Midsummer's Eve

by Kitty Margo

  “You look like you have something on your mind, Eve.”

  I never could keep a secret from Mom. I walked over and hugged her from behind and said, “I do, Mom. What happened to me when I was four.”

  Her hand stopped stirring in mid air and she turned to face me with a troubled countenance. “You remember, don’t you?”

  “A little bit.”

  She pushed the pans off the burners and taking my hand let me to the table and pulled out two chairs. Her eyes were worried and tears threatened to spill. “What do you remember?”

  “Just bits and pieces. I want to hear the whole story.”

  It looked like I was going to have to pull teeth to get it. She reached for my hands and pleaded, “Let’s don't bring all of this back out in the open, Eve. It’s been over forty-five years since it happened. Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “It’s time to euthanize the dogs, Mom.” I looked into her eyes and begged, “Please, just tell me.”

  Tears spilled down her cheeks and she came around to sit beside me. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “Yes, Mom. I do.”

  She took a deep, steadying breath and I feared she might change her mind, but she didn’t. “Mitch and Melissa (my older brother and sister) was already in school and I had to go to work to help make ends meet. Them days was hard times. It was a struggle just to keep you younguns fed. Anyway, I hired one of the neighborhood boys, Samuel, to watch you when your grandma had to work in the field. He was a good boy, from a good family. I just never would have thought...”

  “It’s okay, Mom. Just continue with the story.”

  “Well, you took to crying and carrying on something awful when I would leave you with him. One day at work I got to thinking about it and it just like to drove me crazy worrying about you. I knew I couldn’t work another lick, until I made sure you was safe. I didn’t have a car then, so I got a fixer at the mill to drop me off at the end of our driveway. The more I walked down that driveway the more worried I become, until I was running.”

  She paused, took a deep breath and dropped her face in her hands. “I heard you choking and gagging before I ever reached the house. I looked in the window and that nasty buzzard was forcing his… thing in your little mouth.”

  Tears dropped from her eyes onto one of her floral placemats as she continued, “I went around through the kitchen and grabbed my cast iron skillet and come up behind him and brung it down on his head over and over and over. He was bleeding from his nose, his ears, and his mouth. When he turned around I hit him in the face with the frying pan and then brought it up between his legs to his grind with every ounce of strength in me. I never heard such screaming in all my days. I thought I had killed him. Least ways I hoped I had.”

  “I picked you up and held you all day, all night and all the next day. I never left you with anyone again and I didn’t go back to work until you started school. I didn’t care how much we had to struggle or how many jobs your daddy had to work to make ends meet and put food on the table.”

  “Did you turn Samuel in to the police?” I desperately needed to know if my molester had at least paid for the injustice of ruining my life.

  “No. I knowed if I told your daddy he would kill Samuel and spend the rest of his life in prison. Samuel had already done his harm; I didn’t want to add to it by making you grow up without your daddy. Oh, Samuel suffered, you can believe that. He lost all of his front teeth and hearing in one ear and I strongly doubt he was ever able to father children. I know that ain’t nothing compared to what you suffered.”

  She wiped at the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I never would let myself dwell on what he did to you, cause I knowed I’d go crazy if I did. So, I never told a living soul. Back then we didn’t know the lasting harm that something like that could cause a child.”

  “What happened to Samuel?” I prayed that he wasn’t still in the area.

  “We never saw hide nor hair of him again. He had no way of knowing that I didn’t tell your daddy what he done to you, so he left town thinking your daddy was after him. His mama said he moved to California to live and work with an uncle who owned a tire recapping business out there.”

  “And probably to continue molesting children, if he was physically able.”

  “I prayed every night that he didn’t.” A faraway look came into her eyes and she held my hands as her tears continued unchecked. “You weren’t never the same after that day, Eve. You didn’t play any more. You always sat under a shade tree with a picture book and watched the other children play. You never would join in. And if a stranger come to the house you rode my shirttail until he left.”

  “Didn’t the others notice the change in me?”

  “Yes, they did. They always said you was different from other children and that you was more interested in books than playing. Your daddy was always bringing new books home for you. He would read it to you a couple of times and then you would climb in his lap at night and read it to him. Don’t you remember when you started school you was already reading? How proud we all was of you?”

  “No. I don’t remember my childhood.”

  “And you were a tattletale. If Mitch or Melissa got out of sight of the yard, you commenced to screaming bloody murder for me to go find them. You was always so worried that something was going to happen to them. You was already an old soul at four years old.”

  I stood up to leave. My appetite had deserted me. “Thank you for telling me, Mom.”

  “We all have our crosses to bear, Eve. Yours was just harder than most.”

  I hugged her and walked home.

  Over the next few days some memories slowly returned to me, as did hatred for the man who had abused me. Mom had said that he hadn’t been seen or heard from since that day long ago. Hopefully, he was dead. I had no choice but to let the past die with him.

  Thirteen

  On a sweltering July evening JoJo was working close enough to home that he was able to take the day off and go fishing with his grandpa. Around suppertime, Dad called from the river to say they had caught a mess of catfish and for Mom and me to come to the cabin on the river for a fish fry. I helped Mom load up Dad’s old river truck and she headed toward the river. It was such a beautiful day, and since recently deciding that I needed to jump back on the exercise bandwagon, I decided to ride my bicycle and pedaled down the dusty, river road.

