Black folks just moved in that house over there!”
His grandmother and grandfather joined him at the window, which overlooked the pasture to the sprawling, red-bricked home. Only the A-framed roof and a slick concrete driveway with a basketball goal were visible – the rest was blocked by shrubbery planted by landscapers earlier that month.
“Huh,” Zeke snorted. “Must be some rich ol’ niggers.”
“Tst, tst, tst,” Florine scolded him. “That’s not nice.”
Zeke went back to his chair in the corner, sank into it and began puffing furiously on his Prince Albert. Soon his head was enveloped by a nimbus of smoke.
“You say you need some tobacco?” she said. “I’m fixing to go to the store.”
Jordan went to wait for her beside the pickup. It was understood that whenever the pickup went to the store – about two miles away in Muskogee – Jordan was to be in it. While she shopped, he would prowl the magazine section and look at baseball cards, soaking up the cool air conditioning.
Because he was often bored he played silly tricks. He’d ask Granny if she wanted another beer, and when she said yes he’d go into the kitchen and shake it until the can swelled. He laughed and jumped around when it spewed in her face. This time, waiting in the truck, he turned the wipers and the fan on high, mashed in the flashers and maxed out the radio volume. When she climbed in and turned the key she was greeted with noise and commotion.
“Mercy me,” she said, shaking her head and turning off all the controls. Jordan laughed and clapped his hands.
They drove down to the gate: tools, jacks and cans making racket in the back as they bounced along. She stopped and Jordan got out, undid the chain, swung the gate back, waited for her to pull through, then closed and chained the gate before getting back in. It was something he could do in his sleep and made a game of to see how fast he could do it.
Down the road they neared the new brick house. The long, paved driveway stretched from the basketball goal to the dirt road and was framed by evergreen bushes. People moved in and out of the house carrying boxes. Jordan reached over and pressed the horn – KY-O O O O O-GA!! – it bellowed. Everyone waved as they went by.
“Inn-hay,” Florine said. She was embarrassed to drive the truck – with its rusty muffler it roared and clattered like a stock car and bounced along roughly on worn-out springs – and the buffoonlike horn only added to her misery.
Butch and Jordan were at the pond again the next afternoon. Jordan was sprawled on the ground, resting on an elbow and watching his red bobber float, while Butch lapped at water on the other, shallow side. When Butch came back and lay beside him, he noticed his paws were muddy and was about to say something when he saw a black head bobbing up and down, coming toward them across the pasture.
He watched until the figure made it through the tall grass to the cut field and saw it was a black girl from the new house. She waved, and Jordan sat up and waved back as she made the little rise up onto the rim of the pond. Butch growled, then howled like he’d seen a ghost.
“That dog bite?” she yelled.
“Be quiet Butch,” Jordan said. Whimpering, Butch quivered and licked his chops.
“It’s OK,” Jordan yelled and watched as she followed the bank around to them. Jordan patted Butch on the head to calm him. The girl approached cautiously.
“It’s OK. He won’t bite. Go on Butch.” Butch paced off a few yards and lay down, watching. The girl was almost as tall as Jordan was, dressed in a tight yellow tank top and short black shorts. Her hair was braided into short thick points on each side of her head, like stingers. Jordan thought that she looked like a wasp.
“Hi,” she said and offered a handshake. She smiled and seemed friendly enough.
“Ooooh,” she said. “You know the shake! You know, you know.” Jordan was proud he’d remembered it from last summer’s baseball team. Then, though, with the black players, they’d finish a shake by slapping five.
“We just moved off in that house right there,” she said. “I saw you out here so I thought I’d come and check you out. So, hi.”
“Hi,” Jordan said, acting calm. Rarely did he get visitors out in the country except for a cousin who came out a couple of times a summer. His brother and sisters were with their mother, down south, almost in Texas. He was glad to have neighbors now – but a girl, and a black one at that?
“Was it y’all that honked yesterday, with that weird horn?” Jordan nodded.
“I thought that was you.” She paused, put a hand on her hip, and one under her chin, and looked Jordan up and down. She looked like a rancher deep in thought over the price of a certain lot of calves. “You sure is fine is all I got to say. Where all your girlfriends at?”
Jordan looked away. “I don’t know.” He thought about girls all the time but didn’t like to talk about it. He didn’t want his grandparents to think he had a girlfriend. He thought about Marnie, the cute-faced blonde he played Truth or Dare with during sixth grade at Riverside. He had loved Marnie until Marnie wrote him a note – folded into a tiny triangle – breaking up, saying she saw him kissing Kim Martin behind a tree at recess. It was a lie, but Jordan started going with Kim Martin anyway, and then he loved Kim Martin, too, until, at least, school let out for summer.
“Must ain’t got none, way out here in the middle nowhere,” she said. “Uncle Rodney call this Bum Fuck Egypt.”
Jordan reeled in his line and rebaited with the worms he had dug out of the worm farm Zeke built him in the corner of the garden. He stuck the bright gold point into the plump end of the worm, and black frass squirted out.
“Oooh!” Yolanda shrieked. “That be nasty! Ain’t nobody ever gonna get me fuckin’ with no funky-ass worms!”
Jordan made as if to throw one on her. She yelled and jumped back. When she realized he was only playing, she put both hands on her hips and began swaying sideways, like a cobra sizing its hapless victim.
“Cuz, I knock you out you throw a motherfuckin’ worm on me,” she said, swaying with a mean look.
Jordan chuckled. She was just like the black girls at his school. When he was little they were the only ones who would give him attention. They would circle and trap him and cup their hands around his face and tell him he was so cute. He would hang around their periphery while they played tetherball until they approached him. He had especially loved one named Velvet Lee.
“What grade are you in?” Jordan said after he had thrown his line back.
“I be off in ninth when school start,” she said, looking beyond the pond to the pasture where clumps of cattle grazed, set off like smudges of rust against the brown grass. “I be off at MHS, running track and shit. Ain’t nobody faster’n me. What grade you be off in?”
“Seventh.”
“Aw, man, you just a pup. But you sure is fine. What’s your name?”
He felt embarrassed when she said that. He wondered if she wanted him to be her boyfriend.
“Jordan,” he said.
“My
