Darnay Road (15 page)

“Hey,”
I think I say, well I try but nothing comes out.

“So
how come you’re with Easy? He your babysitter?” Jennifer says and they all
laugh.

I
can feel my chin rise some. I clear my throat to get it working again, though
that is more Abigail than me. But it does help to think of her cause she would
already be saying plenty like, ha-ha real funny or something.

“What’s
he doing with some child like you?” Jennifer says and she looks hateful now.
She takes that Salem cigarette from the other and takes a puff.

Easy
comes out then. He’s carrying two slushies. I would be so happy if these girls
weren’t looking at me. They are around him and he smiles kindly and keeps
working his way to me.

“You
babysitting?” one of the older girls says.

He
just keeps smiling and gets around them and hands me a slushie. It’s red. His
is blue.

“Thanks,”
I say cause I’m polite when I remember and he shouldn’t spend all his money
like this, but I’m kind of so glad he did.

He takes a big drink of
his. So I ignore those girls and take a drink of mine. It is so, so good,
better than I imagined. It’s a snowcone you can drink. That’s how I’ll describe
it to Abigail if I write soon.

I’m
careful to lick the corners of my mouth so I don’t get the moustache. Easy
takes another drink of his and smiles at me. “Brain freeze,” he says after he
swallows and I laugh because…well because he makes me so happy.

Darnay
Road 27

It’s
like a dream drinking that slushie with Easy then riding away on his handle
bars. How am I ever going to tell Abigail May about this? That mean Jennifer
and those girls, like hah-hah-hah, but I would never say it.

Granma
would have plenty to say though.

“I
can’t be gone long,” I tell him.

He
don’t answer, he just keeps pedaling. I think he just needs to go to the river.
I don’t know why other than it’s hot and I’d barely know him if he wasn’t
pretty much dripping sweat all the time.

So
we get there and he’s worked very hard to ride us and it gets rough enough I
hop off and I hope I don’t have the red moustache but that slushie was the best
thing in my life pretty much.

So
we are walking there and I remember what he said about Cap, that he’d tell me
here why Cap had to go away. I hope he hasn’t forgotten.

He
is walking his bike then he stashes it in the woods and we keep walking and
there’s a path pretty much. It runs along the bottom of a hill, and I say, “You
ever imagine there’s Indians in here, how frightening such a thing would be?”

He
looks back at me and smiles because he’s in front and he is pushing leaves and
branches aside and I’m not nearly as tall so I just go under most of what would
like to smack him in the face.

He
don’t answer and I feel pretty much a fool. That’s the kind of thing I always
said to Abigail, but he’s not Abigail, not nearly so, and I might need to not
say the first thing I think of.

“One
time,” he says out of the blue, “we made bows and arrows and hunted along
here,” he says, and it couldn’t have been so long ago. “I shot Beaucap and it
went in and stuck.”

I
stop walking cause my legs just decide.

He
looks back at me and he laughs some. “What?”

“It
went in?” I say.

“Quarter
inch,” he says, more serious. “It was just a stick.”

Then
he keeps moving so I follow.

We
get up the hill a little and there’s a cabin someone built a long time ago.
It’s known some good old times from the look of the fireplace, trash in there
and beer bottles. It’s such a great cabin, made out of real logs, just one
small room and two windows not broken out. The door is slabs of wood. It seems
like Abraham Lincoln got born in here or something.

I
wish we could live here—Easy and me. He could make a bow and arrow and shoot
food and catch fish in the river. But I wouldn’t want him to shoot anything
where I could see. But I could set up house here, like the bomb shelter only
with a table too maybe.

“What
are you looking like that for?” he says using the side of his foot like a broom
to move some trash into the fireplace.

“I don’t know,” I say.
“Living here would be fun.”

“At
night? Ain’t you afraid of the dark?”

“Oh
I’ve thought about that…Abigail May and I. We ain’t afraid of the dark. Maybe
something in the dark, but not the dark itself.”

He
looks at me for a minute. Then he just does this little laugh and finishes with
that trash.

Diarrhea
again. Tongue wagging. Lose lips. Granma is so right about me.

Well,
much as I never want to leave, I said her name again in my mind and I know time
is running out.

“We
better go,” I say.

He
doesn’t argue. He goes out first and I follow after. We go up a big hill then,
really work and climb. Below is the river. It’s deep here, I see that. I can
see the trestle in the distance. But the water barely makes it there now. It’s
rerouted itself here.

