I Lost It at the Beginning: A Novel

By Donald H. Carpenter

Homosexuality, family disintegration, interracial sexual awakening, the civil rights movement, and the mysterious Clay Bertrand all come together in a sweeping new novel, I Lost It At The Beginning, by Donald H. Carpenter, the author of Dueling Voices (1993). 12-year old Michael, in many ways a modern-day Huckleberry Finn, tells the story of his life in the year 1966 in an uncharacteristically blunt yet gentle way. His ambivalent feelings toward his father are in stark contrast with his cold dislike of his mother. His outlook toward his closest friend James is of a dual nature: a muted hero-worship counterbalanced by a boiling hatred deep within. His infatuation with Josephine, the familys seductive but forward-looking maid, must be kept hidden from everyone around him, but it is arguably one of the most important events of his life to date.

What is Michaels fathers relationship with Mr. Bertrand, the tall polished white-haired man from New Orleans? And what exactly are his mothers feelings towards James, and vice versa? What will happen when the civil rights advocates march through town? And how far will Josephine lead Michael on?

In some ways a microcosm of the 60s, in some ways a journal of painful adolescent psychic growth, I Lost It At The Beginning is a somber, wide-eyed journey, the likes of which have never exactly been seen before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 8, 2002
• ISBN: 9781456805777

Donald H. Carpenter

Donald H. Carpenter was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He attended the University of Virginia, and graduated from Kennesaw State University in the Atlanta, Georgia area. He now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. He worked for more than twenty years as a certified public accounting in the area of forensic accounting. Now he spends his time writing and researching, traveling and hiking.

Book preview

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 1

1966 started off with two upsets in the bowl games. LSU upset Arkansas 14-7, and UCLA upset Michigan State 14-12. That cleared the way for Alabama to beat Nebraska and win the national championship. Or at least half of it; UPI decided the national champion before the bowl games, and AP decided it after the bowl games. That year, there was a split, and Michigan State won the UPI poll, and Alabama won the AP poll after the bowl games were over.

I lost two dollars that day, because I had both Arkansas and Michigan State. I lost both bets to a boy named James Arseneaux, who was a friend at the time. He lived down the street that I lived on, Summerville Street, and up a side street, Fleming Street, on the left. Later in the year, he wouldn’t be my friend anymore, and a little while after that he would just up and disappear. But that day we were still friends. I can still remember the big smile on his kind of beefy, not really fat, face, when he stood outside our house knocking on the screen door and waiting for my father to let him in.

You owe me two dollars, Mikey! he yelled around my father, who was standing between us at the doorway.

I waved at him real quick, before my father could turn around. My mother was in the kitchen, fixing supper, so she couldn’t see me, either. The time was about seven o’clock, and the Rose Bowl had barely ended. Even though it had been dark for nearly two hours, I wasn’t really surprised to see James at the door. He was kind of an outgoing, almost pushy, kid, and if he ever got one up on you, which seemed like all the time, he didn’t waste any time in taking advantage of it. He shook my father’s hand, still grinning sort of wild, and then he came up quick to where I was standing, in the middle of the den.

I thought you’d be here after the Cotton Bowl, I said, and I handed him two one-dollar bills I had gotten from my room when I saw him at the door. I didn’t think you’d wait until now.

We were over at Uncle Jerry’s, in Land of Oaks, James said. He had his hand stuck out toward me, and the smirk on his face seemed like it grew until I wouldn’t have been surprised to see his face split open. Watching the games. Besides, I knew I was going to win both bets, so I figured I’d just collect tonight. Save myself a trip.

My father laughed a little at James being cocky, and when he sat back down in his easy chair, I saw him look over at me, and I knew he was trying to catch my reaction. I hadn’t told him about the bets in advance, and I had deliberately decided not to, but I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told him. I knew he would ask me about it later on, after James left, to find out what I had been up to. He was always like that: concerned about me, but always careful to catch me in private when discussing something that he thought I would think was important.

So, you really thought that UCLA would beat Michigan State, James? my father asked him in a quiet voice, after figuring out who we each had bet on.

Yep, I sure did, James answered him, and he took a seat on a stool in the middle of the room. I knew Michigan State wadn’t as good as they were supposed to be. They hadn’t played anybody the whole season, and they got cocky thinkin’ they had the best team. You never should’ve taken ‘em, Mikey.

I nodded at him, and then I said real slow, I guess I realize that now. That’s a couple of weeks’ allowance gone now. I should have thought about it some more before I did it. It just seemed like a sure thing. Oh, well—

James laughed so hard his shoulders shook, and his big face got almost beet-red. He had a real irritating laugh, the kind that really made you hate him for a second or so, and made you wonder why you had bothered to bet with him in the first place. I had heard my father talk about sore losers, and I started to think that James was a sore winner, or at least a poor winner. He didn’t seem to have a very good way of being a good sport, that way of making you feel good about losing that would leave you wanting to do it again, and take your chances on how it came out.

You never should have taken ‘em, Mikey! James went on, and it seemed like he didn’t realize that he was repeating himself. You should have listened to me. I told you LSU was gonna win, that Arkansas didn’t have anything. LSU always wins in a bowl game, especially when the odds are against ‘em. And Michigan State was not all they were cracked up to be. I told you that a month ago, but you wouldn’t listen to me. You should have listened to me.

