The Myth of Perpetual Summer Page 9

  * * *

  After last period, I’m standing at my locker trying to pull out my science book without dumping the whole stack on the floor at my feet, when I hear Grayson Collie’s deep, troublemaking voice.

  If the start of my day was any indication of what’s about to come, this isn’t going to be good. A kid spit at me in the lunchroom, calling our family horrible things. I put on my best imitation of Gran—who believes well-bred Southern ladies must rise above and swallow our ugly words—and said, “Jesus says we must love all mankind.” That boy’s family is churchgoing, so how could he argue with that?

  He didn’t. But he did spit at me a second time as he walked away, this time actually hitting my loafer. I waited until I was in the bathroom stall to wipe it off.

  People at school are nastier to me than they are to Griff. He has a way of shucking off the shame and insults like dirty clothes. And now that he’s the star of Lamoyne Junior High’s football and baseball teams, everyone acts like they were never mean to him at all. Except for Grayson Collie. He’s so jealous of Griff’s elevated status, he goes double after him now—triple after me.

  I lean a little deeper into my locker and hold my breath until Grayson passes—it’s something I’ve always done, holding my breath until the bad moves on.

  The next thing I know, my locker door slams against the side of my head, shoving me sideways and clattering my brain between the door and the other side of the locker. Electrified spots glitter before my eyes.

  Before I can even turn around, I hear running feet and an angry growl.

  There is such a flurry of shouting and noise and movement behind me, I cringe deeper into my locker, my hands protecting either side of my head.

  When I don’t feel any blows, I slowly twist to look.

  The backs of Grayson’s toadies are disappearing down the hall and sliding around the corner.

  Griff and Grayson are on the floor, a tornado of grunts and fists and feet.

  I don’t know what to do. Griff isn’t quite as big as Grayson, but he’s all muscle and no fat. Still, I’ve never seen Griff hit anyone before, or even get in a yelling fight—he outtalks, outmaneuvers, and outsmarts instead. Grayson is a born fighter; his knuckles regularly sport the proud splits and bruises to prove it.

  I take a half step toward them, reaching out in a useless effort to break them up. Grayson’s foot catches me in the ankle and sends me falling against the lockers. Before I can get myself steadied to make another attempt to help Griff, he gets the upper hand and is wailing on Grayson so hard that I hear something that sounds like a bone crack. Whose, I don’t know.

  I look up and down the hallway, worried Griff’s going to get in trouble. Then I remember there’s a teachers’ meeting and everyone is on the other side of the building. For a shameful few seconds, I just stand there, liking the idea of Grayson Collie getting what’s coming to him.

  That’s when I realize Grayson’s pretty much stopped fighting back.

  “Griff! Griff, stop!”

  He keeps punching.

  Grabbing a handful of his shirt, I tug, but it’s like trying to move a tree.

  Finally, I get a hold of his ear and give a sharp tug. “Stop!”

  When he looks up at me, he doesn’t look like Griff at all. His eyes are so wild they scare me. Blood is running from his eyebrow into his left eye. His bottom lip is split.

  My hand settles on his shoulder, gentling as I would a wounded animal. “Let’s go before someone comes.”

  That seems to clear his head. He stands, chest heaving. He looks down at Grayson, who has rolled over on his side, clutching his ribs and spitting blood onto the polished floor. “Leave my sister the hell alone.”

  I’m tugging on Griff’s arm as I kick my locker closed behind me—my science book long forgotten. “Come on!”

  As we hurry out of the school, I ask, “What if he tells?”

  “He won’t.”

  “He might.”

  “Then he’ll have to tell why we got in a fight in the first place.” Griff wipes the blood from his eye and swipes his hand on his dungarees.

  I don’t say anything, but I’m not so sure.

  * * *

  We’re about four blocks from school, and I’m just getting the jitters out of my stomach.

  “I need your help,” I say.

  “I just helped you.” His left eye is turning purple. Most of the blood from his face is now smeared on the tail of his plaid shirt.

  “No, you didn’t! You think Grayson’s going to leave me alone now? You’re crazy. He’s going to be worse.”

