“Which one of those things?” Em wanted to know.
Bo leaned in more closely. “What is it, Turtlest?”
“Just that the two of us nearly got hit, seemed like, by some crazy truck barreling down. It didn’t hit us, understand, and probably just happened to swerve at the wrong place….”
I stopped there, watching L. J. ram his horn-rims back up his nose, him and Em and Bo exchanging glances.
“You guys,” I protested, “think I’m a baby for even bringing it up.”
“On the contrary,” L. J. corrected, “we think you’re a moron for just now mentioning it.”
We arrived next at Welp’s, and when he didn’t appear at the door just after Emerson’s honk, Jimbo threw his size fourteen feet up and over the side of the truck.
Jimbo held out his hand, signaling me to join him. “I think I’ll be needing my partner in crime, just in case Bobby’s momma’s alone in there.” I grabbed his hand and approached the trailer with him.
The aluminum door of the single-wide was left dangling open, drunk on one hinge. As we eased up the three wooden steps, two of them already caved in, we could see through the living room down a short linoleum hall to a king-sized bed at the trailer’s far end. I was vaguely aware—or thought I was later—of hearing another truck growl into the drive beside Em’s.
Jimbo had one-eightied already, looking shaken, and dropped off the steps before I registered what I was seeing. Roach clips trailed from the front door clear on down to the bed, its pink floral spread littered in bottles and cans and a body, a woman’s, that didn’t seem to be real awfully clothed—not near enough anyhow.
As I scrambled back toward the stairs, I felt a meaty bare arm drop onto my shoulder. Mort Beckwith had landed his big self beside me, and the top step, the only one remaining intact, cracked through the middle.
“Welpler!” Mort bellowed through the door, smiling crookedly at me, then shouted again. “Get your butt out here! HEY! Welpler!”
This roused Bobby’s mother, there on the bed. She lifted her head.
Jimbo had turned back to restrain him. “Get off of there, Mort. Go on, now. Get.”
Mort Beckwith stayed where he was, but still hadn’t peered into the trailer. He roared at Jimbo, “What’s eating you, Buckwheat?”
Jimbo leapt to the foot of the rickety steps. He grabbed Mort by one leg and one dangling hand. “I said get off!”
Welp’s momma, her back still to us, was just wobbling to her feet, beginning to turn.
Mort’s neck craned to the far end of the linoleum hall. He let out a whistle and licked his bottom lip, distended as always with a big dip of tobacco. “Turns out our little Bobby’s got himself one good-looking whore of a momma. Reckon he’ll mind if I have a go?”
It was then that Jimbo heaved Mort, whole, the whale of him, to the ground.
Jimbo waited until Mort had staggered up, cursing, to his feet, then Bo punched him.
The blow, Bo’s very hardest left hook, sunk deep into Mort’s foam rubber gut. Mort looked surprised but not at all pained. He pulled back his arm and caught Bo’s nose on the upswing.
I spun around to shut the trailer door, keeping my eyes down on the clip-littered linoleum and not on the woman, by then up on her bare feet.
“Bobby?” she called. “You, Bobby!”
I pulled the door to, heard it click, and looked frantically for a way to lock it from the outside. I saw my hand shake on the aluminum knob.
“Bobby!” she wailed. “Bobby, you get back here!”
I could hear her pinballing against the walls as she made her way down the hall. Grasping the front door with both hands, I threw my weight against it. She tried the knob, then began pounding the door.
“Bobby!” she shrieked. “BOBBY! You let me out, you hear me? BOBBY!”
I held to the knob. “Get away from the door!” I yelled in to her.
She pounded and kicked, scratched at the door.
I hauled back on the knob, my whole weight against it. “Go back to bed! You don’t have your clothes on! You don’t—!”
I saw my knuckles go white as I clung to the knob, and I heard myself, like from a long ways away off, sobbing into the aluminum door.
Welp’s momma crumpled, exhausted or maybe passed out, onto the floor.
