Where I Belong

by Mary Downing Hahn

  Shea shoves three wrinkled dollar bills across the counter and the waitress takes them. The cash register is at the other end of the counter. She rings up the sale and stays there without looking at us again.

  It’s three thirty, too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so the diner is almost empty. Two old ladies are sitting in a booth having coffee and talking loudly about their grandchildren and how ungrateful they are because they never write thank-you notes. “I’m not giving Emily a birthday present next year,” one says, and the other agrees. “Shannon won’t get one either.”

  “Those cranky old ladies are definitely real-lifers,” I tell Shea.

  “And so is the waitress.” We glance at her. She frowns at us. We are not funny. We are not cute. We are not nice.

  We finish our sodas and trade the fresh cold air of the diner for the hot stale air outside. It smells like it’s been breathed and rebreathed by thousands of people—used air, you could call it. No longer fresh.

  Even though I’m really tired, we walk through the town park, a place I rarely go for fear of meeting one of my enemies. The benches are occupied by old people, some dozing, some just sitting. They remind me of passengers at the rail of a boat, waiting to see land. The swings hang on their chains, empty except for one little kid who is pumping as hard as he can. He looks like he’s hoping to fly over the top and launch himself into outer space. At the base of a Confederate soldier’s statue, I see Sean and his friends. Three teenage girls have stopped to talk to them. The girls fiddle with their hair, shift their weight from hip to hip, giggle.

  I grab Shea’s arm and pull her away, turn back to the park’s entrance. She looks at the boys. “It’s them, isn’t it?” she asks. “The ones who beat you up.”

  “Yes.” I walk faster, fearful of hearing one call out, There he is.

  Shea hurries after me. “I know who they are. They live around the corner from me in those apartments at the end of the street. They sell drugs. The cops are always after them.”

  When we’re a safe distance from the park, I sit down on a bus stop bench to catch my breath. Shea sits next to me.

  “Do you think Sean is a real-lifer?” Shea asks.

  I think about it, not sure what to say. “He’s something else. He wants what real-lifers have, though—money, cars, houses, vacations, all that stuff. But . . .” I shrug and lift Shea’s arm to look at her watch. “It’s almost time for dinner. Mrs. Clancy’s going to be furious.”

  We walk together to the end of my street. “Will you be in summer school tomorrow?” Shea asks.

  I nod. We say goodbye, and I walk slowly up the street. In this neighborhood, the houses are one-story ramblers made of brick, probably all built at the same time because they seem to come in three basic look-alike styles. One has the front door in the middle. One has the front door on the left. One has the front door on the right. All have at least one picture window. Some have shutters, some have fences, some have lawn decorations. American flags flutter from most of them.

  All of them are as tidy and well cared for as Mrs. Clancy’s house. They remind me of an old Beatles song about Penny Lane and blue suburban skies.

  Several men push loud power mowers up and down their lawns. Someone cooks hamburgers on a grill. The smell sometimes tempts me to become a carnivore. A woman waters her flowers.

  Except for the lawn mowers, it’s a quiet summer evening. Long shadows make the grass look even greener.

  I realize I don’t know a single person on this street. No kids my age live here. Maybe that’s why.

  FIFTEEN

  MRS. CLANCY LOOKS UP from the pot she’s stirring and frowns. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. I thought I told you not to be gone long.”

  I slide into my seat and watch her ladle pasta and sauce on my plate. “Marinara,” she says. “No meat.”

  I watch steam curl up from the pasta. It’s way too hot for a meal like this, but I figure I’d better eat it since she went to the trouble of leaving meat out.

  She sits down across from me. “You know what? I talked to that pediatrician about growing boys needing meat, and she said not to worry about it, just to make sure you get your protein from cheese and nuts and things like that.” She waves a hand at the shaker of Parmesan cheese. “Take as much as you like.”

  I sprinkle a pile of grated cheese on the marinara sauce and watch it melt. Mrs. Clancy does the same.

  “You know something else?” she asks. “Dr. Phillips said it’s good for people my age to cut back on red meat. She gave me a pamphlet about cholesterol and suggested I talk to my doctor about it.”