  Griff steps close to me and looks down. “If he bothers you again . . .” He doesn’t finish, but his bruised hands ball into fists.

  “Dad says we need to use our brains, not stoop to meet an ignoramus on his level.”

  “Easy for him to say. He doesn’t have to put up with all the bullshit we do.”

  I think of the disapproving way people sometimes look at Dad lately. “You don’t know that.”

  Griff grits his teeth. “I can’t wait to get out of this stinkin’ town.”

  My heart gives a scared jerk, and my hands and feet shoot with tingles. “You won’t leave me, will you?”

  Griff sighs. “What do you want, Lulie? I’ve got someplace to be.”

  It’s Friday, so there’s no baseball practice.

  “You hustling again?”

  Last month Chief Collie brought him home for hustling pool at the roadhouse outside of town. “You know Daddy said he’d tan your hide if you ever did anything like that again.” Which was almost as startling as Griff being brought home by the police chief; Daddy has never spanked any of us. He makes us explain ourselves and our “logic,” then he talks and talks and talks and talks until you want to scream just to get him to stop.

  “How about you mind your own business?” he says.

  “If I’m your business, then you’re mine.”

  “What do you want?”

  I explain my Mother’s Day plan—but I leave out the part about convincing Margo not to carry on the fight for the Negroes. Griff gave up on trying to change Margo’s mind about anything a long time ago. Lately, he’s taken to treating her like she’s invisible, even when she is home.

  “I need you to take me out in Gran’s boat to get the mayhaws for the jelly,” I say.

  I get excited all over again. I’ll give the whole batch, half to Margo, half to Gran, at our Mother’s Day crawfish boil. Then I’ll get Margo to promise to stay home. I keep telling myself it’s just to keep her safe. But sometimes in the dark of night I get a hollow in a place that Gran, no matter how she tries, can’t fill. If I can show Margo how much I need her, maybe she’ll not only stay home but she’ll also actually start seeing me.

  Griff says, “Getting Gran more work to do doesn’t sound like much of a present.”

  “I’m making the jelly. I already have the stuff at home. I just need you to help me with the boat.”

  “Can’t.” He turns the corner and walks off.

  I’m worried. First the fight. And now just leaving me standing here with no way to get my mayhaws and no explanation why. He used to try to bamboozle me, make up innocent-sounding stories, trick me with niceness.

  I stare after him, mad as a poked gator.

  I’m only supposed to take the boat out with Griff (Gran’s strict rule), and I don’t have much time. She went up to Pelahatchie to visit a cousin, and I have to get the boat back before she gets home on the seven o’clock bus.

  Well, I’ve watched Griff enough to know how to start the boat and drive it. That little motor barely moves as fast as a turtle. How dangerous can it be?

  7

  It’s near four o’clock when I walk up to Gran’s weather-beaten house. The branches of ancient live oaks in the front yard are thick, some twisted so low their elbows rest on the ground. Their shade makes for a sparse and patchy lawn. I notice that one of the upstairs window shutters is sagging out of square
and the balcony over the front porch is drooping at one end. For a moment, I can see what people who don’t love her see, a place ruined by time and bad luck.

  I shake off such disrespectful thoughts and go around the house, through a lopsided arch heavy with peach-colored roses, past the covered-up well, to the shed near the river. The shed’s as old as the house and in even worse shape. The whitewash has long turned a ghostly shade of gray. The hasp and hinges on the door are furred with rust. It’s filled with cobwebs—probably home to a couple of snakes and river rats, too. I’m pretty brave when it comes to creepy things, but spiders make me cry silent, horrified tears.

  The hasp is stuck, so I hit it with a rock a couple of times to loosen it. A little breeze kicks up, the heavy kind that tells you it’s coming up a storm. I hurry, yanking the door from its swollen jamb. The hinges let out a noise like a screech owl. As soon as I get the door open, a dark shape swoops out straight at my head. I duck fast, a squeal squeezing past my lips.

  A bat. I feel silly. And yet I still run a hand through my hair just to make sure it didn’t land to set up housekeeping.