I turned back to see Mort, shaking his square, crew-cut head, standing over Jimbo. Landing a last kick to Bo’s head, Mort lurched toward the door like maybe he’d march in there if he wanted, then he spit to the side, threw his head back, and laughed. He swaggered back to his truck, adjusted the rifle Jemima on her back windshield rack, and turned to survey the damage he’d done.
L. J. and Emerson, each on one end of Jimbo, lugged him to the bed of Em’s truck.
With the back of my hand, I swatted away what was left of my tears.
“Bo all right?” I asked L. J. and Emerson.
Jimbo opened his eyes. “Next time, Turtle, remind me up good, huh?”
I stationed myself by his head, and stroked his stubbly cheek. “What, Bo? To do what?”
“Remind me to stick up for the bad guys. They’re always bigger.”
“Our poor sweet Bo. Someday you’ll grow into those feet and—”
“And then I’ll get Goliath good.”
“Sure you will, Bo. You sure enough will.”
And then his eyes closed, and I pulled his head in my lap, him and his tenderized face.
Emerson slid into the truck cab and waited, his fingers batting the keys already in the ignition, until Mort had started his engine. Then Em swung his pickup ahead of Mort’s, blocking the one-lane dirt drive. Mort raced his engine and leaned on his horn. Em thrust his head out the window, then both his arms, and seemed on the point of leaping out altogether.
But Welp’s momma’s old Pinto appeared at the head of the drive. And there at the wheel was Bobby Welpler himself.
“Get on over here, Welpler!” Mort roared over his engine. “Time you ditched these nigger-loving losers.”
Jimbo had gone limp in my lap, and it was Jimbo who always knew what to do in a crisis. We all—all but Bo—looked at Welp, but nobody else spoke.
Welp abandoned his car in the tall grass beside the head of the drive, and sprang out with his skinny arms empty, though I could see a Piggly Wiggly grocery sack on the seat with a gallon of milk, tipped sideways on the shredded upholstery, beside it. He hesitated a moment, shifting his weight toward one truck, then the other.
“Welp!” L. J. called to him. “In this heat, don’t forget, your milk will undoubtedly sour and be unfit for imbibing. Welp!”
And for some reason just then, I pictured Welp’s momma where she’d passed out, her soured-milk skin against the cracked linoleum floor.
Welp swung himself up into the truck beside Mort and didn’t look back.
Jimbo always gave the rescue instructions, but Jimbo was out cold. Both the sideways gallon of milk and the woman passed out in the trailer we left where they fell—hoping, maybe, somebody else would find them and know what to do.
_________
We drove to Sanna’s house, slowing to see her father’s station wagon just pulling into the carport propped up at the right of the kitchen. Farsanna herself was just unfolding from the back of the wagon. She turned to her parents, both emerging more slowly, and to whatever she said, her mother shook her head no. But slowly, real slowly, her father nodded.
Without waiting to see if we would in fact stop, she disappeared into the house.
“What do you do all day in there?” I’d once asked her as we sat with our feet dangling down in the Hole.
“Read, mostly. And study. And sometimes I cook. Sambol, for example.” Her eyes cut toward me, and her lips smiled at one corner.
“My favorite.�
��
“Yes. Your favorite.” The smile gained height, then sank as she added, “I would like to receive a job. To help my father, our family. But I don’t have yet documentation for working.”
I’d opened my mouth to tell her I didn’t have any particular documentation for hauling manure, but I left it alone.
By the time we’d pulled up to the carport and nodded to her father who stood silently at the door, Farsanna had returned, the straps of my old bathing suit showing from under her clothes. We had Sanna with us and were well out of her drive before the screen door had slammed behind her father.
Her eyes wide on Jimbo, she sank to her knees beside his bruised face—beside my lap. One of Bo’s eyes was beginning to swell shut and his nose was still leaking red. Sanna looked from L. J. to me for an explanation.
“This is twice Bo’s been slugged since you came,” I said—before I thought to keep my mouth shut.
