Summer's Song

by Lindi Peterson

  It feels good sitting in this chair holding Sam. I don’t want to let him go. A bad mother would see this as a burden, wouldn’t she? A bad mother wouldn’t want to spend the night in a recliner so her son will feel safe, would she?

  Why does Levi have to be around when all these bad things are happening? Yet, he defends me. Even when my own mother belittles me, this man I have only known for a short time is singing my praises? None of this makes sense.

  My mother walks into the living room.

  “Yes,” she’s saying into her phone. “He’s going to be all right. Just a little bump.”

  She turns to me. “Todd wants to say hi to Sam,” she says.

  My heart can’t believe what she has done. “He’s asleep. Tell him Sam will call in the morning.”

  Repeating what I’ve said, my mother stands in front of me.

  I feel like crying. Why would she call Todd right away? Whose side is she on? Now more than ever it’s obvious she’s not on my side. And she’s a character witness for me?

  Hugging Sam close, I start singing softly. Skeet taught me the words to a couple of verses of Amazing Grace. The rest I learned on my own.

  I could use a little amazing grace right now.

  “I want to go in the boat, Mommy.”

  I shake my head. “Sam, it’s just you and me here. There are no life jackets, and it’s not safe.”

  Sam and I are standing at the edge of the lake Skeet and I share. It’s the middle of the afternoon. Before Sam takes his nap I promised him a walk to the lake. My mother tried to discourage me, but I assured her I would be fine. I had forgotten about the boat tied to the dock.

  “Let’s find some rocks. I’ll show you how to skip them.”

  “What?” he asks.

  Still holding Sam’s hand I look on the ground. “Here.” I stoop and pick up a rock. “See how it’s skinny and flat? Watch this.”

  I let go of Sam’s hand and throw the rock. It skips twice across the water before sinking. “Well, that wasn’t very good. Sometimes they skip lots and lots of times.”

  “I want to try,” Sam says.

  “Well, let’s find some skipping rocks.”

  “Flat rocks,” he says.

  We busy ourselves for the next few minutes, and I’m surprised when we find a few rocks.

  After showing Sam how to hold the rock he flings it, and it doesn’t even make it to the water. It thumps on the dry ground a couple of feet in front of him.

  “We need to get closer, Mommy. I can’t make my rock get to the water.”

  I eye the distance between the lake and us. “I don’t think we need to get closer. You can’t swim.”

  “I want to swim.”

  “Maybe when we get back to California you can take some swimming lessons.”

  I do have a pool at home. Swimming lessons would be a good idea. His nannies have had all the credentials for every aspect of saving a life, but now there will be no nanny. I’m not so credentialed.

  Yes, swimming lessons will be good.

  “Try it again from here. Throw it hard.” I hope the rock will hit the water. “Remember how you threw the Frisbee? Throw this the same way. It’s like a mini Frisbee.”

  “Oh,” he says. He flings the rock, and it barely makes it to the water then sinks.

  “It’s not working, Mommy.”

  “I think he’s a little young for this sport.”

  Instead of annoying me like it needs to, Levi’s voice sends a sense of peace through me. A peace I don’t seem to find anywhere else.

  I stand up, and Sam and I move away from the water to where Levi is standing a few feet behind us.

  “Hi, little Dude.” Levi gives Sam a high-five. “How’s the head?”

  “Okay.”

  “Glad to hear it. I knew you’d be a trooper. No bump is going to keep you down, is it?”

  “My bump is smaller. And it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Excellent. Now you’re onto better things, huh? Skipping rocks?”

  Sam fidgets with the rocks we’ve collected.

  “He’s too young?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I think so. He can’t get enough oomph in his arm yet. The rocks won’t skip.”

  “Can you make the rock skip, Levi?” Sam’s gaze reveals his eagerness to see a rock actually skip across the water.

  “Not sure. Want me to try?”

  I watch the exchange between Sam and Levi. So simple. No drama. What I would like life to be. I’m glad my mother isn’t here. Besides the fact that she doesn’t like Levi, she would spoil this atmosphere with her whining.

