The Planet of Junior Brown Read online

  “Mr. Pool here knows all about the universe,” Buddy said. “Nothing he don’t know, so you can set yourself easy, Junior, we going to give you a circus ride.”

  Mr. Pool waited in the weak glow of the planets to see if Buddy could reassure the fat boy for one more time.

  What would happen, he wondered, if Buddy got tired of it and let Junior leave early? Would Junior hurry off? Or would he stay, afraid to move without big Buddy to shadow him?

  Mr. Pool’s hands came into the light, touching spheres as they moved, and testing the rods from which they were suspended.

  “The universe,” he said, “has to be the same everywhere, in all directions. Our solar system in the Milky Way is not unusual or different. Our own planet of Junior Brown in the solar system is quite ordinary.”

  Junior Brown knew his planet was huge in the solar system but only a speck in the Milky Way.

  “Heavenly science demonstrates that nature is the same everywhere,” Mr. Pool said. “The universe acts the same everywhere. This being so, the Milky Way, the solar system and the planet of Junior Brown hold no unusual position.”

  “Space and time,” Buddy Clark said. He let the feeble light slip through his fingers. “Energy, matter, gravitation and light.”

  “Not space,” said Mr. Pool, “nor light nor any of the others can be measured alone, but only in relation to one or more of the others.”

  Alone.

  Across the span of planets, Junior Brown thought, Who am I? What can I know? It’s Friday. Outside me, it might be Monday. Or nothing. Or something terrible.

  “Earth creatures will not survive forever,” droned Mr. Pool. “Our solar system, our Milky Way, will not survive. Travel to other galaxies will remain impossible …” He sighed. “… for movement in space seems not to exceed the speed of light. Traveling at the speed of light, it would take a being two million years to reach Andromeda, our neighboring galaxy… .”

  Soon buzzers again sounded above the three of them. “… When the youngest stars of our Milky Way die as all things will die,” said Mr. Pool, “life for beings will end.”

  Junior Brown got up slowly from his chair, his unbelievable girth of flesh and fat spreading out from his powerful frame.

  If all things were bound to die, what was the point of being born? Junior thought.

  “A’m lookin’ forty mile,” he sang softly to himself, “Believe a’m fixin’ ta die . . .” He moved away from the light of the solar system into the void.

  “Wait a minute, man,” Buddy told him.

  “I got to hurry, I got me someplace to go,” Junior said.

  “I know all about someplace you got to go,” said Buddy. “It’s Friday, man.”

  Buddy scrambled through the dark after Junior. When they both were within the false broom closet, they began groping around on the dark floor. After a moment Junior found his Fake Book. In no way false, the Fake Book was a thick volume of jazz and rock tunes arranged and copied professionally and in keys suitable for the average singer. The book had cost Junior’s mother fifty dollars. Junior always carried the book although he never used the arrangements. But hidden inside were his music lessons and his own classical compositions.

  Next Junior found a pile of torn and battered textbooks. He grabbed a couple of books and placed them safely with his Fake Book under his arm. Buddy took a couple of books also. Then, facing the door, the two of them stood side by side waiting tensely for Mr. Pool to release them.

  In the hidden room, Mr. Pool turned off the lights of the solar system by shutting off the system’s power source. In the total darkness, he stalked the planets until he found the big one called Junior Brown. The planet hung at a height the level of his chest. Mr. Pool found it with his hands on his first attempt.

  He had to smile. Superstitious, he couldn’t help suspecting that the planet of Junior Brown vanished as though it never existed once its light was turned off.

  But the planet of Junior Brown was safe in the room. That, to Mr. Pool, was a great comfort.

  In a moment Mr. Pool stood in the broom closet. Opening the door slightly, he listened awhile to the tramping feet, the noise of children. Then he called softly to Junior and Buddy that they could leave.

  “I don’t need to remind you …” he said.

  “No,” said Buddy.

  “I will anyway,” said Mr. Pool. “One of these days we’re going to get caught.”

  “Right on,” Buddy said.

