by Mary Knight
“Except for you,” I say, rolling my eyes. I kick an old rotted log and it crumbles. Jules gets all shy and wispy, like a feral kitten in from the cold.
“Well, that’s nice,” she says.
I think about telling her that JD said they weren’t serious, that they were just “having fun,” but then I see how she’s blushing again, and I don’t have the heart. Will I ever see the day when she blushes at the thought of me?
“Hey, Curley, would you hold my bag? I’ve got to pee.” She shoves her pack at me without waiting for an answer and tromps off into the woods behind a tree.
I look at the dream catcher, pretty ratty after all these years but still intact, and I wonder if she’d miss it. Well, I guess we’ll just have to see. Without a second thought, I unclip it from the buckle and stash it in the front pocket of my jacket. I squelch the guilt that’s rising in my throat like bile, telling myself that the dream catcher is mine anyway.
I made it.
I gave it.
And I can take it back.
Jules and I have been peeing in the woods since we were knee-high to grasshoppers, and there’s always been an unspoken rule that the other one never looks. My recent theft has emboldened me (last year, August), and I sneak a peek. I don’t see anything, not really. Just Jules zipping up her jeans as she comes from around the tree.
Now I’m blushing. I’m not sure if it’s what I saw or what I did that has me embarrassed, but thankfully, Jules doesn’t seem to notice.
“Thanks,” she says as she takes her bag back. “Let’s get home. I’m freezing.”
We walk by the sycamore tree where we sat and watched our first elk. Since JD came to Wonder Gap, Jules hasn’t wanted to climb up on Ol’ Charley anymore and hang out with me.
“Do you think we’ll ever see that bull elk again?” I ask, hoping to remind her of that time we dillydallied the morning away.
“Naw.” She looks up toward the mountain where the elk bellowed his mating call. The new green leaves of spring blur the line of sight we had when the branches were bare. She resumes walking, as if nothing happened up there that day when time stood still. “My guess is that old bull has gone back to where he came from,” she says.
If only a certain bad boy would do the same.
Kleptomaniac—noun
: one who exhibits an irresistible propensity to steal
“I’m sick and tired of seeing you sitting around sick and tired, so I’m putting you to work,” Papaw tells me as he nods toward his workbench.
When he hands me a piece of sandpaper and a box full of thin wooden sticks about an inch long, I groan. He uses the sticks to attach wheels to a toy wagon he makes for an Appalachian crafts store up in Berea. He pays me a nickel a stick, which, I don’t mind saying, isn’t enough. There’s got to be a hundred of them.
I’ve been moping around the house all weekend, ever since I became a thief. Mainly I’ve been holed up in my room, staring at the top drawer of my dresser where I hid Jules’s dream catcher, just in case she comes over. I pushed it into the way back, past a mess of baseball cards, old Bazooka gum wrappers, and about a dozen or so arrowheads Jules and I dug up from Ma’s garden when we were kids. I’m so beside myself with guilt, I haven’t even had the gumption to play old Gloria.
Papaw knows my brooding has something to do with Jules, but I refuse to tell him what. “There’s no stuck feeling so stubborn that a good metaphor won’t move,” he says, and I wonder what the heck he’s getting at.
“Is that my word, Papaw? Metaphor?”
I already know all about metaphors from this poet who came to visit us in grade school. Our teacher called him a writer in residence. We thought that meant he slept on a cot in the janitor’s storage room. I remember he helped us come up with over a dozen metaphors for the word love. My favorite was “Love is a scraggly old cat that will never leave you.” Jules thought of that.
“What’s gotten into you, Curley, my boy? We’re only on l.” Papaw peers at me across the workbench, as if he’s trying to read me, but I’m a closed book. Now, there’s a metaphor, I think, feeling spiteful.
Papaw hands me a rag and a rusty can of wood stain for when I’m finished with the sanding. “You can have metaphor next week, if you like.”
“Whatever.” He hates it when I say that. “What’s metaphor got to do with our l word, anyway?” I’m not in the mood for guessing.
