Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  I waded out to join her. She was taller than me, not by much, but enough to put the water to my neck. It was freezing but I wouldn’t let it show.

  ‘How do I surprise you?’

  She sank so our faces were level. ‘I don’t know. I just always thought you were …’

  ‘What?’

  Her face reddened, she backed away sending ripples up to my chin and setting my teeth chattering.

  ‘What?’ I asked again, following her deeper into the lake.

  She wouldn’t answer, just swam further away, careful to keep her head up so her hair wouldn’t get wet. I followed.

  ‘Gloria, hey, not so fast.’ I wasn’t as strong a swimmer as her and I realised too late I was out of my depth.

  The sludgy sand beneath my feet was gone, dropped away into an abyss. The water was black and empty but Gloria didn’t notice. She kept swimming away, laughing. At me? Had she lured me in the water so she could watch me flounder? The opposite of a flapping fish on the beach but no less pathetic. Get a rock, put it out of its misery. Do the same to the boy. I went under.

  Water filled my ears and nose and stung my eyes. But they were open. I could see nothing. Just ink black all around me. My lungs ached to breathe and my throat closed. My head said, breathe, you idiot, go on, take a deep breath, but my body was smarter. My open eyes blurred and I saw her. Coming toward me. A pale figure in the dark. Gloria? No, someone else. Dull blonde hair floating like a halo up from the deep, her hand out, a gunshot hole in her stomach.

  Take my hand, Johnny, Mora was saying, and I could hear it in my mind but not my ears. Help me. Find me. It’s lonely here, so lonely and so cold.

  She reached out, arms impossibly long, fingers stretched and gnarled like tree roots.

  Pastor Frank’s words hit me hard, blasted a stream of bubbles out my mouth. Touched by Death. You’re touched by Death, John, and he’s come to collect. That was the engine I’d heard on the way down here. The car. Death on his pale horse, he’s come back for you, John, he’s come back.

  Her face changed and I was suddenly looking at my sister, pale and dead and reaching for me.

  Fingers dug into my arm and pulled and my head broke the surface. My lungs reacted, pulled air into my body as Gloria hauled me out of the lake and onto the beach.

  ‘Jesus. Jesus,’ she kept saying between panicked breaths. ‘Jesus, Johnny, I thought … shit.’

  I put my head between my knees, coughed out foul-tasting water, tried to shake away the picture of Mora and Jenny. Help me, she said. I spat out the water and the words.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, voice hoarse. ‘I guess I need to pay more attention in swim class.’

  ‘What happened? You were just gone. I turned around and you were gone and I didn’t know what to do.’

  Her panic wasn’t going away.

  I looked up at her. Her hair was dripping wet and she was trembling. I put my hand on hers, gripped it.

  ‘I’m fine, seriously. I just got out of my depth and went under for a minute.’

  ‘I couldn’t find you. I couldn’t see you anywhere. You could have died.’

  ‘I didn’t though. Because you saved me.’

  That calmed her. Her trembling eased and she let herself smile. I considered telling her what I’d seen, what Mora had said, but the idea of repeating it twisted my stomach. It was nonsense, a vision brought on by fear and lack of oxygen, nothing more.

  Nothing more.

  ‘What were you going to say before?’ I asked. ‘You always thought I was, what?’

  She shook her head, fingered the sand and didn’t look at me.

  ‘You have to tell me now, I almost drowned.’

  She winced, too raw and fresh for jokes.

  ‘Come on, please?’

  ‘I was going to say that I always thought you were a bit … a bit of a square. You never do anything crazy is all, but I don’t think it really, I was just playing.’

  I didn’t hear much of what she said after that but she kept rambling, apologising. All I could think of was little Timmy Greer, the kid who threw the first stone at me and Jenny last year. Rudy always called him square, a wuss, a wimp, a boring little idiot who always went home to his mother and always did his homework and never talked back to teacher and was never, ever late for school. That’s why that first rock was a shock. That’s why it hurt so much and meant so much and that’s why he did it. He wanted to break free of that cage everyone else had made for him. I won’t be in a cage. A square? A boring, fit-in-the-box-perfectly square? No, sir, not me. Not John Royal.

