Margaret Sexton - A Kind of Freedom

“I’m mighty sorry, sir. Mighty sorry.” Renard bent his head for the officer in front of him. “I’ll have someone clean it right away.”

The officer smiled, a slow stretch across his face that felt more malicious than joyful. “Is that right, boy? You’ll have someone see to it?” His smile stretched even wider, and he leaned into the backs of his polished black shoes. “Just who do you think you are, boy?”

“No, sir, I mean, yes, sir, I’ll see to it myself right away, sir.”

“That’s more like it, boy. That’s more like it.” The officer stepped back and watched Renard fumble through the street, lifting particles of trash near the store and even stray bottles from the billiard room next door. When he was done, he wiped his hands on his white apron and walked back over to the police officer, reached in his pocket, and slipped him a bill of cash. The officer yanked it from his hand, and it was Renard who said thank you. He watched the officer walk off until he was out of sight, then he ducked back into the shop.

Evelyn would have gone in then. Renard went back to hunching over the boxes, oblivious to the fact that she’d seen him, and she longed to touch him, join him in his oblivion. Each time a box hit the dolly, she started toward him. She told herself she should go at that very moment, but something glued her to the road, and when finally he went out to check the street once more for litter, she ran away so she wouldn’t be seen.

Evelyn didn’t see Renard again until a couple of days later, and she had to run into him in front of the Sweet Tooth, the way the insurance man would meet her neighbors out in their driveways sometimes. After she left the restaurant the other day, she waited for him on her swing but he never came. She wondered if it had something to do with that officer, the way he’d spoken to Renard, but Evelyn didn’t have reason to believe the officer didn’t speak to him that way every day. Why would one encounter effect change? Still, she was glad she hadn’t revealed her presence. She hadn’t been embarrassed for him, only sad. If he knew she was there, though, he’d be embarrassed for himself, and he might not be able to recover.

Now, the way he was standing, with his hands in his pocket and his head down as if he didn’t have every pure thing in the world ahead of him, she wondered if it was her Renard, or if she was seeing visions. Of course it was him. She approached him slowly. When he caught sight of her, there was only faint recognition.

He nodded at her instead of speaking.

She tugged at his arm. “Renard, where have you been? I’ve been so worried about you.”

“Nothing to worry about, girl.” He smiled a distant smile.

“What do you mean, ‘nothing to worry about’? You were supposed to come by yesterday, and the day before that. Where were you?”

He looked off to the side. His eyes appeared misty, not as if he had been crying, but as though he had obscured them to avoid seeing. “Look, Andrew and I been busy with some things. I just didn’t get to it.”

“You didn’t get to it?” Everyone around them turned to stare, but she barely noticed her voice rising. She lifted her hands to pummel them into his chest, and only then did he really seem to see her. His face sort of softened then, but she wasn’t sure, there was so far he had to go. “What is it, baby?” she asked.

He pulled her by the wrist behind him. They walked for seven blocks before they slowed, then turned down several roads in a confusing wind. When he finally stopped in a secluded street she hadn’t known existed, he let go of her hand. He lifted both of his own, then dropped them at his side, like a balloon expanding and deflating.

“I’m going to the war,” he said.

Evelyn sighed. After his behavior she had been expecting worse, though when she thought about it now, there wasn’t a worse scenario she could pick out and name. No, this was as bad as she could fathom. She shook her head, wanting to bar the news from penetrating. “But that means you can’t come by? That means you forget about me?”

He sighed, a deep heavy release. “I didn’t forget about you, Evelyn. I could never forget about you. But I wanted you to forget about me. They’re starting to let more Negroes fight now. I may not come back, and if I do, who knows what shape I’ll be in? Andrew’s brother lost his legs. He ain’t no use for nobody.” He talked in a matter-of-fact manner as if he were explaining to someone how he cracked the chickens’ necks each Saturday.

“Well, can’t you tell them things changed? You’re a student now, and of medicine. I thought if you showed proof of your studies, you could—”

“Even if it did work—” he paused. “I didn’t want to worry you, but the money Andrew’s mama was giving me didn’t come through this semester, so I’m not a student. So there’s no excuse.”

Evelyn didn’t say anything for a while. What was there to say?

“I could talk to my daddy,” she started. “He’ll know his way out of this. He always has a plan. What he says is, ‘Every problem has a solution.’ He says it’s a law. By virtue of there being a problem, there has to be a way out of it. You just have to identify it.”

Renard shook his head violently. “Is you that naïve?”

Are, she wanted to say.

He grabbed her elbow and shook her whole body. “Well, is you? You think your daddy know a way out of doing what the government tell you to do? You think your daddy know a way out of war itself? I know he over there living his life like a white man, but that don’t mean he turned into Jesus Christ overnight.” With that final display of rage, Renard seemed to come to, and his body quieted along with his voice. “I didn’t mean to say that,” he started to stammer. “I always respected your daddy.”

Evelyn might have cried over any aspect of the last few days — just the drafting and not the outburst, just the distance and not the war — but she snuffed out any urge she had to do so now, forbidding herself from breaking down in front of a man who had enough anger in him to overpower his love; if their roles had been reversed, she didn’t know if any other emotion inside her could have outshined what she had come to feel for him. She lifted her head.

“You didn’t have to say that about my daddy,” she said. “My daddy always was kind to you. He’s an honest man and works an honest living. Is that a crime all of a sudden?” She held on to the self-righteousness that was duly hers in that moment. She didn’t care so much about what Renard had said — she still hadn’t forgiven her daddy for the conversation she’d overheard — but it was his ability to distance himself that had broken her.

“No, no, it most certainly isn’t,” Renard said.

“Well, then, I didn’t think so.” She reached down for her bag, which had dropped in the uproar. “I guess I ought to be going then,” she said, willing herself now to hold back her tears. “I’m awful sorry to hear about you being drafted, and I’ll pray for you then.”

She turned and walked toward the bench where she’d left her books. She hadn’t walked far before she heard footsteps behind her. She turned. He had followed her. Her relief rose, but when she remembered his rage, it fell again.

“There’s nothing really to talk about,” she said.

“I leave in a month for basic training.”

“You and Andrew going to the same place?”

He nodded. “For training at least.”

“Well, that’s good then. You can keep each other company, watch out for each other.” Her voice cracked then under the weight of all the heavy suppression.

He pulled her to him. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know how to handle it. And then yo daddy, who was I to say a word against yo kind daddy, I ain’t been myself is all. I’m so scared, and you the first one I been able to say that aloud to, I’m so scared.” His words came out from all directions in sharp spurts, running into each other, stepping back, and turning in the opposite direction just to collide again.