“Sometimes when an object is a perfect metaphor or symbol for something, the word for it takes on that metaphor permanently, as part of its meaning. This week’s word is one of them.”
“You’re losing me, Papaw. Just tell me what it is, okay?” I’m slumped over the workbench, sanding this teeny-tiny piece of wood with a teeny-tiny piece of sandpaper, wishing that Papaw would forget all about his stupid words just this once.
“You’re holding the word in your hand, Curley. A form of it, anyway.”
I look down at the measly little stick I’m sanding and hold it up between my thumb and forefinger. “This?”
“Yup. It’s called a linchpin. It’s what holds the wheel on the wagon, right?”
“Uh … yeeaaah …”
“You know that thing I sometimes say when a plan falls apart? The wheels just fell off? Well, the name for ‘a pin that locks a wheel into place’ also means the key thing that holds something together, whether it’s a plan, a project, or a relationship. You pull the linchpin, and the whole thing falls apart.”
My mind flashes to Jules and JD, and I wonder what their linchpin is and what would happen if I pulled it. I think about telling Jules what JD said about not being serious, and in my mind’s eye, I see JD running down a hill after a runaway wheel while Jules leaps from a wagon into my arms. The picture makes me smile.
I don’t think this is what Papaw had in mind to get me out of my mood, but the metaphor is working nonetheless.
The next day in the lunch line, I ask Jules if I can stop by her house after school for some help on the narration I’m writing for the video.
“Sure, Curley. I’ve got something I want to tell you, anyway,” she says, and I could swear I see her face pink up a bit as she grabs a tray from the wire rack. Could she and JD be breaking up? Has she come to her senses and realized that I’m the one for her? Maybe I won’t have to pull that linchpin after all.
Jules and her ma live in a double-wide, one of the nicer ones in Wonder Gap. It’s got flower boxes under all the windows, which Mrs. C keeps loaded up with red geraniums during growing time, and a back porch where Jules and I mountain watch, sipping sweet tea.
I might as well tell you, there’s no Mr. C. I guess Jules’s daddy up and left right after she was born; her ma was just seventeen. With the same dark, curly hair as her daughter, Mrs. C looks more like she’s Jules’s older sister than her ma. Even their voices sound alike. When they’re chatting away in the car and I close my eyes, it’s impossible to tell them apart.
Mrs. C has made a good life for herself and Jules, that much is for sure, tending her garden, raising chickens, and making everything from scratch. In addition to selling homemade soaps and lotions, she keeps the books for businesses up in Fraleysburg, something she can do from home. “A girl needs her mama close by,” she says. “I’m blessed the good Lord has shown me the way.”
Mrs. C is sliding a sheet of lavender sugar cookies out of the oven when Jules and I come barreling through the back door into the kitchen. Mrs. C grows and dries her own lavender, so the whole house smells as fresh and hopeful as a spring day. She hands me a plate of cookies while Jules grabs two mugs of steaming hot cocoa. When I see that we’re heading for Jules’s room at the end of the hallway, my heart starts pounding against my chest like it has fists.
We’ve been hanging out in each other’s rooms since we were little, so it’s not as if I expect to make out with her or anything. Neither Papaw nor Mrs. C has ever ordered us to keep the door open or even checked up on us, except to tell one or the other it’s time to go home. �
��It’s like you’re siblings, only better,” Mrs. C said once. “You’re not fighting for a parent’s attention.”
She was right, of course. The only attention I ever really wanted was from Jules. Today, though, I guess I’m hoping for a different kind.
Jules sets her mug down on her bedside table and hands me mine.
“Okay, Curley,” she says as she plops herself down on the bed. “Show me what you’ve got.”
I know she means the project, right? But my ears hear it differently. My face flares hot, which only embarrasses me more, which just makes the blood rush into my cheeks. I sit on the edge of the bed, holding the mug in one hand and balancing the plate of cookies on my lap with the other.
“Sure,” I say. “In a minute … um … I need a cookie first, okay?”
“Sure.” She grabs one, too, and the plate wobbles a bit. I set my mug on it to hold it steady.
