June Bug

by Chris Fabry

  “They’re not Indians, June Bug. They call them Native Americans.” Dad nodded and pointed toward the horse farm. “There was a big massacre not far from here. Back during the Civil War.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s too awful to talk about.”

  “What happened?”

  I knew if I asked him enough times he’d finally tell me. That’s what he did when we went to all those Civil War sites. He’d keep saying stuff like, “A lot of brave men died here, but I can’t talk about it.” That just got me more curious, and I’d ask more questions until he broke down and told me.

  Dad sat back on a big rock and crossed his arms. “I think they were Arapaho and Sioux. No, Arapaho and Cheyenne. The government kept pushing them farther and farther west and giving them land here and there to hunt. But some in the group didn’t like the treaties, thought it was their land, and hated all the people coming through their territory to the gold mines and pushing them out.

  “The tribe camped near Sand Creek—we can go there on the way back east if you want. Anyway, these boys from the Army came through, and one of their leaders ordered them to attack. There were only women and children and old men there. The young men were hunting.”

  “They killed them?”

  He nodded. “For a while they made it look like the soldiers were brave and stood up to those painted warriors, but it didn’t stick because the truth came out. That’ll always happen eventually.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to imagine such a horrible thing. I’m sure it was worse than what ran through my mind.

  “What some people can do to others is just plain awful,” he said. “Hard to understand what’s going through their minds.”

  When Sheila got home from work that night she had a big smile on her face, and she acted like we were special guests coming from some foreign country. She had a couple bags full of stuff and one of those take-and-bake pizzas that I’ve been wanting to try. Pepperoni is my favorite and that’s what this one was. I wondered if she knew or just guessed.

  Dad asked if he could use her phone, and she told us to come on inside. I held my breath as I walked into the house because I was afraid that I wouldn’t like the place, but there turned out to be no reason for being afraid. First of all when she opened the door to the garage this red dog raced through the kitchen with his tail wagging and his tongue hanging out almost like he was smiling. Around his eyes the fur was white like he was some old dog professor. He came right over to me, past my dad who was running interference (which I think is a football term), and licked me in the face. (The dog, not my dad.)

  “Walter, stop it,” Sheila said, pulling on his collar.

  When Dad reached out to pet him, Walter growled.

  Sheila wasn’t too happy, and she scolded him. “These are our guests. Now you be nice to them or you’ll be in the garage the rest of your life.”

  It was almost like Walter understood her, or at least he heard the tone of her voice, and the old thing dipped his head and loped outside to take a pee. You could see all the white splotches on the yard that were his favorite places. You might wonder what kind of person names her dog Walter, but I have to admit that the name fit just right. The only thing that would have been better was to have a girl dog beside him named Eloise or Mabel or something like that.

  Sheila showed Dad the phone in the kitchen, and I just stared at the living room. She had one of those really thin TVs in the corner that you see at Walmart playing the latest movie over and over and a bookshelf that filled the whole back wall. The couch and love seat and other chair looked a little old, but the chair was so comfortable to sit in I wanted to stay there the rest of my life and read books and watch TV. There was a fireplace too. Not one of those that you flip a switch and the logs start burning, but a real one with real logs. I could imagine the snow piling up outside and the fireplace on and me on the couch reading a book with a blanket over my legs.

  “You like to read, don’t you?” Sheila said behind me.

  “I’ve always wanted a bookcase for the RV, but there’s no room. This one is amazing.”

  She showed me the section where she kept her classic stories, and there was a shelf up high for books on marriage and relationships and presidents and a couple on war. I could have stood there and looked at the spines of those books all night, but she offered to give me a tour of the house and I was anxious to see the rest of it.

  Downstairs was another living room and a fireplace (the people who built this house sure did like their fireplaces and I can’t blame them), but the room had boxes of stuff stacked up like somebody was moving in or moving out. Off to one side was a bedroom.

  “This is my guest room,” she said, flicking on a light.

  There was a big bed and a dresser and a closet. It smelled musty in there, like nobody had been a guest in a long time.

  “What’s the stuff in the boxes?” I said.

  She put a hand out and ran it over one. “My husband’s things. I’ve been meaning to have Goodwill come and pick them up, but I just haven’t had the heart.”

  “If it’s clothes, maybe some of them would fit my dad.” We shop at Goodwill stores all the time, and I figured it wouldn’t make any never mind to her because she was getting rid of them anyway.

  “Maybe I’ll have him go through them. My husband was a little shorter than your dad and kind of skinny, but we’ll see.”

  There was a bathroom with a shower down there, another bathroom on the main floor where the kitchen and living room were, and the third floor had three bedrooms and another bathroom. The whole place had hardwood floor that creaked when you walked on it, except for the downstairs, which had a thin carpet. The carpet looked worn and had lots of stains, and from the smell down there I half wondered if that was why Walter spent his time in the garage.

  Sheila’s bedroom was on the third floor. Her bathroom had a big bathtub with little jets in it. There were a bunch of different shampoos and body lotions on the counters, and I’ve never seen so much fingernail polish in my life.

