Watermelon Summer

by Anna Hess

  On the other hand, Mom had a pretty solid point when it came to the danger of throwing away your future for a boy. Not that she'd ever said so in my hearing, but I knew Mom's life had made a sudden left turn when she'd gotten pregnant with me. I'd also seen how falling for a guy had clouded the eyes of girls at my school, how they'd decide to drop dreams of Harvard then follow a boyfriend to the state university instead, and I'd resolved not to date in high school for that very reason. Plus, I'd read Elizabeth Gilbert's Committed and knew that the chances of a couple staying together if they hooked up before they were 25 were pretty slim. As a certified over-achiever, it seemed to make sense to wait until the deck wasn't stacked against me.

  But I was going to need to grow a third hand because...Jacob was just so darn appealing! Hours had passed while all these thoughts whooshed through my head, and now I looked over at Kat, who was busy painting Lucy's toenails on the couch of the farmhouse. (If there was ever a dog who less needed painted toenails, I had yet to meet one, but Kat had trouble sitting still, and Lucy didn't mind any sort of attention.) "Do you think I'm going to make bad decisions because of my crush on Jacob?" I asked her.

  "And the ball flies in out of left field!" Kat proclaimed in a sports-announcer voice. "Where's that coming from?" Then glanced over at the phone I was still fiddling with, despite being way outside the cell-phone-reception zone, she added, "Oh, you've been talking to your mom, huh?" At my nod, Kat closed up the bottle of polish so she could keep her attention trained on me. "Look, I won't tell you that I like the kid but, if anything, he seems to be more of a workaholic than you are. Young love appears to be good for getting a community running."

  "But is that really what I should be doing?" I pressed. "Mom thinks Greensun is going to stand in the way of me going to college. And maybe she's right—the farm does seem more important right now. But is our community really my top priority, or am I just making a decision based on Jacob's blue eyes?"

  Kat rolled her own eyes, making it clear that she was heartily sick of hearing about Jacob's assets. "Well, if I had someone willing to put me through college, I'd leap at the chance," she answered. "But I guess there's really only one way to know whether you're here for Greensun or for Jacob." I waited with baited breath for the solution to my dilemma, and Kat didn't leave me hanging. "You'll have to crush the crush," she told me.

  Kat's words startled me into a laugh, because I hadn't been sure my sister had been listening when I explained how I'd reached seventeen without ever having had a boyfriend. There was no TV at Greensun, the radio only picked up two stations (spottily at best), and Kat wasn't a reader, so we'd spent a lot of time talking in the evenings. Mostly, Kat told me about her extensive experiences—she'd lived much more in her 24 years than I thought possible—but now and then my sister decided it was time to talk about me. A week or so ago, I'd explained how I wanted to get more out of my life than being a suburban housewife like my mom. I planned to see the world, to figure out my passion, and then to follow wherever that led me, and I had a sinking suspicion that falling head over heels for a guy would only get in the way.

  I can just see you shaking your head and saying, "Very astute. But you can't do anything about a crush. What you feel is what you feel." In fact, those had been Kat's exact words. To which I'd replied—wrong! While my compatriots were kissing for the first time (average age: 15) and losing their virginity (average age: 17), I had come up with a time-proven method for getting over crushes large and small. In case you have a crush of your own to deter, here's my crush-crushing procedure:

  Decide you don't want to have a crush on this boy. (An absolutely-essential first step!)

  Make a list of his unpleasant traits. We all have them—it won't take long for you to come up with a dozen or so.

  Every time you start going gooey-eyed over his good traits, remind yourself about the bad traits. I've found it's helpful to counteract each gooey moment with a litany of at least two or three negative qualities.

  Wait it out. A week or two should be sufficient to flush those hormones out of your body so you can move on with your life.

  The trouble was that my crush-crushing strategy worked best if I nipped the problem in the bud, and my feelings for Jacob had snuck up on me and gotten out of control fast. In short, I wasn't so sure this crush was crushable.