Usually, Jules would be the one jabbering on and on about stuff, but today, the only sound in the room is an occasional nibble or slurp. I’ve heard Jules mimic JD witnessing an uncomfortable situation like this at school, chanting, “Awkward … ,” but thankfully, she doesn’t say that.
“Curley, I’ve got something to tell you, and it can’t wait.” She’s winding and rewinding a clump of hair around her finger. “I still can’t believe this happened.” She looks upset, and I wonder what he did to her. If he hurt her, I’ll kill him. “I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure …”
Sure of what? My love? Her love? His lies?
“… that I lost it.”
Oh. That.
“Lost what?” I ask, hoping to look clueless.
“Lost your dream catcher, that’s what.” She’s acting like it’s all her fault. “You know, the one you made me that I’ve had all these years?”
Technically, I didn’t make it for her; she took it, but I figure this isn’t the time to bring that up. Besides, I’m the one who stole it back, and I’m not feeling real good about that right now. There are tears in her eyes.
“I feel so bad, Curley. I don’t know how I could have been so careless. It must have fallen off my book bag somehow, but the truth is, I don’t even know how many days it’s been gone.”
“Oh, Jules … that’s okay. It’s bound to turn up sooner or later, you’ll see.” I’m already plotting how to sneak it into her locker without her seeing me.
“But I’ve looked everywhere for it.”
I look around her room and notice for the first time clothes piled helter-skelter on the floor, her two orange beanbag chairs stacked in the middle of the room, her dresser pulled away from the wall.
“Golly, Jules, it does look like a cyclone blew through here big-time.” I set the empty cookie plate and mug on her desk, then come back and sit cross-legged on the bed, facing her. Maybe if I make light of it, she’ll calm down, but then I take one look at her face and see another storm brewing.
“You don’t understand!” Her face is all contorted, and I wonder if she’s found me out, but instead she says, “I’ve been such a terrible friend.” And then she drops her head into her hands and sobs.
“Jules?”
I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hate seeing her this way, knowing I’m the cause of it. I’m about to bust out with the truth, when she looks up at me. Her tears must be acting like prisms, because I swear I’ve never seen her eyes so bright.
“Jules?” I reach out and she falls into my arms, crying even harder. “You’re not a terrible friend,” I say as I pat her back gently. My fingers tangle in her hair.
“Am, too, Curley. Ever since JD got here, I’ve been ignoring you.” She talks into my shoulder, and I can feel the wetness of her tears soaking through my shirt.
“When I lost that dream catcher, it made me realize how I’ve taken you for granted, how you’ve always been there for me, but how lately, I haven’t been there for you. How can you even stand me?”
I’m grappling for an answer, when I realize it’s one of those questions girls ask that you’re supposed to ignore. One side of my face is smooshed up against her hair and it’s tickling my nose, but the way she feels in my arms … well, I’m thinking maybe being a kleptomaniac isn’t such a bad thing, when she pulls back out of my arms and is glaring at me again.
“I’m also really mad at you for not being nicer to JD. He’s lonely, you know, and you’ve been really childish. I mean, just because I have a boyfriend doesn’t mean you and I stop being friends, or that you stop being you. I know you, Curley. You’re kinder than that.”
One thing I both love and hate about Jules is how she can cut through the excrement and get right to the truth, which, I don’t mind saying, usually hurts. Thing is, I don’t know which hurts worse—her calling JD her boyfriend or calling me less than kind. I’m wishing for the guilty Jules over the honest one, when she reaches for my hand.
“Never mind all that. What I’m trying to say, Curley, is that I’ve been a terrible friend and I’m sorry. I don’t want to lose you. One thing we’ve always been able to count on is our honesty with each other. Nothing … and no one … is as important to me as that.”
The truth about the dream catcher is burning inside me. She squeezes my hand, and I think I’ll explode. Telling her about what JD said is no longer the point. It’s my truth that counts here. The truth about me.
I’m about to ’fess up, when she raises her pinky in the air, an invitation to interlock with mine. It’s the way we end all our fights.
