"HARRY & IVORY" – Chapter 8

"Harry & Ivory"

A love story you have not heard before.

   Chapter Eight

    "Close Encounter"

    Heading outside, Harry was too preoccupied to say anything as he passed Annie on her way in. He was surprised to find that it was already warm enough to be comfortable without a jacket. A place to sit down and think was what he needed, and he pulled Annie's favorite lawn chair into a patch of sunlight. Like her pickup truck, the chair had "ANNIE" painted on the back.
    Annie....
    Her could hear the children arguing inside and then a whack as Annie silenced them without a word. She was always surprising him – he had expected her to join the shouting match.
    She had surprised him last spring when they all decided to go for a walk together and pick huckleberries. When Pounder started barking at a rattlesnake, Harry and Perry whipped out their pistols and fired at the same time. While the dead snake twisted and writhed, Annie told them that just the week before she had beaten a rattlesnake to death with a stick. They didn't believe her and she had to take them to the place where the snake lay rotting.
    "I made it strike the stick first to stretch it out."
    But later, when the males went back to pick up the snake they had shot, the snake moved a little and Annie screamed. And when Perry was skinning it to make a belt out of the hide, he accidentally cut himself and Annie warned him about letting any of the dust from the rattles get into the cut. "You'll die in a minute!" she insisted.
    "Mom, the venom's in the fangs!"
    "You'll die in a minute! I know about snakes! When I was a little girl in Colorado we had worse snakes than here! We had side-winders! And hoop-snakes, too!"
    "Hoop snakes?"
    "You better believe it! They grab their tails in their mouths and roll along the ground like a car tire rolling down a hill! Faster than you can run!"
    "Oh, Mom."
    Later, Annie had confided to Harry that she knew all that stuff was bullshit but the stories would keep Perry's eyes open and one day he would realize that. My grandmother did it for me and, lucky you, here I am! Carrying on the tradition! Live! All yours!"
    Harry slid farther down in the chair and closed his eyes to the sun. Why did he need more?
    This is such a beautiful place....
    Janey. What a surprise....
    Why do I love black girls?
    Black girls.... Just saying the words! Black girls, black girls, black girls....
    It's a disease now.... I'm fucked.
    They get in your blood. And when black girls get in your blood, more black girls don't help. They just get more in your blood....
    That must be why all those old race laws got started....
    Harry heard the phone ringing inside.
    Does Ivory have a telephone?
    Black girls....
    There's some eager, friendly spirits locked up in those foxy, dark machines....
    "Harry!" Annie was standing in the doorway. "Derlee Prosser just called. She ran over Mister Prosser's favorite hound-dog and she wants to know what to do! Harry! I told her you'd be right over!"
    Harry groaned and got up. Perry squeezed past his mother and came out. "Listen!" he demanded. Quiet!"
    Off in the distance they could hear the Prosser's dog howling.
    "Yup!" Perry said. "She ran it over. Nothing we can do."
    "We could bring over a bunch of black arm-bands," Janey laughed. "No! We should go over there wearing them!"
    "And a putty knife to scrape the rest of the dog off the tires!"
    "No, Perry. Mrs. Prosser has big mud-grip tires on her car. We'll need a screwdriver to dig the dog out of the tread!"
    "Stop it!" Annie screamed.
    "That dog's in pain," Harry said.
    The phone was ringing again and Annie went back inside.
    "We'll need a shovel, too," Perry said, "to bury the dog and the screwdriver when we're done."
    "They'll want to save the radio collar, though. I think they cost a lot."
    Harry said, "Radio collar?"
    "Oh, Pop, it's real dumb!"
    "Yeah, Dad. The dog has this collar with a battery and radio in it, and it's remote controlled, you know, radio controlled."