  Once my heart settles, I wait a moment, in case any of its bat friends want to make for freedom. Peering in, the only break in the dark are a few lines of weak light sneaking through some cracks between the shrunken planks; no way to see webs or their makers. I take a second and find a stick in the yard. As my feet edge into the shed, feeling their way along the hard-packed dirt floor, I wave the stick around in front of me, a magic wand to clear out spiders and their traps.

  Three steps in, I pause to let my eyes adjust. Unlike the tidy house, the shed is disorganized, the floor covered with piles and strays so you have to step carefully. A heavy-handed wind slams the door closed behind me. I can’t see to move. I swear I can feel spiders crawling all over me. I squirm, bat wildly around my head and swipe my hands across my arms and shoulders. I hear a high-pitched whine, and it takes me a second to realize it’s coming from deep in my own throat.

  “Stop it,” I whisper. “Just. Stop.”

  I stretch my arm out behind me. My palm touches the door and I push. Outside, I grab a big rock and jam it under the door. I tell myself the ruckus I just made sent all the spiders into hiding and walk boldly back inside. It takes me a minute to find the tadpole net we use to scoop the mayhaws off the water. Then I gather the galvanized buckets and pick up the gas can. Light. I shake it. Not even a slosh. I hope there’s gas in the motor’s tank.

  Just as I’m walking back out, I spy Granddad’s rubber chest-waders hanging on a hook. Leaning over a broken Adirondack chair, I reach for them. The waders are so heavy I almost fall onto the chair when I pull them from the nail.

  Finally, I get out on the dock with my equipment. The bottom of the boat is full of water.

  First Griff’s fight. Then him abandoning me to do this alone. The stuck door. That bat. The weather. No gas in the can. Now the boat full of water. Gran always says when obstacles keep landing in your way, it’s God telling you you’re on the wrong road.

  I stand there for a minute, deciding. Then I drop the net, bucket, and waders down into the boat. I run my purse, shoes, and socks back up to the house and leave them just inside the kitchen door, pulling Griff’s arrowhead from my purse. Slipping it into the pocket of my wraparound skirt, I run my fingers over its reassuring dips and points.

  The first couple of times Griff asked for his arrowhead back, I came up with excuses to keep it; an upcoming test, the spelling bee, warding off a hurricane, anything in which luck might play a role. Finally, he stopped asking. I figure he’s either grown out of needing a lucky charm or just reckons I need it more. And I do—to start this cranky boat motor.

  Using an old rusty coffee can we keep in the boat, I bail out as much water as I can. Then I unscrew the gas cap on the faded green Evinrude motor and look into the hole (a really smart girl would have looked before she bothered to bail). I rock the boat a little to tell where the gas level is. Not full, but I figure it’s plenty.

  I’m sweaty from the bailing. The breeze feels good and will help keep the mosquitoes from swarming, which will make it worth getting wet from a little rain.

  Now the last hurdle, that motor. I go through the steps I’ve seen Griff do hundreds of times.

  Turn on the choke. Check.

  Pump the blub to prime the motor. Check. I give an extra squeeze just to be sure.

  I grab the rubber T handle and give a yank. The T jerks free from my hands, stinging my fingers. I lose my balance and fall backward. I brace for the shock of water, but my shoulder hits the dock, launching me back into the boat. I bounce off the plank seat and onto the wet bottom, landing on my backside with a little sploosh. I shake off the sting in my hands and wait for the boat to stop rocking.

  It always looks so easy when Griff does it.

  I get back to my feet, placing them wide on the bottom of the boat. I grab the cord handle with a better grip. Concentrating on keeping my balance, I pull again.

  The motor just gasps a couple of times before it dies.

  I feel the time ticking away.

  Two pulls and the motor catches. Blue smoke comes out. Then it sounds like it’s going to die again.

  The choke!

  I flip the little metal lever. Once the choke is off, the motor runs nice and smooth. I take a moment to be proud of myself.

  Unhooking the rope from the cleat on the dock, I push off and head upriver toward the mayhaw grove.

  Who needs a brother anyhow?

