Jim the Boy (11 page)

“What are you doing down there, Doc?” Uncle Zeno said from up above. Jim could tell that Uncle Zeno had dropped him on purpose.

“Nothing,” said Jim, looking up. Uncle Zeno’s face was dark, but his head was surrounded by a halo of blue light.

“What am I going to tell your Mama?”

“Tell her you put me down in a hole,” Jim said.

Uncle Zeno didn’t say anything for a moment. “We better not tell her that,” he said quietly.

Something in Uncle Zeno’s voice made Jim imagine his father sitting in the bottom of a hole much like this one. He imagined that his father was neither happy nor sad, just sitting there, waiting for something. It wasn’t necessarily a
bad
feeling; the hole wasn’t really an unpleasant place to be. It was just lonesome. Directly in front of his eyes, a rock stuck out of the dirt wall of the hole. He poked at the rock with a finger, thinking,
I’m the only person who has ever seen this rock. I’m the only person who will ever see this rock.

“We better get you out of there, Doc,” Uncle Zeno said, lowering his arm into the hole.

Jim studied Uncle Zeno’s big hand dangling above him. When he jumped, Uncle Zeno firmly grabbed his wrist. He pulled Jim quickly into the bright daylight and set him on his feet beside the hole. The familiar world temporarily seemed strange to Jim, bright, more beautiful than he remembered. He was glad to be back.

Uncle Zeno made a big fuss brushing the dirt off of Jim’s overalls.

Jim was sorry he had made Uncle Zeno feel bad. “That was pretty funny,” he said.

“Humph,” said Uncle Zeno. “Your mama probably wouldn’t like knowing I dropped you down in a hole, would she?”

“No,” Jim agreed. “She probably wouldn’t.”

Not long after they got back on the road, they passed the sign marking the town limits of New Carpenter. Jim never tired of the moment when the state highway rolled in from the countryside and twisted down a little hill and changed itself into Main Street. Seeing the town all at once on a Saturday was like suddenly seeing the ocean: it made Jim breathe a little faster until he got used to it. Brick buildings leaned in on both sides of the street. Whole flocks of people scurried in and out of the stores and among the growling traffic. Down on Trade Street, farmers from all over the county parked their trucks shoulder to shoulder in a line four blocks long and hawked vegetables and apples and watermelons and roasting ears of corn. Sharps and would-be sharps wandered up and down among the farmers hoping to trade guns or knives or sell poor-looking dogs. At the far end of town, Trade and Main, city and country, collided and crossed in a honking, scary intersection, above which the tall white courthouse rose importantly from a large green lawn. On the lawn beneath the trees, tough-looking, young mill hands with the afternoon free gathered in their Saturday clothes. They laughed and argued and looked at people and occasionally fought. The whole thing was watched over by a gruff old policeman named Hague who carried a blackjack and blew his whistle and yelled at kids when they jaywalked. Aliceville always seemed a little quiet to Jim, almost like church, after he visited New Carpenter. As far as Jim was concerned, the uncles didn’t bring him here nearly often enough.

Uncle Zeno parked the truck on Trade Street and turned to Jim. He said, “You think you’re old enough to keep an eye on that courthouse clock and be back here by one?”

Jim nodded rapidly. The uncles had never turned him loose in New Carpenter before.

“All right, then,” said Uncle Zeno. He removed a dime from the bib pocket of his overalls and gave it to Jim. “You stay out of trouble, now, and don’t tell your Mama I let you go off by yourself.”

“Yes, sir!” Jim said.

Once Jim reached Main Street, his excitement at being there alone quickly chilled. Everywhere he wanted to go, he found groups of kids, New Carpenter kids, all strangers, already in possession of the place. Kids swarmed like flies around the drugstore counter, where Jim had wanted to get some ice cream; four tough-looking boys were squatted down in the hardware store beside the display case holding knives; a covey of girls giggled into the dime store just as Jim got there. Soon he began to feel that all the other kids in town were watching him, that they felt sorry for him because he didn’t have any friends. He grew angry at all the kids in New Carpenter for just being there, and angry at himself because he was not brave enough to go where they were and tell them who he was.

Jim was wandering toward the courthouse when Penn Carson yelled his name from the other side of the street. Jim was glad to see someone he knew. He waved his arm back and forth over his head as if signaling a locomotive in a train yard. He looked up and down Main Street, but did not see a hole in the traffic that would let him cross.

