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The Birthday Party

Robert Turner

    I was standing in front of Woolworth’s on Main Street on the fifth of October, 1943 when I began to realize how things worked in our town. James, my seventh grade classmate, and I were watching an olive skinned yo-yo master, in a bright yellow silk shirt and crimson trousers, rock a spinning red disk back and forth on a string extended between his fingers. He allowed it to fall, and just as its momentum seemed spent, retrieved it with a flick of his middle finger into the palm of his right hand. The crowd applauded as the master, who was not much taller than I, removed his white cowboy hat, bowed, and extended one sequined arm toward the store entrance.
    “Let’s go in and look at the yo-yos,” I said.
    “OK,” said James, who had gotten us a place in front of the other onlookers, “but I already have one and Cranston has one with shiny stones. He can probably do all the tricks that little guy can do and then some.”
    I’m sure he can, I thought as I looked at the display. It seemed all James could talk about since his move in January was his next door neighbor Cranston Collins. “I have one too,” I said, “but I thought I would get one for Eugene, for his birthday party tomorrow.”
    “Yeah,” said James, “he gave me one of his invitations yesterday. He gave one to Cranston, and even to the girls. I don’t think anybody is going, though. My mother says it’s bad enough we have to go to school with those people who live down by the river, much less go to a party there.”
    “Well I’m going,” I said, “and I wish you would, too.”
    “Huh,” said James, “that figures. My mother says since you aren’t from around here you’ll probably never understand how things work.”
    “Probably not,” I said, as I picked out a bright red Duncan yo-yo like the one the master had used. “I’m not that much friends with Eugene, but I just think some of us should go to his party.”
    As we left the store the master was carving designs on the yo-yos people had purchased and when I asked him, he carved a sun on Eugene’s.
    “That guy is really good,” I said.
    “Mother says he comes from the Philippines,” said James. “Those people aren’t much better than the Japs.”
    “They are on our side,” I said, “and so are some of the Japanese.”
    “Like my mother says, you people will never understand anything,” said James as he stalked away down the street.
    The next afternoon, the sun coming over the lowlands by the river on my left, felt good as I walked down the dirt road toward the shack where Eugene lived. My shadow, tall and fast, moved with giant steps across the meadow on my right. I could hear the bees buzzing in the clover alongside the roadway and the frogs calling to each other down by the water. I scuffed up swirls of dirt from the road but didn’t kick any rocks because I had on my good school clothes. Eugene’s present was wrapped in white paper decorated with a blue ribbon. He was in his front yard dressed for the first time in the nine months I had known him in freshly laundered trousers and a clean short-sleeved white shirt. He was tending a fire in a pit beside a lone chinaberry tree. As I came up I smelled the smoke from the wood and the charring embers.
    “Happy birthday, Eugene,” I said, thinking how lucky he was to have a fire pit and red clay with no grass to cut in his front yard. “Am I the first one here?”
    “So far,” he answered, “but I invited everyone in the class, so some more people should be here soon.”
    “You never know about them,” I said. “My friend James said he wasn’t coming so I don’t know how many will show up.”
    “Mom let me get some weenies and buns at the store, and marshmallows,” said Eugene. “You get some sticks and sharpen them while I bring out the food,” he said, handing me a rusty kitchen knife.
    I picked out the straightest of the chinaberry sticks Eugene had piled near the fire and began to work on them. I hoped more of our fellow students would come, although I knew many, like James, would not make the trip to the little cottage near the mud flats. I couldn’t understand what had happened to James. We had been neighbors and friends since my father had come to town from New Jersey when I was three years old. We had grown up together exploring the backwaters of the Chattahoochee River. Now James’s mother, who had come from Atlanta, had told him she did not want him wasting his time with people from up North. James’s father was from Maryland which didn’t seem to me to be that much more Southern than New Jersey. I guessed people from Atlanta had a different way of looking at things. Anyway, James now hung out most of the time with Cranston, who was almost a year older than the rest of us and was better at sports, an important attribute in a town that prided itself on having the best Class C football team in the state of Georgia.
    Eugene’s mother, dressed in a faded print dress with a matching bandana partially covering a bruise on the right side of her forehead came out of the front door. “You boys have fun,” she said, “but keep it quiet in the yard because Big Eugene is asleep.”
