“They threw me out of that fucking school, and now they’re fixing to take niggers into it.”
The momentous consequences of desegregation could hardly have meant less to me at that moment. My mind was fixed exclusively on another matter.
“Take back what you said about Kelli,” I told him. I started to say something else, then felt a hand at my arm.
“Let’s go, Ben,” Kelli said. Her dark eyes were very tense, and I could see the fear in them, the sense that things were hurtling wildly out of control.
I did not answer.
She tugged again, this time more forcefully. “Please, Ben. Come on.”
I glanced at her, then back at Lyle. He did not move toward me, nor did he say anything else to either Kelli or me, and I don’t think he ever intended to do either. He would have let me go. He would not have pressed the issue further. I was the one who had to press it, though for reasons he could not have guessed.
And so in a single outrageous, sacrificial gesture, I suddenly, and without any real provocation, lunged violently at Lyle Gates.
His eyes widened in disbelief as I rushed toward him. He stepped back, drew a fist, but did not swing it, so that I was the first to strike.
It was a glancing blow, just touching the side of his face, and Lyle responded instinctively with a quick punch to my chest. I swung again, missed and stumbled forward. I could feel his fist snap against the right side of my forehead, then another in my left eye, and finally a third on my jaw, halting, oddly cautious blows, as I realize now, meant only to warn me away.
Still, they had come fast and blindingly, and though I was not seriously hurt, I staggered anyway, dazed and helpless, until I tumbled over one of the tables, then rolled forward, my head coming to rest only inches from the tip of one of Lyle’s dusty work shoes.
I started to get up, expecting Lyle to deliver a quick kick to my face, but the shoe stepped away instead, other dusty shoes gathering around it as the workmen quickly surrounded him, edged him farther away from me, and finally eased him out the door.
I pulled myself up slightly, pressing my palms against Cuffy’s checkered tile floor. A slender trail of blood hung from my mouth, and I could feel a steady ache spread out from my jaw. Even so, I was not in the least dazed, and could easily have gotten to my feet. But suddenly I felt Kelli at my side, her arms wrapped around me, and I let myself drift down again, into her cradling arms.
“Are you all right, Ben?” she asked breathlessly.
I nodded.
Her arms tightened around me. “I’m sorry I got you into this,” she whispered.
I shook my head groggily. “I’m okay,” I told her, though hoping that she would not believe me and perhaps draw me even more closely to her.
Which, I suppose, she did. And so for a few delicious moments, I continued to lie silently in Kelli Troy’s arms, breathing slowly, though my mind was racing, aflame with the certainty that I had done it, unexpectedly and miraculously made her mine.
CHAPTER 15
THOUGH THE FOLLOWING MORNING MY FACE WAS BRUISED and one of my eyes was blue and swollen, I woke up with a terrible joy. For a time, I lay in my bed, reliving the brief heroism that had landed me in Kelli’s arms. I reviewed it all from beginning to end, from the moment Lyle had entered Cuffy’s to the moment he’d been hustled out of it by his fellow road workers, and each second of it was like a glittering gem.
At breakfast I sat proudly across from my father, and although he had always been a peaceful man, he had no quarrel with what I’d done.
“That boy shouldn’t have said something like that to Kelli,” he told me, “and I guess you didn’t have much choice but to stand up to him.” He gave me a small man-to-man smile, then returned to his newspaper.
After breakfast, I walked out into the front yard. The first green sprouts had begun to inch up from the tiny flower garden my father had planted along either edge of the driveway, and their determination to endure a long winter of isolation, then sprout suddenly to life struck me as emblematic of my own situation in regard to Kelli. I had waited and endured. Now was the time for victory.
I was still reveling in such a glorious possibility when the phone rang inside the house. I rushed in to answer it.
“Hi, Ben,” Kelli said.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said, heroically making light of my wounds. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, but I wasn’t the one who got hit.”
“My father put a little ice on my eye after you left, but it’s still swollen. But other than that, I’m okay.”
“I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to …”
“No, no,” I told her quickly. “It’s nothing. By Monday, nobody will even notice.”
There was a slight pause, then Kelli said, “Well, anyway, I wanted to let you know that I went up to see Mr. Prewett this morning.”
“Who?”
“The man I told you about on the way to Cuffy’s yesterday. The one who was supposed to know a lot about Choctaw.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember now.”
“Well, Mrs. Phillips was right, he did know a lot.”
“That’s great.”
“As a matter of fact, I found out why they call it Breakheart Hill.”
“You did?”
“And so I thought we might drive up there this afternoon. It would be easier to explain it if we were actually there and I could show you a few things.”
“Okay,” I said. “When do you want me to pick you up?”
“Well, I thought you might want to have lunch with my mother and me, and after that we could go up to the hill.”
“All right.”
“So, could you come here at around noon?”
I knew that Kelli didn’t want to tell me more about what she’d discovered, so I didn’t press her further. “Well, I’ll see you then,” I said.
“Noon,” Kelli repeated. “Okay, then.”
I told her good-bye, then walked back out into the yard. The morning air was soothing on my bruised face, and I slumped back in an old lawn chair, closed my eyes and let the sunlight warm me. When I opened them again, they were focused on the mountain, and after a time they drifted to the left and settled on Breakheart Hill. The trees were trimmed in green by then, but I could still see through them, all the way down to the dark ground that made up the forest floor, a deep, rich loam that would soon nourish a wild summer lushness. For a little while my mind lingered on its name, just as Kelli’s had dwelled upon it for the past few weeks, but soon I drifted into a different realm than inquiry, and imagined myself on the hill, lying on my back in the warm, sun-soaked earth, with Kelli over me, the jet-black curls of her hair falling all around me, making a tent for my face. I knew that we were naked, that we were making love, but since I’d had no such experience, it came to me not in a single, sharply focused instant of excitement, but in a rich sensual fullness, so that I touched and was touched in every way and in every place at once. There were no separate explorations, no concentration upon any single part of her. I felt all of her simultaneously, in a limitless and impossible wholeness, felt all of her in each part of her, her fingers in her lips, her pulse in her breath, all of life in every touch of life.
