The Myth of Perpetual Summer Read online

  “Not to Mrs. Collins’s!” I shout. “I want to go to Jackson with you.” When she puts on her angry lips I add, “I want to stand up for what’s right, just like you say we should.” I do care about the Negroes being treated fairly; I really do. I care about Margo’s safety even more. And, to tell the truth, I’m tired of trying to be the same as everybody else. If I’m going to be different let me earn it, let me do something that counts. Besides, if I get involved with Margo’s work, we can spend more time together.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “You know the blackberries are coming on. Granny James and Mr. Stokes need you for the harvest. I’m certainly not going to have time to watch you.”

  Watch me? I can’t remember the last time Margo watched me. She barely looks at me.

  I suppose I should just be glad she’s not leaving me to take care of the twins, too. I’m already having to pick double because Griff’s new job takes him away every day.

  Margo is at the driver’s door. “Tell Dray to pick up the twins when he gets home.” I don’t know why, but her never calling him Dad or Daddy to us like everybody else’s mother does to their kids is starting to make me itch on the inside, a place too deep to scratch. “Mrs. Collins will be expecting them at least for the rest of the week.” She starts the car and shoves it into reverse, letting the clutch out so fast it hops, leaving me to stand there with a belly full of dread, certain something bad is going to happen.

  * * *

  Late in the night, when I’ve only just gotten Margo-worry out of my head enough to fall asleep, Dad comes in and shakes me awake. Face rough with stubble, he’s still wearing his clothes from yesterday, shirt untucked and wrinkled, there’s a dark stain on the front. He puts his fingers to his lips and motions for me to come with him. He’s jittery, the energy popping and sizzling from his skin. I think for sure something’s happened to Margo.

  With my heart racing, I get up and follow him into the kitchen. He paces, shifts, and shrugs, his body in constant motion. There is a feverish look in his eyes, glowing in the low light cast by the small bulb on the back of the stove. A scattering of papers is on the table; wildly sketched charts, diagrams with so many crisscrossing lines they look like spiderwebs. When I step closer to get a better look, he startles me by throwing himself across them, arms spread wide, chest against the tabletop.

  “No! It’s too dangerous.” His voice is a coarse, panicky whisper.

  “What’s too dangerous?”

  “You can’t know too much, but someone has to be aware.” His eyes cut to the dark window, then back to me. He lowers his voice further. “In case something happens to me.”

  “What are you talking about?” That dread that has been boiling in my belly gets fresh fire.

  “I can’t believe it’s taken me this long . . . recorded history meaningless . . . so obvious . . . saints and kings and religion . . . manipulation most sinister.” He’s forgotten the dangerous papers on the table and is now pacing circles, running his hands through his hair and talking so fast he’s not getting all the words out. Hurricane.

  I lean a little closer to the table. One of the papers is covered with dates, some with red circles around them, some with blue, a few with green X’s.

  He steps between me and the table. “Don’t.”

  “Why did you wake me, if you don’t want me to see any of this?”

  “Someone has to know.” He glances at the window again, as if expecting someone there. “About the manuscript.”

  “What manuscript?”

  “My manuscript. You can’t tell anyone. Too explosive.” Then he suddenly stops, leans to my ear, and whispers, “It’s controlled by the consortium.”

  “What’s controlled by the consortium?”

  “History. What we’re allowed to discover. They hide the lessons. Ensure war. Polarize.”

  “How can history be controlled?” Is he not making sense, or am I just too rattled from being jerked from sleep?

  “It’s in the manuscript. Locked in a file cabinet in my office closet.” He walks to the window and looks out, then whispers, “What we know is not history.”

  “What did you mean ‘in case something happens’ to you?”

  “They’ll stop at nothing.”

  “Who?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? The consortium!” He takes me by the shoulders and holds my eyes with his agitated gaze. “Tell no one.” He waits until I nod, then says, “Go back to bed.” I leave the kitchen. Hurricane time can be confusing, but I’ve never been scared like this before. I should talk to Griff about it in the morning.