    Eugene Jr. emerged from behind her with the packages of frankfurters, buns, and marshmallows in a Spur Quick Mart bag. “Pop came in late again last night,” he said. I wondered if the reddish purple bruise on his left forearm had come from his father’s late night drinking and roughing up the family. I had heard that the men on this side of the river did that sometimes.
    “Open your present,” I said, handing it to Eugene. “I hope you don’t already have one,” I said, even though I knew he didn’t, because of the price, and the hand carving, and all.
    Eugene opened the box and took out his yo-yo. “You can do rock the baby, walk the dog, and everything with it,” I said.
    “Gosh it’s nice,” he said. Then, he smiled for the first time I could remember, straightened his boney frame and tried a few throw downs and retrievals.
    I heard a car door slam and looked down the dirt road to where it met the asphalt. A car had stopped there about fifty yards from the house, and a redheaded boy had gotten out and started up the road toward us. Danged if it isn’t Cranston Collins, I thought.
    “Happy birthday Eugene — hello Robbie,” said Cranston as he joined us by the fire. “Nice yo-yo.”
    Cranston did tricks with the yo-yo while I fingered the knife and Eugene opened the box of Whitman’s Samplers Cranston had brought as his present.
    “Thanks Cranston,” said Eugene. “We can eat these with our marshmallows after we have the hot dogs.”
    “Yeah, lets get started cooking them,” I said, glad in a way more of the fifteen people in our class hadn’t come since Eugene only had one package of frankfurters. I knew I was too fat and overly concerned with food. Size had been an advantage when I was younger. As a midget football lineman, I had been able to block out the smaller boys, but now that they were taller and quicker and I was having trouble keeping up with Cranston, James, and the others. Our school was on a hill overlooking the town and it housed all twelve grades. A plateau just outside the old building was our playground where we ran around at recess. Lately the other kids had been turning on me, calling me names and chasing me. I was feeling more like an outsider than ever.
    Eugene seemed to have even more problems. His mother had probably spent much of the family’s grocery money on the food. Eugene had only been with us since the family moved from Arkansas in the middle of last year. His father had hoped to find work at the cotton mills which were at full production supplying the military with uniforms for the war effort. He had not been able to hold a steady job, however, and worked at odd jobs around town. I wondered how long it would take the town to accept Eugene’s family. Although my family had been in town for eight years, we still felt like foreigners. Eugene had moved from another Southern state, however, so his family should have had an easier time. Ashamed of my selfish craving for food, I started wishing more of the class would show up. I was surprised to see Cranston. I had thought that of them all he would have been the least likely to make the trip to this part of town.
    We cooked the hot dogs on the sticks till they were black and ate them without the buns. They were crisp and crunchy with that smoky taste you can only get from roasting them over an open fire on a stick. Eugene’s buns looked moldy and the ketchup was drying up. I was glad we didn’t try using any. We ate most of the candy and left the marshmallows for later. Running around the front yard for awhile, we used the cooking sticks for sword fighting and pelted each other with chinaberries. They stung when they hit you more than you would think. In the back yard was a quince tree with hard yellow fruit perfect for throwing across the fence at the signposts along the railroad tracks. I never had much of an arm and could barely hit the edge of the tracks, much less the posts. Eugene who was in practice and the naturally talented Cranston, however, hit the signs several times. We heard the 4 P.M. train rumble down the track and watched it slow as it approached the trestle which would take it across the river. We took turns throwing the quinces at the engine and then at the cars pretending we were partisans attacking Nazi tanks and locomotives with grenades. We exhausted our supply as the Nazis retreated into the distance.
    Eugene led us to a passageway he had made through the kudzu covered fence. It was cool in Eugene’s tunnel and we watched our shadows moving on the ground across the patches of light and the darker images of the leaves. Above us we could hear insects scurrying about in the kudzu canopy. I had some trouble getting through the hole in the fence. As I squeezed through, I felt the wire catch on my pants, but nothing tore; and I pushed harder and moved out into the sunlight again. It felt good to be back in the open as we climbed the embankment and went out onto the tracks to pick up our missiles.
    “Let’s go to the river where we can throw them like depth charges into the water,” said Eugene.
    “I don’t know,” I said, looking down the tracks which ran to the river on a raised bed and crossed it perhaps a hundred feet above the water. “It’s been a great party but I need to start for home.” I didn’t tell him that I was afraid of heights and didn’t like the idea of going down the raised roadbed, much less out over the water.