  Gloria was still talking when I kissed her. Right on the lips. My first kiss. Her first kiss. Bam! Who’s square now?

  It took her a second to register what I was doing but then she pressed her lips on mine. It was chaste. No tongue or anything like that but it jump-started something in me. I’d kissed her to prove a point but I forgot that in an instant. I was still kissing her because I wanted to, because she was pretty and nice and I liked her. All of a sudden, I liked her. Like, liked her. I’d never seen Gloria that way. She was always just Gloria, a friend who happened to be a girl, but now the tape turned over. Side B. She was a girl. Then she was my friend. And now I was kissing her. Holy wow, I was kissing her and she was kissing me back and I realised that I’d always wanted to kiss her, deep down, I really had. When our mouths parted, her cheeks were as red as her hair but she was smiling. Oh yes, was she ever smiling and so was I. I didn’t think I’d ever stop smiling.

  At this moment in the movie the boy would say, I’m so sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to do that without your permission, you’re just so gosh-darn beautiful that I couldn’t help myself. Then she’d giggle and wave her hand at him.

  I didn’t apologise. Gloria didn’t want me to. I could see that clear enough in the way she looked at me, the way she still held my hand. We didn’t move for a moment. A freeze frame beside a calm lake, nothing to see us but the sun and crickets. We were two kids sharing something special, like a first cigarette. People ask, what was your first kiss like? I can tell them now. It was magic. And the longer I sat by that lake, beside Gloria in this strange hush we’d created for ourselves, the more that euphoria settled inside me, gained permanence.

  Gloria murmured that we should get going. We collected our clothes and shoes and turned our backs as we dressed.

  We walked mostly in silence until we got to the edge of the field bordering the back of the church. Her house was left, down the track that led to Gerrard Street. Mine was back past the church and through the centre of town.

  ‘I’m sorry you got your hair wet,’ was the only thing I could think of to say.

  ‘I’ll blame you,’ Gloria said, biting her lip. The lip that I’d kissed. The one I wanted to kiss again.

  ‘Bye John,’ she said and smiled again. The euphoria blazed white at that smile.

  ‘Bye Gloria,’ I said. ‘See you at school.’

  Then she went left and I lingered, watching her. I told myself it was to make sure she was safe. I considered asking to walk her home but if her daddy saw us both wet and smiling, he’d run me off his porch. Besides, I wanted to get home. I wanted to see Jenny and make sure she and Momma were friendly and make sure Eric had cleared the weeds out of the west field.

  But all that went to the back of my mind when I walked past the church and saw a light on in the pastor’s trailer.

  13

  The sun was a few hours from setting but the trailer sat in the shadow of the church. It must be close to six o’clock and the pastor didn’t open his office past five. At least, that’s what he always told me.

  ‘Five is our cut-off, John. Five is when I go home for prayer and privacy so let’s wrap it up,’ he said if our sessions went on too long.

  The light in the back room of the trailer was on. It had been dark when we passed it on the way to Barks. The only room in the trailer with a lock on the door and a blind in the window. For darkness when I take my mid-morning nap, Frank to
ld me once when I asked. My senses buzzed. Everything felt heightened. My wet hair and clinging t-shirt were suffocating while Gloria and the memory of kissing her were like brushing raw nerves, both exhilarating and uncomfortable. I wanted to tell someone, spill out the evening before the joy of it split me open.

  I knocked on the trailer door.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Frank shouted from inside.

  ‘It’s me. John.’

  A few moments passed, footsteps moved inside. He opened the door but right away I could tell something was wrong. He seemed to look right through me, around me, anywhere but me.

  ‘Come in, son,’ he finally said.

  Inside, the office smelt of bourbon. I knew the smell, could tell a bourbon from a brandy, a vodka from a gin, just from that sour prickle in the air. Momma taught me without her even knowing.

  A single glass stood on the desk, a bead of gold on the rim. Frank, half turned away from me, reached down and placed his finger on the droplet, stuck his finger in his mouth.

  The trailer was dark but for the light in the back room. It lit him up like a Halloween ghoul at the edge of the party.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, then saw me staring at the glass. ‘Just something to warm the old bones.’

