The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,61
his pants.
I’d felt protective before this but it was nothing compared to what I felt now. “It’s hot in there, you go and take a shower and I’ll get lunch ready,” I said trying to keep my voice calm. Never in my life had I felt pity like that or determination. All that talk about war with Russia made Perry stock the house with guns and while I got rid of most of them after he left there was a shotgun I saved to scare crows off my garden and what’s more I knew how to use it. While Andy showered I went and found it and put it under my bed. Guns had taken my first son they could damn well protect my second.
There was a lull of three or four days where no one bothered us. I pulled Andy away from the TV long enough to discuss his plans though that was a joke because neither of us could come up with any. What I wanted was for the war to end and everybody be forgiven but one glance at the news at night threw cold water on that. I knew draft dodgers were safe if they got to Canada and I was guessing that meant deserters too but even though the border was just ten miles away it didn’t seem like a real possibility.
Canada could have been Poland or Africa for all we knew about it. The high school basketball team sometimes went up there for games and there were plenty of Frenchies in town and people with bad teeth drove there for cheap dentists but except for bootleggers in the old days and drug smuggling now it was hard to think of any connections with Canada at all. There was only one road leading up there only one border crossing and it was sure to be watched. You could bushwhack through the woods and swamps but Andy was never what you would call outdoorsy and sent on his own he would probably lose his way and starve.
On Saturday we felt confident enough that he came outside and helped me work in the garden through a perfect August afternoon. We talked about taking a swim in the stream to cool off but then suddenly a hoarse gritty stirring in the air caught my attention and my sixth sense kicked in and putting my finger to my lips I shooed him inside.
I went around to the porch and for the third time that summer had a Greyhound bus squeal to a stop in front of my house.
The driver got out a different one than last time but just as polite and put down his stool with a little flourish and even whisked it off. The passenger who climbed down bowed and slapped him on the back so it was obvious that in the course of the bus ride they had become great pals.
There’s no use pretending. What struck me first about the passenger was his blackness and his blackness almost knocked me down. In two hundred years probably not a single Negro had ever set foot in town since we never had slaves and there are no cities nearby and we don’t get tourists even white ones. And his blackness was black there was no brown. Between that and his being so well dressed in a sports jacket that was a little tight on him and a skinny white tie and a straw fedora with a madras band my first reaction was that this was one of those civil rights campaigners come to integrate us.
Big mistake. No civil rights worker had a waist like his which was small as a ballerina’s or shoulders which were like a lumberjack’s or held that ramrod posture and made it seem perfectly natural and at ease.
He carried no bag and the bus drove off without the driver tossing one down. He looked at the hills just like August had and like August seemed stunned by their beauty. He finally saw me and stared for a long time and I don’t want to say he mentally stripped off my clothes because that’s going to make it seem like all I think black men do is go around lusting after white women’s bodies but that’s what he did he mentally stripped me and then was polite enough to soften his expression and let me get dressed.
First words out of his mouth. “Any bears up here? Looks like evil bear country to me.”