As an Old Memory Read online

  “What are you doing?” Sim’s voice said from the kitchen doorway.

  His father leaned against the entryway. Charlotte stood behind him, peaking over his shoulder.

  “Josh delivered these yesterday. I was going to fill her pill planner.”

  “That’s why I came over. I always come the day after she gets her meds filled. I got her a month-long pill planner a few months ago. It cuts down on the hassle.”

  Charlotte hovered over his left shoulder. “I don’t like him coming over often. I might have company, and Sim rubs folks the wrong way sometimes, bless his heart.”

  Sim glanced at her and flinched a bit. “Don’t stand there.”

  “Sorry.” She pushed past him into the kitchen.

  “When do you have friends over?” he asked.

  “All the time. I’m very popular.”

  Alan sat the bottle down and took his tea glass. “Aunt Charlotte, you were talking a few minutes ago about how you went for a drive today because you were bored and lonely.”

  “I thought that was you I passed today out by that colored restaurant,” Sim said. “You know you shouldn’t be driving that far.”

  “Neither should you,” she snapped back, “and I get lots of visitors. Last night Connie stopped by. We talked for hours.”

  “Connie who?” Sim asked.

  “Like you don’t know. Connie Dearborn,” she answered.

  Alan almost let the glass slip from his hands. His dad’s mouth fell slack. Charlotte often lapsed into the past, but she never admitted to seeing or talking to her friends who had been killed that night. Also, anytime anyone mentioned Connie Dearborn, his father looked like the biggest bomb had been dropped. Alan was pretty sure he had never gotten over her. Sim would look through her belongings years after her murder.

  “That can’t be, Charlotte,” Sim said. “It’s crazy.”

  “Why is it crazy? A teacher and a student can be friends. She ain’t that much older than me.”

  “It’s crazy because there’s no way on God’s green earth that woman was here last night,” Sim said.

  Alan started to get nervous. One of the things that Charlotte’s doctor often warned about was causing a jarring epiphany. His daddy was on the way to doing that. It might be the last straw that would make Charlotte snap and never come back.

  “Daddy, be careful what you say.”

  “I will not. She can’t be left to believe whatever she wants to because some Kike head shrinker thinks he knows everything.”

  Alan’s ire rose. “He’s a doctor and knows his business. The man has worked with Holocaust survivors.”

  “That makes him the God’s truth in bat-shit crazy?” Sim said. “Charlotte, Connie Dearborn did not come here last night. She hasn’t been in this house for forty years.”

  “I know good and well that she was here last night. She told me that it was okay and that I had to buy baby blue crepe paper. She promised me that no one would notice or care.”

  Sim’s face bloomed purple. Alan watched a train wreck in slow motion and could do nothing about it.

  “Daddy, let it go,” he stressed.

  “Charlotte, Connie was murdered by that nigger you were fooling around with forty years ago. You found her and your friends dead in that gymnasium. Every last one of them killed by that Tobias Abernathy for no reason more than you was trying to intermingle the races.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Charlotte screamed.

  The two locomotives collided, the bigot express and the crazy train. Charlotte shoved Sim, causing him to hit the floor. Alan grabbed his aunt by the arm before she could throw any more blows. He crossed her arms over her body while standing behind her and held her fast despite her thrashing and cursing. Sim got to his feet, using the table to pull himself up. Alan recognized the look in his old man’s eyes. His fearless daddy was about to run off.

  “Before you haul it out here,” he said to Sim. “Do something decent and call 911.”

  Sim narrowed his eyes and nodded. He called for an ambulance and then ran off to his truck like the coward he was. Alan stayed in the kitchen holding his highly agitated aunt in a basket hold, while she cursed and screamed.

  He talked calmly to her until the EMTs arrived, using the reassuring phrases Dr. Fein had told him to use if this situation ever happened. They strapped her to a gurney and headed to the emergency room. He chose to let her go alone, thinking his presence might keep her agitated.