But then I wouldn’t have bet you, and you wouldn’t have won the money, I jumped in, and I was probably a little too sarcastic. It was then that I really realized what it meant, losing two dollars all at once. My allowance was only seventy-five cents per week, so I had just lost nearly three weeks worth in two dumb moves. Only, they hadn’t seemed dumb at the time; they had seemed like sure things. Thinking about what had happened, though, I started to get mad at myself, and then I started to get a little mad at James. Maybe I was one of the poor losers my father had talked about, I thought, and maybe I shouldn’t blame James for enjoying winning both bets. He didn’t make that easy, though, the way he was going on about it.

My mother had come in the den by this time, to tell us that supper was ready, and when she saw James, she gave him a nice smile, even though his back was turned to her.

You’re welcome to stay for supper, James, she said, like she really meant it, but at the same time like she didn’t want to sound too excited. We’ve got turkey and dressing again, with cranberry sauce, fruit salad, and pecan pie. You would think it was Christmas Day instead of New Year’s Day. You can blame Mike for that—he wanted the same thing again. I think it’s his favorite meal.

James laughed at what she said, real hard and real long, so much so that my father and I both turned to look at him at the same time. Boy, this just isn’t your day, Mikey. You never should’ve gotten out of bed today . . . Thanks, Mrs. Hartford. I’ll stay for supper.

My mother smiled again at him and said, Maybe you’d better call your parents and let them know.

They’re not there now, he replied. So I don’t need to call them.

I saw my mother and father look at each other, then my mother said, Well, are they out somewhere?

I wasn’t sure why she asked him that question, except that my mother was always curious about things, especially things that involved things about people she knew. That group was a large one, and it included a lot of people in our town: friends of her and my father, customers of my father’s hardware store, and all the neighbors on nearby streets. It was a part of her personality that I never liked, and I noticed it real clear even way back then. It was like she was gathering as much information about as many people as possible, in order to use it for something in the future that she didn’t even know about yet. I know I couldn’t figure it out.

James raised his fist to his mouth, like he was holding back a burp, but it seemed to me like he was making a nervous gesture instead. It was so unusual to see him act without complete confidence; in fact, I think that was the first time I had noticed it, and that was why I noticed it. He recovered real quick, though, and within a flash he was speaking real smooth, almost without any effort, and then he gave my mother his complete attention. I watched him without saying anything, or doing anything—but inside I didn’t like it much.

Well, Mom and Dad went back to Uncle Jerry’s after they dropped me off, he explained. They’re going to watch the Orange Bowl at his house. He and Aunt Teresa are having some kind of a party. They couldn’t party last night because Uncle Jerry had to work.

But don’t you need to call them and let them know you’re here? she asked him, and I got the feeling she were trying not to embarrass him again.

No, they’ll know where I’m at, he said right away, looking straight at her.

I saw my father nod just a little to my mother, and then he moved his hand toward the kitchen. Well, then, let’s eat, he said, turning to James. Would you rather eat in the kitchen, James, or out here? We have a TV in either place. It might be a little bit easier to eat in the kitchen.

Oh no— my mother said right away. Whatever James wants to do—

James scratched his forehead and said, Well, in that case, I’d just as soon eat at the kitchen table. He was looking at my mother while he said it, and I could tell he was trying to sound as much as he could like he meant it.

When I saw my mother smile at him again, I got real mad inside, but I tried as hard as I could not to show it. For a long time, I had picked up on, or thought I had picked up on, a kind of feeling my mother showed towards James and against me. It was not any single thing, and that was the frustrating part about the whole thing. Instead, it was a bunch of things that didn’t seem very important on the surface. Each one happened at odd times, and none of them seemed like they were connected to each other. It was mostly smiles, friendly little gestures, real friendly tones of voice—she even hugged and kissed on him sometimes.

There never was any one incident that was so overboard, so obvious, that I could convince myself for certain that I was right. But it all kind of piled up, I thought. I was on the verge of accepting it as an absolute fact of life, and the way my mother was acting on this New Year’s Day was only helping even more to make me think that way. I knew that I was a little upset and mad at having lost the bets with James that afternoon, and I wondered at the time if that wasn’t making me think that way. But I had seen too many things, and I knew I hadn’t imagined them all. Something had happened to make me feel this way, I thought, and I decided to watch them a lot more closely from here on out.

Have a seat, fellows, my father said to James and me.

James took a seat with his back to the wall, facing the TV. I sat next to him on the same side, and my parents sat on the opposite side with their backs to the TV. The Orange Bowl was just starting up, and my father would turn around every few seconds to look at the screen. My mother wasn’t a football fan, and she started eating right away, stopping every now and then to listen to our conversation.

So, James, my father said, while he was eating on his turkey and dressing, before it really gets going, who’s going to win the Orange Bowl?

James answered without hesitating at all; he didn’t even bother to look up from his plate. Alabama. Nebraska has too many niggers.

