He looked me right in the eye. “Do you know Jesus?”
“Jesus who?”
“I found God on August 22, 1961.”
Rodney had also been raised that it is immoral not to clean your plate at every meal. I hate that attitude. As quick as I finished off my apple stuff and stirred the beans once, I stuck my fork upright in the croquette and said see-you-later.
Rodney pointed his fork at my tray. “You’ll go to hell if you don’t eat all that.”
The plate arrangement was artsy, would have made a really sick black-and-white photograph. “Rodney, if a person goes to hell for not eating tuna, I lost salvation awhile back.”
Outside, the snow came down lightly in little dandruff-sized flakes. I found Maurey Pierce crying on the cafeteria steps.
In my life, men and boys cry. The women I’d known up to that point—and ever since—did not allow tears. And Maurey seemed so normal there on the steps, bent over, hugging her knees. Since it was Friday, she had on her white pleated cheer skirt and the red sweater. We didn’t have a game, but the cheerleaders got off sixth period to practice that day anyway. Her hair was pulled back by a tortoiseshell-colored barrette. There’s no one more quickly loved than a tough person turned vulnerable.
I sat on the damp steps next to her and looked off across the schoolyard at the Tetons. In less than a week, the mountains had gone from stark gray to clean white. The wind whipped snow devils off the peaks, but down below, on the cafeteria steps, sound was muffled and dead.
Maurey said, “They killed President Kennedy.”
I looked at her face, then away. A pickup truck pulled into the cafeteria loading zone, but no one got out. White exhaust smoke plumed from the tail pipe, then spread and disappeared against the white background. “Are you sure?”
Maurey nodded, not looking at me. “It’s on the radio.”
Her fists rested one on each knee with the thumbs inside under the fingers. John Kennedy was dead. Dead was an odd word to me. People on television died every night, but that wasn’t real. John Kennedy was on television, but he was real. Down by the volleyball poles, some older kids were whooping at each other, making magpie sounds.
“Who killed him?”
Maurey shrugged. “Texans.”
Why would Texans kill the president? I thought of Jackie with her little hats and Caroline and John-John. Now he had no father either.
As word spread through the yard, kids gathered in small groups of shallow faces. No one had ever told us how to behave when something happened we couldn’t comprehend. At the teachers’ parking lot, some kids were singing “Yah, yah, the witch is dead,” over and over. Maurey’s jaw tightened. I could see each bone along the side of her face.
I wanted to say something to her that would make a difference. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t true, President Kennedy was alive, and no one was singing the witch is dead about him.
The kids cheering Kennedy’s death ran around the yard, taunting the others, behaving like real twerps. Dothan Talbot led the bunch, followed by his sister Florence and a couple of ranch kids who still wore cowboy boots even in the snow. Dothan was a ninth-grader. His hair was an oily flattop and he was a jerk to play football with, always the guy popping wet towels in the locker room and talking loud about pussy.
Dothan stood facing us with his hands on his hips and his feet spread. “Look at the little lovebirds bawling on the steps. You two crying over the nigger lover?”
I looked from Dothan to Maurey. Her eyes were amazing.
Dothan’s teeth showed a gap when he grinned. “Know what Caroline Kennedy asked Santa to bring her at Christmas?”
Florence squealed, “A Jack-in-the-box.” Must have been a stock joke around the Talbot house.
Dothan’s eyes locked on Maurey’s. “Maybe you’re a nigger lover too.”
Maurey’s shoulder caught him belt high, knocking him over backward with her on top. His hand twisted through her dark hair, then pulled her over into the slushy snow. As Dothan sat up, I kicked him in the throat. He caught my foot and pulled me into the pile. Florence started screaming like her teeth were being ripped out.
Did I jump into the fight in anger over Kennedy’s senseless death or because I knew it was the way into Maurey’s heart and/or pants? Whenever I do something right, I always suspect that I did it for the wrong reason. I couldn’t understand why the president was suddenly dead, I hated Dothan’s glee, I hated all the ignorant grunts in Wyoming or North Carolina or anywhere else who make things dirty for the rest of us.
Maybe I wasn’t simply sucking up to Maurey. Maybe I got myself beat up defending decency. Hell, I don’t know.
And beat up is what I got. Within seconds he’d twisted my arm up behind my back and slammed my face into the cold mud. He used his knee to pin me there while he wrestled a flailing Maurey into the same position. Then Dothan held us, each with one ear ground into the earth.
Maurey and I faced each other, nose to nose, maybe eight inches apart. Dothan’s hand spread across the side of her head, his nails digging into her cheek. He had me more by the neck. She didn’t make a sound so neither did I. The one eye I could see wasn’t crying anymore. It was hurt. Not the physical hurt I was in or the shame hurt of having your face rubbed in the snow by a horse’s ass. Maurey’s was the kind of hurt you get when you discover what an unfair mess of a world we’re stuck with and how helpless we are to do a damn thing about it.
Or maybe she was just king-hell pissed. I’m always reading twenty minutes of insight into a glance in someone’s eyes.
Florence’s godawful screaming stopped and I felt the sharp weight lifted off my spine. I rolled sideways, coughing, and looked up to see Coach Stebbins holding Dothan by both arms.
Florence had the voice of a raped goat. “They started it. They started it. They jumped on my brother.”
Maurey spit snow. “He was celebrating the fucker who killed Kennedy.”
Stebbins stared at us on the ground, then his eyes traveled the circle of kids, Teddy the Chewer, Chuckette Morris, Kim Schmidt. His jaw looked like he’d been hit, not us. He let Dothan go, then turned and walked back into the school.
That Friday in November must be the most analyzed, beat-to-pulp day in history. The day everything got quiet; the day America lost her virginity, or at least her innocence; the day the fifties ended. More strangers spoke to each other that day than any time before or since.
A lot of newspaper and TV guys made their careers that day. An entire industry has grown around trying to figure out what happened. I hate to think we’ll never know.
I take it as the day I first talked to Maurey, without which I’d be a different deal.
I’ve asked a number of people who were ten, eleven, twelve back in 1963, and most of them recall it as the day the grown-ups cried.
“Come on,” Maurey said.
“Where?” She was standing up, but I still sat in wet snow. I felt somewhat debased by losing the fight. Dothan wasn’t that tough. Maurey’s white skirt was a mess. I imagined the guys got some great panty shots, which was probably a bigger deal to them than the death of a president.
“I can’t be here anymore.”
“That makes sense.”
“We can to go my house and watch the news. I want to know what this is about.”
I glanced at the school. “Think they’ll miss us?”
She held out a hand to help me up. “All the rules are off today, Sam. Nothing we do matters.”
How did she know that? Maurey wasn’t any older than me. She didn’t have any more experience at
