“Cowards,” Jimbo put in, his gaze shifting back up the road in the direction of his daddy’s church.
L. J. nodded, “Those who are less than charming.”
Jimbo’s hand brushed Sanna’s arm. “You’re still coming to swim, aren’t you? We can’t Blue Hole without you.”
She looked straight ahead, her words clipped down almost to nothing. “I would like to go home.”
For the flicker of a moment, I thought she meant Sri Lanka, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean. And almost like she’d read my mind she looked at me and tacked on, “To my house.”
I tried to look back at her steady, and tried to benchpress my voice into something like reassuring when I said, “Your home.”
Jimbo shifted forward, right into her face, and whispered, “Come back to the Blue Hole, just this one last time.”
We heard the one last time, our heads snapping up in surprise. But not one of us gainsayed him that day. Maybe because it was Jimbo speaking. Or maybe because it seemed to us all at that moment that it might turn out to be true.
Sanna nodded finally—and even then not much of a nod. Em nodded back and climbed into the truck cab. In the rearview mirror, I could see his mouth had gone taut.
29Stand by Me
For once we had the Hole to ourselves, the other regulars being still at church, and then strapped into long Sunday dinners with pot roast and au gratin potatoes and green bean casserole with fried onion topping. In my family we didn’t do church—except for Momma who most weeks snuck out for early service at the Methodist church, and most weeks covertly invited Emerson and me, though we always said no—No thank you, ma’am—but my father always pretended she just slept late on Sundays, always covered for her like some families hide their alcoholic Uncle Billy. The result was that we were generally free not only of sermons and asthmatic pipe organs, but also of Sunday pot roast and adult conversation never worth keeping your shoes on for. So on this Sunday morning, the Hole was ours.
The chill of the water must’ve done us some good that day. We splashed a little and floated. Having held eight-track tapes in our teeth as we’d slid down to the Hole, and having strapped the player on Em’s back with a towel, we let Ray Charles and Diana Ross ease our pain just a little.
Jimbo, who had come out of the water and was resting on our rock, grabbed up a bottle of the sunblock his momma always sent with him and, standing up, held it to his mouth as a mike: Ain’t no mountain high enough, Ain’t no valley low enough, he crooned along with Diana.
And we sang back to him: Nothin’ can keep me from you …
We ate pimento cheese on white bread warmed in the sun. It did taste a smidgen of gas—and we didn’t care.
“I reckon,” Jimbo said, his mouth full of bread, “we’ll remember this day. Reckon you can say that much for it.”
“Anybody miss Welp?” L. J. asked.
Emerson reached for a third Coke. “Couldn’t say I miss him. Just seems kind of strange, his not being here.”
Jimbo flopped back on his elbows. “What if any of the rest of us was gone? What’d we remember about ’em?”
“About you,” I suggested, “your sweet nature.” And then, before I could stop myself: “And your pretty green eyes.”
He dimpled up in my general direction, but weakly.
“But for certain,” I finished, “your platypus feet.”
He tossed peanuts at me with his toes.
_________
Later, others trickled into the Hole—it felt like an invasion that day. But the rope took up its ticktocking as usual, and the chicken fights broke out on the north bank. After she’d watched for a while, Farsanna stepped away from our group and waded back into the water. Jimbo hesitated a moment, then followed. They stood with the water up to their knees.
I might have hated her then—no, I know that I did—her standing by Jimbo like he was hers. His way of looking at her that closed some kind of door to the outside where we’d all, even Emerson and me, wound up finding ourselves peeking in. And my hating her had nothing to do with my liking her too, at least a clean shot better than any other fifteen-year-old girl I’d ever known. I hated myself, and also was thankful, for asking my brother to U-turn his truck on a day when I was too hot to think straight—we all were. And here’s where we’d come: the calm and the steady and the us of our world all spinning apart. And somehow also pulled in closer together.
