A Fine Dark Line Read Online Free PDF Page A

then that I felt a closer attachment to Rosy Mae, and I had known her even less time than Richard.
    Me and Rosy Mae did spend special time together. I didn’t have to think about what I was going to say before I said it to her. I sure didn’t tell Richard that I liked to read poetry, and I had told Rosy Mae that. And though she didn’t know a poem from a cow turd, she understood I liked poetry and appreciated my interest in it, and even let me read one by Robert Frost to her twice. She had also seen all the Tarzan movies from the balcony of the Palace Theater, where the coloreds watched, and she had seen movies in the black theater over in the neighboring town of Talmont that I had never seen or even heard of. Black cowboys. Black gangsters. Black musicals. I had no idea those movies even existed. She called them “colored picture shows.”
    Aware of my pondering, Daddy said, “I just want you to know I haven’t got a thing against Rosy Mae.”
    I thought, other than her being a nigger. I went in thehouse, upstairs, lay on my bed and felt . . . odd. I don’t know any other way to describe it. The information I received that day had struck me like a bullet, and it felt like a ricochet, meant for Rosy, received by me.
    ———
    I HAD LEFT the door open, and while I was lying on the bed, Nub wandered in, jumped up next to me. Shortly thereafter, Callie came to the door. After the balloon incident, Daddy and Mom had swapped rooms with her, moving her upstairs, next door to me.
    Callie was barefoot, had her hair in a ponytail, was wearing pink pedal pushers and a white, oversized man’s shirt. Like most girls that age, she wore too much perfume. For that matter, three years later, I would wear too much cologne.
    She leaned against the door frame, said, “Mom catches you with your shoes in the bed, and that dog, there’s going to be some trouble.”
    “You ought to know about trouble,” I said. “And she doesn’t care about Nub. She lets Nub in their bed.”
    “Maybe she does, but you don’t know a thing about me being in trouble, Stanley Mitchel, Jr. Not a thing. I didn’t do anything. Now I’m grounded at the best time of my life. I’m supposed to be having fun.”
    “You aren’t supposed to have those balloons in your room.”
    I rolled my head to look at Callie, saw that she had turned red.
    “I’ll have you know that it isn’t what you think.”
    I wasn’t sure what to think, but I didn’t give away my ignorance. I said, “Yeah, whatever you say.”
    “Jane Jersey dropped that through my window . . . Well, atleast I think she did. Someone mean that likes Chester and doesn’t want us to be together and wants to give me a bad reputation. Jane Jersey already has a bad reputation. Not to mention an ugly hairdo. You could hide a watermelon in that hair of hers. Actually, it looks like one of those wire fish traps.”
    “Why would you like Chester? He’s creepy. He looks like a spaceman. I think I saw him in Invasion of the Saucer Men . He was the little monster on the left.”
    “You’re just mean, Stanley.”
    “And you’re telling me Jane Jersey came by and slipped that balloon in your window on a stick? I’m supposed to buy that?”
    “Most of the girls I get along with, but a few are jealous. Jane is the most jealous. She used to go with Chester. I didn’t break them up, though. They were already broke up. I met him at the Dairy Queen and we hit it off. It’s nothing serious. He’s just kind of fun. Different. Jane’s been ugly to me because of it. Always frowning, telling me to leave her boyfriend alone. Her putting that rubber—”
    “Rubber?”
    “That’s what the balloon is called, Stanley. It’s not called a balloon. Politely, it’s called a prophylactic. But her putting that in my room, or having one of her friends do it, that’s just mean. I don’t really know she meant Mom or Daddy to find it, but I think she wanted to show me she was getting what she thought I was