Penn pointed toward the courthouse, and they walked toward the intersection, Jim on one side of the street, Penn on the other. At the intersection, Penn waited for the light to change and ran across Main Street toward Jim.

“Hey, Jim!” Penn said, as if they were the oldest friends. “Do you want to go exploring?”

“Yeah! “Jim said, his appreciation of New Carpenter returning in a rush.

He followed Penn across Trade Street and up the stairs leading to the courthouse lawn. A smoking gauntlet of mill hands lined the sidewalk that crossed the wide yard. Mama said that mill hands carried switchblade knives and got drunk and cut each other. Jim didn’t dare look at them.

At the base of the courthouse steps, Penn stopped and looked around furtively, as if they were being followed. “Come on,” he said. “I know a secret passageway.” He walked to the right side of the steps, motioned for Jim to follow him, and ducked behind the wall of fat boxwoods that ringed the courthouse. Between the courthouse and the boxwoods was a space just wide enough for the boys to pass through single file. They hurried along the front of the building, invisible behind the thick bushes. After they turned the corner, Penn stopped Jim and pointed down at a man’s footprint, its heel mark deep and distinct in the soft ground.

“Convicts!” Jim whispered. “We saw them on the way here. I bet one of them escaped!”

“That’s what I was thinking,” said Penn.

“There’s not enough sign to track him.”

“He might be down there,” Penn said, pointing at a stairway leading into the basement of the court-house.

“He might be,” Jim said. “Have you ever been down there?”

“No,” said Penn, “but I’ll go if you will.”

“You think we’ll get in trouble?”

“I hope not.”

They crept to the stairwell, crawled underneath the handrail, and dropped down in front of the basement door. They crouched to stay out of sight.

“See if it’s locked,” Penn said.

Cool, ammonia-smelling air rushed out around Jim when he opened the door. Ahead of him lay a dark hallway divided across the middle by a thin band of barred sunlight.

“Look,” Jim whispered. “A jail cell!”

“I don’t know,” said Penn. “Do you think we should look inside it?”

“I will if you will,” Jim said.

They crept down the hallway, their backs flat against the wall, almost to the boundary of sunlight on the floor. Jim was afraid to go any farther. He stared down at the shadow of the bars, at the dust motes suspended above the floor. He was about to tell Penn they should go back when Penn shoved him into the light. Through the cell door Jim saw a mill hand sitting on a bench beneath a barred window. He raised his head and looked at Jim with a sad, bruised face. One of his eyes was swollen almost shut. His lower lip was split, and the front of his white shirt was splattered with blood. Jim could not move away from the door, nor take his eyes off of the man. He stared at him the way he might stare at a strange, growling dog blocking his path. One corner of the man’s mouth twisted up in a crooked smile.

“Boo!” he said, lunging suddenly toward the door.

Jim stumbled backward, where Penn grabbed him by the arm.

“Run, Jim!” he yelled.

They ran down the hall, out the door, up the stairs, and across the lawn through the mill hands. They ran across Trade Street without waiting for the light. They did not stop running until they were halfway down Main Street, where they slowed to a jog, then to a breathless walk, their hands on their hips as they tried to breathe. When they finally plopped down on the bench outside the barbershop, Jim could feel his hands shaking, but he wasn’t afraid anymore — just excited. Strangely, he felt like laughing. Penn started to grin. “You should have seen your face,” he panted.

“At least I didn’t yell,” said Jim.

When they started laughing, it took them a long time to stop. Then they leaned back against the bench and sat for several minutes without talking. Jim turned his face up to the sun. He felt absolutely content.

“I’m glad,” Penn said finally, “that the mountain boys …”

“And the town boys,” Jim cut in.

“… aren’t here.”

“Me too,” said Jim. “They would mess everything up.”

It was Jim’s turn to choose a place to explore. He led Penn to the alley between a ladies’ store and a lawyer’s office. The alley ran all the way to the unnamed street that paralleled Main. Jim stopped a few feet into the alley and pointed at the brick wall, where someone had drawn a skull and crossbones in chalk. Underneath the skull and crossbones was written the word “KING.”

“Who do you think King is?” Penn whispered.

Jim frowned. “He couldn’t be a pirate,” he said. “It takes forever to get to the ocean from here.”

