, you won't fight them or try to protect me. You have to remember that I'm just a friend, that I'm not even your daughter. You have to start talking to yourself now, so you'll be ready for them. Remember the games we played in Ohio? We have to start following our better selves, trying to remember that their meanness and hatred come from the absence of love. Their hatred is not a force we have to resist and fight against, for nothing is there. We must descend into that part of ourselves we've been reserving for just such a moment. Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.”

“Shut up.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers; for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed—”

“Just shut your fucking mouth!”
Aaron strikes out sideways, his knuckles catching Nicky on the side of her jaw. The car skids, barely misses a tree, barrels along, two wheels on gravel, two on grass.

“Hit me, but don't hit them,” Nicky says. “There you go. You're listening to me. Get it all out, Aaron. Hit
me—”

They make a sudden right angle turn, the rear wheels spitting stone.

“Don't look now but I'm putting in one of the things we went to the store for.” Nicky speaks in a monotone. “I'll tell them I have the rag on. The rest is up to them. Wanna play stinkfinger with me? Goddamn Tommy Huckowicz. I had a mad crush on him our junior year and all he wanted to do was play stinkfinger. Once you get past the smell you've got it licked, right? Shove it already, I'd say. Where? he'd reply. I like to talk tough and dirty so people think I'm experienced, but oh God I'm scared, Aaron. I'm awfully scared.”

Aaron sees light ahead, something flat and glittering and wide. A lake, reflecting moonlight. A thin layer of silver on water, like dust on furniture. He sees a spray of orange flames, men huddled around a campfire, squatting, as if the evening is cool. What makes sense? They repeated it to one another every day: when they are in Mississippi, the rest of America seems unreal; when they are in the rest of America, Mississippi seems unreal. He starts to steer left, sees two headlights turn on, from the lakeshore. White light blasts through the rear window, a police spotlight illuminating the inside of the car, the dashboard. Nicky lowers her head. He remembers a dead owl, ravaged by heat, caught in the crawl space of a house he was building two summers ago. The owl's skull, beneath all the feathers, was astonishingly small, the size of a lemon.

“I think we've bought it,” he says.

He turns the car around so that they are heading in the direction from which they came.

“You didn't promise me yet. If you don't promise me not to fight them, I'll fall apart and do something crazy right now. I swear. Promise me you won't fight back.”

“What I want to do is to ram straight ahead and take a few of the bastards with me.
Damn!”

“We have to love them too, Aaron.”

“No we don't. Not me.”

“Hold my hand, please? I put the plug in and my hand stinks bad, but I'm shaking like crazy and trying to remember what we learned to do in a situation like this, but I can't do anything except be scared and want you holding me. I wish I was dead. I wish I could die and come back to life later on, but I doubt if we can arrange that. Oh Jesus Christ, Aaron, somebody inside my head is starting to pray for me and I think it's my mother.”

Aaron stops the car, puts it in park, turns off the ignition. He takes Nicky's hand, which is ice cold. She holds onto his middle finger—the shorter stump—so tightly that he thinks she may squeeze blood from it. He imagines the top of the stump opening, a slit like a small eye, red juice spurting upwards.

“I promise.”

Her hand relaxes. A man is at his side, peering into the window, reeking of beer.

“You're a long way from home, ain't you, boy?” The man wears a sheriff's hat, but there is no badge there, or on his shirt. His face, lit from behind, is flat and gray, like the blade of a shovel.

“Yes,” Aaron says.

“You lost?”

“Yes. I think I must be, officer.”

Aaron hears voices tell the sheriff—his name is Ben—to stop wasting time, to enforce the law. Ben's eyes seem, to Aaron's surprise, kind. They are soft and brown, the left one scarred, a vertical yellow crescent, like a fingernail paring, slicing it. In a different uniform—a white smock—Aaron imagines Ben behind the counter in a drugstore, filling prescriptions.

“I think you'd best step out of the car, boy. We got to do an inspection, make sure you ain't hiding any contraband in here. Lots of guns and stuff been coming down here from up North, you know.”

“Me too?”

“You too, ma'am.”

They step out and are shoved forward into the crossfire of headlights. Nicky stands next to him quietly, eyes downcast. She trembles. Aaron sees men emerge from the shadows, moving up from the campfire, from the woods that surround them. Some of them carry clubs, some carry rifles. He sees two large russet-colored dogs—Irish setters? retrievers?—straining against leashes.