  When we arrived at the river, JoJo had cut catfish into nuggets, rolled them in House Autry seasoning mix, and was dropping them into a frying pan filled with corn oil. He had already cooked French fries and hush puppies and had them in a covered bowl. Mom had brought a bowl of coleslaw and I had made a large jug of tea and grabbed a cheesecake out of the freezer.

  I don’t know why, but food always tastes so much better when it’s cooked outside, especially on the riverbank. For some reason, I couldn’t remember being as happy and content as I was at that moment eating fish with my mom, dad, and son on the riverbank. Although, I had told no one about my visit with Marilyn, several had noticed a surprising change in me. The simplest way to explain it, I guess, would be to say that I no longer sweated the small stuff. I had lost that nervous, wound up tight and threatening to explode at any given minute, energy that everyone associated with me. For the first time in my adult life, I wasn’t singing the some man done me wrong song. I still found it hard to believe that, after forty-five years, I had successfully put the past where it belonged. In the past.

  My dad and JoJo practically inhaled fish that tasted even more delicious than what you could order at our local Rocky River Springs Fish House. They were anxious to take the boat downriver to one of the deep holes where the flathead catfish lived and get in some night fishing. I had seen several fish reeled in from the river that when held in front of a 6 feet tall man would reach his chin.

  JoJo waved, then faced the front of the boat steering it through dangerous clusters of underwater rocks that he knew by heart. The roc
ks had been the cause of many failed fishing trips, attributed to busted propellers, by boaters less skilled at navigating the hidden dangers of Rocky River

  “Do you think JoJo will take that job in Charlotte and stop all that traveling?” Mom asked, as we cleared the picnic table and carried leftovers to the truck.

  “I don’t know. It’s his decision and I try not to sway him one way or the other, although I sure would love to have him this close to home every day. Although, I try not to get down on my knees and beg. It’s a crazy world out there, Mom. I worry about him doing all that traveling.”

  “Yes, it sure is a crazy world, Eve. And I’m afraid it’s going to get crazier. We got wars and rumors of wars all over the world. The Bible is fulfilling itself. Yes sir, the Bible is surely fulfilling itself. And anybody who has any doubt about it should just read Mark 13:8.”

  She quoted: “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom, against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.”

  “I agree, Mom. The bible does seem to spell it out and we’ve certainly had the earthquakes in diverse places in the last several years. And on the news yesterday they were comparing the drought we are experiencing now to the drought during the dust bowl.”

  “Yep, it’s getting downright scary, Eve. You can’t hardly turn on the television set no more without seeing some new disaster that’s befalling this old earth.” Then she gave me a big hug and hopped in the truck. “Do you want to put the bike in back of the truck and ride back with me?”

  I was still thinking on her prophetic words as I decided to ride my bike home and waved to Mom as she left in a cloud of dust.

  I sat in a lawn chair gazing out at the river that had been such an integral part of my life. Leaves swirled on the surface of the water and floated by on a lazy current. A woodpecker pecked noisily in a tree overhead. A trail of determined ants made their way across the cleared picnic table searching for crumbs. And fish that always got playful toward dusk, jumped out of the water falling back into the river with a loud plop.

  The sounds provoked new memories to stir inside my head. Pleasant memories. It was like the floodgates in my mind had suddenly opened up and for the first time, my childhood came rushing back to greet me. I remembered Christmases, Easters, Halloweens, Birthdays and Thanksgivings. I even remembered my Valentine’s Days spent passing out cards at school. I remembered them all.

  I recalled that almost every weekend during the summer my family had camped out on this very spot, along with my mom’s sister and her family. I remembered sliding down the muddy riverbank and landing in the cool water with my sister and cousins giggling beside me, along with the time Mom had lifted the cover off a platter of grilled hamburgers and found a blowfly inside. She had panicked in a major way.

  Not knowing any better, she was certain we would all die from maggot infestation since we had snacked on the burgers most of the day. She and my aunt had thrown every last child into my dad’s old river truck and rushed home at breakneck speed. Once there they had made us take a dose of Castor Oil, undoubtedly the nastiest substance on the planet, to clean out our systems.

  Just remembering the horrible taste of the laxative was enough to make me gag now. I had to laugh, remembering the sleepless night my sister and brother and I had spent trotting back and forth to the bathroom. It was good to have memories again, some of them anyway. At least now I know why I have such an aversion to Castor Oil.

  I could just make out the edge of Dad’s boat going around the bend in the river in the growing twilight. Crap! I had been so caught up in my onslaught of new memories that I hadn’t noticed the sun slipping behind the trees. It would soon be dark.

  I hopped on my bicycle not cherishing the thought of riding home alone, especially at night. But Mom was long gone, and since the men had taken a lantern I knew they wouldn’t be returning until much later. Better leave now while there was enough fading light to still see the road.

