The Myth of Perpetual Summer Page 4

  I keep thinking of each of our lives as a long rope with different knots in it. There were a lot of knots in Daddy’s rope before any of us kids were born, so I can’t say for sure that he doesn’t think his life got ruined like Griff said. Ruined! Such a horrible word. And Daddy says words are the weapons of great men, so he always chooses them carefully, even when he and Margo are fighting.

  Gran says I stole my curiosity from one of the barn cats. But I just want people to be honest, like she says I must be. She’s usually happy to answer my questions, probably so I don’t go asking anybody else about things that must never be mentioned. So I decide to go to her house after school to find out more about Daddy’s life getting ruined. Because, if it’s true, maybe Griff needs to be worried about getting stuck on the farm and being a professor. After all, he’s eleven already.

  After the dismissal bell, Griff and Tommy are waiting for me at the stairs that lead down to the front doors. Lamoyne Elementary looks like it belongs in a horror movie with bats flying around the bell tower. The other side of town, where the lawyers and doctors live, just got a fancy new school, long and low and modern. Gran says we should be glad we don’t go to the new William Faulkner Elementary because our school is rich with history and tradition. It’s also got grooves worn in the wooden steps, soot from the coal furnace, and mice bothering the cloakroom, but I reckon that’s all part of the tradition.

  “C’mon, Lulie! Tommy got a new puppy,” Griff says. “His name’s Buster.”

  Most times Tommy and Griff let me tag along on whatever they’re doing—unless it’s shooting BB guns or digging through the city dump for stuff they can use to build go-carts and inventions and the like.

  “I’m gonna go check on Gran,” I say. “I’ll meet the puppy tomorrow.”

  Griff eyes me for a minute, looking to see if I’m hiding something from him, even though he knows neither of us keeps secrets from the other. Then he shrugs. He and Tommy take off at a run as soon as we’re out the door.

  It’s warmed up real nice for February. I’m checking the bare trees for the first spring buds as I walk around the corner of the school building. As I clear the corner, I’m just about knocked off my feet. My lunch box and my booklet of spelling bee words fall to the grass-bare ground.

  “Watch where you’re going!” Grayson Collie says, and gives me an extra shove.

  I take two steps backward to keep from falling.

  I want to say something sassy, something that’ll make him feel as bad as he tries to make other people feel; maybe something about the way his second teeth overlap his crooked front ones, or the way he picks his nose all the time.

  I don’t, though, just like I don’t dare bend over to pick up my stuff. I learned the hard way not to turn my back on Grayson. He’s big for a sixth grader because he was held back in fourth grade (supposedly because he missed so much school on account of having pneumonia, but everyone knows if brains were leather, Grayson wouldn’t have enough to saddle a june bug).

  “Where’s your retard brother?” he says, looking around. Grayson mostly picks on coloreds but makes an exception for me and Griff. He’s easier on me when Griff’s around. Griff fights back.

  No one can see us where we stand. My heart hammers while I make up my mind if I should run. Can I make it to the street before he catches me?

  He takes a step closer.

  I squeeze my eyes closed. I hear crumpling metal, then his laughter and his cloddy feet running off.

  I open my eyes. My lunch box has a foot-shaped dent in the top.

  I collected Coke bottles along the sides of the roads for a whole summer to get that Sky King lunch box. I’m mad enough to run after him. Luckily, my brain kicks in before I do. All I’d end up with is something else broken.

  Last summer Maisie told me a colored boy’s arm ended up in a cast just because he didn’t get off the sidewalk fast enough when Grayson and his toadies came along. But even if that kid had been white, Grayson still wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. Blame never sticks to him, on account of his daddy being the police chief.

  Once I’m sure he’s not coming back, I pick up my spelling bee booklet and brush off the dirt. I leave the lunch box right where it is and head toward Eudora Avenue. If I take it home, I’ll have to explain how it got ruined. If I do that, Griff will look for a way to get back at Grayson. And Chief Collie has a particular dislike for Griff for some reason. I’d rather carry a brown paper bag for the rest of my life than have Griff do something that will get him in trouble with the chief.

