Watermelon Summer

by Anna Hess

  "...and Jacob's videos have been bringing in a lot of visitors from Youtube," I said, coming to the end of my spiel. "Granted, we've only made $10 this month from ads on our site, and we spent a bit more than that getting started, but there seems to be a lot of interest and our readership is growing fast. Between that and the CSA, we're hopeful we'll be able to meet Glen's income requirements by this time next year."

  "So what do you say?" asked Kat, picking up the figurative baton as I dropped back down into my seat on the grass. I was glad to be out of the limelight and my sister was just as glad to leap back into it. "Who wants to join in the new-and-improved Greensun?"

  In my daydreams, every Ex would have leaped to his or her feet and clustered around Kat like the permablitz participants had, asking what she wanted them to do first. I knew reality wouldn't be quite like that, but I wasn't prepared for the long, dead silence, and the pitying glances a few of the Exes sent my way.

  Finally, the snarky whisperer spoke up with the words that seemed to be on everyone's mind. "Well, good luck, kids," she said, standing to leave the fire-lit circle. "I hope you can do it. Hey, does anyone want another beer while I'm up?"

  And then people started offering critiques, but no one seemed interested in joining our group or even in giving us useful advice. Storm's words seemed to sum up the consensus. "Let's be honest, who would want to live here?" she asked rhetorically. I'd thought Storm was the crunchiest of the Exes, with her and her son's hippie names, especially after I'd overheard her talking about co-ops, homeschooling, and vegetable gardens. Surely Storm hadn't thrown all of Greensun's ideals away? But my last hope made it clear that she was no longer interested in the farm. "No one wants to live without indoor plumbing," she explained with a shrug.

  My stomach felt completely empty, despite the three s'mores I'd wolfed down just a few minutes earlier. Looking at each of the Exes in turn, I could tell Greensun was sunk—the community had no advocate left among the people who had loved the farm enough to drive or fly hours to get here this weekend. "I'm sorry, honey," said Susan, reaching over to pat my shoulder comfortingly. "We loved it here once too, but Greensun was never really meant to be."

  And a few hours later, the Exes were gone.

  The one good thing about our failed attempt to rally support at the Greensun meeting is that we suddenly had plenty of cash for our projects. As everyone was drifting away Sunday morning, Arvil took me aside and handed me the exact same check I'd mailed in six weeks prior, along with a few other checks and cash contributions from the Exes. Glen had never banked my offering, figuring it was a stake in a project that might not become a reality, so now the money was coming back to me.

  Jacob and my parents all thought I should just tear up the check and start college $2,000 richer, but I'd gotten my teeth into the Greensun project and wasn't willing to let it go. "I'm going to use the money to make our business grow," I'd said stubbornly, and Kat had been quick to get on board with my plan. Greensun's household coffers were at an all-time low, and our wish list had been getting longer and longer. We needed to restock the kitchen (especially since we'd yet to cross the bridge of evicting Drew), the garden could use some basic supplies like a wheelbarrow and tool replacements, and Kat was trying to talk us into trading in her car (along with a chunk of the Greensun money) to upgrade to a pickup truck.

  "This garden will really take off if we're able to haul in extra biomass!" my sister enthused, although I also thought she was getting sick of having to park on the road so she'd be able to roll her current vehicle into a jump start if it was acting up.

  Of course, Jacob and Kat didn't see eye to eye on possible expenditures. "If we're going to use up a big chunk of change, I think we'd be better off paying to get a phone line installed," my boyfriend countered. "There's only so much we can do with our online business if we have to go to the library every time we want to make updates." Then, turning his attention to me, Jacob returned to his original argument. "But I still think you should just open a bank account in your name and keep most of the money there. It's not safe to have that much cash lying around down here, and it's yours anyway."

  "It's ours," I disagreed, but couldn't help shooting Jacob a smile as I thought about our kiss the previous day. There'd been too many people around to find another quiet moment together, but just looking at Jacob made my heart beat a little faster. "And you know the money's perfectly safe down here. No one who didn't know it was there could find it hidden behind all the junk in the kitchen."

