A Fine Dark Line

PART TWO

Buster Abbot

Lighthorse Smith

6

YOU WERE LUCKY,” Richard said.

It was three days after the accident. Richard Chapman was sitting in a chair by my bed writing his name on the cast on my left leg with a pencil stub he kept wetting by poking it into his mouth. His writing was slow and deliberate, so damp it was smeary.

“That probably won’t be there long,” I said.

“I’ll write it again,” he said. “Next time I’ll use ink.”

As he wrote, he leaned forward so his long brown hair hung almost to his chin. As it dipped toward my leg, Nub, who was lying beside me, sniffed the tips of it with a wrinkled nose. Considering Nub would lick his ass hour on end, yet seemed offended by the smell of Richard’s hair, I assumed my friend’s locks were fairly ripe.

“I was really lucky, I wouldn’t have got hit at all,” I said. “I wouldn’t have a broken leg. My bike wouldn’t be a bunch of bent-up metal. I wouldn’t be spending most of what’s left of the summer in a cast. I’m just glad Nub wasn’t hurt.”

“You could’a been smashed like a possum, truck that big.”

“Driver saw me, slammed on his brakes. Nub ran past me and another car went right over him. Mrs. Johnson was standing in her yard and she saw it all, told Mom and Mom told me.”

“Who is she?”

“She lives down from the drive-in a bit. Mom knows her some. She’s the one came and got me and my bike out of the highway. Her and the truck driver. It wasn’t his fault. I slid right out in front of him.”

“Did you think it was all over, you seen that truck?”

“I didn’t think much of anything. Not until the hospital anyway, and they were putting the cast on me.”

“You really don’t remember the in-betweens? Don’t remember the truck running over your leg?”

“Nope. Truck didn’t break my leg. I did it sliding on the road, that’s what Mrs. Johnson says. I got a real bad case of concrete rash, that’s for sure. My head got banged too. If I had been sitting up the truck would have knocked my head off. I just sort of slid under it and it passed over me, way that car did Nub.”

“I got an arrow run right through my side oncet. I made it myself, sharpened it with my pocketknife, and I fell on it runnin’. It went right through the meat on my side. Hurt like the dickens, but I didn’t get nothing but a hole in my side and some blood. I got over it quick. I had to. Daddy put me in the fields cutting down dead corn stalks with a scythe. He don’t cotton much to foolish injury.”

“I wish I’d got an arrow through my side. It beats this.”

Richard finished writing his name, flipped his oily hair back in place, and tossed the pencil onto my nightstand, atop a stack of comic books.

“You want me to bring you some more funny books? I want ’em back, but you can borrow ’em.”

“Got anymore Batman?”

“Naw, just them. I got some Superman funny books, though. I can’t buy the new ones. They’re a dime. But in the back of Mr. and Mrs. Greene’s store, they got them with half the cover cut off. There might be some Batman there. They’re just a nickel. I’ll be checking when I get a nickel.”

“Why are they cut like that?”

“They don’t sell after a time, they cut off half the cover, send it back, they get their money back, then they sell the funny book anyway. For a nickel. Ain’t supposed to, but they do. I got to hide all mine ’cause my daddy will tear them up. Actually, he takes them out to the outhouse and wipes his ass on ’em. He says they’re devil’s stuff. I thought about that, and I couldn’t picture no devil reading a Batman comic book.”

“He won’t let you read comics?”

“He don’t think you ought to read nothin’ but the Bible. He calls all them books man-made book learnin’. He wants me to drop out of school when I get a little older, go to work. He says that’s what a man does. Reckon I will drop out.”

“I’m surprised your dad doesn’t want you to be a preacher.”

“He don’t want nobody but him to be a preacher. What’s your daddy want you to be?”

“Whatever I want. He always tells me to find something I’d like to do for free and learn to make a living at it. I don’t know what that is yet. Mama wants me to be a teacher.”

“Your daddy lets her contradict him like that, tellin’ you what to be after him sayin’ do what you want?”

I was a little taken aback.

“Sure. He doesn’t care.”

“In our house my daddy runs things and what he says is how it is.”

“I guess Mama runs things here.”

“Your mama?”

“Daddy thinks he runs things, but Mama runs them.”

“My mama don’t run a thing. Daddy’ll hit her in the mouth if she sasses back. He told me you got to treat a woman like a nigger sometimes.”

“That doesn’t sound right to me,” I said. “No one should be treated that way.”

“Well, I’m just sayin’ what he said. Mama, she reads that Bible all the time, and that’s the only thing Daddy gives her credit for. Hey, do you know Elvin Turner?”

“No.”

“He beat up a nigger with a stick. It was just a little nigger, but Elvin beat him anyway because he said the nigger looked at him funny.”

“I’m sure Elvin is proud,” I said.

“He’s pretty proud, all right, but I don’t know how Elvin could beat up much if he didn’t have a stick. Even with that, that little nigger put up a pretty good fight . . . Got to go. My old man is gonna whup the tar out of me with a razor strap or that darn belt of his I don’t get back in time to do chores.”

“Thanks for loaning me the funny books, Richard.”

“That’s okay.”

“Richard. Don’t say nigger here. Rosy Mae might hear it and it might hurt her feelings.”

“Oh. Well, okay.”

“Something else. You ever heard about a ghost in the house on the hill?”

“Naw.”

“What about by the railroad track?”

“The girl lookin’ for her head? My daddy mentions her and her mother from time to time, and ain’t none of what he mentions is good. Then again, he ain’t got a lot of good to say about nobody less it’s Jesus. I been down there at night couple of times, and it’s spooky, that’s what I’m tryin’ to tell you.”

“See any ghost?”

“Naw. But they say it’s like a light that bounces around.”

“I got this mystery going,” I said. “It seems to have something to do with this girl.”

“What kind of mystery?”

I briefly outlined it for him.

“I heard about that Stilwind house burnin’ down from my daddy. He’s talked about it several times. He worked for the Stilwinds, odd chores and stuff. But I didn’t know the house used to be back there behind the drive- in.”

“There wasn’t any drive-in then. On your way home, go to the trees out back and look up. You’ll see.”

“I’ll do that.”

Richard left, scratching at the lice in his hair.