Chasing AllieCat

by Rebecca Fjelland Davis

  I jabbed Joe in the ribs. “Look at Thomas’s hanky. Guess that means it’s a dress occasion, calling for a dress hanky.”

  Joe snorted. “Those guys are something, aren’t they?” We waved back.

  Blue Velveeta launched into “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” and the place went wild.

  Joe smiled. “This is great.”

  “Imagine how much more fun it would be if we weren’t worried sick about Allie. You think she ever gets lost in a crowd to hide?”

  Joe squeezed my hand. “Doesn’t seem like something she’d do, but who knows? Maybe we’ll see her.”

  Scout waved to us again and pointed into the crowd. Joe dropped my hand. I followed Scout’s finger and spied Aunt Susan and Aunt Janie on a blanket, along with all seven little kids and Grandma in her lawn chair. Timmy waved frantically at us.

  We made our way over to them just in time to join the screaming standing ovation for Blue Velveeta. Joe and I squeezed in on the blanket beside Stevie and Timmy. The band played “He Be Gee Bees” as an encore, and then the Mankato Symphony started setting up.

  Our hand-holding didn’t get past Timmy. As soon as we sat down, he fairly screamed in a whisper, “You were holding Joe’s hand !” I looked at Timmy’s face, trying to decide whether he approved, or was appalled and grossed out.

  “So?” I said.

  “So, is he your boyfriend ?”

  “Ah … ” I glanced at Joe. “Not really—”

  “Would it be okay with you?” Joe asked. He leaned across my lap toward Timmy.

  “Would what be okay?” Timmy said.

  “Would it be okay if your sister was my girlfriend?” He put his hand on my knee and grinned at Timmy.

  My chest thumped. Timmy’s eyes got huge. He straightened up and his chest puffed up. “Really?” he asked.

  My heart was hammering in my ears now.

  “She’s the coolest girl I know,” Joe said. “And the prettiest.”

  My face got about a hundred degrees hotter.

  Timmy grinned. “Yeah. But she can be a pain in the butt, too,” he said.

  “Big sisters are supposed to be a pain in the butt,” said Joe. “That’s their job. Your sister’s cool, though. You don’t know what a real pain in the butt is like.”

  “Okay.” Timmy leaned against my arm. “It’s okay if you’re her boyfriend. You’re not really cousins, are you?”

  “Ha.” Joe said. “Nope. Not at all. Just happen to have married relatives.”

  Timmy scrunched up his eyebrows, figuring this out. “Oh. Okay.”

  I wasn’t sure if Joe had been teasing Timmy or if he was serious. Joe shrugged and smiled into my eyes. “So. I s’pose I should ask you. You wanna be my girlfriend?” He picked up my hand and held it between both of his.

  I let all the air out of my torso. It felt like I’d been holding my breath for a long, long time. “I think so,” I said.

  He smiled. “Okay then.” He ran his thumb over the back of my hand, and this time, it didn’t just feel good, it was electric. It was like heat and cold all at once, and it ran up my arm and to all sorts of surprising places, all over my body, and for cryin’ out loud, he was only touching my hand.

  “Is it a secret?” Timmy whispered to us.

  “Kind of,” Joe said. “We’re not telling Aunt Susan yet.”

  “Okay,” Timmy said, and he scootched over so he was sitting between our hands and Aunt Susan. “I’ll cover you up!”

  We laughed. “Thanks, Buddy,” Joe said.

  So there I sat, speechless, holding Joe’s hand, in cahoots with my little brother as the symphony began their first piece: “Rhapsody in Blue” by Gershwin, a jazzy piece from Walt Disney’s Fantasia.

  Allie was a nagging worry at the back of my head, but there was nothing I could do for her at this moment. I felt good letting myself relax. When Joe let go of my hand, I leaned back on my elbows and rested my legs. I was aware of Joe filling the space beside me. That felt good, too.

  After “Stars and Stripes Forever” and “Medley from The Music Man,” Joe leaned toward me. “Want to go walk around? Get a hot dog or something? I’m hungry again.”

  “Is that something new?” I gave his shoulder a friendly push.