  Eudora Avenue is the prettiest street in the whole of Lamoyne. It’s lined with giant arching trees and has big grassy islands with flowering bushes and fancy lampposts. It’s even pretty when everything is winter-bare. All of the best stores are on it, including our one hotel, Mr. Hayes’s drugstore, Potter’s Hardware, and the Southern Belle Dress Shop. As I pass Bertram’s Candy it smells like warm butter and sugar (Gran says Bertram Beecher uses a fan to lure in customers). If I had a dime, I’d go in and buy a piece of fudge, but I tell myself the smell is almost as good as tasting it.

  Down past Bertram’s is the fancy building that used to be First Planters Bank. We don’t pass this building without hearing one of Gran’s stories. Granny’s Great-Granddaddy Neely gave it life years before the War between the States, her granddaddy used it to save our town during Reconstruction, and her daddy rode it to its death in the Depression. My favorite story is about the time her granddaddy took down a robber with a pistol all by himself, saving his depositors from losing their fortunes.

  Now there aren’t any more Neelys, not since Granny became a James.

  In the next block is the big Western Auto where my bicycle lives. I step into the shade of the deep V-shaped alcove that leads to the front doors and there, in the display window between the car tires and rifle racks, sits Sadie (I’ve already named her), the most beautiful red bicycle I’ve ever seen. I’m bumping my knees on the handlebars on the one I’m riding now, a hand-me-down from Tommy Murray’s older sister. I know a new sixty-dollar bicycle isn’t likely in my future, but a girl can dream.

  As I’m standing there, admiring the two-tone seat, the shiny wire basket over the headlight, and the rack over the rear fender, there’s a ruckus on the street behind me. A car horn honking over and over, short and long blasts. Underneath that, voices are singing loud.

  I step back onto the sidewalk—along with a lot of other people stopped in their tracks and drawn out of stores. On the other side of Eudora Avenue, a car is weaving too close to the parked cars on one side, then to the island on the other.

  It’s our car! Daddy’s driving. And singing! I’m so happy to see him smile, my heart floats a little lighter. There are at least eight people in the car with him, students by the look of them, packed so tight that body parts are sticking out the rolled-down windows.

  I hear a man behind me. “I knew it. I just knew it. That damn Drayton is just like his uncle George—a James through and through.”

  A little shiver runs down my back. I hold still, hoping they don’t notice me.

  “Bad blood, I say,” an older voice says. “Only a matter of time. Wonder what ever become of that crazy George?”

  “Ain’t no great mystery far as I’m concerned. Looks like Drayton got hisself the short end of the James family stick—”

  I spin around. They’re in the door of the Western Auto. “At least my daddy is an educated man and uses proper English!”

  Both men look as surprised as if I’d sprung up out of the sidewalk like a fast-growing weed.

  The older one pokes his gnarly cane in my direction. “You watch it when talkin’ to your elders, young ’un.” He looks old enough to have fought in the War between the States, like a shrunk-up apple with white scraggly hair sprouting all around his head and out his ears. Too bad the Yankees didn’t get him.

  “C’mon, Vesper. Leave the child be.” It’s another voice. I look past the hateful old men and see Mr. Hayes standing i
n the door with a shiny galvanized bucket in his hands. His brown eyes are kind as ever. “She’s got enough troubles, and I need to pay for this and get back to work.”

  I hold my tongue because I don’t want to sass in front of Mr. Hayes. He’s always nice to us and sometimes gives me and Griff free penny candy.

  All three of them go back into the store. And by the time I turn to the street, the horn is blocks away. I duck my head against the stares of people in the street and hurry on, buzzing mad, and not just at the old cooter. Margo gives people enough to talk about in this town. Even if he was having fun, Daddy was driving reckless. And Granny wouldn’t like it. She says a man in Daddy’s position should behave dignified and scholarly.

