SEPTEMBER 1972
I fell into a rhythm of school, homework, church, and piano practice, and the carefree nature of summer ended. Jesse had her plate full with Daisy Grace and school. I helped as much as I could but she seemed exhausted by the weekends. Dickie threw himself into whatever was in front of him—school and sports, but when we were together, he was either looking for flying saucers and the Mothman or following the exploits of Evel Knievel, riding his bike up embankments and thinking up jumps.
“It’s all about the speed,” he said one day as we rode through town. “It doesn’t matter what you put under him, a tank full of rattlesnakes or a line of cars—if you’ve got the speed and the right incline, you can jump anything.”
Jesse rode with Daisy in the back, the girl’s chubby cheeks jiggling with each pothole. With all the pain she’d been through trying to keep her big secret, riding with Dickie felt like a respite. But Dickie was going through his own changes, and we could see subtle differences in his moods. He would get quiet suddenly or get angry at something Jesse called “piddly.” Things boiled over on us that day.
“People who have to jump things are trying to prove something to somebody,” Jesse said.
“How you figure that?” Dickie said, an edge to his voice. “He gets paid a lot. I’d rather jump school buses once a month than go to work every day and sell insurance or work at the glass factory.”
“There’s going to come a day when he gets killed and everybody’s going to be sad—”
“He’ll never be killed. He’ll always make those jumps because he plans it.”
“People don’t watch to see if he makes it. They watch because he might not.”
“Exactly. And he’s got the broken bones to prove it. That guy has courage.”
“It don’t take courage to jump a motorcycle over stuff when they’re paying you. Courage is something different.”
Dickie put on his brakes and swung his bike around. “So you don’t think Evel has courage?”
“I think he’s a daredevil who doesn’t want to make a living like the rest of us.”
“He’s a showman,” I said. “He takes chances in front of others like the guy who sticks his head in a lion’s mouth at the circus. But his risks are calculated. He knows how fast he has to go to hit the jump and land on the other side. It’s math and physics. The only question is whether he can pull it off.”
Dickie looked at me like I had two heads. “So you two think there’s nothing to it? Why don’t we make a jump and see if it’s so all-fired easy?”
“I didn’t say it was easy,” I said. “I just said it was calculated—”
“Fine,” Jesse said. “What do you want us to jump? The reservoir?”
Dickie cursed. “You two couldn’t jump a mud puddle.”
Jesse stood her ground. “Come on. Whatever you jump, I’ll jump.”
“On that thing?” Dickie said. “It’s too heavy.”
“It’s like Matt says: it’s just speed and physical.”
“Physics,” I corrected.
“Whatever. Pick something. I’ll jump it.”
Dickie thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. “I got it. The creek in front of Matt’s house. There’s a wide place just down from the curve in the road. I can set up a ramp right now.”
“You’re on,” Jesse said.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “You two are going to break your necks.”
Dickie took us to his house and rummaged through the garage. He came up with a wide plank of wood that was long enough for a ramp. He carried it under his arm and rode to my house, and we searched the barn. Dickie found two cinder blocks and chose the spot where the creek was widest. There was a telephone pole nearby, and as Dickie began to construct the ramp, I had a sinking feeling he might crash into it.
“I think you ought to start with something smaller,” I said. “You know, just to get in the rhythm.”
Dickie shook his head in disgust, but I could tell he was becoming intimidated by the jump. The bank here was higher than on the other side and fell at least ten feet because of the last flood. He pulled the wood and cinder blocks further up the creek where it wasn’t as wide and both sides were level. Daisy sat in the grass and watched, eating a bag of chips.
Jesse added some rocks from the creek underneath the plank because she said the wood would sag when the bike hit it.
Dickie went first and started on the road, then came through the field and hit a muddy patch that slowed him. He put on his brakes and slid to the edge of the creek.
“It’s harder than it looks,” he said.
Jesse rolled her eyes. “Get off and let me try.”
“No, just watch.”
He pedaled farther up the road and entered the field at a different spot, his hair blowing. Instead of slowing, he picked up speed and hit the ramp squarely. When the tires left the ramp, the wood flew up and followed him, splashing in the shallow water. Dickie didn’t elevate much, but his momentum carried him across the chasm and he landed in the tall grass on the other side.