    "Duhhhhh, Janey!"
    "And when Mister Prosser mashes the button on the remote, the collar gives the dog an electric shock. I think it's cruel. One day Perry and me were over there and Perry was sitting in this old ratty sofa they have outside and Mister Prosser came up and wanted to know if we'd seen his dog, well, the dog was right there sleeping under where Perry was sitting, you know, so I thought it was a dumb question and didn't say anything and..."
    "Dummy! Nobody knew the dog was under there!"
    "I saw him! Anyway – this is the funny part – so Mister Prosser gets the remote out of his pocket and mashes the button so he can hear where the yelp comes from, that's how he finds him, and the dog jumps straight up underneath Perry! You should've heard Perry scream! He didn't know what it was at first, ha ha!"
    Perry narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to speak but Annie was back outside and she clamped her hand over his face from behind.
    "You can all stop your big rush over there. Mrs. Prosser called back. The dog is dead."
    Janey bowed her head and crossed herself. "Well, at least the deer around here will be happy about it."
    "It's a coon dog, dummy!" Perry struggled to get away from his mother.
    "It was trained to run deer!"
    "Coons, Janey!"
    "Tuh unh! When Mister Prosser said that about coons he meant it barks at niggers!"
    "Harry?" Annie said.
    But Harry was already walking away. Walking away again. Pounder, unchained so he could enjoy his new, arranged marriage with Pumkin, followed him. Pumkin trotted up and hunkered down a little as Harry bent to pet her. "You like your new home, Pumkin? Neat here, huh!"
    The three of them started down the reefer trail, the dogs sniffing the path for signs of prey. Harry had a favorite spot, just a few minutes from the house, where the trail opened up into a meadow. There was a stump there, with a smooth board nailed to the top for a seat. Harry checked it for fire-ants and plunked down. The meadow was full of spider-lilies – red Christmas flowers brilliant in the sun.
    Three years ago. Was that me? Was I the person who nailed down this board back then?
    Wonder if Sunday would like this spot.... Probably rather be cruising around the city in that T-bird.
    Ivory would....
    A voice in his head said: "Annie does!"
    Ivory would, I know. Likes to sit. Maybe she's just stupid. No.... Easy to take advantage of....
    Would that be wrong?
    The dogs returned, bursting out of the hedge-row across the meadow and heading full-speed for Harry, their feet slapping the turf. He jumped up and pretended to draw a pistol. With hands clasped together and his legs in a wide stance, he imagined the dogs were charging wild boars and he was blowing them away, BOOM! BOOM! the pistol bucking up, the hairy bodies slamming to the ground from the impact, rolling over in the dirt, screaming and twitching, and flopping around as the life drained out of them, their eyes dilating and glowing with peace now just before losing consciousness – that last moment when the pain and the struggle depart and the bliss and relief of surrender releases their spirits. Their blood glistening in the grass in the silence.
    "Dad?"
    Harry wheeled around. It was Janey.
    Pounder and Pumkin, breathing heavily, plopped down between them.
    "Dad? This would be a good time to go. To the Clearsons. Annie's going to hold on lunch and I promised her we'd be back soon. That way you'll have an excuse – you won't have to talk to Ivory much the first time. But you'll be able to get a look at her."
    "Janey...."
    "It'll be cool, Dad."
    "Janey, I'm not in a position right now to..."
    "Just get a look at her! That's all! She won't talk to you, anyway – I don't think. Not at first. She might not even come out! Hell, I need a ride!"
    "Okay, okay! A ride!"
    "Right."
    "And you can meet Mister Clearson. You'll like him, too. But you'll love Ivory! Ha ha!"

