Let's No One Get Hurt Read online

  Fritter, meanwhile, twirls his shirt over his head. “My people!”

  ONE OF THE REENACTORS LOOKS over at us, but I know he doesn’t see me because I’m standing next to a nearly naked three-hundred-pound black man with a bouncing chest, his nipples like eyes all agog for the pageantry.

  “Do you know what some people called the Civil War in my hometown?” Fritter says to me.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Late, Great Unpleasantness.”

  “That sounds poetic.”

  “Yeah. Pretty fucking poetic.”

  * * *

  We get in position next to family members who have gathered for the battle. Between the split lines of soldiers is a gulf that cuts the manicured lawn perfectly in half. The fastest way for us to reach the hospital’s entrance is to just go straight across the field, right through the line of fire.

  Fritter, as if reading my mind, nudges me. “You ready?”

  My heart drums inside me. I suddenly want nothing more than to see my father.

  The soldiers have already drawn their oiled muskets. They are pointing them at each other. I pull away just before an officer shouts an order.

  I sprint beyond being a girl in my own body.

  I become an idea.

  I know I’m not a woman yet.

  But I’m also not a girl.

  I’m a poem no one will ever translate.

  I RUSH PAST THE MUSKETS as they begin spraying clouds. It’s black-powder smoke that isn’t smoke. They’re not guns. I feel like I can look into each face I sheer past, into each eye as it aims its muzzle to put me out of my misery. I see my father, and I don’t see him ever again. More clouds of smoke like nets cast in the river. Nothing touches me. Not one thread of woven smoke. You can’t touch an idea. I’m too fast to catch in anyone’s mind. In this moment, like Fritter, I’m invincible.

  WHEN I REACH THE OTHER side of the field, I turn to face the cheering from the crowd. The roar reaches my ears. Fritter hobbles up behind me. He’s clapping along with the bystanders. Some of the soldiers, Union and Confederate alike, raise themselves up from where they’ve fallen so they can flip me off properly. Others take out their phones to take our picture. They’re capturing our image.

  Amid the celebration Fritter bends over and heaves.

  “We did it.” I dig at a stitch in my side.

  “That was all you.” Fritter wipes his mouth.

  * * *

  The hospital’s entrance is an atrium with mauve- and teal-colored couches, faux palm trees. I walk up to the front desk and ask about my father. The receptionist, an elderly white woman with a bone-colored pixie cut, clicks a few buttons on her keyboard. She says he’s not here anymore.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means he’s gone, sweetheart.”

  She touches my hand. Her fingers are skinny like knitting needles, her pointy nails painted an eggshell white.

  “As in gone gone?” I take a step back.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “I think what she’s asking is, was he discharged?” Fritter says. “Or is he dead?”

  The woman cuts her eyes at Fritter, as if only noticing him for the first time. “Sir, I’m afraid you’re going to have to put on a shirt if you think you’re visiting this hospital.”

  “Maybe I’m not visiting. Maybe I’m making my home right here.”

  “Then maybe I need to call security.”

  “If you think you need to call security, knock yourself out.”

  “Ma’am,” I interrupt, “I’m sorry. I really need to find my father.”

  Fritter eyes the woman as he puts on his shirt.

  The woman sighs but clicks a few buttons and then smiles, pleased with herself. She grabs the silver crucifix hanging from her necklace and slides it back and forth. “Well, what do you know? He was released not even thirty minutes ago.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “Yes, thank you very much,” Fritter says.

  “You’re welcome, sweetheart.” The woman studies my face now.

  Fritter doesn’t even blink.

  * * *

  The sliding doors open as a clean-shaven black man in a tailored gray suit comes through carrying balloons and a giant stuffed elephant. Bluegrass music follows in behind him. The jangle of notes makes me think of a cigar-box guitar. When the doors close, Muzak over the hospital’s speakers resumes. The man looks at Fritter and nods, and Fritter nods back.

  “I think I have a good idea where Dox is,” Fritter says to me.

