Color the Sidewalk for Me (39 page)

I was silent. Perfect was having him beside me. Perfect was my mama saying we could date this year. Perfect was anything but being left behind.

“Well, what do you think?”

“I'm glad for you. I know it's what you want.”

“It's not what I'd choose, Celia. But it's what must be, under the circumstances.”

I buried my face in his neck. “You're excited, I can tell. You're just bein' quiet because it's been such an awful week for me. I know you, Danny. You're thinking about the ocean and beaches, thinking about sailing on one of those ships to other places, other people. I know you love me, but your thoughts aren't here. They've left already.”

“That ain't—that's not true. Sure, I think a going. And in a way I can hardly wait, because I'll be gittin' outta this town. You know what I think about? The first night away, when I can really sleep, not having to worry about Daddy beatin' Mama senseless. I think about her being free and happy for once. She's been so good to me. It's time I paid her back.”

I dug my fingers into his jacket. “I don't want you to go! I just lost Granddad; I can't lose you too. Daddy's working most of the time, and when he's home, he's not really there. Mama hates me. Kevy's really all I've got and he's only a kid; he's not you. I want you.”

“Celia,” he said, holding me tightly, “don't do this. Please.”

“I can't help it. I can't.” Clinging to him, I cried and cried. Cried for him, for Granddad, for a mama like his that I never had. I cried for his mama's fear and his stinking daddy touching my hair at Tull's, for Danny's kisses and my lonely nights spent feverishly drawing oceans and beaches. Even as I cried, I knew I was being selfish, that he deserved this lucky chance. I wished desperately for Granddad's money now. So willingly I would give it to Danny so he could buy a house nearby. “Why can't you work at the mill?” I accused, hating myself for asking it. I felt his shoulders slump.

“Celia.” His voice was quiet. “I can't stay here. Mama and I got to sneak off without Daddy knowin', to somewhere he can't find us. He'd kill her for sure if he knew she was planning on leaving, and turn a gun on me next. We wouldn't be safe living anywhere around here. You know that.” Yes, I did.

“So you got to keep it real quiet, okay? Nobody else knows we're goin' except Miss Jessie and Cousin Lee. He's gonna lend us money for the bus.”

We were unusually quiet when Mary Lee picked us up, her boyfriend, Mike, beside her. She took in my red eyes and Danny's stone face with a glance. “It's been a hard week for you, hasn't it?” she said, patting me on the shoulder.

If she only knew.

April rolled in with a hint of warmth, daffodils blooming. My seventeenth birthday came and went, uncelebrated. Mama was too wrapped up in her own grief; Daddy never remembered dates. Danny was ashamed that he had no money for a present. “Even if you did,” I told him, “you should save it for leaving.” Kevy spent three weeks of his allowance on a set of watercolors, which he presented me with great pride.

One by one my friends turned seventeen also. Mona was in Danny's class and would be eighteen in October but was distressed that nobody was coming to call. Barbara excitedly awaited her seventeenth birthday in June. Somehow she'd managed to meet an Albertsville boy her parents approved of. Evidently, that town wasn't total Sin City after all.

Bobby Delham worked up his courage to catch me at school one day. “Celia, got a minute?” He had grown to be good-looking—tall and quiet, his generous lips known for their rueful smile. He was dependable and gentle. Well-liked and respected. And I could never love him.

He licked his lips, chocolate brown eyes gazing at me fondly. “I know it's a bad time to visit your folks, so I don't want to do that unless I know you'd . . . What I'm tryin' to say is, now that you're seventeen, would you go out with me if they said it was all right?”

My face froze. I didn't want to hurt him, but the thought of Mama gladly accepting his request made me sick inside. “I'm sorry,” I replied quietly. “I can't.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

He flicked his eyes in frustration. “Celia, that's not goin' to happen; you know that. And meanwhile I'm here. I've always been here. I've liked you since eighth grade.”

I've loved you for years.
Danny's words floated through my head.

