Fireflies in December

by Jennifer Erin Valent

  And I was looking forward to seeing it.

  My momma was the first to spot us. She yelled for my daddy and came running, grabbing my bandaged head in her hands. “What happened? What’s happened to my baby?”

  I wanted to tell Luke Talley that I wasn’t a baby, but I didn’t have a chance. Once Momma got a look at my bloodied wound, she started screaming like the sky was falling. “She’s bleedin’. My baby’s bleedin’! Do you see this, Harley?” she asked as my daddy came running from the barn. “Your daughter’s bleedin’ from her head.”

  Miss Opal and her husband, Joe, came running out too, looking worried like I was dying or something. “What in tarnation is goin’ on?” Miss Opal cried. “What’s happened to Jessilyn?”

  Gemma grabbed Miss Opal’s hand and told her, “I’ll bet those boys hurt Jessie. I knew they’d be up to somethin’.”

  Miss Opal ran for supplies and Mr. Joe took a close look at my cut. “I’ll call for the doctor,” he said. “Might need sewin’ up.”

  I thought it was an awful lot of fuss over nothing.

  Luke set me down on the outside couch, where Momma had ordered him to, and told my parents who he was. “She took a spill on them rocks by the swimmin’ hole,” he said. “Took in a good bit of water too.”

  Gemma knelt at my side, her hands shaking.

  “The boys dunked me. I almost drowned,” I told her before adding in almost a whisper, “He saved me.”

  “She almost drowned,” Momma muttered as she got to dressing my wound. “Thank You, dear Jesus in heaven, for bringin’ my baby home.” She patted my sore head with a wet cloth, leaning close to me to inspect the wound.

  “I told you not to fool with those boys,” Gemma scolded. “I told you they’d dunk you, and they did, didn’t they? You best listen to me from now on.”

  Gemma’s words sparked an extra bit of anger in my momma, and she stopped all her fussing over me to turn and glare at the boys. “Which one of you did it?” Momma asked in a shaky voice. “Which one of you roughnecks hurt my baby?”

  “Momma,” I whined, “I ain’t no baby.”

  Momma ignored me and kept staring at the boys. “I’m askin’ you a question. Which one of you hurt my baby girl?”

  I wasn’t going to say a word because I didn’t want to be known for a tattletale, but it didn’t matter because I knew my daddy would figure it out. He had a sixth sense about those things. And Buddy’s guilty face and the hard gulp he made when Daddy fixed his eyes on him made it pretty clear to anyone that he’d done it.

  “Buddy Pernell,” my daddy said in his mild-mannered way, “you do this to Jessilyn?”

  “He did,” Ginny Lee said before Buddy had a chance to speak. “He did, and he was laughin’ too.”

  Even though she was mad as a hornet, Momma went back to dressing my cut, leaving my daddy to take care of things like she knew he would. I watched, wincing every time Momma touched my head, and saw my daddy take Buddy by the neck almost like a new puppy and push him toward his daddy, who stood there with a hand on his belt as though he was ready to whip it off and take it to Buddy’s backside any second.

  Buddy Pernell was in trouble, sure and simple.

  Chapter 3

  The night after my near drowning I wore a dress to supper. Dr. Mabley had come by the day before and given me a clean bill of health. “She’ll have a good scar over her eye,” he’d told Momma. “But that’s not the worst of what could have happened from that hit on the head. A good night’s sleep and a little nursin’, and she’ll be fine. She’s a lucky girl.”

  But when I walked into the kitchen the next evening, Momma and Daddy looked like maybe Dr. Mabley had been wrong about my head not being hurt.

  They stared at me with wide eyes, wondering at me all dolled up with my hair pulled back in a cockeyed braid. I had been too embarrassed to ask Momma to fix my hair, and I was an awful hand at it. Daddy grinned, but Momma stopped him from saying anything. She knew as well as I did that my dressing up was due to the fact that Daddy had invited Luke Talley to supper.

  When I got downstairs, Luke stood up from the big green chair where he’d been sitting, polite as if I’d been a grown lady. “Well, looky there. You got yourself right cleaned up and lookin’ fancy.”

