True (. . . Sort Of) (12 page)

A
fter that, the Pattisons were at the old Hennepin place every weekday by noon, bringing lunch, good times, and armaments.

With the money they got from Galveston, they bought fluff, chocolate bars, and a box of graham crackers.

“First, you spread the fluff on a cracker. Next comes the chocolate. Then you slap a cracker on top.” Delly demonstrated. “Fantabulous,” she declared, spitting cracker dust.

“S'more, please, s'more please,” RB sang as his belly got big with them.

Ferris Boyd just closed her eyes while she chewed and chewed.

Delly made slingshots for each of them. “Ready, aim, blast 'em,” she hollered, as she taught those two how to shoot.

She got eggs and left them in the sun.

“Won't they go bad?” RB asked.

Her eyes sparkled as she said, “They're stink bombs. You hit somebody with one, and the stench'll knock him out.”

She brought a shovel and dug holes in the ground around the hideawaysis. She covered them with evergreen branches. Then she showed Ferris Boyd and RB where they were. “Traps, for intruders,” she warned them.

It took over a month to get the jobs done. Delly didn't mind. She was with her friend, with no school and no Novello to bother them. No green Impala, either.

Sometimes she thought about asking, Ferris Boyd, where's your dad? Because even though Boomer and Clarice were gone a lot, there was always somebody around to watch Delly and RB. Nobody was watching Ferris Boyd.

But she couldn't say it, as if the words might bring the green Impala back. She wouldn't risk ruining the happiness.

And in June, she got another Delly Day.

Clarice borrowed a canoe, but she wouldn't go down the river; they took it to the lake instead.

They went in the morning, before everybody else got up. They paddled around for a while, and it was so peaceful Delly almost fell asleep again.

Till something blew up beside them. Smack, it hit the water, then splash. Smack, splash. The water kept exploding, like they were in a minefield.

“Grenades!” Delly screamed. “Ma, get down!”

Clarice was laughing. “That's the carp,” she explained. “They rest in the shallows. We're waking them up.”

“Oh.” She calmed down.

They cruised to the middle of the lake, and Clarice got breakfast out—egg sandwiches and doughnuts. And Delly was so happy all she could do was smile.

They watched the deer come down to the water to drink. “Ma,” Delly whispered and pointed, and Clarice nodded. Then they stayed still for a long time.

“This is the best summer ever,” Delly breathed to the wind and the sun and the water. “Nothing can wreck it.”

Brud Kinney was having the best summer, too.

Weekdays he worked on his grandparents' farm, and that was all right.

But on Sundays he was with his friend. He didn't go to the park anymore; he stayed at Ferris Boyd's all day.

One Sunday at the end of June, after they played H-I-P-P-O-P-O-T-A-M-U-S for the third time, he was so happy he had to write it, This is the best summer ever.

Ferris Boyd's eyes smiled.

Nothing can wreck it, Brud wrote surely.

Ferris Boyd closed her eyes, as if she were wishing the words would be true.

But Brud was wrong.

They all were.

I
t was July. It was Sunday. For the Pattisons, that meant church. But this Sunday there wasn't just church in the morning. “We got church the whole bawlgram day,” Delly griped. Because after the sermon, there was a picnic for everybody at the park outside town.

“Yay,” RB cheered when Clarice said, “We're going.”

So Delly set him straight. “A church picnic's not like a real one,” she told him. “There's no swimming in your underwear or mudball fights. You just play baby games and talk to old people.”

RB looked like he might cry, so she added, “They got good food, though.”

After the service they all got in the van. Delly took a window seat.

“Move over,” Galveston ordered. “I feel sick,” Delly replied. “You want me to throw up on you?”

So Gal climbed in behind her, and the questions won again.

As they drove down the River Road, RB yelled, “Hey, Delly, we're going by—” but she
shh
-ed him silent.

Then she turned to the window, because she wanted to see if Ferris Boyd and that cat were outside.

She spotted the cat on the stoop. And there was Ferris Boyd, playing ball in the drive.

But she wasn't alone. Somebody was with Delly's friend.

The somebody turned to the road, smiling. The sun shone on his two front teeth so they glowed.

“That's Brud Kinney,” RB said, like it was a happy thing.

Delly just kept turning in her seat, watching those two together. “What the glub?” she mumbled.

“What are you griping about?” Galveston asked.

“Nothing,” she muttered. But it didn't feel like nothing. It felt like something. Something bad.

