Eugene’s dad got him the job. Eugene didn’t ask how. Explanations were seldom satisfactory anyway. He was sixteen. Maybe he’d get clarity when he was older.
What mattered was that by delivering for McCall’s Florist, he could earn enough to buy a used car, or at least a new bicycle, and to take Miriam Betts on a date, if he ever got the courage to ask her. Maybe that would lead to a date for the junior-senior prom, and then to her being his girlfriend. The past summer thousands of young people, hippies out West, had declared a future of optimism and an end to repression and deprivation. The Summer of Love. Eugene wanted that for himself.
His dad cooked, chauffeured, and managed the domestic sphere for the Blanchard family, who owned the engineering and architecture firm that had built most of the buildings downtown. Mr. McCall was the Blanchards’ neighbor in the part of town where the prominent white people lived. McCall’s Florist served them all: everything from prom corsages to wedding bouquets to funeral wreaths.
Eugene had started the job during Christmas break, delivering poinsettias. He’d never seen such large poinsettias. Saturdays thereafter the deliveries were of smaller arrangements to hospitals, funeral homes, private parties. But even though he had his driver’s license, he didn’t drive the step-van. That was Allen, a college junior who’d worked part-time at McCall’s since high school and who seemed to delight in being the boss when they made deliveries. He kept the van’s radio tuned to a soulless Top 40 station and talked down to Eugene about the florist business, as if they were doing more than dropping off arrangements.
In March Eugene asked Allen when he was going to let him drive. They had stopped for lunch at McDonald’s, and the day was warm and bright.
“Let me see, maybe . . . never,” Allen said, laughing. He dipped some fries into a puddle of ketchup. Allen’s brown hair was short and combed smoothly over his forehead, and his teeth were big. He looked like an imp. He wore the uniform that all the white boys wore. Eugene saw them waiting for their school bus when his bus passed on its way to the Black school: too-short khaki pants, dirty bucks, pin-striped collared shirt, half-zipped Izod jacket.
“You’re kind of a jerk, aren’t you?” Eugene said, thinking anybody cool would let their hair grow and wear paisley shirts. Eugene had a paisley shirt, which he saved for special occasions. He was also growing an Afro and working on a mustache.
“You need to learn to take a joke, man,” Allen said, scraping cheese off the burger wrapper with his fingernail. “Anyway I’m the driver. You’re the sidekick.”
Eugene was losing patience but thought it wise to pretend to like Allen. “OK, you’re not a jerk. You’re a comedian,” he said, before biting into his Filet-O-Fish.
Maybe Eugene felt impatient because of the backyard party the night before, celebrating St. Patrick’s Day that week. From a record player on a card table, Aretha Franklin had sung “Ain’t No Way,” and Eugene had held Fifi Jenkins as they moved in slow rhythm on the pine-straw-covered grass. He didn’t know how he’d wound up with Fifi. Girls had hinted that she liked him, and that night, as others began coupling off, he’d found himself with her. Strings of green Christmas lights stretched overhead. Some kids were dancing, and others stood around drinking from Dixie cups. A few couples embraced against the tall trees, out of the harsh back-porch light. Fifi’s cheek pressed hot against Eugene’s sternum.
He was watching Miriam Betts, who stood with her back against a pine tree while his friend Winston kissed her, sliding his hands from her waist to her hips. Fifi murmured something, and when Eugene looked down at the top of her head, she lifted her face. They sidestepped to a vacant tree. Because Fifi was so short, he had to spread his feet and stoop to kiss her. It wasn’t comfortable, and her mouth was dry and firm.
He had known Fifi since first grade, but he’d longed for Miriam since seventh, when she’d arrived as a new student with glossy hair, glowing dark skin, and uncommon poise for a twelve-year-old. She’d come over to his school with a bunch of other kids during some pre-integration reshuffling; even though segregation had been ruled illegal years earlier, the school system still hadn’t complied. Eugene hadn’t let anyone know he adored Miriam, and now she’d been going out for weeks with Winston in Winston’s brother’s GTO.
Allen, meanwhile, was engaged to be married, a fact Eugene had learned his second day on the job. “She has birthing hips,” Allen had said, winking. Eugene had never heard a girl described that way.
At McDonald’s Allen showed Eugene his fiancée’s yearbook portrait. She had curled blond bangs and perfect teeth.
“Pretty,” Eugene said.
“You want to know why a beauty like her loves a guy like me, right?” Allen put two fingers across his lips and wriggled his tongue between them.