As the Hole gradually filled with swimmers, Sanna and I joined each other on the rock, drying off. We’d sat for a while and then this: “Turtle, I …” She seemed stuck on that word, and on the anger I could see in her eyes.
With a sliver of sandstone I drew on the granite beside me. Then I wrote one single word. “Sanna? See this.”
She looked at the word I’d sandstoned. “We,” she read.
“We’ve got to do something about Mort. About … everything that’s been going on. We.”
She reached for my sliver of sandstone and circled the word. Her arms went briefly around me and she gave me a smile that wasn’t one really, but more like a way to say thanks. Then she dropped the towel she’d kept cocooned around herself for some time, and she waded into the water.
I dove from the rock then, despite the water’s not being deep enough there. I needed the blast of cold. When I surfaced, Sanna had waded in to a few feet from me.
“Turtle,” she asked, not looking at me, “what will happen to …” she turnd toward me then. “To us? I’m tired of being … afraid.”
I couldn’t remember her admitting fear until then, even when the rest of us had been clearly terrified, or even last night when she’d been heartbroken by what we’d found at the end of the rope. Maybe she’d been scared all along and too brave to show it.
“I don’t know.” It was all I could think of just then, even with my looking for the warm, easy words that couldn’t be true anymore but wouldn’ve been nicer to hear myself say.
But if Sanna heard me just then, she never answered.
Her eyes redirected to the base of the sweetgum tree. I felt more than heard the tremor that went through the Blue Hole just then. I lifted my head to see what Sanna’s eyes had locked on.
A group of boys no one knew had gathered at the base of the tree, their collective dark skin emerging from the shadows like a scene from a fantasy film: the inanimate landscape that comes strangely to life. The trees themselves may as well have grown feet onto their roots and begun moving about.
How these boys had found this place I never knew. What possessed them to come up from the Valley, I never heard. But here they were, a whole group of them, maybe as many as five, waiting in line at the tree just like they’d been invited. They pulled themselves up to full height and stuck their chests out and planted their feet.
Mort, who’d retired himself from the rope swing to sprawl on a towel beside Neesa, rose now. He squinted, rubbed his eyes even, and then his forehead, like sunstroke might be at fault for what he was seeing.
Someone punched off Em’s tape player, and the Hole sat watching in silence and Mort began lumbering to the sweetgum.
One of the boys from the Valley had already made his way to the jumping-off limb of the tree. It was when he first put a dark hand on the rope swing that Mort charged.
30Regret
Buddy Buncombe had been waiting in line at the base of the tree and had backed off in blank confusion when the new boys arrived. But he stepped forward now, catching Mort by his shoulders.
At the opposite side of the Hole, I couldn’t hear what those two said. But they both talked at once, heatedly, both pointed toward the sweetgum, both pacing on the red clay bank like two bulls eyeing each other and a red flag. Twice, Mort shook off Buddy’s hands as he began charging again toward the tree, and twice Buddy grabbed him again, their voices rising.
Buddy’s face was in Mort’s. “Not here is what I’m saying!” was the first thing loud enough that I could hear on my side of the Hole.
Everyone stared at the two of them, like the outcome would instruct the rest of us what to do.
The boys from the Valley lined up along the bank of the Hole, their arms crossed over bare chests, their feet well apart, their expressions defiant. Their eyes darted up to the one of their number who stood on the limb and clung to the rope. They knew just what they’d done by coming. They’d never expected to be warmly welcomed.
All eyes stayed on Mort. He shook off Buddy’s hands once more in disgust, but this time made his way back to the towel beside Neesa and dropped himself to the ground, where he propped on his side, his skin visibly twitching, to watch. Buddy followed. For several long moments, nobody moved.
Then slowly, Bo crouched down to punch back on Em’s tape player. And the music called out for the rope swing to keep time.
Jimbo and Em and L. J. all found their way to the tree, Jimbo and Em lip-synching the words as they waited in line and as they climbed.
