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The room settles for a moment on the stupidity of these two people, and
there is the sense that it is a very stable and big platform, their
stupidity. The blame is not that these two should have known better than
to taunt each other that way, even as friends, but that they are
responsible for the birth of another committee. One man in the last row
mutters, "Sheez.”
Sipe unfolds his arms. He holds up his hands. Clare sees they are
callused.
"All right," Sipe says. "Okay, look. We been told to form this committee
and that's what we're doing. Our goal is for us as a group to explore
ways to coexist with each other as well as we can. We're going to talk
about topics, put together a diversity newsletter and workshops, and after
a couple months we'll take what we learn in here out to the mill at
large and it'll be a big help. Because I'll tell you for one, I missed
my guess at how big this thing is to some folks.”
The woman who wore the Black Thang T-shirt says, "And people, it's not
just black and white. It's men and women, too.”
"That's right," says Sipe, and nods, refolding his meaty arms. "We
need to find ways to be more sensitive to each other. And it's not just
for the mill. It's the whole community." Clare thinks that this man
has had his ass chewed out bad to be talking this way.
Then Sipe points at Elijah and says, "We all need to find ways to be more
like Clare and Elijah here. More accepting. Like them.”
Elijah's hard hat dangles from his fingers between his spread knees, his
eyes turned to the floor. The hat spins a revolution in his hands. He
catches it. He stands. The hard hat goes on his head.
Looking at no one, not even Clare, he softly says, "This is y'all's
problem.”
Knees and legs slide out of the way, allowing Elijah to exit his row. No
one looks up to his face moving past them as though fearful his face is
where he keeps the blow he would throw at them if he were to throw one,
because it wasn't in his voice.
The trailer door opens with the break of a seal and Elijah closes it
gently. When he is gone, again the room ponders on something and now it is
Clare. But she has a baby in her belly soon to be born and so she is not
disposed to carry the weight of their inquiry. She will not explain Elijah
to them, he is her husband and the father of her child and they all, all
of them in the world, are not.
Clare stands. She wishes she had her own hard hat to put on. To get to the
door she has to pass only one set of legs in her row.
"Look," she says, walking, "you all know him. He's got a mind of his
own.”
Clare grips the trailer doorknob. Her back is to the committee. She turns
fully to them. The globe of her coming child is included when she says
before leaving, "I'm sorry, but we are not your damn role models.”
Four
Clare and Elijah do not like being made to feel they love each other
despite something. They are not better people because they have married
someone outside their own race. They are not tolerant because the other is
of a different color.
They do not in this first year of their marriage discuss race, in the same
manner they do not discuss gravity. That he is black and she is white is a
subject for others, who once in a while try to hold the matter up to Clare
and Elijah with curiosity, seeking feedback and impressions, postcards
from someplace exotic and perhaps taboo they themselves will never go.
Excerpted from Scorched Earth by David L. Robbins. Copyright 2002 by David L. Robbins. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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