“Hey Dad—you want me to see what they got in their car here? Want me to open the trunk?”

“Sure, son. You go ahead. Take the key from in front.”

“Maybe we can talk things over,” Aaron offers. “We mean no harm.”

Something stings his mouth before he is aware that anyone has come close enough to touch him. He tastes blood. His lower lip is split.

“Don't want none of your smart city talk, neither,” a man says. A dog snarls, snaps at Aaron's leg. “What for all you nigger-lovers comin' down here anyway? Whyn't you stay home in Harlem where you belong, burn them cities to the ground?”

Aaron sucks blood, touches his lip, and something whips him across the back, low. He is on the ground at once, head down, knees to stomach, hands covering his back. He glances sideways and sees that Nicky has done the same, her forehead touching earth. He hears men laugh, feels the lash on his rear end, on his fingers, on the backs of his legs. The pain is extraordinary, lightning-white. He hears a dog close by, panting.

“Get on up, boy, and get them hands off your back. We want to see that yellow streak you got there. You get on up so we can make sure you are who you are. You got identification?”

Aaron hesitates for a second—will he be safer obeying them or covering up?—and in that second something crashes against his ear and cheek, sending him sprawling, a streak of fire searing his brain. Fiery white stars explode, filling his skull with heat. He rolls over, feels warm liquid pour down along his neck. Nicky is bent over him before he can move again, covering his body with hers, sideways, her stomach across his back, her hands cupping his ears, and she is screaming at the men to leave him alone. Doesn't she know what they'll do to her? Is
this
how he'll die, then, far from home, a thin young woman draped across his back? He hears himself moan, wonders if he has been hit with a baseball bat, wonders why he is still conscious. What will Susan think when she gets the news? Do
you miss me, Aaron?
Nicky screams at them to go away, to get a doctor. The dogs howl. Aaron's mouth is clogged with dirt, pebbles, blood. He spits. He lets his tongue roam, searching for open spaces, for missing teeth. You
won't hurt yourself, will you?
Nicky keeps screaming: do they want to kill a man who won't fight back? Can't they see that he is unarmed, that he was telling the truth, that he means no harm. They threaten Nicky, tell her they will ram red-hot pokers up her nigger-loving cunt, feed her to the dogs, bury her alive in horse shit, coil her in barbed wire and sink her in water, cinder blocks on her ankles. They will split her wide open but give her what she really wants first. They will make her beg for it. She recites words they had rehearsed during role-playing sessions in Ohio. Her voice is calm, like that of a schoolteacher addressing fourth-graders.

“We've got nothing against you. We are not your enemies. We're just here to help teach some children for a short while, and we'd like to hear your opinions too and understand how you feel about us. We're human beings just like you are. We have nothing against you. We know some of you have wives and parents and children you love as much as—”

He feels her weight being lifted from him, and he crouches again, covering his neck and ears this time. His left ear and cheek feel pulpy.

“But you got something against him there, girl, don't you? You got your goddamned filthy body right up against him, you little cock-teasing slut. Same cocksucking body you been giving to all them niggers. Don't you spread them legs for every black dick you smell?”

“No!”

“You been suckin' black cock, ain't you, girl? Your teeth ain't fell out yet but you been doing it, ain't you?
Ain't
you?”

“No!”

Aaron lifts his head. Nicky stands with her hands pressed flat against her thighs, her head held high, eyes blazing.

“No! I'm not like that. I'm here to
teach
. I'm a member of the First Baptist Church in my home town and I know you don't really believe that I do things like you say I do. Why should you think so? Let us talk about this reasonably, so that—”

“Iffen you ain't done it yet, you're gone to before the night's over, ain't she, Homer?”

“Like they say, lots of plowin' gets done by moonlight. Lots of plantin' too.”

“But I could be your own
daughter!”
Nicky pleads. “I could—”

Before she can finish, the man named Homer whacks her so ferociously across the face with the back of his hand—Aaron hears a cracking sound, like that of a thick branch breaking—that Nicky rises bodily from the earth before she falls.

“You watch your goddamn foul mouth, girl. No daughter of mine ever sucked black cock.”

Aaron realizes that he is standing. Nicky screams, her body heaving up and down, but Aaron knows he helps her most by not going to her, by not touching her.

“I brought the girl here,” he says, his tongue thick. “It's my responsibility that she's here. Why don't you let her go and just deal with me?”