Read Online The Obstacle Course by JF Freedman - Free Book Online Page A

ninety-percent colored overnight. That’s when everybody moved out.
    Ravensburg is totally segregated, like every other school in this county. It’s redneck to the core, always has been and always will be and proud of it. No niggers are ever going to come to our school, not unless they feature getting their brains beaten out.
    It isn’t like we hate niggers or anything. It’s just that they’re one thing and we’re another, and mixing us doesn’t do nothing but cause trouble. Actually, I’ve never hardly had any contact with colored people, except for maids and shit like that, garbage collectors. There’s an area south of town, the Heights, where they live, but I’ve never been to it. No one I know has. There’s all these stories about how they practice voodoo and all kinds of weird stuff, like drinking chicken blood and grisly shit like that.
    Of all of us, Burt’s the one who really hates coloreds, because they ran his family out of their own neighborhood. All his old stomping grounds are full of black faces now. It would be as if all of a sudden I woke up one morning and I was the only white kid in Ravensburg Junior High. I don’t know what I’d do if that ever happened but I wouldn’t stick around long, that is for shit-sure. That’s what Burt’s older brother must’ve felt—he went back to Eastern one time after it was desegregated, to get an old trophy or something, and the halls were filled with colored students, it made him so sick he almost puked on the spot. He drove over to the Anacostia River, took off his class ring, and threw it in. Then he went out and got royally shitfaced.
    We crossed the highway and went down the hill to Quincy Arms, these cheap two-story brick apartment buildings that were built ten years ago after the war for the returning vets who needed a place they could afford to live and start up their families in before they could buy regular houses. They were the first apartments built in Ravensburg—now there’s three other developments scattered around the town. Quincy Arms is only ten years old and already looks like it’s about to fall down, it’s so dirty and grimy and putrid. Ravensburg’s still a small town full of hicks for the most part, but it’s no longer the little out-of-touch farming community it was when I was born.
    A few apartments were lit, but it was pretty still. They don’t allow dogs here, so you can pretty much come and go as you please and no one ever knows.
    We approached the buildings from the back, waiting near the playground to see if there was any activity. Satisfied we hadn’t been spotted, we carefully picked our way down the icy sidewalk and went in through one of the unlocked basement doors.
    The basement was like a labyrinth, stretching under several adjoining buildings. It was dim, even in daytime, just some naked bulbs hanging down. There are dozens of entrances and exits and crawlspaces and doors leading upstairs to apartments.
    We’re always wary when we come in. Better safe than sorry, that’s my motto. After we were sure no one else was around we moved through a bunch of corridors until we came to the laundry room.
    The laundry room is a big square white-tiled room with four coin-operated washing machines and four dryers set against the walls. Each machine has slots for dimes and nickels. The first thing we always do is check to make sure nobody has a load going, because we don’t want somebody coming down to take out their dirty underwear and find us there. We’ve found some really funny stuff in those machines. It’s amazing what people’ll put in the wash.
    All the machines were empty. We had it made in the shade.
    “Helloooo down there,” Joe mooed in this real low voice, which echoed off the walls like at the Grand Canyon. He’s a real clown sometimes, most usually when it’s the wrong time.
    “Shut the fuck up, you asshole,” Burt whispered. “You want some dumb-shit housewife to come down here and start screaming