  This might be the most Mrs. Clancy has ever said at dinner. Usually she eats with one eye on the little TV she keeps on the kitchen counter, but tonight it’s turned off. I wonder what else she’s told Dr. Phillips about me. And what Dr. Phillips has said she should do with me, the problem boy.

  Suddenly she stares across the table at me, a frown creasing her forehead. “I’ve been thinking about that girl. Is she really the only friend you have?”

  The question takes me by surprise. To avoid answering, I swirl my spaghetti around my fork. It’s finally cool enough to eat.

  “Pretty much.” I sop up sauce with my bread.

  “Is one of her parents black?”

  “Well, her mother’s white and her stepfather’s white, but all I know about her real father is that he was killed in Afghanistan.” I look her in the eye. “Why do you want to know? What difference does it make?”

  Mrs. Clancy takes a sip of iced tea. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

  She just wondered. That’s all. Mrs. Clancy doesn’t need to know anything about Shea. Or me. It’s none of her business.

  “It’s too late in the summer for Little League,” she says, veering off in a totally different direction, “but soccer season’s coming up. Maybe in the fall, when school starts . . .”

  She breaks off with a sigh. “Dr. Phillips says I need to accept you just the way you are, but if you, if we—Oh, I don’t know what to do with you. It’s not as easy as she thinks.”

  For once she isn’t angry. She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t spout the usual stuff—I’m irresponsible, selfish, lazy, etc., etc., etc. She actually sounds like she’s trying to start over with me. But she doesn’t know how. Well, I don’t know how to start over with her.

  Mrs. Clancy sits there for a moment tearing her bread apart, not eating it, just crumbling it. “I’ve been taking care of foster kids for twenty years and never had the problems I’ve had with you.” She frowns. “Don’t get me wrong, Brendan. I’m not saying it’s all your fault. I just don’t have the energy I once had. I ought to be more patient with you, I know I should, but I don’t have the patience I once had either.”

  I don’t know what to say, so I start clearing the table. I watch her get up. She moves slower than she used to, and there’s a white stripe along the part in her red hair. Her hands are ropy with veins. It’s true. She’s getting old. I surprise myself by asking if she wants some help with the dishes.

  “That would be nice.” Mrs. Clancy washes and I dry. We don’t talk, just stand side by side as if we’ve been doing the dishes together for years. Outside the window above the sink, I can see the man next door working in his garden.

  “You want to watch TV?” she asks. “Jeopardy!’s on after the evening news.”

  This is something new. She’s never invited me to watch TV with her. Cautiously I join her on the sofa, leaving lots of space between us. I don’t feel comfortable, but I think it might be smart to keep on her good side—which I honestly didn’t realize she had.

  The local weatherman is talking about the heat wave, which will continue all week. Temperature in the upper nineties, humidity to match, air quality is bad, and old people should stay inside. So should people with asthma.

  Mrs. Clancy says, “Thank the lord for air conditioning. When I was your age we didn’t have anything but window fans. We spent a lot of time
in cool places like movie theaters and drugstores.”

  “The people I stayed with before I came here didn’t have air conditioning,” I tell her. “It was horrible.”

  The weatherman concludes by mentioning a hurricane is gathering strength off the coast of Cuba. Charlotte could pack a wallop if she hits the East Coast but there’s nothing to worry about yet.

  “It won’t come this far inland,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Heavy rain, maybe. Some wind. That’ll be the worst of it.”

  She leans forward. The Jeopardy! music has begun. Alex Trebek walks out smiling and greets the audience. “Isn’t he the handsomest man?” she asks. “I’ve been watching this show a long time and he just gets better-looking every year. I wish I knew his secret.”

  “Rich people always know stuff we don’t,” I say.

  The contestants join Alex and he starts the introductions. One is a schoolteacher from Missouri, another is a lawyer, and the third is an accountant. All three are men. The accountant has won for three weeks in a row and he has twenty thousand so far.

