Summer
Briar girl number one was Della Palmer. Della was sixteen and lived in Standing Oak, which is an hour from Grace. Della’s momma is Peach, Peach Palmer, and she’s the kinda lady that lets men fuck her if they can scrape together fifty bucks, ’cause she’s got a drug problem to pay for and Della’s daddy walked out before she was born.
We heard about Della on the local news. We were eatin’ supper and watching Melrose when she flashed up missin’ and Momma said Standing Oak girls are trouble so that was that. No one thought she was taken ’cause no one believed Della was decent. Even though she went regular to the West End Mission and she made good grades and didn’t get in shit at school.
Della was walkin’ home from church on a Sunday mornin’ and she cut down Willowbrook Drive; the cops know this ’cause she walked part of the way with the Lewis family. That was the last time anyone saw Della. According to the Briar County News there weren’t no tire tracks and nobody saw nothin’. There ain’t many houses on Willowbrook and the folk that live there ain’t the type that’ll spill to cops. They chalked it that she’d run ’cause that was easiest. Maybe she had a boyfriend that drove a Chevy ’cause one of Peach’s neighbors saw it stop by late a couple times. Peach couldn’t say if it was a john ’cause she was too strung out to notice much of anything back then.
Later, once they finally got that Della was the first and not just another runaway, I saw Peach again. This time there were shots of her at the Briar County Sheriff ’s Office, sittin’ by Sheriff Ernie Redell as he made a plea to the camera. When he said Della’s name Peach got up and stood and looked around like she didn’t know where she was. And then she dropped her head and cried into her hands.
*
“Do you have any friends, Summer?” Bobby said.
“You,” I said.
“Friends your own age.”
“No.”
“How come?”
“I’m odd, they’re even.”
He smiled. “What are you reading?”
I glanced at my book. “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.”
“I liked Francie.”
“Those immigrants,” I said. “They reckoned education was all it took to rise up and find a place, like that was the key to the kingdom, like it was that simple. Why do people want to fit so bad? Don’t matter where, they just need a place.”
His sleeves were rolled back. He’s got the kinda eyes where you ain’t never sure what’s goin’ on behind them. He’s sad sometimes. When he thinks no one is watchin’ he looks real sad.
“Education is important.”
He said it flat so I laughed.
“Raine’s in trouble again,” I said.
“How come?”
“ ’Cause she don’t fit. She’s not smart enough to keep her head down . . . ’cause it ain’t forever. The real world, it’s comin’ for us.”
“And you?”
“I’m smart enough to know better. I do what I need to do but I can see it for what it is—a means to an end. I see them. They tell lies like that’s the right thing to do.”
“What kinda lies?”
“They say be all you can be. They tell tales about makin’ a difference in a world where difference ain’t exactly tolerated.”
He stretched his legs out and looked at me. It was hot and his collar was loose. Sometimes it was too quiet in St. Luke’s so I’d stamp my foot down and make an echo.
“What should they be tellin’ you?”
“Keep low and let life run steady through your fingers while you plan for the ever after. That’d be one kinda truth. Raine . . . they know she’s cutting but they don’t even call the house. It’s like they’ve given up or somethin’. She ain’t ready.”
“For what?” he said.
“Life. Momma reckons it’s comin’. I know she’s expectin’ Raine to just take off one day, leave a note or somethin’. Maybe she’ll get pregnant, take that route to nowhere.”
“She’s just struggling to find her way.”
I set my book down and turned to face him. “What does that even mean? Her way to where exactly? To the other side?”
He shrugged. “That makes life nothin’ more than a test.”
“I guess that’s why Momma worries so much, ’cause she believes.”
“It’s hard not to in a town like Grace,” he said.
“If there ain’t nothin’ to this life then it’s a wonder more kids ain’t reaching for guns and swallowing the barrel. Actually, that might’ve been a viable shortcut, but the church has got that base covered. Purgatory—the holdin’ cell between life and eternal life. God’s own drunk tank, where sinners sober up to the horrors of a life without sin.”
He laughed.
“Don’t anyone go to hell no more? I think about murderers and rapists repenting at the gates, tossing a Hail Mary toward the light, eyes wide when it lands. And it always lands.”
“It seems that way.”
“If that’s all there is to this, an eighty-year dry run, then surely now is the time to make mistakes, to let loose and do whatever you want, to get it outta your system.”
“That’s somethin’ to take comfort in at least.”
“However much of a mess you’ve made, whatever you’ve done wrong or whatever wrong’s been done to you, just take a breath and dust yourself off. You’re just practicing. You’ll nail it on the next try.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Shit. When you think about it that way it’s no wonder religion is big business. You’d have to be crazy not to believe.”