I Got Somebody in Staunton

When I walk out of the bathroom, these Whiteboys are staring at me as hard as they did when I first drove into the filling station. But now they're smiling, all four of them, like somebody just told a good joke about the nigger in the toilet. Keri's sitting in my car, laughing with them like they've all known each other since grade school. She probably shined up to them, and they got interested when she said something like my name's Keri, with an i, and ran her hands through her hair, the same way she warmed on to me just two hours ago.

All of them look tired. They have long, washed out faces, like each of them has done time—maybe the over-night lock-up more than once, father with a bottle, lover with a fist, working too many months on third shift, weeks of pork fat and cabbage, too many years stuck in nowhere with nobody to blame for it. Right then, because she's in the middle of these squint-eyed men, because her skin looks more like theirs than mine, because they are all smiling, I get the feeling like running is a good thing to do. My Uncle Izelle used to say when the time comes, running takes you over before you know it's an answer. More than once he'd tell me don't wait on the answer.

It's moments like this when I know I have to think fast, but I get caught in all the choices: what's bound to happen, which move should I make or miss? Time slips on me, I get caught in the heat and haze of the day, and here comes Uncle Ize's voice, buzzing my head with every bit of advice I never wanted: I'm back to fifteen years old, sitting in Ize's car, parked a quarter mile into a field. The sun has just dipped past the treeline and the air is thick with pollen haze and fireflies, rising from the hay. Ize sips on some corn, looks straight ahead. He talks to the grass, but speaks to me: Some folks, Clive, you got to step past. Walk on. You walk proud, but some folks don't got a mind for that. The Scottsboro Boys, they was out of work, but lookin. They was runnin the freights, always mixin it up with Whitefolks who was doin the same. Happy go lucky they was til them boys got to trading blows with the wrong Whitefolks at the wrong time. Next thing, they in the lock up, waitin on the hangman. All that cause a White girl was in the mix. You get near mess like that, walk before you cain't. He would get to talking like that without any prompt, from out of the blue, it seemed, no event to relate, no reason for why I should remember it, no beginning to the story, no end. There were dozens of drives down country roads, all of them moments I didn't recognize then as lessons until moments like now.

Then my eyes catch the sun, I look to the ground. I refocus, raise my head. I'm looking at the car, the men, Keri, and I'm back to feeling like a twenty-eight-year old history professor, stuck in another situation where graduate degrees, pedagogical discourse, and academic distinction don't mean shit. I walk along the storefront, feel the change in my pocket. I'm thinking of Bayard Rustin, snuck out of Montgomery in the trunk of a car. When I get to the Coke machine, I stare right back at the four of them. Here I am, out in the sticks again, this close to losing my Black ass, and all I can do is hope that when I put the quarters in the slot, the Coke will come out the machine, it will be cold...