Mostly the Honest Truth

by Jody J. Little

“Why’d they leave?” I was completely facing him now, sitting crisscross applesauce on the boulder.

  “They left because of me. Because of my actions.” His shoulders slumped forward. A pain in his heart seemed to be pulling on him. He gripped his crooked stick tighter. “Jane, the little boy I shot in the leg that one night, thinking it was a mountain lion, was my grandson. He was your pop.”

  I gasped. My hands covered my face.

  Stuff inside my brain started to make sense. I thought of Pop getting shot when he was so little. That must have been awful. I thought of all those scars on his leg and how he told me he was attacked by a blackberry bush.

  “Pop lied to me,” I whispered.

  Old Red sighed. “Young Jane, your pop was probably trying to protect you. He probably thought you would be scared to learn he had been shot by his own grandfather.”

  But I wasn’t so sure. There was so much Pop kept from me. So much about my family.

  My brain felt all scrambled and messy again. I yanked on Pop’s stocking cap.

  Old Red reached into his chest pocket and pulled out three pictures, handing them to me. They were the thick photos with white borders, and I gazed at a little boy, maybe six years old, sitting on top of a blue bicycle. The second one was of that same boy in a tree and a woman was reaching up to him, and then the third photo with that same woman, younger in this shot, sitting on the dining hall steps. My pop and my grandma.

  “You may keep those,” Old Red said.

  “No way.” I quickly tucked the pictures back in his shirt pocket. “I can’t do that. They are your good memories.”

  Old Red smiled, and it almost seemed like a few of his wrinkles ironed away at that moment.

  “How did you find out about me?”

  He lifted his eyebrows a bit. “That’s a fair question. Many people have come in and out of Three Boulders, and many stay in contact with me. Your grandmother’s good friend, Helen, drove from Idaho to see me after she heard that Florence had passed.

  “And, of course, Officer Dashell used her connections to keep tabs on you and your pop for quite a few years. I asked her to. I was pleased when she informed me that you two had moved to Willis, just a short drive down the highway.”

  Stuff was making more sense. All Officer D’s visits to our house over the last year. All the times she and Pop would stand in the driveway and talk while I watched from the kitchen window. They weren’t just talking about everyday, ordinary stuff like I figured. They were probably talking about Old Red and Three Boulders.

  Old Red began to chuckle from his belly. “Doris told me you were a pistol, Jane. She took a strong liking to you. She told me stories of you and your pop longboarding in the park after curfew and having to send you both home.”

  Those were good me-and-Pop times. Pop always said that longboarding at midnight under the streetlights was his favorite.

  “Doris called me, right after you were taken to the hospital with your burn. She said she could do some paperwork and that she could bring you to Three Boulders while your pop was in rehab. I can’t tell you how happy that made me.”

  I was sitting close enough to Old Red now that I could feel his arm brush against mine. I could smell just a whiff of aftershave too, the same kind Pop uses. “Mr. Norton,” I began, because questions and facts were organizing in my brain. “The money you get for selling Three Boulders. Is that money for Pop?”

  “For you and your pop,” he answered. “I can’t live up here any longer knowing how much you’re both struggling. I want your pop to recover, to have more therapy if he needs it. I don’t want you hopping from place to place between each relapse and job. I want you to be safe and happy.” He looked me straight in the eyeballs. “Officer Dashell wants you safe too. She cares for you deeply, Jane. So do I.”

  I almost flung my arms around Old Red’s skinny chest. I almost told him that I cared about him too, but I didn’t do those things because there was something I still didn’t understand, something that kind of prickled at my heart.

  I cleared my throat and asked carefully, “Why didn’t you ever try to come see me and Pop yourself?”

  Old Red lifted his eyes to the sky, like he was listening to words from God, swirling over our heads. His voice quivered when he spoke. “Young Jane, that is a deep regret of mine. You see, I wasn’t sure if I’d be welcome. There is so much sorrow in the past.” He turned his head and gazed directly at Redemption.