  “Further on,” Junior said.

  “And they will get rid of me, like maybe they’ve been itching to do for years,” Mr. Pool said.

  “We’re sorry about that,” Buddy said, his voice rougher now.

  “You are not to worry,” Mr. Pool said. “They’ll fire me and we’ll get together with the solar system somewheres else.”

  Buddy and Junior slipped quickly through the door. They tiptoed down the long hall which turned twice, until they had reached the outer door.

  Buddy Clark took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the triple police lock. Outside, a line of students streamed down the steps at the front of the school. When the stream was large enough to become raucous, Buddy rushed up the basement steps with Junior close behind him. In the mass of students the boys separated. Alone, neither of them registered on the mind in any special way. For one more time they had worked their escape.

  Buddy hummed to himself as he always did at the moment he knew that he and Junior were going to make it. Two blocks beyond the school he saw Junior, whom he had allowed to pass him, and caught up with him.

  Junior didn’t look around when Buddy came up beside him.

  “You got anything particular in your mind?” Buddy asked him.

  “Just me going to the river,” Junior told him. He didn’t feel like talking to Buddy anymore, or anyone. The effort of talking and walking at the same time took his breath.

  “I’ll just go with you,” Buddy said, “make sure you don’t slip and fall in that messy water.”

  “Not going to fall. Even if I did, I can swim enough,” Junior told him.

  “Shoot,” Buddy said. “You is big as a boulder and you would sink as fast as a boulder.”

  “Shuh,” Junior said. He refused to speak to Buddy for the rest of the way.

  2

  JUNIOR LOVED THE low sky and the Hudson River surrounded by zero winter. The river was smooth. Breaking into it was a light of yellow mist out of a sky the color of sulfur and filled with fumes from chemicals. The sky above the river was vibrant with cold poison, the kind of sky Junior felt he knew best. Cold winter was the one season he could be outdoors and feel comfortable seeing the day. In this late November he wore only a yellow Dacron shirt and brown denim trousers.

  The river looked clean. The putrid light out of the sky made New Jersey on the far bank seem a fantasy Christmas land atop the Palisades. These past weeks Junior had needed Jersey to seem as unreal as possible. He had needed to wipe it away with a flick of his hand over his vision, if only he could.

  “A’m a low-life clown, with muh head on upside dow-ow-wown,” he sang.

  He and Buddy had climbed the iron fence on the bank of the river and now braced themselves against boulders at the water’s edge. They filled their pockets with rocks. Here there were rats living on the river’s filth. Not even freezing winter could rid the shore of its awful smell.

  “I can’t stand it, whew!” Buddy said.

  “Shuh,” Junior told him. He wished Buddy would just disappear.

  “But I’m cold. I already froze myself getting here,” Buddy said, “and you going to freeze yourself too.” Buddy wore his windbreaker; even so the weather coming off the water went right through it.

  “Whyn’t you go on home then?” Junior said. “Nobody ask you to freeze your diaper out here.”

  They settled down uncomfortably on icy rocks. Junior put his Fake Book and torn textbooks carefully down beside him. He was feeling mean toward Buddy and impatient with the slow pass
age of time. He could tell by the dull yellow light closing in on them that the time was about three-thirty. He still had a whole hour to get down to 79th Street and Broadway.

  They saw a rat move boldly. It was big and hungry, with hair almost black. Swiftly Buddy aimed and threw a stone all in one sure motion. The stone grazed the rat.

  “He ain’t going to move. He thinking about fightin’ back,” Junior said.

  Buddy hurled three stones in succession; one whucked sickeningly against the rat’s side. The rat’s hindquarters quivered; then it moved off under rocks.

  Once at 79th and Broadway, Junior would have to go one block down to 78th Street and one block east to Amsterdam Avenue. Behind his eyes, those streets were blown clean by cold wind. Apartment-house lobbies on 78th would be free of the usual scarred tables in anticipation of holiday decoration.