  But Kat was right. If I wanted to know whether my feelings for Greensun were real or hormone-induced, I had to try. Time to begin Operation Crush Crusher.

  Jacob seemed to sense there was something different going through my head when he picked us up the next day for our inaugural neighbor visit, but other than throwing me a couple of confused glances, he stuck to business. Looking down at his list, he informed us that there were nine neighbors whose properties adjoined Greensun, making this part of Glen's challenge not terribly time consuming.

  "I figured we'd visit Mr. Thompson first because he's almost family," Jacob explained. "I owe him some deer jerky anyway from last year's hunting season. Want some?" I accepted a handful of the home-dried meat, but Kat rolled her eyes—she was a vegetarian and took the local hunting culture even less in stride than I did. But, luckily, she didn't say anything about the snack. "I call shotgun," was my sister's only response, and she sent me a pointed look as she climbed into the front passenger seat of Jacob's minivan. I got the message—I needed to remember to stick to business and to spend less energy watching the way Jacob's hair glinted in the sun. (Now, what were those negative traits I was supposed to be quashing the visuals with?)

  Mr. Thompson lived in a double-wide just a couple of minutes down the road, and as we piled out into his yard, I could see Jacob open his mouth a couple of times, then close it again. I'd like to say he wanted to ask me why I'd been so quiet, but his eyes were actually trained on Kat, who had dressed up for the occasion in a body-hugging tank top accessorized with a nose ring and extra studs running up the sides of her ears. Even worse, the scanty shirt bared a lot of skin, revealing extensive tattooing on her upper arms. While the designs were intricate and appealing to my eyes, I hadn't noticed much body art in Appalachia, and knew Jacob was concerned Kat would give a bad first impression. Eventually, though, he just shook his head slightly. Like me, he was clearly more afraid of Kat's sharp tongue than he was of Mr. Thompson's reaction.

  In retrospect, I should have spoken up. That seemed to be one of my core jobs in this Greensun-saving team—to bridge the cultural divide between crunchy-city-mouse and conservative-country-mouse and to smooth over differences—but I was too engrossed in my own thoughts to find the tact to suggest Kat throw on another shirt. Unfortunately, Mr. Thompson didn't see any reason to be tactful.

  "Who are you?" the middle-aged man demanded upon answering the door. He hadn't even glanced at me and Jacob enough to recognize the latter since his eyes had gone straight to Kat and stuck. In particular, the ink spider crawling out from under my sister's tank-top strap seemed to demand his total attention.

  "You remember me, Mr. Thompson," Jacob said, stepping forward slightly so he hid Kat, at least partially, from view. "I'm Jimmy's nephew. We went hunting together last year? I brought you some jerky my mamaw made from that deer."

  Mr. Thompson's arm came out to clasp Jacob warmly on the shoulder. "Of course I know you, Jacob. I didn't see you there." But despite the bit of warmth that came into our neighbor's voice when he noticed Jacob and accepted the dried meat, he remained in place, barring the entryway. I'd seen enough of Appalachia already to know that Jacob would usually have been invited in, especially by someone who seemed to be a sort of honorary uncle. Instead, the man just asked, "Who are your friends?"

  "This is Thia and...um...Kat," Jacob answered, rushing through the introductions. "You know the Hippie Farm down in the holler over there? We're trying to buy it and bring it back to life. I was wondering if you'd have time to sit down and talk to us about what you'd like to see there."

  This was supposed to be the easy neighbor to sell on our idea, given his
family connection. But Mr. Thompson's eyes stayed cold. "Now's not really a good time, Jacob," the man replied. He took one more long look at Kat, this time letting his glance settle on her nose ring. Then he closed the door in our faces.

  Kat, Jacob, and I stood on the wooden porch for a minute, staring at each other in dismay. My face was hot and everything felt a little distant due to my usual angst over meeting strangers, combined with our cold reception, and Jacob seemed thrown off as well. Kat, though, was oblivious, and soon shrugged as she turned to lead us back to the van.

