Dad shuts off the TV.
Martin Luther King Jr. killed in April. Now Bobby Kennedy. I can’t help wondering who will be next.
They say bad luck comes in threes. If you had asked me, I’d have said things couldn’t get worse, what with Bobby Kennedy’s killing in California and that worm Kemper and his county council trying to steal our land to sink Apple Creek under a reservoir. But the day after Kennedy’s funeral, things do get worse.
Frankie and me are at the creek, skimming some of those smooth pink and blue river stones, when we hear Ma calling for Frankie from the front porch, shouting that his mother’s on the telephone.
You’ve never seen a boy move so fast.
I trot after him, catching sight of my mother’s face as I push through the screen door. A hard look is on it, her eyes flinty sharp and her lips closed tight with no color to them. I know right then: something’s happened.
By the time I get in, Frankie is standing at the phone in our kitchen with the receiver pressed tight against his ear. Aunt Effie’s voice comes squeaky to me, and I don’t catch everything she says, but I can tell something ain’t right.
“But how is he?” Frankie asks, still catching his breath.
Aunt Effie’s voice comes through the receiver in a thin squeal. Hard to hear her now, but a tremor seems to pass through Frankie, as if his whole body is water and a heavy stone’s been dropped into it, sinking deep and making waves as it goes. With a sudden chill, I remember Uncle Leone’s been looking for the murderers of them boys at that corner store, and I wonder if maybe he’s found them. Or if they found him.
The thoughts swimming through my mind scatter like minnows when Frankie suddenly starts shouting into the phone. “Let me come home! Let me come home!”
Aunt Effie’s voice gurgles over the phone again, and I think I hear her crying now.
Frankie is trembling, but he goes on listening as his mother talks. He stares at the plaster on the kitchen wall, touches it with his fingers. I watch my cousin make his whole body slowly go calm, the water smooth once more. Then Frankie whispers to his mother, “I will.”
He hangs up.
Ma is at my side now, though I don’t remember hearing the screen door.
We wait.
Frankie’s still staring at the wall. Then, in a voice as dry as that plaster:
“My dad’s been shot.”
My breath catches in my throat, but before I can speak a word Frankie goes on in that same funny voice, slowly, as if he’s stamping it on his own mind. “He was at a traffic light. Someone walked up and started shooting. Most of the bullets went into the car. One hit him in the leg.” Frankie’s voice seems to be drifting away from him, like it’s leaving him, heading home. “He’s hurt, but alive . . . He’s in the hospital now.”
I draw a deep breath. “Come on, then. We’ve got to get you back to that train station.”
He shakes his head once, a quick jerk. “I have to stay.” His dark eyes move first to Ma, then to me as he repeats it. “He wants me staying here!”
My mouth drops. “But what on earth does your dad want that for?”
“Because he loves you.” Ma’s voice is full of command, of truth. To deny her words would be like telling someone the sun don’t come up in the morning or go down at night. She moves to Frankie, puts her arms around him. “Your father is a strong man, Frankie, and he will recover,” Ma tells him, her voice softer now. “And he will do it easier knowing you’re not in danger.”
Frankie bows his head, and now the tears are running down his cheeks. Ma holds him a minute longer, and I’m surprised to see tears in her eyes too.
When Frankie lets go, Ma sends him upstairs to lie down. I listen to him climb those spiral stairs and wait until I hear the door to my bedroom shut before asking her.
“Was it those men Uncle Leone was looking for? The ones who killed them boys in the car?”
“It was him being a policeman in a policeman’s car,” Ma says. “Nothing more than that.” She wipes the tears away with the hem of her apron. “Let him be a little while. Then keep close. Understand?”
I tell her I do, but as I push through the screen door, out into the furnace of a day, the truth blazes like a torch in my mind: I don’t understand any of it. Not why anybody would kill anybody for looking different. Or light fires. Or shoot a policeman. I make for the creek, looking to quench the fire burning in my mind. Next thing I know I’ve stripped down to swim.
Creek is low, and I bump my knees against the sandy bottom, but I keep right on swimming to the far bank. Push my feet into white clay, turn around. Back again.