He looked inside. Tomatoes. “Thanks,” he said.
“Well, see ya.” She turned to go. Her bicycle lay on its side at the edge of the road.
“Wait!” Martin called, but when she stopped and faced him, he didn’t know what to say next. She waited. Sybil-so-patient. Sybil-so-cool.
“I want to show you something,” Martin said.
“What?”
“Uh, it’s not here. I mean, it’s somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I’ll show you.”
He led her up the gravel road toward Wylene’s. Please be home, he prayed.
When he heard the twang of the radio drifting from Wylene’s trailer, he looked at Sybil and smiled.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see.” Martin knocked on Wylene’s screen door so hard it banged and rattled against the trailer.
“Hold your horses,” Wylene called from the kitchen.
Her flip-flops slapped against the bottom of her feet as she walked to the door.
“Well, hey there,” she said. Her eyes darted nervously to Sybil, then back at Martin.
“This is Sybil,” Martin said.
Wylene held the door open for them. “This place is a pigsty. It’s just too dern hot to do anything. I almost wish I had to work tonight so I could be in the air-conditioning. You all want something cold to drink? I got soda and lemonade.”
Martin recognized her fast, run-together nervous talk.
She turned the radio off and flip-flopped into the kitchen. She kept shooting quick little glances at Sybil.
“Sybil just moved to Six Mile,” Martin said. “She has a garden.”
Wylene’s face relaxed a little. “Oh, I just love gardening. I wish I had a good spot for one, but it’s too shady here.” She plunked ice into three glasses and poured soda into them. One of them overflowed onto the counter.
Martin wondered why Sybil was being so quiet. Then he remembered the way she had been that first day at school: looking everyone over; sizing them up.
Finally she said, “I bet you could grow lettuce.”
“You think so?” Wylene handed them a drink and flipflopped back into the living room. She had on shorts. Her legs were white and plump and freckled.
“I thought I’d show Sybil your violin,” Martin said.
“Oh.” Wylene looked at Martin wide-eyed. She brushed invisible crumbs from the coffee table, fluffed the pillows on the couch. “Well, sure, okay.”
She brought the violin out from the bedroom and held it up for Sybil to see.
“That’s nice,” Sybil said. “Is it hard to play?”
“Oh, I don’t play it.” Wylene chuckled. “Martin plays it.”
Sybil looked at Martin, and for a minute he wished he hadn’t done this. But it was too late now, so he said, “Well, not very good.”
“Not very good?” Wylene shrieked. She turned to Sybil and said, “Martin has a gift. Like Beethoven.”
Sybil turned her slow gaze to Martin. “Play something,” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
Martin realized he was still holding the bag of tomatoes, now damp and wrinkled in his hand. Sybil took the bag from him and sat on the edge of the couch.
Martin took the violin from Wylene and placed it gently under his chin. Wylene shut the front door and sat in the La-Z-Boy. Martin knew that if he didn’t start playing right away he’d never be able to, so he moved the bow slowly across the strings, just making notes at first. Then he closed his eyes and let the notes run together, one after the other, until he drifted away into the music.
Later, when Martin and Sybil sat by their bikes at the edge of the lake and he told her about how he had wanted the violin but his father wouldn’t let him have it and how Wylene had bought it and all that, she just watched him with those cool, cool eyes.
Then she stood up and skimmed a stone across the top of the lake. It bounced three times, leaving a trail of ripples on the surface of the muddy water.
“Well, I guess a person’s got to handle things their own way,” she said, taking another stone out of the pocket of her cutoffs.
What was that supposed to mean? Martin watched her bracelets dance up and down her arm as she threw another stone. She sat back down and gave Martin a look that made him feel like a little kid being scolded. He flushed. What did she know about anything? When was the last time her smiling daddy had yelled or thrown anything or made her feel like a piece of dirt for breathing the wrong way?
“I never should have taken you to Wylene’s.” His voice was shaky. He cleared his throat and forced himself to look at her. She looked back at him with that confident look of hers.
“I’m not sure who it is you’re mad at, Martin,” she said.
Now, that took him by surprise. He looked out at the water and then down at his feet. The toes of his sneakers were wet and muddy. His ankles were dotted with bumpy, red mosquito bites.
Sybil stood up and brushed off the seat of her jeans. “I better head on back. My dad and I are going out for Chinese food tonight.”
Martin was glad she had changed the subject. He was confused and uncomfortable, and right now those were two feelings he wasn’t in the mood for.
They rode silently down the dirt road. When they got to the highway, they turned in opposite directions.
“Thanks for the tomatoes,” he called after her. She waved a hand over her head. Her bracelets glistened in the sun.
Martin watched her until she disappeared from view. He wished he was going with her. Wished he was going home with her to stand out in the garden and look at okra and play the violin and not be mad at whoever it was he was mad at.
Nineteen
“YOUR FRIEND SYBIL’S here,” Martin’s mother called from the living room.
Martin stared at himself in the dresser mirror, his mouth hanging open and his eyes wide. Sybil? Here? In his trailer?
“Coming,” he called. He smoothed his hair down with his hand and composed his face in the mirror before going out to greet her.
