Lay It on My Heart (28 page)

“Does it hurt?”

“What—this?” He nods again toward the sleeve. “Ain't nothing but a thing.”

“What happened?”

“What's it to you?”

I give him a careful shrug. High above, the end of the train disappears into the trees on top of the opposite cliff. Then the sound disappears, too.

“I just come out this way,” he says finally. “Like them pill babies but without the pills. Me, I'm just lucky.” He sighs and spits the cigarette from his mouth. “That stuff on the bus? Just messing with you. You don't have to do nothing. You're just a kid.”

“I'm thirteen.”

“Like I said.”

“I'll show you,” I say, and as I say it, I know that this is it. This is what I want. This feeling that's so wonderful and so wrong at the same time that if you're not married, you're supposed to do whatever you have to to make it go away. Like look at split-open women. And I can picture her right now, but the picture doesn't make anything go away at all. It just opens the door to a sadness that's already there anyway, right alongside the rest.

“All right, then, show me,” Cecil says, as if it's all the same to him. “But first light me another smoke.”

I slide a cigarette out from his pack and place it between his lips. This time I manage the lighter a little better. As I'm unzipping my sweatshirt, the branches above me move a little in the wind, and water from the leaves douses my head and shoulders. Cecil ducks to keep his cigarette from going out, and when he raises his head, I'm ready. I peel up my shirt, and when I get to my bra, I hook my fingers under the bottom and peel that up, too, because I don't want him to see how tight it is, how the frayed material won't even clean up white anymore. My breasts are still painfully swollen, heavy as gourds. There's a raw, red groove beneath them from the bra's elastic band.

Cecil takes a long look. “You got tits, all right.”

The breeze picks up, and this time when the water shatters down from the leaves it feels gentle on my hot skin. My nipples get tight.

“Hey-hey,” Cecil says.

It begins to rain again, lightly. I don't know if I should be watching him watch me, so I watch the river instead. Even this high I can see the rain pocking its surface. After a few seconds I carefully lower my bra and shirt.

“Anything of mine you want to see?” asks Cecil. He's closer in under the tree than I am, and it's catching most of the shower. I step toward him, and he nods at his tied right sleeve, then at his crotch. I'm standing near enough now that I can feel his breath, which starts warm, then evaporates into the rest of the cool, wet air. Then we're so close that neither of us can see anything but each other's eyes, and his are more and more golden, like they're lit from inside, the closer you get. For a moment I am full of him and he is full of me. Which is how I always imagined it might feel to be, for once, inhabited by God.

Then my hand is moving toward his jeans, and I'm thinking,
That's my hand, and this is me doing this
, and when I touch him all I can think again is how his jeans feel, like something I already know. Underneath them his penis feels solid. It might be pushing back against me. I'm moving my other hand up to his right shoulder, over the tied sleeve, when a car approaches and slows down.

Cecil lifts his head, listening. “I got to get up,” he says.

Car wheels crunch on the gravel across the road, next to where he lives, and I'm about to move my hands, help him up maybe, when he says, “Get your hands off me,” in a disgusted way that makes me feel suddenly, horribly alone.

“Wait,” I say. I keep both hands where they are.

He hits my arm with the claw, then opens it and tries to pinch me, but I just take my hand from his crotch and grab the claw's metal stem. I can't believe how easy it is. With one hand on his shoulder and the other on the claw, I'm holding him down, and I don't even realize it until he says, “Bitch.” Then I can feel the way he's straining to get up. He can't get leverage from his legs, though, and he's at the wrong angle to get any strength from his torso. I'm standing over him. The slightest pressure keeps him right where he is. “Let me up,” he says.

I just want him to look at me again, and he does, but it's hate now, all mixed in with the way we both know I'm keeping him down. I see it, whether I want to or not, and I keep on seeing it as I hold him there another long moment. When I let go, all the clean godless feeling is gone. My insides fill up with black vomit, and I clap my hands over my mouth.

As he struggles to get himself up from the fallen tree, he doesn't look at me, and I know better than to help. “I didn't mean to,” I whisper into my hands, and I wish it were true, but it's not. A car door slams, and Cecil starts his labored way up the hill without looking back.