“OK,” Eugene said.
“You probably don’t know anything about that, do you?”
Eugene shrugged.
“You a virgin?”
“Nope,” he lied.
“I heard Negroes don’t like to lick it. Is that right?”
“Man, I don’t know what everybody does. And we’re Black now, you know. Anyway, I don’t, if that’s what you’re asking. Might as well eat butt.”
Allen threw his head back laughing. “OK, OK,” he said. “Well, maybe you’ll get around to it one day.”
After McDonald’s, riding with the windows down on the way to drop off a wreath at Jasper’s Mortuary, Eugene considered virginity. Fifi—he wondered if she was his girlfriend now—wouldn’t let him do more than kiss, pushing his hands away when they wandered too far below or above her waist.
When they stopped at a light, Allen said, “Let me show you something. Best thing about this job.” He motioned for Eugene to look out the driver’s side window. “Check it out,” he said, pointing to a car stopped beside them. From the height of the van Eugene saw the driver wore a short skirt that exposed her thighs almost to her crotch. “Happens every spring,” Allen said, grinning, “and lasts until October.”
Eugene arched his eyebrows appreciatively. But how much interest should he show? Allen might tell Mr. McCall and get him fired—and then his dad would learn about it and be embarrassed. But maybe Allen was trying to make up for being a jerk. Once, he’d refused to let Eugene use the bathroom unless Eugene begged him to stop, and while Eugene’s bladder swelled, Allen had mocked him with a story about a man with a round-shaped house who kept running in circles looking for a corner to pee in. So Eugene kept quiet about the woman with bare legs.
He had already made the mistake of saying he was uncomfortable delivering to funeral homes, and now Allen made him go in alone to drop off sprays and wreaths. Nothing ever sexy in there. Sometimes, after being around the dead, Eugene felt like a ghost when he came back outside. And looking at women in cars was also like being a ghost: they didn’t know he was there, and he’d never get to associate with them anyway.
Eugene didn’t understand how Allen could be engaged to be married and still carry on about other women. But then, his desire for Miriam didn’t negate his own interest in other girls. He remembered Miriam’s face pressed against Winston’s, her hands on his back.
McCall’s Florist occupied one end of a row of cream-colored brick shops—a bakery, a camera store, an insurance agency, a drugstore—on a busy street near the neighborhood where Eugene’s father worked and the McCalls lived. Behind the shops was an alley hemmed in by a wooden retaining wall that separated the business district from a country club. Allen parked the van there.
As they entered the flower shop, Eugene inhaled the fragrance of greenery and blossoms and felt soothed by the cool temperature. Mrs. McCall and her daughter, Janice, were working on some arrangements that weren’t ready for delivery yet. Mr. McCall was doing paperwork in his office. He seldom interacted with anyone except to ask the women about lunch, to hand out work orders, or to blurt out a question about the cleanliness of the truck or why a delivery took so long. He moved about fast—all elbows in short-sleeved shirts with a tight necktie—frowning, manning the cash register or the phone.
Usually during downtime Eugene and Allen washed the step-van, but the weather had changed suddenly to a downpour, so Eugene stood in back and mopped up the water that splashed from flower buckets. There were worse jobs, like washing dishes, or busing tables, or picking tobacco, or pulling parts from junked cars like some of Eugene’s schoolmates did. He felt lucky to work in a serene, cool environment filled with flowers, and to ride in the truck and see the town during the day. But he didn’t feel as lucky as Winston, who assisted in his father’s plumbing business. Winston had joked that he “fixed faucets by day and laid pipe by night” when he and Miriam parked. Eugene had felt like a ghost then, too.
While Allen talked with the women arranging flowers, Eugene breathed purposefully, practicing meditation. He’d been reading about the Beatles’ embrace of transcendental teachings, and when he tried it at home, it had some effect. He sat on his bed thinking, Om, until he felt less anxious about having to take a geography, math, or Spanish test at school. Less bothered by Miriam and Winston.
In the quiet of the shop he thought the word breathe, because he’d read that noticing the breath was effective. Miriam’s choosing Winston kept surfacing, though. There must be other girls like her he could eventually attract: beautiful, intelligent girls with long legs, slim arms, clear skin, soft eyes. Once, in eighth-grade health class, when the teacher had cautioned against touching that could lead to venereal disease and babies, Miriam had whispered to Doris Peaks, loud enough for everyone to hear, “What if it feels good to be touched?” Some of the class laughed, but Eugene was shocked at her bravery and open curiosity about sex. The teacher said, “That’s not the point, Miriam.”