  I’d never had a teacher tell me that I’m smart. Oh sure, they’ve told me that I exert effort or that I have unique gifts, but they never say I’m smart. Right then, though, sitting on the Community boulder with Old Red, I felt supersmart, because I had figured something out.

  Old Red had been a drinker. He had done some bad things. He had left his orchard in California. He had stolen money from his brother. He had shot his own grandson . . . by accident, of course.

  I had it all figured out.

  Old Red needed redemption too.

  And then I glanced at the round boulder I called Steel Marble but which Old Red named Forgiveness.

  I realized that to have redemption, you had to have forgiveness.

  Old Red was living up here in Three Boulders, almost hiding away, because he hadn’t forgiven himself.

  He hadn’t forgiven himself for anything.

  Matching Socks

  There was only one thing in the whole universe that would have made me leave Old Red sitting there by himself on the Community boulder after telling me his story.

  And that one thing—well, person, really—was moving toward me through the grassy clearing.

  Pop.

  I blinked my eyes hard to be sure I wasn’t imagining him, but it was really him. Pop with his black stocking cap resting just above his ears. Pop with his dusky orange T-shirt with the fading words The Clash. Pop with a fish-shaped longboard propped over his shoulder.

  I leaped off the boulder and flung myself at him, squeezing his belly and burying my head in his warm, sweaty chest. He wrapped his arms across my back, dropping the longboard at our feet, and then he scooped under my armpits and lifted me in the air, tossing me above his head like I was still three years old.

  When he set me down, I still felt like I was flying in the air with happiness. I hugged him again. “Pop! Are you okay? Are you dry again? I was worried about you.”

  “Dry as a camel’s mouth in the desert, Jane Girl.” He winked at me, and just as he did, it registered in my brain that he wasn’t alone. He had brought a crowd. There was Officer D; my best friend, G; Mr. and Mrs. Biggs; Timmy Spencer and his mama, Amelia; the Donalds; the Carters; Preston Farmer; Chef Noreen; and even Loam and Dandy.

  “What’s going on?” I let go of Pop’s waist and grabbed his hand. I looked over at Officer D. “Pop wasn’t arrested?”

  She stepped forward. “Jane, I had a talk with Fran. I told her the story about your . . . incident.”

  I glanced at Pop when she said that, and his eyeballs gave me a serious look that I understood without any words. He had been told what I had done, and he never wanted me to do it again. He didn’t need to worry. I had no plans to ever hurt myself again. I did a silent cross-my-heart-hope-to-die-stick-a-needle-in-my-eye promise.

  “They are allowing you to return to your father, but with some strict guidelines,” Officer D continued.

  “What guidelines?” I asked.

  “To begin, there will be twice-weekly home visits and interviews with each of you.”

  Officer D was speaking slowly, like something was wedged in her throat that made it hard to push out the words.

  “And,” she went on, “your pop will be required to attend daily meetings, twice a day at first, and have no unreasonable absences from work.”

  “Jane,” Pop said. He pulled the orange stocking cap off my head and ruffled my hair. “I have my job back at the warehouse, forty hours a week beginning Monday. We’ll stay in Willis. We don’t have to move.”

  That all should ha
ve been good news to me. Sometimes after Pop got out of rehab, it took him months to find a new job. But I didn’t know what was wrong inside my brain because the news wasn’t setting off much excitement.

  I looked back at Officer D. She was staring at the brown pine needles under her feet.

  “We survived another twelve days,” Pop said. “We can go home now. You and me. Matching socks.”

  That was the honest truth. I had survived the twelve days. Twelve days in Three Boulders. And in those twelve days, I had met Gertie Biggs, and we went to school and church together, and we snuck off to Willis, and she wrote a special song for me.

  I peered at Officer D, my foster per— my foster mom, and I thought of the twelve days I stayed in her little room above the dining hall, and how she changed my bandage, and how she put her strong man paw on my head each morning to wake me, and how she ran with me in her arms all the way to her truck to get me to the hospital.

