Joe Lansdale - A Fine Dark Line

“Why not?”

“Well, coloreds are different, son. They aren’t like you and me. Good upstanding white people just don’t spend a lot of time around niggers.”

This was all something I should’ve known, I suppose, but in No Enterprise I had been sheltered. There, the only coloreds I had seen were those driving mule-drawn wagons with plows in the back.

And there was Uncle Tommy, who sharpened knives and fixed household goods. He lived down by the creek in a one-room shack with an outhouse out back. I knew the colored people I had seen were poor, but it wasn’t until that moment I understood they were different, considered inferior to whites. And though I had heard the word nigger before, I realized now that it could be said in such a way as to strike like a blow, even if spoken to a white person.

It also occurred to me that Daddy and Mom didn’t have any true friends in Dewmont, and they had most likely spent more hours with Rosy Mae than anyone they might invite.

Daddy, sensing I was disappointed, said, “If you want, you can invite a friend of yours. What about that Richard kid? He looks a bit like a hooligan to me, but I reckon he’s all right.”

“Yeah. Okay. Maybe.”

“You think he has lice?”

“He scratches a lot.”

“That hair looks buggy to me.”

Richard was all right. I liked him. But I realized right then that I felt a closer attachment to Rosy Mae, and I had known her even less time than Richard.

Me and Rosy Mae did spend special time together. I didn’t have to think about what I was going to say before I said it to her. I sure didn’t tell Richard that I liked to read poetry, and I had told Rosy Mae that. And though she didn’t know a poem from a cow turd, she understood I liked poetry and appreciated my interest in it, and even let me read one by Robert Frost to her twice. She had also seen all the Tarzan movies from the balcony of the Palace Theater, where the coloreds watched, and she had seen movies in the black theater over in the neighboring town of Talmont that I had never seen or even heard of. Black cowboys. Black gangsters. Black musicals. I had no idea those movies even existed. She called them “colored picture shows.”

Aware of my pondering, Daddy said, “I just want you to know I haven’t got a thing against Rosy Mae.”

I thought, other than her being a nigger. I went in the house, upstairs, lay on my bed and felt . . . odd. I don’t know any other way to describe it. The information I received that day had struck me like a bullet, and it felt like a ricochet, meant for Rosy, received by me.

———

I HAD LEFT the door open, and while I was lying on the bed, Nub wandered in, jumped up next to me. Shortly thereafter, Callie came to the door. After the balloon incident, Daddy and Mom had swapped rooms with her, moving her upstairs, next door to me.

Callie was barefoot, had her hair in a ponytail, was wearing pink pedal pushers and a white, oversized man’s shirt. Like most girls that age, she wore too much perfume. For that matter, three years later, I would wear too much cologne.

She leaned against the door frame, said, “Mom catches you with your shoes in the bed, and that dog, there’s going to be some trouble.”

“You ought to know about trouble,” I said. “And she doesn’t care about Nub. She lets Nub in their bed.”

“Maybe she does, but you don’t know a thing about me being in trouble, Stanley Mitchel, Jr. Not a thing. I didn’t do anything. Now I’m grounded at the best time of my life. I’m supposed to be having fun.”

“You aren’t supposed to have those balloons in your room.”

I rolled my head to look at Callie, saw that she had turned red.

“I’ll have you know that it isn’t what you think.”

I wasn’t sure what to think, but I didn’t give away my ignorance. I said, “Yeah, whatever you say.”

“Jane Jersey dropped that through my window . . . Well, at least I think she did. Someone mean that likes Chester and doesn’t want us to be together and wants to give me a bad reputation. Jane Jersey already has a bad reputation. Not to mention an ugly hairdo. You could hide a watermelon in that hair of hers. Actually, it looks like one of those wire fish traps.”

“Why would you like Chester? He’s creepy. He looks like a spaceman. I think I saw him in Invasion of the Saucer Men . He was the little monster on the left.”

“You’re just mean, Stanley.”

“And you’re telling me Jane Jersey came by and slipped that balloon in your window on a stick? I’m supposed to buy that?”

“Most of the girls I get along with, but a few are jealous. Jane is the most jealous. She used to go with Chester. I didn’t break them up, though. They were already broke up. I met him at the Dairy Queen and we hit it off. It’s nothing serious. He’s just kind of fun. Different. Jane’s been ugly to me because of it. Always frowning, telling me to leave her boyfriend alone. Her putting that rubber—”

“Rubber?”

“That’s what the balloon is called, Stanley. It’s not called a balloon. Politely, it’s called a prophylactic. But her putting that in my room, or having one of her friends do it, that’s just mean. I don’t really know she meant Mom or Daddy to find it, but I think she wanted to show me she was getting what she thought I was getting. But I’m not. And if I was, I’d be smart enough to pick it up and get rid of it. And if Chester is getting what she says he’s getting, I don’t want any part of him.”

I finally gave in. “And what is she getting that you’re not?”

“Do what?”

“Jane Jersey. You said she wanted to show you she was getting what she thinks you’re getting. What were you and her getting?”

Callie closed the door. “You really don’t know about this, do you, Stanley?”

“I got some idea.”

“No you don’t. You keep calling it a balloon.”

“Well it is a balloon. Kinda.”

Callie laughed. “You don’t have a clue.”

“Well, I know Daddy’s real mad. I know that much.”

Callie sat down on the end of the bed. “Daddy’s wrong. I think he knows he’s wrong. He’s just waiting to be sure.”

“Waiting for what?”

“To see if I come up pregnant. To see if there was a leak.”

“Pregnant? A leak in what?”

I know it’s amazing, but I actually had no idea how pregnancy occurred. It just wasn’t talked about then by parents or in polite society.

Callie, however, was versed in all this, and was not as skittish about it as Mom and Daddy. She said, “You want to know how a girl gets pregnant?”

“I guess.”

“Well first, let me straighten you out on something. I’m not getting anything from anybody . . . Remember that part. You know those dogs out in the yard? The ones Daddy turned the hose on?”

“The ones with their butts hung?”

“Their butts weren’t hung,” Callie said. “The boy dog had turned, and that put them rear end to rear end, but it was his thing that was hung.”

“His thing?”

“That’s right. His doodle.”

“In her butt?”

“In her pee-pee.”

I was growing very uncomfortable.

“Let me explain it to you,” Callie said.

When she finished, I was amazed. “People do that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it feels good. Or so I’m told.”

“Does it feel good with one of those balloons on? Is that what makes it feel good?”

“I wouldn’t know if it felt good with one or without one.”

“Ooooh, you and greasy Chester?”

“I didn’t do anything. Let me tell you something, Stanley. I don’t really like Chester that much. I mean, I like him, but not that way. He’s a little on the stupid side. I like riding around in his car, but to tell the truth, I like Drew Cleves.”