  As I chug along, fuming like a locomotive, those men’s words rattle around in my head. Why’d they call Uncle George crazy? And what were they talking about, bad blood?

  Now I have more questions for Gran.

  * * *

  Granny lives on the opposite side of town from us. I walk the dirt lane that runs through the tunnel of tree branches and ends at her saggy front steps. Hawthorn House backs up to the river and is big and old and kind of rickety, but Granny tells how it used to be when she was a child, polished and grand. Now, the wind whistles through the gaps around the front door that has cracked and peeled and been repainted so many times it looks like gator hide. Daddy is always offering to replace it, but Granny won’t hear of it. She says the worn-out-ness of it reminds her of “family come before.” Everything about this house honors the Neely family. I think she loves this house even more than the house on Pearl River Plantation, where she went to live with Granddad as “a young James bride.” We live in that one-story clapboard house now; the pecan orchard and professoring at Wickham are Daddy’s birthright.

  Even though she lives here, Granny still organizes the orchard work, because Margo isn’t much for what Daddy calls “agrarian pursuits.” Each of us kids has a job—even the four-year-old twins, not that they’re good at them. Gran says it doesn’t matter, that it’s the principle of learning responsibility. Walden takes his work seriously, like he does everything. Last fall, when he was supposed to be picking up stray pecans that missed the collection wagon, we found him up on the roof of one of the orchard sheds because he saw some up there. He’s like that: he’ll do anything to make the people around him happy. Dharma, on the other hand, pretty much ignores her chores no matter how fun we try to make them look. Gran says Dharma will come around. But I think Dharma is like Margo: not very interested in pecans.

  As I come through the front door, I hear the ticktock of the grandfather clock standing under the stairs in the hallway. Gran’s newspapers are on the little table next to the front door, the daily crosswords pulled out into a special pile but unmarked. I’ve never seen the crosswords back up for more than a day. A nervous flutter goes through my stomach.

  I check the kitchen. The sink is filled with evidence of sick food—dirty china teacups and saucers with toast crumbs.

  “Gran?” I head up the stairs. I hear her radio playing softly in her bedroom. “Granny, it’s me.”

  “In here, sugar.” Her voice is croaky.

  Her room smells of Vicks VapoRub. She’s pushing herself up in bed, her flannel nightgown buttoned to her neck. President Eisenhower is talking on the radio about the new Cuban government and that dirty communist, Fi-del Castro.

  She glances out the window. “What time is it? Drayton hasn’t come already, has he?”

  “No, ma’am,” I say. “I walked here on my own after school.”

  “It’s too cold to be traipsing all the way out here.”

  “It’s warm today.”

  “Well, you can just stay here until your father stops on his way home. I won’t have you walking around alone after it starts to get dark, young lady.”

  I stop myself before I say that Daddy and Margo don’t mind if we’re out after dark as long as we use our noggins. Griff told me to stop being so honest with Gran about everything, it just makes her worry and usually sets off a fight between her and Margo.

  “That’s what I planned,” I say, but I think Daddy might not show up today. I wonder if Margo made him so sad that maybe he’d had a nip. He keeps a bottle of bourbon in his desk drawer for a “little pick-me-up” when he’s feeling particularly tired and low. If he did, I think maybe he had too much.

  “Could you please turn off the radio?” Gran asks. “So much worry in the world. And bring me some aspirin, will you?”

  I take care of President Eisenhower and Mr. Castro, then go to the bathroom and get fresh water and two aspirin. After she takes them, I fluff her pillows so she can sit up and visit more easily.

  “Do you want to play cards?” I ask. Granny is a stickler for manners. I can’t just hop into my questions.

  “You’re so thoughtful, Tallulah, but I don’t feel up to cards today.”

  My stomach flutters again. Stacked-up crosswords. No cards. She must be sicker than I thought. I sit in the upholstered chair, thinking about those men at the Western Auto and eyeing the bottom shelf of her night table where the old black photo albums sit.