  “I want a hot dog!” Timmy said to Joe.

  “Me too,” Stevie said.

  “Me, too,” Megan chimed in.

  “Holy crap, what did I start?” Joe muttered.

  “Nope.” Janie held out a Tupperware bowl of cookies. “We already ate. You guys stay with us. Let Joe and Sadie go if they want.” Janie actually winked at me. I wondered what got into her to be nice to me, but I wasn’t going to ask.

  I caught Susan’s eye and pointed toward the food stands, and she nodded back.

  “We’ll be back,” I told Timmy. He didn’t protest. His mouth was jammed full of chocolate chip cookie.

  Joe and I walked around the perimeter of the crowd. Stands selling cotton candy, footlongs, kettle corn, elephant ears, tacos, homemade taffy. Anything we wanted, as long as it had at least thirty grams of fat per serving. We each bought a Polish sausage and a Coke. We sat and ate at some benches, out of sight of the family and all the little kids who would want what we had if they saw us.

  A guy with brown spikey hair who looked vaguely familiar came hurrying over, dragging his girlfriend by the hand. The girlfriend wore lots of eye make-up, a white halter top with her tummy sticking out over her shorts, skinny legs below with no muscle tone, and a look of absolute boredom on her face.

  “Sadie. Nice job today,” the guy said.

  I swallowed a big bite of sausage and bun. “Thanks.”

  “I’m Rob. I was in your race. You passed me on the switchback. Remember?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t have recognized you,” I said. “But thanks.”

  “Hey, what was the deal with that Allie girl’s dad?” Rob asked. The girlfriend rolled her eyes.

  “No idea. Really.” I stood up. “Hey, Joe, come on. The orchestra’s starting Mozart. Last song before the 1812 Overture. We gotta go so we don’t miss the cannon. Excuse us. See you, Rob.”

  “Nice brush-off,” Joe said.

  “Allie’s dad is the last thing I want to talk about.”

  We skirted around the outside edge of the crowd on our way back to the family. Near the gravel mountains, behind all the lawn chairs and blankets, a hayrack was hooked to a pickup. A canopy covered the rack, with about a dozen people and several coolers among the hay bales. All the guys leaning on the rack were shirtless. They nodded and grinned at us. One of the guys whistled, and Joe put his arm around my shoulder as we passed.

  We turned the corner and grinned at each other. “Everybody thinks you’re hot. See?” Joe said into my ear. “This is fun.” We weren’t watching where we were walking and almost ran smack into two guys without shirts.

  “Watch it,” the one wearing a Schlitz cap said.

  “Sorry,” Joe said.

  “Well, well. It’s the little nosey bitch who won’t get off the road,” the other one said. He was wearing a Vikings hat. It was the reptilian ponytail guy.

  The rednecks.

  I stopped dead, frozen. The last people I expected at a concert. And now, now I knew what I hadn’t thought about since the race—hadn’t fully realized until this moment, when everything about these guys came rushing back. These two asshole rednecks had been riding ATVs with Cecil Baker. They were friends with Allie’s dad.

  “Watch where you’re walkin’. And you”—the Schlitz cap redneck poked a finger at me—“you and Miss High-and-Mighty Strong Arm Miss Allison Baker—keep your noses out of where they don’t belong.”

  “If you know what’s good for you,” the reptilian guy threw in. The driver elbowed him hard in the ribs, and he
collapsed inward at the blow. “Jeez, ya don’t have to get violent. I’m just sayin’—”

  I felt myself shrinking back, instinctively clinging tighter to Joe’s hand.

  The driver went on, “Mr. Cecil Baker has a message for his daughter, if you would deliver it, please. He’d like his daughter to come home.” Here his tone changed to sickly sweet. “He misses his baby.” His sick smile evaporated. “Now you tell her that. Ya hear?”

  “And,” the reptilian guy straightened up again to say, “you tell her Cecil Baker is not going back to the slammer. Period. No matter what anybody says to frame him—”

  “Will you shut up!” The driver elbowed him again.

  “Back off.” The voice was so authoritative, it made me jump. “Leave her alone.” I looked up. Joe. Joe, my new boyfriend, released my hand, pulled himself to his full height, and was chest-to chest with the ponytail guy. “You leave my girlfriend alone, or you’ll really, really wish you had.”