  So I made my first big mistake and put temptation in the way of our budding community.

  In the terrible week that followed, Jacob told me that you have to choose your memories. This is the one I want to keep forever.

  "The dog days of summer," Kat groaned. "Why doesn't this place have air conditioning?"

  The four of us (yes, even Drew) were lounging inside the dim farmhouse, hiding from the heat. Supposedly, we were having a business meeting, but we were actually sweating too hard to think straight. Drew had been so quiet I thought he'd fallen asleep, until he came up with a brilliant suggestion.

  "The river," he grunted. It had started driving me crazy lately that Drew was so lazy he refused to utter a sentence when a phrase would do, but this was a brilliant phrase.

  "The river!" Kat enthused, picking up the idea and running with it. "We need iced tea and sunscreen and river shoes...."

  "And watermelon," Jacob added with a smile that lit up his whole face. Usually, he was so guarded around Kat's sharp tongue that he barely looked at her, but now the two were in cahoots. "You get Kat and Drew ready. I'll meet you there with the snacks."

  Getting us ready consisted of explaining that swimming in the river was nothing like diving into a swimming pool. I thought Kat would come out of her room sporting a bikini that left nothing to the imagination, but instead she greeted me dressed in cutoff jeans, a ratty t-shirt, and ancient tennis shoes. She took one look at my bathing suit and told me to dress down. "You need more clothes," my sister said, dragging me into her room to toss holey t-shirts in my direction and to pull another pair of worn-out shoes from beneath her bed. On any other day, I would have asked Kat where these old clothes had been when she'd told us she couldn't be involved in cleaning out the barn because she didn't want to ruin her fancy duds, but today, I just let myself be swept up in my sister's enthusiasm.

  By the time we reached the river, Jacob was already there, the promised melon resting in the still water near the shore. "Swing!" exclaimed Drew, and took off like a bee to honey. A long rope had been tied high in a tree at the water's edge, and Drew grabbed the trailing end, took a running leap, and swung out over the water. "Yahoo!" he yelled at the top of his lungs, letting go in time to splash into a deep pool twenty feet out from the shore. Lucy barked once, then dove in to join him—it turned out she was a water dog.

  Jacob and Kat talked me into trying out the rope swing once as well, but mostly I spent the afternoon drifting with the current. We had two cars, so Jacob was able to drive us all a mile upstream and park, then we let the water carry us back to our starting point. At first I worried about everything. Was Lucy going to get lost following us along the shore? (No. She wandered off following scents but seemed to check in at least every few minutes to make sure we were still on course, splashing out to meet us every once in a while.) Were snakes and turtles going to bite me in the water? (No again. Although Kat did make me shriek when she told me about hellbenders, huge salamanders as long as my arm that lived under river rocks. "They're perfectly harmless," Jacob chimed in eventually, but even he was laughing at the look on my face.)

  Despite my worries, by the time we had floated back down to our original location, I was ready to do the whole thing over again. But, instead, Jacob cut the watermelon, and we ate until juices drizzled down all of our chins, forcing us to dive back into the water to wash off the stickiness. Here, the rocks had formed a water slide, chuting us down across smoothed stone to another deep pool at th
e end. Kat lazed on top of a boulder that stood just above the flowing water, letting her trail her feet in the river, and Drew went back to his rope swing. Meanwhile, Jacob and I whooshed down the water slide together, hand in hand, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. This was summer perfection at its finest.

  Trouble started the next day when Jacob and I were working in the library and my cell phone rang. I almost never got incoming calls, so I hadn't thought to turn the ringer off, and I shot an apologetic look at the librarians as I rushed outside to answer. "Hello?"

  "My head hurts." The muffled voice could have been anyone, but I thought I recognized the tone. "Davey?" I asked, motioning through the window for Jacob to join me. "It's Davey," I mouthed, then passed the phone off to his older brother.