  Sam and I watch as Levi’s rock heads to the water and skips across it six times.

  “Wow!” Sam stares at Levi with admiration. “Do it again.”

  “I don’t know if I can do it just like that. I think it was a lucky try.”

  Sam hands Levi another rock, and Levi performs another spectacular throw.

  “I wanna do it like that,” Sam says.

  “You need to be a bit taller. One day you’ll be able to do it better than me.”

  He proceeds to bend down and starts talking to Sam about the rocks and why the shape helps them skip across the water.

  I’m amazed how good Levi is with Sam. How natural acting he is. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable or nervous. He seems more relaxed than I do at times.

  He probably has good judgment also. Wouldn’t tell his child to climb a tree or forget to put pillows around the edge of the bed so he doesn’t fall off. He’d be a good dad.

  But not for Sam. Sam already has a dad.

  Not dwelling on that.

  I go to lengths to avoid Levi, and somehow he finds me. I know the lake is right off the path that goes between Skeet’s house and mine, but how is it I can’t seem to get away from Levi?

  He’s good for you.

  There’s that voice again. I haven’t heard it in a while. I thought it left me. But no. It’s back. Telling me things I don’t want to hear.

  He may be good for me later, I want to shout, but not right now. I have things to do before I can be fudge. Doesn’t anyone understand?

  “We better get back, Sam. Anne probably is wanting some lunch.”

  “Can Levi have lunch with us?”

  “Thanks for asking, Dude, but I ate after church.”

  “Church?” Sam asks. “What’s a church?”

  “Sam, I’ll explain about church while we’re eating our lunch. Let’s go. Bye, Levi.”

  “Before I say bye I have a favor to ask you.”

  I look up. Will this never end? I need to stay away from him, God. Don’t you understand?

  “Yes?” I say, not really wanting to.

  “When I was at church this morning they announced the couple that was going to lead the music for the Bible school they are holding this week had an emergency. So the church needs someone to lead the music. I kind of volunteered me and you. Is that okay?”

  Chapter Fifteen

  I give Levi my totally practiced ‘are you kidding’ look.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” He shoves his hands in his pockets.

  “I can look at you any way I want,” I reply. “You volunteered me?”

  “Us. Volunteered us. And I didn’t say it was certain. I said I would have to ask you.”

  “Mommy, I’m hungry. Can I go to Bible school with you?” Sam tugs at my jeans. I look at him and smile.

  Although everything in me wants to flat out say no to Levi’s request, there is a reason why the word won’t come out of my mouth. Maybe it’s because I would like Sam to experience a church atmosphere. If we tried to go to church in California the press would be following us to the door.

  “I’m going to volunteer regardless, I just thought it’d be nice to have some help.”

  “What about Skeet? Isn’t he back?”

  “Delayed. His brother had another setback.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “He said he’d stay in touch. So w
hat do you say? Are you in? If you want to know more about it, I could come over later this evening and give you more details.”

  My brain is screaming no while my heart tugs me over to the yes side. I mean it’s not like we’ll be alone. We’ll be surrounded by other people. And we won’t be working on my music. I guess it couldn’t hurt to hear what he has to say. “Okay. Come over around eight.”

  “Will do. See you then.”

  I hold Sam’s hand as we watch Levi walk to the path. We follow, but where Levi takes a left to go back to Skeet’s place, we take a right to head back to our house.

  We walk slowly, at Sam’s pace. He’s still holding some rocks in his hand.

  “Mr. Levi is nice, Mommy.”

  Nice and always around, I think. “Yes. He’s nice.”

  We walk the rest of the way in silence as I try to figure out how to have a conversation with Levi later tonight without my mother hounding me.

  “Honestly, Summer. I don’t know why you are letting that man come over here. He seems to do nothing but get you into trouble.”