  “Stop reading my mind.”

  Fritter raises his eyebrows and points at the receptionist. “You should hear what she’s thinking. Not good. Not good at all.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” the woman says.

  WE WALK BEHIND A LINE of vendor tents. There are smoky grills that are as long as banquet tables. Aproned workers take wide paintbrushes and dunk them into buckets of brown sauce and then baste the hammered chicken breasts lined along the grates. Fritter says he could eat all of it, the entire batch and even the coals, and I nod and stop next to a white girl who looks to be my age pouring a large carton of blue liquid into a whirring machine the size of a semitruck’s tire rim turned sideways.

  The sides start fanning out faint strands, and the girl takes a narrow paper cone shaped like a unicorn’s horn and begins to twirl it around and around, tracing the metallic circle. The strands wrap on top of each other until they bunch into a blue beehive on a stick. She holds it up and gingerly places the cotton candy into the hands of a young boy wearing a gray kepi and a neon-yellow T-shirt with a cape that’s just a Confederate flag tucked into his collar.

  “That’s the kind of shit that scares me,” Fritter whispers. “That boy right there.”

  “All that you’ve seen, and that’s what scares you?”

  “Hate hardwired with happiness? That’s the toughest net to untangle.”

  * * *

  Past the vendor stands is a group of musicians sitting in a circle and trading off turns, keeping a melodic riff going among them. One on a fiddle sews the melody into the scrape and strum of a mandolin player, who then hands it off to someone sliding up the neck of a cigar-box guitar.

  DOX SMILES WIDE WHEN HE spots us. Those teeth of his, I swear. Most are missing, and what few remain could be stray pieces of peanut brittle. I wonder if Fritter ever worries about having his genes. Dox points to the far left with his chin, and we look over to see my father using a wooden spoon and slapping the bottom of a plastic bucket. With his vest-and-no-shirt getup, my father fits in better than any of the rest of us.

  He’s wrapped his hospital gown into a ball. I pretend for a moment that it’s cotton candy he’s bought for me, like he thinks I’m younger than I am. I feel like I’ve been on pause in his head for a long time, even though I’ve been paying attention to him, to his legs and his feet, though not as often perhaps. I could always do better.

  But who has been paying attention to me?

  The inside of my mouth goes slack, and I can’t swallow. I’m suddenly angry with him, as if he meant to do this, as if it were solely his neglect that has brought us here. I’m not going to cry, but I’m not going to smile either.

  I walk up to him and he holds out his arms. “Did you miss me?”

  I can’t help it. I slap him across the face.

  “WHAT WAS THAT FOR?” my father says.

  “Don’t ever do that again.”

  He laughs but touches his cheek.

  I slap at him, this time all over his arms. It’s a storm. I keep at it until I can’t see. I start crying. No one stops me. Not even Fritter. People look at us like we’re not real, but I don’t care.

  “I hate you,” I say. “I do. I hate you!”

  “Honey,” Dox says.

  “No, let her,” my father says. “Let her get it out.”

  My hands can only hover. I can’t hit him anymore.

  “It’s okay, Pearl,” my father say
s. “I was scared, too.”

  MY FATHER PULLS ME TO HIM and we stand there while others gather. A bearded man who isn’t dressed as a reenactor but could easily be one of the regiment digs in a giant duffel bag. He pulls out spoons and rattles and all kinds of noisemakers. He turns the duffel bag over, gives it a jolt, and dumps out a few empty tin coffee cans that spin to a standstill. One lands upside down. Its dented bottom catches sunlight. That’s the one I grab because I still feel like punching something. My knuckles rap the light and sound metallic. The bearded man yells, “Louder! Louder!” We keep at our banging, but now it’s all in time. Dox and my father are both hopping from one foot to the other. Fritter claps, and I hoot and holler. Soon everything becomes a song.

  When our revelry subsides, a few Confederate soldiers standing near a souvenir tent glance over at Fritter. They point excitedly, like they’ve just seen the real Stonewall Jackson. They head our way.