“I know, Bobby. And you're right—it's not fair. But I can't help what I feel.”

“You're not as smart as I thought you were, Celia.” His voice thickened with hurt. “Go on, then; I'll leave you alone. Someday you'll be sorry. And then you'll come to
me.”

Within a month he started dating Melissa. Sometimes I'd see him drive by in his daddy's car on the way to her house, slowing down for a glimpse of me.

The days were both quiet and frothing, uneventful and filled with emotion. The whole town missed Granddad. I couldn't go anywhere without hearing about him and his stories. It must have driven Mama crazy, those war tales popping up even after his death. No one could miss him as much as I did. Once my heart had been full. Now there was a hole in it. That was Granddad.

In my grief God seemed very far away. “Why did you take him so soon?” I'd rail at the heavens. “Before Mama could soften to him and when I need him so much? If this is your idea of a plan for us, I don't want any part of it!”

Danny and I stole away when we could, holding each other in a field or on Mary Lee's couch, hanging on to the time we had with quiet desperation. He was studying hard for senior finals and still working at home. “The farm,” he said bitterly one day, shrugging, “can burn to the ground for all I care. All that work. All my life. And what has it got me?” Sometimes his eyes would fill with that faraway look, and I'd know he was thinking about those ships, big as buildings. Jealousy and fear would well within me.
Danny, I know you have to go,
I'd cry inside,
but don't leave me with your heart.

I had a full-time job for the summer, baby-sitting the Harding kids, and I was glad for it. I didn't care about the money, but I did need something to keep me busy after Danny left.

After Danny left.

It became a finality in my thoughts, a day when time would stop. To think of a summer without him or walking alone through the school hallway next fall. Most of all to think of the look on Mama's face when she heard Danny had gone, fleeing into the night with his mama without a backward glance for me. How smug she would be, how vindictive. “I told you he'd break your heart,” I could hear her say. “I told you he'd leave.” And I'd have to endure it in silence for a whole year until I could run to him, taking my money—my fortune—which could have been hers.

Then one day in early May Danny didn't come to school. And after that things happened quickly, like a broken clock spinning its hands around and around.

Maybe he's just sick,
I told myself when he hadn't shown up after second period. But I knew it was something else. Danny's absence could only signal trouble.

I hung around our living room all evening, desperate for a chance to call his house but finding none. The following day he was absent again.
Dear God, please protect him,
I prayed. After school I told Kevy I had an errand to run and set off downtown to Miss Jessie's sewing shop. “What's wrong with Danny?” I whispered breathlessly, leading her aside. “He hasn't been at school for two days.”

Dread rimmed her eyes. “Maybe he's sick.”

“Danny's never sick.”

Absently she set the pincushion in her hand down on a worktable. “I don't dare go out there if something's wrong. And Lee's at the mill.”

“Phone them.”

She did but got no answer.

Fear built up inside me. “I'm goin' over there right now.”

“No, you're not!”

“Yes, I am, Miss Jessie; he could be in trouble. What if his daddy found out they're leavin'? What if his mama's hurt? What if he's hurt?” I tossed my books down and turned to run, not caring about her employees' stares.

“No, Celia!” She caught my arm. “You can't. If something's goin' on, it's too dangerous. You know that. You've seen it.”

I couldn't look at her. We'd never spoken of that summer day almost two years ago. “I don't care what that man does to me; I just want to see if Danny's all right.”

“Celia! Listen to me. What if nothing's wrong and you show up? You could spoil it all. You could tip off Anthony that Danny's plannin' something. Don't do it.”

“Then what do we do?”

“I'll call Lee at the mill. Maybe he can run over.”

When Lee finally came to the phone, he said he'd drive to the Canders' right away. I waited for what seemed an eternity, hands clenched. Every time the phone rang, I jumped. Finally Lee called from the Canders' house. He'd been through every room and the barn, he said, fearing at each turn what he might see. But no one was home and the truck was gone. There wasn't a thing we could do.