  Then he frowned at me. ‘Your hair’s wet. What have you been doing?’

  I blanked. The kiss with Gloria at Barks suddenly seemed like hours ago, the twenty minutes with Miss Eaves, yesterday.

  ‘I had a lesson with Miss Eaves.’

  He ran his finger over the rim of the glass again.

  ‘Swimming lesson?’ he smiled. ‘How was it?’

  ‘Fine, I guess. Algebra.’ I watched that finger circle the empty glass, dip into it, streak up the side to pick up as much of the residue as it could.

  ‘Ah, say no more,’ he smiled, tapped his nose. ‘You didn’t knock on my door at this hour to talk lessons, did you?’

  My cheeks warmed and the rest of the evening came hurtling back to me. His smile infected me. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Spill it, John. A fat grin like that usually means a girl’s involved. Am I close?’

  He flicked on the desk lamp and the room filled with warm yellow. All the initial strangeness fled with the gloom and the pastor smiled. It was as if the drink had pulled the cork out of the uptight churchman, let out all the hot air, left just your average Joe behind. He spoke to me like a man, not a pastor. Like a father might to his son.

  My red cheeks blazed and all those excitements, the chest ache, the buzz in the back of my throat, tingle on my lips, all came surging. Red. All red. Everywhere. Love red. Gloria red. It was all I could see.

  I told him. Every detail. First kiss, it was special, boy-oh-boy was it ever. All kinds of special. And the redness in my eyes and cheek and neck grew and I thought I was shining like a stoplight.

  ‘Gloria Wakefield?’ He sat back, arms crossed. ‘That, I wouldn’t have pegged.’

  I couldn’t tell his face, his tone. Was he impressed? Or shocked, because why would a girl like Gloria be interested in a guy like me? A tiny thorn worked its way into my temple.

  But he read my worry and plucked out the thorn, like he always did. ‘She’s a lucky girl to have you,’ then he patted the side of my arm, hard.

  ‘This calls for a celebration,’ the pastor launched himself from the desk. ‘My boy has become a man and with the prettiest girl in town, no less.’

  An ember glowed hot white in me when he called me his boy. He opened one of the desk drawers, the deep lower one, and pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. The good stuff. Momma could only dream of a bottle like that. It was mostly full, just one or two glasses out of it. I would’ve bet a week’s lunch money he’d opened it tonight.

  ‘Been saving this one for a special occasion. This is one of them, that’s for sure.’

  The pastor uncorked the bottle and waved it under his nose. ‘Nothing like that smell, huh, Johnny?’

  Nothing like it, that’s for damn sure. A hateful smell. The sour sting of Momma, her words and breath tainted with it and Jenny’s tears stinging her eyes. Made me sad to see Frank taken in by it but not all those who enjoyed a good whiskey turned monster on it.

  He poured a measure into the glass and handed it to me.

  ‘No, thank you, sir.’

  Jacobs frowned. ‘This is a celebration, isn’t it? A man’s got to have a drink in his hand for that.’

  A tiny change in his tone made me take the glass but couldn’t make me drink. I’d promised long ago that I never would. Jenny couldn’t live with two of us sodden. He shifted, became looser in his movements, like all his bones had come out of joint.

  ‘What’s the matter, John?’ Frank took the bottle by the neck and raised it like he was giving a toast. ‘Don’t want to have a drink with an old man?’

  I raised my glass to match him and as he took a mouthful right from the bottle, I mimed it. The smell alone twisted up my stomach. The fake-out worked and Jacobs patted my arm again.

  ‘Ah, John. Nothing like your first kiss. You remember it, treasure it, you hear me?’

  ‘I will.’

  He went quiet for a while. Kept the bottle in hand, right up to his lips, but didn’t drink again.

  The trailer office felt strange to me for the first time. I had a distinct feeling I shouldn’t be there, out of hours, in the dark. Felt like by closing the door, I’d closed off the world and this place had its own rules where a pastor could give a fourteen year old expensive bourbon and it was no big deal.

  ‘Nothing like your first kiss,’ Frank said again, fainter, to himself. He spoke over the bottle, voice turned hollow echo.