    “Yeah,” said Cranston, looking at his steel Westclox wrist watch. “Mother is picking me up in 30 minutes.” I had admired that watch since Cranston had gotten it for his twelfth birthday last year. I had asked my parents for one for my birthday which was coming up next month, in November, but I doubted they could afford it. Even if I did get it, they probably wouldn’t let me wear it to school every day the way Cranston did, showing it off to our classmates and deftly avoiding getting it damaged during the scuffles on the playground. Now that I was thinking about it, Cranston usually stayed away from these activities anyway, preferring to use his time talking to the girls or running laps around the edge of the play area.
    “I’m glad you brought your watch,” said Eugene. “Can I try it on?” Cranston handed it over, and I again felt sorry for Eugene because the big face and strap hanging loosely on his wrist accentuated his gaunt appearance. He shook his straw colored hair out of his eyes in that way he had and said, as he handed the watch back to Cranston, “You guys aren’t worried about another train, are you? The next one won’t come along for two or three hours. This has been the best party ever. It’s really fun down there and it won’t take long.”
    We walked along the tracks balancing on the rails and throwing rocks from the roadbed at objects on the mud flats. Eugene carried the shopping bag filled with the quinces we had collected. We ventured out over the water, staying near the eastern end of the trestle, but far enough out so we could watch our missiles splash into the river, pretending they were depth charges dropping on Japanese submarines. “Have you ever crossed the river on the trestle?” Cranston asked Eugene. “I’d be afraid to do it.”
    “Only once or twice,” said Eugene. “Paw said he’d skin me alive if he ever caught me walkin on it.”
    “He wouldn’t have to tell me anything to keep me from doing it,” I said, looking down through the cross ties and the girders at the muddy water rushing past the bridge pilings.
    “It would be a fastest way for you to get home,” said Eugene.
    I thought, yeah, and I wouldn’t have to squeeze through the fence again or walk all the way back to the regular bridge. It would be pretty cool, unless I fell in the river.
    “I would do it,” said Cranston, “but I told my mother I would meet her on this side next to Eugene’s road. You are probably too fat to make it across, anyway.”
    “Show us you can do it Robbie,” said Eugene. “It’s not that hard.”
    I knew if I didn’t do it, Cranston would tell the other kids I had been afraid. On the other hand, if I made it, I might be the class hero, at least for the next several days.
    “Look he’s really going to try it!” said Cranston, as I started walking on the crossties, keeping to the middle of the tracks as they stretched out across the river.
    “It was a great party, Eugene. I’ll see you all in school tomorrow,” I called back to them as I moved toward the middle of the trestle. I tried to keep my eyes focused on the crossties, but I could still see the water beneath them and hear it gurgling against the pilings. I thought I heard a rumbling behind me and I could feel the tracks vibrating and hear them start humming like they do when a train is coming. I wondered if I could make it to the other side if an unscheduled train were coming down the hill toward the river. I was afraid to run because I might fall on the tracks. I could jump, if I had to, because I could probably swim to the river bank. But I didn’t want my parents to find out what I was doing, and I thought I was getting too close to the shallows and the mud flats at the western edge of the trestle to survive, unscathed, the impact from the descent. As the rumbling and the humming became louder behind me I began to run, but it seemed like I was just running in place like they make you do at football practice.
    I finally made it across, however, just in front of the engine. I could feel the wind from it lift me off the tracks as I reached the end of the trestle and ran down the embankment just as the train reached the west side of the river. I was sweating and shaking as I stood on the river bank and looked across to see if Eugene and Cranston had gotten off the tracks before the train had reached them. They were jumping up and down and waving at me so I took off my shirt, which wasn’t even too messed up from my sweating, and waved it back and forth to show them I was OK.
    The next day Cranston told everybody in the class about his escape from the train and even mentioned favorably my part in the story. James tried to talk to me about it, but I no longer had much interest in him or his opinions. I was the envy of my classmates for the next three days, and then they began to chase me around the playground again. Now, however, I knew how to get away, and I used the down the embankment maneuver on them whenever the game got out of hand. I never became good friends with Cranston, but I did always respect him for going to Eugene’s party and reporting, relatively accurately, what had happened. The next year Eugene didn’t return to school. His father had been killed in a fight at a beer joint across the county line, and Eugene and his mother had moved to Kansas. The city bulldozed the shack where Eugene had lived and built a new practice field for the football team.

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