NEVER LIE DOWN

I fell in love. The trouble was he was married and I was twelve years old. On top of that he was the father of my best friend, Glorybe. He called himself The Indian and I never learned his real name. In Rahway, New Jersey, at the beginning of the summer of 1933 life was skimpy and threadbare. But we thought that those dire times, long lines to apply for jobs, down-and-out hoboes and beggars, were just the way of life. The Great Depression hadn't directly affected Glorybe and me yet. Our fathers had jobs then and we liked being kids as we giggled our way across town to the river. The river ran throughout our town. At Inman Avenue it bumped out like a boa constrictor swallowing a rabbit. From there it turned into Peter’s Bend where our friends the Johnsons and the other Colored people lived. Then the river flowed straight and flat under the railroad, soon passing the tramps' shacks made of scrap wood and tin and on past the truck farmers that surrounded our town. The farmers gave the tramps vegetables that were going bad and let us get vegetables cheap if we picked our own tomatoes and dug our own potatoes. We were going to catch crayfish to give to Glorybe’s father, The Indian, and some to my family. We were almost to the river’s edge when Glorybe shouted, "Look at that hearse." I looked up at the sleek vehicle, black as our butcher's dog. “Who’s in there?” she asked. "I bet it's that guy, Strickland, who got murdered." We locked arms and sang, "When the hearse goes by you may be the next to die." "I was born in a hearse," I said. "Oh sure you were." She pulled my pigtail. "What do you bet I was born in a hearse?" "Nothing." "What'll you give me if I tell you how come?" "How about my all-day sucker." "Oh sure, full of pocket grit from your shorts," I said. Now we were high up on the bank where there weren't any houses, just before the Rahway River runs to Perth Amboy and stretches football-field wide and deep enough for rich people's motorboats. It becomes smooth and dark as it rolls toward the Atlantic Ocean. We didn't have to take our shoes off. We were always barefoot unless our parents caught us. As we climbed down into the river the rocks jabbed our feet, which weren't as tough as at the end of summer. But the icy water felt good on our burning feet. Although we flipped and flipped the rocks we didn't find a single crayfish. "We'll go down to where the Johnsons live. We gotta find some," I said, thinking only that I might get a glimpse of her father when we took him some. But first we had something else we were dying to do. We scrambled back up the steep bank. "You go," I said. I loved making her do things first because she hung back. "No, you go." What flashed in my mind was that this was near where they found the murdered man, who lived across the street from me. Glorybe stood at the edge chewing her lip before she set her behind on the muddy edge. I gave her a big shove. While she slid and screamed at the same time, her long blond hair flew out like feathers. Her father claimed to be the son of Chief Scarecrow, but her mother was Finnish. Glorybe had outlandishly big feet. That and her hair were the only things like her mother, thank God. She hit the water. I slid down and into her. Nothing stopped us. We could do this all morning, all summer. Two slimy goopy seals, wet and muddy, the ends of her hair had turned brown like the color of my pigtails. We spread out on the grass as the sun covered us and warmed our bellies. That warmth was one of my first feelings of arousal, a hand brushing softly over me, down the insides of my legs, sighing out my breath. So what, I thought, that Strickland was killed right here where we played. He was killed at night. Glorybe ran a piece of grass through her teeth as she closed her eyes. Nothing ever went wrong while we were lying in the sun like that. And as a child you think nothing will ever change. The Depression seemed like a foghorn you could hardly hear and the murder was almost unreal. "I won't go with you to look for crayfish unless you tell me how come you got born in a hearse," Glorybe said. I knew she didn't mean it. We went everywhere together. "You know Gruber?" "Yeah." "It was Gruber's hearse." "Yeah?" "There was a snowstorm." "Yeah?" "Stop saying yeah. Mom couldn't find Dad. The usual. He was out saving somebody's soul. And I wasn't supposed to get born for two whole weeks. But you know how I hate waiting." "So she calls an undertaker?” "Preachers and undertakers have a deal. It's good for business." "What kind of a deal?" "When somebody drops dead Dad calls Gruber. He does the best embalming in town. Then when Gruber gets a dead guy who has no church he calls Dad. He does the best prayers in town." "But Gruber has a car,” Glorybe said, suspicious-like. "His car is busted. The snowstorm is coming in fast and furious. So he runs across the street to Beaucage but he isn't home. Then he runs to Price's, but only Richard, the kid, is home. Then he runs..." "So the only thing left was the hearse?" "Gruber roared it into our driveway, lifted Mom up and through that wide door. Helped her lie down, you know, right on the bench where they lay the caskets, beside all those pleated black curtains, and drove through the storm to the hospital in Newark. "Six blocks from the hospital, guess what? A noise, a bellow, a roar...an EXPLOSION. Me rocketing straight out, landing on this earth with the speed of lightning." "Sure," Glorybe said, blinking her blue eyes. But Glorybe knew I never lied to her, like for real. She wanted to pretend that I did so that she could show me she wasn't just under my spell. She pursed her lips. She tickled my chin with a piece of grass. "In other words you were born dead." I kicked her foot and rolled over on my belly. We lay still in the high sun. Before we headed for the other side of town, where we hoped the crayfish were more plentiful, I looked once more at the river, thinking I couldn't believe that a man I was acquainted with was murdered. The mud was drying on us. The bottoms of our feet were black as sin. We didn't care as we ran under the rusty girders of the railroad bridge and held our ears. The WPA men were jack hammering up trolley tracks. We walked slowly past the factory where The Indian worked. On top was a box as big as a car with the word in yellow letters, "Wheatena," a disgusting-tasting cereal. That was where Strickland had been The Indian's boss and his yard was also where our Colored friend Jeremiah Johnson worked. “Bet you never personally seen a dead person. At her church Bess-the-Mess gets to stare directly into the corpse's face. Isn't that neat?” I asked. “I saw Strickland following Jeremiah around in his yard scolding him over not doing his tasks the way he wanted. The Indian,” (she also called her father The Indian) “didn’t like Strickland. Nobody at the factory did. I hope they find out soon who murdered him. I don’t like to think a murderer is loose,” "I’m scared but it’s kind of exciting too.” "I’m just scared," Glorybe said.