A single light shone from the front porch now. The rest of the house was shadowed in darkness. He wondered which room belonged to Becca and Aaron.
Matt felt like an intruder, sitting there in the dark and staring at this place where Becca still lived. But he couldn’t help himself. He imagined her garden, pictured her working in it during the morning hours before the heat bore down with too much intensity. He wondered if the farm looked the same in the light of day. He remembered Aaron as a good man, a hard worker and a friend to Jacob. Could Aaron’s influence be seen in the fields around the barn?
Matt cut the engine and the lights and rolled down his window. The farmhouse was no longer visible, but enveloped in the pitch darkness of night, he knew one thing now with sudden glaring certainty. Since the day Becca cut him out of her life, he’d been searching for what the two of them had.
And he never found it.
Not even close.
∞
Then
MATT PICKED ANGIE up at six, and the two of them drove to Roanoke for a seven o’clock movie. They were mostly quiet during the thirty minute ride, making a few false starts at conversations that petered out within a couple of minutes.
Something about the night felt different to Matt, forced, as if they were trying to fix something they had already agreed was unfixable.
Matt had never been good at that, going back on a decision once he’d made it. He wasn’t sure why he was doing so now, why he kept looking at her and wishing he felt something, anything that might justify the two of them being together.
But after spending a portion of the past two days listening to Jacob talk about Aaron Brubaker’s crush on Becca, Matt had decided a date with Angie was exactly what he needed. That maybe being with her would force him to quit thinking about Becca.
Besides, he could probably count the number of words they’d actually said to one another since that kiss under the oak tree. And yet, he was aware of her in a way he’d never been aware of anyone in his life. It was like he had a sixth sense for when she was going to walk out of the house, or suddenly appear at the barn. His palms started sweating, and his heart felt like it was going to trip out of his chest. A girl had never had this effect on him before. His ability to stay cool was something he’d always taken pride in, bragged about in the locker room with the other jocks who viewed dating as a necessary detour on the road to getting laid. All of a sudden, he was thinking about asking Becca out on a real date, found himself creating scenarios that might impress her.
As for Becca, he was beginning to think she’d erased that kiss under the oak tree from her mind as something altogether insignificant. She found other things to look at when she was around him. Like he was the most uninteresting person she’d ever met. But then he would find himself wondering if maybe she was aware of him, too.
Matt and Angie both found the movie less than stellar, the popcorn pretty much its only selling point. Afterwards, they stopped for pizza, even though Matt wasn’t hungry.
It was almost ten-thirty by the time they pulled into the Dairy Queen parking lot in Ballard, the mutually agreed upon meeting place where everyone ended up on Saturday nights. Within shouting distance of the Minute Market, it maintained a steady stream of cars circling in and out. As soon as Matt cut the engine to the Jeep, Angie hopped out and headed for a group of friends who waved her over with smiles that demanded she tell all. Matt wondered if she would be honest and say that so far their date had sucked or if she would dress it up as something other than what it had been.
He walked over to Wilks’s Mustang, shooting the breeze with a few guys sitting on the hood of his car. Wilks came out of the Minute Market, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in his hand. He clapped Matt on the shoulder, shaking his head. “I didn’t figure you two would be wasting any time hanging out here tonight,” he said, shooting a glance at Angie a few car lengths away. She laughed at something Mimi Parker had just said, her head thrown back a little so that her dark hair swung in a curtain against her bare shoulders. “If I could have a night alone with that work of art,” he added, “there’s no way I’d be wasting time with this bunch of jerks.”
Matt leaned up against the door of the car. “Maybe you should’ve asked her out then,” he said, his tone not quite as lighthearted as he had intended.
Wilks lit a cigarette, taking a long pull and then blowing it out through the center of his lips. “Maybe you hadn’t noticed, but she’s not aiming it at anybody but you.”
He heard the envy in his friend’s voice and realized it should bother him.
A dark blue Chevrolet pickup idled by, a plain black sedan right behind it. Matt glanced at the truck and recognized the driver as Aaron Brubaker. Sitting next to him in the middle of the seat was Becca, a younger boy on her right.
His mouth went completely dry, and he barely listened as Wilks told him he should invite Angie out to the lake tomorrow. He stared at the truck where it sat parked in front of the Dairy Queen, headlights flashing off. The driver’s door opened. Aaron slid out, holding up a hand for Becca, who put her palm in his and slipped down, releasing his hand to smooth the skirt of her dress. The younger boy riding with them walked around the truck, and they joined the two guys and girls getting out of the sedan. One of the girls Matt recognized as Becca’s sister, Emmy.
The group stood out in the parking lot full of teenagers wearing cut off jeans and t-shirts. Aaron and the other guys wore dark pants and long-sleeve shirts, straw hats on their heads. Emmy and the other girl wore the dresses and capes of the Old Order, white bonnets covering their hair. Becca’s dress was light green and simple, her long hair caught in a ponytail that nearly reached her waist.
Aaron said something, removed the straw hat from his head and made a mock bow. They all laughed. It was the sound of Becca’s laughter that his ears automatically singled out, and jealousy ignited inside him. Unfounded as it was, it hovered over him like smoke from a wood stove, filling his lungs to choking point.