  “Oh, this old thing?” I drawled just like I’d heard Myrna Loy say in a picture I’d seen. “It’s nothin’.”

  Daddy snorted, but I snapped him a look good and angry, so he corrected himself by making a serious face.

  At dinner, I did nothing but swoon while Luke ate pot roast and potatoes and talked shop with my daddy. I listened in rapt attention as he told us about his life. I admired him for being the man of his family after his father had died three years before; for leaving his mother and two younger sisters to come to Calloway County so he could work in the tobacco factory and send money back.

  I watched in a sort of trance as his strong, calloused hand lifted the fork to his mouth with each bite and eagerly asked him at two-minute intervals if I could get him anything. “More lemonade, Luke?” I would ask sweetly. “More potatoes? More gravy?”

  “Jessilyn, why don’t you set on down there?” Daddy finally asked. “You’re makin’ me nervous.”

  “Daddy,” I said with something of a whine, “I’m just bein’ hospitable.”

  “Since when did hospitality get so pesky?”

  That got my dander up, and I stuck my bottom lip out, making me seem a whole lot younger than I’d been trying to let on with Luke.

  “Harley,” Momma warned softly, “Jessilyn ain’t bein’ pesky; she’s bein’ polite.”

  Poor Luke sat by uncomfortably for a second before agreeing with Momma. “It sure is nice to know a man won’t go without seconds when he needs ’em. I could go for more of them snap beans, Miss Jessilyn.”

  I jumped up so quickly my chair squealed and almost fell over, but I tried to be as graceful as I could when I served him that extra helping of Momma’s special bean salad. “You can call me Jessie,” I told him. “Everybody does.”

  He nodded at me with a lopsided grin. “Thank you, then,” he said, adding emphasis when he finished by calling me “Miss Jessie.”

  I pretty much floated back into my chair, barely touching my food for the rest of supper.

  Later that evening as I watched Luke walk away from my house, I never let my eyes stray from his tall form. He stopped when he neared the apple tree and turned to wave a final good-bye. I pushed the screen door open and waved back with a sigh, watching him until he disappeared from sight.

  “Jessilyn, you gonna stand there all night?” Daddy asked as he picked up his book and headed toward the den. “Them mosquitoes are gonna come in and have us for dessert.”

  Momma put down her dishcloth and came over to take my shoulders in her soapy hands. “He’s a nice boy, ain’t he? I owe him a lot for takin’ care of you.”

  “He saved me from dyin’,” I said, mostly to myself. “I almost drowned.”

  “It’s a miracle straight from God Himself; that’s a fact.”

  “Jessilyn!” my daddy called again from his seat on his old wooden rocking chair. “I just got bit by one of them bloodsuckers.”

  “We’d best be shuttin’ the door now,” Momma said quietly. “You know how cranky your daddy can be when he gets to itchin’ from his bug bites.”

  “I’ll bet Luke Talley wouldn’t complain over a little bug bite,” I murmured as I closed the door.

  “Now, don’t you go puttin’ down your daddy. There ain’t no man tough as he is.”

  I followed her into the kitchen and caught the towel she tossed at me so I could dry the dishes. “Luke Talley’s tough,” I responded.

  “No doubt he is.”

  “And he’s strong. He carried me the whole way home.”

  “I saw that.” Momma started humming like she always did when she puttered in the kitchen, propping her bare right foot up on the cabinet beneath the sink—to take the strain off her back, she alway
s said.

  “Momma,” I said as I dried the colander.

  “Hmm?”

  “How old do you think Luke is?”

  Momma stopped washing the potato pot and looked thoughtful. “Oh,” she said in a high voice, “maybe about nineteen, I’d say.”

  “That’s older than me.”

  “Quite a few years.”

  “I guess he’ll get married soon.”

  “Why do you say that? Does he have a sweetheart?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then what makes you think he’s gettin’ married soon?”

  I inspected my face in a spoon and frowned at the fun house reflection I saw in it. “Well, boys that age get married, don’t they? Katey Pike’s brother got married when he was twenty.”

