Some years ago, I said as much to Noreen as we sat at the breakfast table, reading the paper on a bright Sunday morning.
“It’s the ones who love you that you have to look out for,” I said, rather idly referring to an article I’d just read about a father who’d poisoned his two sons. But Noreen had glanced up abruptly, her eyes trained lethally on mine. “What are you talking about?” she asked tensely.
The strain that had suddenly swept into her face puzzled me. “A man in the paper,” I explained. “He killed his sons so they could go to heaven.”
She nodded. But her eyes were still fixed on mine with a terrible concentration.
“What is it, Noreen?” I asked.
She hesitated a moment, the tumult building in her even as she labored to contain it. “Nothing,” she said finally, her eyes fleeing from me, focusing on the newsprint once again.
KELLI’S ESSAY ON WHAT WE ALL REFERRED TO AS “THE RACE problem” at that time was sent to Mr. Avery’s office the day after I first read it. In those days school officials always had to approve whatever students wrote, and I remember thinking that there was a good possibility Mr. Avery would not allow Kelli’s article to be published in the
“We can’t just turn away from our problems down here,” he told us as he stood in the corridor outside the basement office. Then he nodded with that exaggerated and anachronistic courtliness that still clung to the last of his kind, and walked away.
“I guess that’s what you call a ‘gentleman’ down here,” Kelli said once he’d disappeared down the hallway.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
We left the office together a few minutes later, and I remember that as we walked outside, I could feel the first thawing out of that long winter, the first hint of spring’s approach.
Kelli unbuttoned her coat, drew the long, checked scarf from her throat and tucked it beneath her arm. “It feels warm,” she said.
I glanced toward the sky. It was light blue, and the sun was very bright. “We should take a walk before I drive you home.”
“Where to?”
“We could go downtown. Then walk back and pick up the car.”
Kelli flashed me the smile I had seen so seldom since our trip to Gadsden.
We headed down the stairs, then along the sidewalk that led almost directly to the center of town.
“Do you think everybody will feel the same as Mr. Avery?” she asked after a while.
“Most people will, I think.”
“The only thing that bothers me is that the people who don’t like it, they can say that I’m just another ‘outside agitator.’ ”
I laughed. “Just another Yankee trying to tell us how to treat our Negroes.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, some people probably will say that, Kelli, but if they couldn’t say something like that, they’d just say something else instead.” I shrugged. “But we’ve got a lot of good people in Choctaw. Basically, it’s a nice town.”
She looked at me, clearly surprised. “I thought you hated Choctaw.”
“Not as much as I used to.”
“Why not?”
I didn’t dare tell her, so I lied. “Maybe I’m just a little more mature than I was a few months ago.”
“But do you still want to leave here as soon as you graduate?”
“Yes, but maybe not forever, though,” I told her. “Maybe just for while I’m in college.”
“And then come back?”
“Yes.”
She seemed pleased, and I allowed myself to believe that her pleasure in such a prospect was the same as mine, that it signaled the possibility that we might always be together, that slowly, incrementally, I was growing into that greatness she so intensely desired.
We walked on toward the center of town until we reached the park. The grass was still brown, the trees mostly bare, but the sense of their reawakening was everywhere, the earth poised to make its nod toward spring.
“Want to sit down?” I suggested.
“Okay,” Kelli said, then followed me to the short bench that rested at the edge of the deserted tennis court. It was the place she’d been sitting when I’d seen her that first day. In the manner of teenage love, it seemed sacred to me now.
I felt content enough to release a small portion of those feelings that had been growing in me for so long. “I saw you here once.”
“Here? When?”
“It was just before school started. You were reading.”
She suddenly recalled it. “You were playing tennis. You and … it was Luke, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was.”
She seemed amused by the memory. “It feels strange that there was a time when I didn’t know you.”
It was far from a declaration of love, but I relished it anyway. “Yes, it does,” I said, then added cautiously, “especially since we’re so … close.”
She nodded, but added nothing, so I quickly went to another subject, one less charged with possible disappointment. “What do you want to write about for the next issue?”
Kelli’s answer came so quickly that I was sure she’d been considering it for a long time.
“History,” she said, her whole manner suddenly more alert, as if a starting pistol had fired somewhere, and she was off. “I want to find out what Choctaw was like at various times.” An invisible energy swept over her. “I’ve been looking into some things,” she said, even the rhythm of her speech now more rapid. “Did you know that there was once a slave market here?”
I looked at her doubtfully.
“It’s true,” Kelli said. “It was the only one in this part of the state.”
“A slave market? Here in Choctaw?”
“The big markets were farther south, where the cotton plantations were, but for a while, the northern part of Alabama had one slave market, and it was here in Choctaw.”
I still found it difficult to believe. “But there wasn’t that much slavery this far north. No real plantations. It was too mountainous for them. The farms were small.”
“And because of that, the market didn’t run all year,” Kelli said, clearly pleased by the knowledge she had acquired. “It opened in early summer, and stayed open until fall.”
“How do you know that?”
“I read about it,” she said. “The town library has a whole section about this area. I could show it to you sometime.”
She seemed quite excited, and in that excitement, rushed to seal the agreement. “How about this Saturday?” she asked almost girlishly, as if it were a dare.
“All right.”
She smiled with a new radiance, joyful, luminous. “Great, Ben,” she said. “You can pick me up at around ten.”
And so, two days later, I pulled up at the front of Kelli’s house.
