Panther Baby Read Online Free

horses and tractors—and outhouses. Imagine my surprise having to poop in an outhouse, that stinky wooden shack in the back of the house. Th ere was running water inside and a water heater that could be turned on a few minutes before you took a bath, but there was no toilet. A two-lane paved road divided the black and white parts of Marshall. Th e whites weren’t rich but had slightly bigger and nicer houses with indoor toilets. As far as I could tell, everybody in town made a living by working on one of the farms or one of the factories. Aunt Cleo and Aunt Mae, the ladies I stayed with, were retired from bookkeeping and domestic work.
    Th e Greyhound bus dropped me near Aunt Cleo’s two-story wooden house. It was morning and I had been riding all night. Aunt Cleo and her grandson, Roger, who was thirteen, met me at the bus stop. Roger showed me where to put my stuff and took me to the outhouse. When I was inside trying to do my business, he told me that snakes would sometimes crawl in there and bite people on the ass. He fell out laughing when I ran out with my dungarees half off. I was ready to fight, but he made me laugh when he drawled, “Aw, come on. Can’t y’all take a joke?” We washed up and went inside for a breakfast of chicken-fried apples and grits. It was a weird breakfast, but man was it good.
    I spent the next few days exploring the woods with Roger, swimming naked with four other boys in a lake, and eating peanut butter sandwiches in a secret cave. I was a regular Huck Finn. A skinny, thirteen-year-old girl named Betty, with a pretty face, would always smile at me when Roger and I walked by her front porch.
    “She likes you,” Roger said. “She used to like me, but I got me another girlfriend now.”
    “No, she don’t,” I said, blushing. I was still real shy when it came to girls.
    “She likes you,” Roger insisted. “Maybe she wants to give you some.”
    I looked back at the porch and she smiled again. I blushed and kept on walking.
    Th e next day Roger and I were on Aunt Cleo’s porch when Betty walked by and waved. I waved back.
    “Wanna walk me to the store?” she asked.
    “Me and Roger?” I yelled back.
    “No, silly, just you.”
    “She gonna give you some,” Roger teased.
    “Shut up,” I snapped.
    “Well, go ahead. What? Are you scared?” Roger persisted.
    “Hell, no,” I insisted, but I was shaking like I was freezing. I hopped off of the porch and walked with Betty down the road.
    On the way back from the store, Betty pulled me into the woods and kissed me. I was tight-lipped, nervous. “Relax,” she said. “Open your mouth a little.” She kissed me again and used her tongue to play with my tongue. Fireworks went off inside of me. If she was giving me “some,” I wanted more. After a few minutes Betty led me out of the woods and back to my aunt’s house. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t tell nobody.” I could hardly sleep that night, thinking about Betty and the woods.
    Th e next day the black kids and the white kids played softball in the field across the road from my aunt’s house. It was on the white side of the road. A twelve-year-old white kid named Dale bossed everybody around, especially the black kids. Dale called kids names like “stupid” and “blind” when they would miss a hit or drop a ball, and his arrogance and southern drawl really annoyed me. When it was my turn at bat, I swung at the ball and missed. Strike one. Another ball was pitched to me. Strike two. Dale was standing by first base. “Hit the ball, stupid,” he said. “Don’t just stand there like a beanpole.” Th at’s all it took for me to run over and sock him in the nose. I balled my fist, ready for a good fight, but Dale got up, cupped his hand over his bloody nose, and ran across the field to his house.
    My cousin Roger came over to me. “Whatcha do that for?” he asked.
    “Cuz he came out his mouth wrong,” I replied with my tough New York