The Myth of Perpetual Summer

by Susan Crandall

  I sit on the foot of his bed. I just need to be near him for a bit, that’ll calm the bees in my chest.

  He doesn’t say anything, just waits like he always does for me to spill my guts.

  “Do you still want to go to a big city and be Clark Kent?” I ask. The question aggravates those bees like a bear paw after a honeycomb. If Griff leaves, I’ll be all alone on nights like this.

  “Maybe. I want a place where I’m who I am because of me, not because of Margo, or Dad, or Great-Granddad Neely, or anybody else. Been thinking on California. Everything is new, not chained to the past. And it’s the hot rod capital.”

  “The whole state? I thought a capital had to be a city.”

  “The only part that counts is LA.”

  “Because of Hollywood?”

  “Because of everything about it. You can be anything there. Anything at all. And it’s sunny and dry.” He pats the bed. “No damp sheets.”

  “Well, like Gran says, it’s too early to be making those kinds of decisions.”

  “I reckon.” He sighs and puts his other hand behind his head. “So what’s really keeping you awake?”

  “That was it.” It wasn’t when I came in, but it certainly is now. “I don’t want to wake up one day and you’ll have disappeared, too.”

  “Oh, Lulie, she doesn’t deserve you missing her. It’s nothing but fights and embarrassment when she’s here.”

  I think he just wants to remember the bad so he doesn’t miss her himself.

  He goes on, “Dad will get over shadow time. The talk will die down. Things will be better than ever. You’ll see.”

  “Good. If it’s better than ever, you won’t need to leave.” I head back to my own bed before he can say any more.

  * * *

  We’re two weeks into summer vacation, and I’m up with the birds. Not because I want to be. It’s harvest time. Blackberries might not look dainty, but they are as delicate as snowflakes. Got to get them off the cane and into the refrigerators before the heat of the day. Pick them a day too early, they’re sour. A day too late, they’re mush.

  The early rising is only tolerable because Maisie and I pick side by side, then spend the whole rest of the day together—that is, unless her momma has work for her at Judge Delmore’s house. Maisie’s momma works there as a cook. Sometimes Beulah, the housemaid, has extra outdoor sweeping or woodwork washing for Maisie. I don’t like the way Mrs. Judge Delmore talks to Maisie and her momma. She’s one of those ladies whose nose is stuck so high in the air it’s a miracle she doesn’t trip over everything. As Gran says, there’s never an excuse for unkindness.

  Most girls have a best friend of their own color, but Maisie and I are salt-and-pepper best friends. She’s almost always got a good amount of humor in her, unless her daddy’s in a mood. That’s one thing that makes us such good friends, the way we both have to check the wind around our houses before we know how the day’s going to go. I guess you could say we understand each other, which is important in friendship. Gran says things will change in time for Maisie and me. Ridiculous. That’s like saying things will change between Griff and me.

  Before I go out to the orchard barn, I stick my head in the boys’ room. I don’t want to wake Walden, so I tiptoe in and shake Griff by the shoulder. He takes a blind swat and catches me in the nose.

  “Hey!” I loud-whisper. “I’m just trying to keep you out of the doghouse. Better be in the barn by the time Gran gets here.” If there’s one thing I hate, it’s Griff being in trouble—it almost feels worse than when I’m in trouble myself.

  I give him one more poke from arm’s length and hurry toward the door. He buries his face in his pillow and mumbles, “Coming.”

  I can’t dally around prodding him. If I’m late Gran makes me and Maisie pick in different spots to remind me to be responsible.

  Next, I open Daddy’s door. His room is dark because he closed the shutters on the outside and keeps the drapes tight. It smells like phys ed and Billiards and Beer all rolled into one. I don’t remember the last time I saw him anywhere but in this bed. He’s on his back with an arm thrown over his eyes. Gran says he’ll come around when he’s ready, and to leave him be unless he isn’t breathing. I walk over and put my finger under his nose. He is.

  As I eat my bowl of cereal, I’m feeling pretty low. I can’t wait to see Maisie. No matter how bad I’m feeling, she can always get me to laugh.