  He could take a subway at 96th and Broadway and be down at 79th Street in less than fifteen minutes. Even though he was slow, he knew he could make that block from 79th to 78th Street and the one block over to Amsterdam in five, seven minutes.

  Be there thirty minutes early, Junior thought. I don’t know what I’ll do if she won’t let me play. I should of told Mama about it. Shuh, Mama wouldn’t of believed me—how you going to tell her something like what’s been happening? She’d think I was just trying to get out of the lessons.

  Buddy sat hunched over, freezing. He imagined his face turning ashen with cold. His toes were numb and his nose had started running. The moisture in his nostrils crystallized, forcing him to breathe through his mouth. Buddy made himself sit silently so he could watch Junior with the least amount of physical pain to himself.

  All sorts of moods played over Junior’s face and all of them upset Buddy. Buddy could tell that Junior was still carrying on to himself. There had been a time when all of Junior’s thoughts had been open to Buddy.

  “We might take us a bus,” Buddy said, in a bursting loud rush right in Junior’s ear. “We early for your lesson.”

  “You can’t come in with me!” Junior was shouting. “You know you can’t so why you keep on following me?”

  “One of these times I’m going to leave you by yourself and see how you like it,” Buddy told him.

  “Like it fine,” Junior said. “Maybe then I can have some peace in my brains.”

  They both fell silent. There were two rats at the water line off to their left but neither of them bothered to stone them. Buddy was ashamed at feeling hurt that Junior didn’t want him around. He knew he was getting on Junior’s nerves. Lately he had stuck with Junior from the time Junior came out of his apartment house in the morning to the time he went back in at night. Buddy let Junior go into his house alone because Junior’s mother didn’t want her fat son to associate with him. And Buddy let Junior go alone from 78th Street and on into Miss Peebs’ house on Amsterdam to take his piano lesson each and every Friday.

  Buddy Clark had known Junior’s mother long enough and well enough to understand that she wasn’t the cause of the change in Junior. Junior Brown’s mother was as out of her head anxious as all the other women in the neighborhood whose husbands had gone away. Only, Junior’s father had a good job over in Jersey. But just like the other women, Junior’s mother had all the time she needed to get her insides confused and to make the life of her favorite child over to suit herself. In Junella Brown’s case, it was her only child.

  Maybe she is sickly, the way she likes to say, thought Buddy. She still uses that asthma of hers to keep Junior as close to home as she can.

  He got himself a piano in his very own room, Buddy went on to himself. He got books and a raincoat. He even gets rolls of canvas and paints to draw with. And still he says he’d just as soon have nothing if he could have his daddy come home every night and be there every morning. He lucky he got a “daddy” at all, but he don’t know nothing.

  Mrs. Junella Brown bothered Junior into going out to restaurants and to uplifting plays.

  Buddy shot a quick glance to the center of the river. A few chunks of ice floated easily along. They seemed rounded, perhaps melting. Buddy hunched his shoulders and clenched his frozen fists, hoping for a thaw.

  “I saw you and your maw going out last night,” he said. Upriver there was more ice.

  “Trying to be some kind of detective,” Junior told him. “Join up with the Force and they’ll get you a badge with Captain Oink written over it.”

  “I happened to be coming down the street,” Buddy said. “When I see you all coming out, I ducked myself into the building across the way.”

  “Duck yourself, nothing,” Junior said. “You standing there hiding and waiting.”

  Buddy decided he’d better get on with it. He had been waiting across the street from Junior’s house. He didn’t know why, or what he hoped to see. His nights were always too long. He could go to what he called home, but he only went there to leave something or to pick something up. Usually he ended up somewhere near the building where Junior lived.

  His story was that here in the city his mama was actually his aunt. Buddy’s real mama was still in East Texas with the rest of the kids. She was trying to save to get the rest of the kids and herself up here. Buddy kept on telling her to stay where she was. There wasn’t nothing up here but trash and terror, he wrote her. And his aunt, who was his mother’s sister, kept hounding him to quit school. Grow up, she told him. Go work in the garment district and do something for your helpless mother.

