Saving Scrap

I ran through the trees and scrambled down the rocky hill to the edge of the river where Grain was waiting; the checkerboard spread open on the rock. I reached him out of breath and plunked down on the grass.

“You finish your chores?” he asked me.

I nodded still catching my breath.

“Yesterday, too?”

“Yes sir.”

“So what he do that for?”

I looked down at the welts swelling up purple on my legs, and licked my tongue across the part of my lip that was puffed and sore, and crusting with dried blood.

“I left the gate open,” I told him, moving a checker to a square. I won yesterday so I had first move.

Grain looked at me, moving the sunflower seeds he never seemed to be without around in his mouth before cracking them to get to the nutty flesh inside.

“Sonofabitch,” he muttered, spitting the shells on the ground and popping in a fresh handful.

“It ain’t so bad.”

“Sonofabitch,” he said again and spit out more shells.

I shrugged. It didn’t take me to do much for Daddy to beat me; most times I didn’t have to do nothing at all. It didn’t matter no more. It definitely didn’t matter today. Today was my last day to spend with Grain. He was leaving and I was losing my best friend. I know my best friend should have been my own age instead of some old man with a raggedy jacket and gimp leg dragging around a duffel bag, but boys my age picked on me. I was little for 10. I couldn’t catch a ball and couldn’t throw one either. Nobody wanted to play with me so when school shut down for the summer all I had was chores and Daddy, until I met Grain.

I found him sleeping one day in the rundown shed by the river that was my hiding space. This was the only place I could cry, or hide from Daddy, or look out at the water and miss my Momma.

I knew who he was. People in town called him crazy, a bum, a drunken fool. All I know is he was nice to me. He taught me how to play checkers, and told me about far off places with funny food and nothing but trees and sunshine as far as the eye could see. When he told his stories in town he stopped being a drunken fool and just became a drunken liar. I didn’t care. He was no different than the people like Daddy who drank and cussed in the LuLu Lounge except he drank out back of it. And he seemed to have a real liking for the apple wine Miss Effie made in her barn instead of the stuff Miss LuLu served in her fancy glasses.

Nobody seemed to know exactly where he was from or why he came to Mullen Spring which surprised me. I thought everybody in Mullen Spring just kinda sprouted there. It was such a nothing kind of town I couldn’t imagine anybody coming here on purpose. I was glad Grain did. Now he was leaving. He said a friend of his from the Navy worked a cargo ship that was docking at the port and when he left he was going with him. At first, I didn’t know what was harder to believe—that he was in the Navy or that he had friends. It must have been true because the last two days we didn’t venture far from the hill. We spent all our time playing checkers and card games like Pity-Pat and Tonk, and watching the water.

The sky was turning orange and gold when Grain clambered to his feet, a smile spreading across his whiskered face.

“Lookit Scrap, there she is!” He called out, excited. “I tell you ain’t nothing more beautiful than a ship on the horizon.”

I got to my feet slow, not near as happy or excited as him. “What’s horizon?” I asked.

He turned to me, his eyes just shy of twinkling. “That place where the sky and the ocean meet so wide, you can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.”

I looked at the horizon. I saw the ship. There was nothing beautiful about it to me. It was coming to take my friend away, and I just couldn’t be happy. My days were going back to chores and whippings, nobody glad to see me, nobody to even play cards or checkers with now that I knew how.

Grain must have known what I was thinking. “You gon’ be alright, Scrap,” he said. “You ain’t gon’ be 10 forever.”

“Don’t matter, it’s gon’ still be the same when I’m 11.” I tried to smile. “I’m really glad your ship came though, and I’m really glad you let me be your friend.”

I stuck my hand out like grown men do and he shook it. “Thank you for letting me be your friend, Scrap. I ain’t leaving ‘til dawn, you can still hang around.”

I shook my head. “I think this is goodbye enough.”

I knew he was watching me as I walked away, disappearing through the trees the same way I came.

I got home and saw Daddy had been there, his boots meeting me at the door. A pot was on the stove and his dirty plate was on the table. The house stank of dime store cologne and I knew he was spending the evening at the LuLu Lounge trying to be sweet to some woman whose perfume smelled worse than his. I cleaned the kitchen as good as Momma used to and put his boots in his room where he liked them to be. Then I sat in my room hoping I didn’t get the walloping that always came after a night drinking at LuLu’s.

