The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (4 page)

E
very summer morning I woke up early, pulled on my swimsuit, and ran down the piney path to the river. Swimming in the La Luna River, watching that sunrise, was my way of praying.

And I loved climbing trees. I loved discovering branches that would hold me up while I looked out on the ground. I would put my head close to the bark and I could hear the tree breathing, and I would kiss the trees.

I imagined that the trees and I were dancing. After all, M’Dear taught me that everything danced. In my closet up on a shelf where I kept my special things—feathers, marbles that my brothers didn’t like because they were chipped—I kept branches from trees I loved. I was known for being a scrambler up trees, so I could reach the tiny ones.

“It’s your long legs,” my brothers would say. “You have the longest legs on a girl that we’ve ever seen.”

One particular morning, when I was nine years old, I had a little extra time after my swim and it just felt too early to be climbing trees, so I walked around town. I liked seeing La Luna before it woke up. It made me feel like my town was a baby sleeping, all sweet and good.

I loved to visit the La Luna Garden Café where Leon was up at four every morning making the French bread to go with the gumbo or red beans and rice or cold shrimp dumped out on newspaper. Some people like Saltines, but my family and me like French bread on the side to balance out the zing of the cocktail sauce. Leon was one of my buddies. He was going to join the Marines soon, something that made me sad. Why do people have to go off to war, leaving us back home never knowing if they’ll come back? But he promised he’d be back. He didn’t talk much, but whenever I showed up, he smiled and gave me big hunks of fresh bread on a paper plate, with fresh butter on the side. I would put the butter on and quickly eat the fresh bread, letting the butter drip down the front of my swimming suit, knowing I could quickly rinse off under the outdoor shower when I got home.

We didn’t have a Greyhound bus station in La Luna, so the bus just stopped behind the Garden Café. There I was, all dripping with butter, when the bus pulled up that morning. Nobody from around here was getting on, so I watched to see if anybody got off. Almost always it would be someone I knew: Mrs. Matthews coming back from Shreveport, where her son Michael had a job. Or Janie Gerard coming back from seeing her boyfriend, who was stationed at Fort Polk.

The Greyhound bus door swung open, and I wondered who might be coming home from a trip this time. Eating my French bread, concentrating on each bite—oh, it tasted so good that I called out, “I’m telling you, Leon, you have outdone yourself. This bread is perfect!”

And that’s when I saw the stranger! He was a kid about my age. I kept waiting for some adults to get off with him, but he was the only person to get off the bus. All by himself. With blond hair sticking up all over the place, scruffy-looking all over. I watched the bus pull away, the sound of that big engine and the smell of those fumes. Who could be out here this early in the morning?

He caught my eye and then he turned away. Leon was back inside the shop, so it was only this scruffy-looking boy and me. He carried a suitcase in his arms. The handle on the suitcase was broken, and something about him seemed broken too. His eyes darted around like he was trying to get his bearings, but didn’t want me to see him doing it. But I did see. There I was, standing there barefoot, with a towel wrapped around my waist.

I wiped some butter off my chin and walked over to the stranger.

“Hey,” I said. “What are you looking for?”

“None of your business,” he said, and then started walking away from me in the direction of the River School.

“Where’re you headed?”

“
None
of your business.”

“I’m Calla Lily Ponder,” I said, stepping in front of him. “You want some French bread?”

“I could step on your toe if I wanted to.”

“Why do you want to do that?” I asked.

Finally he looked at me. “Just leave me alone.”

“Okay, I can take a hint,” I said, and started in the direction of home.

When I was about a block away, the stranger yelled, “Where’s the Tuckers’ house?”

“I’m headed in that direction. You can just follow me.”

“No,” he said. “I was just curious.”

Sheesh.
“Okay, it’s down this way,” I said, and kept on walking. I wasn’t going to stand around while someone treated me like I had a bad case of cooties. But I couldn’t help turning around just once to look at him.

Later at lunch, M’Dear told us that the Tuckers’ grandson had come to live with them. “I want y’all to be very nice and welcome him to La Luna,” she said.

We all answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

We had to wait an hour after lunch before we could go back down to the river and swim.