“Twice?” L. J. asked.
With his one eye still open, Jimbo looked at me, pleading.
“That is … the other time was nothing but these two playing.” I pointed to the cab, to the back of Emerson’s head. “Reckon Em just played too hard that one day.”
Farsanna nodded but kept her eyes on me like she was waiting for more, for maybe the truth. I reached for the cooler and passed Cokes all around.
Then Sanna’s head whipped around. “The Stray! I did not call for him to come!”
We were a couple of miles away from her house by then. “He’ll be just fine,” I shouted into the wind off the truck. “He’s probably just as happy lounging around the yard, don’t you think?”
Persuaded, Sanna poured peanuts into a bottle for Jimbo, then held the cold glass up to his head. Seemed to me nobody needs peanuts in their Coke to unswell a black eye.
Seemed to me nobody needs a face down close enough to suck out your air.
L. J. sat across from me, his jaw gone slack just staring at them, and then sometimes at me—like there’d been a lit sign like his daddy’s right there in the truck all along, and he’d only just then learned how to read it.
Me, I couldn’t watch anymore, so I shifted my gaze toward the road, trying to focus on the trees swishing by.
_________
We kept to ourselves mostly that day. None of us except Sanna felt much like swimming. So we sat on the rock palm in a tight little knot, our ankles dangling into the water, while Sanna waded in, quietly soaking in the cool water.
After awhile, she emerged from the water, and Jimbo wrapped around her shoulders a towel, a thick burgundy thing, plush and new. For a moment, I was too busy noticing the towel that must’ve replaced the white excuse for terry cloth to focus on the way Bo reached tenderly to brush a strand of Sanna’s black-licorice hair from her face. But when the rest of the Blue Hole went quiet, I knew right then what everyone else must be seeing. Or maybe feeling: the stripped-wire charge between Bo and Sanna that jolted the banks.
It had been a simple gesture, Bo’s flinging the towel, so maybe it was the look in his eye. Or in hers. Or maybe it was when his hand brushed her shoulder. Or her one finger held up, tracing the swell of his eye.
But there it was, the two of them—gone public by letting everyone see how shut out we all were. Shut out tight from them and the place they made private with just a fling of a burgundy towel.
“Oh, man,” I groaned—not exactly to L. J., but he frowned over at me, and he nodded.
L. J. and I climbed the trail together, though I turned now and then to check on my brother behind us—he at least had Big Dog beside him, licking his hand. Me, I only had L. J., and no way would he be licking my hand.
Em waved me away every time. “You go on, Turtle. Go on. Leave me be.”
“What’s eating him?” L. J. asked. At least he didn’t ask about what might be eating me.
“You know,” I whispered to him, “for a real smart guy, you don’t notice too much.”
He ignored me the rest of the climb, though we kept close together, our arms and legs pumping hand over hand, pulling us up, our legs dragging us the final flat of the path. We reached the Clearing at the same time.
Side by side, we stopped there at the head of the trail and stared.
And then, side by side, we broke into a run.
Smoke was pouring from Emerson’s truck cab.
21 An X Marked the Spot
I reached the truck first and peered into the passenger’s-side window to see what was causing the smoke. Two sticks were crossed at right angles and bound with blackberry vine. Flames leapt up from them.
I swung my wet towel through the open window at the thing, and L. J.’s towel followed close behind mine. The fire suffocated under wet terry cloth and mud. We fell against the truck, both of us holding our chests.
With the sleeve of his T-shirt, L. J. wiped the sweat from his nose and pushed his horn-rims back into place. “What in God’s name was that?”
I unpeeled my towel and his from the seat, both of them charred and in pieces. He picked up the bound sticks.
“L. J., don’t tell. Okay?”
“What? Why not?”
“Just … don’t.”
“You don’t expect your brother will perceive there’s been some alteration to his upholstery? Be realistic, Turtle.”
“The truck’s in bad shape. Maybe he’ll—Big Dog’s not here yet to sit on it even … Okay, yeah. He’ll notice. Just don’t.”
