Eli the Good (17 page)

“Yeah, it’s creepy.”

“My mother had a terrible crush on John F. Kennedy,” she said, not taking her eyes off the fan. I was busy looking around at everybody.

“That
is
creepy.”

“She’s so messed up,” Edie said. “What’s creepy is that she had a crush on him even after he was dead. Her and Daddy got into a big fight about it one time.”

It seemed to me that Edie’s parents had had a fight about everything at some point, so this held little interest. “Let’s go down to the river,” I said, and before she could reply, I zigzagged across the courthouse lawn and crossed the street, then ran down the steep bank that led to the river. The shore was crowded with willows that gave a deep blue shade. Cicadas clicked in the branches of the trees, so loud they overtook the din of a thousand voices that drifted down from the street. I liked our riverbank at home much better, as this one didn’t seem real. The city workers maintained the grass along the river and had planted little clumps of impatiens around some of the trees. It didn’t seem right for something like a riverbank to be kept up; wild things should be free to remain wild. Lots of families had spread out quilts down here and were sitting on them, eating funnel cakes and fried chicken they had bought from the vendors along Main Street. Children were running everywhere, with sparklers sending glints of yellowish silver out behind them or playing catch and freeze-tag. I saw Paul and Matt, so I turned to go, almost running face-first into Edie, but then the boys hollered my name and I knew I’d have to speak to them.

They sauntered over to us, and I caught a glimpse of what they’d be like by the time we reached high school — blond, golden-tanned boys like that one who had said Charles Asher’s daddy was a dopehead because he was in the war. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I already hated them, even if I didn’t want to. I had once truly thought they were my friends. Now I couldn’t even imagine wanting to talk to them.

“Well, look, Eli’s hanging out with his girlfriend again,” Matt said, soliding his hands on his hips. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops.

“Go eat another turd, Matt,” Edie said, and brought up her fan to swipe a breeze against her face.

“And look,” Paul said, glancing down to my right hand, which I was trying to put behind my back. He capped his hand over his heart in mock joy. “They’ve got matching fans. That’s really sweet.”

“Shut up, ass-face,” Edie said.

The boys cracked up at this. They laughed and elbowed each other. “Well, I can see who wears the pants in this marriage,” Matt said. “She doesn’t let Eli say anything.”

“Shut up, man,” I said, at last able to make my mouth move. “You think you’re cool, but you’re not.”

“Is that the best insult you can come up with?” Matt said, and drew his fingertips up into his armpits with a hearty laugh. “That’s pathetic. You’d think a boy whose mother has the best boobs in the entire world would be cooler than that.”

“Don’t talk about Loretta that way,” Edie said, taking a step forward. “I’ll mash your mouth.”

“I’m shaking in my shoes,” Matt said. “Trembling.”

I wanted to hit Matt, but instead I turned on Edie. “I can take up for myself,” I said. “So shut up.”

When Edie realized I was talking to her, her face changed, flattened. I believe she might have grown up in that moment. Even her posture changed. She looked like a balloon that was beginning to deflate, but then she puffed up again, filled with the defiance and strength that would carry her through the rest of her life. “Do it, then, instead of being a damn coward,” she spat. “Don’t let them talk about your mother that way.”

“Well, she’s my mom, not yours.” I could feel Paul and Matt watching us. So I added: “Yours left.” As soon as I said this, I knew what I had done. I could feel the betrayal crackling in the air, like the ice of an entire river was breaking all at once. I knew what a horrible thing I had just said, but instead of backtracking, I kept going. I made it worse. “So stay out of my business. I could stand up for myself if you’d stop following me everywhere.” I was breathing hard, my face heating up, my fists clenched. She was right: I was a coward and I knew it, so I took it out on the best friend I ever had.

Her eyes touched mine for a time. I could feel the boys behind me, waiting to see what would happen. All the sounds of the crowd and the river and everything had fallen away.

“You’re no better than them,” Edie said at last. She turned and stomped away. The worst part is that I let her. I watched her for a moment, wanting to call out to her or run and catch up with her, but I didn’t. I turned back to the boys.

“It’s about time you got rid of her,” Matt said. Maybe he thought I had chosen him over her, that I was back to the nine-year-old he had known last summer who never thought about anything except playing Hot Wheels and swimming. But now I liked to read and I could hear the trees when they spoke and I was different from them. I was weird and glad of it. Nowadays I actually thought about things, which is that hardest thing to begin doing. The strangest thing was that I liked being different. But it had taken me betraying Edie to know that, so the realization wasn’t worth the price.

And maybe for some demented split second I had wanted those boys’ approval, had wanted them to ask me to play with them again. But now I hated them more than ever.

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t play with you two if you were the last buttholes on earth.”

“What’d you call me?” Matt said. Without even glancing that way, just by the curl of his voice, I could tell he was clenching his fists.

So before he had a chance to do it first, I let my fan flutter to the ground and brought my right hand up and smashed my knuckles against his mouth. His buck teeth split the skin on my hand, and blood popped out in three singular bubbles. When he gained his senses, he saw my hand, thought the blood was coming from his lip, and ran away crying to tell his mother. I stood there, looking Paul in the eye, waiting to see if I’d have to hit him, too. But he simply blinked at me a couple of times and took two steps back, then ran along behind Matt, calling for him to wait.

I looked down at my hand and wondered what I’d tell my father. The one thing he had always taught me was to try to avoid violence of any kind. But sometimes it is unavoidable. Like that moment in the jungle when he had to look right in that man’s eyes and kill him. Because if he hadn’t, my father would have been the dead one. Like this moment, when I had to let these boys know that I was done with their games, that I chose myself over them. But no, I knew that I could have just walked away. It would have been the harder thing to do, but I could have done it.