That afternoon, Sonny Boy, Will, Renée, Sukey, me, and our friend Eddie were laying on the beach. I can remember the swimming suit I had that year. It was a racer-back, showing almost nothing, and my legs stuck out so long and skinny. Renée wore a one-piece with a strap around the neck and strawberries on the front, with a little ruffle down the side, all modest. Her hair was almost white-blond in the summers. And Sukey wore a little yellow two-piece. Sukey was a tiny thing.

Eddie already had a little crush on Renée; I knew because he had given her a blue box with watermelon candy in it. And she liked him back. Sukey and I could tell by how her white, white complexion blushed. There was no doubt. But she had to turn it down, she said. “Calla, I just couldn’t take that watermelon candy. Just one bite of it, and it would have made Eddie feel like…well, like I liked him special.”

“Well, don’t you?” I asked, and Sukey said, “Yeah, don’t you?”

“Well,” she said, “yes, I do like him. But I can’t let him know it.”

I couldn’t even
picture
liking a boy, let alone liking him special, watermelon candy or not.

We were all a gang, a La Luna, Louisiana, gang. Oh, how we played! How we practiced dives! We did cannonballs, over and over and over again, and spitfires, with one leg held up so that the water kind of swished out to the side. Cannonballs were considered a boy’s sport and Sonny Boy was the best. But I decided that I could join the competition myself, and so I did. None of the boys really knew how to swim. They’d flail those arms up and over, splashing and making a mess. They could kick hard, I’ll give them that much. But the whole time I could keep up with them because I knew how to breathe, and to match it to my strokes as I cut my hands into the water. Papa’s the one who taught us how to swim. And because I’m the one who stuck with it, he taught me how to turn my head from side to side when I breathed and to kick hard, using my leg muscles and keeping my ankles low as I kicked, but hardly splashing at all. Papa had to learn to swim real good when he was in the war. He was lucky. M’Dear says the Moon Lady was with him to get him home safe.

I was known for being able to hold my breath the longest underwater. Just as Sonny Boy was the king of cannonballs, I was the queen of holding my breath. And I was the queen of cannonballs, even if no one would admit it. Papa always said, “If you’re good at something, don’t be afraid to say it.” “I’m the cannonball queen!” I’d call out. But they would only grant me queen of breath-holding, and I guess that was good enough.

I’d dive in and swim till I was out a ways. Then I’d take a deep breath. Just as I began to exhale, I would put my head down under so that no one could see me. I’d let my breath out in little bursts, very, very slowly. And at the same time I’d be kicking as hard as I could, so that by the time anyone would look for me, I’d already be a far ways off, underneath. No one could see me. And when I’d finally raise my head, everyone would clap and cheer. “Oh, God, Calla! You had us really stumped that time!” everybody would say.

Besides doing cannonballs off the pier, there were also three rope swings on trees that you could climb to swing out over the river. First, there was the little kid’s rope swing. Then there was the intermediate rope swing, which I was just starting to use. And then there was the high, high rope swing farther down the riverbank that only the adult men used. Papa was always warning that he better not catch any of us down there, because there were snakes down around the overgrown bushes and logs. That was all I needed to hear to stay clear! We called that area “The Scary Swamp.”

So all of us were just sitting around on our beach, a wonderful little beach that the La Luna River gave us. Renée, Sukey, and I laid out our towels and rubbed Coppertone on each other. Eddie had brought his father’s cooler, the one he used on his fishing trips, and that’s where we stored our bottles of Coke and 7-Up and ham and cheese sandwiches. And there we spent our afternoons, just playing and swimming—especially me, because I wanted to become a very strong swimmer. I swam all over every single area that we were allowed to go.

While I was straightening my towel, I looked up and saw that boy who got off the bus. “Hey!” I said. “Hey, I’m the one that tried to be nice to you this morning.”

He just ignored me, standing there in front of us. I said, “I’d introduce you, but I don’t really know your name.”

“Well, you don’t really have to know my name,” he said. “I’m here to swim.” Boy, talk about snooty!

“Do your grandparents know you’re down here at the river?” I asked him.

The new boy answered, “Nobody needs to know what I do. I do what I want.”