“We
got to climb all that way,” I say.

“We
don’t climb, we jump.”

He
grins when I look worried, then he takes my hand and we start climbing down.
And do you know once he took my hand he could have pulled me right off into
outer space and I wouldn’t have argued. Only Abigail May or Granma ever hold my
hand.

So
we go down, and it’s steep, and he helps me the whole way and it’s the nicest
feeling in the world.

We
get to the bottom near the water and he is taking off his shirt. “Keep your
shoes on,” he says. “There’s sharp things in there.”

Well
I’m keeping everything on. But he steps in and I am going right after.

There
is no stopping me it seems.

He
gets in pretty quick and turns and goes under and comes up and slicks a hand
through his hair and he spits that river water. “Stay in this same line as me,”
he says.

Well
I walk out there, my arms out like I’m walking a tightrope. But I get to where
it’s high on my legs and I can’t help but yelp when it gets to my waist. He laughs
and comes toward me. “You want me to hold you?” he says.

Well
I can’t say yes, but I don’t mean no.

So
he reaches me and he says to put my arms around his neck and I do. He has the
longest eyelashes in the entire world and they hold water. “Are you scared?” he
laughs.

“I
don’t…no!” I say.

“Well
you look scared.” He is not shy looking at me so close.

“I
get excited,” I say. Granma always says that. I’m excitable, but not so much as
Abigail May.

“Well
hold on,” he says, and he gets my arms off his neck and he turns and I am on
his back now. I think it’s okay. He’s so strong. I have my legs through his
arms and they’re like toothpicks Granma says—my legs, but Easy doesn’t care. We
are laughing and the sun is so bright and the water is so big and brown.

“You
know how to swim?” I say.

“Learned
in this river,” he says. But he’s not swimming, he’s walking along sloughing
through the weight of the water. It’s cold and wonderful.

We walk so far along
the bank, but it’s up to his neck and I never felt like this, except when I put
my head on Granma’s lap and she sings “The Man Who Got Away.” That always makes
me so happy when she sings Judy Garland, and she sang that song on a record
just a couple of months after I was born, same year and everything, so I feel like
me and that song are the same age.

I
don’t know when I put the side of my face against Easy’s shoulder, but I’m
looking at that long bank, and the grass and trees swaying. It’s right now.

“You
going to sleep?” he asks.

But
I don’t answer cause I’m not going to sleep. I might cry a little, and if I
stay quiet, he won’t know.

His
dad. And his mom. And Cap. “Are you sad?” I say.

“Sad?”
he repeats like he ain’t thought about it.

I
lift my head, “Ad-say?” I ask in Pig-Latin, mine and Abigail May’s favorite
language next to English.

“O-nay,”
he says. “R-ay ou-yay?”

I
laugh so much and I pinch his side and he dumps me and I mean to squeal but I
get a mouth full of water instead.

I
get up but it’s deep and I’m gasping and treading water and he goes under then,
under me and threads his head between my legs and I know what he’s going to do
cause I saw it in Gidget a million times, he stands and the water is streaming
and I am on his shoulders holding onto his head, curled over it. He’s holding
my legs so the only way off is if he throws me and I can’t stop laughing and
I’m trying not to squirm.

It’s
happening. To me.

Darnay
Road 28

Lying
on our backs on the bank of the river, hands on our stomachs and Easy wearing a
wreath of clover flowers and me wearing a long necklace of the same, and two
bracelets, we’re figuring out pictures in the clouds. I see them all the time,
and Easy does too. He’s just a big surprise mostly.

Then
I tell him about the Darnay spies and all the mysteries we’ve solved, leaving
any mention of the Hardy Boys—him and Cap--out of it. Well they’ve been my
biggest mystery ever.

“One
mystery I don’t know is—where’s Cap?”

“He’s
with my mom’s cousin. He had to go after….”

I
swallow, but he doesn’t look at me, he keeps looking up.

“Was
he so sad?” I say.

He
doesn’t answer, eyes on those clouds. He finally says, “Yeah.”

“Is
he ever coming back?”

He
doesn’t answer for long time again, but I’ve already learned he does that.

“Maybe.”

I
stare at him. His face is so pleasing and interesting. I have to remember not
to touch him, though I never would I don’t think. But I wonder what his nose
would feel like if I touched that bump on its bridge, so I touch my own and
there’s no bump like his.