  My mouth fell open. Joe, who was a self-proclaimed wuss, Joe, who apologized for not being fearless, Joe, who had just asked my little brother if I could be his girlfriend, Joe, my new boyfriend, stuck his finger in the driver’s face. “You touch her again, or threaten her on her bike, you’ll be dead. You understand? Now back off !”

  If the rednecks’ eyes had flashed fear when confronted with Scout and Thomas, now their eyes flashed surprise and shock. The element of ambush took them off guard so completely that they only stammered as Joe grabbed my hand and we walked right past the two jerks.

  “Back off. You’ll really wish you had,” the rednecks called after us, trying to mock Joe, but the words bounced off our backs as we strode away.

  We headed into the crowd until we’d gotten a safe distance away.

  “Joe.” I yanked on his hand. “I can’t believe you. I mean, I can hardly believe you said that to those assholes. How—why—how could you do that? Talk about guts.”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m shaking now.”

  “You were awesome.” I squeezed his hand. “And now we know they’re Allie’s dad’s friends.”

  “And now we know for sure that Allie’s not at her house, wherever that is.”

  “What do you think they were talking about? Frame Cecil Baker? He’s already been in and out of prison,” I said. “Those guys are so nuts, they don’t even make any sense.”

  Joe said, “Do you think she recognized them? Back when they ran you guys off the road?”

  “No. I’m sure she didn’t. She would have said something, don’t you think? I mean, the way she came storming into the Last Chance.”

  Joe started to chuckle. “That was my introduction to Allie.” He smiled down at me. “And to you, for that matter, besides at the truck stop.”

  At that moment, the cellos started the sad, somber notes of the 1812 Overture. The big-boy uncles would shoot their cannon soon.

  “We better hurry,” I said.

  “Or,” Joe said, “we could stand right here and listen and watch.”

  We looked over at the aunts and little kids. They were absorbed in the music and watching the cannons. They weren’t looking our direction.

  The uncles were very busy with their toys.

  “Okay,” I said. “We can see everything from here.”

  Uncle Thomas was checking something on the cannon. Then the Union soldier guys, in their blue coats, stood at attention, trying not to wiggle like little boys.

  The music sounded like a hymn, and then it grew into this horrible, wonderful, awful collision of notes that really sounded like a battle. This song was written by Tchaikovsky, the same guy who wrote The Nutcracker. I knew The Nutcracker because I was in ballet for six years, until I got the guts to tell my mom I’d rather ride my bike after school than take dance lessons.

  I loved this music, but I didn’t very often admit that to anybody. I slid my hand up under Joe’s arm and stood on tiptoes to say in his ear, “I love this song.”

  Joe squeezed my hand against his ribs. “I’ll pay attention then.”

  At the height of the music that painted a battle scene, Scout brought a match (no cigar this time) to the powder hole, and though I didn’t want to move my hand away from Joe, I did. I watched Timmy and the other little cousins sit up straight. We covered our ears, as did lots of people around us, and we watched the flare and the shudder, and flame shooting from the cannon barrel. The boom crashed inside my eardrums and in my sternum, even through the palms of my hands, and even with an oatmeal cannonball.

  In spite of my eardrums, I could hear the music roaring bloodshed and gunfire, drums, strings, and deep brass, as the cannons went off again and again. They filled the air with explosion, smoke, and dust. I looked at Joe, his hands over his ears, and I yelled, “Joe, you know what? What you did tonight? Standing up to those guys? You’re anything but a wuss.”

  He grinned and took his hands off his ears. He practically had to yell for me to hear. “Nobody gets to treat you like that and get away with it.”

  And with the cannons crashing around us, and in the middle of all the dust and music and smoke, and in sight of Susan and Janie and Timmy and God and everyone, Joe took my chin in his hand and lifted my face to his. And he kissed me. And we didn’t get interrupted.

