The Liberation of Gabriel King (3 page)

“No,” I said, super quick. Then I said, “Well, yes,” but Momma didn’t seem to be listening.

“Your father took overtime down at the peanut mill so I could buy you those pants, and no one even got to see you wear them. When the principal called your name I’d never been so proud in my entire life, and then…”

Tears started to leak out of Momma’s eyes. My eyes were starting to leak now too, on account of how the day had turned into such a mess. Pop looked at both of us and took a deep breath.

“Let’s talk about this at home,” he said.

*   *   *

Momma didn’t say a word the whole ride back to the trailer park where we live, but when we got inside, she said, “Take off those pants right now so I can wash them.”

She said it real cold, so I said, “Fine.”

Pop set his truck keys on the counter and shook his head.

“I suspect Gabe feels bad, darlin’,” Pop said, and he was right. Bad didn’t begin to cover it.

“Well, good,” said Momma. “He can feel bad straight through until next year. Straight through until he goes to the fifth grade and that’s that.”

She was half crying and half mad, and that made me feel just about the same.

“I won’t do it!” I said, and then I burst into tears. Frita says I’m a crybaby, but I can’t help it. Soon as I get upset, the waterworks turn on and there’s no shutting them off.

“You will!” said Momma.

“Enough,” said Pop, standing between us. “Gabe, go to your room so your momma and I can talk.”

I knew they were going to talk about me, and that felt like being caught red-handed. “Fine,” I said. “I won’t ever come out. Especially not for the fifth grade.”

Pop gave me that look that said,
Not another word
, so I stomped through the kitchen to my bedroom. I slammed the door shut and tore off my pants, then I pulled on my oldest, dirtiest overalls. I flung myself facedown on the bed and gave it up for good.

Terrance called me a wimp once because he says boys aren’t supposed to cry, but Frita doesn’t mind and Momma doesn’t mind and usually Pop doesn’t say nothing either. I heaved and coughed until my pillow got all wet and all the bad stuff came out through my nose.

I thought about Momma and Frita and how I’d disappointed them. Then I thought about Duke and Frankie and how it was all their fault. Part of me wanted to go back out and tell Momma and Pop what had really happened, but if I told Momma, she was sure to call Mr. Evans and Mr. Carmen and then Duke and Frankie would have even more reason to kill me. What was a man to do?

Life was grim. The future did not look good, and let me tell you, it was pressing in.

J
UST ABOUT THE MOMENT
I’
D DECIDED TO RUN AWAY FROM HOME AND
change my name so no one would ever find me, there was a knock on my door.

“Gabe,” Pop said, “we’re going for a walk.”

Pop didn’t wait for me to say yes or no. He just turned and headed toward the door. We live in the smallest trailer in the Hollowell Trailer Park, so he didn’t have to go far. The inside is tight, but Momma decorated it nice with orange curtains and thick brown carpet. The outside paint is flaking off the shutters, and Pop always says he’s going to fix that someday, but he never does. When I got outside, Pop was chipping away some dirty brown paint with his finger, but he stopped when I walked out.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Georgia is mighty hot in the summer when the sun is high and there ain’t no clouds, so Pop and I walked real slow. I knew we were headed toward the catfish pond because that’s the only place anyone headed when it was hot like this. But first you had to walk to the far end of the trailer park, and that meant going past the Evans trailer.

I might live in the smallest trailer in the Hollowell Trailer Park, but Duke Evans lived in the scariest. It was all torn apart, with boards hanging off the windows and parts of cars all over the front yard. Plus, no one knew for certain if Duke’s momma was alive or not. Erin Morgan said she was perfectly fine and mean as a whip, but Duane Patterson said you could smell her corpse when the wind was right.

I sniffed at the air as we got closer and sure enough, I thought I caught a whiff.

“Let’s cut through over here,” I said to Pop. He gave me a look, but he didn’t say nothing, so we took the secret path me and Frita had cut out behind one of the other trailers. I kept looking back over my shoulder though, and picked up the pace.

