“What did they look like?” Father would always ask us.
But every year they looked like ghosts, gorillas, skeletons, and worse, of course; it was a night for disguises, and nobody ever was caught. Not for tying Frank to the fire escape of the biggest dorm, where he wet his pants; no one ever caught anyone for that. Not for the three pounds of cold, wet pasta someone threw on Franny and me, crying, “Live eels! Run for your lives!” And we lay writhing on the dark sidewalk, the spaghetti sticking to us, beating each other and screaming.
“They’re going to rape my sister, Harold!” I said. “You got to help her.”
“I can’t help nobody,” Harold said.
“Somebody can help,” I said. “We could run and get somebody. I know you can run, Harold.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But who’s going to help you with those guys?”
Not Howard Tuck, I knew, and by the sound of sirens, which I heard now—from the campus and the town—I guessed that Father had figured out the police car enough to use its radio for help. So there would be no authorities available to help Franny, anyway. I started to cry, and Harold Swallow shifted his weight on my shoulder.
It was quiet for a second, between the deep breaths the sirens take, and we heard Franny. Flesh on flesh, I thought—but it was different now. Franny made a sound that moved Harold Swallow to remember whomight help her.
“Junior Jones could handle those guys,” Harold said. “Junior Jones don’t take no shit from nobody.”
“Yes!” I said. “And he’s your friend, isn’t he? He likes you better than them, doesn’t he?”
“He don’t like nobody,” said Harold Swallow, admiringly; but suddenly his weight was off me, and he was pawing at the net, unwinding it from around me. “Get up off your ass,” he said. “Junior does like somebody.”
“Who’s he like?” I asked.
“He likes everybody’s sister,” said Harold Swallow, but this thought did not reassure me.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“Get up on your feet!” said Harold Swallow. “Junior Jones likes everybody’s sister—he told me so, man. He said, ‘Everybody’s sister is a good girl’—that’s just what he said.”
“But what’s he mean?” I said, trying to keep up with him, now, because he was the fastest organization of human flesh at the Dairy School. As Coach Bob said, Harold Swallow could fly.
We ran toward the light at the end of the footpath; we ran past where I knew I’d last heard from Franny—where the ferns were, where Iowa Bob’s backfield was taking turns. I stopped there; I wanted to run into the woods there, and find her, but Harold Swallow pulled me along.
“You can’t do nothing to those guys, man,” he said. “We got to get Junior.”
Why Junior Jones would help us, I didn’t know. I only thought that I would die before I found out—trying to keep up with Harold Swallow—and I thought that if Jones indeed liked “everybody’s sister,” as he apparently claimed, that didn’t necessarily mean good news for Franny.
“How does he like everybody’s sister?” I panted to Harold Swallow.
“He likes them like he likes his own sister,” Harold Swallow said. “Man!” he said to me “Why are you so slow? Junior Jones has got a sister himself, man,” Harold said. “And some dudes raped her. Shit,” he said. “I thought everybody knew that!”
“There’s a lot you miss, not living in the dorms,” Frank was always saying.
“Did they catch them?” I asked Harold Swallow. “Did they catch the guys who raped Junior’s sister?”
“Shit,” said Harold Swallow. “Junior caught them! I thought everybody knew that.”
“What’d he do to them?” I asked Harold Swallow, but Harold had beaten me to Junior Jone’s dorm. He was flying up the stairwell and I was easily a full flight of stairs behind him.
“Don’t ask!” Harold Swallow yelled down to me. “Shit,” he said. “Nobody knows what he did to them, man. And nobody asks.”
Where the hell does Junior Jones live? I wondered, passing the third floor and climbing higher, my lungs breaking, Harold Swallow nowhere in sight. But Harold was waiting for me at the landing of the fifth and topmost floor.
Junior Jones lives in the sky, I thought, but Harold explained to me that most of the black athletes at the Dairy School were quartered on the top floor of this one dorm. “Where we’re out of sight, you know?” Harold asked me. “Like fucking birdies in the nests in the tippy-tops of the trees, man,” said Harold Swallow. “That’s where the black people get put at this shit-ass school.”
The fifth floor of the dorm was dark and hot. “Heat rises, don’t you know?” said Harold Swallow. “Welcome to the fuckin’ jungle.”
Every light in every room was out, but music was playing and escaping from under the doors; the fifth floor of that dorm was like a tiny street of nightclubs and bars in a city observing blackout conditions; and from the rooms I heard the unmistakable shuffling of feet—dancing and dancing in the dark.
Harold Swallow pounded on a door.
“What you want?” said the terrifying voice of Junior Jones. “You want to die?”
“Junior, Junior!” said Harold Swallow, pounding harder.
“You do want to die, don’t you?” said Junior Jones, and we heard a series of locks, as if from a jail cell, unlocking the door from inside.
“If some mother wants to die,” said Junior Jones, “I’ll help him.” More locks unlocked; Harold Swallow and I stepped back from the door. “Which one of you wants to die first?” said Junior Jones. Heat and a saxophone throbbed from his room; he was backlit by a candle burning on his desk, which was draped—like the coffin of a President—with the American flag.
“We need your help, Junior,” said Harold Swallow.
“You sure do,” said Junior Jones.
“They’ve got my sister,” I said to him. “They’ve got Franny,” I said. “And they’re raping her.”
Junior Jones seized me by my armpits and hoisted me up to him, face to face; he leaned me, gently, against the wall. My feet felt a foot or two off the floor; I didn’t struggle.
“Did you say rape, man?” he asked.
“Yeah, rape, rape!” said Harold Swallow, darting around us like a bee. “They’re raping his sister, man. They really are.”
“Your sister?” Junior asked me, letting me slide to the floor against the wall.
“My sister Franny,” I said, and for a moment I feared he would say, again, “She’s just another white girl, to me.” But he didn’t say anything; he was crying—his big face as shiny and wet as the shield of a warrior left out in the rain.
“Please?” I said to him. “We have to hurry.” But Junior Jones started shaking his head, his tears spraying Harold Swallow and me.
“We’re not gonna be in time,” Junior said. “No way are we going to be in time.”
There’s three of them,” said Harold Swallow. “Three times takes time.” And I felt sick—I felt like Halloween, again and again, with a bellyful of junk and trash.
“And I know which three of them, don’t I?” said Junior Jones. I noticed he was getting dressed: I hadn’t noticed he’d been naked. He pulled on a baggy grey pair of sweat pants, he pulled on his high-topped white basketball shoes over his huge bare feet. He put on a baseball cap, with the visor turned backwards; that was all he was going to wear, apparently, because he stood in the fifth-floor hall of the dorm and shouted suddenly. “Black Arm of the Law!” he said. Doors opened. “Lion hunt!” Jones yelled. The black athletes, quarantined on the top floor, peered out at him. “Get your shit together,” said Junior Jones.