CHAPTER ONE OUT OF GAS
CHAPTER
ONE
Out of Gas
‘Benny, would you come on? You’re gonna make Momma late for work.’
Benny searched under his bed for his shoes, then under a pile of clothes, his work overalls and some T-shirts heaped in the corner.
Nothing. He pulled back the curtain they’d hung to separate his sister’s half of the room when they’d grown uncomfortable sharing a bedroom in their twenties.
One glance at her neatly made bed and books in alphabetical order and he knew he wouldn’t find anything there that didn’t belong.
‘I can’t find my shoes,’ he shouted. He hurried to the living room and dropped to his knees, feeling under the couch.
‘Did you move them somewhere, Cora?’ He looked up in time to see her roll her eyes.
‘Just wear any old something. We have to go.’
He didn’t even acknowledge that comment after she’d spent half the morning running her thick hair through the hot comb and changing from dress to skirt to dress again.
And she knew good and well that the only other shoes he had were for baseball.
Fat chance he was showing up at Aunt Teen’s cook-out in those.
Cora pulled on her coat and picked up a plate of cornbread cut into even squares. ‘I swear, Benny, you’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached.’
‘Benny North,’ Momma said, her voice quieting both of them.
He looked up at her and she tipped her head toward the kitchen table.
There, under his chair, were his worn but well-polished leather shoes, which he now remembered kicking off at dinner the night before.
He slipped them on and tied them up, then ran back to his room for a coat and rushed out to his sky-blue Plymouth where Momma sat waiting in the passenger seat and Cora in the back, with the plate of cornbread on her lap and a sweet potato pie to her side.
They barely made it ten feet down the road when Momma noticed the gas needle bouncing on the line above the E.
‘Benny, this car is dead on empty. You didn’t fill it up before you came home last night?’ Her voice lifted the end into a question, like the curved tail of a scorpion set to sting.
‘I’ll handle it. We’ll be fine.’ He glanced in the rear-view mirror to see Cora press her mouth into a line.
‘I can’t have you two stuck on the side of the road,’ Momma said, her tone clipped and sharp. She sagged in her seat when she said, ‘You best go on and get the gas.’
Cora caught his eye and shook her head.
Momma worked a cleaning job over at the Bayside Hotel. Mr Hall ran a tight ship, and every maid knew he didn’t play when it came to lateness. ‘Come on time or don’t come at all,’ was how he put it, and he’d fired more than a few to prove he meant it.
Benny knew the needle could fall to just below the line until he was well and truly empty. That’d be enough to take Momma to the hotel, but then he’d have to get gas at the segregated Texaco close by or run out for sure.
At the junction where they could turn right for the Esso station, where anybody could buy, he turned left for the Bayside Hotel. They couldn’t afford to lose Momma’s paycheck.
‘Turn this car around,’ Momma said through her teeth. ‘This ain’t no game. I don’t want you fooling with those people.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, and then added, ‘Cora’ll be all right,’ because that’s who she was worried about.
With his brown hair and light eyes, he could pass if he needed to.
Cora couldn’t. Her skin was almost as light, her hair almost as straight, but everything lay just short of convincing.
Especially her attitude: timid and retreating instead of bold and demanding.
No. Cora couldn’t pass for anything but what she was.
Benny kept his eyes forward, avoiding the rear view of Cora in the back seat until they pulled up to the service entrance of the hotel to let Momma out, but she sat tight, looking mad as a buzzard.
‘Now you both listen to me good, ’cause I’m only gonna say this one time.
You were too young to remember Rosewood, but let me tell you, we did not run for our lives and survive that nightmare to go courting trouble in Mangrove Bay.
’ She cupped Benny’s cheek. ‘Let this be the last time, Benny. I mean it.’
He nodded his agreement because he didn’t want to upset her, but it wouldn’t be the last time.
And not just because passing made so many little things easier.
It didn’t matter that it was illegal or run-you-out-of-town dangerous: he got a rush from fooling those bigots that quieted the constant rage simmering just below his skin.
If he didn’t find ways to muffle it, it would pulse and flare and make him do something reckless.
They watched Momma hurry inside before pulling away and heading toward the Texaco. Cora pinched her lips smaller and smaller the closer they came. ‘Let me out before they can see us.’ The quaver of fear in her voice made his guilt hitch.
Benny slowed, looking for a spot to stop, but a black Ford pickup truck with two men inside drove up behind them.
He sped up, passing the gas station with its big red star on a pole by the side of the road.
About a half-mile down at the T-junction, he rolled to a stop.
The needle sat just under the E line. The pickup truck filled the rear-view mirror with no blinker set to tell Benny left or right.
Benny eased the car to the right, hoping they wouldn’t follow. When the truck pulled off left, he and Cora breathed a sigh of relief. After a few seconds he pulled over beside a clump of trees.
‘You can stand behind those.’ He felt a rush of blood color his face that hinted at the anger inside. They shouldn’t have to do this.
Cora climbed out, leaving the pie and cornbread on the back seat, and ran to the trees, picking her way through rough, patchy grass.
He watched her tuck herself behind the tree-line and pulled away, back to the gas station where a blue Chevrolet filled up at the first pump.
Benny pulled up to the second and waited for the attendant.
‘Fill her up,’ he told him, keeping his voice steady and even.
Benny’s heart pounded, but the man just nodded and fed the nozzle into the side of the car, then sauntered back to the Chevrolet to wash the windows, back and front.
He took payment from the man through the window and the car pulled away.
Benny relaxed a little when it was just him and the attendant.
‘Wash your windows?’ the man asked, back at his side.
‘No, thanks,’ Benny said, trying to act casual.
The attendant took out the pump and wiped the drip of gas from the side of Benny’s car with a rag from his back pocket. Benny handed him a twenty-dollar bill and said, ‘And a Coke if you have one cold.’
He’d long ago discovered at penny candy shops, state fairs, drug-store counters and public toilets that the best way to pass was to act like you belonged, and the more you expected them to hop to, the less they looked at you.
The man went inside to get his change and his Coke.
As Benny waited, a white Chrysler pulled up to the other pump.
He nodded a greeting at the couple inside and turned away, his hands pooling nervous sweat.
When the attendant came out with his change, he wiped his palms on his thighs before holding out his hand for the cash and the drink.
Benny thanked the man as he turned the key, starting the engine, then eased the Plymouth back onto the road.
When he got to where he’d left Cora, she peeked around a tree trunk before dashing to the car.
‘I brought you a Coke,’ he said, reaching between his thighs where he’d clamped the drink, the coolness of it making the glass bottle sweat into his trousers.
Every place he went that she couldn’t follow, he brought her something back, and every one of those somethings was a little rebellion.
He handed the Coke to Cora, who flashed him a smile and drank it down quick as a click, each swallow a little victory.
Benny pulled the car onto the road, and turned back around, headed to Aunt Teen’s cook-out.