  "Maybe Thia and I should take over neighbor meeting for a while," Jacob suggested finally, holding the van door open so I could slide into the front seat. I could feel Jacob's warmth as I brushed past his body to hop up into the vehicle, and my cheeks redenned again, this time for a more pleasant reason.

  "Whatever," Kat answered, pulling out her cell phone to check her messages. "I've got some ideas for finding new members, so I wanted to focus on that anyway."

  In anyone else, the words would have sounded like a way to save face, but Kat really did seem to be oblivious to Mr. Thompson's snub. Even though I was relieved my sister wasn't angry, I couldn't help wondering if our young community was already following in the old Greensun's footsteps, and not in a good way.

  The next neighbor came to us, and he was a welcome surprise. "Arvil!" I exclaimed as I saw my mother's old friend walking down the hill. Kat had taken off that morning to round up cronies from Knoxville to attend a work day, hoping at least one of them might fall in love with the farm and decide to join us. In the meantime, I'd been hoeing weeds around the young pumpkin plants and waiting for Jacob to turn up, but Arvil was an even better surprise. While I relished every moment I spent with Jacob, it was becoming increasingly confusing to try to think of negative traits in his company—I kept getting sidetracked by Jacob's numerous attractive qualities instead. Arvil's presence was equally welcome, but much less complicated.

  "Don't get too excited," warned my exuberant neighbor, although his smile belied his words. "I'm here as a spy for your mother."

  I couldn't help laughing—only Arvil could make those words sound ominous and humorous at the same time. "She's still worried about me?" I asked, dropping the hoe and coming over to greet my neighbor at the creek. Unlike during Arvil's last Greensun visit, the water was low and easy to cross in a single hop, so Arvil soon joined me in Greensun's front yard.

  "Worry is the purest form of love," Arvil answered. We chatted for a few minutes about Glen, who I was surprised to realize I was actually a little concerned about despite his hit-or-miss interest in being a father. Notes kept turning up in Greensun's library, the most recent being a birthday card with $18 dollars in it—a buck for every year of my life. The card and money were slipped inside The Secret Garden, which had been my favorite book between the ages of nine and eleven, and which I had been flipping through nostalgically when I realized I was going to be away from home for the first time on my birthday, coming up in just a few days. How had Glen known I'd open the book at all, or that I'd look inside so close to my birthday? The note gave me no clue about what my bio-dad had been thinking since it was merely a typed poem by Walt Whitman without any commentary:

  This is what you shall do:

  Love the earth and sun and the animals,

  Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

  Stand up for the stupid and crazy,

  Devote your income and labors to others,

  Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,

  Have patience and indulgence toward the people,

  Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,

  Or to any man or number of men,

  Go freely with powerful uneducated persons,

  And with the young and with the mothers of families,

  Read these leaves in the open air,

  Every season of every year of your life,

  Reexamine all you have been told,

  At school at church or in any book,

  Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,

  And your very flesh shall be a great poem,

  And have the richest fluency not only in its words,

  But in the silent lines of its lips and face,

  And between the lashes of your eyes,

  And in every motion and joint of your body.

  I had to admit that Whitman's words were brilliant, but what was Glen trying to say by sharing them with me? I hadn't the foggiest clue.

  "Is Glen ready to meet me yet?" I pressed Arvil, who had just finished his rundown on my bio-dad's health. Apparently, Glen was out of the hospital, although still needing lots of rest. But, no, Arvil answered, my father was still being coy about meeting his youngest daughter. "Although, if I were you, I wouldn't let him stew in his own juices for too long," Arvil warned me. "Glen doesn't always know what's good for him, and I think you would be very good for him indeed."

  Arvil paused, looking out across our garden as he shifted mental gears, and I couldn't help being buoyed up at the admiration in his glance. "You've done a lot in a few short weeks," my neighbor said approvingly. "But I see you've got some deer damage."