  Dew sparkles in the rising sun as I come out the back door. I feel better already, just being out of our house. Sometimes it feels so heavy I’m surprised it doesn’t collapse on us while we’re sleeping.

  I walk toward the barn, which sits off from the house, between the pecan orchard and the blackberry fields. Every step away from our house lightens my mood. I feel even better when I set eyes on Mr. Stokes—and then a little worse when I don’t see Maisie at his side. In addition to being Maisie’s Granddad, Mr. Stokes is Gran’s right-hand man in the orchard. He’s our bee man, too. He brings his hives every spring to make blackberries for us (pecans are wind pollinated, and he says the bees respect that) and honey and beeswax for him.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Stokes.”

  “Mornin’, Miss Tallulah.”

  “Fine day,” I say. It’s always best to mind manners before asking a nosy question.

  “Indeed.”

  “Is Maisie coming today?”

  “She be along.”

  I’m relieved and a little worried. Her daddy gets rough with her when she sasses. I won’t know if that’s the case until I see her, though, because Mr. Stokes is almost as bad as Gran when it comes to things that must never be mentioned.

  Since I’ve been thinking this morning on different colored friends, I’ve taken count. All of Griff’s friends are white. And Daddy’s friends are all white. I never see Margo’s friends. They could be purple for all I know. But I can’t quite figure Gran and Mr. Stokes.

  “You and Gran have known each other a long time, right?” I know Gran likes Mr. Stokes and respects him, because us kids are supposed to use the same manners on him as we would any white person. But being friends is something entirely different.

  “Since we were children bedeviling my mama and your Mamo.”

  “Did your mother work for Mamo all her life?” I ask, hoping Mamo didn’t treat old Mrs. Stokes the way Mrs. Judge Delmore treats Maisie and her momma.

  “Pretty much. They run a tight ship, those two. Was back when Hawthorn House was still somethin’.” A pleased smile curves his mouth. Gran likes to tell how ladies fought one another for an invitation to tea or to be included on the Christmas party guest list. But that was before the Great Depression ate up all of Great-Grandfather’s money and finished with his pride for dessert.

  “Were they friends, Mamo and your momma?”

  He’s quiet for so long I almost ask again, but when I glance up at his face and see the quizzical look on it, I know he heard and is just parsing it out, as he does.

  He finally says, “I’d say they had a strong respect for each other, those two ladies. But friends . . .” He shakes his head. “Not in those days.”

  “Things were different?” I can’t believe it. Margo says nothing’s changed in Mississippi since the first slave was dragged here in shackles.

  “In some ways,” he says slowly. “Some the same.”

  “You and Gran seem like friends.”

  He stops dead. “We do?” Then he tilts his head. “Don’t let folks hear you say that.”

  “You’re not friends, then?”

  “I reckon that depends on what you mean by friend.”

  “Well, Tommy and Griff”—my yardstick for all friendships—“spend lots of time together and keep each other’s secrets and will get in a fight to defend each other, so I guess that’s what I mean.”

  He’s quiet again, looking off in the distance. Finally, he says, “If that’s so, then I reckon you can call me and your granny friends. Just don’t go doin’ it out in public.”
r />   I wonder what part of my definition provoked the distant look and what made him finally decide his answer was yes.

  * * *

  Today’s a lucky day—for me, not so much for the orchard—because the picking is light. Gran always says we’re one bad harvest ahead of the taxman. Maisie and I have our berry pails cleaned and stacked long before lunchtime. Her momma usually packs a lunch for her and me and Mr. Stokes. Well, she packs enough for Griff, too, but he’s always in a hurry to meet up with Tommy. I’m pretty sure Tommy’s mom keeps a lunch ready for whenever Griff shows up—she’s one of those mothers who’s always trying to feed you. Not like Margo.

  Griff takes off on his bicycle, and Maisie and I get permission to take our lunches down by the river for a picnic. Well, Maisie gets permission from her Pappy Stokes, I’m what Daddy calls a free-range kid, better to learn how to be responsible for myself.