My father stopped eating and looked real quick at James. It was so fast that if I hadn’t been looking at my father when James was answering him, I wouldn’t have noticed it. My father glanced over at my mother. She just smiled real sweet and half-shrugged her shoulders, like she was saying, Why are you surprised? My father then turned towards me, but while he was turning I realized that he was, and I dropped my head real quick. Then I stared at my plate and played a little with my food.

I wouldn’t have thought twice about what James had said if that hadn’t happened. To me, he was speaking the way he always did, and there was nothing to surprise me. So it made me wonder when I saw the way my father reacted, and I started to think about it. I knew right away what he was reacting to. I’m not sure how I knew—I just knew. It wasn’t just the one word, it was the way James had put so much feeling into it.

Do you really think that? my father asked James. Why would that make a difference?

Because niggers are stupid, James said right away again. That’s why you never see one play quarterback, even when they’re on the team. It takes the smartest player on the team to be the quarterback, and they’re not smart enough.

My father looked at me, like he was trying to catch my reaction. By then I knew that there was something up about the way he was interested, and I tried real hard not to let on that I knew. I saw my father’s face turn a little red, and it seemed to me like he was a little mad, and I noticed his lips tighten up. After a few seconds, he took another bite of food, and then he started to nod his head kind of slow.

What does your dad say about that? he asked. Does he know how you feel?

About niggers? Or about the football game?

About niggers.

It seemed real weird to hear my father actually say the word, after the connection I had just then made in my mind. I knew that he had said it before—he must have—but I couldn’t really remember a specific time. He normally said colored or Negroes when he talked about them, and it probably would have seemed unusual to hear him say differently anyway. But this time it sounded especially weird, maybe because it came right after what James had said.

James thought about the question for a few seconds, and right away I wondered if he was trying to decide the right answer. He was like that, if a teacher or the principal asked him a question, and for some reason he didn’t want to just answer truthfully. He would move his eyes away just for a second, his jaw would jut out as far as it could go, which wasn’t far, and you could almost see him thinking. It never lasted long before he had an answer, one that he came up with to satisfy whoever was asking him the question.

It doedn’t matter to him, he said, and he sounded maybe a little defensive, and I thought that he tried to avoid my father looking at him. He feels just the same way I do. He hates ‘em, too. He won’t hire ‘em where he works.

I knew that James’s father worked as a foreman for a construction company, and I knew that he was always bringing home wood and other things from the job. I didn’t know much else besides that, except that he was out of work off and on during the year. James never talked about him much to me, and I usually didn’t ask. I knew that my father knew his father, but I also knew that he had never been to our house.

James’s mother worked as a secretary for a lawyer in town. I didn’t know if my mother or father even knew his mother. I had seen her every once in a while, when I was playing over at James’s house. She had seemed nice enough, but she was real quiet; she hardly ever spoke to me unless I said something to her first. I did notice that James’s father seemed to make all the decisions around the house, like what they would have every night for supper, and where and when they would go out on weekends.

Once I had overheard James’s father dressing down James’s mother because she didn’t have supper done when he got home. She didn’t make any attempt to excuse herself, even though I knew she had come home late from work because her boss had given her some last-minute jobs. I knew that because she had told James that when she first got home, but she didn’t say anything about it to his father. I heard her voice in the next room, agreeing with everything he said, promising that it wouldn’t happen again, and to me she had sounded like she was afraid.

Well, I can understand that sentiment, my mother said, even though it sounds a little harsh at first. With everything that’s happening nowadays, it’s enough to make anybody get upset. I don’t know how far it’s going to go, but I think if we don’t get a breather, things are going to blow sky-high.

My dad says the only way to get ‘em to quit marchin’ and protestin’ is not to hire them, James answered. He says they’re nothin’ but troublemakers at work anyway. All they do is stand around and not do any work. And they steal, too.

My mother breathed in real deep and let out a long breath. I can certainly believe that. We’ve had two that stole from us right here in the house. They were just as nice as they could be on the surface, but when we weren’t looking, I believe they were stealing us blind—

Now you don’t know that, my father interrupted her.

I was kind of surprised when he interrupted her, and when I looked over at my mother’s face, I could tell that she was even more surprised. She gave my father a sort of mad look, and for a few seconds they stared at each other without saying anything. I looked over at James, and I saw that his eyes were wide open, and so was his mouth. He was surprised, too, but unlike the rest of us, he looked like he was a little amused by the way it had happened.

What do you mean? she asked, and her voice sounded defensive, and I could tell she had been embarrassed. I thought you agreed with me. I mean, I didn’t think there was much doubt about it, at least in one case.

My father shook his head slowly. Maybe there wasn’t much doubt in that case, but what did it all amount to? A few scoops of ice cream. That hardly qualifies as stealing us blind, and I still say you don’t know for sure. One thing just led to another, that’s all.

Well, as far as I’m concerned, it was proof enough for me, she said, and she turned back to her plate.

Did you fire ‘em? James asked, like he was real interested.

No, my mother said, and she looked over at my father. We didn’t have to. They were leaving anyway, both of them. Two different cases. Two separate times . . . Now we have to hire another one. I don’t look forward to that.

Really? I asked. You’re going to hire somebody else?

