Rusty Summer (26 page)

“I don't! I wouldn't!”

“You are. You're telling her
you
are not pretty enough to measure up and she will think that she has to improve to measure up too, to be pretty. Seriously, Lee? That's what you want to teach our girl?”

“I am not! She'll find out anyway! It sucks! Besides, what could I even tell her?”

“That she's beautiful and deserves to be happy, regardless of how she looks, and that she should want others to be happy too, regardless of how they look. That we
are
stardust and she rocks! That we rock! We are so rare in the universe—or maybe the multi-verses—that we should celebrate! We are billions of years old! We are stellar! That's what you should tell her!
And
yourself.”

I'm silent for a moment. Finally.

Leo looks at me and she starts to cry.

I reach over and touch her foot over the coarse cotton hospital sheets. I squeeze her toe gently.

“Why do only
you
say this stuff?” she asks me wearily. “Why doesn't anybody else think so?”

“That's not true, lots of people say this stuff, they just don't get listened to like the glam folks. Like, don't get me wrong, Leo, you know I'm all for fixing Mom up and feeling cute and stuff, but honey, don't limit yourself like this!”

“Easy for you to say, Rusty. You're smart. People only like me 'cuz of how I look.”

“That's not true—not
just
because of your looks. They like you because you are sweet and funny. Here's the thing: I think girls who are pretty should treat it like a beautiful new coat. Everyone's all ‘how hot do you look!' for a sec, or even a few years, but at some point it's time to store it and then you have to see what's underneath, when the coat of beauty comes off.”

I shrug at her earnestly.

Leo looks at me, thinking. She looks out the window, frowning. She nods.

I love how she looks when she's considering stuff, even when she only weighs as much as a housecat. Omg, I'm so glad she's here. I pat her foot through the covers again.

We sit in growing comfort.

After a while she gazes at me. Gratefully.

“Okay,” she says, “you make me feel better.” Her giant eyes gleam.

Nothing has ever made me gladder. She takes a deep breath. So do I.

“Then let's change the world!” I say. “Who wants Jell-O?”

With relish I hand her the remote and watch her push the button for the nurse.

 

Around eight p.m. the nurses kick me out of Leonie's room. The staff has been so cool while she's been here. They tell me go get some real rest and she'll be up and at 'em tomorrow morning, and might even be ready to go home since now she's cooperating.

That means she ate—without a feeding tube.

I watched her. The decision was one thing, but she almost failed when she was actually confronted by food. It was almost impossible, in spite of her fierce will.

“I can't, Rye . . . the smell is terrible,” she said. But then she ate. Gagging at first, she did it. When she managed to swallow the first bite of lemon Jell-O I cried.

I wait for Leo to grow drowsy. When she falls asleep I leave.

 

At GramMer's house they are still outside sitting on the back porch.

“Ahh!” I hear as I come through the door. “These mosquitoes are the size of rat terriers!”

I hear GramMer laugh. I walk through the house to the porch, where I smell citronella before I see either of them.

And I smell something else. GramMer and Uncle Oscar look up as I step onto the porch. Uncle Frankie is out there too. They all smile at me. Big.

Beau comes out from the kitchen behind me with some popcorn. He's blazed too!

I stand with my mouth hanging open. Beau cackles. His ruddy eyes gleam with delight.

GramMer looks up with the joint in a little clip. She cracks up too when she sees my face.

“You're not gonna chuck a fit, are you, honey?” she asks in serene amusement.

Uncle Oscar has been holding in a toke and he bursts out laughing and choking.

All four of them look at me for a sec.

I look back. I hold out my hand.

“No,” I say. “Give it here.”

GramMer hesitates.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Give me that weed!”

She does. I can see from her face she isn't sure what I'm going to do with it but she hands it over placidly. I take it.

I take a toke.

My first hit.

I hand it off to Beau, who takes a toke too. He gives it to my grandma, who also takes a toke. Then Uncle Oscar, Uncle Frankie, then me again.