T
HE NEXT DAY IS
Saturday, the day of the Main Event. The weather, cloudy but dry, cooperates. We stop to pick up Tracy, and Phoebe peppers her with questions the whole way into town.

“How long have you lived on the river road, Tracy? Where do you and your parents go to church, Tracy? What are your favorite subjects in school, Tracy? How many brothers and sisters do you have, Tracy?”

And Tracy, sitting behind me in the back seat of the Buick, answers them all like a movie star in the spotlight. She tells Phoebe about her mother and her granny and her older sister with a baby.

“Where do your sister and her husband live, Tracy?”

“She doesn't have a husband,” Tracy says.

“It's not an inquisition,” I say.

“I'm just trying to get to know your friend, Charmaine. Tracy, Charmaine may have told you that I am a substitute teacher. And as such, I have become fascinated by the way children choose playmates.”

“Children?” I say. “Playmates?”

“It's hard to say anything right around Charmaine,” says Phoebe. “I am forever using the wrong words.”

“My mother says, one single working woman to another, her hat's off to you,” says Tracy.

Phoebe frowns sideways at me. “Single?”

“I mean while your husband's away,” Tracy says. “I showed her where you-all lived, and she said if you-all need anything from the store, like snacks, or anything from the garden, you should ask her. We got more fall squash coming in than we know what to do with. My mother gets real sick of canning.”

“My mother used to can,” says Phoebe. “I'd almost forgotten. Maybe your mother can give me a refresher. One single working woman to another, as the case may be.”

As soon as Phoebe drops us off at church, Tracy lays a heavy hand on my back and keeps it there. “Are you and Cecil going together now, or what?” she says.

And just like that, his name heats up a secret core of shame and longing I never even knew existed before yesterday. I shut my eyes against the warmth. “No,” I say. “Nothing happened.”

“You turning a whole lotta red over nothing.”

“Nothing much, I mean.”

“Okay,” she says. “I hear you. Nothing much.” And when I open my eyes again, she winks at me.

We join about a hundred other kids on the back steps, all standing around waiting for Pastor Chick to come out. Some kids are Operation Outreach recruits from school or maybe from other churches. Mary-Kate and Karen are, predictably, huddled together near the church door. They eye Tracy and whisper to each other. Seth is tossing a NERF football around in the paved drive with a few other boys. I point him out as the one who's living in my house, and Tracy says, “Skinny.”

A low, loud black car turns into the lot and pulls slowly through the kids, who part on either side of it in wonder. Painted on its hood is an enormous silver bird. “That's a Trans Am,” Tracy says.

When the passenger door opens, none other than Kelly-Lynn steps out. She closes the car door without a word to the driver and stands there in her ironed jeans, searching the group until she finds me and makes a beeline.

“I like your car,” says Tracy when Kelly-Lynn reaches us.

“So does my mom. Just ask her, she'll tell you all about it.” Which is exactly the kind of talk Tracy enjoys. We all watch Kelly-Lynn's mom ease the car around the circular drive. When she turns back onto Main Street, she gives it the gas and makes the tires squeal. “Outta sight, outta mind,” Kelly-Lynn says, rolling her eyes. “The school informed her that I was smoking, and so last night she went through my book bag and found the flyer for this and decided a church thing would do me some good.” She looks at me pointedly. “Wonder how that happened?”

“Sorry,” I say, marveling again at the tenacity of Operation Outreach. Kelly-Lynn just shrugs.

The church door opens, and Pastor Chick joins the swarm of kids. The boys throw themselves at him, slapping his back, punching his arms. “You're a tough bunch,” he says, jabbing into the air, slapping a few backs of his own. Then he steps up on the curb and raises his voice. “Welcome, people,” he calls out, and everyone quiets down. “And a very warm welcome to our special guests. We're glad you're here. People, none of you were around in 1973, though maybe one or two of you were a twinkle in your parents' eyes. But lo those many years ago, the spirit of the Lord worked a revival miracle in this town. Some folks showed up to celebrate Jesus Christ, and some showed up, maybe like a few of yourselves, to see what all the fuss was about. Well, people, tonight we've got a little bit of everything. Some fuss and some fun. This scavenger hunt we've cooked up will have you roaming East Winder like a pack of foraging coyotes, then racing back to the water tower, where it all went down in the first place, for some righteous fellowship. And prizes, people. Did I say prizes? And people, I'm not even going to mention the food. Or the games. Or the crazy things that happen after you've been locked into the seminary gym for hours in the middle of the night with hours left to go.”