As long as I could remember, we had had a maid to take care of the house. Since both of my parents worked, they needed somebody to help with the cooking, cleaning and, when I was little, with the baby sitting. The first one I could remember, from the time I was about three years old, was Emma. She was about sixty, I guess, because of her white hair all over her head, and she was real slender the way she was built. I think that there might have been someone before her, but I wasn’t sure.

Emma left when I was about eight, to go and live with some relatives in New York. Over the next few years we had Genine, Joyce, and Myrtle. Genine stayed for about two years, then went to work for someone else. Joyce only lasted about six months, then she quit working to have a baby. Myrtle came a couple of months later and stayed until early December, when she called my mother one day and told her she was quitting. All three of those women were heavyset, and I think they were all somewhere between thirty-five and fifty, but I didn’t know for sure. I thought of them all together in my mind, and I had trouble separating one from the other.

Every maid we ever had had been a colored person, and that had never seemed unusual to me. In fact, I remember thinking how strange it was that one of our neighbors several houses down, an old lady, had a white maid. She was the only person I knew who had a white maid, while I knew a lot of families that had colored maids.

Yes, we’re looking for one right now, my mother said. I’ve asked around, and I have a couple of names. It’s getting harder and harder to find a good one anymore. If someone has a good one, they keep it to themselves. If they have one they want to get rid of, they’ll tell you they know a good one. You have to kind of listen through their comments to get the whole story.

Why don’t you just hire a white one? James asked. Or just do without one? That’s what we did. My dad got tired of fooling with ‘em. When he got rid of the last one, he said no more. He wadn’t gonna hire any more, ‘cause hiring ‘em was helping ‘em, and he wadn’t gonna help ‘em.

My mother breathed out kind of heavy and looked over at my father. My father was finishing off the last few bites of food on his plate, and he didn’t bother to look up at her. He was being quiet all of a sudden, and I knew it had something to do with what we were all talking about.

I wish we could do without one at all, my mother answered, and she looked off down the hallway in front of her. But we can’t, not with both of us working and Mike coming home after school every day. I don’t know how your parents do it. Both of them work, don’t they? . . . I thought so. I don’t know how they do it.

We don’t need one, James said. I don’t need a baby sitter. And my mama cooks and does the laundry. My dad and I mow the grass.

Well, we do that, my mother said. Of course, my mother, who lives out in the country, has one who cuts her grass and does all of the outdoor chores. But I just don’t have time to work and do everything that needs doing in the house. I’d never have time for anything else. Right?

She put her hand on my father’s arm and gripped it kind of hard, and that made him look up from his plate.

If you say so, dear, he said, and he sounded like he was kind of tired, I accept it. I wouldn’t want to have to work and do all the cleaning by myself. But sometimes I do think that together we could all do it. But it doesn’t cost enough to worry about.

No, it doesn’t! she said. And the last thing I want to do is housework. What a way to spend the day! Your mother deserves a medal, James.

James grinned a big grin and looked at my mother, then he turned and spoke to my father. She does it because my dad tells her to. If he tells her to do something, she does it. She won’t ask any questions.

My mother and father exchanged a real quick look, and I was surprised to see such a big difference between the expressions on their faces. My father turned to look at my mother, I think, because he was reacting to her turning to look at him. His expression was almost totally blank, and it was kind of like he had a question he was about to ask. But my mother looked like she was sort of disgusted, and she had a kind of sneer on her face. It was so obvious that she was reacting to what James had said that I knew it without a word being spoken.

Well, maybe so, James, she said. She must be a saint, then, to do all that she does. But, anyway, we’re going to have to hire a maid, and I’m looking right now. But it’s sure getting harder. And more expensive. And the more expensive they get, the less they do, it seems.

Do you still need a baby sitter for Mikey? James asked, and right away I felt my face blushing.

No, I don’t need a baby sitter, James, I said real defensively, then I looked over at my father to see his reaction. He smiled back at me, and then a serious expression came over his face.

No, you don’t, he agreed, and his voice was quiet now. James, what makes you say something like that?

James’s expression was a sly one, and he couldn’t really help from snickering, although he tried hard to keep control. His lips were pressed tight together, and his nostrils flared wide open, and he struggled to keep his breath from exploding out of his mouth. After a few seconds he got himself under control, and he turned to look at my mother.

What do you say? he asked her. It was like he knew my mother would disagree with my father and me, and that aggravated me very much. It made me mad that he would know to do that, for one thing, and it also made me mad that my mother would do just like he expected. But, even before she answered, I knew that she would.

My mother smiled at James, then she looked at me, then she smiled again at James. Whenever she looked at James, she smiled, or so it seemed to me. I was her real son, but it seemed like James was the one she liked the best, and she never hesitated to give that impression, even though she never came right out and said so directly. That night, sitting there at the table with them, I made up my mind that I would try to discuss it with her at the right time, without knowing exactly when that would be.

I don’t know that he needs a baby sitter, James, she said in a real soft voice, and for some reason she sounded a little like a schoolteacher. I saw James’s face take on this look like he was disappointed when she answered; his lips turned down for a second and his eyes got kind of narrow. But I don’t mind having someone here to look after him, and to let me know what he’s doing. You boys would get into all sorts of trouble if I didn’t have some idea of what was going on. Remember the fire you two started a couple of years ago? The house would have burned down if I hadn’t found out about that on time. I have to have my spies around, you see.