  “Oh, yes, Mother. Levi the Christian singer leads me into all sorts of temptations.” I won’t think about his kiss. Kissing is in the past. Our future would consist of singing. At least for one week.

  “What he leads you into are delusions. You have to get back to reality.”

  “What’s real, Mother?”

  The question seems to confuse her. “You know, your life. Live it.”

  “What if I want a better life?”

  “Better than what? You bring in millions of dollars a year. You have a twenty thousand square foot house. You have housekeepers, nannies, drivers. You have the world at your feet, Summer. That’s what’s real.”

  None of that matters.

  I’m pursing my lips together so I don’t speak that thought.

  Mother would probably have a coronary.

  “We could take a walk.” Levi mouths the words to me, and I smile.

  I know he’s trying to get away from my mother. She conveniently decided to sit on the front porch tonight. Of course she decided this only when Levi showed up. I thought after a few minutes the warm air, the gnats, or something would drive her inside. No such luck.

  “Levi, why don’t we take a walk? Mother, you’ll keep an eye on Sam, right?”

  “A lot better than you do.”

  Her course reply is met with the same course look, then the slam of the door as she goes inside.

  “Man,” Levi starts.

  “She’s really not this bad all the time. She’s scared.”

  “Come on.” We start walking on the path through the woods. “Why is she scared?”

  “She’s afraid she’s going to lose the lifestyle she’s been accustomed to. Even though as long as I invest well, if I never received another dime, I could live nicely for the rest of my life. Her life. Sam’s life, even.”

  “So why is she afraid?”

  “She’s especially difficult when she comes here. She grew up here, poor and pitiful. Then she got married, had me and Val, then our father left. She was devastated. She couldn’t wait to get out of here. And then I have the nerve to come back.”

  I turn to Levi. “You know I came back here just to torture her.”

  “That’s what she thinks?”

  “Those were her exact words when I called her and told her where I was.”

  “Why did you come here? With all the money you have, the world just a plane flight away, so why did Lawson’s Ledge become your haven?”

  “You’re not going to understand.”

  “Try me.”

  I stop walking. There is a fallen tree, and its trunk sprawls across the bed of the woods. Dusk settles in as I sit. In the silence, night sounds of creatures surround us. It seems so peaceful here.

  “Can I join you?” Levi nods toward the log.

  “Sure.”

  Levi settles next to me. “Spill.”

  He has no idea what he’s asking. “Before I came here I was in a lot of pain. Mentally, physically, emotionally. I was a disaster. I was out there in California, the girl who had it all. Yet on the inside, I felt so empty. Void. Like there was nothing. I can’t really explain why I was doing all those crazy things. I just was. Then when Todd came and took Sam, it all became real. Too real. I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t get a judge to rule in my favor, I knew I had to do something drastic. I had to make a change.

  “The pain was so bad I knew I had to get away if I wanted to straighten my life out. I had been to countless cities world-wide. There were lots of places I loved, but only one place I hated. Of course, I didn’t really hate Lawson’s Ledge, I had just heard my mother talk about how she hated it my whole life. So I couldn’t imagine there being anything good here, so I decided to come. I didn’t deserve a nice place. I needed to suffer.”

  Levi’s feet shift, the pine straw beneath moving like needles in distress.

  “Why would you feel like you had to suffer?”

  His question barely reaches me, he speaks so softly.

  “Because I didn’t know anything else.” I take a deep breath. “I’m sure if I knew about God back then I would have felt differently.”

  There. I said something about God. I talked about Him on my own with no prodding from Levi.

  “People who believe in God still suffer.”

  There is a tone in his voice. I imagine growing up like he did could be considered a form of suffering. “Yeah, but I’m sure they handle it differently than I did. You handle things differently.”

  Levi seems to have retreated somehow. He doesn’t look at me. “I didn’t always. Handle things well, that is.”

  I want to know about Levi. “Tell me about it?”