The next hour became a blur of black and white bodies hurling themselves from the rope. Higher and higher the rope’s end pitched, deeper and deeper the depth of the dives, twists and flips and plunges, each one a dare and a taunt to the next boy in line. Someone spun up the volume on Em’s tape player, and the Hole pulsed with the heavy downbeat of a bass and the swing of the pendulum rope. Perhaps there were shouts and catcalls from the shore, but the blast of the music must’ve covered it all. Black and white bodies, long and lean, danced on the branch of the sweetgum where they waited their turn, and fell laughing, twisting, shouting from the arc of the rope swing.
By the time dusk was finding its way to the rim of the Hole, our fever had cooled, and we all began our departure.
Someone turned off the music. Somebody else yawned as they waded out of the water.
And then, the boys from off of our Ridge lifted themselves hand over hand up out of the Hole. And then they were gone.
On our way out of the Hole, I turned back for the T-shirt I’d left on the rock. Mort was there, his back to me, one hand hooked onto the tree, so that his biceps were hung like big hams for Neesa standing before him to see and admire—or he might have been hoping she’d bow down and worship. She did run a red fingernail over one bicep.
“Reckon you let one of them slip in and the whole herd wants feedin’,” he said, his words coming slow, like he’d had to fetch each one from a little grazing herd of vocabulary.
She answered by shifting her hips.
“Don’t nobody take a hint no more?” He snorted. “There’s guys, you know, older’n me, they been through this back when, and they’re—we’re tired of messing around.”
Seeing me, Neesa put a finger to Mort’s lips in a hush. And she smiled right at me, like she dared me to tell.
I almost did, almost told what I’d heard.
Whatever else Mort had said, this couldn’t be a good thing for any of us, not to mention Farsanna.
Farsanna.
Our peaceful, all-get-along world had little by little been crumbling to pieces, and what did she care? Her and her arrogant no-expression-at-all. She’d come and mangled our Pack, divided us all, nearly gotten us killed by the roadblock and by Emerson’s escape from it, chewed up whole days of our time, our keeping eyes out, our cutting down poor little dog nooses, our detouring for her, our being thrown out on our tails from a church with a mute for a preacher. Our not being quite so sold on each other, or on our town maybe, as we’d been before she came. And now what did she care? She seemed happy right now just to have Jimbo’s attention. His undivided attention. I decided there was no reason to tell what I’d heard.
_________
Emerson dropped off Farsanna first. She nodded to each of us in the truck bed, and through the driver’s-side window, “Thank you.”
Em stuck his head out the window this time. “Hey. Farsanna.”
She turned.
“You know what? You’re an awful good sport. And I—”
She nodded, just slightly, and began walking away.
I lifted my hand and thought about calling out something, but it’s likely she never saw me—and there was nothing from me to hear anyway.
Jimbo had launched his big feet over the tailgate and caught up with her before she reached her door. He touched her arm.
She drew back.
I couldn’t hear what they said—and, sure, I tried to listen.
But she kept her gaze to herself, and whatever please he was plying her with, she seemed not to feel.
Her screen door creaked open, and Jimbo might’ve followed her in if her father hadn’t suddenly filled the door frame. His hands were in his pockets, his face in hard creases. Farsanna slipped past her father.
Jimbo smiled in that way of his that gave him the air of bowing, and he thrust out his hand. Mr. Moulavi stared at the hand, then stared, still unblinking, at Jimbo.
Jimbo withdrew his hand and found a use for it raking his hair.
He stumped back to the truck, and L. J. offered him a hand to haul himself in. “I perceive he doesn’t fancy you,” L. J. offered.
“Don’t start,” I said, and added, “Laban Jehu” by way of warning.
Emerson started his engine, but idled for a moment. “What if something happens?”
“Look,” L. J. offered, “they’ve not enacted anything actually lethal since—” L. J. offered.
We all turned to him.