About five years before, when James and I were still in elementary school, we had started a fire in the back yard. It started out as just a small fire—just some limbs, leaves, pine straw, and newspapers. Then we decided to burn another pile of brush on the other side of the yard, near a thick set of bushes. Then we started still another fire at another point in the back yard, near a group of trees at the boundary with our neighbor on the back side. After a while, we had all three fires going great, with flames higher up than our heads. It started to worry me that we seemed about to lose control, but James was as calm as he always was, and that kept me from worrying.

Then James found some liquid in a dark brown glass jug in a shed room connected to the garage, which had one side facing the back yard. He told me that he was going to pour it, but in all the excitement I didn’t really understand what he had said. I watched from the other side of one of the fires, through the waves of heat rising up, while he started to pour the liquid onto the edge of the fire on his side.

When he started to pour the liquid, the fire immediately began to spread. It didn’t flare up and explode, like gasoline would have; instead, it started to spread real fast, steadily moving outward, moving the circle of that particular fire toward one of the other circles of fire. Then he walked from the second circle toward the third fire, spilling still more of the liquid while he moved. James kept on pouring as he walked away from one circle and toward another until he had all the circles connected with a thin line of fire. By now all of the separate fires were connected and the thin lines of fire connecting them were spreading out on both sides, covering more and more of the grass, which was kind of dry and grayish-green.

I started to get worried, because of what my parents would think of what we were doing, and because of the way the fire was spreading fast. I hollered at James that it was spreading too fast, that we couldn’t control it, that maybe we should put it out before we lost control. But James stayed as calm as he always did, and he kept on walking around the fires, pouring the liquid from the brown jug until it was all gone. Every few seconds, he would look over at me and laugh, as if he didn’t see any danger at all. He made no effort to get the hose and keep it near, just in case; instead, he stood back and watched it spread still further out, backing away steadily as it got near him. In a few minutes, the fire was within ten feet of the bushes on one side of the yard, and it was getting near the trees on the other side real fast.

I started to yell at James, that we should get the hose and put the fires out, that we were going to burn down the neighborhood, that we were both going to get into a lot of trouble. When he didn’t answer me at all, except to laugh at me like I was being silly, I ran to get the hose. I turned it on full blast, twisting the faucet handle as fast as I could, then I ran back toward the center of the yard. I was holding the nozzle up as high as I could, so that I could make the stream of water curve up to reach the flames as quick as possible. The stream of water was real weak, though, even with the nozzle, and the hose just wasn’t long enough to reach out to the fires. Some water drops did manage to reach the edge of the fire closest to the house, but the edges that mattered were the edges away from the house, closest to the trees and bushes, and those edges kept on spreading.

Just when I was afraid that the bushes and trees were going to catch on fire, and that a disaster was going to happen, I heard a siren. It was off in the distance, but it was getting louder almost by the second, so I knew it wasn’t too far away. I couldn’t tell the fire siren from the police siren back then, but I hoped it was the fire truck, and for more than one reason. James noticed it, too, and he started looking around. His eyes got wide for a second, and his mouth opened up just a little. He stayed where he was, though, not bothering to make a quick getaway, like I would have done if I had been him. The flames didn’t seem to worry him, and the sound of the siren only caught him off guard for a few seconds.

I heard the tires screeching when the truck rounded the corner, and in a few seconds I heard the gravel crunching when it entered our driveway. James turned to look in that direction, and when he did, he pointed toward the house. I looked to where he was pointing, and I saw our maid standing on the concrete steps that led up to the back door. I couldn’t remember now, while we were sitting around the table talking, who the maid was, and that frustrated me a little. I should know, I told myself, but I just couldn’t put a face with the body.

Our maid started pointing toward the fire, and she was yelling something I couldn’t understand. Two firemen rushed around the corner of the garage and looked to see what she pointing at, and I saw their eyes get real wide when they saw what was happening. They disappeared around the corner, then came back with a giant fire hose. They started to spray, with one of them holding the nozzle and one the hose, and in a few minutes they had everything under control. By now, the area where the fire had been was a black, smoking area, and the smoke had a musty, sour, and kind of irritating smell to it.

After the firemen had wrapped up the hose and brought it back to their truck, they came over to talk to us. As they came towards me, I looked around to see what James’s reaction was, and I noticed that he was gone. He had slipped away during all the excitement after the men had arrived, and when I discovered that, right at that moment, I got really nervous, thinking I was going to get in a lot of trouble because he wasn’t there.

The firemen started to ask me questions, and I answered them as best as I could. While I talked, I mostly kept my eyes down toward the ground, although every once in a while I would look up at their faces. They were both fat, about fifty years old, and both of them lit up cigarettes right after they had the fire out, like they were celebrating something. It seemed like they enjoyed having the fire as something to talk about, like I did when I hit a home run in P.E. It seemed like they also enjoyed seeing me uncomfortable and embarrassed, especially after the maid told us my father was on his way.