  The bedroom was neat—her bed was made like it was some hotel room, the corners all tucked in and everything. On the nightstand was a picture of Sheila and a young girl, smiling. I asked who it was and she said it was her niece and then she told me about her and that she was sick and not doing well.

  “Do you have any kids?” I said.

  She kind of smiled and frowned at the same time, as if I’d asked her something too personal, but she said no, she didn’t have children but that she always wanted to.

  “How come you live in this big house all by yourself?”

  “I’m not by myself.” She sat on the bed. “I have Walter.”

  “Yeah, but he stays in the garage.”

  My dad’s voice came up through the heating vent. He was on the phone and sounded mad, like somebody had lied to him or something.

  I smiled and sat down on the bed and looked at the cobwebs in the corner of the ceiling. There were definitely flaws in the house, but I would have stayed the rest of my life if it were up to me.

  On the way over, we had passed a church made out of logs, and I imagined my dad dressed in a tuxedo, his hair cut, and Sheila coming down the aisle in a long white dress, her face with some blush on it so she didn’t look so pale, me putting flower petals on the floor in front of her. I also imagined her side of the church pretty full and nobody on our side. And then I thought of the picture in Walmart and that my name wasn’t Johnson and if that was true, my dad wasn’t really my dad. Or maybe he was and he had taken me from my mother. I swear, it’s hard to keep your mind from running sometimes.

  “I was married once,” Sheila said softly in a voice like a little girl. “But he passed away a few years ago.”

  “The bike accident,” I said. “Was he wearing a helmet? Because my dad says you gotta always wear a helmet, even if it’s just in a parking lot.”

  “Your dad’s a smart man. No, he wasn’t wearing a helmet.”
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br />   Her closet was full of clothes in neat piles on shelves or hanging up and there were all sorts of colors. Probably one to match every one of those fingernail colors. I wondered what it would be like to have all this room for your stuff, and then I thought about what dad had said. “Do you have a mortgage?”

  She shook her head. “A couple of years before my husband passed, he bought an insurance policy that paid the house off if he died.”

  That seemed like a lucky break to me, except that he died of course. “So you’re not tied down to a mortgage?”

  “No, that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about. There are still enough bills, though, and Walter nearly eats my whole paycheck each month.”

  From what my dad had said, living in a house was a bad thing. But as the miles rolled on, I’d look out at all those houses passing by and wonder, if it was such a great idea to live in an RV, why didn’t everybody live in one? I’d see these big white houses in Kentucky with the white fences and wonder what it would feel like to go to bed inside something that never moved and didn’t need parts. Then, because my mind tends to jump from one thing to another without a whole lot of warning, I wondered if my mother lived in a house and if she was waiting for me. Or maybe she’d gone out riding without a helmet like Sheila’s husband.

  Across the way a horse blew some air through its lips, and I stared out the window at them. This whole setup didn’t seem bad at all.

  “Who owns that farm over there?” I said.

  “Mr. Taylor’s there alone. His wife passed last winter.”

  All of a sudden I got an idea that we could trade Mr. Taylor the RV for his farm and he could go out on the road. You can meet a lot of people when you’re traveling.

  “You said something about liking horses last night,” Sheila said.

  “Oh yeah, they’re just about my most favoritest thing in the world, except for little dogs.”

  She stood and looked out the window. “Well, maybe I can take you over there this weekend and he’d let you ride one.”

  “You really think so?”

  “Maybe we’d need to soften him up a bit with some homemade apple pie or some nut bread, but I think we could arrange it.”

  She smiled and put a hand on my head, and it was the best feeling I’d had in a long time. I couldn’t resist hugging her right then and there and burying my head in her side. Her perfume smelled so good I didn’t want to let go.

  Sheila turned and gasped. My dad stood in the doorway.

  “I didn’t hear you come up the stairs,” she said. She didn’t know that he has a way of creeping around without anybody noticing. I don’t know how he does it or where he learned it, but it’s an unfair advantage when we’re playing hide-and-seek at a campground.

  “The parts place said they lost the order. Just fell through the cracks, I guess. It’s going to be another few days. They can FedEx it, but that’ll cost at least—”

  “Don’t spend that extra money; that’s silly,” Sheila interrupted. “You can stay here for as long as you’d like. I’ve got plenty of room.”

  I could tell by the look on his face that the idea wasn’t going to fly, so I quickly spoke. “You should see the house, Dad. She has so many books it would take me years to go through them all. Lots of the classics you like. Plus, she said that Mr. Taylor will let me—”

  “Hold on, June Bug. We have our own place. We’re not putting Sheila out any more than we already have.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “There are two bedrooms up here not being used. One downstairs. You can sleep there and she’ll sleep on this level.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t want to impose. You’ve done enough.”

  “Nonsense. It’s no trouble. You’re just parking your RV. And you might as well take advantage of this old house before it starts falling apart.”

  I was still hanging on to my dream of riding those horses, so when he said, “We’ll stay in the RV. If I could hook up to your electricity, that would be great,” I ran over to him and hugged him.