  * * *

  “You need to step your ass back,” Fritter says to the first one.

  “You ruined our scene,” another one says, already hysterical. “We trained a long time for that battle, and you messed it up.”

  Other soldiers begin to walk over as well.

  “What about me?” I say, stepping between them.

  “What about you?” the first one says.

  Fritter pats my shoulder and winks.

  “They’re not worth it,” I say to him. “They’re just flies.”

  “What now?” Fritter says. “Flies?”

  Dox laughs. “She said they’re flies.”

  “Fuck you,” the first one says to Fritter.

  “How about we go talk about this over there,” Fritter says to the group of men. Dox and my father stand there like their legs have suddenly stopped working. Reenactors gather in numbers, wanting to know what’s going on, wanting to see if this guy is the same asshole that ran through the field during the reenactment. Like they can’t tell, like there’s another Fritter in the world.

  “Yeah,” the first one says, “that sounds like a real good idea, boy. Let’s go over and see if we can’t talk about this like a bunch of civilized folk.” The other soldiers laugh on cue, and my teeth and jaws hurt from clenching, but Fritter is all smiles, is all nods and yuck-yuck, and he even slaps one on the shoulder, like they’re sharing the funniest joke they’ve ever heard.

  The men cluster around Fritter. He has this secret he’s been meaning to share with someone for a long time, and they’ve been chosen to hear it. It’s all serious with no more jokes. When I go to follow them, my father grabs my wrist and says, “No, ma’am.” I twist my arm to loosen his grip, and just as I’m about to free myself from him, Dox grabs my other wrist, and they hold me next to them.

  My father says, “You don’t need to see this.” It’s suddenly a lesson that’s been scratched off the list, a translation he gave the once-over and x’ed out. He’s trying to cover it up.

  * * *

  I follow Fritter with my eyes. I won’t take my eyes off him. He looks like a torch before a procession of uniforms, blue and gray in lockstep, united, and as they pass others in the crowd, new ranks join up, and I think of White Truck and its parachute behind it. I know I was wrong. These men following behind Fritter are not flies like Main Boy and his friends. No, they’re dust kicked up from a road people will always try to make use of.

  * * *

  The men with Fritter don’t look like soldiers anymore. Most have taken off their gear. They’ve set their satchels on the ground next to the muskets.

  “We should help him,” I say.

  “Wait,” Dox says. “Just wait.”

  The circle of men turns like it’s going to click into place. I move as if to take a step forward.

  My father squeezes my wrist again. “Wait. Just wait.”

  * * *

  All of the sounds of the festival can’t drown out the singing I hear. For it’s singing that Fritter unleashes on the soldiers. It’s a singing for their hands and their knees, their foreheads even. They touch his chin. They touch his neck and his chest. He sings like he’s holding the snake’s mouth open and pouring the song inside it. I wait like Dox and my father told me, but I’m tired of waiting. Bodies are on him and vanish into the ground with the embers. Fritter is singing that dirge, that sweet, happy crying song he carries inside him.

  The men lock arms. It’s a scrum. They’re all just boys playing a neighborhood game, and someone’s hidden the ball inside Fritter and they’re all reaching for it, trying to get at it, and I smile now because they can barely hold him down, and I think that means he’s winning. Other men come to watch what’s going on and figure out their role in this scene unfolding, how they’re to not question what started all of this, but that they’re here to answer how it will end.

  How many fists clenched dreadlocks? How many were ripped clean from his head? Fritter keeps singing, and I want to yell, “I hear you!” But Dox and my father hold me back when deputies’ uniforms show up and draw their glossy black wooden clubs. They want to play the game, too. They’re breaking in new equipment. They want to get a chance to hit the ball as hard as they can.

  I know my father would tell me not to mix metaphors, but how else to reach the confusion I harbor when the ball becomes Fritter’s head and simultaneously becomes the top of a torch. Each hit sends sparks into the grass and into the trees that burst into blank, translation-less pages.