Daisy clapped and I whooped.
“Now you go, Matty!” Daisy said.
I laughed nervously. “I don’t think I want to be Evel Knievel today.”
Jesse wasn’t as impressed. “Pull it back yonder. This part of the creek is for babies.”
I picked up a cinder block and a rock or two and Dickie brought the rest. Jesse put Daisy in the bike and pushed her past the telephone pole. The basket always seemed to subdue the girl and allowed us to continue.
“Now you stay there and watch,” Jesse said to Daisy Grace, sitting her in the shade of a scrub oak.
There wasn’t much water in the creek, but we had seen snakes chasing minnows. The more troubling aspect of the jump was landing. The ground was hard and rock-filled. The bank on our side was higher, so the rider had to get altitude and let gravity work. At least that’s what Jesse figured.
“How fast you think you need to go to get across?” I said.
“Fast as I can,” Jesse said, pushing her bike up the hill.
“Don’t take that one, Jesse,” Dickie said. “If you crash it, you won’t be able to ride with Daisy to the store.”
“Take mine,” I said. It was in much better shape and could go a lot faster than her heavy bike.
“You two are worrywarts,” she said. She pushed her bike out of the way and came back for mine, but when she reached for it, I held on.
“I got a bad feeling about this.”
“Grow a spine, Plumley,” Jesse said and her words cut to the quick.
She took my bike and ran up the hill to the road. She would get speed coasting down the hill, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough. Once she moved out of sight, Daisy stood and craned her neck. Then we heard the tires on the dirt and furious pedaling. Jesse appeared at the edge of the road, gravel and dust flying, and raced down the hill at an incredible speed. She was focused like a laser on the jump, pumping and leaning forward.
My heart pounded. I couldn’t watch her kill herself, so I moved into her path and waved my arms.
“Stop!”
She was concentrating so hard she didn’t see me at first, and she got spooked. The bike wobbled and she applied the brake, the front one, flipping the bike over. Jesse fell hard, the bike careening over the embankment and into the creek. She landed dangerously close to the phone pole, Daisy laughing.
Jesse bounced up, holding a bloody spot on her elbow and cursing. “You trying to kill me?”
“I was trying to stop you from killing yourself,” I yelled.
She jerked away, her face contorted. Dickie climbed down the embankment and got the bike.
“I swear, Matt, you’re just like your brother,” she said.
Her words stunned me. I turned away, not knowing how to respond.
After climbing up the bank, Dickie handed the bike to me. The handlebars were crooked. “If we take it back to my place, I can fix it.” He looked at Jesse. “How is Matt like his brother?”
She had grabbed Daisy and put her in the basket. “He’s chicken. Go on and tell him, Matt.” Her face was red and she was limping. “Tell him where your brother is and why he’s there.”
“Jesse,” I said, pleading with her to stop. “Don’t leave. Look, I’m sorry.”
“I would have made it if you hadn’t got in my way,” she said, wincing as she pushed her bike.
“Where’s your brother?” Dickie said.
I watched her climb on the bike and pedal away, Daisy licking salt from her fingers. I thought Jesse might yell, “Draft dodger,” but she kept her promise and didn’t reveal any more about my brother. As she made it to the road, I thought I heard her crying, but I wasn’t sure.
“I was trying to help,” I yelled.
When I turned around, Dickie was staring at me. “Where’s your brother?”
“Look, I don’t know where my brother is. I haven’t talked to him in a long time.”
“Don’t lie to me, Plumley. Where is he?”
I knew I needed to tell Dickie the truth, but that didn’t make it any easier. I explained that he was supposed to go in the military but decided to move to Canada. I left out the part where he moved there with his girlfriend.
“He got drafted?” Dickie said.
“I guess.”
“And he didn’t go?”
I shrugged. “Dickie, I’m not my brother. He didn’t ask my opinion about what he should do.”
“And if he had, what would you have told him?”
“I don’t know, Dickie. What’s your problem?”
Dickie clenched his fists and the veins in his neck stood out. “My problem is, my dad went to fight for our country. Laid down his life. He went because they asked. Your brother ran. That’s my problem.”