All
I know is Easy is the best boy I know and you can take that to the bank—or hide
it in the garden shed in a mason jar like I know Granma does.

I
am telling him about the Nancy Drew book
The Mystery of the Old Clock.
He likes the whole idea, and that’s when he says something so strange I can’t
believe my ears even though he was held back for it but Easy does not like to
read.

I
know some people do not like it so much. But Easy says he only likes comics.

I practically sit up
and say, “I have stacks of comics.”

“You
do?” this gets his interest.

“Archie,’
and ‘Casper,’ and ‘Richie Rich,’ some ‘Little Lulu.’ Oh man I love comics.”

“What
about ‘Horus,’ or ‘Tales from Beyond,’ or ‘Superman?’” he says.

“Ricky
has those,” I say, slightly disappointed he isn’t excited about Betty and
Veronica’s struggles to win Archie. I have to be Betty and Abigail May picks
Veronica, of course. It drives me crazy cause Betty never wins. But what I
really think, Veronica and Betty are too good for Archie. Archie is a fool and
he treats them poorly, but they don’t seem to mind.

I
start to lie back down and it hits me and I shoot right up again. “What time is
it?”

Easy
shoots up too. We’re on our squishy feet really quick. I just start running
back in the direction we came from. My granma….

“What
time is it?” I ask again because I am not wearing my watch and good thing with
going in the river. I almost wore it in the bath once and saw it just in time.
But I’m running along that path, stumbling a little. Easy is behind me.

“Just
tell her we were mowing someone’s lawn,” he says kind of loudly as I am running
and he’s just walking fast.

If
I knew the time I would know what story she was on, be it magazine, book, radio
or TV. But it’s close to suppertime is my guess and that gets her looking at
the clock and thinking about me. She will not believe it if I don’t show for
supper. She told me not to be gone too long, didn’t she? And not showing for
supper is like missing Mass on Easter.

If
Abigail May was still here she wouldn’t worry so much and Aunt May would be
sure and call her, but she might not know Easy’s last name even, and his mother
surely doesn’t know where Easy is, but he’s a boy and she’s sick so she won’t
even worry probably.

“Will
she be mad?” he asks me when I reach his bicycle. I don’t even wait, I take off
running because I can’t stand still now that I’ve let the worry bug get me.

“Georgia,”
he calls after, and he doesn’t say my name and I know it’s very nice to hear
it, but I know more I’m in so, so, so much trouble.

I
get on his handlebars and he gets us going, and he’s working so hard to get us
over the ground. “I can run,” I say so he doesn’t have to work like this, but
he says, “No.”

So
we finally get out to the road and it is Darnay but it doesn’t even look
exactly like itself yet we’re so far down. And a car is coming toward us and I
know it right off, but I hope it’s not what I think. “Let me off,” I say. “Let
me off.”

He
comes to a perilous stop and I hop off and there we are, broken flower chains
and stinky damp clothes, and it is Aunt May driving the Buick and Granma
sitting beside her with a terrible expression on her face. I see her lips move
in my name. “Georgia Christine,” she says, but she doesn’t believe it I don’t
think. And Aunt May just looks sorry and she’s shaking her head.

“Ma’am,”
Easy says pulling his bike a little closer to Aunt May’s window.

“You
go on home, young man,” Granma says cause she will never let someone do my
talking for me.

“You should know
better,” Aunt May says to Easy. “We will be talking to your mother. Shame on
you.”

Easy
looks at me. “My mother….”

“Just
go on home like they said,” I tell Easy. I want to say more, how I’ll do
everything in my small powers to fix it, but my Granma never gets in Aunt May’s
car unless it’s for church, and she’s in there now and this shows me how
worried she is.

I
pull off the broken flowers and crank that big door and get in that big
backseat and then I slam that door and Granma speaks in a tone I have never
heard except that time she said those things on the phone to my dad when he
didn’t come for my birthday.

I
wait to see Easy pass the car and when he doesn’t I turn and Aunt May is going
slow, and Easy is pedaling hard to keep up. “Go home Easy,” I whisper.

“Are
you listening to me young lady?” Granma is saying, and I do turn around, but I
can hardly hear.

Aunt
May sees him, looks in that mirror at me, and keeps her lips pressed tight. But
Granma just carries on.

“I’m
sorry,” I blurt.

Granma
starts again and I say, “I’m sorry.”

But
she hardly listens she just goes on, and I turn around and he’s still coming.