  “She’s making pepperoni pizza for us.”

  “Suit yourself,” Sheila said. And then she walked downstairs real fast.

  He looked at her bedroom like it was some lost jungle where there might be a city of gold. Then he spoke in a quiet voice and took my hand. “Don’t get too attached to things around here, you understand? We might have to leave quick.”

  “I want to ride the horses. She said I could.”

  “Just don’t get too attached.”

  Sheila gave me raspberry lemonade with my pizza and she offered Dad coffee or tea, but he just had the lemonade and she did too.

  After supper, I went outside on the porch and sat next to Walter and rubbed his head while they stayed in the kitchen. I was watching some old bird fly from a pine tree to the fence and then over to the barn. It had black wings with white around, and it made a screeching noise. I think it’s called a magpie, but I’m not sure.

  “How does she do school?” Sheila said.

  I moved close to the window so I could hear more.

  “I homeschool her. Actually, I RV school her.”

  Sheila laughed. “Well, it looks like you’ve done a good job. She’s as smart as Einstein and cuter than a button.”

  “To be honest, I don’t have to do much. She tears through books like there’s no tomorrow. I wish there was a way I could get her hooked up with a library, but moving around doesn’t lend itself to that.”

  There was a pause. There are times when you want to turn up the volume on life and times when you want to turn it down and times when you just want to turn it off. This was a volume-up time for me. I guess Sheila was taking her time, thinking about what she was going to say because she didn’t speak very loud when she did talk again.

  “I don’t want to overstep my bounds . . .”

  “Didn’t bother you in the parking lot last night.”

  Sheila laughed again. “A girl that age, moving toward this part of her childhood . . . It’s important for her to learn girl things. Like how to cook and how to make a bed and learn some things about the house.”

  “She knows how to cook a few things.”

  “I’m not criticizing your parenting. It’s just that there are some things a woman needs to teach a young girl. Things she should pick up from another woman. Has it been a long time since her mama was around?”

  Another pause. “It’s been a while.”

  I heard the refrigerator open and close and the clink of dishes.

  “I expect that manager of yours thinks you’re crazy letting us stay here,” my dad said.

  “He’s not somebody I go to for advice on life, if you know what I mean.”

  Dad laughed.

  “He cares, I guess. Thinks you might be bad news.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. He actually let us stay longer than I thought he would. Can’t blame him for being cautious. This the first time you picked up a couple of strays?”

  “It is. Except for Walter, of course. And he’s a keeper.”

  I had bugged Dad about a dog for a long time, and he said it wasn’t fair to bring an animal into a life like ours. Now, petting Walter and seeing him close his eyes in pleasure at my touch made me want to have a dog all the more.

  “She can’t go over to a friend’s house to play,” Sheila said. “I see her walking the aisles of the store, just staring at other girls. I’m not trying to be hard on you—you’ve done the best you can—but there are some things a father can’t give. Some things only a mother can.”

  I listened close, thinking Dad was going to run out of there, but he didn’t.

  Then Sheila spoke again. “She’s shown an interest in the horse farm next door. Is it okay if I talk with the owner about letting her ride?”

  Walter put his head up.

  “I don’t think we’re going to be here long enough to do much riding.”
/>   “It might take a few days for that part, though. And on the weekends I help Mr. Taylor clean his barn. If she helped, I suppose he’d let her ride as a fair trade. It teaches responsibility, that an animal comes with hard work—”

  “I can see why you’re in retail. You’re good at sales.”

  Sheila chuckled. “I really think it would be good for her.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  Another pause. Then my dad said, “I was noticing a few loose shingles on the roof. You get a lot of wind out here, don’t you?”

  “Blows like a hurricane in the winter and spring.”

  “I’d like to repair those for you if you’d let me. I can’t pay you for the hookup and for parking in your driveway . . .”

  “There’ll be none of that. I invited you here as a friend. I’m not hearing any talk about payment. That’s like a slap in the face.”

  “All right, but let me work on the roof. And if that Mr. Taylor would let me help in the barn, I’d do that too.”

  “So she can ride?”

  “Yeah, I guess it’ll be okay. Just don’t let her get too attached to those horses. She’s probably already named them.”

  Walter put his head down, and his leg moved in a phantom scratch. I guess I hit the spot with him, and Dad’s words made me feel the same way.

  “You a handyman?”

  “I can fix a thing or two.”

  “Writers do that sort of thing?”

  “Writers do what they have to.”

  Walter’s ears went up and he loped off through the yard. I wanted to follow him, but the conversation was too interesting. There was a long pause, and I figured Sheila was getting ready to back the question truck up and unload.

  “What happened to her mama?” Sheila said. “Did she pass away? If it’s something you don’t want to talk about, I understand.”

  “It’s complicated. Let’s just say I was put in a position I didn’t expect. You know, being a father and all wasn’t what I had planned.”

  “But it’s grown on you.”

  “Yeah, I guess it has.”

  “So her mother isn’t dead.”

  “Not that I know of.”