Call Me by My Name Read Online Free PDF Page B

much.”
    â€œOf course it isn’t. Would you like to come sit with us?”
    Pops started gnashing his teeth, the muscles in his jaw working. Then he pulled at the crotch of his pants, as if he’d just now noticed how tight they were.
    â€œCome sit,” Mama said to Tater.
    â€œYes, ma’am,” and he tried to suppress a smile. I could smell him—equal parts hair oil and Aqua Velva—even before he slid over.
    For a few minutes all you could hear was the noise from the pool. Then Tater said, “Why aren’t you on the swim team with Angie, Rodney?”
    â€œI have baseball. I couldn’t do both.”
    â€œYou can swim, though, right?”
    â€œYeah, I can swim. Can’t you?”
    â€œNo. I’ve never even been in a pool.”
    â€œNot ever?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œNot even a baby pool?”
    â€œI tried to take lessons. I heard somebody talking about it at Redbirds’ practice, then I saw a paper on the pool-house door when I was walking home one day. I came and got in line with my dollar fifty—that’s what it cost to take them for the summer—and when I got to the desk, that old lady, Miss Daigle, said I needed to leave because they didn’t want any darkies in the water.”
    â€œShe called you that?”
    â€œNot exactly. She said they didn’t want darkies, then she said she was going to call the police if I didn’t leave that minute.”
    It was hard to hear, and I was relieved when Angie and her teammates came out to loosen up and swim practice laps. I gave a sharp whistle to let her know where we were sitting, and she answered with a wave.
    The sun had combined with chlorine to streak her hair with gold strands. Bands of muscle and sinew stood out on her long limbs. Every time she came out of the pool dripping with water, I wondered how we could be related, let alone twins.
    â€œIs he with you?” I heard somebody say. It was a park employee, standing behind the bleachers.
    â€œYes, he is,” my mother said.
    â€œThat colored person there?”
    â€œThat’s right, George,” Mama answered when Pops wouldn’t. “This is Tater Henry, my son’s teammate on the Redbirds.”
    George Fontenot was older, maybe sixty. Dressed all in khaki, he usually handled maintenance at the park. “Yeah, all right,” he said. “He’s the one got kicked out for picking a fight with the Trussell boy.”
    Tater had come wearing all new clothes and a belt with his name on it, and even they weren’t going to be enough to spare him today.
    â€œGeorge, your pool looks lovely,” Mama said.
    â€œKind of you, thanks. Every morning at seven o’clock sharp, when I skim the surface, I wish they’d built it somewhere else on account of them trees. You can get the leaves easy enough, but it’s the moss that gives you fits. Who builds a pool next to trees?”
    â€œOnly somebody with a man like you, George,” Mama said.
    You could see what her words did to him. He no longer was worried about Tater. Instead he hitched up his pants and went back to spearing trash with a nail at the end of a stick.

    The meet featured only three teams, ours and two others from nearby towns. Angie easily ranked as her team’s strongest individual female competitor, and she also anchored the girls’ relays. There was no limit to the number of events a single swimmer could participate in, and by the last race Angie had already won four medals, three of them gold and one silver. Tater and I stood tall and cheered like crazy people without a thought to how it might be taken by the visitors from out of town.
    As Angie was stretching before her last event, a man looked back at us from his seat at the bottom of the bleachers and spoke to my father. “Is all that really necessary?” he asked.
    Pops didn’t answer, and the man got up and walked over to the fence. He stood