I wanted to say something to appease him, but nothing came to mind.
“Jesse was right. You’re just like him. You’re yellow, Plumley.”
It was painful to watch Jesse get off the bus each day and then pass our house on her bike as she rode home. Sometimes Daisy would ride in back of her holding a shopping bag. I stayed upset at her for about a day and then the old feelings crept in and I spoke to her on the bus. She held up a hand and moved to the back even though there was an open seat beside me.
Dickie stopped talking to Jesse on the CB because of me, and Jesse didn’t respond to my clicks of the microphone. Two days later I brought some leftovers and snacks to her house as a peace offering.
“One day your mama’s going to notice and she’s going to drag the truth from you about me.”
A few days later my mother did notice a missing box of Little Debbie cakes, so I decided to be more discreet.
The strange thing was, nobody saw Jesse’s plight. Dickie hadn’t, the lady who watched Daisy every day hadn’t, and for everyone up and down the road it seemed common that Jesse took care of her sister.
Every so often she would ask me to make a phone call for her. Once, my mother gave the two of them a ride to Goodwill so Jesse could buy clothes for Daisy. I went with them and asked my mother if we could pay. My mother had a kind heart.
“Jesse, let me take care of that,” she said like it was her idea. And I felt proud for the ten dollars she spent.
We had a close call one day in late September. I was in English class and our teacher, Mrs. Gibson, was taking a break from her Nazi-like sentence diagramming to put together our ninth-grade play. She had enlisted the help of Mr. Lambert, the high school drama teacher, who had a calming effect on both Mrs. Gibson and the class. We were auditioning for parts and I assumed I would be a townsperson or perhaps the milkman. But when I spoke, Mr. Lambert looked up from the page and watched me.
“I think we have our George,” he whispered to Mrs. Gibson, but I heard every word.
The school secretary, Mrs. Stewart, spoke over the loudspeaker in our room and called me into the office. I walked on air, having heard such encouraging words from a man who would become pivotal in my high school years.
“Matt, we have a situation with Jesse Woods and no way to contact her mother,” Mrs. Stewart said gravely when I walked into the office. “She said your family might help.”
“Sure. What’s the problem?”
She searched my face. “I think it best if Jesse spoke with your mother, if that’s okay.”
“I can call her if you want.”
“Why don’t you go to the nurse’s station and call from there? That’s where Jesse is. But don’t get too close.”
I walked to a series of partitioned rooms at the back of the office. I didn’t even know our school had a nurse. I found Jesse alone in a room, sitting on a plastic chair, her legs pulled up and her head down.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
She looked up with red eyes. “Girl behind me in home ec said she saw something crawling in my hair. Teacher sent me down here and the nurse says I have lice. She won’t let me go back to class and said I couldn’t ride the bus. How am I supposed to get Daisy?”
Lice was the great stigma, the great leveler of haves and have-nots. If your family contracted it, everyone kept their distance. Anybody with a locker next to yours abandoned ship, just like people in the lunchroom.
“You probably caught it from somebody else,” I said.
She gave me a look that I ignored and I picked up the phone. I dialed home but no one answered and I realized it was the day of the ladies’ Bible study. I couldn’t remember where the study was held, so I called the church office. It went unanswered as well.
“What happens if I can’t reach them?”
“Guess I have to wait until you can,” she said.
“I’ll come back after English and call again,” I said.
“How long you think it’d take me to walk?”
“Jesse, that has to be six or seven miles.”
“If I start now, I can make it. They’re not going to let me ride the bus. If your mom doesn’t come, you need to get Daisy Grace. Just don’t tell the lady who cares for her about this, you understand?”
My mind whirred with the responsibility. “It won’t come to that. I’ll get in touch with my mom and she’ll come pick you up. You sit tight, okay?”
She shook her head. “If I got it, Daisy’s got it. The nurse gave me this handout that says I have to stay home until it clears up.”
“How do you treat it?”
She held out the sheet. “There’s stuff you got to buy. I can’t afford that.”
I thought I might be able to find some information in the school library.
“My cousins had it once,” Jesse said. “But I ain’t asking them.”
“I’ll ask.”
“Elden is the one who would know, but he’s meaner than a snake.”
