The Story of Beautiful Girl Page 7

  He heaved his arms up to swim to the shore. The currents, though, drove relentlessly ahead, herding him on. Past the split-rail fence that marked the edge of the Boy Scout camp. Below Old Creamery Bridge. The river widened and the miles tallied up swiftly, along with barns and trailers. Businesses began appearing—a lumberyard, factories, mills, where a wheel scooped up two of the mums. And then, just as the river opened wide, he spied, in the rushing water beside him, the refuge of a floating door.

  Forty-two hoisted himself onto the wood. Winded, weakened, unable to stop the charge forward, he held on, beneath bridges, past flood walls, into the nighttime glow of a city. Again, he said to himself, his thoughts coming in the southern drawl he’d spoken before the fever. I can’t believe it. Running again.

  He jumped his mind to better places. Little One sleeping in the old lady’s basket. Beautiful Girl shaking her head no to the first many houses, pressing on until the one that felt right. That first tractor ride, when Forty-two spoke to Beautiful Girl with his signs, and she slowly lifted her hands and tried to copy his. For so many years at the Snare, he’d just been ignored or smirked at or bossed around. The only others who’d signed to him—an official he saw once, and a man stuck there like him—made nonsense signs, and when he showed them how to do it right, their eyes went blank. But that day on the tractor, Beautiful Girl watched his every gesture, her brow deep in concentration, until her smile opened wide with respect.

  But—and the sadness of it flickered in his gut—Beautiful Girl did not know his name.

  In the place he called the Snare of Stone Walls, he’d been a John Doe. More specifically, he was the forty-second John Doe caught in the system. He didn’t know this. He did know how to count, because his mama had taught him: There were two rooms in their shack, four directions to the wind, seven brothers and sisters, ten silver circles to one green rectangle, twelve houses in the dale where they’d lived. After he got stuck in the Snare, he kept count of the times the circus came and got all the way up to twenty-three. After the last planting season, he counted forty-two breaths to get from the tractor shed to Chubby Redhead’s office, where Beautiful Girl would be waiting. So forty-two was his favorite number. But he’d never thought it might be his name. He’d never read his chart. He’d never read anything. He’d never set foot in a school.

  Only he knew his real name.

  It was a name his mama made up after the birthing lady left: Homan. Mama was thinking of homing pigeons, hoping the name would send a message to his daddy to come back from the other woman’s house. Her wordplay did no good, and by his teething time, Mama had to move them in with Gramps and Mama’s baby brother, Bludell—whom everyone called Blue. After the fever, when Homan’s brothers and sisters kept their distance, thinking they could catch deafness, Blue made up a sign for Homan’s name, and whenever Homan met someone new he’d use it, saying it with his voice at the same time. HO mun. They just laughed, shaking their heads as if he were simpleminded. Soon, like Beautiful Girl, Homan became two people: the one inside that was the truth, and the one outside that almost everyone believed him to be.

  The lone chrysanthemum rode on downriver. Ahead lay a concrete slipway, and above it was a warehouse with smashed windows. It was the kind of site that attracts rule breakers: underage beer guzzlers, soldiers shipping off to war with finally relenting girlfriends, hippies. And one desperate, banged-up man who’d washed up from a door, as night had begun draining into day.

  Homan wanted to run as soon as he came to. But he was lying on his side, and when he opened his eyes, he saw the silhouettes of a man and woman standing over him and felt a hard tapping against his legs. It was the man, he realized, poking him with his foot, as if checking to see that Homan was alive. With the morning sun rising behind them, Homan couldn’t see their faces. Now, though, he knew the way east, and east was the way to Beautiful Girl.

  It seemed a good idea to take stock of his surroundings before he made a move, which meant giving the once-over to this couple. Blue had taught him this rule when Homan could still hear: Always know the jabber who sharing your ring.

  The shape of their hair and features told him they were white. The woman was thin and wore her hair curled at the shoulders like a lady he saw on television. When she stepped closer, Homan could make out her clothes: a short fur coat, a tiny red-and-white polka-dot dress with a red sash, white boots to her knees. The man circled him, as if Homan were a skunk that might spray, and when he moved into the sunlight, Homan could see his cheeks were a foamy white—shaving cream, Homan recognized. What this joker doing outside with shaving cream on? People out in the world going crazy? The man, in a leather coat with jeans, was stout as a pig going to market.

  The woman bent beside Homan. She was pretty but couldn’t hold a candle to Beautiful Girl—who must have been back in the Snare already, waiting for him to return. He propped himself up on an elbow as the woman looked to the man with the shaving cream, her mouth moving. Homan had barely understood Mama’s and Blue’s lips, so no way was he following anyone else. His leg was hurting, too, and he wanted to look down to see why. But just as he was about to, the woman—Polka-Dot—reached forward to touch Homan’s leg, and that made the man—Pudding-Cheek—narrow his eyes with a sneer. Dot turned up toward him, and he nodded at her like he meant the opposite of a nod, and with each nod Dot shrank into herself.