All the hoping didn’t matter. He came in slamming doors and cussing, and woke me out my sleep just to give me a good one. I don’t remember going back to sleep but I must have because I woke up seeing the pink and blue of dawn out of one eye. There was nothing on my body that didn’t hurt but I leapt out of bed anyway. Grain wasn’t gone yet and I still had an hour or so to ask him the question that burned in me long after Daddy staggered off to bed. Too scared to open any drawers, I threw on yesterday’s clothes and crept through the hall. I passed my bedroom door leaning lopsided against the wall where he left it after beating and banging it off the hinges when I tried to escape his fists.

“Ain’t gon’ be no closed doors in my house!” He’d hollered.

Looking across the hall I could see his door was shut tight, making me grateful his rules didn’t apply to him. I didn’t bother to stop in the bathroom—I could pee outside, and there was no need to look in the mirror and wash my face. I already knew what I looked like—fat lip, swollen eye, black and blue jaw—all of it pounding like each one had its own heartbeat.

I ran all the way to the river, slipping on the rocks as I scampered down the hill. The sun was starting to crease through the pink when I saw Grain step out the shed.

“Grain! Grain! Take me with you!” I called, running. “Please, can I go?”

His face looked pained when I stopped in front of him panting. His eyes travelled over me, travelled over the fresh bruises criss-crossing old bruises, wounds overlapping, competing for space on my skin.

“You think your daddy just gon’ let you leave?”

“He don’t care. He gon’ kill me one day, Grain.”

Grain sighed, looking down at the ground then back at me. “You ain’t even got nothing with you.”

“I don’t need nothing. If I do, I’ll fend for myself, fend for you too if you need me. I’ll do whatever you say, just please, don’t leave me with him.”

Grain had started walking toward the river’s edge while I was talking. His gimp leg seemed to move faster and faster the closer he got to the water. It was the first time I had to run a little bit just to keep up. I knew there was no reason for him to stop, tell me to ‘come on’ but I needed him to. I needed to hear him say ‘come on, Scrap’ like he did when he showed me the tunnels under the abandoned train yard, or when we crawled through the underbrush to find the sweetest fishing hole I ever saw.

I needed him to say ‘come on Scrap’ so bad, I said IT—the one thing I’d never said out loud to nobody, not to the birds that flit from tree to tree, not even the wind.

“He killed my momma, Grain. I saw him…he knows I saw him.”

He stopped.

“It’s a wonder I ain’t dead already.”

I was crying, begging. I didn’t care if my tears meant I was a sissy, or a waste of man, like Daddy said. By the time I caught up to him, he looked down at me and lifted his hand. I shrank back knowing crying could get me slapped. He didn’t slap me though. He put his hand on the top of my head and pulled me to him. I flung my arms around his waist and pressed my face against his stomach in the old raggedy jacket. He smelled like dirt, and apple wine, and the morning mist coming off the water. It was the best smell. After Momma, I never had nothing to hold onto when I cried, so I breathed him in.

We stood there a bit.

“Time to go, Scrap,” he said in the gravelly voice I knew I’d never forget.

I let him go and he turned and started walking, waving at his friend who was docking the little rowboat that was gon’ take him to the ship. The man waved back, smiling. I trailed behind him, my heart sinking when I stepped with my right foot, hope soaring when I stepped with my left. He hadn’t said no.

Grain stepped gingerly into the boat and clasped hands with his friend, hugging him, laughing and whooping about how good it was to see each other again. I was less than ten feet away when his friend caught my eye. He said something to Grain who turned and looked at me.

“Oh Willie, this here’s my boy,” I heard him say. “My auntie’s getting on in years, figured it’s time he come with me…come on, Scrap.”

I thought my fat lip was gon’ split again I grinned so hard, running to the boat, Willie waving me aboard.

“Look at that shiner!” Willie marveled, as I climbed into the boat. He took my chin in his fingers and tilted my head to get a better look at my eye. My heart sped up. I didn’t think about how I must look.

“Yeah, it’s something,” Grain chuckled, “but you should see the other guy.”

Willie laughed.

Grain and Willie rowed the boat around to the port. I didn’t talk—scared to believe that what was happening was happening. We boarded the ship as the sun burst bright in the sky. Before we set sail, Grain asked me if I was sure. I nodded. There was nothing in Mullen Creek I could think of to miss. Everything of Momma’s was gone. We stayed below deck until we reached open water. Grain thought I might get seasick when we came up top, but I didn’t. I loved the roll of the waves, the spray on my face as I leaned over the rail.

The one thing more beautiful than a ship on the horizon was being on it.