  Except Dad trusted me, not Griff, with his secret. And he said I can’t tell anyone.

  * * *

  Before the sun burns off the silver mist of night, I have the twins fed and dressed and ready for Dad to take to Mrs. Collins’s. Easy enough since I never went back to sleep because now I’m worried about both parents. If Dad is right about history being manipulated, I hope his book is easier to understand than he was last night.

  When he comes out of his room (still in the same coffee-stained shirt) the fear I saw in his eyes last night is replaced with a burning excitement as he talks a mile a minute about how he’s figured out perpetual motion. Maybe it’s like Griff says, sometimes Dad’s just full of bullshit. Or maybe Margo has finally made him lose his mind. I wish I knew, because I hate wasting my energy worrying about something that’s all in his head—there’s too much real stuff to worry about.

  I think I’ve figured out what to do about Margo, though. So the wakeful night wasn’t a total waste.

  Right after Dad leaves, I turn on the radio (Dad says today’s music is an offense to the senses and the intellect). I’m dancing to Del Shannon singing “Runaway” and rinsing cereal bowls when Griff comes shuffling into the kitchen with his hair sticking up every which way. It hurts my heart how much I miss him being around like he used to be. Ever since school got out, he’s either working at the Sinclair or with Ross, painting the Saenger cottage.

  Griff says Mrs. Saenger is just like Harriet from Ozzie and Harriet. So I can’t blame him for wanting to be there and not here with hurricanes and Dharma fits and berry picking. Still, I don’t like the gut-punched feeling it’s giving me, like he’s living in a world different from mine.

  “It seems like you could stay home at least one day and help with the picking,” I say, a little startled by the hatefulness in my voice. But it’s just wrong that Griff can go off to his job and get paid when I have to work the orchard for free. Most days, I don’t even have the joy of working with Maisie because she’s at Judge Delmore’s more and more.

  With that thought, I catch my breath. I love the orchard. I should be happy to work in it. And jealous of my own brother? What’s wrong with me?

  Suddenly I’m spinning. Wobbling. A gyroscope. A boat without a rudder. A kite without a tail.

  A girl alone.

  My bare toes curl against the sticky tiles and I bite my tongue, determined not to let him know what a sorry person I’ve become.

  Griff looks at me with concern. “What’s wrong?” Then he pulls me into a hug and pats my back—like I’m a baby.

  I shove him and take a step back. “What do you care? Just go to your job. Spend all your time with Ross. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  He looks as shocked as if I’d smacked him with a baseball bat. “What the hell? I was trying to be nice.”

  “You think a hug is going to make a difference? You’re leaving! You don’t care about the orchard, or Gran, or the James family legacy.” Or me.

  “What are you talking about? I’m right here.”

  “For now. But you said you’re leaving as soon as you get enough money. And then what? I’ll be stuck here taking care of Walden and Dharma, picking blackberries, hulling pecans, listening to Dad and Margo fight, and dealing with all the bullshit around town. It’s hard enough with you here. But you’re leaving me to do it alone.” I stop, honestly stunned by all t
hat came out of my mouth.

  He stands there for a minute looking like he’s never seen me before. “I . . . Lulie, I didn’t know—”

  “I’m sure you didn’t. You haven’t been here enough to notice if the barn burned down.”

  He puts his hands on my shoulders. “I won’t leave. Not until you can go with me. I promise. I’ll stick around and work. I can take a couple of classes at Wickham after graduation if Dad pushes it. Then, after you graduate, we’ll go to California. It’s full of young people and great music and beaches. Everyone does what they want, not what generations dictate they should. We can get a little apartment in Huntington Beach. I’ll work on movie people’s expensive cars. You can get a job at Disneyland. We’ll have a life where nobody knows Margo, or Dad, and the police chief isn’t up my ass.”

  Me, leave? Suddenly it’s as if someone opened the drawbridge of the castle where I’m prisoner. I can’t walk through it yet, but now it’s open and I can breathe. Griff will take me away from here. I’ll be free.