I knew Elden Branch, Jesse’s first cousin, from gym class. He would jog behind people as they ran laps around the baseball field and trip them. On the court, inside the gym, he would stand and bite his fingernails, staring at girls like they were pieces of meat on a smorgasbord. He looked like a series of bones held together with rubbery skin, but he had a wicked mouth.
I found Elden in the lunchroom after English and went through the line, weighing the best approach. I decided to play a part—the lunchroom would be my stage. I put on a confident look and walked past him, stopped as if I’d just recognized a long-lost friend, and spoke.
“There you are, Elden,” I said, sitting across from him.
“You can’t sit here, Plumley.”
“I have a question. I’m new and there’s a lot I don’t know. And I heard you had experience.”
“Experience with what?”
I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Head lice.”
He pulled his head back. “You got it?”
“No, but I have an English research paper to write. I was thinking about showing what people do to fix it.”
He scowled. “You want information, you’re going to have to pony up.”
“Excuse me?”
“You going to eat that pizza?”
I looked at the tray. It held a square piece of pizza, a fruit cup, cut corn, a snack cake, and a small carton of whole milk.
“I’m not that hungry. Go ahead.”
He grabbed it with a dirty hand and plopped it on his tray. “What about the cake?”
I pushed the whole tray to him.
Looking like he’d just won the lottery, he opened the cake and ate it in one bite, then talked around it. “Way we done it was my mama took us all outside and shaved our heads. Them nits hang on to the hair. It’s better just to cut ’em off.”
“What about your sisters?”
“She lined us all up. Didn’t make no difference. Then we slept outside. Them things die in about a day. She washed the bedding in hot water and shook out the mattresses and we were good.”
“You didn’t use anything on your hair to kill them?”
He shook his head. “You can douse your hair in kerosene. That’s what my grandma did. That’ll kill the little buggers. But I heard about this kid who got too close to the stove.”
I nodded, hoping he wouldn’t provide any more details. It sounded like a story Dickie would tell.
He used his spoon once for the fruit cup, then tipped it back and slurped. “You live over near Jesse, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
He grinned. “You get her yet?”
I understood what he meant but pretended I didn’t.
He wiped his chin. “Last time she come over, we got her cornered at the corncrib. She put up a real fight.”
I swallowed hard and stood. “Thanks for the information, Elden.”
I went back to the office and heard Jesse talking with the nurse. I called my mother and father, but there was no answer. When the nurse left, I ducked inside and told Jesse what Elden had said about the lice. She got a far-off look. She had the prettiest hair I had ever seen. Soft and silky. For a country girl, she kept it clean.
“Okay,” she said. “I got my daddy’s clippers and it’s not that cold at night. By Sunday we can move back in.”
“You’re going to sleep outside?”
“It’s either that or the kerosene. But you got to get to Daisy if I don’t make it in time.”
“I’ll get her. Don’t worry.”
“You’d better keep clear of us after today,” Jesse said, opening a window. “I don’t want them jumping on you.”
“What are you doing?”
“Close this when I’m outside. And watch for me on the road when you go home. If I’m still walking when you pass, get Daisy.”
I closed the window after she jumped down, feeling like I was watching Steve McQueen jumping the barbed wire in The Great Escape. I spent the entire ride home looking for her. We got to the Halfway Market and I hoped someone had given her a ride. Then I saw her, by the Buckner farm, swinging her arms and walking fast, her hair swirling in the exhaust and dust from the bus as we passed.
The bus driver did a double take, leaned out and looked in the side mirror, but kept driving. When we reached the stop by the gas station, I got off in a gaggle of kids so the driver wouldn’t notice and headed to pick up Daisy.
The woman who cared for her lived in a small white house with a chain-link fence surrounding it, Jesse’s bike propped against the fence. There were toys in the overgrown front yard and a swing set in back. A rusty tricycle lay on its side by the front door. I rang the bell. When no one answered, I knocked and the door opened.
“Matty!” Daisy Grace said from somewhere inside. The room was dark and there were gates up to block the kids from getting into the kitchen.
“Can I help you?” a woman said. She had a round face and a black tooth on the left side.