  As we walk slow and easy through the shade of the pecan orchard, Maisie’s singing. Which is another thing I love about her, if she wasn’t my best friend, I might even be jealous of her voice. Griff says I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. He always tells me true about things like that.

  After her song is finished, she asks, “Still no Margo at your house?”

  “Nope.” I like the way the p pops but can’t use it around Gran or Daddy, because nope isn’t an actual word.

  We walk on, quiet with each other, scaring off a rabbit or a squirrel every now and again. Gran keeps the orchard floor neat by hard work, not by letting livestock graze like some do. Which means we can look at the sky as we walk and don’t have to keep an eye out for manure.

  Finally, Maisie asks, “Think she’ll ever come back?”

  I know Maisie’s heart; she’s not just nibby-nosing like the rest of Lamoyne. Still, I can’t bring myself to speak what I’m afraid is true, so I shrug. Which is also a forbidden answer around Gran and Daddy.

  “Does it go away, the missin’, the longer she’s gone?”

  “No.” I’ll only admit this to Maisie. I make Daddy and Gran think I’m not sad over it. Daddy is sad enough already. And Gran’s always trying to fill us up; I don’t want her to think she’s not enough.

  But she isn’t. And I don’t understand why.

  I say, “It’s crazy, but I feel Margo not being here way more than I ever felt her being here.”

  “Maybe not so crazy. Momma says people never miss a thing till it’s gone from them.”

  Maisie’s momma is like Daddy in that way, always saying thought-provoking things. Sometimes Daddy’s answers to my questions are so longwinded that I forget what the question was by the time he’s done trying to make me figure it out on my own.

  After a moment, Maisie asks, “Why’re we goin’ this way?”

  Since we’re settled into being best friends for life, I’ve decided to show her my secret place by the river. Griff is the only other person in the world who knows about it.

  I stop and look at her, holding up a pinkie finger. “There’s a magic place. You can’t tell anyone.”

  Her eyes are wide and serious as she links her pinkie with mine. “I swear.”

  I nod and we march on. Thinking on secrets and friends makes my curious nature think of Gran’s slippery ways when it came to Uncle George. “Did your Pappy Stokes ever talk about Daddy’s uncle George?”

  “Who?”

  “Guess that answers my question.”

  We reach the place where the pecan trees are the oldest, and the rail fence meets from south and west, and the land drops away toward the river.

  “Here we are.” I stand and look around, reverently, as Daddy would say. Sometimes I’m thankful rather than vexed over Daddy’s weekly vocabulary words. Like right now, when no other word but reverent could describe how I feel.

  Maisie looks around, bewildered. She hasn’t understood the magic yet.

  “Here.” I climb on the rail fence, then reach up and pull myself onto a thick branch of the most perfect pecan tree that ever sprouted. This is truly my secret place, off the ground and farther away from the world.

  Maisie follows me and we sit quiet, side by side, looking at the river.

  “Now I see,” she finally says, hushed and respectful. Then she knocks her shoulder into mine. “Thank you for bringin’ me.”

  “That’s not all.” I reach into my pocket for the safety pin I tucked in there when I got dressed this morning. “This is the place we’re going to be blood brothers—or sisters, I reckon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Last month, Tommy and Griff did the ceremony to become blood brothers. That means you might not be born from the same people, but you’re linked just the same. It’s a forever promise.”

  Maisie nods solemnly. “If you think it’ll work, then I’m ready. What do we do?”

  “I prick each of our thumbs with this pin and we squeeze out a drop of blood. Griff said the proper way is to slash across your palm, then shake, but then you have to explain why you have a cut, and blood brothers are secret and sacred.”

  “I’d rather have a thumb prick anyhow, if you’re sure it’ll work the same.”

  “Griff says the important part is the promise and the mixing of blood.”

  Maisie keeps her eyes on mine as she holds up a thumb.

  “Ready?”

  She nods.

  I stick my thumb first, then hers. I’m happy to see that our blood is exactly the same color. It makes me think this will work for sure, even though our skin is different.