  I look out the window.

  “What will happen to the orchard if we go?” I’ve never really thought of another kind of future.

  He shrugs. “The same thing that happened before we were born. Someone will take care of it. Walden loves it. It should be his anyway. In five years he’ll be old enough to take on some of the responsibility.”

  I start to say I love the orchard, too. Then it strikes me. I feel something else, something much, much stronger. The ugliness of the way this town looks at us outweighs that love. Or maybe I only love the orchard because of Gran and Mr. Stokes and Maisie. But there will be a time when they’re no longer here. The orchard will be so different. And the town will be the same.

  “You swear you won’t leave me?” Five years. If things are going to get better around here they will have—for both of us. If not, we have a plan.

  “I swear,” Griff says, staring me in the eye. “I won’t leave you.”

  I throw my arms around his neck. Griff has never broken a promise to me. I’m so light I’d float away if he wasn’t holding on to me.

  We step apart. He opens the refrigerator for the orange juice and milk. And, just like that, we’re back to our usual selves. But deep inside I’m different, I look at Griff differently—well, not differently, but like I always used to. Like we’re a team. Now and forever.

  I say, as if nothing had changed, “Margo went up to Jackson.”

  “So, what’s new?” He pours Wheaties into his bowl and shovels on the sugar.

  “I’m afraid she’s going to get hurt. You saw what those men did to the Riders last month.”

  “Margo’s too selfish to get herself hurt on account of others. She’ll be fine.”

  “She’s dedicated.”

  The milk bottle is in his hand and he pauses to look at me before he pours it. “Yeah. Okay. Fine. Believe what you want. But don’t waste your energy worrying about her. She’s not worth it. She’ll always look out for herself first.” He takes his cereal bowl and heads back to his room.

  I put the milk bottle back in the refrigerator and decide Griff’s not going to be any help in my new plan for Margo.

  * * *

  As I walk to the orchard barn, dew wets the toes of my Keds, turning spots of the navy-blue fabric to near black. The sun is starting to bake off the fog from the tops of the trees, but the mist is still strung low over the ground, pooling thick in the low places. The catbirds are singing. A quiet calm seeps into my chest, replacing the buzzing panic I’ve been feeling since Margo pulled out of the drive yesterday. There isn’t anything more beautiful than the orchard this early in the morning.

  The barn smells of old wood and dry pecan husks. The refrigerators hum in the background as I get the picking pails ready. Mr. Stokes arrives, bringing the bad news that Maisie is working at the judge’s house today.

  He says, “She’s looking to get on full with the judge soon as she’s sixteen. Their maid is close to seventy, opportunity opening up.”

  “And not work here at all?” Panic rockets through my veins. Sixteen is only a year away for Maisie.

  “You don’t think a woman can live off working harvest, do you? She got to look to her future.”

  The way he says it makes me feel selfish. But the orchard forever without Maisie is unimaginable.

  As he and I leave the barn with the pails clinking against one another (I can only carry four by the handle, but Mr. Stokes somehow manages eight), I think of Margo up in Jackson, fighting for civil rights. I can’t imagine Gran ever treating Mr. Stokes with the disrespect Margo says all colored people suffer in the South. I wonder if Mr. Stokes is secretly hating us white people, too scared to do anything else. I’d hate it if he felt that way.

  I’m sure Gran would consider the whole topic to be one of the things that must never be mentioned. So I’d better get at it before she gets here.

  “Mr. Stokes?”

  His gaze slides over to me without him turning his head. I’ve noticed he does this when he’s suspicious of what’s going to come next. “Yes, Miss Tallulah?”

  “Margo says your people . . . colored people . . . hate Mississippi.”

  “Mississippi my home, just like it’s yours.”

  I can tell by the look on his face he’s deliberately misunderstanding the meat of my question.

  “What about having things separate?” I ask. “Would you rather it be that everybody went wherever they pleased, sat wherever they pleased in the movie house, ate wherever they pleased, and rode the bus wherever they pleased?”