  Alan made sure that everything was tidy in his aunt’s house and that all the lights and dangerous appliances were off before he locked the front door and left. During the drive home, he ruminated over the events, wishing he’d manned up and kicked his dad in the nuts.

  Chapter Six

  1956

  A few weeks after the beginning of school

  Charlotte watched in silence as people tossed food at Tobias Abernathy. He sat alone at a table in the far corner of the lunchroom near the door to the kitchen. It was where the school administration made him sit. Unfortunately for him, the garbage cans and slop bins were there, too. Instead of using those bins, her fellow students made him the slop bin. Even her good friends took advantage of him. It was after Barabbas Hassle, with his bright white smile under his flaming orange hair and brown freckles, flung spaghetti on Tobias’s head that Charlotte took a stand. The new kid couldn’t help it that he was a Negro and forced to go to the all-white school. She knew that he would’ve preferred to go to a school with his own kind. Dumping food on him for something he couldn’t help was no way to treat him. Tobias seemed to take it with ease, knocking the remnants of pasta off of his head and onto the table with a swipe of his hand. He didn’t take a stand or show any sign toward retaliation.

  She stood and took her tray to the bin. As she passed Tobias, they made eye contact. His dark brown eyes narrowed in anticipation of another barrage of food. After she tossed her refuse and scraps away in the bin, he looked relieved that one person passed without harassing him. Once Charlotte put her plate in the window to be washed by the too-fat lunch lady who was as vicious as the students, she walked back to him, shielding him from the others with her body.

  “I’m sorry about all this,” she said.

  He looked up at her and took another bite of his food, which had been spat in. Something about him eating like that reminded her of Christ as he walked down the Via Dolorosa bearing the cross. Everyone spat at and cursed him too. The Scriptures said so. Why could the others not see that?

  “I’m going to stand here so that you can have a moment of relief.”

  Tobias kept his eyes turned down to the table. “You ought not do that. They’ll do worse to you.”

  “They will do no such of a thing.”

  “Why are you talking to him?” Suzie Tittle asked as she passed by with her beau Frankie Kemp.

  “Because she’s a nigger lover,” Frankie said, making to toss his leftover milk onto Tobias.

  Charlotte slapped his arm, and the bottle flew out of his hand and smashed against the wall. Frankie looked like he would smack her across the face, but the too-fat lunch lady burst from the kitchen.

  “What was that noise?” she asked and stepped over the broken bottle on the floor. “Who did that?”

  “I did.” Charlotte didn’t give Frankie time to say a word. “He was going to toss it at Tobias.”

  The lunch lady snarled at her. “Why would you stop him from that? That uppity colored ain’t got no right to eat in here. It ought to be made to eat by the outside garbage cans.”

  “He’s got as much right as anyone else,” Charlotte said.

  “Please be quiet,” Tobias whispered.

  “I won’t. It’s not your fault that your family came here to work for the Harringtons and there isn’t a colored school for nearly fifty miles.”

  “Please, Miss McAdams,” Tobias said again. “Let it go. Everyone’s got to go back to class.”

  “He could’ve dropped out,” Frankie said. “Ain’t like
a colored’s got any chance of a good job anyway. He’ll be bucking hay or portering a train.”

  “Better options that what you have,” Charlotte said. “How many times have you been a junior now? Twice?”

  Suzie pulled on Frankie’s arm. “Come on before you get in trouble. No reason to get suspended over a nigger lover.”

  The two walked off. The other students started to leave the cafeteria as the bell rang in the hall. Fifth period would be starting very soon. If she didn’t leave as soon as the bell rang, she would be late to her home ec class. Her locker was on the other side of the school, but she continued to shield Tobias until every student left. The lunch lady loomed over them the whole time.

  “Don’t think you’re going to waltz out of here, either one of you,” she said. “Boy, clean up that table, and around it as well. I ain’t slipping on any food.”

  “You probably wouldn’t be able to get back up,” Charlotte said. “You’re as big as a milk cow.”