My father got there about five minutes later, and I noticed right away how calm he was about it all. He pulled real slow into the driveway, and he got out of the car without hurrying too much, and he didn’t even slam the door in the process. He walked towards the three of us who were standing in the yard, and he took his time and looked around at the damage The maid still stood on the steps; I knew that she had called my father, although neither one of them ever told me that.

He came up to us, then he asked the firemen what had happened. They told him what I had told them, and when they didn’t mention anything about James, I knew that he had gotten away without them seeing him. My father then turned to me and asked me if that was what had happened, and I nodded my head without looking directly at him. One of the firemen told my father that he was supposed to write him a ticket for burning too close to the house, but that he knew it was an accident and he’d just overlook it this time. My father said that he appreciated that, and that he would see that it didn’t happen again.

After the firemen left, my father and I sat on the porch, and he talked to me about what had just happened. He said that he knew James had been involved, I guessed from what the maid had told him, and that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that James had been the leader behind it all. Without hesitating a bit, I started to stick up for James, saying that it was my idea from the start, and that James had been here just by chance. I wasn’t sure why I did that, and even at the time I noticed that I was doing it, but that didn’t make me stop or take back anything I said in his defense. My father looked at me like he didn’t believe what I was saying about James, but he didn’t interrupt me, and he didn’t disagree with me after I was finished speaking.

Instead, he talked to me about what I, or what we, had done, except that he played along with me and didn’t blame James. He talked kind of quiet, like he usually did when he talked to just me, like he was trying to teach me something, like I should realize that what I had done was not only wrong, but outright dangerous. He told me to think about what could have happened if the bushes and trees had caught on fire, and about how then it would have been too late to say that I was sorry. I listened to him without saying much, and then I apologized for the whole thing. He got out of his chair and went into the house, and I heard him thanking the maid for calling him. On his way out, he patted me on the head, and when he got into his car, he reminded me to think about what he had told me.

I didn’t blame James for what he did in leaving before the firemen arrived. Instead, I sort of admired him for it. He had found a clever way out of getting in a little trouble, although it didn’t really seem like that big of a deal. But it was probably the first time I had seen him react under pressure to escape from a bad situation that he had had a hand in causing, and I think that I looked on him differently after that. He didn’t really mean to stick me with the trouble, and the blame for that trouble, I thought. It just had worked out that way, and I had escaped with nothing more than a good talking to, and we were still friends.

I remember that fire, James said now, but I was gone by the time it got big. It was just a little fire when I left.

Yes, I remember it well, too, my mother said. It took until the next year for the grass to turn green again. I was afraid to have anybody over for a long time. Having to explain Mike’s behavior sometimes— Her voice stopped short.

Yeah, I thought Mikey had it under control, James said. If I had known he didn’t, I would’ve stayed and helped out. Then you wouldn’t have had to call the fire department. And you wouldn’t have had to come home from work.

I looked over at my father, and right away I noticed the expression on his face. He was looking at James like he didn’t believe him; his lips were pressed together, and his head was leaning back a little, like he was listening to every word but not accepting what he heard. At the same time, though, I thought I noticed a little smile on his face, like even though he disapproved of some of the things James did and said, he still couldn’t help but be impressed by them. I didn’t understand exactly why that was, but I decided to try and find out.

As for my mother, it was obvious that she blamed me completely for the fire. I didn’t realize it at the time, though; in fact, I never really realized it until we talked about it on New Year’s night. Then it hit me that it had never occurred to her that James could have been to blame, or anybody else for that matter—anybody besides me, but especially not James. Something had fallen into place tonight, I thought, and I’d have to study it until I found out what it all meant. So now, I had something about both my mother and my father, two different things, to pay attention to in the near future.

Well, maybe not, James, my mother said, and she sat her fork down on her plate and wiped her mouth. But now you know why we need someone here at the house when we’re not here. I don’t need any more surprises. So whether you call her a baby sitter or a maid doesn’t really matter to me. I still want someone here to be with Mike when he gets home.

After that, we all sort of drifted away from talking. My mother started washing the dishes, and James, my father, and I moved back into the den. The Orange Bowl was getting near the end of halftime, and we settled in to watch the second half. All three of us, even James, were unusually quiet when the game started up again, and there was hardly any talking throughout the rest of the game. Around the end of the third quarter, my mother joined us for a while, then she said goodnight and went to bed.

It was a pretty exciting game, and I was pulling for Alabama to win, because after the way Michigan State and Arkansas had gotten upset, I knew Alabama would be the favorite to win the polls and be the national champion. About halfway through the third quarter, though, something struck me as very strange. It probably wouldn’t have seemed important at another time, but after the conversation we all had just had, it seemed to jump out at me.

My father usually pulled for Alabama to win, especially in bowl games. Even though we didn’t live in Alabama, he usually pulled for them because they were the closest team to us that had a chance to win the national championship. The year before, he had pulled for Alabama, when Joe Namath was the quarterback, to beat Texas in the Orange Bowl. I could still remember him cheering them on, in his quiet sort of way, as Alabama tried to score in the last few minutes, and how disappointed he had seemed when Texas had stopped them at the goal line.