  Mrs. Clancy sighs. “I wish I was smart enough to get on the show and be a bigtime winner.”

  “What would you do with the money?”

  “First I’d quit my job at the card shop and go on a cruise. I might even try my luck at one of the casinos in Atlantic City. You can take a bus from Roanoke.”

  The game starts before Mrs. Clancy has a chance to lose her winnings in Atlantic City. I wonder if she’d take me on the cruise—probably not. Probably I wouldn’t want to go anyway.

  The first contestant picks the category English Literature, and I amaze Mrs. Clancy by giving all the right answers. At the end of the show, she stares at me. “For somebody who almost flunked sixth grade, you sure know a lot,” she says. “Why, with a brain like yours, you could win millions on Jeopardy!”

  We watch a few more shows, but by nine o’clock I’m ready for bed. The new Mrs. Clancy has tired me out. I don’t know how long our détente will last, but I have a strange feeling we might get along better now. Except for her questions about Shea, she was really nice tonight. Dr. Phillips must have given her an earful.

  The next day, I go to summer school. As soon as we’re dismissed, Shea and I cross the train tracks and head for the woods. Soon, the trees close in around us. Their straight trunks tower above us, soaring like pillars in a cathedral. We breathe in the smell of damp earth and moss. Above our heads, leaves rustle and sigh. Sunlight flashes down here and there in shafts the color of pure gold and puddles the ground with light. A bird sings bloggit, bloggit, bloggit over and over again.

  As usual we walk quietly, Shea and I. We don’t talk above a whisper. She knows the law of the forest.

  We scramble up the tree and check our stuff. It seems like we’ve been gone for a long time, but everything is just the way we left it, except for a few acorns squirrels have dropped.

  Suddenly the bushes part below us and the Green Man steps into the clearing. He’s wearing a T-shirt with Bob Dylan’s picture on the front and a list of concerts on the back with dates from 1988 to 2000. It was black once, but now it’s faded to a greenish color. If he’d been wearing that shirt the day I met him, I wouldn’t have thought he was the Green Man.

  It’s the first time I’ve seen him since he carried me to Mr. Hailey’s house, and I’m not sure how I feel about him. Part of me is still mad, I guess. But there he is, old and shabby, grinning at Shea and me like we’re still the best of friends. I don’t know. Maybe we are. Maybe we aren’t.

  Shea calls down to him, “Hey, you got a new T-shirt!”

  He smiles. “My other shirt disintegrated. I got this for twenty-five cents at the Goodwill store.” He scratches his belly. “Dylan and me go back a long way.”

  He squints up at us, shading his eyes with his hand. “Come on down here. I want to get a good look at you, Master Brendan. I’ve missed you, lad.”

  “I’ve missed you, too,” I admit. I scramble down the tree with Shea just behind, showering my head with rotten wood and bark.

  The Green Man studies me. “Your hair’s growing back,” he says. “Pretty soon you’ll look like those boring real boys with crewcuts. You’re still skinny, though.”

  “He’ll always be skinny.” Shea gives me a poke in the ribs, which makes me wince. “Oops, sorry, I forgot about your bruises.”

  Shea and I share our lunch with the Green Man. Which is fine, because Shea brought more than enough for the two of us. Maybe she knew who’d be here, hungry and thirsty.

  After we finish eating, the Green Man stretches out on his back and stares up at the treetops far above our heads. “I love the way the sun shines through the leaves,” he says, “and how the trunks all seem to curve in and form a roof.”

  He looks like he might fall asleep, but Shea has other ideas. “You promised to show us your hut,” she reminds him. “Can we go there now? Please? Please?”

  “You sure you want to see it?” The Green Man scratches his belly. “It’s a hidey-hole, not very clean, a bit dark and damp and full of junk.”

  “Yes,” she and I say. “Yes.”

  With a shrug of his heavy shoulders, the Green Man shambles ahead like a big bear. We follow him a long way into the woods, on a trail so faint and twisting, it might have been made by a deer—or a unicorn that didn’t want to lead anyone to its hiding place.