I decided to be polite anyway. That is just the way I was raised. “Let me introduce you to my brothers and our friends.”

“I don’t want to meet anybody related to you or who you know.”

Well, I was ready to hit him with a fishing pole when Sonny Boy walked up and put out his hand and didn’t drop it. Just looked him in the eye until the new boy couldn’t help but shake hands. He said, “My name is Tucker LeBlanc.” And I thought,
Way to go, Sonny Boy
. And then Sonny Boy began to explain where you could swim and where you couldn’t. He said, “All those are good places. But don’t go over there. Don’t do it. Every single one of our fathers—”

“And our mothers too,” I chimed in.

“Anyway, don’t swim over there in the La Luna Swamp,” he said, and pointed to a part of the river near us where some logs had fallen and stopped up the flow a little bit. “That’s what we call it. They got snakes down there and ever since we were little, everyone has warned us not to swim down there. And not a one of us has. Right?”

And everybody went, “Right.” And Eddie nodded his head. You could tell that Eddie wished he was the one talking to this new boy. And already Sukey was trying out her flirting skills.

So this new boy got in the water and swam. I could tell he had a strong flutter kick, but he didn’t know how to dig his arms into the water or turn his head to breathe either. He was not a strong swimmer. He wasn’t even what I’d call a
real
swimmer. Just like my brothers, he lifted his neck straight up out of the water like a turtle and gasped for air. He stopped and was just floating for a minute. Then he said, “Is that y’all’s rope swing way down there?”

And Sonny Boy said, “Yeah.”

“Y’all jump off that?” that boy Tucker said.

“That’s for adults only—the old Danger Swing. And Papa says it needs a new rope this year. It can land you right in a snake pit if you’re not careful; you can fall where the snakes are,” Sonny Boy said.

“You’re just scared to do it,” Tucker LeBlanc said.

“I am not scared to do it,” Sonny told him.

“Well, I’m gonna go do it. And I dare you to—unless you’re chicken.”

Suddenly everything was silent as we all turned and stared at Sonny Boy.

After a long minute, Sonny Boy said, “All right,
new boy
, I’ll do it. I’ll go first, to show you how, so you don’t get yourself killed.”

Just as he was getting up, Sonny Boy leaned over and whispered to Will and me, “Keep your eyes peeled out for M’Dear, will you?”

“Sonny Boy,” I said, “are you crazy?
You’re
the one who’s gonna get killed if M’Dear sees you out there.”

“Just give me the whistle if you see any sign of her, okay?”

“No, I’m not giving y’all any whistle,” I said. “I’m coming with y’all.”

So we all started our adventure.

Eddie started talking. “Many times grown men have been bit by snakes there. Oh yeah. Many times it has happened.”

You could see that Eddie was trying to scare this new boy Tucker.

Next thing I knew, Sonny Boy was leading us through the bushes over to the rope swing, and Eddie kept on talking.

“Once, during World War II, a soldier from Fort Polk was messing around down there and died from
multiple
snake bites. They couldn’t even recover the body. All they ever found was one boot and his helmet. My father was part of the search party. I heard the story myself.”

“You’re making that up,” Tucker said, trying to laugh it off. But you could tell Eddie’s story was getting to him a little.

Then that Tucker said, “Somebody told me something like that, I wouldn’t believe him for jack-shit.”

Well, all of us were kind of taken aback when he said “jack-shit.” Not that we are goody-goody, but we just don’t go around saying “jack-shit.” We know the expression, but it has to be saved for special occasions.

Sonny Boy tried to strut down the trail, but all the vines and thorns that had grown in over the trail kept slowing him down. I looked back once or twice to see if anybody was watching us, while the rest of the gang trailed behind us. The last part of the trail you had to hang back a little, because it’s a little steep to climb up on an old root, and then you have to reach up and grab the rope.

There it was. That big old thick brown rope with four knots tied in it so you could climb up. The riverbank was about six feet high there. Tucker leaned over and looked at the tangle of roots and grasses at the bottom. Still acting tough, he asked Sonny Boy, “I don’t guess y’all have any alligators in this part of the woods, do you?”