by Larry Watson
“Cry if I want to, cry if I want to . . .”
The car is a black 1952 Ford Tudor, and Ann is familiar with many of the ways its owner has customized the car. He has done things to the engine she doesn’t entirely understand, things with valves and carburetors and plugs and points, and he’s changed the exhaust system so it growls a warning even when the car is standing still. He moved the gearshift from the steering column to the floor, and the top of the shifter is an oval of wood crudely carved to look like the head of a ferocious Indian warrior. The seat covers are rough wool and can scratch the backs of your bare arms and legs, and the knob on the window crank and the door handle can gouge into your back if you’re pushed up against the passenger door. Ann knows that if you push the first button on the radio, the station will jump to Miles City; the second will bring in Billings; the third Dickinson, North Dakota; and the fourth and best, KOMA in Oklahoma City. Ann knows the sound the cigarette lighter makes when it pops out, and she knows the look of it close-up as it glows red-orange.
The sidewalk climbs and curves, and Ann moves to the edge of the cement, almost stepping into the weeds of the vacant lot. Here, without a house staring down at her, Ann has to be ready to run. The air feels slightly cooler as she walks past the open field, and the sound of the car’s engine throbs all the way over to the next block. But she passes safely, and the next house not only has its porch light on but its curtains open as well.
Off to her left a Roman candle fizzles into flight—did it come from McDonoughs’ backyard? It must have been a dud because it didn’t attain any height but instead sparked and spiraled erratically into the lower branches of a curbside tree.
That sudden flare is enough to distract Ann and prevent her from noticing the cherry bomb that rolls into the gutter only a few paces behind her. By the time she registers the hiss of the fuse, the detonation is only a half second away.
She has walked unperturbed through a day of explosions, but this blam!—a sound she feels in her chest—frightens a shriek from her, and she starts to run as if a shell from an enemy’s artillery has burst at her feet.
Between two houses she runs, and once she’s away from the streetlights and into the backyards, she can no longer see where her feet will fall, but she does not slow. In the hour past midnight, dew has begun to form, and she slips and sinks on the wet turf. She crosses into another yard, and when she does, she alerts a dog back by the alley—a big dog by the sound of its bark. Its chain rattles and snaps taut, and Ann veers in another direction. She needs to stay away from the alley anyway in case he circles around and drives behind the houses.
What trips her she isn’t sure—a croquet hoop? a sprinkler? a wire fence around a flower bed?—but she goes sprawling and skids forward on her hands and knees. The odor of wet grass fills her nostrils, and for a moment she’s tempted just to lie still and hope she won’t be seen. But her white slacks will probably glow against the black-green lawn, and she’d rather be chased down than to have him come up behind her, grab her ankles, and drag her off to God knows where.
When Ann rises and begins to run again, she takes it a bit slower and lifts her feet higher, and soon she comes to the end of the block and a familiar sight—the white shed in the Rhinebohns’ backyard, and she’s sure of the landmark because before Mr. Rhinebohn began to store his garden tools in there that little building had been Mary Rhinebohn’s playhouse, and all through grade school, Ann, Mary, Karen Kemper, and Judy Falk used it for their clubhouse. Then, in the summer before seventh grade, Mary drowned in the Elk River, and the following year Mr. Rhinebohn moved out the toys and the play dishes and old dresses and moved in his shovels, rakes, hoe, and mower. Ann has not been inside since Mary was alive, but she’s sure she can still work the latch on the bottom half of the double door, and if she crawls inside she can probably make her way to the back wall and find the spot where she, Mary, Karen, and Judy wrote their initials in purple crayon.
But she doesn’t have to hide. Not yet. Not now. The sense of being pursued is gradually leaving her, and if she stands still for just another minute or two, she might be ready to step back into the light. She’s only a block from home, close enough to feel not only that safety is reachable but also to feel a little power flowing back in her direction. Seventeen years of living in this rectangle of rectangles—the right angle geometry of intersections and streets, of sidewalks and alleys, of lawns and houses—now counts for something. Sometimes she can feel her heart quicken with fear when she thinks about her little town’s isolation, how frail and temporary it seems in comparison to the hundreds—thousands!—of miles of shapeless prairie that surround Gladstone. How comforting it must be, she thinks at those times, to live in a huge city, block after block of sheltering bricks and boards. But right now she’s close enough to being inside that she dares to step into the open.