“Jesse Woods had to stay late at school and asked if I’d bring Daisy Grace home.” I tried to sound authoritative.
“Well, I don’t have the okay from her mother. I can’t just let you take her.”
I resisted the urge to ask if she’d ever seen Daisy’s mother. “I understand. I’d feel the same way. I’m Matt Plumley. My father is the new pastor in town.”
This news seemed to calm her somewhat.
“Jesse comes to my house to use the phone and we try to help her family out as much as we can.”
“That’s nice of you. If her mama had a phone, I’d call her, but she don’t.”
“Right. Well, I guess I could just wait here and make sure Jesse shows up.”
The woman looked back at Daisy and seemed to have no big attachment. “If Jesse asked you to pick her up, I’m all right with it. You wait.”
She got Daisy’s things, which consisted of Daisy’s coat and a metal lunch box with a picture of Charlie Brown raring back on the pitcher’s mound.
“You tell her not to do this again. I need her mama to come in and set some things straight. And she needs to pay by the end of the week.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I retrieved Jesse’s bike while Daisy Grace stood on the porch and waited. I figured this was their routine.
“Where’s Jesse?”
“She had to stay at school. She asked me to get you. Do you want to stop at the gas station and get a pop?”
The girl’s eyes widened and I put my books in the front basket and we rode to the gas station. Daisy made the grape Nehi last a lot longer than I did. I’d returned the bottles and was trying to figure out what to do next when a car drove up and parked at one of the pumps. Jesse got out, thanked the woman driving, and ran to us.
“Matty got me a grape!” Daisy said.
“That’s good,” Jesse said. Then, to me, “So you got her all right?”
“The woman wasn’t happy, but she let us go.”
“You have a good day, Daisy Grace?” Jesse said, her face right next to her sister’s.
“Yeah,” Daisy said, scratching the top of her head.
“Come on, let’s go home.”
Jesse pushed the bike with Daisy in it and I walked beside them, asking what she was going to do.
“Today’s Thursday. If we sleep outside tonight and tomorrow night, they should be dead by Saturday. Sunday at the latest.”
“You’re just going to wait ’em out?”
“I’ll need to get our sheets and pillows to the Laundromat. That’s what that woman was saying who picked me up. Wash everything in hot water.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t kick you out of her car.”
“I told her it was my cousins. People are a lot more helpful when they’re trying to solve other people’s problems.”
“You can sleep back on our hill,” I said. “Dickie’s tent’s still up.”
“He don’t talk to you anymore, does he?”
I shook my head.
“I’m sorry about that. I was plumb put out with you.”
“I know. I’ve got a couple of sleeping bags you can use.”
She looked at me, realizing I had forgiven her without even saying it. “I wouldn’t want you to have to delouse them.”
We passed my grandmother’s place, but I kept walking. Jesse seemed to like the company. When we arrived, Daisy jumped down and ran to Carl and hugged the dusty old dog.
“I thank you for what you done,” Jesse said. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wish I could do more.”
“Would you wait a minute?”
Jesse ran into the house and returned with a round blue tin and an extension cord she snaked out the front door. She rummaged through the tin and came up with hair clippers. The trimmer clacked and she banged it against her hand and adjusted something with what was left of her thumbnail.
“There. I can get most of it, but not the back. Would you do the honors?”
“I’ve never cut hair.”
“First time for everything.”
“Don’t you want to put a thing on the end? You know, so you don’t look like you just got drafted?”
“I need it as close as you can get it. Not taking chances. But don’t let them jump on you.”
I took the clippers and gingerly cut a two-inch section from the back of her hair.
“No, not like that,” she said, grabbing the clippers. “Like this.” She ran the shears through the front of her hair and took off a deep row all the way to the scalp. “Don’t be bashful. Cut and let it fall.”
Daisy came out and pointed, laughing at her sister.
“Don’t you laugh. You’re next.”
“Why are you cuttin’ it, Jesse?” Daisy said.
“So’s I can go to the Dollar Store and get a bandanna. You can’t wear a bandanna unless you have your hair short.”
Jesse’s hair fell in big clumps and I sidestepped it. Her hair was clean and soft. When I finished the back, she took the clippers and did the front and sides herself, then saluted me. “Private First Class Jesse Woods reporting for duty.” She looked cute without hair, though it made her look even thinner. Jesse’s hair was down her neck and I felt bad that she couldn’t take a shower.