Eugene wrung out the mop in the sink, then swept the clipped stems and leaves around the long table where Mrs. McCall was working. She had the facial features of a child—tiny mouth, narrow nose, round chin, and smooth, plump face—but was otherwise not a small woman. Her graying hair, worn in a top bun, suggested middle age.
Janice, who taught French at the Baptist college that Allen attended, was wide and shapeless like her mother but had her father’s height, red coloring, and long nose. She wore her hair in an unflattering Prince Valiant style, was pleasant, and had a talent for arranging flowers.
Eugene liked to watch the women work. They tied stems to thin wire rods and set them into absorbent green foam blocks, formed balanced arrangements in glass bowls, or inserted eucalyptus and wildflower stems into tall vases. They combined colors and textures until shapes appeared, seeming to float on baby’s breath. Allen contributed by cutting lengths of ribbon to pass to the women when they asked for them.
Janice was saying, “Boys are showing up now with hair longer than the girls. Then, to distinguish themselves, the girls are ironing their hair so straight and flat that it hangs like curtains. We have a dress code, but there isn’t a grooming code. The headmaster is calling a meeting to consider it.”
Allen said, “I can see how the boys might be told to get haircuts, but can you regulate how the girls wear their hair?”
“I mean, the girls are fine, really,” Janice admitted.
“I’m sure it’s just a fad,” Mrs. McCall said.
“Well, they look like dropout dopers,” Janice said. “Eugene, I’ll bet you have people thinking you’re a bad boy.” She frowned at his Afro the way his barber frowned when Eugene asked him to trim only his frizzy ends.
Surprised to be spoken to, Eugene said, “Bad? I don’t know. I’d like it to be bigger. It’s the style. And, you know, an expression of pride.”
“Well, someone could mistake you for a Black Panther, and I’m sure you don’t want that,” Janice said.
“Yes, that would be a mistake,” he said, chuckling. He swept debris into the dustpan.
“You can’t judge a book by its cover,” Allen said.
“People do it all the time,” said Janice.
Mrs. McCall said, “Eugene, you’re doing a good job looking busy. That’s what I judge. You probably didn’t learn that from Allen.” She winked at Eugene. “I’m sorry your job can be boring until we have orders ready to go.”
“Yeah, I’m finding stuff to do,” Eugene said. “The rain looks like it’s slacking, so maybe I’ll sweep the truck next. Anyway, I like watching you. Maybe I could learn that one day.”
“You want our job?” Janice said.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, laughing nervously.
“What did you mean, then?” Allen said. He leaned with one elbow on the table, grinning. “As they say, give the boy an inch, and he wants the whole mile.”
“I just think how you do that is cool, that’s all,” Eugene said.
“He thinks we’re cool, Mother,” Janice said.
“And you’re talented, Janice,” he said.
“ ‘Janice’?” she shrieked.
Eugene was startled. He had thought that, since Allen called her by her first name, he should too. Should he apologize?
“He can’t call you Janice?” Allen asked.
“I’m twenty years his senior,” she said, “a professional educator with a master’s in Romance languages. I don’t insist on being called ‘professor,’ but I do intend to be respected. Eugene. You should know to call me Miss or Ms. McCall.”
Allen rolled his eyes, and Mrs. McCall made her mouth even smaller, keeping her eyes on the work of twist-tying a pale-green spider mum to a rod.
Eugene mumbled, “Sorry. I thought you were younger.”
“Let’s go sweep out the truck,” Allen said to him.
Mrs. McCall looked at the clock: 3:45. “It’s about time to deliver the corsages to the club,” she said. “You can clean the truck after that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Allen said.
“Thank you, Eugene, for the compliment,” Mrs. McCall said.
Avoiding the gazes of the women, Eugene swept the last of the cuttings, then followed Allen to the back.
They carried two shallow boxes of corsages to the truck, and Eugene took his spot in the passenger seat, unsure what had just transpired. Janice had embarrassed him. And Allen’s bigoted “boy,” “inch,” “mile” comment, before coming to his aid—confusing. Still, he wanted to think they must be fundamentally good-hearted people. How could they love flowers and not be? Flower people. And what Janice had said about his hair wasn’t unlike what some Black people said. When his barber complained about Afros, Eugene didn’t think he was racist. Of course, his barber was Black.