* * *

    They were eating lunch: toasted cheese sandwiches with bacon. "Harry?" Annie said. "Listen. They have three children, the same age."
    "They?"
    "The Clearsons! Janey said you were taking her there after lunch."
    "Before lunch, only Dad couldn't get it in gear," Janey said.
    "He wasn't interested, cum-for-brains!" Perry said through a mouthful of cheese and bacon.
    "That bacon you're choking on is from the Clearsons, scumbag!" Janey said.
    "Three children the same age," Annie repeated. "You couldn't find a more typical colored family. Two children the same age in a negro family almost gets it, but three? That's their goal! Keep society wondering how they did it, whose father is whose, whose baby is whose, et cetera. But..."
    "Who's fucking whom!" Perry said disgustedly.
    "But the Clearsons have achieved the quintessence of negro family culture by coming up with three children all born in the same month. And like suckers at the circus, here we sit trying to figure it out!"
    "Here you sit trying to figure it out," Janey said.
    "How kind of you to substitute negro for nigger," Harry added.
    "What three children are the same age?" Perry said. "Connie's younger than that deaf-mute Ivory, and her brothers are older than her, so..."
    "No, dummy!" Janey said. "The oldest brother, the one in college, he's the same age as Ivory, and his brother is really his father's sister's son, only Connie said that her step-father is the father of him, no, wait, her father's step-brother is..."
    "See? See?" Annie said triumphantly.
    "No, wait. One brother is Ivory's but not Connie's and..."
    "Janey!" Perry shouted. "You're playing right into Annie's hand! Annie! I mean, Mom! That's terrible! They're nice people!"
    "Oh? Since when, Perry?" Annie said.
    "They gave him a Christmas present," Janey said.
    "Oh?"
    "It's a knife. It's neat, too!" Perry hauled it out of his back pocket and handed it to Harry. "It's the biggest folding knife I ever saw! And it's a Case!"
    "Nice," Harry said. "Expensive! I'm impressed!"
    "When did this happen?" Annie said, her voice all toned down and humble.
    "Remember last time Mister Clearson drove me home and you turned out the driveway light before he was all the way back out? That's when."
    "Nice shot, Annie," Harry said.
    "I didn't know. And we don't have anything for them."
    "I do!" Perry said.
    "So do I!" Janey said.
    "Oh? What did you get them? Where? When? With your own money?"
    "It's okay, Mom. They're just niggers." Janey got up from the table and snatched an egg from the bowl Annie had set out.
    "Hardly-boiled eggs," Perry grumped. "Try one, Pop!"
    "I boiled them at least ten minutes!" Annie screeched.
    Perry jumped up and grabbed an egg and cracked it right in the middle of Annie's plate. Nothing happened. "Oh, well, sorry!" Perry said.
    Janey leaned over and smashed her egg on Perry's plate. The egg mushed out around the shell and yellow yolk ran onto the rest of Perry's cheese sandwich.
    "Janey!" Annie yelled.
    "See, Mom?" Perry said.
    "Anyway, they're good this way, dummy!"
    "Well get it off my plate!"
    Harry's hands were covering his ears. He was watching Ivory wandering around on the highway, face beaten and swollen, wrists and ankles cut and bruised from the lamp-cord they used to lash her to the bed, spread-eagled, the men laughing and jeering and working up into her with their sweaty, greasy bodies, digging their dirty, cracked fingernails into her sweet, pretty tits...
    "Dad?"
    Ivory, home at last at the little farm Janey had described: chicken coops and garden plots thick with winter collards and Chinese cabbage, flowers up the drive, and blooming cacti. And inside their cottage, the beds all covered with pretty quilts all different colors, and Ivory sitting by the fire, looking out the window, a colored handkerchief tied around her head...