  “But that don’t mean all boys get married at twenty. Your daddy was twenty-five when he married me.” She handed me the potato pot and smiled. “You askin’ for any particular reason?”

  “No,” I insisted uncomfortably. “I was just askin’.”

  She nodded at me slowly, a grin on her face, and went back to her washing and humming.

  I could tell Momma guessed at my way of thinking, but I didn’t take much time to care. I was too busy dreaming about Luke Talley and hoping that Momma was right.

  I didn’t want him getting married anytime soon.

  Nobody saw much of Buddy Pernell that next week, even at the swimming hole. Rumor had it that his daddy had sent him off to military school or had locked him up in the cellar or worse, depending on whose version you heard. I asked my daddy one night if he knew what had happened to him.

  “You leave Buddy to his father,” Daddy told me. “He’ll take care of him as he sees fit.”

  “But he’s not gonna beat him too bad, is he? He might up and kill him,” I said, feeling that it would be a shame to have someone get killed over something they did to me. I didn’t want that hanging over my head.

  “Buddy’s daddy ain’t gonna kill him,” my daddy said with a laugh. “You kids all think us daddies are capable of murder.”

  “Sometimes you look like you want to murder someone.”

  “Maybe sometimes I even feel it, but I never would.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, it’s against the Scriptures to take someone’s life.”

  “That’s right,” I said with a nod. “It’s a commandment.”

  “Well, there you have it. And I know Waylon Pernell enough to know he ain’t gonna kill his own boy.”

  “But we ain’t seen hide nor hair of Buddy in a week.”

  “Don’t you think maybe he’s just bein’ punished? Seems a lot more likely that he’d be stuck at home doing chores for discipline.”

  Momma came into the room and tossed a load of sun-dried laundry onto the rickety old table. “Stop talkin’ about murders, Jessilyn, and help me fold.” She wiped her sweaty brow with the back of her hand and sighed. “I’m tellin’ you, Harley, I can’t take a full summer of this heat. Thank the Lord, there’s a breeze whippin’ in. Looks like we may get a storm soon.”

  I grabbed a pair of britches to fold and ran to the window to look outside. I loved thunderstorms, and sure enough, the clouds that rolled in were looking big and dark, coloring the outdoors with shadowy gloom. Once I finished working out the laundry with Momma, I headed outside to the porch.

  “Just look at that girl,” I heard Momma say through the open window. “Headin’ outside to meet a storm on purpose.”

  “She just likes lookin’ at weather,” Daddy said. “Ain’t nothin’ wrong with bein’ interested in nature.”

  “There will be if the lightnin’ gets her.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “And you don’t worry enough. If you had your way, she’d be climbin’ trees in storms.”

  “I didn’t never tell her to climb trees durin’ storms.”

  “You may as well have, talkin’ about Ben Franklin and his kite.”

  “I didn’t tell her to go flyin’ one, now did I?” Daddy asked.

  I peered through the window screen and smiled as I watched Daddy pull Momma down into his lap, teasing her about being a worrywart. The scene made me feel safe, and I curled up on the porch swing, completely content.

  It was a funny thing, all Momma’s talk about lightning, because that storm rolled in fast and strong, bringing fierce winds and lightning that lit the sky in jagged streaks. I watched it in fascination until a crack that shook the house resounded through the countryside, making Duke, our basset hound, start barking like crazy.

  Momma ran to the door and called, “Jessilyn, you get in this house before you end up crispy.”

  But I was too distracted to reply because I’d seen a bright flash past the thicket at the edge of our property some two acres away, right near the house where Gemma and her parents lived.

  “Jessilyn,” Momma repeated, “what are you starin’ at?

  Get in this house.”

  “There.” I pointed into the distance. “I saw the lightnin’ hit there.”

  “What?” Momma came through the door onto the porch, standing on her toes to see across the meadow. “Over near Gemma’s house?”

  “Right past the thicket.”

  “Harley,” Momma called, “you best come out here.”

  “What’re you doin’ out here, Sadie?” Daddy asked as he joined us on the porch. “You were just yellin’ about lightnin’ a few minutes ago.”

  “Jessie says she saw lightnin’ hit near the field house.”