Eugene and Allen rode past the rolling golf course: the trees and sculpted hills that were about twenty shades of green, with glittering lakes and white ponds of sand between the flagged holes, like an alternate reality. A foursome of golfers in pastel shirts were followed by caddies in white overalls. Then Allen veered away from the course to weave through streets of large houses. One with columns and a second-floor porch had a miniature duplicate in the yard behind it, which Allen said was a playhouse for the children. Eugene wondered which house belonged to Mr. McCall, but he wouldn’t ask. At least they wouldn’t pass the house where his father worked, because it anchored a cul-de-sac. He was always uncomfortable when he went with his mother to take something to his dad at the Blanchards’. He’d wait in the car while his mother rang the kitchen doorbell, and his dad would appear in white pants, shirt, and apron to receive whatever she had brought. Eugene hated seeing his dad being a part of another family, living a life Eugene and his mother couldn’t have—even though he knew it was a servant’s role. His dad was usually gone when Eugene woke in the morning, and he returned at dusk or after dark. Summers, he was gone for weeks at a time, living wherever the Blanchards vacationed.
At the country club Allen told Eugene to wait in the van. Since the corsages were for a debutante ball that night, Eugene had been hoping to see some debutantes. Maybe Allen was making Eugene stay in the truck to deny him the experience—except he didn’t mind that Eugene ogled white ladies’ legs as they rode around. Anyway, most likely the girls were at home getting ready.
Eugene had attended something like a debutante ball the previous summer—except for Black women. His mother’s sorority had sponsored it, and she’d volunteered him to escort a girl he’d never met, whose name was Thailand. He hadn’t known it was possible to be named for a country, much less an Asian country that no one he knew even talked about. His mother told him a few other intimidating things about the girl: She was a year older and played the violin. Her father was an ophthalmologist—he examined Eugene’s mother’s eyes—and her mother was also a member of the sorority, as well as his mother’s coworker at the Y.
Thailand turned out to be a snob, or maybe just shy, and they spent most of the evening saying little to each other.
Without any rehearsal they were lined up in pairs and told to walk from the entrance of the ballroom to the other end and stand in a row. People applauded. In her heels Thailand was slightly taller than Eugene, a little heavy in her white dress, and had a pretty face and straight, pinned-up hair.
After the dinner it occurred to him she must also feel funny about being fixed up with a stranger, which had the effect of diminishing her mystique. He wondered aloud which of the other couples had been put together by their parents, and the tension between them lessened. She pointed out several girls she knew who were there with their boyfriends. Then they danced a couple of times to the music of a jazz combo.
By the evening’s end, while they waited for their mothers to take them home, he had begun to like how he looked in the rented white dinner jacket and patent leather shoes. She seemed relaxed, too. She told him she’d never been to Thailand but her grandmother was from there, and that she didn’t mind having to practice the violin every day. “I like that I can make the most-irritating sounds,” she said, laughing behind her gloved hand. They talked about movies and records. “Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, as his mother approached. “Thank you for being my date.” He hadn’t thought of it as a date. If so, then it was essentially his first date ever. He never saw Thailand after that night, never asked his mother how he could get in touch. The memory had acquired a hazy unreality.
The revelation that he could feel at ease with someone like Thailand, however, had given him confidence that he might have a chance with Miriam. He ventured to talk to her more, sitting near her in the cafeteria or discussing the music they learned for the school choir. But she was with Winston—and why wouldn’t she be? Winston had grown taller and acquired wide shoulders and a muscular physique. He had access to his brother’s GTO. He could dance and play trumpet. He was on the football and basketball teams. Meanwhile Eugene served as the teams’ statistician and, despite being in the choir, couldn’t even really sing.
Allen was taking his time inside the country club, probably joking with somebody he knew. Or maybe he’d found the room where the teenage girls were. Eugene decided this was his chance to go inside. The country club was off-limits to Black people, but if anyone questioned him, he could say he was looking for Allen.
He hadn’t ventured far before he ran into Allen on his way out. What little Eugene had seen was a letdown: a dreary hallway with dark-green carpet, the dingy beige walls lined with black-and-white photographs of white people from long ago. “Trying to get yourself arrested?” Allen said, and he laughed as he steered Eugene back outside.
The next couple of weeks were filled with choir practice for the April concert, and he had to skip a Saturday of work to take the SAT. He actually saw more of Miriam, though Winston walked her to the auditorium and was waiting for her when practice was over. Juniors and seniors were getting excited about the prom, for which Eugene was on the planning committee but didn’t and probably wouldn’t have a date. The situation with Fifi didn’t develop, thankfully. After the party she didn’t try to hold his hand in the hallways or even sit beside him at lunch. Maybe she didn’t like the way he kissed, either. He continued trying to manage his anxieties with meditation.