Through the space between the Rhinebohns’ and the Winters’, Ann walks calmly, but when she reaches the sidewalk, even though there’s no sign of the car or its driver, she breaks into a run again, and she does not slow until she turns into her own driveway.
The light is on over the side door, and she stands in that circle of luminescence and waits for her heart rate to return to normal. If her parents are still up, she doesn’t want to have to answer their questions about why she’s breathing so hard.
Overhead, moths and insects whirr, flutter, and crawl around the porch light, and Ann retreats into the darkness to get away from them, especially the thick-bodied, clicking June bugs. She steps back into a sulfurous smell, and it takes her a moment to locate its source: Her little brother Will has been lighting snakes in the driveway again, those long tubes of black ash that writhe mysteriously forth from a tiny pill when set aflame. The odor is not merely unpleasant but disgusting—it reminds her of farts. And her mother hates the black smudges the snakes leave on the concrete. Poor Will. While his friends have moved on to firecrackers and bottle rockets, he’s still lighting snakes and waving sparklers.
ANN DOES EXACTLY AS her mother taught her, filling the washtub first, then pouring in a cup of Oxydol and a half cup of bleach, the smell of which stings her nostrils. She takes off her slacks and drops them into the water. As they slowly sink they seem to turn gray, and Ann knows the stain won’t come out. Maybe she can cut them off and make shorts out of them.
She looks down at her bare legs. She’s been working thirty-five to forty hours a week in the Boys’ Department at Penney’s, so she doesn’t have many opportunities to get out in the sun. Nevertheless, she still has a tan line, two, in fact, one in the middle of her thigh from her in shorts and another, much higher, from the fewer occasions when she’s been out in her bathing suit down at the river. That was where he and his friends were drinking beer and eating fried chicken, when Ann and Kitty walked by. “I’d like to take a bite out of those thighs,” he’d said. Ann knew he was talking about her, because he was looking right at her, and then he tossed a chicken bone that landed in the sand at her feet. That was before she started at Penney’s, when she could spend as much time down at the river as she liked. Maybe she should have gotten angry at his remark, but she knew who Monte Hiatt was and what her friends had been saying about him. He came from Laramie, and he moved to Gladstone because his parents split up and his mother’s cousin lived here and he gave Mrs. Hiatt a job in his furniture store. The new boy was going to be a junior, but right from the start he hung out with the seniors, especially the car guys. Was Monte Hiatt a hood? She couldn’t say for sure. That hair . . . and he smoked. He had his own car, and from what the other boys said, it was impressive, but Ann understood little about cars or the worship of them. What she did understand was what the girls meant when they talked about him. Monte Hiatt was cute, and according to Laurie Dwyer who lived on his block, he was nice. Cute and nice. There were not two other words in the English language that could be applied to a new boy from Laramie that would make him more appealing.
And hers were the thighs he wa
nted to take a bite from. Ann had laughed over his comment. Not in front of him, of course. But she and Kitty both burst out laughing as soon as they had walked far enough along the sand that the boys couldn’t hear them. Take a bite—it was exactly the kind of stupid thing a boy might think was clever or flirty or even romantic.
She doesn’t know how it could have happened without tearing her slacks, but one of her knees is scraped raw. The first layer of skin has peeled back, exposing a wet, pink layer. A few years ago a neighbor cut his hand with a power saw, and her father had taken him to the hospital. “I was surprised,” her father said, “there wasn’t much blood, but that blade cut right through the meat to the bone.”