  The lunch lady grinned, looking almost demonic. “Speaking of milk, clean up the mess you made. Don’t use no broom and dust pan either. Pick up those shards with your bare hands. You owe us a deposit on that bottle too.”

  “We’ll be late for our classes,” Charlotte said. “The principal won’t like that.”

  “He’ll like what you did even less,” the lunch lady said. “Get to it.”

  Tobias stood and let the food piled on his pants fall to the floor. He emptied his own plate into the bins and put it on the window to be cleaned. The lunch lady grabbed it and threw it away. The broom and mop stood beside the kitchen door. Tobias took them both and brought them to the table. All the food on the table top went into the floor with a swipe of his arm. Charlotte watched all this before she started picking up the pieces of glass on the floor.

  The bottle had broken in large pieces. She kept from cutting herself and used the mop to clean up the leftover milk. Without him asking, she mopped around Tobias’s table as well.

  “I wish you would let me do this. There’s no reason for you to be subjected to this kind of torture.”

  Charlotte leaned on the mop. “It’s my choice. We’re all the same below the skin, red and yellow, black or white.”

  “Thank you much, Miss McAdams.”

  “You sound like a butler or something.”

  “I kind of am.”

  “Call me Charlotte. We don’t need the formality. I might be the only friend you have at this place. “

  Principal Faircloth burst through the lunchroom door, startling both Charlotte and Tobias. He looked flustered and angry at the same time.

  “Abernathy, I think you should head on home,” Principal Faircloth said. “I’m sure you know what to tell your folks.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll go as soon as I clean up this mess,” he said, turning his eyes to the floor.

  “No, go now,” the principal said. “When you come back tomorrow, I suggest a brown bag lunch and eating in your car, which you need to park down the street by the boarded-up shoe store.”

  Tobias nodded and hurried out of the cafeteria. Charlotte quit leaning on the mop and stood at attention like a soldier.

  “Come with me, Charlotte,” he said.

  “Somebody is cleaning up this mess,” the lunch lady protested.

  “She will be back in a little while,” Principal Faircloth said. “I will also remind you that I’m your boss, and if I wanted you to clean this up, you’d do it. I’m a little bit upset that you and the other staff in here let this get as far as it did. When somebody ends up dead, you’ll wish you’d done a sight better.”

  “No, you’ll be the one wishing for better,” the lunch lady said, “after letting that darkie come here. You should’ve known what would happen.”

  Principal Faircloth took Charlotte by the arm and pulled her out of the lunchroom and down the hall toward his office. Although his grip was firm and authoritative, it was not aggressive or painful. As soon as they stepped into his office, he let her go. Charlotte stood looking at the principal as he closed the door and sat behind his large wooden desk littered with way too much paperwork.

  “Sit down, Miss McAdams,” he said.

  Charlotte sat across from him, making sure to straighten out her skirt as she did so. Principal Faircloth leaned back in his chair. It creaked like it might give way. The principal was a rather large man. Supposedly he’d played football at the University of Alabama years ago. Before he’d taken over as the administrator of Pinehurst High School, he’d been their winningest football coach. A state championship plaque hung behind him over the window that looked out on Raider Avenue, the street that passed by the school, named for the mascot.

  “How much trouble am I in?” Charlotte asked. Other students might get caught up in the trappings of Principal Faircloth’s office, but she wasn’t like other students. Direct and to the point was the only way to get things done.

  “I don’t know. How much are you in?”

  “You’re the one who determines that. Although I was trying to keep that poor boy from being picked on. You saw the condition he was in. Everyone, even some of the girls, were throwing their leftovers on him.”

  “He’s colored. What do you expect them to do?”

  “Treat him like any other human being. The color of his skin doesn’t mean he’s a bad person. They did that because he is different and has to be at our school. It’s not his fault the closest colored school is two counties away.”

  Principal Faircloth leaned forward and started digging in his desk drawer. He brought out a pulpy looking magazine. It was already opened to an article. He handed it over the desk to her. A picture of black boy hanging from a tree took up most of the page. The caption beneath stated that Amos Agnew of Louisiana was hanged by his fellow classmates when he was forced to attend a white school due to circumstances very similar to Tobias’s. Charlotte quickly handed the magazine back.