  From the tone of Davey's voice, I knew we needed to check on him as soon as possible, so I drove while Jacob talked on the phone. Davey had been feeling a little under the weather when his grandmother and brother left that morning, but once he was home alone, he got much worse. By the time we opened the door to Jacob's trailer, Davey looked flushed and feverish.

  "They say Mamaw's on her lunch break," Jacob told me, putting down their land line with one hand while keeping his grip on the thermometer in Davey's mouth with the other. "She's working a double shift, and I think they give her a longer break on doubles. It could be a couple of hours before she calls us back." Looking at his watch, he pulled the thermometer out of Davey's mouth, held it up to the light of the window, and frowned. "A hundred and four point five."

  "That sounds dangerous." I was feeling out of my league. Sure, kids get sick all the time, but Davey looked really bad, and Jacob didn't seem to have any more idea of what to do than I did. We'd taken Davey's temperature (which he fought) and offered orange juice (which he refused), and that was pretty much all we could think of to do. Luckily, I knew someone who had lots of experience with kids.

  Mom answered right away. She was calm and decisive, and within minutes, all three of us were back in the van heading toward an emergency clinic. Jacob filled out a clipboard of Davey's information at the receptionist's window while I tried to keep the sick child occupied, reading from the sorry selection of children's books on display.

  "You have to put down some sort of payment information," the receptionist said, loudly enough to draw my attention away from the book Davey and I were sharing. Jacob's reply was too low for me to make out, but his words were clearly heated, so I walked over to join them.

  "What's wrong?" I asked Jacob, but the receptionist is the one who replied. In a tired voice, she explained that the clinic had to have some form of insurance or payment up front before they could see new patients.

  "But we brought Davey here last year," Jacob insisted. No, the receptionist countered, he wasn't in their system. She recommended we go to the emergency room, where the doctors were federally mandated to treat everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.

  "We can't drive for another half hour and then wait who knows how long," Jacob countered. "My brother's a sick kid—can't you just slide him in? My mamaw will pay the bill."

  "They're all sick when they show up here," the receptionist replied. "I'm sorry, but those are the rules." She seemed sympathetic, but not ready to be swayed by pity.

  "So we'll pay up front," I said, the answer obvious. "How much is the visit?"

  Jacob tried to talk me out of it, but I was more interested in the tears trickling down Davey's red face than I was in Jacob's pride. And when we left the clinic with a calmly-sleeping child in the backseat, a prescription for antibiotics on the dashboard, and Jacob's hand in mine, I felt like we'd gotten a pretty good deal.

  "You spent $150 of the community's money on a kid, and then you tell me we don't have enough to buy Drew the kind of pop he likes?" Kat said incredulously. "Do you know how hypocritical that sounds?"

  I closed my eyes for a second and took a deep breath. Kat and I were on our weekly grocery-store run, which should have been fun, but which had turned into a battle of wills lately. Kat felt like we were flush now that I'd cashed my buy-in check, but I'd been keeping a budget and knew that $2,000 wasn't going to go all that far. Plus, Jacob and I had voted against the pickup truck idea this morning, and Kat was in a foul mood.

  Rather than argue the point, though, this time I decided discretion was the better part of valor. The name-brand soft drink went into the cart, and so did the expensive bread that I had argued we could make ourselves for a fraction of the price. Fancy bratwursts for Drew replaced my usual choice of meat from the last-chance, sale aisle, raising our food bill even further. But even that wasn't enough to push Kat back into her usual happy-go-lucky mood.

  Still, it seemed like she might, at least, be mollified. "How about I drop you off at Jacob's on the way home?" my sister asked as we loaded groceries into the car in the store's parking lot. Jacob and I had a work date set for that afternoon, and I'd assumed I'd have to go home with Kat, unload the groceries, and then walk back up the hill for Jacob to pick me up, so I was quick to agree.

  "Thanks for the ride!" I enthused a few minutes later, looking back in the open window of Kat's car after disembarking outside Jacob's trailer. "I really appreciate it." Sometimes a bit of effusiveness goes a long way with Kat, so I'd learned to thank her at every opportunity, but this time my words didn't bring a smile to my sister's face. But I soon shrugged off Kat's bad mood when I headed inside and saw Davey back to his usual rambunctious self.