Meat. Is that what’s pinkly showing under that scraped-away first layer of skin? Is that what he wanted to bite his way down to? Ann knew he wanted to put his hands on her—in her—but maybe it was more . . . maybe it was worse. He wanted to rip her apart, to explode her into pieces. Isn’t that what he was doing when he tossed that firecracker in her direction?
Oh, she has to stop! She’s going too far, just being melodramatic as her mother says Ann can be.
Footsteps thump down the basement stairs, and Ann grabs a towel from the laundry basket and wraps it around her waist. Her father thrusts his head around the corner and peers into the laundry room.
“Hey, sunshine,” he says. “Kind of late to be washing clothes, isn’t it?”
“I got a grass stain on my new pants. I thought I’d better soak them before it sets.”
He asks, “Enjoy the fireworks?”
“I guess.” Ann doubts that her father has come down here to make small talk. In an attempt to hurry him to his real reason for being here, she stages an elaborate yawn that turns into the real thing.
Her father takes his cue. “Do you have to work tomorrow?”
“Not until noon, but I told Kitty I’d come over to her house early and help her paint her room.”
“Smart—do that work before the day heats up.” He clears his throat and pats his shirt pocket for the pack of cigarettes that isn’t there. “Look,” he says, “there’s been a slight change of plans. Your mom and I are still going to Missoula as scheduled, but instead of you and Will being by yourselves, I’ve asked your grandfather to come and stay with you. Now, before you say a word—this isn’t for you. God knows you’re old enough to stay alone. But Will needs somebody close by, and with you at work so much of the time . . . Besides, it’s not fair to ask you to give up your summer freedom to care for your little brother.”
Her summer freedom—it’s all Ann can do not to laugh out loud. She can’t walk through her own neighborhood without looking worriedly over her shoulder. She says, “I don’t mind.”
“I know. You never said a word of complaint. But I just think this is a better arrangement. And again—it’s for your brother. It’s not because we don’t trust you or think you can’t handle things. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Okay. Sure.”
It’s her father who doesn’t understand. Ann isn’t angry or offended that their grandfather is coming to stay with her and Will. She’s nervous—wouldn’t anyone be if a stranger was coming to live within your walls? For that’s what her grandfather is to Ann. He lives alone out on the prairie in his little trailer, and he almost never comes to Gladstone, even though the town was once his home. Ann can’t even be sure when she last saw him. Four years ago? Five? He came to Gladstone to attend a funeral, and before he drove back to his trailer he stopped at the Sidey home for supper. She remembers a tall white-haired man in a black suit striding up their front walk, a man who looked so stern as he approached the house that Ann wondered if the family was in some kind of trouble. Oh, it has to be at least five years, and when her father introduced her, he said, “You remember Grandpa Sidey, don’t you?” and though Ann nodded yes, she couldn’t be sure. And now that man will be staying in their house. What will she say to him?
Now it’s Ann’s father’s turn to yawn. “You won’t spend the whole night down here, will you?”
“I’m just going to soak my pants a little while longer.”
“Okay. Good night, sweetheart.”
He’s almost out of the laundry room when Ann calls her father back. “Dad?”
Her father turns to her with such an innocently expectant look she immediately realizes she can’t say what’s on her mind. That’s the face of a father who wants to hear his daughter say that she’s glad he’s home or that she doesn’t think this year’s fireworks were as good as last year’s . . . How can she say to that face, Daddy, someone’s after me—he wants to blow me up, rip me apart, eat me alive.
“What is it, honey?”
“It’s been so long since Grandpa lived in town—does he even know how to do it?”
“He’s out of practice, that’s for sure, so he’ll probably need some help. You’ll get him over the rough parts, won’t you?”
She nods.
“And you’ll be patient with him?” He laughs when he says this, and while she isn’t sure if he’s serious, she nods at this too. But isn’t that the kind of remark that her father should have been making to her grandfather about his grandchildren?
“Okay. Good night again.” He starts to leave, and though Ann does not call him back, he returns to the laundry room.
He knows, she thinks. I don’t have to find the words; he knows.
“You didn’t happen to take a beer from the refrigerator, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Ann says.