“Hey, it’s the Little House on the Prairie girl,” Wilks said, his voice booming under the effect of a six-pack of Bud.
Becca looked back, first at Wilks, then Matt. She missed a step, tripping a little. Aaron took her arm, leaned in close, said something, and then smiled.
They followed the rest of the group inside the Dairy Queen, and he gave Wilks a look.
He tossed his cigarette on the pavement and ground it out with the toe of his boot. “So that’s how it is. Angie’s out and Dunkard babe is in.”
Matt’s fist itched with the sudden need to wipe the smirk from Wilks’s face. “Shut up, man.”
Wilks laughed, hooked an arm around Joey Mathers’ shoulders and pulled him over. “Hey, Joey, tell Matt Becca Miller’s never going to let him under her skirt.”
Joey shifted a slow gaze in Matt’s direction, his voice flattened with the effects of a recently inhaled joint. “What skirt?”
Wilks gave him a half-playful shove backwards. “Get out of here. You’re too stoned to have a valid opinion, anyway.”
“Ease up, Wilks,” Matt said, taking a step closer.
Wilks held up both hands and grinned. “She brings it out in you, doesn’t she? So how you planning to compete with straw-hat boy?” he asked, tossing a glance at the Dairy Queen where Becca and her friends stood at the front counter.
“What is your problem?”
“Hey, I’m not the one trying to figure out which piece of ass is the right one for me,” he said, looking at Angie who was now staring in their direction.
Matt turned and started to walk away. Wilks grabbed his arm, laughing now. “Man, can’t you take a joke?”
Matt pulled his arm free. “Get off me.”
He headed for the Dairy Queen door then, not sure why he was doing this, aware with every step that he should turn around.
They were all at the cash register, ordering. Matt fell into line behind them. Becca stood in front of him, Aaron beside her, studying the menu. She glanced over
her shoulder, her eyes widening at the sight of him.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” Her voice was cool, and he could see she hadn’t missed Wilks’s remark.
Aaron turned around, smiling and sticking out his hand.
Matt shook it. “How’s it goin’?”
“Matt’s helping out at the farm this summer,” Becca said, her voice stiff.
Aaron nodded. “Yeah. We met.” He put a hand on Becca’s shoulder, and Matt didn’t think it was his imagination that there was a statement behind it. “We better get something to eat. This girl plays a mean game of softball.”
“I’m sure,” Matt said. Becca looked up at him then, the same awareness he’d been feeling all week clear in her eyes. The glance between them couldn’t have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but it was enough to make him feel as if he’d been given a shot of adrenaline.
“Matt?”
Angie’s voice brought him back to the present. Becca glanced over his shoulder, and he felt Angie’s hand on his arm. “Wondered where you got off to,” she said, stepping in front of him and leaning back against his chest. “Hey, Becca,” she said, lacing her fingers through his. “Gosh, I haven’t seen you in forever. You quit school, didn’t you?”
Becca took a breath. “Yes, I did.”
“We used to have English together. Tenth grade, right?”
“Right,” Becca said.
“I thought I’d never get through that class,” Angie said. “All those poems. Chaucer and Beowulf. Who actually reads that stuff, anyway?”
Becca smiled a smile that Matt already knew was not her real one, this one stiff and failing to reach her eyes. “Chaucer takes a little time to get used to,” she said.
“Yeah, if I remember right, you and Mr. Simmons were the only two in class who got it.”
Aaron turned back from the guy he had been talking to. “Our turn to order, Becca,” he said.
Becca faced the register and ordered a banana split.
“I could go for one of those,” Angie said, tilting her head back to look up at Matt. “Wanna share?”
“You go ahead,” he said.
Becca and Aaron took their ticket and walked over to the table where the other kids in their group were sitting. Angie ordered her banana split, and they waited at the front counter. She put her arms around his neck, pulling his head down so that her mouth was close to his ear. “Wilks said I better get in here and protect what was mine. Why don’t we take our ice cream out to my uncle’s place?”
Matt looked over her shoulder to find Becca watching them. He put his hands on Angie’s arms, removing them from his neck and making some comment about an early day tomorrow. He glanced back at Becca then, but it was too late. She had already looked away.
29
A Single Seed
If you judge people you have no time to love them.
- Mother Teresa
Now
As a young person, I’m not sure I ever thought about prejudice. We studied it in school, of course. History classes about our country’s time period of slavery, and then later on, segregation between blacks and whites. And, too, its reach to other parts of the world where men like Adolph Hitler killed millions of Jewish people because they were thought to be inferior.
I remember wondering in those history classes how hatred could get so big and out of control. How it could lead to such acts of horror. That there must have been some enormous instigating factor to justify turning a person’s life into a nightmare. It seemed unbelievable to me, almost like someone must have exaggerated the eventual outcome, that people couldn’t have been as evil as history recorded them to be.
And if they had been, how did they get that way?