But on this New Year’s night, 1966, he hardly cheered or talked about the game at all. He sat real quiet while James and I made all the noise. Once in a while, when one of us spoke directly to him, or asked him a question, he would answer in a soft tone of voice, like he was real tired. Then, when we went back to watching the game, he settled back into his chair and stared towards the TV, but I got the impression that he wasn’t really watching the game. Instead, he seemed to be thinking about something.

Alabama won the game, 39-28, to win the half of the national championship that the AP gave. I was glad they did, because I had never liked Nebraska. I think I never had liked them because my father had never seemed to like them, and that was another thing that seemed so strange that night. I had never talked with my father about why he was pulling against Nebraska, and I had just assumed it was because they were the team from some other part of the country. It seemed real obvious to me tonight, though, that he wasn’t pulling for either team while the game was on.

Even James seemed to notice how quiet my father was, and I think it caused James to be a little quieter himself, a little less excited, than he normally would have been. He would yell loud when Alabama scored, of course, and boo when Nebraska scored, but he didn’t seem to pop off every few seconds like he usually did during a game.

Just like I told you, Mikey, he said to me when it was all over. I thought that he was ignoring my father, because I remembered that he had made that prediction to him and not to me.

I nodded, and I grinned at him. I’m glad I didn’t bet you on that game, too. It’s a good thing I was pulling for Alabama.

All of a sudden, we all seemed real tired. My father was starting to nod off, and every few seconds he would open his eyes and his head would snap back against the chair. I was able to keep my eyes open, but when I stood up, I had a hard time keeping my balance. I leaned with one hand against a corner of the wall and balanced myself on one foot. Even James looked tired; he was yawning and rubbing his eyes, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing him look that tired before.

I’ll see y’all later, he said, and started walking toward the door. I’ll see you in school, Mikey.

Okay, I answered him. Got all your homework done?

We started school after Labor Day, so we didn’t finish our first semester until after the Christmas holidays. Usually, the teachers would give you a project, like a paper, or a lot of regular homework, to do over the holidays. I usually did mine early in the holidays so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it, but most people said they waited until the last day or so.

Nope, James said. Sure don’t . . . I don’t think they’ll grade it. They never have. They didn’t last year. So this year I didn’t even worry about it . . . I’ll see y’all later.

Bye, James, I said, and I heard my father say it at just about the same time. James closed the back door behind him, and I heard his footsteps when they clacked on the concrete steps that led to the ground. I turned to face my father, and I was surprised to see him looking wide awake, or at least a lot more so than he had seemed only a few minutes before. He stood up out of the chair in one fast movement, and looked real quick at the back door, then he placed his hand down on the top of my head and ruffled my hair. I looked up at his face, and he smiled at me.

Let’s have a little talk tomorrow, he said in his quiet voice.

What about?

I’ll tell you tomorrow. It’ll wait till then. Let’s go to bed now.

Chapter 2

School started back again on Monday, January 3. Even though I normally liked school, I always hated going back after the holidays. I think that was because I had gotten so used to sleeping late. During the holidays, I got used to staying up later then normal, usually watching the bowl games, and my parents didn’t seem to mind since there wasn’t any school the next day.

I usually got up at seven-thirty or eight at the latest, as compared with six-thirty on school days. Sometimes, during the holidays, or the summers, or even just on weekends, I would actually wake up earlier than normal, sometimes as early as four-thirty. Whenever that happened, I would usually read on whatever book I happened to be reading, but sometimes I would leave the house and go exploring around the town.

But on Monday, January 3, 1966, I was up at six-thirty, just like usual, dressing for school. It was real rainy outside, and the sky was real dark. Even though it was early morning, I could already tell that the sun wasn’t going to come out for a while. I could see the first light of day outside my window, but I had to look almost straight up to see it. The light was real faint, and it seemed like it was struggling to shine through the heavy clouds, and it produced an eerie effect: a dark, inky, rolling blob of gray that was broken here and there by several jagged shapes of lighter gray. While I watched it for a few minutes, the shapes changed constantly, sort of like a boiling pot filled with some nasty mixture.

The rain was coming down hard, making constant streams of water on the windowpane. On the ground beneath the window, a small brown river of water had formed in a drainage path leading from a gutter spout on the bottom of the house wall. The swift stream flowed toward a ditch that separated our property from the neighbors’ property. That ditch was slanted so that the water flowed out toward the street, where it met still another drainage ditch. In other parts of the yard, the rain beat down so hard that it caused spiderweb-like patterns in the mud, as the top layer floated away. On that side of the house, we didn’t have much grass, because the trees were so tall that they shaded the area so much that grass just wouldn’t grow there.

I didn’t live that far from my junior high school; it was only about a quarter mile, and I usually walked there every day instead of riding the bus. Because the bus driver wasn’t used to stopping for me, or for anyone else near my house, on rainy days I had to get one of my parents to take me if I didn’t want to get rained on. So this morning I was waiting on my mother to take me. She was eating breakfast about that time, and I was killing time until she was ready. I usually went to school very early, a long time before classes started, just to hang out with everybody.