Me and Pop crossed the old dirt road and walked through the tall pine trees toward the cotton field. We stepped across the line where the stretched-out shadows of the pine trees reached over the cotton field. Pop’s big old work boots snapped the brown stalks and the white cotton balls before we crossed into the woods.

Pop put one rough hand on my head.

“I suspect it wasn’t entirely your fault that you missed Moving-Up Day,” he said. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt your momma’s feelings.” He paused. “The thing is, you haven’t got much choice about the fifth grade. Sometimes we’ve got to do things whether we like them or not. Understand?”

I nodded, but I was still thinking about Duke and his pop.

“Pop?” I said.

“Mmm?”

“How come Mr. Evans called Frita that name?”

I was used to kids at school calling Frita names when she wasn’t around to punch their lights out, but they called me names too—like Shrimp and Shorty. I’d always figured that was just about the same thing. Only there sure weren’t any adults calling me Shrimp.

Pop thought things over.

“Well,” he said at last, “some folks don’t care for black people.”

“How come?” I asked.

Pop frowned. “Don’t know for certain. I suspect they see the world as having only so much of the good things in life, and they’re afraid of sharing because then there will be less for them. That other person might get something they want.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“No,” said Pop. “That’s not how I see it. I suspect there’s enough good to go around.”

We walked real quiet again until we reached the pond. It was deserted today and I was glad there weren’t any sixth-graders hanging out by the rope swing to yell things at me when my pop was around. Since the coast was clear, I sat right under the big old cypress tree, where the edge dropped down, and slipped off my sneakers so I could dunk in my feet. The water was muddy and warm.

Pop didn’t take off his work boots, but he knelt down and
stuck one hand in. He stared for a long time, like he was thinking what to say next.

“Gabe,” he said after a little while, “you and Frita have to watch yourselves. You know that, right?”

I wasn’t sure exactly what Pop meant, but I had an idea—like when Frita used big words. Made my stomach feel funny. Pop studied me careful.

“I’m not telling you to fight, but sometimes a person has to stand up for himself. You can’t live your life being afraid of boys like Duke.”

I didn’t say anything—just swished my feet around.

“Your momma was some disappointed not to see you walk across that stage today. Now you’ll never have another chance. I know there were reasons you didn’t make it, but you got to think to yourself…Do I want to let someone take something from me that I can never get back again?”

I stopped swishing.

“Like Moving-Up Day?”

Pop nodded.

“And the fifth grade?”

He nodded again. “You think things over,” he told me, “and I’ll go back and talk with your momma. When you’re ready, you come home and tell her you’re sorry. All right?”

I looked around the empty pond. What if the sixth-graders showed up? What if Duke was with them?

“I’ll go home with you, Pop,” I said, but Pop shook his head.

“You’re fine,” he told me, but what he meant was,
You’re staying put until you figure some things out.

“Yes, sir,” I said, but I said it extra miserable so he might change his mind.

Pop reached over and ruffled my hair. He stood up, then headed back the way we’d come. I watched him get smaller and smaller. Long as he was in sight, things felt okay, but the minute he disappeared, the world shrank in. All the trees got closer and the cypress roots looked like giant tentacles reaching up to grab me. The rope swing hung like a gallows, and without meaning to, my mind pictured what it would feel like to swing through the air, then plunge far below, turning over and over in the muddy water.

Everything I’d eaten churned in my stomach until I thought I might be sick. I heard a snap and thought for sure it was either an alligator or a sixth-grader sneaking up on me, and I sure as heck wanted to light out of there.

But then I thought over what Pop had said about not letting people take stuff from me. Maybe he meant something like this, a summer afternoon when I had the whole catfish pond to myself. But how could I just decide not to let other people take things? Seemed to me I was too chicken to stop ’em.

Now how was I going to change that?

A
MAN CAN DO A LOT OF THINKING AND STILL COME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION
. Best to stay put where life is decent. Of course, Frita still hadn’t offered to stay behind with me, but I guessed she’d come around once she discovered how serious I was about staying back. I figured I’d ask her again eventually, but eventually snuck up on me real quick.