She sat on the sofa across from Martin’s father. Her legs were crossed, one foot bouncing up and down as she talked. She clutched a paper bag in her lap.
“ … moved in with my dad when my mother went to Texas,” she was saying to Martin’s parents.
She looked up when Martin came in the room. Her eyes showed a hint of amusement that irritated Martin. She held up the bag, those bangly bracelets sliding down to her elbow. “Green beans,” she said.
Martin’s mother took the bag and peered inside. “Are these from your garden?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sybil said.
“That’s mighty nice of you, Sybil,” Martin’s father said. He pushed the recliner back and took a sip of coffee. “Nothing like homegrown. You have a big garden?”
“Not as big as I’d like. Next year I’m going to make it bigger.” She smiled at Martin. He looked away, watching his mother put the beans in the refrigerator.
“I’ve thought about planting some weeds out there just to give myself something else to do.” Sybil laughed. Martin’s father laughed. Martin walked to the front door and stared out at nothing in particular, wondering why he was feeling so uncomfortable.
“You say your daddy works down at the Exxon?” Martin’s father said.
“Yessir.”
“Maybe he could get me a deal on some tires.”
“You could ask him,” Sybil said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. He’s just crazy about Martin, you know.”
Martin felt that familiar ball in the pit of his stomach. In his mind he saw Frank and his father together. He tried to imagine them laughing, slapping each other’s backs, making a deal on some tires. He looked over at Sybil, watched her chatting with his father like they were old friends. What was she doing mixing up her life with his, sitting here in his trailer talking about Frank? Then out of the clear blue she said, “You must be
pretty proud of Martin.”
“Oh?” his father said. “Why’s that?”
Martin watched a sparrow splashing in a puddle in the front yard. He wished he was out there, too, splashing around. Then, when he’d had his fill of that muddy water, he’d up and just fly away. He heard Sybil stirring on the sofa, bracelets clanging.
“You know, his musical talent and all.” Sybil used a surprised, you-oughtta-know-that kind of tone. Martin glanced at his father and saw the clenched jaw, the narrowing eyes.
“No,” his father said, “I can’t say that I’m particularly proud of that:”
Martin watched Sybil’s face change, her smile disappear, her own eyes narrow slightly. She cocked her head and tilted her chin up and said, “That’s too bad.” Her foot bounced harder, faster. “You ever listen to him play that harmonica? Me and my dad just can’t get enough of it. Sometimes I nearly cry it sounds so pretty.” She leaned forward and added, “And I’m not exactly the crying type.”
Martin looked back out at the yard. The sparrow was gone.
“I bet if Martin got that violin he’s been wanting, he could really play some nice music,” Sybil said.
Martin’s father slammed the recliner down with a bang and Martin stepped between his father and Sybil. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door.
“We’re going to take a ride down to the lake,” he said. Outside, he jumped on his bike and rode off in a swirl of dust. At the main road, he leaned forward and pedaled furiously. He stared down at the asphalt rushing beneath him and felt the sweat running down his back.
When he got to the lake, he threw his bike down and sat in the grass near the edge of the water. He didn’t look up at the sound of Sybil’s bike on the dirt road above him. Didn’t move when she sat down beside him.
“You mad at me?” Sybil said.
Martin jumped up and turned to face her. He let out one little “Ha!” and started pacing, his sneakers making squishy noises in the wet mud at the water’s edge. Finally he stopped and looked at her.
“Stay away from my family, Sybil.” He struggled to catch his breath before continuing. “I don’t need you to stir things up with my daddy. I can do that all by myself.” He felt a flicker of pleasure when he noticed that Sybil’s usually cool expression was gone. That her chin was quivering, her hands shaking.
She clutched her knees and stared out at the lake. “At least I’m not afraid of being myself,” she said.
Martin stopped pacing and looked down at her. “What makes you think I am?”
When she looked up at him, her Sybil-cool expression had returned. “You got a violin hidden away up at Wylene’s. A violin you play like I never heard anybody play before. A violin you won’t even bring into your own home.”
“You don’t know anything about me, Sybil,” Martin said. His voice echoed across the still water. “You and your daddy living in your happy little world don’t know anything. I ain’t nothing to my daddy but a disappointment, and I hate him.”
Martin turned away from Sybil and walked out into the water, kicking it over and over, sending splashes of muddy water into the air. He whirled around to face Sybil. “I wish my daddy was somebody like yours,” he said. “Somebody I’d be glad to come home to, somebody who laughs just for the heck of it and treats me good. But he ain’t. I wish I could be a fast-pitching baseball fool like T.J., but I ain’t. And I could keep on wishing till kingdom come, but that ain’t gonna make it happen.” He kicked at the water again.
“You’re mighty uppity, Martin, you know that?” Sybil said.
Martin threw his hands up and looked at the sky. There wasn’t any use even commenting on that, coming from someone who had just sashayed into his home and tried to start something. Sybil hugged her knees and rocked back and forth.
“You think you’re the only one on this planet who ever felt like that?” she said. “You think you got a patent on wishing people were different?”
“I never said that.”
“You might as well have.”