  Just thinking about Griff gets me worked up. We’ve always been like biscuits and honey, one of us never really right without the other. Even when he and Tommy occasionally exclude me, I don’t feel left out. But lately he doesn’t even tell Tommy what he’s up to. I think about talking to Daddy about it, but that feels perfidious (Daddy’s vocabulary words are getting more and more obscure).

  As I watch the water ripple past, I think about Sunday and my stomach gets fluttery. This will be the best Mother’s Day ever. Much better than last year, when Daddy was deep in his shadow time and Margo stayed home from the crawfish boil just to spite Gran because they were arguing over what to do about Daddy’s shadow time. Margo was sick of it and said he needed doctoring. Gran said he needed a wife who supported him and, given time, he’d come around like he always did. Gran was right about that last part, at least.

  This year, even with the Negro argument wedged tight between them, Gran and Margo are able to be in the same room without sighs and huffing and nasty looks (apparently Gran’s rule that ladies never show unpleasantness applies only to words). I’m beginning to think all that word stifling might make things fester. Margo is never bothered by festering words. I wonder if that might be the one thing about her that I should try to take after. Heaven knows there isn’t anything else in her I want inside me.

  The second I have that thought, I’m breathless and heated by shame. There are plenty of things in Margo that are admirable. Her sense of justice for the underdog. Her commitment to making the world better. Big, significant things.

  Even as I try to convince myself those things are more important than making dinner and tucking kids into bed, I’m shocked by how resentful I feel.

  Griff treating Margo the way he does, like she’s no more than a stranger in the room, begins to make sense. What if next year I stop noticing Margo?

  Mother’s Day might be my last chance to tie our family back together before it flies apart completely. If I can make Margo see how her being gone leaves a hole nobody else can fill, if this weekend will help keep Daddy in his shiny time, if I can convince Griff to give Margo another chance, then maybe, maybe it’s not too late.

  * * *

  Moving against the current of the spring-swollen river, it’s taking longer than I remember to reach the mayhaw grove. Off in the west, the clouds are getting darker. The air has turned still and heavy, which tells me the storm a’coming is going to be bad. Even if I turn around now, I could still get c
aught out. And if I don’t get the mayhaws today, the clouds might dump enough rain that most of them could be swept away.

  It’s hard to tell exactly where I am; the river isn’t familiar to me like the roads. Not much changes in the thick green woods from mile to mile. I heard a bobcat a while back, its creepy cry reminding me how alone I am and how far from people. It also reminds me how many sizable wild critters live out here, every one of them used to making themselves invisible as they’re on the hunt. I take comfort in being in the middle of the river away from bobcats (not that they do anything to people but give them goose bumps), and bears and boars (both of which are considerably dangerous to a fourteen-year-old girl without a brother or a shotgun). Of course, being in midriver doesn’t help with gators and snakes. I keep a keen eye for floating logs—the kind with two protruding eyes.

  Over on the left bank, I finally see something that tells me I’m almost there. A hunting cottage perched on thick piles. It’s not like the splintery little shacks folks around here use to hunt and fish. Gran said this one must belong to someone from up north with more money than sense; nobody needs a fine place like this, painted white with a deep wraparound screened porch to use for a few days once or twice a year. It even has a little cleaning and gutting shed near the water. Gran bets they’re the kind of city people who just shoot and catch, then pay someone to deal with the messy work. A small, yet expensive boat is tied up to a fine dock and covered with a fitted canvas tarp. It’s even named Crescent City Queen. How fancy.

  I set my sights on the right bank, looking for the place where the ground gets so low that the river oozes into the woods. A big push of wind sweeps from the west, rippling the water and shaking the leaves overhead. I catch myself leaning forward, as if that will make the boat move faster. I will the storm to take its time as the grumbling sky argues for a faster arrival.

  Finally, the right-side riverbank swings away. I guide the boat over to the wide shallows. The water near the edge is dotted with yellow and red floating mayhaws. I cut the motor and pick up the net as I coast into the tiny bobbing fruit. A gritty scraping tells me the boat has grounded. I realize I’m on a sandbar dumped by the sluggish creek that winds from the soggy woods.