What did she do?
She just stared at him for a second, then she got up.
She rose in a single flawless motion, spun to the left and headed for the door. For a brief moment I remained in my seat, no less shocked by what Lyle had said than by the uncompromising fierceness of Kelli’s response. I had expected her to argue a bit, perhaps defend herself, all the while remaining as calm, and even respectful, as she’d remained when she’d been called a Yankee bitch by the anonymous caller. But she’d done something completely different, something that a southern man of that time could have regarded only as a brutal gesture of contempt.
Lyle’s eyes shot over to me, utterly puzzled, as stunned as if she’d risen and slapped his face.
“What the fuck!” he snapped.
I got to my feet. “Forget it, Lyle,” I said quickly, then moved past him, following Kelli toward the door.
“Forget it yourself,” Lyle said, though not loudly, or even angrily, a remark simply added as a parting shot.
I could see the workmen turning around to face Lyle as he stood in place beside the now-empty table. He must have sensed their eyes upon him, too, and in their steady, evaluating gaze, felt the need for one further gesture of self-assertion and self-defense against a young girl’s arrogant rebuke. And so, fatally, he called out one more time.
“Run, you nigger-loving bitch,” he shouted, though almost comically, trailing it with a short, dismissive laugh.
It was the pat insult of the time, and yet hearing it fired at Kelli suddenly ignited an almost-smothered flame. This was my chance, the one I had been dreaming of for so long, the “right moment” when I could take up the sword, slay the dragon in all its smoldering fury.
I turned toward Lyle in a slow, deadly motion, and felt the same trembling courage rise in me that had risen two years before when I’d faced Carter Dillbeck on the softball field. But now infinitely more was at stake. Now was the opportunity to prove myself once and for all.
“What did you call her?” I demanded.
He seemed reluctant to repeat it, but with the eyes of the other men leveled upon him, he had no choice but to do it.
“I called her a nigger-loving bitch.”
Like a sullen third-grader, I said, “Take it back.”
Lyle sneered. “You Choctaw High people, you think you’re so fucking great.”
“Take it back,” I repeated.
“They threw me out of that fucking school, and now they’re fixing to take niggers into it.”
The momentous consequences of desegregation could hardly have meant less to me at that moment. My mind was fixed exclusively on another matter.
“Take back what you said about Kelli,” I told him. I started to say something else, then felt a hand at my arm.
“Let’s go, Ben,” Kelli said. Her dark eyes were very tense, and I could see the fear in them, the sense that things were hurtling wildly out of control.
I did not answer.
She tugged again, this time more forcefully. “Please, Ben. Come on.”
I glanced at her, then back at Lyle. He did not move toward me, nor did he say anything else to either Kelli or me, and I don’t think he ever intended to do either. He would have let me go. He would not have pressed the issue further. I was the one who had to press it, though for reasons he could not have guessed.
And so in a single outrageous, sacrificial gesture, I suddenly, and without any real provocation, lunged violently at Lyle Gates.
His eyes widened in disbelief as I rushed toward him. He stepped back, drew a fist, but did not swing it, so that I was the first to strike.
It was a glancing blow, just touching the side of his face, and Lyle responded instinctively with a quick punch to my chest. I swung again, missed and stumbled forward. I could feel his fist snap against the right side of my forehead, then another in my left eye, and finally a third on my jaw, halting, oddly cautious blows, as I realize now, meant only to warn me away.
Still, they had come fast and blindingly, and though I was not seriously hurt, I staggered anyway, dazed and helpless, until I tumbled over one of the tables, then rolled forward, my head coming to rest only inches from the tip of one of Lyle’s dusty work shoes.
I started to get up, expecting Lyle to deliver a quick kick to my face, but the shoe stepped away instead, other dusty shoes gathering around it as the workmen quickly surrounded him, edged him farther away from me, and finally eased him out the door.
I pulled myself up slightly, pressing my palms against Cuffy’s checkered tile floor. A slender trail of blood hung from my mouth, and I could feel a steady ache spread out from my jaw. Even so, I was not in the least dazed, and could easily have gotten to my feet. But suddenly I felt Kelli at my side, her arms wrapped around me, and I let myself drift down again, into her cradling arms.
“Are you all right, Ben?” she asked breathlessly.
I nodded.
Her arms tightened around me. “I’m sorry I got you into this,” she whispered.
I shook my head groggily. “I’m okay,” I told her, though hoping that she would not believe me and perhaps draw me even more closely to her.
Which, I suppose, she did. And so for a few delicious moments, I continued to lie silently in Kelli Troy’s arms, breathing slowly, though my mind was racing, aflame with the certainty that I had done it, unexpectedly and miraculously made her mine.
CHAPTER 15
THOUGH THE FOLLOWING MORNING MY FACE WAS BRUISED and one of my eyes was blue and swollen, I woke up with a terrible joy. For a time, I lay in my bed, reliving the brief heroism that had landed me in Kelli’s arms. I reviewed it all from beginning to end, from the moment Lyle had entered Cuffy’s to the moment he’d been hustled out of it by his fellow road workers, and each second of it was like a glittering gem.
At breakfast I sat proudly across from my father, and although he had always been a peaceful man, he had no quarrel with what I’d done.
“That boy shouldn’t have said something like that to Kelli,” he told me, “and I guess you didn’t have much choice but to stand up to him.” He gave me a small man-to-man smile, then returned to his newspaper.
After breakfast, I walked out into the front yard. The first green sprouts had begun to inch up from the tiny flower garden my father had planted along either edge of the driveway, and their determination to endure a long winter of isolation, then sprout suddenly to life struck me as emblematic of my own situation in regard to Kelli. I had waited and endured. Now was the time for victory.
I was still reveling in such a glorious possibility when the phone rang inside the house. I rushed in to answer it.
“Hi, Ben,” Kelli said.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” I said, heroically making light of my wounds. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, but I wasn’t the one who got hit.”
“My father put a little ice on my eye after you left, but it’s still swollen. But other than that, I’m okay.”
“I’m sorry, Ben. I didn’t mean to …”
“No, no,” I told her quickly. “It’s nothing. By Monday, nobody will even notice.”
There was a slight pause, then Kelli said, “Well, anyway, I wanted to let you know that I went up to see Mr. Prewett this morning.”
“Who?”
“The man I told you about on the way to Cuffy’s yesterday. The one who was supposed to know a lot about Choctaw.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember now.”
“Well, Mrs. Phillips was right, he did know a lot.”
“That’s great.”
“As a matter of fact, I found out why they call it Breakheart Hill.”