  The narrow dirt road from the river to the main road was surrounded on both sides by cornfields. In fact, the road twisted and turned in such a way that for most of the way out your were surrounded on all four sides by towering stalks of corn as far as the eye could see.

  The corn stalks rustled and crackled, their tasseled tops swaying in the gentle breeze. Wiping the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand I closed my eyes for a few minutes savoring the feeling of being alone in my cacoon of corn. I breathed deeply of the cooler evening air realizing that I had been wrapped up in my own misery for so long that I had ignored the peace and tranquility right in my own back yard.

  That was about to change. I intended to start communing with nature. Life was good again for the first time in a long, long time. Laughing out loud, I startled a covey of about a hundred guail and sent them into a noisy, scattered flight along with a grasshopper that landed on my knee and promptly spit a wad of tobacco juice on it.

  JoJo would be coming back home for two weeks at Thanksgiving, I had a new contract at the county offices, and crying myself to sleep at night was a thing of the past. Huh. I suppose time does heal all wounds. Well, time and a good hypnotist. Amazing, since a few short months ago I would have bet my last pecan log that the wound Adam had inflicted on me would fill my body with enough pus and canker to give my shattered heart gangrene.

  After twenty minutes of strenuous pedaling, I was beginning to feel the burn in my thighs. I had forgotten the return trip was mostly uphill. You can believe I was doing some heavy breathing and had just slowed down to catch my breath, when I heard a loud thrashing in the corn. It must be a raccoon or fox or other small creature that called the cornfields home, but man was he ever kicking up a fuss. The furry little critters were notorious for making a mad dash across the road -- I would swear they had turbo jets built into their hind legs-- causing you to slam on brakes to keep them from an early demise. Although in this case, with me on a bike, if we collided the odds were better that I would be the one picking my bruised bottom up off the ground after I took flight over the handlebars.

  I stopped the bike, squinting into the dying light and waiting for the animal to cross the road. It must be a fast little critter the way it was charging through the cornfield. It got closer and closer and I waited impatiently for it to emerge in front of me so I could be on my way. But it didn’t. “Come on would you! We’re losing daylight here!”

  The thrashing noise suddenly stopped and all was quiet. The animal must have spotted me and was too frightened to come out in the open. Good. I placed a foot on the pedal, when I heard what sounded like… a giggle. As a general rule, raccoon’s don’t… giggle. It had been my imagination for crying out loud. I pushed on the petal, but then curiosity got the best of me -- my nosiness has always been a curse—and I leaned slightly into the corn for a better look.

  Oh, my sweet Jesus! Why did I do that? Why didn’t I just leave while I had the chance? And what in the hell was that glaring at me through the corn? Those eyes certainly did not belong to the animal kingdom! A horrified scream froze in my chest and my heart pounded against my ribs like a jackhammer as I saw large emerald green… laughing eyes… staring back at me.

  They were human eyes, but not… quite… human eyes.

  The urge to leap from my bike and run screaming through the soaring rows of corn was strong. However there was no way I was leaving my bike and being stuck…at night… in the middle of a cornfield with whatever that…thing… was. I might be scared shitless, but I wasn’t stupid. It was time to follow my golden rule and run, or pedal, like hell. Unfortunately, before I could get the wheels in motion a chubby little black face peeked out from behind the corn stalks. I shut my eyes for a second praying furiously that when I opened them again he wouldn’t be there and we could both pretend this never happened.

  No such luck! He was still there and he had his full lips pursed as if he were puzzled to find a middle-aged woman on a bicycle i
n his cornfield. I took a slow steadying breath, tried to calm my rattled nerves and waited to see what the child would do. And he was such a beautiful child. He could have easily graced the cover of a parenting magazine. I couldn’t be afraid of him. Could I? He seemed perfectly normal. Well, bless his heart, he was filthy… but normal.

  Except for the eyes.

  Eyes that just looked… different.

  Too brilliant.

  Too green.

  Like he had colored contact lenses or had just climbed out from under a rock.

  Judging from the green eyes and his coffee with just a touch of cream skin tone, I assumed that one of his parents had been white. He didn’t speak, but just looked at me with two dirty little fingers tugging on his bottom lip as the sun dipped down below the cornfield. I shuddered at the thought of being trapped in the cornfield all night and pushed on the petal once again. The child grabbed a cornstalk and shook it vigorously to gain my attention, then he held out his other chubby, dimpled hand and playfully stuck one finger out, motioning for me to follow him.

  Bless his little heart! The child had bumped his head on a corncob if he thought I could ever, in this life or any other, find the courage to go hiking through the corn with him. Nope, you’ll just have to wait for the next hapless cyclist to wander by sweetheart. Me? Follow him? Me? Who couldn’t even work up the nerve to stroll through a haunted house at Halloween?

  As the child’s green gaze locked with mine, I was lost in a daze remembering Dad's story. Like the little boy in his story, this child was wearing nothing more than a saggy cloth diaper as well. But he wasn’t trembling and crying, possibly because dogs weren’t chasing him in freezing weather. He seemed to be in a rather playful, albeit a troubled mood, like he had heavy things weighing on his young mind...nope scratch that, he was undoubtedly way older than me.