  Then Pudding was walking away, waving his arm behind like he was pushing a door shut. Dot kept touching Homan’s hurting leg, and he could see she was younger than Beautiful Girl. With a face that looked scared for herself and sorry for him, she opened her mouth to speak.

  He shook his head hard and pointed to his ears.

  Everyone froze for a moment. Five whole breaths passed.

  Then Pudding stormed back and got going with the Yell Face, and Dot started in on the Baby Talk Face—the faces most hearing folks put on when they caught on about Homan’s deafness. He hoped they’d give up fast. Don’t let them make you feel like some no-account flea, the McClintocks used to sign, just ’cause you ain’t hearing. They talk at you and think they a growed-up crow talking to a baby crow. But they really a crow talking to a lion.

  Dot and Pudding went on, now to each other, and Homan sat up. To the left stood the warehouse, before him stretched a parking lot, and beyond it were weathered picnic tables. One had things piled on top—they looked like cans of soup and shaving cream. Farther out were dumped washers. The lot had only one rusty car, its backseat heaped high with clothes.

  He recognized what everything was, though he hadn’t grown up around warehouses, washers, or slipways. He’d grown up around cotton fields, tin bathing tubs, wooden stoves. He’d grown up going to the woods with Blue and learning to track deer, or looking into the paved streets of the Fork, where the white folks’ houses began. The last colored house before the Fork was where the McClintock boys lived and ran an auto repair shop. Like him, they did not hear. He’d goof around with them in front of their garage, watching the talk of their hands. He and Blue would bring them fish they’d caught in the creek.

  Blue had once explained that creek water went up into clouds and came down as rain. Much later, when Homan saw Beautiful Girl’s drawing of a tall tower overlooking the sea, he was amazed by the huge, aqua water, so different from the creek, so filled with white foam and pointy waves. Beautiful Girl, seeing him marvel, drew another picture, of a person crying. She pointed to the tears, then back to the picture of the sea. Homan understood: Crying came from the sea and went back to the sea. He folded the first picture into his pocket and hid it in the barn, under the hay.

  Dot and Pudding still disputing, Homan knew it was time to make a run for it. The river was flowing south, he could see. He just had to make his way north along the shore all the way to the dock, then go east. He had no idea how far he’d come and might have to do a fair amount of swimming upstream and trespassing, but he’d taken harder journeys before.

  He rose to his feet—and his leg buc
kled like a car hood falling closed.

  The couple whirled around. He looked down. His pants had torn, and the leg beneath had a bloody streak. With a blast of fear, Homan realized that with one hurt leg, he’d have to limp the many miles between him and Beautiful Girl, and right now he couldn’t even stand.

  But look: Dot was making a pleading face at Pudding, and Pudding was shaking his head. Then Dot combed her fingers through Pudding’s fuzzy gray hair, untied the knot of her red sash, and used it to wipe shaving cream off Pudding’s lips. His eyes softened. Then they draped Homan’s arms over their shoulders and walked him to a picnic table.

  They ain’t no threat, Homan told himself. Just bide your time till you can leave.

  While Dot went back to the car, Pudding took a seat at the picnic table with the cans of shaving cream and soup. He picked up a slice of steel that had been lying flat and flipped it end over end—a knife. Pudding peered at Homan out of the corner of his eye to make sure he got a look. Then Pudding stuck the knife straight into the wood so it jutted up into the air.

  Dot returned from the car, holding some things in her arms, with a worried look on her face, like the boys who cringed around the guards. She set her things on Homan’s table: a paper sack, brown glass bottle, and white box with a red cross on it. Then she took a sandwich from the sack, opened the top of the bottle, and handed both to Homan. He hesitated. But she made a smile at him through her worry, and the sandwich did taste good. The drink did not—it was bubbly and had a bitter smell like the one the guard with the dogs had every day. Yet Homan was too thirsty to stop.

  The girl knelt beside him and used a cloth to wet down the gash.

  All this time, Pudding was spooning up soup from a can. When he finished, he pulled the knife from the wood. That was their sign, Homan guessed, because Dot set down her cloth then, hurried over, and sat on his lap, legs on either side of his hips. She took the knife from Pudding, drew the edge against the shaving cream, and wiped it on the bench between strokes.

  Homan finished the sandwich, watching. The world must have changed a lot in twenty-three years. Womenfolk were shaving men’s faces—right out in the light of day.

  When Dot finished, Pudding stabbed the knife back into the table. Then she gave him a huge kiss, and he pulled her too close. Homan looked away. He wished he felt good enough to jump in the river. He wished he knew where he was or could understand maps. The one map he’d seen, at the McClintocks’, looked like nothing more than a sketch of a deer leaping.

  He was suddenly so tired. He set his head on the table, tasting the bitter drink in his mouth, and the taste made his tongue feel fat. So when Dot came over from the newly shaven Pudding and made a lay-your-head-on-a-pillow gesture and indicated the car, he let them move him across the lot. For a long time to come, when he looked back on this bend in the river of his life, he couldn’t believe he’d downed that brew without a second thought or given in so quickly to the drowsiness.