I trudged down to the river and put my hand in the water, watching it as if from very far away, as if I had floated above myself and was looking down, judging this little boy on the bank who was washing blood from his knuckles. The water was warm and immediately comforting to the smarts of pain that ran all the way to the tips of my fingers. I had the sudden urge to taste the river. I brought my hand around to cup up some of the water, but when I put it to my mouth, all I could taste was blood.

M
y family was situated on the sidewalk near the courthouse, laughing and talking as they sat in the wooden chairs they had carried down after they parked. I stood in the milling crowd and studied them before they had a chance to see me.

Nell was nowhere to be found, but Josie had already bought a bag of cotton candy and her lips were purple from eating it. Charles Asher had his arm stretched out across her shoulders, a crooked little smile playing out on his face. My parents were similarly hugged up, too, but my mother was paying more attention to Edie than to my father, who ran his thumb up and down my mother’s arm as he looked around, taking in all the people who had ventured out for the parade and fireworks. Edie was sitting on the curb, leaning back against my mother’s legs. Mom was bent over and talking to her, but Edie only sat there with her arms hugging herself, nodding. Her face was still square, and I knew that Edie hadn’t told what happened and was being questioned about where I was. My mother could tell something was wrong with Edie; I knew because she put her hand out and smoothed it over Edie’s head, five or six long strokes that caused Edie to close her eyes. No one could see her face but me. I couldn’t remember the last time my mother had touched me in such a way.

I made my way over to them.

My mother looked up with her eyebrows fretted. “You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago,” she said. “Don’t ever go off by yourself like that again. I told you and Edie to stay together.”

I apologized and she smiled halfheartedly, letting her anger go so as not to ruin the day.

“Did you bring my Uncle Sam hat?”

“No, I’m sorry, I forgot it in the truck,” Mom said.

I sat down on the curb next to Edie, and the concrete sidewalk scorched the backs of my legs. I slid my hands under my thighs and leaned into Edie, but she wouldn’t look at me. I wanted to apologize, but instead I just sat very close to her. I thought when our arms touched, my skin would shoot out little messages of penance, but it didn’t work. She scooted away. She could read my mind, anyway; she’d feel my grief. And before I could say anything else, the parade started.

At first there were just a bunch of police cars, all of them with their lights flashing blue. The cops wore big sunglasses and looked straight ahead, as if the interest of safety and protection depended on them not looking anyone in the eye. Then came the high-school marching band. The horn players stomped by first, holding their trumpets and saxophones and flutes out stiffly in front of them while they walked in beat to the tapping of the drumline. Then, right on cue, all the horns came up to their lips and they started playing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” while they bobbed their clarinets and cornets back and forth in front of them, and a jagged line of girls behind the band thrust their flags into the air and waved them with such force I could hear them flapping even over the music. Lots of people started bouncing around to the music, and everyone was happy and caught up in the parade, except for me and Edie. My mother was clapping her hands to the song, and Charles Asher let out a wolf whistle.

All the floats were done up in some patriotic way. The First National Bank of Refuge’s float was a giant Liberty Bell made of dyed Kleenex, with bank tellers dressed as Betsy Ross walking alongside, throwing suckers to the crowd. A scattering of Dum Dums skidded to the toes of my and Edie’s shoes, but neither of us had even bent forward to get the candy before the little kids on either side of us burst in and snatched them up. The college’s entry was a man dressed as Paul Revere, sitting on the back of a beautiful chestnut horse that stomped diagonally down the street and looked around wild-eyed every time the tuba sounded. The man, who was too fat and soft-faced to play Revere, shouted, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” in a very unconvincing way while he waved to the crowd. Everyone laughed as he passed. The chamber of commerce sponsored a float that was made to look like Washington’s crossing of the Delaware; the JC Penney employees were the wounded and nurses of a Revolutionary War hospital. There were scenes of the Declaration of Independence being signed, and the high-school debate team was dressed in period garb, sitting on the float in front of the principal, who was dressed like Lincoln and delivered only the first line of the Gettysburg Address over and over while he held on to one lapel. Josie burst out laughing at this one. There was a Boy Scout troop and the high-school ROTC, looking especially sinister and stoic. A string of fire trucks held the county’s assorted cheerleaders on its back. They all smiled down with Vaselined teeth, and suddenly the captain started clapping as if her life depended on it and began a cheer: “Firecracker, firecracker, boom boom boom. Refuge Redbirds go zoom zoom zoom.”

But then one of the fire trucks let out a deafening wail from its siren, and at first I only noticed that several people were laughing and covering their ears, looking around at each other. A baby wailed. I didn’t yet realize that behind me, my father had been so startled by the loud noise that he had jumped from his chair, sending it to fall back against the knees of people who stood too close at his back. He stood, hands suddenly out in front of him, his eyes wide, his head darting around like a frightened bird’s. My mother rose and put her hands on his arm carefully, the way some of the men walking alongside the horse had tried to steady it when the tuba boomed too loud.

I read her lips over the noise of a group of cloggers who were making their tap-heeled way up the street. “It’s all right,” she said. “Only a fire truck.” I could see him relaxing — it was a visible thing that started by a slump in his shoulders and continued down his arms and chest — and finally, he sat back down. Some teenage girls standing behind him snickered into their hands.

About this time, Nell came floating up the sidewalk, smoking a cigarette with one hand and eating a caramel apple with the other. Charles Asher took his arm off the chair he had been saving her, and she plopped down, digging the toe of her sandal into my leg to say hello. I wished I had my composition book so I could write down everything I wanted to remember. Lately I had been trying to use my mind to do this better, for just such occasions when I didn’t have my notebook handy.