The answer is still hard for me to accept. But I know it’s true. I’ve seen with my own eyes the tragedy that can result from a single seed of hate. That’s all it takes, really, just one. It’s easy to miss at first, a seemingly benign judgmental word, resentment, jealousy. In the same way that the wind blows spores of a dandelion across a green yard, and they begin to pop up everywhere, the same is true of hatred, the seeds multiplying one by one until the landscape it has fallen upon is forever changed.
30
Unexpected Encounter
You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.
- Desmond Tutu
Now
It was just after one-thirty a.m. when Martha pulled into the Wal-mart parking lot, seven or eight cars scattered about in nearby spaces. She saved her shopping for the night hours when real sleep was nothing more than a distant memory.
The first couple of hours after she went to bed, she usually managed to doze off from sheer fatigue. But the rest of the night she would lie on her back, staring at the ceiling, one thought after another flitting through her mind until they were so tangled, she would wrest herself from bed just to escape their hold.
Tonight had been no exception.
She got out of her car and hurried into the store, nodding a greeting to an employee in a blue vest who was sweeping the walkway at the main entrance.
Inside, the whir of a vacuum cleaner competed with the music playing from ceiling speakers. Martha reached for a cart and pulled a shopping list from her purse. She headed with purpose then for the aisles containing cleaning supplies. To her basket, she added Comet, Windex, and Johnson’s furniture polish. From there, she made her way to the back of the store, picking out some white hand towels to replace those of her own that had grown thin with use.
She passed two other customers, the only other people in sight a young woman with frizzy red hair counting items on a shelf and making notes on a clipboard. She found the towels, counted out a half-dozen and made her way toward the grocery section. She turned a corner and bumped the edge of someone else’s cart.
“I’m sorry,” she began to apologize, glancing up with a smile and then feeling it freeze on her face.
The woman staring back at her wore the same expression, both of them standing there for several long moments, the silence hovering between them awkward and choking.
Martha supposed that this had been inevitable. Amazing, really, that it hadn’t happened before now. Ballard wasn’t that big a town, after all.
“Mrs. Miller,” the younger woman said.
“Linda.” Martha nodded, trying to say something more but feeling as if her vocal chords had suddenly been cut. She could not make a single sound come out. It was then that she noticed the young boy standing next to her daughter-in-law.
“Mrs. Miller,” Linda said, her voice respectful, “I’d like to introduce you to your grandson.”
Martha stared at him, one hand going to her chest as if she could still her heart’s sudden flutter. She could see her son in the boy, the features so clear and familiar that it was as if Jacob were right here in front of her, ten years old again. The only difference that the boy’s skin was darker, the color of caramel candy. Everything else about him had the clear stamp of her son.
“Hello, ma’am,” the boy said, his voice shy.
“Hello,” she managed. “Are you here alone?”
“Jacob’s at home with one of the goats. She’s in labor,” Linda said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Michael’s had a cold. Our humidifier broke, and since neither of us was sleeping, we came out to get another.”
“I’m sorry you’re not feeling well,” Martha said, gripping the handle of her cart.
“Thanks,” he said. “My daddy’s told me about you. Why don’t we ever come to see you?”
The question hung there between the three of them, issued with nothing more than a child’s honest curiosity. Martha had no idea how to answer. Over the years, she’d built up a fortress of reasons, and yet not one of them came to her now.
“Michael,” Linda said, touching his shoulder, and then saying, “we’d better go.”
“Of course,” Martha said, unable to look at the boy.
Linda t
ook his hand and pushed her cart on. A few feet away, she stopped and said, “Mrs. Miller?”
Feeling as if there were a knife stuck in her back, Martha said, “Yes?”
“Jacob would love to see you. You’re welcome at our home anytime.”
They walked on without looking back again. Martha stood there in the same spot after they disappeared from sight. Never in her life had she felt more alone.
A sob welled up in her throat. She pressed her hand to her mouth, and left the cart where it sat. She began walking then, her steps faster and faster until she was almost running from the store.
31
Cherry Picking
“Nothing ever becomes real ’til it is experienced.”
― John Keats
Now
Becca got up with the sun and picked another round of lettuce from her garden, tucking the tender leaves of burgundy and green inside large plastic Ziploc bags and labeling them with the name of the restaurant to which they had been promised. She then set out another row of tomato plants along with a row of Crookneck squash.
She woke Abby around seven-thirty and asked if she’d like to go back to the lake house today. Abby mumbled something that sounded like yes and then groped her way to the shower through half-open eyes. Becca went back downstairs and started a pot of vegetable soup to have for supper later. She carried Emmy’s breakfast up, helped her dress and then took her down to sit under the oak in the back yard where their mother could see her from the kitchen window.
Emmy clung to Becca a little this morning, as if she knew she was going somewhere different and didn’t want her to go. Becca sat with her a few minutes, looking out at the fields behind the house, at the blue-tinged crest of Tinker’s Knob farther beyond. If Emmy was happy anywhere, it was here under this old tree. The two of them had spent so much of their childhood playing beneath it, entertaining their rag dolls with picnics of acorns and pokeberries. It seemed so long ago, and she wanted to ask Emmy if she remembered, but stopped herself, knowing she wouldn’t answer.
Crossing Tinker's Knob Page 14