I'm done. I sit down on the porch with the rest of them.

I wait....

At first, nothing. Then:

I look up into the night sky and . . . gently feel myself rising up to meet the moon. Weightless, I float slowly over till I find the Man in the Moon. He winks and asks me, “What's up?”

“I am,” I whisper and then orbit over to the dark side for a spell. The Sea of Tranquility.

I hear GramMer saying something and I float back down and look over, filled with a wonder I've never known before. How beautiful she is! Her soul shines like a pearl, emanating a soft halo.

I smile and almost weep with love. My kindly GramMer . . . I'm crazy about her!

Omg, I'm high . . . I'm so hella high! I am wholly hella high. Whoa.

Beau starts to giggle. I eyeball him.

“Whazzup, Beau bro?” I squint. My eyes feel hot. I blink and try to focus on him.

“You are so faded!” he snuffles. He's Mr. Snuffleupagus. I snicker. That makes me Big Bird! Lololol! He points at me, swaying, slouched in the swing like he's melting. We laugh like hyenas.

“
You
are!” I point at him.
J'accuse!

“You
both
are!” points out Uncle Oscar.

“We all are!” hoots my grandma.

We roar. It's hilar!

I stretch comfortably. This is the best I've felt in a while! Even my scabby leg is fine!

We sit on the porch. The mosquitoes ARE the size of rat terriers. The Bomb lays on her side, unbothered by them. We swat haphazardly, but hey, no big.

I think about my mom and dad. I almost weep with love. Poor babies, they never had a chance. I coast back up to discuss the drama with the Man in the Moon. He says I can call him Bob.

Then, sometime later . . .

I think I could eat all the Cap'n Crunch in the world. I say something to that effect. We go inside. Beau and I watch cartoons . . .
Rocko's Modern Life
. . . so funny. GramMer and Oscar make a lot of noise making blackberry muffins. They're so hilarious; they giggle and whisper as they add secret ingredients. We can hear them and Uncle Frankie in the kitchen messing around, laughing at the hand mixer, like it's the funniest invention they have ever come across. They sound like we do when we are having a kitchen party—laughing so hard they're breathless and need to have a sit-down just to judder. We roll our eyes at their raucous kitchen hijinks, but gladly vote on the impromptu ingredients they are adding. They are apparently inventing the most exquisite, not to mention original, muffins in the entire space-time continuum . . . nom-nom-nom.

The aroma of the baking muffins is so maddeningly delicious. This much be the munchies!

We sit and roar at Rocko. I LOVE cartoons when they don't suck. At one point in the cartoon there's a part where everyone thinks Rocko's dead (with
X
s for his eyes), so he gets strapped to a car hood like a deer for some random reason. That makes us look at each other because we are reminded about a real deer that ended up tied to a car hood.

It harshes my buzz to remember.

“I'm sorry, dude,” I say for the millionth time when I catch Beau's eyes. I sigh. It feels really bad to think about it while high. “At least you knew what to do to put it out of its misery.”

“Yeah, another gift that just keeps on giving—from my dad, of course.”

“When he used to take you hunting?”

“Yeah . . . I only saw him do it once though.” Beau trails off as he watches Heffer and Spunky being divertingly subversive, talking with faux-dead Rocko about his opinions on the afterlife. I redirect his attention.

“He showed you how to slit a throat? Jesus, Beau! How much did that suck for you? I can't imagine my ol' animal lover Dr. Doolittle-britches in the murder bizness.”

“Right?”

“So what did you do? How did you get him to stop making you hunt with him?”

“That part wasn't hard. He never wanted to again, after the last time we went.”

“Dude! Why? Tell me!”

“You won't like it.”

“Beau, I am beginning to realize that I never like stories about your dad.”

“Okay,” Beau says, as in, “you've been warned.”