  ‘I remember mine. Norma Fontaine. We were fifteen but she was a woman through and through. She was …’ He shook his head, took a long suck on the bottle. ‘She was a beauty, a top-of-the-pyramid girl, and she picked me. You know, every town has a make-out spot, from here to Virginia all the way across to California. Every town is a carbon goddamn copy. Our spot was called the Look Over. A craggy overhang in the forest that looked out over the town. We biked up there and we were so awkward.’ He laughed and the bottle sang. ‘Well I was. She knew exactly what she was doing. Girls at that age do. No idea how but they do. You’ll see. They know exactly what they’re doing way before us fellas do. Norma and I made out for about twenty minutes then she got cold and we rode home.’

  He looked over me, past me to some other place, and ground his teeth against the bottle. The sound set the muscles up my neck twitching. The dark on the windows felt like a void, not night, and the streets and the town and the county were all gone. Just me and Frank left, standing in dim yellow light, smell of bourbon and damp corners, voices swaddled by narrow walls and low ceilings.

  ‘I was on top of the world. I picked her a bunch of flowers from my neighbour’s garden, risking my skin and good shorts with their nasty dog,’ Jacobs said. ‘I hid the flowers in my locker at school, planned this stupid romantic gesture at recess, figured I’d have an official girlfriend by last bell. But Norma, she really was a top-of-the-pyramid girl, she didn’t see anyone below her. Norma acted like I didn’t exist. Ignored me. When I spoke to her she pretended she didn’t know who I was. But that’s girls for you. Be careful, John. Gloria is lovely, beautiful, but she’s still a girl. They know what they’re doing. Us men, we’re destined to play catch-up. It’s only when you get to my age that you take a step ahead.’

  The smell of the drink, the low light, his tone, all met and mingled and made my head and stomach ache. Momma got like this when she was on the strong stuff, maudlin and sour. He was no different. He just needs a bed and a strong Backhoe coffee in the morning. That’ll right him.

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ I said. All I could say. Gloria wasn’t like his Norma. Gloria was my friend first and that made whatever we had all the more special. She’d never blank me. Ignore me. Make fun of me. She was Gloria.

  ‘Good,’ he said, to
ok another mouthful of whiskey.

  I waited for the quote from scripture to tell me to watch out for wicked women but nothing came. He hadn’t spoken about God in all the time I’d been in the office. Not a verse or a lesson or a mention of Him Upstairs. The unease in my gut turned to outright discomfort. It’s just the drink. Momma once said the devil was in the bottle and once the bottle is open you’ve got to drink it all down to banish him back to Hell. If anyone could take on the devil, it was Frank.

  Outside, I heard a truck roar near the church.

  The soft atmosphere shattered. Frank’s back straightened and his eyes darted window to door to window like a rabbit spying a fox and wondering which way to run. He stood up and set the bottle on the desk so hastily it teetered for a horrible second before righting itself.

  His frantic eyes found me, stared like he didn’t realise I’d been there the whole time.

  ‘You should be going.’

  A heavy, pounding knock shook the trailer.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘You need to head home.’

  He all but dragged me to the door, then stopped an inch from the handle. A wide shadow filled the small plastic window and I wondered how any man could be that big and broad.

  Frank’s hand trembled on my arm. I’d never seen him scared before.

  ‘Who’s out there?’ I asked.

  My voice snapped something in him and he pulled me away from the door, spoke to the room, not to me. ‘Sorry, John. This visitor is sensitive. I need you to go out the back door.’

  ‘There isn’t a back door.’

  He paused. ‘There isn’t. You’re right. There isn’t …’

  He looked around as if this was new information and then ushered me into the back room, closed the door behind us.

  ‘You’ll have to use the window.’

  He yanked up the sash on the wide back window as the man outside pounded the door a second time.

  ‘What? Frank, what’s going on? Who is that guy?’

  ‘No one, no one.’

  He strained against the sliding window but it wouldn’t budge. Sweat sheened his forehead and I didn’t know where to look, where to stand, how to be. I’d never seen Frank like this, so out of sorts, like his mother had busted in on him with a dirty magazine.