    "Dad?"
    Harry remembered reading somewhere how black women hated the notion that blacks should be grateful for every favor done them – that a white man was a fool who believed that a black woman should be grateful for taking her out of the ghetto, that...
    "Earth to Harry!"
    "DAD!"
    "Yeah, yeah...."
    "Wake up, Pop!"
    "Dad, can you drive me now?"
    "Can you drive us!" Perry said.
    Harry surprised himself. "Now!"
    "How about later," Annie said, putting down the phone. "The Prosser dog didn't die after all. Derlee just said she last saw it dragging himself this way. And Mister Prosser's not home."
    Harry sighed.
    "I'll bet I know exactly where it is, too!" Perry said.
    "She said its guts are, well, hanging out."
    "Come on, Pop," Perry said. "Get your rifle!"
    Harry nodded and got up.
    "Dad? Can we go as soon as you males are done?"
    "For sure, Janey."
    "Make it quick, okay?"
    "Quick."
    "BOOM!" Perry said. "SPLAT! Will that be quick enough?"
    Perry held Love Jones' door open while Harry slid the 30-06 off the rear-window rack. It was a long, scoped, Winchester-Enfield, and the weight of it reminded Harry of the time when he thought Annie was cheating on him. She had suddenly taken an interest in frequenting the "Caryville Pits", a secluded swimming hole off Highway-279 in Washington County. One morning, when Annie left after deputizing him to stay home and watch the kids, Harry drove to the old dump which was near the abandoned clay pits. Hiding the pickup, he broke off some pine boughs and brushed out his tire tracks. Then he scouted a way through the woods to the swimming hole. His plan was to shoot Annie's lover from the high banks overlooking the water – with a little luck splatter the asshole's guts all over her. But when he arrived with his rifle he found Annie sunning herself down there with a boom-box, a pile of empty beer cans, and flea-bitten old Derlee Prosser. Derlee, in the cross-hairs of his scope, unappetizingly topless.
    "Follow me, Pop!" Perry, with his .45 Colt revolver, headed out. They spotted the dog half-way to the Prosser's. And when the dog saw them, it headed for cover. It was trailing intestines.
    Harry got down beside his boy and poked his left arm through the sling, swinging the rifle in a slow arc. Peering through the scope through the thick berry-brush, he made out the head and hindquarters. He pulled the gun-stock up hard against his shoulder, flipped off the safety, and began a slow trigger-squeeze. The cross-hairs slid over and down through a branch of the bush, slid between the desiccated leaves, and found the animal's lungs and heart.
    The sharp report echoed and bloomed through the woods. The voice of God ringing in the ears of the hunter in his moment of calculated violence.
    "You got him!"
    Harry nodded. They got to their feet and watched from the distance the last act of the dog, knocked clear from the security of the bush he had been hiding under, his bright, arterial blood squirting high into the air in diminishing bursts, his spirit easing out of the doomed body, his role on the planet finished...
    "...for now..."
    "Dad, what?"
    "We'll bury him with the collar, okay?"
    "Ohhh.... Mister Prosser paid over a hundred dollars for it. He'll be pissed."
    "Fuck 'im! Huh? Okay, we'll take the collar off and smash it, like it got run over by the car. It wouldn't be right to bury him with that damn thing, anyway."
    "Yeah, Dad. That's right. That's good."
    "Good. Sometimes I wonder what that is."
    "And then we'll go to the Clearson's. Okay?"
    "Okay!" A rush tripped through Harry's body, raising goose-bumps. It was so many things. The love for his son. The terrifying power and reach of the weapon in his hand. The beauty of the little piece of the planet he owned, temporarily, his land.... His family. Annie. Janey. Thank you, Jesus!
    Ivory.