  My knees were already weak from terror, exhaustion, the race, adrenaline coming and going all day, and now this last run-in with the rednecks. When Joe brought his lips to mine, I was sure they would give out entirely. If he hadn’t had his arms wrapped around me, I thought I might have landed on the dusty quarry floor. I didn’t know lips could feel strong. But they did. Soft and strong all at once. But then his tongue flicked against mine and he pulled me tighter, and I forgot all about my knees.

  The cannons roared and thundered, the dust rose, the music swelled around us, and his mouth melded to mine. And I felt it everywhere.

  Twenty-Six

  Ice Cream

  The Fourth of July, continued

  Nobody saw us kiss. Everybody was too busy watching the cannons and listening and covering their ears to pay any attention to us. Timmy included.

  Timmy and Stevie begged to ride home with us from the concert. I would have liked fifteen minutes alone with Joe, but Joe looked at me, shrugged, and said, “Okay. Come on.” The little guys jumped up and down, so I felt guilty for not wanting them to come.

  Driving home, I sat in the passenger seat like before, but now it felt different. If I was Joe’s girlfriend, should I sit next to him? I looked at the spot on the seat right next to him, where girlfriends usually sit in front seats, and the magnetic pull to be close to him was electric. I slid a little closer. As much as my seat belt would allow.

  I’d had a boyfriend last year, Kevin, but he’d just asked me, “You want to go out with me?” and it meant we talked on the phone, sat together at basketball games, and danced at school dances. We watched movies in his basement three times, and he only gave me a quick peck on the lips each of those evenings. Mom wouldn’t let us be alone together if she could help it. “Too young,” she’d said. We were both fourteen when we started dating, fifteen when we broke up.

  This was different.

  And I wondered if I was a selfish, horrible person to be feeling all this when Allie was hiding somewhere. I had no idea where, and I wasn’t even sure why, except now I thought it must have something to do with scary leather-dude dad. But here I was, basking in the glow of Joe’s attention, wanting nothing more than for him to touch me again, the whole world looking more vibrant because Joe liked me, and because I’d raced and done okay, and all the while, Allie was in some subterranean hideout under my feet. What was wrong with me?

  But, I tried to tell myself, Allie was the strong one, strong enough to hold up, even holed up.

  Going up the last hill to Scout’s, Stevie leane
d forward and squealed, “Look! Fireworks!”

  Bottle rockets flared above the trees, a bouquet of illegal color from the junk woods. Colored sparks showered down toward the road and Joe slowed to avoid them. Somebody must have cleaned out his car right there: bottles and paper and cans and Dairy Queen containers heaped by the shoulder of the road. Joe and I shook our heads at each other.

  When we pulled into the driveway and got out of the car, firecrackers crackled in the woods like popcorn popping.

  “Can we do firecrackers?” Timmy asked.

  “Nope,” I said. “Too dangerous with so many kids around. We’re going to go watch the big fireworks later, though.”

  Timmy ran after Stevie into the house. They came running back out, whooping before we’d even gotten to the steps. “Sparklers! Look, Sadie!”

  Scout produced eight boxes of sparklers, and the boys and Megan swirled arcs and circles of color in the yard and wrote their names against the sky.

  I cornered Scout and told him about the rednecks at Rockin’ in the Quarry. And about how Joe stood up to them, without telling exactly what Joe had said.

  “Good man, that Joe,” Scout put a new unlit cigar in this mouth. He winked at me. I wondered if he knew, or guessed. My uncle was no dummy.

  Aunt Susan’s homemade ice cream had finally frozen, so Joe and I dished up ice cream for the kids, dropping a Hershey’s Kiss upside down in each cone. Firework explosions from the trailer court made a constant backdrop of noise and flashes through the kitchen window. Joe tilted his head toward the sound. “Reminds me of the concert. Like we’re in a battle zone.”

  “Take the ice cream outside to eat it,” Janie hollered from the living room.

  “Yes!” Stevie and Timmy bolted out, balancing ice cream.

  “I’m so scared for Allie,” I said. “I can’t stop thinking about her.”

  “Me neither.”

  Outside, Megan screamed. A blood-curdling, scared-within-an-inch-of-her-of-her-life scream, and Joe and I looked at each other.

  “Cecil!” I dropped the ice cream scoop and we ran.