  The car stank of mold and potato chips. He remembered how Beautiful Girl loved to breathe in scents, but only if they were pleasing, like pinecones and lilacs and the air before a rain. Once he picked the sweetest-smelling white flower from the magnolia tree near the administrative office, hid it until they saw each other again, then set it behind her beautiful ear.

  Dot pushed clothes to the floor, then tossed Homan a sleeping bag and pillow.

  Just lay here a short while, he told himself as the couple walked toward the warehouse, Pudding removing his jacket, Dot her fur coat. When the sun progressed and the couple was still gone, he thought about the way Beautiful Girl’s hair smelled with that flower and how he’d buried his face in the scent. By the time the car pulled away, sleep had taken him over.

  He dreamed of running.

  He was little, running fast across the yard to the tree with the tire swing. His uncle Blue caught up to him and they jumped on the swing together. Homan tickled Blue’s stomach, and their laughing swung them high into the sky. Blue was eleven years older and told Homan he should think of him as his big brother. And Blue was the best big brother a boy could ever have.

  The next running Homan dreamed of was sad. He was six and saw Blue running away from him, out of their shack. It was muggy and raining. Blue must have run to the road where the women were coming home from the houses they cleaned, because he ran back with Mama. She crumpled next to Homan with fearful eyes. Then the washcloth was on Homan’s head, and he was on Blue’s mule, Ethel, and they were all running. His body hurt so bad. Mama bolted into the hospital, came back out, pointed to the next town over, with the hospital that let colored folk in. By the time the mule got there, the rain was done and the moon high. But Homan couldn’t make out the bugs or Mama’s voice. He pulled Blue close, saying, “What’s going on? I can’t hear nothing!” Including, he suddenly realized, himself.

  He got laughed at a lot after that, and it made him so mad that he kicked the crap out of trees in the yard. Then one day, Blue pulled him along and ran to the McClintocks’. He’d never paid them much mind before, and that day he learned the boys were deaf—and spoke with motion, using signs their daddy taught them before they moved here. Every day after, he and Blue rode Ethel the mule to the McClintocks’, and Homan learned a language of pointing and jabbing and fist closing and finger flicking, frowning and shrugging and waving and saluting, brow raising and eye narrowing and lip pursing and head tilting. His anger ran off, and happiness moved in.

  When the revival came to town, they all headed to the church. They climbed the pecan tree outside the windows and peered in, touching their hands to the glass. And Homan, feeling the congregation’s voices resonate, thought that now that his eyes could hear and his hands could speak, he didn’t miss using his ears. Then Fattie McClintock signed, What you think God is? Homan asked, He like the seasons, right? Like the way you ask seasons to end a drought or cold snap and sooner or later they do? Fattie said, Yeah. That’s what God is.

  Then. That afternoon.

  Homan was fifteen, Blue twenty-six. They were at the McClintocks’, shooting the breeze around the car they were working on. Ethel was chewing lunch in her feedbag. The boys were eating molasses cake. Wayne Sullivan drove past in his big new car—then drove past again, slower. His daddy was Mr. Landis, the white man who owned the shoe store and lived with his wife in the house in the Fork that Mama cleaned. Wayne’s mama was Mr. Landis’s other lady, Velma Sullivan, who had such a fair complexion, you’d never know she was colored. Mr. Landis kept her and Wayne in their own house at the edge of the Fork. Now Wayne was passing the McClintocks’ shop a third time. His friends were with him, and he flicked his lights on and off until he caught the McClintocks’ attention. Then he popped his eyes wide and waggled his tongue. His friends scratched under their arms, opening and closing their mouths like animals.

  Mighty fine behavior for a rich boy, Tallest McClintock signed.

  Fattie explained, He just mad his girl brought us her car yesterday.

  Then he especial mad at him, added Buck-Toothed McClintock, pointing to Blue, owing to he gave her a ride home on that mule while her car was setting here.

  Homan felt the old tree-kicking anger come back. He told himself to ignore Wayne and might have succeeded if Blue hadn’t shouted something out. Homan could only guess what it was, but the look on Blue’s face said it was a name for nasty folks. Like maybe “Swine-butt.”

  Then Wayne braked the car, and before Homan knew it, the whole pack was taking baseball bats from the back and climbing out and slamming those bats on the car the boys were working on. Right on the windshield! The headlights! The boys, trying to stop them, got pushed to the ground. Blue grew so mad that he body-slammed Wayne, bringing him down, too. The McClintocks, rising to their feet, laughed—That’ll teach him to get above himself, they signed. Wayne scowled at Blue as he got up, slung the bat over his shoulder, and dusted himself off. He turned to go. He fixed his eyes on his car. But just before he reached it, he turned back, right in
front of the feeding mule. Then he lifted that bat and smashed Ethel in the head.

  With a scream Homan could see, Blue ran after the car. But it was going too fast.

  That night: Blue crying in their bed, Homan shaking with rage.

  He would always remember how, the next morning, when he and Blue went down to Wayne’s house, the honeysuckle was in bloom. They had no weapon. They had no plan.

  The shiny new car was sitting out in front of Wayne’s house.