The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead Page 0,45

he was performing a service for his fellow students, sparing them.

The blond lady pushed the carriage toward the door and Elwood held the door open for her. She didn’t say a word.

Harper pulled up and waved them to the front seat. “You boys up to no good?”

“Yes, sir,” Turner said. He whispered to Elwood, “Don’t go stealing my plan, now, El. That shit’s pure gold.” They got in the van.

When they drove past the administration building toward the colored campus, the students stood in worried huddles on the green. Harper slowed and called over one of the white boys. “What’s happening?”

“They took Mr. Earl to the hospital. Something’s wrong with him.”

Harper parked the van by the warehouse and ran to the hospital. Elwood and Turner hustled to Cleveland. Elwood scanning every which way like a squirrel and Turner trying to maintain a front, which made him move like a space robot. They needed a report. Despite the segregated campuses, the black boys and white boys passed on news for safety’s sake. Sometimes Nickel was like being back home, where the older brother or sister that you hated warned you about a parent’s black mood or daylong drinking jag so you could make preparations.

They found Desmond outside the colored dining hall. Turner looked inside. The staff table was still set in the aftermath. Half set—the overturned chairs pointed to a fuss, and the smear of blood showed where they’d dragged out Earl.

“I don’t think it was medicine,” Desmond said. His deep voice added a baleful tone.

Turner punched him in the shoulder. “You’re going to get us killed!”

“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” Desmond said. He looked over Turner’s shoulder toward the White House.

Elwood’s hand covered his mouth. There was a half of a work-shoe footprint in the blood. He snapped to and turned downhill. To see if they were coming for them. “Where’s Jaimie?”

“That nigger,” Desmond said.

They strategized on the dining-hall steps. Turner suggested that they hang out and gather information on Earl’s condition from the other students. He didn’t say he wanted to stay there because it was a straight shot to the road bordering the east side of campus. If Spencer came up with a posse, he’d be out lickety-split. Can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man.

Jaimie showed up an hour later, looking rumpled and a bit dazed, like he’d just had a turn on a Tilt-A-Whirl. He completed the story they’d got from the other boys. The Holiday Luncheon commenced as it always did. The special tablecloth that only got aired out once a year covered the staff table, the nice dishes were wiped of dust. The supervisors took their places and drank beer, sharing rowdy stories and off-color speculation about the bustier secretaries and teachers. It was loud and they enjoyed themselves. A few minutes into the meal, Earl bolted up and grabbed his stomach. They thought he was choking. Then he commenced to disperse his insides in a spray. When the blood appeared they carried him down the hill to the hospital.

Jaimie told them that he waited among the boys outside the ward until the ambulance took him away.

“You’re crazy,” Elwood said.

“I didn’t do it,” Jaimie said. His face was blank. “I was playing football. Everybody saw me.”

“The can is gone from my locker,” Desmond said.

“I told you I didn’t take it,” Jaimie said. “Maybe someone robbed your shit and they did it.” He knocked Desmond’s shoulder. “You said it was horse medicine!”

“That’s what he told me,” Desmond said. “You saw it—it had a horse on it.”

“Could have been a goat,” Turner said.

“Maybe it was horse poison,” Elwood said.

“Or goat poison,” Turner added.

“They ain’t rats, dummy,” Desmond said. “You shoot horses, not poison them.”

“He’s lucky he ain’t dead then,” Jaimie said. Elwood and Desmond continued to press him, but his version did not change.

It was hard to miss the smile that tugged at Jaimie’s mouth from time to time. Turner wasn’t angry that Jaimie lied to their faces. He admired liars who kept on lying even though their lies were obvious, but there was nothing anyone could do about it. Another proof of one’s powerlessness before other people. Jaimie wasn’t going to admit it, so Turner just watched the boys and the activity down the hill.

Earl didn’t die. He didn’t come back to work, either. Doctor’s orders. They’d hear about that in the coming days. And a few weeks after that, they’d discover that Earl’s replacement, a tall man named Hennepin, was made