It was a Tuesday morning, and me and Frita were making a track and field course outside my trailer.

“Let’s pretend we’re in the Olympics,” Frita said. The Olympics were coming up and Frita had been reading all about them.

“This part of the road can be the track and then we can bring out stuff to be the hurdles and the high jump.”

We looked around the trailer until we found what we needed. There was a lamp with a broken switch, Momma’s old blender that wouldn’t blend, the pillows from the couch with the stuffing falling out, the stool with the cracked seat cover, and three buckets.

“Someone’s got to count,” Frita said, “so we know if we set any world records.”

I said I’d count first, so Frita lined up beside the lamp.

“On your mark, get set…”

The mailman walked right into our course and tripped over the blender. “Crazy kids,” he said, shaking his head. He took out a yellow slip and handed it to me. “This one’s for you, Gabe. Guess you’ve got a package down at the post office.”

The mailman put the rest of the mail in the box, then headed next door. Frita ran up to see my package slip, but she jumped over all the obstacles first, ending with a flying leap onto the pillows. I counted and she made it in record time. Record for Hollowell, Georgia, anyway.

She stood up and hopped over to me. “Did you order something?” she asked when she reached me.

“Nope,” I said. “Maybe it’s for Pop.”

“But it says it’s for you,” Frita pointed out. “Ask your momma if we can walk into town and get it.”

Frita reached down and scooped up a huge daddy longlegs that was crawling over the finish line. She dangled him between her thumb and forefinger and I jumped a mile even though that spider wasn’t anywhere near me. I ran right quick to the trailer and poked my head inside the front door.

“Momma,” I yelled, “can me and Frita walk into town?”

All I heard was a muffled sound from the back, but that was yes enough for me.

“Okay, we’re going!” I hollered.

I went back out to the yard where Frita was setting that spider down on the pillows real careful.

“Ready?” I asked, keeping my distance.

The daddy longlegs scampered away.
Good riddance.

“Yup,” Frita said. “Let’s take the old dirt road. It’s quicker.”

I felt my gooseflesh rising.

The old dirt road was a narrow stretch between the peanut mill and the town of Hollowell, and nobody used it except the eighteen-wheelers that came to pick up the peanuts. They came barreling down out of nowhere. Momma always said a man could get run over and killed on a stretch of road like this and no one would know it for days. Me and Frita talked about it once and we guessed you’d get eaten by buzzards. They’d pick at you with their huge beaks until you were nothing but a pile of bones.

“Who’s in a rush?” I asked.

Frita said, “Don’t be a chicken, Gabriel King.”

Then she took off, so I didn’t have any choice but to follow.

We left the obstacle course set up and ran through the trailer park, then cut through the secret path. Soon as we stepped onto the old dirt road, I looked up and down for eighteen-wheelers. Then I looked in the sky for buzzards, just in case, but there weren’t any. There was only dry dust chokin’ up my tongue and making it hard to breathe. Everything was pressing in again, even with Frita right there beside me.

“Race ya,” I said, so we could get to town faster. I took off
three seconds early and ran full out, but Frita still beat me by a mile. By the time I turned onto Main Street, she was already sitting in front of the post office. I could see her perfectly clear because there are only seven buildings in the town of Hollowell, so you can see just about everything at once. There’s the post office, the town hall with its big green lawn and gazebo, Mae’s Pit Stop Restaurant, the general store, the Baptist church, and the gas station. Then a little farther down there’s the Hollowell Elementary School.

Frita stood up when she saw me coming.

“What took you so long?” she asked, but she didn’t say it mean, only teasing. I was all winded, so I handed Frita my yellow slip and she marched up the steps into the post office and gave it to Mr. Alfred. I walked in real slow behind her, taking in big gulps of air.

“Morning, Frita. Morning, Gabe,” Mr. Al said. He looked at me and shook his head, chuckling. “What are you two up to today?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” Frita said.

Mr. Al went in the back and brought out a big manila envelope and handed it to me. I tore it open.