“Of course you didn’t. And I’m not going to wake your brother to ask him!” He laughs again as though that’s the punch line to a joke everyone knows.
FIVE
In the alley behind his home, Will Sidey smooths a circle in the dirt. The sun has not yet reached midmorning height, but the pebbles he picks out of his circle are warm to the touch.
He puts a firecracker—nothing more powerful than a ladyfinger — into the center of the circle and then places an empty, upside down Butter-Nut coffee can over the firecracker, making sure to leave as much of the fuse as possible sticking out from the can’s rim.
Will touches the fuse with the smoldering punk he’s stuck into the dirt, and then scurries back a good ten feet. There’s a quick sizzling sound like spit, but no explosion—the can must have pinched off the fuse. Will is about to step forward to investigate when a voice stops him.
“Jesus. You think you’re far enough away?”
Coming down the alley are three boys close to Will in age. Like Will, they all wear sneakers, jeans, and T-shirts. For reasons none of them can recall, they’ve decided to favor the Cincinnati Reds this year, so they’ve cut off the sleeves of their T-shirts in imitation of the uniform of their favorite team. Only Stuart Kinder, the tallest of the three, wears a Reds cap; the other two wear caps with ironed-on B’s because Boyd Insurance sponsors their little league team. Will is bareheaded, though he also plays for the Boyd Bulldogs.
Will has just turned away from his coffee can circle and is walking toward his friends when there’s a tiny, pinging explosion behind him. He jumps, and Stuart points at him and laughs. “What the hell was that—a ladyfinger? One of those fuckers went off in my hand last year.” He wiggles the fingers of his right hand. “You don’t see nothing missing, do you?”
The coffee can still stands bottom up in the middle of the circle, but Will only stares at it. He jams his hands into the pockets of his jeans in case the trembling in his hands is visible. If his friends hadn’t appeared at that moment, Will would have lifted the can to investigate why his firecracker hadn’t gone off. He doesn’t care what Stuart said; Will is sure that firecrackers—even ladyfingers—can do real damage. What if he would have put his face down there because he thought the firecracker was a dud—he could have lost an eye!
“You should light a whole pack under there,” Bobby Mueller says. “I bet that can would jump around like it was dancing.”
“I blew a ch
unk out of a soup can with a Silver Salute,” says Glen Spiese.
“Where’d you get Silver Salutes?” asks Stuart.
“My cousin goes up to Canada every summer. He brings back a whole shitload of stuff you can’t get here.”
“Lemme know the next time he goes. I’ll put in my own order.”
Will finally lifts his Butter-Nut can but slowly, as if he fears another explosive might still be under there, its fuse burning at its own willed speed.
“Hey, Will,” Bobby says, “you still got that can of beer?”
Under the can is nothing but paper, shredded into scraps tinier than any hand could tear. “It’s hidden in my closet,” Will says.
“So it ain’t cold,” Glen says.
“No, my closet is refrigerated, shit-for-brains.”
“My old man says drinking warm beer is like drinking piss.”
“He’d know, I guess.”
“Fuck you.”
Stuart loops a finger through a belt loop of Will’s jeans and tugs him to his feet. “It don’t matter. Go get it. We can stick it in the river, and it’ll get cold in no time.”
“The river? I thought we were going to play ball.”
“We ain’t got enough guys,” Bobby says.
“Not even for workup?”
“Gotta have at least five, and even then it ain’t that great.”
“Did you try the Lucas twins?”
“The Lucases—shit.” Stuart spits in the dust. “We ain’t that hard up.”
“Besides,” Glen says, “I heard my brother say there’s maybe going to be a party down at the sandbar.”
“My mom doesn’t really let me go down to the river,” Will says.
“So don’t tell her. Get your fishing rod and say you’re going to Willow Creek.”
As if to close off the discussion, Stuart kicks the coffee can across the alley where it comes to rest against a stalk of rhubarb in Mr. Neaves’s garden. “Yeah, don’t tell her nothin’. But get that beer.”