“Friends?” she asks.
I hesitate. What if the truth is the linchpin that makes all of this fall apart? How can I risk that? How can I not? I sigh. Her eyebrows furrow, no doubt wondering if I’m having second thoughts. And then her dimple shows.
Call me a coward, but I just can’t disappoint her. Not now.
I raise my pinky and link it with hers.
“Friends,” I say.
When I get home, Papaw’s in the living room sitting in the dark. The shades are drawn, and he doesn’t even have a fire going in the woodstove. His dark green flannel shirt blends into his easy chair’s corduroy slipcover. The only thing that seems to add light to the room is his mane of silver hair.
I usually don’t bother him if he’s napping, but the heaviness in the room scares me. It reminds me of the wake the Donnelly sisters held for my ma and little Zeb when Papaw said he couldn’t do it.
“Papaw?”
He startles in his chair, as if from a dream. “Curley? You home already?”
“Yeah, Papaw. Are you okay?”
When he doesn’t answer right away, I remember that he was supposed to have a meeting with Mr. Tiverton today. How could I forget? Too busy feeling guilty over Jules’s dream catcher to remember that the fate of my life with Papaw is hanging by a thread, that’s how. Folks say they see red when they’re angry, but all the red I’m seeing is on account of shame.
“Papaw, what happened?” I let myself fall back onto the couch in front of him. I pull the silver chain of the brass lamp on my right and gaze into his face, trying to read what’s there. Even in the warmth of the light, his skin looks gray. His eyes are without their usual shine. I swallow hard. “Do we still have a deal?”
“Yeah, Curley. There’s a deal on the table, anyway.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
He leans forward, elbows on knees, staring down at the rag rug under his feet. He shakes his head and hair falls over his eyes.
“I’m having a hard time finding the stomach to accept it.”
Speaking of stomachs, mine does this sinking tumble, like what it did in the elevator of the Willis Tower last summer when we visited my Uncle Pete in Chicago. Papaw raises a hand, signaling me to wait with my questions, which is just as well, because all of my questions are in the pit of my gut.
“I told him I’d have to think about it, that I wanted to talk to you first. He said he’d give us a month before he moves on anything.”
“Moves on what, Papaw
?”
“Moves on our mountain, Curley.”
“Our what?” His words aren’t making sense until my mind flashes on the topless mountain on Ranger Whit’s elk tour. “He’s not …”
“I’m afraid he is.” Papaw looks up and latches on to my gaze. “We either agree to stand by, take our money, and say nothing. Or we say something and lose everything … including our mountain.”
“What kind of choice is that?”
“Exactly. I keep rackin’ my brain, searching for an answer, but no answer comes. It’s a conundrum, Curley … which is why we’re going to sit on it for a while. It’s time to take stock.”
I’m thinking it’s time to blow up somebody’s house. “But, Papaw. We can’t lose our mountain.” Tears are burning their way down my cheeks. “It’s not fair!”
“Fair has nothing to do with it.” Papaw reaches for the little bottle of heart pills by his chair and puts one under his tongue. “Technically, Curley, it’s not our mountain. The government owns most of it, and Tiverton holds the lease on it. The land is his to do with as he pleases.”
“But it is our mountain, Papaw. It’s the one we look at every day. We have a right to it, too.” I know Papaw isn’t the enemy here, but my mad has nowhere else to go. “We can’t stand by and watch it happen, Papaw.” I rub the wet off my cheeks with my sleeve, feeling the strength of a resolve I didn’t know was in me. “We just can’t.”
Linchpin—noun
1 : a pin used to prevent the wheel of a vehicle from sliding off the axletree
2 : that which holds a thing together and without which, a thing falls apart
I should be paying attention.
Carl Jenkins and one of his cronies are in the middle of their report on the extinction of the Carolina parakeet—something about their feathers being used in ladies’ hats, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If I’m not careful, Mr. A’s yardstick is going to land smack across the lab table in front of me. Not that I care. As a matter of fact, let it. I’ll just grab that stick and smack him right back with it, I’m so steamin’ mad.