  Buddy smiled. In his head, he had this long conversation with this person who was his aunt, all about how he loved school and how he was going to go on to college.

  Maybe I will go to college, he thought. Maybe some billionaire will give me ten dollars a minute and a gold pot to keep it in too.

  This was his story known to Junior and to Mr. Pool. The truth was, Buddy was by himself.

  “You and your maw go to some kind of Broadway play last night?” Buddy said.

  Junior took his time about answering. He finally said, “We went us to Weight Watchers. I bet you haven’t ever heard of the Weight Watchers.”

  “I heard,” Buddy said, evenly, although the idea surprised him. “What did they make you do?”

  “Make me do nothing,” Junior told him. “They stared at me a lot and I didn’t like that one bit.”

  “What kind of else did they do?” Buddy asked him.

  “They talked a lot about celery and raw mushrooms.”

  “Gawd,” Buddy said.

  “They seem to think pretty highly of broiled fish.”

  “Nobody eat that stuff,” Buddy said.

  “Then one lady, she say maybe how I abuse my body because I didn’t much care for my black skin.” Junior laughed softly to himself, his fat shaking and rolling under his shirt. “Ole white lady,” he added. “She had on this red coat and this red fur hat. She had real orange hair and she was wearing a shiny brown dress. She wasn’t bad, but she was pretty plump herself.”

  “Might be some truth in what she saying,” Buddy said. “I mean, eating so much because you so black.”

  “Shuh,” Junior said. “You’re black but you don’t eat the way I do. I seen some white folks just as fat as me. And anyway, black is beautiful.” He had to laugh.

  “Did they put you on some diet?” Buddy said.

  “Say Mama have to cook me a little bitty this without no oil,” Junior told him, “and a little bitty that without no butter or no flour or no nothing.”

  “She’ll do it, too,” Buddy said.

  “Hush off my mother,” Junior said. “She sickly.”

  Sickly like a night tripper, like a fox. Buddy didn’t say what he had been thinking. Right then he decided it wasn’t Junior’s mother or the Weight Watchers or the black of Junior’s skin that was causing him to be so nervous and full of secrets. There was only one change in Junior’s life and that was Miss Peebs.

  Buddy had a sudden memory of a nicer time. Junior had taken piano lessons from the age of five. He had known Miss P
eebs for six months. Over the summer, somebody Miss Peebs knew managed to get Junior on the stage in a concert at Central Park. Buddy had been thrilled to see his friend up there at the piano in the bandshell, with all the people from all over stopping their strolls to sit and listen. It was the most exciting thing Buddy had ever seen. Big, fat and black Junior Brown playing classical music—even Buddy had to admit the music sounded fine—and then getting all that applause when he was finished. And then Junior coming down off that stage to sit right next to Buddy. That had been the best part of all. Buddy recalled he had met that Miss Peebs but she had been just some lady. She hadn’t seemed important and he didn’t remember much about her. But now Junior had something worrying him, something he couldn’t tell Buddy.

  Junior sat there by the water worrying about Buddy asking him so many questions. He was afraid he might talk too much. He wanted to talk now. If he only could talk, but how could he say anything?

  Junior got up, moving in a crouch. Holding onto boulders when he could, he made his way up the rocks toward the iron fence.

  “You leaving now?” Buddy called after him. The sky had changed, shading into gray before it would turn into night. Buddy followed Junior, holding back his strength and easy movement to give the fat boy room.

  He had all kinds of ideas about Junior and that Miss Peebs, whom he’d only once seen. He was a champ. He knew everything the street could teach him.

  Buddy stared after the grunting form of Junior Brown. No matter how completely Junior had changed into someone nervous and frustrated, he was still the shyest, most innocent boy Buddy had ever known.

  “Junior, you’re trying to give up on one more thing.” Junior’s mother reached into Junior’s mind and tried to take it over. Her sudden presence caused Junior to slip on the rocks and fall to his knees.

  Junior groaned and sat down, rubbing his shinbone.

  “Do you want me to believe you haven’t the courage to face your talent?”