  He clasps his hands together. “My dad moved Jake and me all over. We started out in Texas. Looking back it seems like we were everywhere. When I was seventeen, we ended up in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Dad got a job as a maintenance man for one of the cabin rental companies. That was the longest we ever stayed anywhere. Free rent was part of the pay plan.”

  He stops speaking, his silence as apparent as the darkness. Random sounds fill the air. Sounds which normally would have me scared, but right now I’m only scared of one thing.

  What I’m feeling for Levi.

  And what else he might have to say.

  “Dad always dropped me and Jake off in town, telling us we better figure out how we were going to eat that day. What my dad didn’t know was I had made friends with Tom. He owned the music store. He would loan me a guitar, and I sat on the sidewalk everyday playing for tips. Tom always made sure we had enough tips to eat. Then I met Skeet. That’s when everything changed.”

  He turns and looks at me.

  I smile. “I can relate to that.”

  He smiles back. “Yeah, things got kind of cool. For a while anyway. Skeet started coming around once a week giving me guitar lessons. And he told me about God. God who was working right then and there even though I didn’t have a clue.”

  “I can relate to that, too.”

  He turns totally sideways now, looking at me full on. His face is close enough for me to touch, but I suppress the urge.

  “Skeet gave me a guitar. A nice one. Dad thought I stole it. He couldn’t grasp the fact that someone would be nice enough to give me a gift. Anyway, one night he came home screaming for us to get in the car. Seems even though we had free rent, Dad still managed to get into a mess that forced us out in the middle of the night. He was apparently caught with his employer’s wife in a compromising position. Our deal in Blue Ridge was done. Finished. We drove and drove. He stopped at the first pawn shop that was open and pawned the guitar Skeet gave me. Then we stopped at a gas station. I’ll never forget that day.”

  “What happened? I mean what else happened.” I can’t believe all that Levi has been through. And I thought my childhood was crazy.

  “Jake was hungry. I was too, but I always looked out for Jake first. Jake asked dad f
or some food. Dad said he didn’t have enough money for food right then, he’d deal with that later. Then as the gas was finishing up, Dad pulled his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, crushed the empty pack, and headed into the store. He came back out with a new pack of smokes, but not one bit of food. That was it for me. Jake had to go to the bathroom, and Dad told me to go with him. We never went back. We snuck around the side of the store and started walking. We walked for hours, until dusk. By then we were in a small town, and I went to a church and asked for help. I never saw my dad again.”

  While I was running around on stage, Levi was running for his life. I can’t process how different our lives are. “Wow.”

  “Dad found me after I started making records. He called a couple of times. Said he turned his life around, but he died shortly after we were in contact again. And Jake, well no amount of church or respectable living ever drove away the desire for excitement. He was shot about six months ago fleeing the scene of a convenience store robbery. He couldn’t quit running. It’s been hard trying to forgive my father for setting that example.”

  It’s fully dark now. An occasional lift of the wind parts the tree, and slivers of moonlight filter through. Like Levi’s story filters through my heart. A little bit at a time.

  And I thought he’d had an easy life.

  Levi stands, his back to me. I don’t want to give him the impression I’m not affected. I just can’t think of anything helpful or consoling to say. So I rely on something we have in common.

  “At what point did you see Skeet again?”

  He turns. “Jake and I had gone back to Texas. I tried to build a life for us. I knew I couldn’t live like we did with my dad. Nothing will make me live that life again. Nothing.”

  I let him pause. It’s like he needs to process something inside.

  “Skeet was playing at this venue,” he continues. “I bought a ticket. I knew somebody who knew somebody, and they got my name to Skeet. He remembered me and asked me to come backstage. He took up being my mentor right where he left off.”

  “Skeet is a good man. Coming here and meeting him has changed me, too. He’s been good for me.”

  He holds out his hand. “I know you’re coming here has been good for me.”

  Instinctively I reach for him. My pulse quickens. His fingers wrap around mine and gently pull me to a standing position. He doesn’t loosen his grasp, in fact he tightens it ever so gently and pulls me way too close to him. It’s what I want, but it’s also dangerous.