The concert was scheduled for a Friday night, but it got postponed because that Thursday, Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in Memphis, Tennessee. On Friday morning the principal held an assembly to address the students, some of whom cried. Some teachers cried, too. The principal, guidance counselor, and basketball coach talked about managing grief and anger. There had been protests downtown and across the country the night before, and the speakers stressed King’s philosophy of nonviolence. “Yet he was murdered,” Miriam hissed, sitting behind Eugene, Winston’s arm slung across her shoulders.
The choir director sat at a piano and played “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” The choir members, scattered throughout the audience, stood and sang. The song always evoked a feeling of pride in Eugene, but now it sounded more plaintive than prideful, as if the souls of MLK and countless other murdered Black people saddened their voices. Miriam’s alto at the back of his neck made him lonesome. And angry. And tearful.
On Friday night protesters broke the plate glass at Woolworth’s and Clark’s jewelry store and Silver’s shoe store, all of which had been looted. TV news reported on the crowd marching and singing songs, carrying signs and shouting. A stream of Black marchers pooled against the armored blockade on Main Street, and police arrested people and jerked them around in handcuffs. The National Guard had been summoned. Eugene’s mother and father wouldn’t let him leave the house, even though their neighborhood was quiet and downtown was several miles south.
By the following morning downtown was deserted except for store owners sweeping glass and boarding up windows with plywood. Military trucks guarded some intersections. A 7 PM curfew had been issued for the rest of the weekend, yet protest leaders vowed to march again.
Eugene assumed Mr. McCall would close the shop, but Janice phoned to ask Eugene to arrive by noon, earlier if possible. His mother agreed he could go since the florist was not downtown, and nothing would likely happen until nightfall. The mayor blamed the protests on “outside agitators.” “As if only outsiders would be outraged by vicious racists,” Eugene’s mother said.
Eugene’s father had left for work before sunup as usual, but because he worked a half day on Saturdays, he wouldn’t have to deal with the curfew. There was a rumor the NAACP would call for a boycott of white-owned businesses. Eugene’s mother said it wasn’t clear what the objective would be, except to piss off white people and make Black people feel in control of something. “A show of Black power,” she said, holding up a fist from the living-room sofa, but she was worried more people would be killed.
Would Eugene’s dad boycott his job? Eugene wondered. Should Eugene boycott his? Black business owners and preachers were asking for calm, urging people to abide by the curfew but not to give up on the cause of equality. Eugene’s mother forbade him from doing anything but going to work and then coming straight home.
He drove her Cutlass to McCall’s with the windows down. The air was humid and warm, streets mostly vacant, though he passed a small group of people waving signs and jeering at some national guardsmen sitting inside their trucks. He recalled the famous photograph of a Vietnam War protester placing a carnation in the barrel of a soldier’s gun. He wondered where the protester had gotten the flowers. Maybe a florist had been looted.
“No deliveries,” Janice said, standing behind the cash register. “Help out back.” Mrs. McCall was holding a legal pad and a pen, counting the flowers in the refrigerators. The step-van was parked in the alley. Mr. McCall was sweating through his yellow shirt, wearing a shoulder-holstered pistol under his left arm, and passing plants from a cart to Allen inside the truck. Down the alley, other workers were emptying their shops of valuable goods, loading cars and trucks with cameras, cakes, guitars. Eugene helped until the van was full.
The plan was to take the merchandise to the McCalls’ house and unload it into their carport. As usual Eugene rode shotgun, holding a philodendron between his feet. Its stiff leaves brushed against his face as the truck bounced. The house, a four-columned white two-story, turned out to be a few doors down from the Blanchards’, where Eugene saw his father’s champagne-colored Mercury parked under the basketball goal to the right of the three-car garage. Mr. McCall had a two-car garage. The doors were already up. While they unloaded, Eugene kept watching the Blanchard house, expecting to see his father step out, and dreading it.
The door between the McCalls’ house and garage opened, and a thin Black woman in a maid’s uniform stood there. “Y’all know what y’all doing?” she asked.
It seemed an odd question, as if they were doing something other than what it looked like: stacking potted plants along the perimeter of the space.
“I think we know,” Allen said.
“You think, huh?”