  When everyone is finished, they take a step back. They’re heaving, sucking wind. Fritter is on the ground. His head is patchy. There are spaces where his dreadlocks should be. I shake loose from my father and run to him. The men see me. They start walking away. I get down on the ground and cradle Fritter’s head. His eyes are rolled back, but he’s breathing. I hold his face in my hands.

  When he comes to, he says, “How did I do?”

  He wants me to smile, and I smile.

  I FIND A SPIGOT AND wring out Fritter’s shirt. I hand it to Dox, thinking he might want to tend to his son, but Dox shakes his head, which surprises me. I dab at places on Fritter’s swollen face.

  “I’m fine,” Fritter says, shooing my hands away. “That was nothing.”

  My father says we should head home and asks where we parked the truck. I tell him how it died on the road, how we happened upon a construction site and Fritter made us a raft.

  “A raft?” My father shakes his head.

  I nod and point over at the embankment by the river. There’s our contraption of a raft, splintered and all.

  “You two rode that here?” Dox says.

  Fritter smiles. The blood in his mouth outlines his teeth.

  “A shame,” my father says, “it won’t be taking us back.”

  And just like that, our raft becomes a poem.

  * * *

  We walk the full length of the downtown, though it’s hardly a feat. The downtown is only a handful of blocks with painted brick townhomes and storefronts sandwiching one another in a spectrum of pastels. Some of the people from the festival have been diverted to these stores like schools of fish through a series of weirs.

  Crowds ripple along the sidewalks. Businesses sell antiques, mostly refurbished Civil War weapons and framed parchment papers. In little jewel boxes, pillowed in cotton, are pitted musket balls. They’ve been pulled from warped tree trunks or unearthed and pitched from tilled soil like random, obnoxious stones that scraped plow blades. My father wishes aloud that there could be a pawnshop close by. He points at the rusty tools in the canvas bag I’m still carrying. He thinks I don’t know what he’s up to, his mind already switching modes. He doesn’t once ask about the rod and the creel, though I know those would be the first to go.

  “If only we could get our hands on some money,” he says.

  A few girls my age walk by us on the sidewalk. They look back and laugh.

  * * *

  We pass more storefronts. In one is a pale blue summer dress. It drapes on a faceless mannequin. I turn away.

/>   The main street ends at a cobblestone pavilion with a gazebo overlooking the bridge Fritter and I drifted under this morning. My father and Dox walk over to a bench under the gazebo and plop down. I keep forgetting my father is spent. Dox is no spring chicken either. Fritter hobbles up, takes the end next to Dox, and lets out a sigh. These men are a sad bunch.

  I set our things on the ground next to Fritter.

  “Where are you going?” my father says.

  “Nowhere.” I keep on going.

  It might be good to see the dress after all.

  * * *

  The girls from earlier have stopped in front of the same store. They’re in dresses, too, with matching suede ankle boots. Both have straight auburn hair with bangs. Their faces are drawn and long like those of baby alpacas, their eyes lashy and dark. I don’t mean that as a dig. These girls are pretty in their own way.

  I stop at the storefront, too, but keep my distance from them. They see me and smile.

  I smile back. “Hey.”

  They don’t answer. They laugh and walk off.

  They leave me alone.

  * * *

  In my reflection, I see what they see. My hair is a rat’s nest. My face is more dirt than face. Dried blood is on my shirt from holding Fritter’s head. My chest isn’t even there.

  “Hey,” I say to myself.

  My reflection keeps laughing at me.

  * * *

  When I head back to the gazebo, I hear mostly minor chords and screech. My father doesn’t miss a beat. He’s tied the hospital gown around his neck and has a shit-eating grin on his face. With the wooden spoon, he slaps the bottom of the overturned bucket, right in the molded bull’s-eye. He lifts the bucket up and down so the rim, which is flush with the ground, produces a deep-sounding bass. Fritter winces but sings. Dox is sweet Dox.