The others were emerging from the woods.
“You win,” I said loudly to L. J., and picked up a tape from the pile on the floor where Emerson stored them. “We’ll listen to Little River Band on the way home.” I edged away from the cab, and without meeting Em’s eye moved toward the bed.
“Hey, Turtle.” Emerson grabbed my arm. The air was heavy with heat and gas and burnt cloth.
“Hey, Em.”
“You got something to tell me?”
“Me?”
He nodded toward the seat. Big Dog, her chubby hind hips needing Emerson’s lift to mount the passenger seat, had her front end strained forward, her nose in the burn, and was sniffing and whining.
“What, that?” I asked.
“Yeah. That.”
L. J. stood to one side. “I told you he’d notice.”
Jimbo and Sanna were just reaching the head of the trail that opened onto the Clearing.
“Not everybody needs to see it, Em,” I pleaded. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“What, you didn’t think I’d see a cross charbroiled on my vinyl?”
“It’s just an X.”
“It’s a cross.”
“It’s nothing but an X. Now who’s being overdramatic? L. J., what do you say it is?” I demanded.
L. J. raised one eyebrow at me. “It’s a cross.”
I shrugged. “So what if it is?”
“If it is—and it most decidedly is,” L. J. pronounced, “well, then—” but he never finished.
Jimbo and Farsanna approached the truck.
I shook my head at Emerson. “Don’t mention it to her—”
“Why not?” he demanded. “How come you’re so all-fired bent on not telling anybody anything?”
“How come you’re so nasty with that tone of voice? I just don’t think anybody needs to jump to conclusions is all.”
“Look, enough fun and games here. I’m saying we got to tell someone about all this. We’ve been kidding ourselves that all this didn’t mean anything.”
Jimbo elbowed his way between us, and we both fell suddenly silent. “By all means, club, maul, or mangle each other,” Bo offered, “but just relocate y’all’s family feud to somewhere I ain’t so likely to starve standing up.”
We were all in the truck but Farsanna, and sh
e was just swinging in when Bobby Welpler slipped out from the path that led to the Hole into the clearing with Mort.
I mouthed at L. J., “So if Mort’s here … then who?”
“I know,” he mouthed back.
“So who could’ve … lit those sticks? Did they loop up here and back down?”
L. J. shook his head and his shoulders twitched up and back down—it was the closest I ever saw to his admitting that he didn’t know.
Mort tipped sideways to whisper something to Welp, and the two of them laughed a little too hard and too loud, like people do when nothing’s particularly funny. Mort had left his gun in his truck, but he retrieved it now and caressed its long, shiny barrel like he’d missed it and needed to make up for lost time.
Then, looking up, he let out a whistle. “Looky there, Bob, it’s Turtle’s friend up there in the truck.”
I didn’t turn my head.
“Or should I say Jimbo’s friend? Hey, Bob, looky how fine them black apples is ripening up this season.”
Farsanna’s leg, which had frozen just in the process of leaping up and over into the truck, must’ve failed her just then. She dropped back down to the ground.
Jimbo stood up in the truck bed, his face already pulped blue.
Mort swung his square-column legs up into the cab of his own truck. “Lordy, Bob, would you look at that? Mm-mmm! Ain’t saying I’d keep me a black cow of my own, y’understand now. But I swear I might could be talked into borrowin’ theirs for a good time.”
I remember Mort’s mouth making the shapes for the sounds as much as I recollect the words the sounds made: his jaw dropping and rising, dropping and rising onto his chest, where his neck ought to have been.
Jimbo was out of the truck then and on the ground, my brother right beside him.
Barricading himself in with the driver’s-side door and waving for Bobby to join him, Mort reared back to deliver his finishing touch: “I tell you what, Welpler, that there girl is put together nearly as good as your momma!”
Welp’s snicker strangled on itself. Already trotting to jump in Mort’s cab, Bobby Welpler stopped where he was.
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