Allen slid a ficus tree into a corner and then stared at the woman. A wave of fear swept over Eugene. He worried Allen might say something demeaning, and he wondered what he, Eugene, would do. He wondered what the woman would do. It was as if she were accusing them of betraying the cause of civil rights by shielding these plants from vandals. Eugene already felt like he was betraying himself, even though he knew Mr. McCall had a right to protect his property, and Eugene, like his dad, had an obligation to do his job. That’s why he didn’t want to see his dad, he realized—he didn’t want them to have to face each other’s betrayal. Meanwhile here was this woman in her maid’s uniform imperiously questioning him from a house that wasn’t her own.
“What do you think we should be doing?” Allen said. “Didn’t Mr. McCall tell you?”
“Y’all need to leave room for them cars when they get back here,” she said and closed herself in the house.
Eugene looked again at his father’s car across the street. He had an odd thought: Since his dad lived there so much, what if there were another Eugene inside, with his own TV and stereo system in a big, carpeted bedroom? The Blanchards had three grown children who were all married and living elsewhere. So maybe there was another Eugene who looked out the glass wall at the Japanese maples, the pink azaleas, the banana-palm tree, the unblemished lawn. Another Eugene who hit tennis balls on the green paved court in the back. Another Eugene who drank freshly squeezed orange juice and regularly ate steak. Another Eugene with the sort of girlfriend he desired. This other Eugene never imagined the Eugene who rode in the florist’s van.
They made several more trips to load and unload the van. Workmen were putting sheets of plywood over the storefront windows at McCall’s. Eugene was growing tired, and everything seemed an overreaction. He resented the assumption that anyone mad about King’s killing would come all the way out here to steal stuff. It looked as if the store owners loved their merchandise more than they cared about King’s death. Eugene didn’t know what they should do to show they cared. He didn’t expect them to boycott their own shops, but some of them should do something.
Allen held open the trunk of the McCalls’ Lincoln while Eugene and Mr. McCall lugged the bulky cash register from the shop. The pistol in Mr. McCall’s holster jostled with the effort. They balanced the machine on the lip of the trunk while Mr. McCall wiped his face with a damp handkerchief, smearing thin red hair across his splotchy forehead. “It’s a goddamn shame I have to empty my store because that bastard got himself killed,” he said. “But I’m still glad the son of a bitch is dead.”
At this, Eugene felt trapped in an unbearable moment that wouldn’t end. And then time continued. People kept moving about, working, talking, securing the shop. After relocating all the plants, they hauled the pots, canisters of helium, boxes of uninflated balloons, and wire tripods. They packed the Lincoln and station wagon with vases, stuffed toys, spools of ribbon, rolls of foil, and silk flowers. If they’d had a bigger truck, Eugene thought, they might well have taken the refrigerators.
Eugene rode again with Allen in the step-van, Mr. McCall drove his Lincoln, and Janice rode with her mother in the station wagon. By the final trip Eugene’s father’s Mercury was gone from the Blanchards’ driveway. He never did see him. Feeling especially lonely, Eugene helped with the last of the unpacking, leaving no room to park the cars.
He worked in a humid cloud of anger and shame, more powerless than ever. He was repulsed but grimly fascinated by the others. Mrs. McCall licked sweat from her buttonhole mouth, the lipstick worn away. Janice grunted with heavy breaths. Allen scowled as if to mirror the rictus of Mr. McCall. No doubt Eugene grimaced, too, trying not to drop the pots and vases, wishing to see all of it smashed.
He’d have to endure the drive back to the shop to get his mother’s car. He didn’t want to speak to Mr. McCall—or any of them. Maybe, if he didn’t go home, he could join the protest later. The curfew was an hour and a half away. He hadn’t talked to Winston or any of his friends since the end of school yesterday. For all he knew, Winston and his brother and even Miriam had been at the protest that night. They might have been arrested. They might be heroes. Maybe he could be a hero, too.
But really he just wanted to get back to his own house, where his father probably was. Eugene got paid every two weeks, and this Saturday was supposed to be payday. He wanted the money that was due him, but he wanted to be home more. He figured he could get it later, unless Mr. McCall completely forgot, and then Eugene would have to ask for it, or forfeit it, like he had forfeited Thailand, like he forfeited Miriam. He could just forfeit the whole job, never come back. He didn’t know what all he had given up.
Just when Eugene thought he could simply wait in the step-van for Allen, Mr. McCall decided to rearrange everything to make room for at least one of their cars to be parked in the garage. Eugene imagined the maid in the house feeling smug about that. His arms ached, and his shirt was damp. He had worked harder that day than he had all year. He counted two slow breaths. The job was taking too long.