She struggled to get Daisy to sit still but finally cut her hair as well. Then she took a can of gas and poured it on the clumps and set it ablaze. The stink was awful, but Jesse said she just wanted to know those things were dead.
I wanted to help more, but she said they were off to the Laundromat.
“Let my mom drive you.”
“If she drives us, there’ll just be more questions. I got to do this myself. But if you could, get some kindling and firewood at the campsite. I’ll be obliged.”
“You’re going to sleep there?”
“I think Daisy will do better in a tent than out in the open.”
I had the fire going by dark and watched the two trudge up the hill. They had bought a loaf of bread and some ham from the grocery store and eaten half of it while they did laundry. The other half was for breakfast. Jesse had rinsed her and Daisy’s hair out in the sink at the Laundromat. I found old covers in my grandmother’s basement, and they used them for beds. Jesse brought their clean sheets and two pillows, which weren’t much more than two lumps of cotton with covers on them.
“My mom made a pound cake yesterday,” I said, holding out a paper bag with two pieces wrapped in wax paper. Daisy Grace squealed and ate hers quickly and licked her fingers.
I tended to the fire while Jesse got Daisy settled. The air was cool and made me think of football and the turning leaves. The grass was showing black on top. Jesse sat on a rock by the fire and wiped at her neck.
“I can get some marshmallows for tomorrow night,” I said.
“Daisy will like that.” She ran a hand through the stubble of her hair and yawned. “Matt, why are you doing all this?”
“I want to help.”
“But why?”
“I’m like you. When I make a promise, I keep it. You remember your promise, right?”
She scowled. “You mean the one about not telling anyone about your brother?”
“No, the other one.”
She put her head down. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “I didn’t know it was going to be this hard.”
“You didn’t know what was?”
“Everything.” She wiped at her face and sniffed hard.
I tried to think of something to say but nothing came. Finally I smiled. “I can’t wait to see the look on Dickie’s face when he sees you.”
She put her head in her hands and groaned. “Man, I bet I look awful.”
“No,” I said, swallowing hard. I had been thinking of a way to say something nice, to show her how I felt. But I kept holding it in. Now I let it go, not worrying how it sounded. “You could never look awful. You’re beautiful, Jesse.”
She stared at me a moment. “You need to get your eyes checked, PB.”
I was glad I had finally said something, glad she knew what I felt, even if her response wasn’t exactly warm. “Get some sleep,” I said. “There are a couple potatoes in the fire for in the morning.” I handed her another covered container. “And some salt and cow butter in here.”
I took a long shower that night and felt itchy, but I told myself it was in my head. As I did my homework, I thought I felt something crawling but ignored it. I fell asleep reading Great Expectations for English and woke up too late to check on Jesse and Daisy.
In the morning, my father said there was a curious smoke smell in the air. I shrugged. “Maybe somebody’s burning their plant bed.”
“In September?” he said. He stopped me as I reached the door and folded his newspaper in front of him. “Did you hear about last night?”
I heard our bus rumble in the distance. “What?”
“Blass won his eighteenth. Pirates clinched against the Mets.”
My mouth dropped. I’d been so involved with Jesse and Daisy I had missed it.
“Reds can clinch today against Houston if they win. Cincy and Pittsburgh for the National League crown.”
“I can’t wait for the Pirates to beat them and show you who’s best.”
My dad smiled. “Be careful what you wish for.”
I ran down the driveway just in time to catch the bus. School dragged all day and I looked at my watch a million times, thinking of Jesse and what I had said. That afternoon I ran up the hill but they were gone. The fire had burned down to ashes and the potatoes weren’t there.
I stayed at the house, excited for the weekend, and hurriedly ate dinner and told my parents I was heading for the hill. I grabbed my transistor radio and sneaked a bag of marshmallows.
“What are you doing back there, Matt?” my grandmother said. “Digging a hole to China?”
“He’s excited about his favorite team,” my mother said.
When I had enough wood for the fire, I sat by the tent. Darkness came but no Jesse and Daisy. Then I saw a light coming up the hill. It turned out to be my father.