  I scanned the other faces lined up before me: little twitchy, home-run-hitting Timmy Spencer; klepto dirt-boy Loam; rainbow weed-girl Dandy; Chef Noreen. And I remembered more stuff from those twelve days, the school that wasn’t really like school, the church service where God spoke to us in the wind, the softball game that made me a town hero, the talent show where G displayed her brilliance on the squawk stick, the yummy food Noreen cooked for us every day, the rainbow masterpiece that Dandy built . . .

  I looked over my shoulder. Old Red still sat on the Community boulder, holding his crooked walking cane. He hadn’t moved a muscle.

  Old Red.

  My great-grandfather.

  My . . . Old Pop.

  Pop took hold of my shoulders and pulled me in for another hug. “Are you packed?”

  I stepped back, releasing his arms, and I gave Pop my best serious, Officer D–like look. “No,” I said.

  “Well, come on, then.” He softly punched my good arm. “Let’s get moving. We’ve got some hills to bomb in Willis.” He reached down and grabbed his new board.

  Looking at Pop right at that moment, I thought about how much I loved him, and that really required about a hundred or more thoughts because I loved my pop a lot. A whole lot.

  But what I said to him was, “No, Pop.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Jane?”

  “Pop,” I began, but I had to stop and swallow. There was some reorganizing happening in my sock drawer. More sock pairs were being rolled together, pairs for me and G, me and Officer D, me and Old Red, and me and all the other really nice folks of Three Boulders. Those pairs tucked themselves into my drawer, like cushions around the Pop and Jane socks.

  I gazed at Pop and said, “I don’t want to go back to Willis or any other town. I want to stay in Three Boulders.”

  A Decision

  I think it’s possible to know that things are happening even if you don’t really see them with your own eyes. Right then, when I said those words, I was staring at Pop’s face, but I’m pretty sure that G and Officer D and maybe everyone else had their mouths dropped open and their eyes locked on me.

  “I don’t understand.” Pop tugged on my stocking cap. “We got this, Jane Girl.”

  Here was Pop in front of me, dry, happy, ready to move on with our lives like we had done many times before.

  Pop and me.

  Me and Pop.

  I spoke softly. “No, I don’t think we got this anymore.”

  I gulped in a burst of boonieville air and continued. “This place, Three Boulders, is the weirdest place I’ve ever been, Pop, but I really like it.”

  I snuck a quick glance at Officer D. “I like all these folks here, and I think most of them like me too.”

  Pop didn’t say anything, and neither did the crowd of Three Boulderites, but G had a smile from ear to ear. Loam Moonbeam had two thumbs-up, and Officer D . . . well, I had pretty good vision and she had teardrops on her cheeks.

  Pop’s fingers were laced together and his thumbs were spinning.

  I reached for his hand. “I know you lived here once, and I know something else too.”

  I turned and led him slowly toward Old Red and the three boulders: Redemption, Forgiveness, Community.

  Old Red had his steely eyeballs glued on my face as me and Pop stepped toward him.

  I dropped Pop’s hand and said, “I’d like you to meet someone. Well, I’d like you to re-meet someone. This is Mr. . . .”

  But I stopped, and I noticed for the first time that the curve of Old Red’s chin was just like Pop’s, except with those brownish blotches and gray beard stubble that Pop didn’t have . . . yet.

  “Pop, this is . . . Old Pop.”

  Old Pop Red Norton let out a loud, deep chuckle, one I hadn’t heard from him before, but one I had heard so many times from Pop.

  “Hello, Jerry,” Old Pop said. “You look well.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Pop answered.

  Old Pop shook his head. “Not sir, please. Call me Red.” Then he winked at me. “Or Old Pop.”

  Pop gazed at the three boulders, soaking in their sparkling magic, like I had done days earlier. Like Old Pop had done decades earlier.

  And even though I still thought my names for those boulders were pretty great, I felt that rush of smartness inside my head again because I finally understood all those symbol names that Old Red had chosen so long ago.

  The boulder Old Pop perched on, the one called Community, was probably the most important one. I had sat there with G. I had sat there with Old Red. I imagined every Three Boulderite had plopped on that Community boulder hundreds of times, ’cause maybe it made them feel like they belonged here . . . together. They all needed each other, ’cause it was better that way.