 

It was when they still lived in Kansas, Beau begins. He was twelve and his mom and dad were still in their tortuous little mosh pit of a marriage.

Beau had been going on deer hunts with his dad since he was ten. This season he found himself with his dad and some guy his dad worked with. They were going hunting and the coworker was using a bow and arrow, so it was more “real.” Beau couldn't keep his eyes off the bow. It looked huge and super shiny, all fiberglass and springy.

The friend of Beau's dad's, Duke, called himself a purist. He said he came by hunting from his heritage, so he had to do it, that it was bred into him. Beau listened sourly. Duke was very enthused, to say the least. He was covered in deer gear from his orange baseball-capped noggin to his green rubber toes, grinning in anticipation. When they had gotten into his truck Beau had climbed in on the passenger's side and looked up to say hi—and then jumped about ten feet because Duke's face was covered with black and green streaks. Beau wasn't expecting some multihued Burning Man–looking dude eyeballing him at three in the morning. This, of course, caused his dad and “The Duke” to snort and roar with scorn.

“Boy's a little jumpy, Gales. Didn't you feed him his Wheaties this morning?”

“Yeah, I don't know if there are enough Wheaties in the world,” Beau's dad, Jason, replied, griping and glaring at Beau. He was still pissed that Beau had chucked a fit the night before because he didn't want to go hunting. For starters he didn't want to get up at two thirty in the morning in November! Beau kept his eyes straight ahead but his heart sank and he heaved a deep sigh.

This was just great, if this was the way the day was going to unfold—with good ol' Beau being the butt of all the jokes. This time, at least, he thought his mom was right. Hunting was unnecessary.

“Well, get in here, kid. We are wasting precious night light,” Duke grumped, taking Jason's tone, as they scrambled up the ladder on the side of the oversized truck and into the cab.

They headed into the wilderness and drove for what seemed like hours. Beau started to fall back asleep as he listened to the guys trade hunting stories. At one point he was joggled awake when they turned off the paved road. He remembered the joke that comedians do: “If your address includes the phrase ‘turn off the paved road,' you might be a redneck,” or however it went. He tried to remember as he went jolting up and down, sailing over the ruts, but even so he started to fall back asleep.

And then he was sitting in a deer blind and it was pitch black and it was freezing. He was alone in this blind but he knew his dad and Duke were out there somewhere.

But even if you get a little weirded out by the noises and the dark, you're not supposed to make a sound. You are a hunter. The food of the tribe depends on
you
.

Shhhh
. . .
Be vewy, vewy quiet . . . For hours and hours.

That, btw, is also the answer to the question: “Dad, how long do we have to
do
this?”

 

Beau looks over at me and sighs in recollection of total boredom.

“Okay, now fast-forward a bunch of times because that's all you do mostly—sit in the dark, all cramped up and freezing, and wait to kill something that wanders by, that never does. At least until this hunt.”

I am already so not a fan, and this is making it worse.

“But how was it the worst horror show ever, or whatever you said?”

“I'm still getting to that part.”

 

Hunting was supposed to bond Beau and his dad in a grown-up, manly way. Beau found this theory fallacious; by this reasoning, he'd be bonding with stupid Duke too, since he was also there.

The father/son bonding never happened—certainly not because of those lonely, silent, bitterly uncomfortable hunting trips. Beau considered himself lucky if he was warm enough to drowse for a while. The best thing that could happen, as far as he was concerned, was when he scrunched down in the blind and the next thing he knew, he'd open his eyes and his feet were asleep, but at least it was light out and that meant that they could go home.

But that didn't happen this time.

Beau was hunkered down as the first light was just beginning, amusing himself with imagining all the names he would call Duke, if, after taking him prisoner, he could explain to him that he, Duke, was a terrible human being. He'd tell him that he should go live barefoot in a deer blind forever and challenge the deer barehanded, because he was a dick and a douche bag and a lime disease tick, and a pie-faced pinhead and a poser, and a very bad sport and a bully—