Suddenly Delly had all kinds of questions. For herself. Questions like, How long's he been going out there? Are they friends? How much fun are they having? And the only answer she had was, I don't know, because my friend doesn't tell me anything. Delly hadn't felt this bad in a long time.

At the picnic, Clarice sat her between Mabel Silcox and Angel Grace Pincher. While the two old ladies chatted about prunes and support hose, the questions wouldn't leave Delly alone. How long does he stay out there? they asked. Did she show him the hideawaysis?

After lunch there were games. Clarice made Delly and Galveston do the three-legged race together. “So you work as a team,” she told them. Gal's legs ended at Delly's eyeballs, though, so they kept falling over each other.

Delly won the seed-spitting contest without even trying. They let her pick a prize, but all they had were socks and mittens the church ladies had knitted. “Chizzle,” she grumbled.

She sat on a bench, and the questions followed her. Does she like him better? they wondered. Now that she's got him, will she get rid of me?

RB sat beside her. “You got socks!” he exclaimed, like they'd given her a chocolate cake.

“Take them,” she said.

“I got socks, I got socks,” he sang.

Delly wasn't getting any answers on her own, so she asked RB. “How come Ferris Boyd didn't let us know she's friends with Brud Kinney?”

“Maybe she didn't think we'd care,” he answered.

“I don't care.” She huffed.

Instead of saying, Yes you do, RB told her, “Maybe because they play basketball and you hate that game.”

She chewed on that for a bit; it could be true. Then she rasped, “RB, do you think Ferris Boyd likes us?”

“She likes us a
lot
.” He said it so surely she believed it. Almost.

“Because she doesn't tell us anything,” she argued.

He laughed. “Delly, she doesn't talk.”

“Bawlgrammit, RB,” she shouted. “I mean she doesn't let us know stuff.”

“We know about the hideawaysis, and that she loves basketball and animals.”

Delly knew all that was a big deal. “But . . . about her.”

“She's just sad,” he replied.

“Huh,” she said, because she knew that was true. Now she had more questions, though, like, Does sad make you stop talking? And, Does sad keep secrets?

Clarice came by, herding her horde to the van. “Delly, you sit up front with me.” She directed her.

They rode for a while before Delly asked, “Ma?”

“Yep.”

The rasp was so soft Clarice could hardly hear her. “If you got a friend, then she gets another friend, do you get less friend?”

Clarice thought about it. “I don't know about friends; I know about kids. Will that do?”

Delly shrugged.

So Clarice told her, “After I married your dad, we had Dallas. He was the only one, and I loved him a lot.

“Then Tallahassee came along, and I had less time for Dallas, but I loved him more because we were a family.

“It was the same with Montana, Gal, you, and RB. I got less time for anybody, I know it, Delly. But I got more love for everybody. More than I knew I had in me.” Clarice's voice cracked. “That make sense?”

“Maybe,” she answered. Because Delly liked everybody more since she had Ferris Boyd.

Everybody except Brud Kinney.

M
onday, Delly waited till they were at the hide-awaysis to say, “Shikes! I left my bag at the bottom of the tree. RB, will you get it?”

He was already settled in beside Ferris Boyd; he didn't want to go.

“Please?” she asked. “The sandwiches are in it. Plus I brought cookies.”

And he couldn't say no to that.

When he was out of earshot, Delly started. “Hey Ferris Boyd, I don't have a question for this; I just got to say it.”

The girl's eyes came to her.

She said it quick, so it wouldn't hurt so much. “I didn't have friends for a long time before you. Sometimes I think you might quit being my friend, because everybody else did. So if you got other friends, that's all right.”

Delly couldn't look at her for the last part. “Just keep being my friend, okay?”

Ferris Boyd gazed into the green. She took out her pad and pen, then passed the note to Delly. OK, it read.

Delly leaned back against the rail and breathed out all the worry that had been weighing on her. “All right then.” She and Ferris Boyd were okay.

Brud Kinney, however, was a different matter.

T
uesday after supper, RB and Delly had nothing to do.

“Want to make worm muffins?” he asked her.

“Nah.”

“Want to listen to Gal talking to her boyfriend on the phone?”

“No,” she told him, because that was just weird. “How much money we got?” she asked.

“Lots.”

“Let's go get some doughnuts.”

They got two triple chocolates. They sat in front of the IGA eating them, not spitting once.