  “Old Pop,” I began, “please don’t sell Three Boulders. Please.” I pointed to the rocks and then the fir trees and finally the little crowd of people gathered near us. “These folks love this place, and so do you. This place keeps you healthy. You even said so at church.”

  Old Pop gave me a wrinkly smile.

  “And I love Three Boulders too.” I paused. “And, Old Pop? I want to stay here . . . with you and Officer D”—I turned and gave Officer D a big grin—“and everyone standing over there—”

  “Jane, we have a home in Willis. I have a job there,” Pop interrupted.

  “Pop, listen.”

  I had always gone everywhere Pop took me. I never questioned him because he was my pop and I loved him. That’s the way it had always been, but it didn’t have to stay that way. Twelve days in Three Boulders taught me that.

  I gulped a big glob of saliva. I had to tell Pop the honest truth even though it was the hardest thing I’d ever done, harder than bombing Park Street, harder than burning my hand. “Pop,” I began, “I don’t think I can do just you and me anymore.”

  Pop was looking straight at me, but his cheeks and forehead sagged.

  “I don’t want to go back to Willis, where it’s just us.” My voice was shaky. “I want more socks. Let’s stay here, Pop, where we have family.”

  Pop’s hands wiped at his droopy eyeballs and nose, and he stood there sniffing and wiping for a long while. He didn’t have any words for me. He slumped onto Community boulder next to Old Pop and he cried. He cried deeper and harder than I’d ever heard, and my heart was stretching apart like a tug-of-war.

  “Oh, Jane Girl,” he finally said. “My strong, sweet, smart girl . . .”

  The Three Boulders crowd had silently moved closer to us.

  “You deserve a mountain of socks, not just me.” He stood and reached his arms out and pulled me in for another one of his sweaty chest hugs.

  “I can’t stay in Three Boulders,” Pop continued, “because I have to get better.”

  “But you said you were dry again, Pop.” My cheek was smooshed against his shirt.

  Pop pushed me away, but he held on to my shoulders snuggly. “I am, but I want to be dry forever, and I need help with that in Willis with my counselor and sponsor.”

  Pop looked up and
spoke to Officer D. “Doris? Will you take care of my Jane Girl? I know you’ve been good to her.”

  Officer D stepped forward. She put her beefy arm around me. “For as long as you need, Jerry.”

  I heard Dandy clapping.

  Then Pop turned and faced Old Pop. He inhaled real deep and asked, “Red, will you watch over my Jane too? She needs family.”

  Old Pop gripped his crooked stick and rose from the boulder. I thought he was going to reach out and shake Pop’s hand, strong and firm, but that didn’t happen.

  The Three Boulders crowd watched Old Red. It was like we were all at the church fire pit, and everyone was taking a moment for prayer. I half expected a little wind gust, for God to speak to all of us, to give us important words.

  But what happened was that Old Pop reached out his skinny arms and pulled Pop toward him and squeezed him like the long-lost grandson he was. And after hugging Pop for a lifetime of missed hugs, Old Pop wrapped a skinny arm around me. And soon, Officer D’s burly arms joined the hug, and then G’s arms, and Loam’s and every other Three Boulderite arm.

  I was right in the middle of that enormous group hug, and even though Pop wasn’t staying with me, he was still a matching sock. But now I realized that every person in this big lump of bodies and arms was my family, and my sock drawer was big enough for all of them.

  And I think Pop realized that too.

  One Month Later

  A New Rainbow

  Old Pop didn’t sell his land.

  The only folks who left Three Boulders were the Carters, which made everyone a bit sad, but it did allow me and Officer D to move into the Carters’ old cabin, which was only two cabins down from Old Pop.

  Me and Old Pop were becoming good matching socks. I went to his cabin each day, and he always had a story for me about Three Boulders and all the people who had lived here. My favorite stories were the ones with my grandma Florence. I sure wish I had met her.

  That morning, when I entered Noreen’s dining hall, Loam waved his arms over his head. “Jane!” he yelled. “Come here.”