  We press the blood spots on our thumbs together. “Blood sisters,” I say.

  “Blood sisters.” Maisie’s face is serious enough that I know she’s putting her heart in it, which Griff says is important.

  Once it’s done, we sit for a while watching the river and I can tell something inside me has changed. I think something inside Maisie has, too. We are sisters.

  * * *

  The Saturday before the Fourth of July, Gran and us kids come home from the grocery store. The twins make straight for the tractor-tire sandbox. I lead Gran and Griff into the house, each of us carrying two big paper bags. Gran’s talking about this week’s case on Perry Mason as we walk through the back door. And there sits Margo, big as you please, at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and reading a book.

  I stop dead and blink, just to make sure she’s not a mirage. When I open my eyes, she’s still there, dressed head to toe in black. Her eyelids are black, too—makeup, but not the kind any mother around here wears.

  She’s here! Really here.

  Before the three of us find the voices she startled out of us, she says, “What’s wrong with Dray? He won’t get out of bed.” She sounds like she just saw us an hour ago, and not four long months.

  My mouth goes cottony, and my heart beats hard and fast. I want to drop my bags on the floor and throw my arms around her. But I hear Griff breathing behind me, deep and shaky, and I’m afraid to move.

  Gran’s voice is low and cold when she says, “Drayton has been ill.” I swear if I turn I’ll see puffs of frost coming from her mouth.

  Margo’s head snaps up. “Ill? What do you mean, ill?” There’s a look on her face I’ve never seen. She looks . . . scared. “Has he seen a doctor?”

  “There’s no medicine for what ails him.” Granny steps beside me and thumps her bags on the table. “You just take off, leaving him with four children . . . it’s too much . . . too much heartbreak.”

  Griff drops his bags on the kitchen counter. Then he turns around and walks back out the kitchen door slamming it behind him.

  The sharp sound makes me jump, but Gran stays as still as a tree stump.

  Margo’s back straightens. “He knew I had to go to San Francisco! I was going to die here! Those people saved me.” Her hand caresses her book like it’s a baby.

  “Really, Margo, you cannot tell me that you were crusading for a cause in San Francisco these past months. That was pure selfish folly.”

  “If you’re t
rying to blame me for Dray crawling into bed and not coming out, then you’d better rethink it. You know how he gets in a mood. And my being here doesn’t change it one bit. What’s it been, a couple of days?”

  “Nearly four months. He’s had to take sick time from the college. If he’s not better by fall classes . . .”

  Margo’s eyes get so wide you can barely see the black around them. She shoots out of her chair and runs to Daddy’s room.

  Gran puts an arm around me and pulls me close. “Your children are just fine,” she calls after Margo.

  Her words pour over me like icy water. I realize Margo hasn’t even looked at me.

  My knees are shaky, and a darkness pools in my heart. All this time . . . and she doesn’t even see me. I’m afraid I might throw up, but I swallow hard instead, not wanting to move from Gran’s tight hold. My fingers slide into my pocket to wrap around Griff’s arrowhead.

  With one hand, Gran flips closed the book Margo abandoned on the table. Then she groans.

  On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

  “Is that a bad book?” I whisper.

  “There aren’t any bad books, Tallulah.” She hugs me tighter. “But there are books that give a woman like your mother damaging ideas.”

  From Gran’s comment and the title, I figure it’s a book that encourages people to leave home.

  Gran and I don’t talk while we put away the groceries, me shaking like a willow in a windstorm and Gran thumping cans onto the shelves and closing the cabinet doors harder than usual.

  I keep looking at the doorway, hoping Margo will come back, give me a big hug, tell me how much she missed me and promise never to leave for so long again.

  But the doorway stays empty.

  5

  August 1972

  Lamoyne, Mississippi

  In all of my years away, I believed this moment would never come. I wrapped myself inside the steady rhythm of my life in San Francisco, leaving Lamoyne and all that happened here safely outside my chrysalis. And so, I find myself shockingly unprepared for the emotional onslaught of seeing the ruination of my old home.