  Even though Gran and Mr. Stokes have lived in the same town and worked side by side all their lives, the only space they really share, the only place they can be open friends, is the orchard.

  “Who wouldn’t want to go wherever they pleased without worryin’ about getting throwed in jail or beat bloody?”

  He didn’t say it hateful, but I feel like a small person for even bringing it up. I stay quiet for a bit, thinking of how the Stokes family rope and the Neely family rope have spun out for a hundred years alongside each other. And I’ll bet Gran and Mr. Stokes know all the knots that come over the past sixty years in each other’s ropes.

  I know better than to sound like I’m prying, so I try fishing instead. “It’s nice hearing you and Gran talk about old times. There are probably a lot of stories I haven’t heard yet.”

  “I reckon so.”

  Of all the things Gran has danced sideways about in the past, one mystery sticks out.

  “Did you know Granddaddy James’s brother, George?”

  “How you know about George?”

  I’ve hit on something. “Oh,” I say casually. “Gran and I were looking at photo albums a while back and I saw his picture. Gran and I had a nice chat about him.”

  He gives me that sly look again. “You did, did you?”

  “Yes. She said Great-Grandmother James wasn’t very tolerant of him.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Everybody must have been worried when he left with no word.”

  He stops again and stares down at me hard enough to give me goose bumps. “Your granny tell you that?”

  “Well, not exactly. I just figured . . .”

  He starts walking again. “Hurry on up. Them berries ain’t gonna jump off the cane, you know.”

  I trot to catch up, knowing time’s getting short before Gran shows up. “I bet it made Granddad James especially sad, bein’ his only brother and all.”

  “Your Granddad had a blue streak in general. So I can’t say.”

  The back of my neck tingles. Neither Gran nor Dad has ever said Granddad was sad. But then, I don’t go around telling people about my dad’s hurricanes, either.

  “Is Dad like Granddad James?” I ask.

  “Those dark-haired James looks are strong in both your daddy and Griffin.”

  “I don’t mean in how they look. I mean in nature.”

  “Some.”

  “Like the blue streak?
The hurricanes?”

  He frowned and looked at me. “Hurricanes?”

  “Griff and I call it that when Dad is all energy and ideas, so full he can’t even sleep for it.”

  Mr. Stokes’s mouth gets tight. “These are questions for your granny.” He drops two pails onto the ground. “You start pickin’ here. I’ll start over yonder.”

  He leaves me standing there, wondering about Granddad’s and Dad’s natures. And then a horrible thought comes to me. If Granddad and Dad share a blue streak and hurricanes, what about Griff?

  I pray that’s not why he’s been so strange lately. I’d be able to tell, wouldn’t I?

  11

  Even before the church bells ring noon, we’re done picking blackberries and I’ve changed into my prized possession of the moment, a lemon-yellow-with-white-polka-dot spaghetti-strapped dress that Gran made from a Vogue pattern. I feel like a grown woman on the streets of Paris. Too bad my shoes don’t send the same high-fashion message. But at least they’re new, bright-white Keds.

  I’m feeling pretty sassy as I walk to town with my church-bazaar-bought straw purse clutched in my white-gloved hand. I even snuck some of Margo’s Picardy Peach lipstick and put a little tease in my hair and sprayed it with Aqua Net before adding a yellow clip-in bow. I’m enjoying myself so much, I almost forget I’m on a serious mission.

  The sun is hot, so I keep to the shady side of Eudora Avenue, passing the white picket fence and rose bushes in front of Judge Delmore’s house, wondering about Maisie working inside. That starts to drag my mood, so I shift to wondering if Paris also smells of roses right now, too.

  I hear the rumble of the car before I hear the wolf whistles and catcalls. I know every well-bred Southern girl is supposed to be offended, but I have to say it gives me a little rush of satisfaction. I finally feel like I’m shaking off my coltish, awkward in-between-ness. Gran says I shouldn’t be in a hurry to grow up. But I’ve always been grown up on the inside. It’s nice that the rest of me is catching up.