Read Online Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin - Free Book Online Page B

stop, tumbling in his own dust, winding up on his stomach with his breath knocked out, rolling over, opening his eyes to the high white sky latticed with leaves. The face that appeared above him, a moment later, was Jackie’s. He was aware of how quiet the playground had become with everybody inside, how far his yell had carried. Ken and David had stopped and were looking back.
    “What you call me?” Jackie asked.
    He couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t answer.
    “Tell me, white boy.”
    He opened his mouth.
    But she’d turned. She walked away, through her friends who were putting their hands on her back, casting their furious eyes back at Larry. Ken and David hurried off, not even looking at him. Larry pushed up on his elbows, lungs on fire, tears stinging the rims of his eyes, sorry for saying it, seeing the door open at the end of the building and Mrs. Tally, a black teacher, coming out, meeting the girls, just as Ken and David went inside.
    “You know what that white boy call Jackie?” one said.
    Mrs. Tally knelt in front of Jackie and said something, then sent her and the other girls inside. Larry was on his knees when she came over, her legs blocking the school from his view.
    “Ain’t that girl got enough problems in this world without a white boy calling her that?” she asked.
    He couldn’t look up. “I’m sorry.”
    “I’m not the one you need to say that to. You will apologize to Jackie.”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “I ought to call your daddy,” she said, walking away. “But what good would that do?”
    He returned to his classroom where he, Ken, and David were the only white boys mixed in with two white girls, eight black boys, and nine black girls. Mrs. Smith, black, too, shook her head and pointed him to his desk and they finished their world history lesson.
    After a time Mrs. Smith told them to read ahead and left the room. Larry, who hadn’t yet dared to look up, was focused on a paperback copy of The Shining on his desk when a heavy world history textbook suddenly hit him on the side of his head. He flinched as the book slid off his shoulder onto the floor, felt like his ear had been torn off, and he lowered his head into his arms, folded over his desk. The black girls and boys began to snicker.
    “White boy,” a girl named Carolyn hissed. One of Jackie’s friends, heavyset and light-skinned. Mean.
    He ignored her.
    “White boy! Brang me that book.”
    His head throbbed but he didn’t look up.
    “White boy. YOU,” she called, and Larry felt all their eyes crawling over him. He heard Ken and David, across the room, begin to laugh, and then the white girls, both of them, giggled. The black boys were hooting, and then somebody else threw a book. Then somebody else. Larry kept his head on the desk, smelling his own sour breath in the pages of The Shining as more and more books pounded him. He knew somebody was posted at the window, where Mrs. Smith was outside, smoking and talking to another teacher.
    Monkey Lips, he thought as more books pelted him. Monkey Lips, Monkey Lips, Monkey Lips. Then, Nigger nigger nigger nigger.
    A desk leg screaked the floor and somebody slapped the back of his head. “Boy, you better answer me fore I whoop yo ass.”
    “Whoop his ass, Carolyn,” a big black boy called.
    Nigger nigger nigger nigger.
    She grabbed his scalp, bunched his hair and squeezed it, pulled his head up, the laughter louder without the nest his arms had made. Some part of him hoped the white boys would rally for him, admire him for what he’d said, but they were laughing and pointing at him, as were the two white girls, and he knew this was not going to happen any more than the drive-in movie would.
    Carolyn twisted his head harder, and Larry pushed at her arm but she had his hair and he told himself not to cry. Then she slammed his head down, hard, onto his desk. Everybody laughed so she did it again.
    He stole a sideways look and saw her face. He’d never been that angry. He