My father usually left early. He owned a hardware store franchise in the downtown area, and although it didn’t open until nine o’clock, he was almost always there by six-thirty. He had taken over the business from my grandfather after he graduated from college about twenty years before. At first, it was the same small business it had been for almost thirty years. Then, about five years before, my father had hooked up with a national hardware chain. Even though it was still in the same building on Main Street where it had always been, the store was a lot busier now than it ever had been, with more employees, more merchandise, and more customers. Because of that, my father had to spend more time running the day-to-day operations, and his workdays were usually long ones.

The day before, Sunday the 2nd, my father never had mentioned the talk he wanted to have with me. I kept waiting all through the day for him to say something, but he never brought it up. It seemed to me that he never even started to bring it up; it was like he had completely forgotten about it. For some reason, and I wasn’t sure exactly why, I never seriously thought about being the one to mention it.

Of course, the idea did cross my mind for a few seconds, but I decided against it right away. Maybe I knew, or sensed, that the subject of the conversation was really serious, and to me a serious conversation almost always meant something bad. Or maybe I sensed that my father was struggling with something, and that he needed to decide when to let me know about it. Maybe it was a combination of those two reasons. Anyway, after thinking about it off and on for most of the day, I had forgotten all about it when early evening got there and the good TV shows started.

Sunday had been kind of a long, boring, day. I woke up about seven o’clock. It was overcast, but not raining, and right away I had felt restless. I got up and dressed in a hurry, so that I could get on my bike and ride around town. The light was trying to force its way through the clouds, and the clouds were fighting it, when I first pushed my bike out of the garage and climbed on it. I coasted down the hill on Brainard Road, the street beside our house, until I reached Summerville Street, which was a three-mile-long street that ran in front of our house on its way from one end of town to another.

Ever since I had had a bike and my parents let me ride it out of the yard, I had used it to explore the town on weekend and holiday mornings. Sometimes I rode it in the afternoons, too, and during the summer months, but then I was usually with somebody else, like James. In the mornings, I could ride by myself and just explore: take a street I had never taken before, or ride out to the far edges of town, without having to talk somebody else into coming with me. There wasn’t much traffic at that time of the day, and most of the neighborhood streets had sidewalks, anyway, so I didn’t have to worry too much about cars.

Early on Sunday morning was a good time to explore around town. There wasn’t a lot of traffic; sometimes, I could ride for over a mile without seeing a car on the street, and I never met anybody riding a bicycle or walking. It was almost like having the whole town to myself for a while, like I was entering the private world of the rest of the town, but without anybody seeing me. Whenever I rode around, I had this strange feeling that, if somebody had looked out of their window or their door and seen me, they would have been very surprised, shocked even, like I was invading their privacy by passing their house before they were ready.

Although I explored around town on a lot of different days— Saturdays, holidays, summer days—Sunday was always my favorite day. It was usually a lot quieter on Sunday than any other morning, and the town took a lot longer to wake up, but the main reason I liked it was that I didn’t like going to church. As far back as I could remember, my father had never gone to church, but my mother usually had. I barely remembered going to church with my mother before I started to school, but I remembered that I didn’t like it at all. At some point, I had complained about going, and my father had told my mother that if I didn’t want to go, I didn’t have to go.

After that time, I had quit going to church at all, unless my mother put a lot of pressure on me to go. Sometimes, she would get up on her high horse and talk to me in a sharp tone and actually make me go. Usually, that happened on a Sunday morning when my father had gone into the store to catch up on some work, and I didn’t have him there to defend me. I remember especially one Easter Sunday about two years before when she just insisted that I go. I didn’t want to go at all, and I even thought of calling my father at work and telling him about it. But I was afraid of making him mad, so I went on to church with her, even though I hated every minute of it.

Even though I never brought it up directly, I think that they both knew that I didn’t like going. Sometimes I could hear them arguing about it, especially when my mother was getting ready to go and my father was at home. If my father was there, she wouldn’t make an issue of it in front of me, but she would lay into my father in the bedroom. He always defended me and said that he didn’t want to make me go to church unless I wanted to. He said that he had been made to go when he was a kid, and he didn’t want me to have to go if I didn’t want to. He always won those arguments, and I was always glad.

I had never been clear about why my mother thought it was important for me to go to church, or why my father didn’t think it was necessary. They never talked to me about it; they just talked to each other, usually when they were shut up in their bedroom. So I only knew how I felt about it, and I thought the whole thing was real boring. I didn’t like the way everybody dressed up to go to church, and I definitely didn’t like having to dress up. It seemed like most of the people there didn’t really want to be there, but nobody wanted to come right out and say that. Inside the church, the seats were too hard to be comfortable, and it was so quiet that I felt like if I made any kind of sound, everybody else would turn around and look at me.

After church was over, I hated standing in line to shake hands with the preacher. He seemed more like a salesman than anything else, and it seemed like he kept track of how many times I had missed church. Once we were outside, my mother had to stop and talk with friends of hers for at least half an hour. I never saw most of those friends except after church; they never came to the house. Sometimes, when she was talking to her friends after church, I would hear her complain about my father, and that bothered me. She would cut him down for being too stingy with money, and for working too many hours, and she complained about having to keep working herself.

Several years before, when I was about seven or eight, I found out that, if I was gone from the house when my mother came to look for me, I could get out of going to church. She never seemed to think about it in advance so that she could get me to promise to go, and I would be gone when she came looking for me. After a few