  I didn't learn why Kat was so grim until hours later, when Jacob dropped me off at Greensun to an empty parking field. At first, I figured Kat and Drew had simply gone out, and I was impressed that the perishables weren't sitting on the kitchen counter going bad. But when I started rustling up dinner, I discovered the day's groceries weren't in the fridge either, and Kat's behavior earlier in the day started making more sense. I hoped I was wrong, but a walk up the stairs confirmed my fears—both Drew's and Kat's belongings were gone. Kat had moved out.

  I'd forgotten how bare the Greensun rooms looked without Kat's colorful clothes flung across every available surface, and the house felt so empty that I almost started missing Drew's monosyllabic replies. After sitting on the stairs for a minute to gather my courage, I headed back to the kitchen with an even worse sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The coffee can of community funds was just where it was supposed to be, tucked away behind the mouse-proof flour and sugar containers in the kitchen, and for a moment, I berated myself for thinking ill of my sister.

  But I had to open Pandora's box. And when I did, I found nothing left but a handful of coins and a scrawled note. "Goodbye, Thia," the paper read, and the note was right. Thia, the intrepid younger sister molded this summer by Stout Kat, was gone. Instead, Forsythia—that wee, sleeked, cowering, timorous beastie—was back to take her place.

  I fled to Arvil. While you might think the obvious person to help me drown my sorrows was Jacob, my boyfriend had never appreciated the full potential of Kat's free-spirited personality, and I couldn't help thinking that if Jacob hadn't been in my life, Kat might have stuck around. Of course, Jacob would have been sympathetic when he saw I was hurting, and so would Mom, but the latter was also off the potential-comforter list since I knew that if I called my mother with this news, she'd insist I come home. The rumblings from the Seattle contingent had leaned in that direction ever since the Greensun meeting, and I didn't want to add fuel to their fire.

  So I showed up, tear-streaked, on Arvil's doorstep, and he let me in, fed me, and drew the whole story out, one tortured word at a time. Then my neighbor led me out into the garden for some weeding therapy, followed by a round of churning homemade blueberry ice cream in an ancient wooden bucket with a hand-turned, metal crank. After we'd polished off a couple of bowlsful apiece, I was starting to feel a bit more human.

  Just in time for the phone to ring, marking the second round of disasters. Arvil had gone inside to answer and I was sitting on the porch, gazing across the valley
that housed Greensun, and trying to remember all of the good times Kat and I had shared. But my mother's name caught my ear, and I went inside to see why she'd called Arvil.

  My neighbor held up his hand to ask me to wait as I stepped through the doorway, and I paused, the smile that had come onto my face when I learned my mother was on the phone slowly fading away. Arvil had sunk down onto the three steps dividing his kitchen from his living room, and his head bowed down over the receiver.

  "When?" he asked, and then after a pause. "Another heart attack?" My own heart sped up, suddenly sure Arvil and my mother were discussing my bio-dad.

  I'd actually been thinking of Glen all day, until Kat pushed him to the back of my mind. Despite his absence from the Greensun meeting, I'd just about built up my courage enough to go see Glen this week, but I hadn't quite gotten around to it. Then this morning, I'd found a note tucked away in Small is Beautiful, quoting Guillaume Apollinaire in my father's handwriting. "Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy," my father and Apollinaire admonished. So I'd taken their advice and walked with Lucy to my favorite cleared spot on the hill above the house, eating my breakfast in the wild and catching sight of a saffron-colored warbler in the process. Glen had felt so present, I could almost have reached out and touched him.

  But now I never would touch my biological father. Mom broke the news to me when Arvil handed off the phone, but I'd already guessed. Glen was dead.

  "Honey, I'm so sorry it had to end this way," Mom said, the sound of her voice immediately opening the floodgate of my tears. "Dad's on the computer now getting you a ticket home and Arvil said he can drive you to the airport."