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Back A Different Drummer
Chapters (18)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for William Melvin Kelley’s
  3. William Melvin Kelley
  4. Other Titles
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. The State
  8. The African
  9. Harry Leland
  10. Mister Leland
  11. One Long Ago Autumn Birthday
  12. The Willsons
  13. Dymphna Willson
  14. Dewey Willson III
  15. Camille Willson
  16. David Willson
  17. The Men on the Porch
  18. What’s next onyour reading list?

Then I couldn’t look at him any more. I turned away and found we were hooking down into Sutton, that already the car lamps were lighting the fronts of the stores on the western side of the street. I could see the yellow band that the bulb in Mister Thomason’s store laid out across the Highway.

And when, after a few seconds, I turned back to Reverend Bradshaw, he was even more sad, his eyes glassy and faraway.

inline Camille Willson inline

LAST NIGHT was almost like twenty years ago. We didn’t have that wonderfully open feeling we used to have, but we talked; and we haven’t done that in a long time. And today, walking down the platform, going to meet Dewey’s train, I felt his hand on my elbow, then sliding down my arm until he was holding my hand. He was almost like the David I loved so much, not young again of course—we won’t ever make up the years we lost—but that David I married aged twenty years in the same way that David would have aged. And I felt a little of the same things, like when we were first married, and I couldn’t hardly wait to get him in bed with me. If he got anywhere near me, I’d be putting my arms around him, getting real close to him or rubbing up against him so only the points of my breasts touched him. I’d squirm around until I knew he could feel them on his chest. And then I’d let him go and act like nothing had happened, like I didn’t know what I was doing. I guess that was all silly, but I loved him so much I couldn’t get enough of being near him.

Sometimes, even in the middle of the afternoon, I’d get more bold and I’d write him a note:

Dear David:

You have ten minutes to finish what you’re doing. Because I’m coming to get you. I love you,

Camille

I’d go into where he was reading the newspaper or writing and say, “This note came for you.”

“Oh?” he’d say.

“Yes, sir. And she was very pretty, too.” Then I’d just turn around and go out and I’d hear him laugh and say, shouting to me.

“What am I going to do with you?”

And I’d say: “You know the answer to that. Come in ten minutes.” And then I’d get everything cooking just right, so I wouldn’t have to worry about it, and set the table. I’d run into the bedroom and get undressed and douse perfume all over me and everything else. By that time, ten minutes would be up and he’d come in unbuttoning his shirt and say, “Where’s the girl who left that note?”