* * *

They stopped for cokes and a beer. Janey and Perry seemed to be getting along and decided to ride in the back of the pickup the rest of the way.
When Club 81 appeared out of nowhere, Janey tapped on the rear-window and hollered: "Turn right!"

CLUB 81

"We sell beer on Sundays!"

Harry hung a right. They passed some quaint, old cabins, handmade, unpainted, homey and pretty, with rocking chairs on every porch. They passed a cottage with an old, wringer-type washing machine out in the front yard, a gasoline engine going put put put put underneath it where the electric motor used to be. Janey began to pound her fist against the rear-window again but Harry did not slow down in time for the mailbox farther down the road. The lone sentinel beside a nearly invisible, narrow drive.

CLEARSON

    Harry backed up a little and turned in. The dirt drive was twisted in an "S" shape through the heavy hedge-row, the bushes concealing the wooden house from view until you were right up on it. Chickens were clucking about everywhere, and hogs were snuffling their noses through the gaps between the boards of their pen to the south of the yard. The yard was spotlessly clean and had been freshly raked – the marks of the rake swirling through the sand and sparse grass in graceful patterns around the trees and berry bushes, and the few pieces of white lawn furniture.
    Harry was smiling as he eased out of the truck. He sucked in a deep breath of the sweet air which carried just enough of a farm-scent to be pleasing. What was it about this place? It was almost familiar. It was the way he had imagined it! Only lovelier, neater.... He felt perfectly at home.
    "In the summer the flower boxes under the windows are jammed with geraniums and petunias," Janey said. "And marigolds and pansies. And that stuff under the plastic there is cactuses that have real pretty flowers in spring, no February."
    "Cacti," Perry corrected.
    The kids had their presents for the Clearsons in their hands.
    "Their truck's not here," Janey said.
    "It's Christmas, Janey! Maybe they have to visit people, too!"
    "We should have called first," Harry said. He wondered if Ivory was inside. And he wished he had remembered to give his hair a good brushing before they left. He looked up and around for a telephone line, and peered around the corner of the cabin.
    "Do they have dogs?"
    "No dogs. Well, they used to have this real neat airedale, a female, to keep the possums and coons away from the chickens at night, you know. It was Ivory's dog. This cop gave it to her years ago when they found Ivory..." Janey looked over at Perry who was at the hog pen. She lowered her voice. "He has ears like an owl. Remember? I told you about all that? Well, last summer the man from the electric company who comes to check the meters? Well, he parked his truck out there in the road and when he walked up the driveway, Mellow – that was the dog's name – Mellow barked at him and he shot her. I never met that dog but they all talk about her. Except Ivory. But she moved a chair next to Mellow's grave. See it? The mound with the little picket fence? It's in the shade but she sits there with a book or whatever when it's warm out."
    Harry was still looking around but was reluctant to profane the seclusion of this place by leaving the vicinity of the pickup. "Well.... Maybe we should come back some other time."
    Perry was returning from the hog pen. "They don't bite, Dad, they're real cute. Mister Clearson lets me feed them sometimes. The meter man is real short and fat. And he wears this big, straw cowboy hat. And he chews tobacco. Yeech! He came to our place one time and he talked to Annie, you know, asking her like if she's reading the meter right and sending in the right numbers every month like you're supposed to. Well, Annie happened to tell him we moved up here from Miami and as soon as he heard that, he spit! And then he got his ladder out of the truck and checked all around the meter-pole to see if we were cheating and by-passing the meter. And Annie got pissed and made him leave!"
    "And when we told Annie he shot Mellow she called the electric company and got him fired!" Janey said.
    Harry smiled. Good, old Annie!
    Perry lowered his voice. "She hates the Clearsons but she got him fired anyway – she was on the phone every day, bitching, until they did something."
    The screen-door of the cabin suddenly creaked open and Harry's heart pounded up.
    "Ivory," Janey whispered.
    She was as tall as a desert nomad and she was wearing a pink dress.
    Janey walked up to the porch-rail and held up her brightly-wrapped present. "Perry has a present for the whole family. This one's for you and Connie."
    Ivory slipped out of the doorway. Her dark eyes settled on Harry. The peasant top of her dress was off one shoulder and when she leaned over to take Janey's gift, Harry had to glance away. When his eyes returned, she was still looking right at him. Perry walked up with his present and Harry followed behind him.
    Ivory stood there with both boxes in her hands, her long fingers curled around the flashy, metallic paper. She broke her reconnaissance of Harry's aura and looked down at all of them, and smiled briefly.
    "We picked them out and wrapped them ourselves," Perry said.
    "Yeah. Ivory? This here is my father. Harry. Dad? This here is Ivory."
