Summer
“You don’t talk much,” I said.
Samson smiled and kinda looked embarrassed. He held the umbrella in one hand and my cello case in the other.
We walked slow. We passed cars drivin’ careful as their wipers swept and their wheels sprayed an arc of the fall toward us.
Up close Samson had the pinkest lips I ever saw. He helped Bobby out, he was at St. Luke’s almost as much as me ’cept Samson had purer purpose. He tended the building like he does at school, and he looked at Bobby with somethin’ like awe in his eyes.
“Rainin’ cats and dogs,” I said, and he smiled again.
I led him the Beeson way so we could cut through to the Red. I liked watchin’ the Red when it was rainin’, seein’ it rise up like it’d burst.
Grace hadn’t felt right since Coralee Simmons got taken. The streets had an edge to them I can’t really explain, maybe like we were just waitin’ on our turn and glancin’ at each other and wonderin’ who it was gonna be. Daddy had a talk with us about not goin’ to church till the Bird was caught and I nodded like I was listenin’ but my mind was on Bobby. I sat out again and watched Savannah as she took that same route toward Hell’s Gate but there weren’t no way I was gonna follow her in there. I pictured her runnin’ the trails with a flashlight, her heart poundin’ out while she taunted the devil. That veneer so perfect she was desperate to crack it.
“You like to read, Sam?” I said.
“No one ever called me Sam,” he said, kinda smiling again. “I ain’t never really read a book.”
“I sit by the window and read and drink tea and Momma says she ain’t even sure I’m her daughter.”
We cut into the woods. The rain died with the trees holding it from us and I could hear the creaks and groans and the snaps under our feet.
“Is it hard being so white?” I said, and it sounded funny and Samson started laughin’.
“Sometimes it is . . . lookin’ like this.”
“I like it, your hair, it’s nice.”
He blushed.
We stood on the edge of the woods and watched the rain land and I told Samson how I wished it’d flood Grace. He made a joke about an ark and I thought of Noah, who’s a kid in my school and he’s on dialysis ’cause his body don’t work right. I wondered about evolution and independence, if people like the Bird were just angels in a different guise, sent down to dent the numbers and hold the fear. Two birds and one stone and a whole lot of ripples. God’s work can’t always be clean ’cause he knows better than anyone about the science of suffering. Lessons learned and forgot.
“How’s your daddy doin’?” I said.
“He don’t say much to me . . . I mean about his sickness, he don’t tell me. We have nurses stop by, but sometimes I have to help, lift him out the tub and all. He gets mad at me, he yells a lot.”
“Maybe ’cause he’s embarrassed.”
Samson nodded but I knew, everyone knew about the pastor. He was mean and crazy and folk were shit scared of him. He’d look at me like I was somethin’ bad, even though I was at the church more than the other kids.
“It’s good that you go to church, Summer. Most of the kids only go ’cause their parents drag ’em.”
“I always liked St. Luke’s. When I was small I’d stare at the colored glass, the pink that falls. It’s so pretty.”
“It’s nice talking to you, Summer.”
I smiled. “It’s decent of you to walk me back.”
I took my cello from him. It weren’t really mine but Savannah had a couple and said I could keep one so I could practice at home and school.
“Summer,” he said.
I turned.
“You’re nice. The other girls ain’t, but you’re nice.”
“You’re nice too, Sam.”
I felt him watchin’ me as I walked away.
*
I asked Momma to tie my hair up pretty. I walked the even mile to Bobby’s place just before sunset. I like that time, that perfect hour when orange day turns to blue night, when you glimpse the first lightnin’ bug and crickets drown the birds.
I played Debussy but felt far from innocent and far from naive. I reckon innocence is overrated, we’ve all fallen short, it’s what he expects and I weren’t gonna disappoint.
Savannah clapped once when I was done.
“What color is flaxen anyhow?” I said, layin’ the bow down.
“The same color as your hair,” Savannah said.
Sometimes she didn’t speak for the longest time. At first I thought it was some kinda test, like maybe I was supposed to hear somethin’ in the acres of silence.
“You want me to play it again?”
“No. Not yet.”
I looked over to the corner of the room. “What’s that?”
She followed my eye. “A lute.”
“Who busted the end?”
She smiled. “It’s supposed to be like that.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded.
“I think I saw one. Maybe it was in a painting, Orpheus or somethin’. That sound right?”
She cocked her head a little. “Yes, that sounds right. There’s a play I like, The Honest Whore . . . the heroine is a lutenist.”
“The Honest Whore, is it blue?”
She laughed. She’s got the kinda laugh that’s on reins, like laughin’ ’cause it’s needed but ain’t wanted.
“No, it’s not blue.”
“What’s it about?”
“A lady named Viola, she’s married to Candido. He’s mild-mannered, and it bothers Viola, so she comes up with ways to provoke him, to see his temper lost.”
“She wants to piss him off on purpose?”
“Yes, basically. It’s humorous.”
“How does she do it?”
“Various ways. She gets her brother to help.”
“Does it work?”
“Candido doesn’t lose his temper, but he ends up being incarcerated as people think he’s mad.”
“So she’s happy about that?”
“Devastated, actually.”
I looked at the lute again, at the polished wood and the golden strings and how much it said about Savannah and the distance between us.
“She wouldn’t have done that if she was married to my daddy. But maybe my uncle Tommy, ’cause he don’t care enough to get riled.”
Savannah laughed again, like she knew him and she knew us.
“Have you finished your paper yet?”
“You reckon the other kids won’t like me ’cause I’m a Grace girl?”
She reached forward and took my hand. “I think you’re strong, Summer.”
I kept glancin’ at the door.
“Bobby’s not home,” she said.
I got it then, that she knew somethin’. I was thinkin’ maybe she reckoned I had a crush on him, like all the girls in Grace did. That was all right if she thought that. Maybe she thought it was sweet, that I doted on the golden pastor, maybe I drew hearts in my schoolbooks and stuck his initials inside. Maybe I dreamed of marryin’ him, virgin in white walkin’ the aisle in St. Luke’s.
She cried then. It was so sudden I didn’t know what to do. So I sat there and watched, and then I told her I needed the bathroom and she told me she was sorry.
They had a grandfather clock as tall as me. It was dark wood and glass and ticked so loud I reckoned they could hear it from their bedroom.
Their bedroom. I pushed the door open, soft light and cream carpet, neat and ordered and glossy. I looked at the bed. They had five throw pillows on it. The sheets were cool, maybe silk or something like it.
I walked over to the dresser. I opened the middle drawer, smelled somethin’ floral and spiced. I pulled out one of her bras; it was lace and fancy and made me feel like a child.
There was a bottle of perfume. It was French and I took it and put it in my bag.
That night when I lay in bed I held it to my nose and closed my eyes. I reached down there and moved between lives.