  He stops near a tall, twisted tree almost as old as my tree. Moss furs its bark with a thick green coat. “We’re close,” he says. “You can almost reach out and touch it from here.”

  Shea and I peer this way and that. We brush bushes and branches aside, ducking brambles, avoiding poison ivy. We look up in case it’s a tree house. We look down in case it’s truly a hole in the ground.

  “It’s not here.” Shea’s lower lip juts out like it does when she’s mad.

  I stare at him. Not so long ago, I would’ve thought he’d cast a spell of invisibility on his shelter.

  “Come.” The Green Man leads us off the path and down a hill, threading his way between lichen-splashed boulders that erupted from the earth thousands of years ago. You can still feel the power that thrust them aboveground, only it’s dormant now.

  We’re in a ravine beside a creek before we see the hut. Like Shea told me, it’s a combination of canvas tarps and logs and cinder blocks. The canvas has a camouflage pattern. Grape vines and blackberry bushes cover it. The logs and cinder blocks are covered with moss and lichens.

  “You have to be less than six inches away to figure out what it is.” I keep my voice low. Who knows who could be listening or watching from the dense shade?

  “And even then you could miss it,” Shea whispers. “It’s like a fairy’s cottage, hidden from everybody, unless the fairy allows you to see it.”

  She looks at me, and I see a glint in her eye that tells me she’s thinking maybe he’s the Green Man after all.

  The Green Man walks around to the side facing the stream and moves a pile of branches that hide a small door, as gray and weathered as the old logs on the ground.

  “Come in.” He steps back, and we duck our heads to go through the doorway. He bends down and comes in behind us.

  As my eyes get used to the dark, I see a mattress and blankets, an orange-crate table and an old office chair. Bits and pieces of metal sheets keep out the rain and snow.

  In the light of a kerosene lantern, Shea examines everything, including the contents of an old wooden box. She rummages around and holds something up. “Are these yours?” she asks the Green Man.

  He glances at what she’s found—army medals on faded ribbons. “Ah, put those back where you found them.”

  “Did you get them in Vietnam?” she asks. “Were you a hero?”

  “Me a hero, that’s a laugh. Put them away, Shea. That box is private.”

  “This one’s a Purple Heart,” she says, “and this one’s a Bronze Star. You want to know how I know?”

  “Well, I suppose you’ll tell me whether I s
ay yes or no.”

  I’m watching all this anxiously. Is he mad at Shea? Is he about to kick us out? But he doesn’t seem cross. Just resigned. Like me, he knows Shea pretty well now. She won’t stop asking questions until she hears what she wants to hear.

  “Well,” she says, “my real father was killed in Af-ghanistan and the army sent my mother a letter about how brave he was and she has two medals just like these—a Purple Heart because he was wounded in battle and a Bronze Star because he was very brave.”

  Shea turns the medal over and reads the back: “‘For heroic or meritorious achievement.’ And here’s your name: Edward John Calhoun. And here’s a V, which means you got this for doing something brave in battle, just like my daddy. He saved two men in a burning tank and then got shot. I think he should’ve gotten the Congressional Medal of Honor for that. I mean, how much braver can a person be?”

  “Not much,” says the Green Man.

  “What did you do to get yours?”

  “Oh, Shea, can’t we talk about something else?”

  “Please tell me.”

  “It was so long ago, another lifetime. I barely remember the war. Or what I did. Or how I survived.”

  “Come on, Shea,” I say. “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, it’s okay. Just leave him alone.”

  “Well, if I got a medal I’d want everybody to know why I got it and how brave I was.” She holds one up to her chest. “And I’d wear them every single day. I’d never hide them away in a box.”

  “Everybody’s not like you,” I say.

  Shea puts the medals back in the box and closes the lid. “Okay,” she says, “but promise to tell me later.”

  “Maybe,” the Green Man says.

  “No maybes!”

  “All right, all right. Someday I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Is that a promise?”

  “Yes, yes it is.” He’s beginning to look a little vexed. “Now leave it be.” He laughs when he says this, but I worry that deep down he’s sorry he brought us here.