“Since, what, last night?” Em said. “That’s supposed to be a good sign?”
I opened my mouth to agree with Emerson, but was distracted by the movement I saw on the far side of the Moulavis’ house, just behind the scrub pine. Was someone watching us? Or watching the house?
“Hey … guys?” I piped up then, my eyes still focused on the woods behind the house. “Look, what if there’s even more more ugly about Mort than we thought?”
The boys waited for me to go on. It occurred to me that maybe I should have mentioned what I had just heard Mort say. But what was one more threat and slur from a bully like Mort? It wasn’t like this was really anything new, was it? I settled on something simple and vague: “Let’s just say the guy’s got to be stopped.”
But L. J. persisted. “These types like Mort are basically cowards. I’d make a significant wager they’re done with their pubescent pranks.”
Jimbo eyed L. J. suspiciously. “I’ll grant you one thing, L. J.,” he said bitterly, “cowards is what we’re dealing with here.”
_________
After we dropped L. J. off, Jimbo thumped on Emerson’s back window. “You wanna swing by my place?”
This might have struck me as odd, given that he always was the next to take home and wouldn’t have needed to ask Em to stop. But I’d known Jimbo forever, every bit as well as I knew my own brother. I’d known since that morning he wouldn’t be spending the night at his house. Not after I’d watched him watching his daddy up in front of that church. Emerson would’ve known the same thing.
“Better stop here.” Jimbo motioned to a driveway three doors down from the Baptist church parsonage. “Maybe swing around the block a couple of times while you wait.”
Jimbo’s bedroom, the former garage, sat against the kitchen and breakfast room. He’d left one window cracked open.
Emerson leaned out of the cab. “We’ll give you five.” And we drove away.
On our first circuit of the block, we saw Jimbo gripping the sash of the window, his legs in a deep plié and straining to rise, like an Olympic weightlifter. On our next circuit, Jimbo was still there. On our third circle, we stopped.
“Well, Turtle,” Em said.
I sighed and made a face through the cab w
indow at Big Dog, who licked my hand. My being skinny had always made me the logical choice when Frisbees or baseballs or kites needed to be retrieved from tight spaces. Emerson’s golden could, on occasion, sniff her way to them, but then, wide as she was, only whine.
The crack in the window was tight, even for me. And I might have been stuck there, teetering on the fulcrum of the sill and unable to wriggle my hips all the way over, if Jimbo hadn’t shoved on my feet.
“Ouch!”
“Sorry, Turtle. Had to be done.”
“What am I in here to get, anyway?” I whispered.
“Forget my toothbrush—it’s in the bathroom, too risky. I’ll just use yours.”
“No you won’t. You want clothes?”
“Just stuff for work. Three days’ worth maybe. And cash—it’s on the dresser. Underwear’s in the top drawer.”
In his top drawer were a dress shirt, wadded but sparkling white, three ties, two T-shirts, and a host of athletic socks. “No underwear here,” I whispered over my shoulder. “What am I looking for—trunks or briefs?”
“Now, Turtle, I’m hurt. You know the answer to that.”
It was true. I did. Though I’d forgotten I did. Until very recently, Jimbo had changed clothes freely with his best friend’s kid sister coming and going—though never, of course, with my mother at home. My mother believed in men, but in modesty, too.
My mother, were she in my shoes, wouldn’t have known as I did to look for Bo’s trunks.
“Try under the bed,” Jimbo whispered.
“Wouldn’t they be dirty?”
“Only a couple days’ worth. Or so.”
I turned to wrinkle my nose at him, then thrust a hand under the bed. Then thought the better of it and lowered my head to the ground to see what I’d be touching.
Two baseballs lived there, and a bat, a pair of flannel pajamas he couldn’t have worn, surely, for months—not in this heat— “Aha!” I snagged a pair.
I dropped them out the window to Jimbo.
I returned to his dresser, swept up the cash scattered there, and stuffed it deep in my pockets.
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