Me n Poot Make It Three in a Row

Thursday morning I thought might be just another day at school when I parked my moped just off Rosemary Lane next to Bankston School. Poot wasn’t there yet, and I started walking to class with a rare measure of calmness. Poot come in just before the first period bell, sat down and said, “I need 79 cents.”

I wanted to yell, to run away, to punch the little turd in the face. It was like Poot had an itch to see how close we could come to getting caught. Maybe he really wanted to get nabbed. Maybe that way he could confess to all the stuff we done and we would be famous outlaws like Al Capone and Jesse James. Maybe that was it. It was like we was always competing with Tooter and his gang to see who could be the baddest. Only Tooter could talk about his stuff, but most of what we done we couldn’t tell nobody.

Anyway, there weren’t no way in “h-e-double hockey sticks” he was ever gunna talk me into burning down a third house in three straight nights. And them all in a row, side by side. It wasn’t never gunna happen. Not never. Not no how.

By end of first period, I give Poot the money.

He kept passing me notes and that alone could have got us sent to the office. And if the teacher, Mrs. Jarman, had got one of these notes and read about us burning down houses, we would have left school that day in a police car.

Poot said there prolly would be somebody watching tonight. Around nine or ten. But weren’t nobody gunna stay in one of them houses all night and get murdered by mosquitoes. Besides, we wouldn’t do it until we knowed no one was inside. Weren’t nobody gunna run us down and swim the river after us if they was somebody on the stake out. We couldn’t get caught if we done it at 3:00 in the morning, spied it out, and was ready to run.

I ate the notes and give Poot the money.

Sometime in the early morning I slowly come awake to somebody, saying, “Zane. Zane. Wake up you dumb dickhead.”

I had left the window open and slept in my clothes. All I had I to do was put my shoes on and was then out the window.

The dangerous part of this one was not getting seen by the police. At eight or nine o’clock, we could always say we was just out running. In fact that’s what we done just last night when a cop asked us what we was doing. Even though Poot had his stopwatch, I don’t see why no police would ever believe our parents would let us out to “train” at three in the morning. No, we had to get to the river and back without being seen, and that had me real nervous, more nervous than setting fire to the house.

So we were going the Park Avenue/Medallion Drive route. Park Ave was lit up and had cops on it sometimes. But you could see ’em a long off. And we didn’t have to be on it far until we got to Medallion. Once on Medallion, there was a bean field on the left, then some houses, then a cotton field on the left we could duck into like a deer if we seen headlights.

So we went up Harding to Key Street, through the dump at Wonder Bread, and then peeped out to look for cops. We didn’t see nothing so we went to the shopping center and slipped up between the Twin Cinema and the Laundromat.  When we peeked around, there was a cop car easing along towards us looking into the store windows.

“Crap!” I yelled as we turned and run.

We went behind the shopping center and stopped at a dumpster. We was trying to figure what to do. We thought about climbing inside with the big trash can but then we heard the car idling between the Cinema and the Laundromat. No time. He turned our way and we had to slide like treed squirrels around that Dumpster, keeping it between us and him, while he passed going about one mile per hour. When he made the turn and was out of sight, Poot said, “Let’s run. It’ll take him a couple of minutes to make it back to Park.”

So we run like the wind. I was already scared out of my mind, but when we got on Medallion I realized I had the lighter fluid and lighter in my hand. If the cop had caught us we would have gone straight to Parchman Penitentiary for sure. We walked until we got to the houses and then ran till we got to the cotton field. I figured then we would get to the swing without being seen, but I was still nerved up.

Did I mention me n Poot hadn’t smoked no cigarettes since we started burning the houses on Wade Road? With all the running and swimming and no smoking, we really was in good shape. But that last incident with the cop had me shaking like a leaf in a whirlwind, and I felt weak and scared. We still had to swim the river, burn the house, swim back, and get home without being seen. I was starting to wonder why I hung out with Poot.

At the swing, we knew this time to take our clothes off here and then walk upstream. That meant we had to walk along barefoot and nekkid with one hand covering our goobers. If a mosquito bit your goober you was in misery for three days. But we got across the river, with me carrying the fluid and lighter, got redressed, and eased up to Wade Road walking between the field and ditch in the dark delta night.

We took a good long look when we got there. Two houses were still standing where there had been four. Twisted tin, lonely pilasters, and ashes made two ugly scars where houses had stood only a couple of days ago. We intended to make it three in a row.

We didn’t see or hear nothing but we sat there at the ditch for a long time, with our heads poking up just above road level. We watched for any movement and listened for any sound. Then Poot whispered, “Go on over and check it out like you done last time. Might better check ’em both out. If somebody runs out, don’t let ’em get between you and the road. If we have to run for it, let’s just jump in the river. We can kick these shoes off in the water.”

I scooted across the road and chucked a dirt clod through the window of our target house. Nothing. Then I crawled over to the next one and did the same thing. Nothing. I motioned Poot over and went back across the road to be the lookout. In nothing flat we were walking, not running, back to the river bank where we hid our shoes and shorts, again, walked up stream, and started our swim back across.

I glanced over my shoulder when we was in the middle of the river. The sky was orange with the fire of the house. We got back to the swing without getting our goobers bit, got dressed, and eased up to the road. I was really dreading the journey home, but Poot said it weren’t no problem. But Poot never seemed to worry about nothing.

We started walking towards Park and all the while we was listening for cars and for the fire truck. This time, we didn’t hear no fire truck. When we got to the houses we stopped and discussed whether or not to go straight through or make a bid loop though the cotton field and behind the houses. If someone looked out a window and seen us and called the police, we would wind up in jail.

So we went around in the cotton field and came out in the bean field that bordered Park Avenue. That meant a lot of extra walking, but we couldn’t be seen or get caught out there. When we finally got back to Park, we squatted in the bean field while an eighteen-wheel Wonder Bread truck passed and backed into the dump. We took another look and decided to make a run for the slot between the Cinema and the Laundromat. We made that and slipped around to the dumpster where we almost got caught an hour ago. 

We caught our breath and listened for cars. Instead of going the Key Street route, we decided to go through the fence at the end of Harding. The gap in the fence is still there to this day and sometimes when I am out running, I will run through the gap and remember the night me n Poot burned down our third house on consecutive nights. Once we got on Harding, I relaxed. We never saw cops on Harding. I knew now I was gunna make it, but Poot still had several blocks to go before he got home.

We got to my house and I crawled back through the window, put the screen back on, and tried to settle in for some rest. Although I was as tired as I had ever been, I couldn’t sleep but I just lay there and wondered what God thought about us. I wondered if He understood how a boy just had to do things. I wondered if Jesus ever burned a house down. Prolly not.

I must have eventually dozed off because Momma shook me awake and told me to get ready for school.

“You have never been this hard to wake,” she said with concern, pressing her hand against my forehead.

“I think maybe you and Robert have been running too much,” she told me as I tried to eat an egg she had fried me. Dad was drinking his coffee, reading the newspaper, and saying something about overdoing it.

“Y’all are right,” I mumbled as I washed a bite of egg down with a swallow of cold orange juice. “We have been running way too much. If Poot comes by this afternoon, tell him I can’t go.”