“Better come home,” he said when he reached me, out of breath. “Storm’s headed this way.”
As the words left his mouth, the wind kicked up a gale and blew through the trees. The moon went behind a cloud and thunder clapped.
“You waiting on someone?”
I fiddled with the radio. “Just trying to pull in the Pirates game.”
I left the marshmallows in the tent and returned with him, wondering about my friends.
The next morning I was up early. The first thing I noticed was the creek. It had risen with the torrent. My father read the morning paper with his coffee, my grandmother humming a Fanny Crosby hymn next to him.
“It’s a gully washer,” she said to me as I stared out the window.
My father joined me at the window and watched the water rolling through the bottomland.
“When are we moving into our own house?” I said, trying to keep my voice down.
“Your mother’s asking the same question. Blackwood has things tied up. It shouldn’t be much longer. That’s my hope.”
“Do you think it’s because of the picture I took?” It was the first time either of us had brought up that day.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “There are some things we don’t control. And Basil Blackwood is one of them. I’m sure the picture didn’t help, but you can’t blame yourself.”
I realized then, observing my father’s peaceful acquiescence to the events of our lives, that I had kept my vow not to forgive him. I understood the pressure he was under at church and with my mother and why it was just easier to go along with Blackwood and not make waves. To keep the truth about Ben a secret. It all made sense because he always took things in stride, as if this were his spiritual gift. But it seemed to me that this wasn’t the way to live. I wanted him to act, to do something, to stand up and be strong. But the more inaction he exhibited, the more tension there was in my grandmother’s house and in the church. Things weren’t working out the way people had hoped. We didn’t have a big influx of visitors. The closest we had come to a baptism was a baby dedication. And my father’s sermons weren’t as forceful as Blackwood and some elders wanted.
“Life is never easy,” my father said. “It may seem like it on the surface, but there’s struggle to it all. When Jesus told the disciples to go across the Sea of Galilee, they got in the boat and obeyed. And that was when one of the biggest storms blew up. So obeying God’s will can sometimes get you into trouble. But it’s better to follow him into a storm than to stay on the shore alone.”
This was one of the things my father liked to do—sermonize in the middle of life. I wondered if he was reminding himself of the truth as much as he was teaching me. I wanted to ask about Ben, but that was a subject best left to my parents’ prayers. At the dinner table, my father would pray for “each and every one not at this table” and pause, a hint of regret in his voice. And then we would eat.
The rain ended in the afternoon and the creek stretched into the corn. I rode my bike to Jesse’s and looked in the windows but the house was empty and so was the backyard. A truck passed and slowed. Macel Blackwood, Basil’s wife, usually spoke in grunts, but today she rolled down the passenger window and yelled, “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your distance from that bunch, Plumley.”
I waved and smiled.
Later, after walking the muddy path to the top of the hill, I found Jesse and Daisy. They shivered like wet animals in the tent. Daisy ate marshmallows by the handful.
“I’ve been looking all over,” I said. “Where have you been?”
“Here and there,” Jesse said. “Just waiting for the lice to die.” She moved out of the tent and got me alone. “I’m scared, Matt. I think Blackwood wants me dead.”
“You’re paranoid. Why would you think that?”
“He’s been poking around the property with a guy who has something he looks through. I think he’s a surveyor. If they find out Mama’s gone, he’s liable to take it.”
“He can’t do that. Did your mother have a will?”
“I can’t find it or the deed. I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Well, he’s not going to kill you. That’s silly.”
“You don’t know him or his kin like I do.”
Seeing her concern gave me an idea—I saw an opening here and pushed through. “Maybe it’s time to get help.”
“You stop saying that. We tell nobody.”
“You just said that Blackwood wants you dead.”
“I haven’t found a will or the deed, but I did find my daddy’s gun. And there was a box of ammunition in the closet. If Blackwood tries anything, I’m ready.”
“Jesse, you can’t threaten people with a gun.”
“I ain’t threatenin’. I’m just saying I’m ready for whatever comes down the pike. But I’m still scared.”
It began raining hard and Jesse retreated to the tent. I ran down the hill through the mud and slept in a warm bed, thinking of her all night.