  It just now comes funny to me that Gran is always talking about family and traditions but never Uncle George. Only that he left Lamoyne a long time ago.

  “Uncle George was firstborn, right?”

  She sits up a little straighter and gets a cloudy look on her face. “Why on earth are you bringing up George?”

  I tell her how the men at the Western Auto said something about bad blood and Uncle George. I don’t tell her why they were talking about the Jameses in the first place.

  Gran’s lips press together, like she does when she’s perturbed. “You shouldn’t be hanging around Western Auto, but yes, George was older than your Granddad.” But she doesn’t start off on a long story about the funny things George did as a boy, his accomplishments, and how he fits in our family like she does about everyone else.

  “Is he dead?” I ask.

  “Why would you ask that?” Her voice cracks from her cold.

  “Well, you said, he was older. Like he’s dead.”

  “Oh, I suppose I said that because he’s been gone for so long.”

  “So? Did he and Granddad have bad blood like those men said? Is that why he left?”

  She looks like she’s parsing her words, finally she says, “There’s another meaning—” She stops. “You need to stop listening to gossip. It’s rude and unladylike.”

  “But why—”

  “Hush now,” she interrupts. “No good ever comes of listening to rumors.” She lowers her chin and gives me that look, the one that both shames me and makes me feel like I’m special.

  I want to ask how I’m supposed to tell if something’s a rumor if I don’t know what really happened, but not after that look. Instead, I reach down and pick up the photo album with James written on the cover in spidery white script. “Can we look at pictures of Granddad and the old Jameses?” Maybe I’ll see a picture of Uncle George and see if he looks like a crazy loudmouth.

  “Of course. Hop up here.” As she makes room for me to sit beside her, she starts coughing. I pat her on the back until it passes, then hand her a tissue to blot the tears the coughs squeezed from her eyes.

  I open the album to the first page. There’s a thick, yellowed picture of about twenty people standing in front of the wide steps up to the porch of our house at Pearl River Plantation. It’s less warped and worn than it is today, but still not what most Yankees think of when you say plantation house. No Tara for sure. Sitting on a half-raised basement that used to be the kitchen, it doesn’t even have a second story, let alone a “grand staircase.” Nowadays people would just call it a farmhouse and avoid the confusion. But there’s the James family tradition, so it stays a plantation.

  “That’s the extended James family. This is your Great-Granddad James.” She places a red fingernail on a whiskered man standing behind a woman in a chair. “Your Granddad is on his
momma’s knee.”

  “Why is he wearing a dress?”

  “That’s the way they dressed babies back then. More comfortable and easier to change diapers.”

  I look at her, trying to figure out if she’s just making that up so I won’t think Granddad was a sissy.

  “So, which one is Uncle George?”

  “There, up on the porch with his arm wrapped around the post.”

  He looks to be around the twins’ age. I wonder why he wasn’t with the rest of the kids down front. It’s hard to see his face with him so small and shaded by the porch.

  “So if George is older, why didn’t he get the orchard and become a professor instead of Granddad?” Even I know it’s the firstborn son who’s supposed to get all the stuff—even when you’re not living in a castle.

  For a minute, Gran just sits there. Then she finally says, “Let’s just say George wasn’t well suited to either one.”

  “What does that mean?” Crazy George.

  “He wasn’t”—she paused—“an intellectual like your grandfather. And as for Pearl River Plantation, well, he was just too . . . scattered. And he didn’t have a good wife like me to do the organizing.” She winked.

  “So where’d he go and what did he do?”

  Her eyes cloud, and she looks like she’s taking a walk in the past. Finally, she says, “One day, he left without so much as a goodbye. Like I said, he was . . . undependable.”

  “He left, so Granddad had to be the professor? And you both had to take over Pearl River Plantation?”

  “Your grandfather didn’t have to. He wanted to.”

  “But the legacy. Somebody had to be the professor. And then Granddad James died and Daddy had to be a professor instead of climbing mountains or guiding African safaris.”