  “Are you sure, Jessilyn?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We stood there watching for about a minute before the first wisps of smoke started creeping up above the treetops.

  “Land’s sake, somethin’s on fire over there,” Momma cried. “Harley, what do we do?”

  “You two are stayin’ right here,” Daddy replied. “Call for help, and I’ll drive over to find out what happened.”

  I was scared for Gemma’s safety, even more scared than I’d been when I almost drowned. If Daddy had a sixth sense about when someone was lying, I had a sixth sense about bad things, especially bad things that happened in summertime. I’d thought that maybe my ordeal at the swimming hole was my bad turn for that summer, but now I was feeling numb down to my toes.

  I knew something was horribly wrong.

  “I’m comin’ with you,” I told Daddy.

  “Jessilyn, you stay here.”

  “Daddy, wait!” I called as he walked down the steps. I was as determined to go to Gemma as I’d ever been to do anything, and I was sure my face showed it. “I’m worried for Gemma. I’m goin’ too.”

  Daddy looked at me hard, and I could tell by his own face that he read mine perfectly. “All right, you can come,” he said reluctantly. “But don’t you go doin’ anythin’ without me sayin’ you can. Understand?”

  “Yes’r.”

  “Harley, it’s too dangerous,” Momma said, tears already rolling down her cheeks. “Jessilyn should stay home with me.”

  Daddy took Momma in his arms and quietly said, “Some things a body just has to do, and Jessie’s gotta go. You can see it in her eyes. You go on now and call for help, and I promise I’ll watch out for her.”

  Momma’s face showed plain fear, and she grabbed me hard. “You be careful, Jessilyn Lassiter. You hear me? I don’t want nothin’ happenin’ to you.”

  I nodded and then broke free, wanting to tell Momma that I’d be fine, but I couldn’t say anything. A big lump was forming in my throat, and my heart raced, but I managed to run to the truck and jump in beside my daddy.

  As we drove down the road, I inwardly willed Daddy to speed up his truck, wanting to get to Gemma’s house as fast as I could. But once I reached the house, I started wishing I’d never gotten there at all.

  The place was ablaze, like it had been made of kindling. At first we couldn’t see anything for the flames and sparks that flew through the air on the wind. With all the storm a
bout us, not one drop of rain had fallen, and I found myself praying that God would send some right away.

  Daddy hopped out of the truck, ordering me to stay put, and went running toward the flames. I screamed at him, begging him not to go, but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t listen. And anyway, I knew he had to go look. If he didn’t try to help, who would? In this part of the country, neighbors weren’t exactly within seeing distance. It would take time for any help to get here.

  I watched Daddy run from one side of the house to the other, trying to see in windows without getting burnt. All the while, I sat still and prayed hard. I prayed that God would save Gemma and her parents. I prayed that rain would come. But I didn’t feel right. I had that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one I’d always gotten whenever trouble was brewing.

  Thankfully I saw a droplet splatter against the front window of the truck, followed by another and then another. “Thank You, Jesus,” I murmured, sounding just like my momma did whenever anything good happened.

  The rain began to come in buckets, but it wasn’t doing much to calm the inferno that was Gemma’s house. I couldn’t see my daddy anymore, and I started to breathe a little harder. Scared senseless, I opened my door and stepped into the pouring rain, shielding my eyes with my hand to look around. I still couldn’t see Daddy. In fact, I couldn’t see much of anything. But I thought I’d seen something moving near the tractor, so I trudged through the mud, ignoring the lightning and wind, to investigate.

  When I reached the tractor, I looked into the cart on the back and saw something. “Gemma? Gemma, are you in there?”

  A bolt of lightning lit up the sky to show me that it was Gemma in the cart, curled up in a ball, her clothes black from soot. She was shaking all over, her eyes wide and scared, and I felt awful for her. I’d never seen anyone so afraid.

  “Gemma, are you all right? Can you move?”

  “Your daddy told me to get away from the house,” she said softly.

  “Why didn’t you come to the truck?”

  “I couldn’t find it.”

  “Where’s my daddy?” I asked in fear. “Is he all right?”

  “I think so.”