  As usual, Arvil struck the nail on the head. While my wire-and-stick contraptions had served to keep the chickens from scratching up my seedlings, the deer were more than happy to consume any young plants that pushed past the barriers. Jacob had told me of two Appalachian remedies for the situation, but I wasn't willing to give either one a try. The less-bloodthirsty option would be to stake a dog in the garden at night; however, Lucy liked sleeping on the couch in the farmhouse (or, sometimes, outside my tent), and she seemed too accustomed to her freedom to be chained up. Which left shooting the deer, legal if we got a permit from the game warden, but adamantly opposed by my half-sister.

  Instead, Kat and I had been running through a variety of home remedies, none of which lasted past the first rain. (And it seemed to rain every other day here in the mountains.) We tied stinky soap to branches around the boundary of the garden, sprinkled Dollar-Store cologne on the ground, and even sprayed the plants with a mixture of garlic, soap, and hot peppers. Apparently, our local deer liked things spicy and were fans of heavy perfumes.

  But Arvil had an ace up his sleeve. "In my garden, I've been playing with deer-scaring sculptures," he told me. And out of his pack came some wire, bamboo, and a length of plastic pipe. "We'll just tap into the line from the spring and...."

  "That's ingenious!"

  Arvil and I were so engrossed in our bamboo sculpture that Jacob had walked right up without either of us noticing. Now that he'd caught our attention, my eyes were irresistibly drawn to his face, and out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that Arvil noticed my attention shift. Instead of commenting on it, though, he drew Jacob into our project, and soon the two guys were bouncing ideas off each other at a rate I couldn't keep up with. Clearly, Jacob and Arvil were kindred spirits.

  Arvil's original sculpture was a traditional device he'd found on the internet, consisting of a length of bamboo attached to a tripod so that when water from the spring filled up one end of the bamboo, the cane tilted and dumped the load, clanging onto a rock in the process. Jacob liked the idea but figured the need for running water would drastically limit the number of places we could rig a deer scarer around the garden. Instead, he wanted to use the bamboo-water trick to raise marbles up to a higher level so they could run through a noisy course around the garden perimeter, losing altitude at intervals, then ending up back at the base of the deer scarer, only to be pushed on their way once again by the power of water.

  "Or we could even use a solar panel to lift the marbles up," Arvil suggested. "I think there are some old solar yard lights in the shed we could dismantle."

  "There're some little motors from broken kitchen gadgets out there too," Jacob agreed, walking off beside my neighbor without a glance in my direction. I should have been miffed at being ignored, but instead I was just thrilled that someone saw Jaco
b's potential, so I picked up my hoe and got back to work, a smile on my face.

  "What are your intentions toward Forsythia?"

  Arvil and Jacob had been puttering together in the shed and garden all afternoon while I dipped in and out of their orbit at intervals, so it was pure chance that popped me into their presence in time to hear Arvil's question. The actor had put on the persona of an intimidating father for the occasion, which mitigated his words with a bit of humor, but I was still mortified by Arvil's intrusion into our relationship (or lack thereof). Sure, Arvil had warned me that he was present as a spy for my mother, but did he have to be a mouthpiece for her too?

  The guys were picking through odds and ends of what I would have called junk, but which they seemed to think was prime inventing material, when Arvil spoke. They obviously hadn't noticed I was there, probably because, although the whole front of the shed was open to the world, I was hidden by the side wall as I walked toward them from the house. Eavesdropping isn't my thing, but I'll admit that I dawdled a bit on my approach so I could hear what Jacob would answer if he didn't think I was there.

  Unlike me, Jacob seemed to think Arvil had every right to ask nosy questions. Rather than hemming and hawing like I would have if faced with such an overt interrogation, Jacob looked Arvil right in the eye and replied, "If you're asking me whether I like her, I do. A lot. That's not the only reason I'm working to save Greensun, but it's a big one. But she's older than me...."

  "By less than a year," Arvil interjected.

  Jacob shrugged. "Okay, by less than a year. But I'm not sure she's interested in dating a hillbilly. Thia is going places, and I don't want to be an anchor."