“I reckon you been wishing your daddy wasn’t so nice, right?”
Sybil jumped up and put her hands on her hips. “You’re as mean as your daddy,” she said and sat back down so hard she let out an “oomph.” She picked up a stone and threw it into the water. “I’ve done my share of wishing,” she said. “But I’m a lot smarter now.”
“Well, maybe I’m just a dumb ass, Sybil, okay?”
“Maybe you are,” she said.
Martin sat down close to the water, feeling the wet seep through the seat of his jeans but not caring.
Sybil threw another stone. “You know, one time I got sick at school and the nurse called my house for someone to come get me,” she said. “I waited in the nurse’s office for my mom, but it was my dad that came walking in the door. He had grease plumb up to his elbows. Dirty old rags hanging out of his pockets. His shoes all caked with mud. I looked that nurse right in the eye and said, ‘That ain’t my dad.’”
Martin watched Sybil dig another rock out of the wet mud, waiting for her to go on. When she didn’t, he said, “Then what happened?”
“My dad just turned around and walked out of the room.”
Martin said, “Wow,” and then felt foolish. Wished he hadn’t said it.
“I was scared to death to go home that day,” Sybil said. “But when I walked in the kitchen, my dad just handed me a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich.”
“What’d you do?” Martin said.
“I ate that sandwich and wished like anything I could have started that day all over again.” Sybil wiped her muddy hands on the seat of her shorts. “But at least I saw a few things with new eyes.”
She started up the hill toward her bike, then turned and looked down at Martin. “I feel sorry for you, Martin. You just keep looking through the same old eyes.”
The sun behind her made a silhouette of her climbing on her bike and riding away. He stared down the empty road, thinking he was mad at Sybil for sitting in his trailer and talking to his daddy. Thinking she wasn’t so damn cool after all. Thinking she was wrong about him and his same old eyes. He stood up and looked down at himself. His legs were wet and muddy. There was a squishy, sucking sound when he pulled his feet out of the mud one at a time. He thought about that sparrow he had seen in his yard. Thought about that sparrow flying away while he was still standing here in the mud. Then he kicked at the water and said “Shoot” before climbing on his bike and heading home.
Twenty
JULY HAD TURNED into August, and Martin could already feel summer drifting away. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what made him feel that way. Surely not the weather, which was as hot and muggy as ever. He guessed it was just the little things. Kids coming home from town with brand-new backpacks. T.J. talking about football.
Martin wanted to hold on to summer as long as he could. Once school started, he wouldn’t have nearly as much time for the violin.
Everything about it still felt new to him. Each time he picked it up felt as good as the very first time. The feel of the smooth wood under his chin. The slender, delicate neck beneath his fingers. The hardest part about holding it was putting it down again. It hadn’t come with a case, but Wylene had found an old suitcase that was just the right size. She and Martin had cut foam rubber to line the bottom. Each time he finished playing, he polished off the fingerprints and blew away any little particles of dust that might have settled on the strings. Then he admired it one more time before returning it to its foam-rubber cradle.
Martin had developed a system for teaching himself to play. First he would sit on the floor of Wylene’s trailer and listen to music. He would pick out a part he especially liked and listen to it over and over again. Then he would try to play it. And he kept on playing until he got the notes just right, the rhythm just right. When he felt like he had a piece down real good, he could begin to put his feelings into it. To make it his own. “Giving it that personal touch,” Wylene called it
.
“That’s the sign of a true artist,” she said. “Anybody can just copy something, but it takes an artist to make it special. I’m telling you, Martin, you got a gift.”
One afternoon the two of them sat on the floor playing Chinese checkers and listening to the music from The King and I. The violin lay between them on the coffee table. Every now and then Martin ran his fingers up and down the strings or plucked along with the record. Wylene wagged her head from side to side and tapped her toes together. She was wearing madras Bermuda shorts. Her pudgy white legs stuck straight out in front of her. Even in the heat, she wore her fuzzy slippers. She looked down at the checkerboard, contemplating her next move and happily singing “Getting to Know You.” Wylene hadn’t had one of her bad days since the violin had come into their lives.
“I feel like I have a purpose now,” she’d said.
Martin watched her waving her hands in the air, conducting an invisible orchestra. Every now and then she’d point at Martin and say, “Here’s your part,” and they’d stop the game to listen to the violin part. A fan whirred on the kitchen counter. The window shades were pulled down and the room was dark and kind of mysterious. Martin pretended that nothing outside the trailer existed, that they were floating around in space, high above the dirt-and-gravel world of Paradise Trailer Park.
“How about a Little Debbie snack cake?” Wylene said when they finished their game.
“Sure. That sounds good.”
“Lemonade or soda?”
“Soda.” Martin stayed on the floor, putting the marbles back in their container.
“Ain’t it funny how you can’t tell what time it is when you can’t see outside?” Wylene opened ice trays over the sink. “I mean, it could be the middle of the night and you wouldn’t even know it if you didn’t have a clock.” Martin watched her pour soda into the glasses. It foamed up to the top, fizzing. “What time you think it is now?” Wylene said. “Don’t look.”
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