    Jeez, Janey....
    Harry had to look up at her – the porch was several feet off the ground and she was tall. He didn't know what to say and could only smile. Ivory looked back at him without any expression save the cold fire of her gaze. She looked back to the kids.
    "Ummm," Janey said. "Do you want to open yours now?"
    Ivory shook her head. Her hair was covered with a colorful, Caribbean bandanna, and on her feet were sassy, leather clogs with high, cork soles (which put her over six feet, Harry figured). The pink dress had a full skirt, to just below her knees, and puffy sleeves, and a scoop neck drawn with a sky-blue ribbon. The flush of pink was Heaven on her nearly black skin, but Harry could not take his eyes away from her beautiful and exotic face.
    "Well, uhhhh – is it okay if I show Harry the farm in back?" Janey said.
    Ivory nodded. Harry forced himself to look away, to look around, but he couldn't think straight. He had caught the flash of a gold tooth in her brief smile. And the grace of her movements, the aura of poetry that cut through him like rays of sunlight piercing the clouds. She was his dream. His dream! He looked back at her and caught her eyes on him again, but this time she quickly looked away.
    My dream!
    It's not possible!
    A voice in his head said, "Harry, your other dreams all came true. Well, most of them...."
    Sweet Jesus, what do I do now?
    "Come on, Dad," Janey said. She grabbed her father's hand and led him away and around the cabin. Rows of bright-green collards arced out to the woods beyond, ditches of black soil, rows of mustard greens and clumps of Chinese cabbage. There was a raccoon in a cage under one of the pear trees, walking back-and-forth, back-and-forth, turning his head with each switch in direction so that he could observe them the whole time. Before rounding the rear corner of the cabin, Harry looked back to see if by any chance Ivory might be following. He was surprised to see her at the pickup, peering into Love Jones' cab, the brightly wrapped presents still in her hands. Perry walked up to the raccoon and tried to start a conversion but the animal continued pacing back-and-forth.
    "Go talk to her now, Dad," Janey said. She quickly joined her brother at the cage, turning around to make sure her father was going. Harry looked back at Janey and shrugged his shoulders. Janey gave him a thumbs-up.
    Ivory was at the back of the truck now, looking at the huge, knobby tires and the chromed rims. There was no expression on her face.
    "This pickup is my baby," Harry said. "One of my dreams come true."
    Ivory stepped back a little but kept her eyes on the machine.
    "I put a new sound system in. Cassette and CD. Eight speakers. It's unbelievable. When you switch it on, you're there!"
    Ivory nodded. "My brother, he gave me a Walkman for Christmas. But he forgot to buy the batteries, so...." Her voice was low, and quiet, but it electrified Harry.
    She talked!
    Taller than me? Those shoulders – so wide, and lanky. So pretty!
    Harry opened the door on the passenger side. "Want to hear it?"
    Ivory nodded, and stepped up to him, her eyes avoiding his. She slid onto the seat quietly and effortlessly. Harry took a few, practiced, long strides around the front and climbed in. They sat there, the doors wide open.
    "FM 105 be jammin' this mornin'," she said.
    Thank you, Jesus – a pre-set! Harry punched it up, but the soul station was running commercials. Where to have your Christmas photos processed. Return the shots you messed up on or don't like (a come-on which Harry had always considered the quintessence of pandering crap). Ivory was staring straight ahead, out over the hood, the presents in her lap and her hands folded over them. Harry had pictured those hands – holding the purse with the gun in it. He punched up 103.9. Willie Nelson was "On the Road Again."
    "I love the road," Harry said. He meant it. "I love to travel."
    "I like Willie Nelson," Ivory said, sitting perfectly erect, her head an inch from the roof, looking out over the shiny, heavenly-blue hood.
    Harry had been about to punch up the next station but he turned up the volume instead. Turned it up slowly until he could just feel the bass notes of the guitar vibrating through his snake-skin boots. Through his bones. The magic and force of the music filled the cab.
    Her face.... She could be a model!
    No.... Too African for normal people. Too black.
    God carved out that mouth Himself – those sweet lips....
    Her neck.... Her shoulders....
    My dream!
    Harry did not want to frighten her, and he forced himself to look away.
    The stereo was so crystal clear and powerful and beautiful that Harry thanked Jesus once more – as if he believed in Jesus – and when he glanced back at Ivory he caught her studying him. But she looked away quickly, out over the hood again, out somewhere beyond.
    The news suddenly came on. THE NEWS!
    "Do we want to hear the news on Christmas Day?" Harry said.
    Ivory barely shook her head, eyes off into the distance.
    "Can we sit on your porch for a minute? It looks so peaceful up there."
    She nodded, and was out of the truck before Harry could get over to her side to help her down.
    The rocking chairs had colorful, patch-work cushions on them, and Harry could tell which was Ivory's before she sat down. He picked the chair next to her.
