They could pack a lunch. Pickles and jelly sandwiches. Maybe he could steal some whiskey from his mother’s liquor cabinet, or, failing that, a bottle of Dr. Tichenor’s—it was antiseptic, and tasted like shit, but it was a hundred and forty proof. They could drive to Memphis, up to the museum so she could see the dinosaur bones and shrunken heads. She liked that kind of thing, educational. Then they could drive downtown to the Peabody Hotel and watch the ducks march across the lobby. They could jump on the bed in a big room, and order shrimps and steaks from room service, and watch television all night long. No one to stop them from getting in the bathtub too, if they felt like it. Without their clothes on. His face burned. How old did you have to be to get married? If he could convince the highway patrol that he was fifteen, surely he could convince some preacher. He saw himself standing with her on some rickety porch in De Soto County: Harriet in that red checked shorts set she had and he in Pem’s old Harley-Davidson T-shirt, so faded that you could hardly read the part that said Ride Hard Die Free. Harriet’s hot little hand burning in his. “And now you may kiss the bride.” The preacher’s wife would have lemonade afterwards. Then they would be married forever and drive around in the car all the time and have fun and eat fish he caught for them. His mother and father and everybody at home would be worried sick. It would be fantastic.
He was jolted from his reverie by a loud bang—followed by a splash, and high, crazy laughter. On the opposite bank, confusion—the old black woman dropped her pole and covered her face with her hands as a plume of spray burst from the brown water.
Then another. And another. The laughter—frightening to hear—rang from the little wooden bridge above the creek. Hely, bewildered, held his hand up against the sun and saw two white men, indistinct. The larger of the two (and he was much larger) was simply a massive shadow, slumped in hilarity, and Hely had only a confused impression of his hands dangling over the raiclass="underline" big dirty hands, with big silver rings. The smaller silhouette (cowboy hat, long hair) was using both hands to aim a glinting silver pistol down at the water. He fired again and an old man upstream jumped back as the bullet kicked up a white spray of water near the end of his fishing line.
On the bridge, the big guy threw back his lion’s mane of hair, and crowed hoarsely; Hely saw the bushy outline of a beard.
The black kids had dropped their poles and were scrambling up the bank, and the old black woman on the opposite bank limped light and fast after them, holding her skirts up with one hand, an arm outstretched, crying.
“Get a move on, grammaw.”
The gun sang out again, echoes ricocheting off the bluffs, chunks of rock and dirt falling into the water. Now the guy was just shooting every which way. Hely stood petrified. A bullet whistled past and struck up a puff of dust next to a log where one of the black men lay hidden. Hely dropped his pole and turned to bolt—sliding, nearly falling—and ran as fast as he could for the underbrush.
He dived into a patch of blackberry bushes, and cried out as the brambles scratched his bare legs. As another shot rang out, he wondered if the rednecks could see from that distance that he was white, and if they could, whether they’d care.
————
Harriet, poring over her notebook, heard a loud wail through the open window and then Allison screaming, from the front yard: “Harriet! Harriet! Come quick!”
Harriet jumped up—kicking the notebook under her bed—and ran downstairs and out the front door. Allison stood on the sidewalk crying with her hair in her face. Harriet was halfway down the front walk before she realized the concrete was too hot for her bare feet, and—leaning to one side, off-balance—she hopped on one foot back to the porch.
“Come on! Hurry!”
“I have to get some shoes.”
“What’s going on?” Ida Rhew yelled from the kitchen window. “Why yall carrying on out there?”
Harriet thumped up the stairs and slapped down them again in her sandals. Before she could ask what was wrong, Allison, sobbing, dashed forward and seized Harriet’s arm and dragged her down the street. “Come on. Hurry, hurry.”
Harriet, stumbling along (the sandals were hard to run in) scuffed behind Allison as fast as she could and then Allison stopped, still weeping, and flung her free arm out at something squawking and fluttering in the middle of the street.
It was a moment or two before Harriet realized what she was looking at: a blackbird, one wing stuck in a puddle of tar. The free wing flapped frantically: Harriet, horrified, saw right down the creature’s throat as it screamed, down to the blue roots of its pointed tongue.
“Do something!” cried Allison.
Harriet didn’t know what to do. She started toward the bird, then pulled back in alarm as the bird shrieked piercingly and battered its lopsided wing at her approach.
Mrs. Fountain had shuffled out on her side porch. “Yall leave that thing alone,” she called, in a thin, peevish voice, a dim form behind the screen. “It’s nasty.”
Harriet—her heart striking fast against her ribs—grabbed at the bird, flinching, as if making feints at a hot coal; she was scared to touch it, and when its wingtip brushed her wrist, she snatched her hand back in spite of herself.
Allison screamed: “Can you get it loose?”
“I don’t know,” said Harriet, trying to sound calm. She circled around to the back of the bird, thinking it might quiet down if it couldn’t see her, but it only screamed and struggled with renewed ferocity. Broken quills bristled through the mess and—Harriet saw, with a sick feeling—glossy red coils that looked like red toothpaste.
Trembling with agitation, she knelt on the hot asphalt. “Stop it,” she whispered as she eased both hands towards it, “hush, don’t be afraid …,” but it was scared to death, flapping and floundering, its fierce black eye glinting bright with fear. She slipped her hands underneath it, supporting its stuck wing as best as she could and—wincing against the wing beating violent in her face—lifted up. There was a hellish screech and Harriet, opening her eyes, saw that she’d ripped the stuck wing off the bird’s shoulder. There it lay in the tar, grotesquely elongated, a bone glistening blue out the torn end.
“You’d better put it down,” she heard Mrs. Fountain call. “That thing’s going to bite you.”
The wing was completely gone, Harriet realized, stunned, as the bird fought and struggled in her tarry hands. There was only a pumping, oozing red spot where the wing had been.
“Put that thing down,” called Mrs. Fountain. “You’re going to get rabies. They have to give you the shots in your stomach.”
“Hurry, Harriet,” cried Allison, plucking at her sleeve, “come on, hurry, let’s take it to Edie,” but the bird gave a spasmodic shudder and went limp in her blood-slick hands, the glossy head drooping. The sheen of its feathers—green on black—was as brilliant as ever, but the bright black glaze of pain and fright in its eyes had already dulled to a dumb incredulity, the horror of death without understanding.
“Hurry, Harriet,” cried Allison. “It’s dying. It’s dying.”
“It’s dead,” Harriet heard herself say.
————
“What’s wrong with you?” shouted Ida Rhew to Hely, who had just run in through the back door—past the stove, where Ida, sweating, stood stirring the custard for a banana pudding—through the kitchen, pounded up the stairs to Harriet’s room, leaving the screen door to slam shut behind him.