“Then why the skull and crossbones?” asked Penn.

“Maybe he’s a murderer,” Jim said.

They walked slowly toward the sunlit space Jim could see at the end of the alley. Every few steps they encountered fresh warnings, each more fierce than the one that preceded it: “NO TRESPASSING KING;” “BEWARE KING;” “IF YOU GO PASS HERE YOU WILL DIE KING.” Jim had always wanted to explore this alley, but now he wasn’t so sure. His feet felt too heavy to move. The alley had grown darker and colder, as if it were a canyon between two tall cliffs. He would have run all the way back to Main Street, but he didn’t want Penn to think he was afraid.

Penn picked up a small, white rock and drew a circle around the word “PASS.”

“At least he spelled his name right,” he whispered.

Jim put his hand over his mouth to keep from giggling out loud.

They tiptoed out into a small courtyard that opened onto the narrow, muddy street. The ground was littered with cigarette butts and broken bottles. On the other side of the street was the back of an unpainted shack almost overrun with blackberry briars. An enormous crown was chalked onto the wall. Underneath the crown was written “YOU DIE KING.”

“I don’t know, Jim,” Penn said. “What if King really is a murderer? What if he’s not playing?”

Jim considered the possibility. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

When Jim and Penn turned to go back the way they had come, they saw two older boys running toward them down the alley. Another two boys ran into the courtyard from the small street. They quickly found themselves surrounded. The boys wore dungarees, not overalls. They closed in around Jim and Penn until Jim could smell their hair oil, the cigarette smoke on their clothes. Jim guessed they were New Carpenter boys, mill-hill boys, seventh, maybe eighth graders. There was no way to get away from them. Jim wanted to tell Penn that if he didn’t fight, these boys would kill them.

Almost as if reading Jim’s mind, Penn whispered, “I’m with you, Jim.”

Jim felt a little better, but not much. He picked out the least scary-looking pair for when the fight came, but the idea of fighting the bigger boys — and of what they would do to him and Penn — made him feel sick inside.

One boy was obviously the leader. He was stocky, bordering on fat, but his arms were almost man-sized. He wore a felt cap shaped like a crown. He stepped up so close to Jim and Penn that he was almost touching them. He had tiny black eyes set above big round cheeks.

“I’m King,” he said, pointing toward the alley. “Can’t you hicks read?”

“Better than you can spell,” Jim said.

King shoved Jim hard against the wall. “Did I say you could talk, hick-boy?”

Penn pushed King. “You leave him alone!” he said.

“That was the biggest mistake you ever made,” King said, pushing up his sleeves.

Over King’s shoulder Jim saw Abraham walk into the alley. Abraham didn’t look at Jim.

“Hey, old man,” said King. “No ‘coons allowed back here.”

Abraham’s eyebrows went up briefly and he reached into the pocket of his overalls. Jim heard a click and suddenly there was a knife in Abraham’s hand.

“Hey,” said King, backing toward the street.

Abraham stepped closer, his face a blank.

All four of the boys took another slow, backward step.

“Hey,” King said again.

“Hey,” said Abraham.

The boys turned and broke for the street. Jim could hear their feet splashing in the mud as they ran away.

Abraham still didn’t look at Jim. He stared at the street where the boys had gone. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out an apple.

“Hey, Abraham,” said Jim.

“Sit down, Mr. Glass,” Abraham said. “Against that wall right there.”

Jim backed up and sat down against the wall.

“Who’s that?” Abraham said, indicating Penn with the knife.

“He’s my friend,” Jim said. “Penn Carson.”

“Sit down, Mr. Carson.”

Penn obediently sat down beside Jim.

“Slide over,” Abraham said, indicating with the knife that he wanted them to sit apart. He walked over to the wall, turned, and sat down heavily between Jim and Penn. Jim and Penn stared at the knife. With great formality Abraham began peeling the apple. Jim noticed that his hands were shaking.

“Abraham?” Jim said.

“Them boys was following you all over town. I followed them boys. They ain’t good boys.”

“I know,” Jim said.

“What are you doing back in this alley?”

“We were just playing,” said Jim.

“Well, you ain’t playing no more.”

Jim stared at the apple as Abraham peeled it, at the peeling snaking toward the ground. Even though his hands were shaking, Abraham managed to keep the peeling in one piece.