    "You don't want to open your present? I don't know what it is, either. I can't imagine what it is."
    "I wait for my sister to come home."
    Harry was feeling more relaxed now. "Ivory? You're so – you look even more – beautiful and special than Janey told me you were." Harry was glad that he had the courage to say it, then realized how presumptuous the statement was.
    Ivory was looking out over the porch railing and a faint smile passed across her face.
    Yeah, well, don't quit now! "I don't want to sound stupid, Ivory, but I got such a rush when I saw you. I don't know how else to say it. I usually know what to say, but...." His legs were stretched out and he re-crossed his boots, one on top of the other, glad that he had remembered to shine them up.
    A breeze came up briefly and lifted Ivory's skirt, revealing a long, nasty scar on her right knee. She quickly snicked the skirt back over.
    "You're so long and slender," Harry said. "Like a model. How tall are you?"
    "Oh, I'm six feet tall. Six feet three with these clogs. An' I weigh one-hundred-an'-ten pounds. Daddy, he say I should eat more an' fill out some. He used to like Mama fat – fat like a chicken. But she sick now."
    "You're pretty brave, to pick out these neat clogs and know how good you'd look in them, knowing how tall you are already."
    "Mmm - hmmmm."
    "Your mother. Is she home?"
    "Nooo.... My Daddy an' his fren', they put Mama in the back of the truck – for visiting – for Christmas."
    "You're so tall and beautiful – we could look each other right in the eye."
    But Ivory would not look back at him, and she looked sad.
    "You don't go with them visiting?"
    "Noooo.... I like it here. Well, sometime I feel like – you know – but I stay home. Sometime I want to, well, no – it's okay...."
    Harry caught a hint of her perfume – so fine. "Don't listen to your daddy about getting fat, okay? You are perfect. You look like my dream. I guess I shouldn't be telling you that – but, oh, if you only knew! You are a dream. My dream. For sure. So black and tall and pretty! And I always believed, well, I hoped, anyway, that one day my dream would come true. That you would come true. That I would meet you."
    Ivory smiled and then it was gone. The wind kicked up her skirt again and she pulled it back down over the scar.
    "That scar is pretty, too because it's you, and it sets you off."
    "Mmm-hmm." Ivory was up, with the presents clutched against her bosom. "I better be goin' in now. They be home later an' my Daddy he be mad if he see me talkin' wif' a stranger man, so...."
    "May I talk with you again? I'm sorry I said all that stuff. It just came out. It was the truth." Harry was on his feet and trying to think of a way to stop her from going in. Her hand was on the screen door.
    "Well, that be okay, I guess.... But my Daddy be here probably nex' time you come." She opened the door.
    Harry's heart was tearing with the reality of her presence and the imminence of her escape from his grasp. "I have to go back to Miami, soon. I live in a really neat place. You ever been to The Magic City?"
    "Noooo.... I read about it sometime.... An' I always thought about it, them callin' it the Magic City. An' I use' to watch Miami Vice on TV." The door clicked shut behind her.
    Harry stood there, helpless and alone. And high from the encounter. He sucked in a deep breath of the perfume of her. In the ensuing vacuum prickled the distant voices of the kids out in back.
    How can it be?
    I knew about her before I met her.
    A male cardinal dropped out of the sky and landed directly behind him on the porch rail. Harry looked at him and the bird cocked his head and looked back. One side, then the other side. The female, not as bright but prettier, Harry thought, swooped by and convinced the male to fly off.
    Chicks....
    Suddenly the screen door flapped open and Ivory was back on the porch. In a swirl of pink and devil-black she parked her purse on her rocking chair cushion and unfolded a wrinkled, worn-thin map across the railing. Her long fingers and crimson nails smoothed out the creases in the paper.
    "It be nice goin' down the eas' coas'," she said, a fingertip tracing Highway-A1A and US-1 from Jacksonville south to Miami. "This map – I look at it sometime at night, when my sister an' Daddy be asleep – an' I picture myself on these differen' roads, an' how it be."
    "I usually go down Highway-27 from Tallahassee," Harry said, next to her and leaning over the map, his heart speeding, feeling her warm, slender arm against his. He traced his finger down the familiar route, down the center of the state. "But I go down the coasts sometimes, too. It takes longer that way but there's more to see. Beautiful, different things to see."
    He remembered Sunday.
    "Would you like to come with me next time?"
    "Well, yes, but my Daddy – he say that's not in the plan."
    "The plan?"
    "The plan for me."
    "Oh. Uhhhh...."
    Janey and Perry came around the corner.
    "Isn't she nice, Dad?"
    Ivory straightened up and grabbed the map, and before Harry could think of something to say the screen-door banged shut behind her. Harry looked over to her rocking chair but the purse was gone.

     <end chapter-8>

Humanism with attitude! Rev: 24 March 2005