When he pauses for breath, everyone whoops.

“Listen to them,” Tracy says.

Kelly-Lynn checks her watch.

“And now,” says Pastor Chick, pointing to Conley, who drumrolls on the church door behind him, “I have here in my hand”—Pastor Chick brandishes a sheaf of papers—“the lists for our scavenger hunt.” More whooping and a few “coyotes” howl. “But first, folks, I'd like for you to separate into small groups. And you know what? Since it's getting dark a little earlier these days, let's make sure there's at least one godly young man in each group. We don't want to send our godly young ladies out onto the mean streets of East Winder alone.” Boys who have probably been ready to whoop again groan instead. They are totally outnumbered by godly young ladies and will most likely be separated. “In fact,” Pastor Chick says, “why don't you godly young ladies get yourselves into groups of three or four, and I'll assign you a godly young man to keep and protect.”

Tracy clamps one arm around me and the other one around Kelly-Lynn. “Hope he doesn't give us that farty guy who lives in your house,” she says, and right then I get a bad feeling.

“Your boyfriend?” says Kelly-Lynn, looking at me meaningfully.

“Not exactly,” I say. “Not at all, actually.”

“She's got a new boyfriend now,” says Tracy to Kelly-Lynn.

“I don't have any boyfriends,” I say.

Pastor Chick, passing nearby, points to us. “Before the evening is over, I want to meet your friends, Charmaine Peake.”

“Did we do something wrong?” Tracy says, and Pastor Chick chuckles and moves on. But soon he's back, papers in one hand, box of garbage bags in the other, Seth scowling behind him.

“Just look at this extraordinary group,” Pastor Chick says. “With my man Seth, we have a grand protector. And with my good lady Charmaine, we have someone, I'll wager, who knows the mean streets of East Winder like the back of her hand. Charmaine, how's your grandmother?”

“A little better,” I say hopefully, but a quick, sharp ache rises in my throat.

Pastor Chick extends a respectful hand first to Tracy and then to Kelly-Lynn.

“You two have fine instincts,” Pastor Chick says. “I can tell by the company you keep. Who's going to refuse a group of young people this special when they come knocking in the name of the Lord?” He hands Kelly-Lynn a sheet of paper with the list of items. He hands Tracy a garbage bag. He reminds us to stick to households with the porch light on and to take only one item from each. And not to do anything that might be unfair, like go to our own homes. He looks from Seth to me then back. “You know what I mean,” he says.

“You mean Charmaine's home,” Tracy says, and Seth looks at the ground.

We're supposed to make a note of who we get things from and if it's anything they might want back. “We don't want an angry East Winder mob scene,” says Pastor Chick. And we're all supposed to meet under the water tower, he tells us, before the seminary carillon chimes nine.

Seth is pretending to gaze out over the parking lot while really glancing sidelong at Kelly-Lynn. When he gets back around to her again, she's looking right at him.

“Take a picture,” I say. “It'll last longer.”

“I hear you enjoy photographs,” Kelly-Lynn says sweetly.

Tracy narrows her eyes, and when Kelly-Lynn whispers in her ear, Seth flushes pink from his collar to his hair.

“People,” yells Pastor Chick from the top step of the church. “Have you formulated a strategy? Because in ten seconds I'm setting you scavengers loose on this unsuspecting town. Are. You. Ready?”

The crowd of kids, each group studying its list, gives off an anemic “Yes.”

“Convince me,” says Pastor Chick.

“Yes,” everyone yells.

“Ten, nine, eight . . .” Pastor Chick counts.

“‘Light of the world' lightbulb?” reads Kelly-Lynn, running down the list with her finger. “What is that, just a regular lightbulb?”