“It's probably nothing,” Miss Jessie consoled. “All this anxiety, and you'll find out they just went into Albertsville. Go home now. Don't worry.”

Again there was no chance to try calling Danny from home. Miss Jessie promised me Lee would stop by the Canders' again after work, and if anything had changed, he'd let me know. Mama had plenty of questions, wondering where I'd gone after school and eyeing me suspiciously when I said I'd visited Miss Jessie to talk about babysitting. By the time I'd done the supper dishes, I couldn't stand it anymore, pulling Daddy into my bedroom and begging him to let me have the car to check on Danny.

“Celia, I can't let you go to his house alone.”

“Then come with me, but I have to see if he's okay. Please. It's the last thing I'll ever ask you!”

Mama rounded the corner at the worst moment, carrying a folded stack of clothes. “Young lady,” she announced, glaring accusingly at Daddy, “you're not goin' anywhere.”

That night I couldn't sleep. Staring out my window at the streetlight, I begged God for Danny's protection. I just knew something terrible had happened. I
felt
it.

chapter 45

F
or a long time after that day, Bradleyville would rattle with macabre fascination over the event. But no one else really knew what had taken place. Danny couldn't tell me the details at school with all the eager ears around. Not until we could sneak out again would I finally hear the full story. When we met each other on a Saturday, once again courtesy of Mary Lee, we sat on the log across the dirt road where I'd cried into his jacket. Wearily he told me, his voice streaked with sadness.

“The first morning I didn't come to school,” Danny began, scuffing at the ground with his shoe, “we'd gotten a call from Lee's great uncle, needin' to talk about our arrival in Miami. Plus he needed information to fill out papers for us. Daddy was up early for some reason and he overheard Mama talking. He said he'd kill us both.

“So I stayed around the house, not leavin' Mama's side, letting him know that to get to her he'd have to go through me first, and he'd be right sorry for trying. I wasn't goin' to start anything, afraid a what I'd do to finish it and thinking he just wasn't worth ruining my life. But if he made one move, I was ready.

“Something strange settled on me that day and the next, Celia, while I waited, steppin' around Daddy, steppin' in front a Mama. I knew something was going to come of it all, 'cause I sure wasn't about to give up my plans a leaving, and Daddy wasn't about to let us go. Meantime Mama and I prayed a lot and did chores while Daddy drank, swallowin' that whiskey in between shooting his mouth off, cursing and yelling like a crazy fool. By the second day Mama and me was so tired. We hadn't gotten any sleep that night, sitting up behind my locked bedroom door with a chair pushed under the knob. He disappeared the next afternoon, probably sleeping it off in the field, and we left in the truck, catchin' a nap under some bushes way down the riverbank. After supper time had come and gone, we got hungry and slunk home. He still wasn't there. And neither was the shotgun he always kept in the back closet off the kitchen.”

Danny fell silent for a moment, his green eyes glinting in the dappled sunlight. “It's hard to explain, thinkin' back on it. But like I said, something strange happened to me. Staring at the empty closet corner where the gun always stood, I told myself this was it, and may God help me. We had the truck. I coulda taken Mama over to Cousin Lee's and fetched Bill Scutch. We coulda hid out for the night. But what then? Another day like that one, and another? Waitin' for my daddy to come busting through the door, drunk and steel-eyed mean, a loaded shotgun in his hands? It was a long minute, Celia, staring at that corner. I remembered so many things right then. I thought a my earliest memories, hearing Daddy holler at Mama. Her soft voice begging him not to wake me. I thought a fights at school, the way the kids looked and whispered. Gerald Henley's nose goin' crunch. You and Mr. Rose. And that time I saw you standing in the field, watching my daddy and me fight. I thought I'd die that day. And kissing you the first time, telling you I loved you. Looking for you at school every day, my heart dropping at the sight a you. I thought a the plans Mama and I had for going and what a price I was paying for it, leavin' you behind. And somehow all a that, my whole
life,
came down to staring at that empty corner. I prayed to God for help and wisdom. I had no idea then what I would do.”