  “That’s what’s going to end up happening to Tobias,” Principal Faircloth placed the magazine back into the drawer. “If you keep commiserating with him, you might end up the same way.”

  Defiance built up inside of Charlotte. “They won’t lynch me. I’m white.”

  “If they think you are—how can I say this—in a relationship with Tobias, folks might do worse to you. I watched French girls stoned for being in relationships with Nazis when I helped liberate Paris. Think about that.”

  Before Charlotte could retort, the door opened and Miss Timmons, the probate judge’s secretary’s spinster sister-in-law, poked her too-long turkey neck into the room. “I’m sorry to bother you, but you have a telephone call.”

  “Take a message.”

  “It’s very important,” she said. “It’s Mr. Harrington.”

  Charlotte looked from the secretary to the principal. He pushed back from his desk and hurried out of his office, leaving the door opened. She could hear him talking with Tobias’s father’s boss, and the most respected and feared man not only in Pinehurst but also in the whole county. The linebacker-built principal said a lot of sorrys and yes sirs while talking. Principal Faircloth’s demeanor changed. He hung up the phone with a last very sorry and walked back to his office, not bothering to sit down.

  “Charlotte, I’m going to tell you to be careful. Ain’t no telling what these kids or their folks might do to you.”

  “I’m not in trouble?”

  “No,” Principal Faircloth said. “Apparently, you’ve piqued the interest of Mr. Harrington, who specifically said that I was to make sure nothing happened to you while you are here at school.”

  Charlotte smiled. “What about Tobias?”

  The principal swallowed hard. That much pride took a large gulp to swallow. “He’ll be back tomorrow, and Mr. Harrington will make sure nothing else happens to him either.”

  In a small way, Charlotte believed a great victory for civil rights had been accomplished. She might write President Eisenhower to tell him about this triumph. Perhaps it might h
elp him ensure that other black kids could go to school anywhere. Principal Faircloth swung his hand out as an invitation for her to leave his office. She skipped out the door.

  Chapter Seven

  Josh walked into the library. He usually tried to find something else to do during study hall, but today he had come up short. A smattering of students sat at every table. Since his aunt had lost it last night, many of them had been asking him questions. In their small town, Charlotte McAdams was famous as the crazy old woman. The popular phrase some of the creepier kids had started using was psychobiddy. A group of the black-clad, horror-loving clique started cruising past her house. Apparently, psychobiddy had something to do with old movies like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?—which he had seen several times, despite what he’d told Jessica. He walked past a table with three of those kids at it.

  “Hey, McAdams!” Marcus Smithson tapped him on the arm as he passed by. “Whatever happened to Auntie Charlotte?”

  Josh flipped his large history textbook around and took it in both hands. He reared back, ready to knock the geek in the head. Marcus wouldn’t find things so funny when his head slammed into the table and he bled real blood all over his stupid Guns N’ Roses shirt. Welcome to the jungle, Josh thought as he swung the book.

  The tune of that terrible song echoed through his head as the book made solid contact with the side of Marcus’s face. The impact was hard enough that blood splattered out of his mouth. Marcus listed to the side, hit the table with the other side of his face, and then the floor.

  Josh tossed the book at Jamie Morris, who charged him as soon as his head-banging buddy had gotten his head banged. The textbook made solid contact with Jamie’s chest and sent him stumbling back into a shelf full of encyclopedias.

  By this time, the room buzzed with energy. The other students clambered out of their chairs and formed a loose circle around him and the three heavy metal kids. Bill Foreman came around the table at him. Josh balled his fist and readied himself. Of the three burnouts, Bill was the most formidable. He was the only one who took an interest in any kind of sport, and unfortunately it was wrestling in the heavyweight class. Josh swung as hard as he could as soon as he was in the strike range, following it up with a swift kick to the nads. A shock strike might work.