And didn't Brud Kinney ride up on his bike, because his mother sent him for milk.

Before Sunday, Delly'd always liked Brud. She liked his stutter and his fake teeth. But now she had something she wanted him to know. “Hey, Brud Kinney,” she called.

Brud Kinney liked Delly, too. He liked her voice and how she took on Novello. But he knew about her fighting. He waved from far away.

“Hold on,” she said as he walked toward the door.

So he did.

“I saw you playing ball with Ferris Boyd. You go out there every Sunday?” she wondered.

Brud nodded; then he watched her. He wanted to see if a fight was headed his way before it hit him.

“Well, she's my friend, too,” Delly told him.

Brud's eyes got big, like she'd punched him. “Wh-Wh-Who?” he said.

“Ferris Boyd,” she announced. “She's my friend. First.”

Brud's head felt funny, as if a piece of surest knowing were getting sucked out of it. “H-H-He's not—”

“Yes she is,” Delly declared. “She's my best friend.”

He saw the sureness in her face, and he knew it was true. And just like that, there was a giant hole in Brud's brain where everything he knew about Ferris Boyd had been.

Delly saw his surprise. That's all right, she thought, now he knows where he stands. She nodded and turned toward the lot.

Brud stumbled into the store.

After he was gone, RB said, “Delly, how come Brud called Ferris Boyd ‘he'?”

She thought about it. “Stutter,” she replied.

But while they walked home, Delly remembered the shock on Brud's face when she told him “she.” Maybe he'd made the same mistake about Ferris Boyd that Delly had, but nobody'd corrected him. Till today.

“Chizzle,” she muttered.

“Huh?” RB asked.

“Nothing,” she said, hoping that was true.

Back at the IGA, Brud couldn't remember what he'd come for. He stood in the aisle thinking, Ferris Boyd, he's a . . . she.

The thoughts rolled out from there: I've been playing with a girl. I've been writing notes to a girl. I've been wishing more than anything to be like . . . her.

It wasn't that Brud thought a girl couldn't play ball. But he thought he had a friend, a best one, a boy. He was wrong about all of it.

“You all right?” Norma asked.

“Huh?” he mumbled, and walked out the door to his bike.

Every other time he'd passed the old Hennepin place Brud had searched for the boy, hoping to see his friend. Now he pedaled hard and stared ahead, like the place wasn't there.

At home his mother asked, “Where's the milk?”

He checked his hands, as if they might be holding it.

“There's nothing,” she told him.

And Brud nodded. He'd gone to the store having a friend; now he had nothing.

Sunday Brud Kinney did not get up early.

When he finally went to town, he didn't ride his bike down the River Road. He went up the hill near his house, along the highway, and back down to River Bluffs.

“Well, look who's here,” Novello sneered.

Brud played ball, but he was bad. Every time he shot or dribbled he'd think, Ferris Boyd, my . . . that girl taught me this. It messed him up.

“You all right?” Gwennie asked.

Brud nodded, because nothing was true.

He played at the park all day. He went home the long way again.

That night in bed, Brud couldn't sleep for missing his friend.

Get over it, his head said. It wasn't real anyway.

But the rest of him didn't listen; it just kept missing.

Sunday was another Delly Day. This time she got Boomer.

“Where do you want to go?” he asked her.

“Hickory Corners,” she answered, because they had ice cream. And there was something she needed to see. “Can we drive out the River Road?”

“Sure,” he said.

As they came to the old Hennepin place, Ferris Boyd was standing in the drive bouncing her ball,
thump, thump, thump,
like a call. She was looking down the road for something that should be coming.

“No Brud Kinney.” Delly snickered.

But as they passed, she saw the loneliness on her friend's face. “Huh,” she murmured.

At the ice-cream shop, they both got chocolate with chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles. It was so delicious they couldn't speak.

When they were done, though, Boomer said, “Well, Delly, three months of no trouble. I didn't think it would happen.”

That hurt, hearing he hadn't believed she could do it.

But he went on. “I was like you: I was in so much trouble when I was little. It didn't stop till I was a lot older.”

“You were never this little,” she told him.

“Yes, I was.”

“You were never in this much trouble.”

“More,” he said. “My ma cried all the time.” His head went down.

“How come you didn't stop?” she asked.

“Didn't know how. My dad tried to knock it out of me. They sent me away to school. Nothing worked.” The shame still weighed so heavy on him, he hunched over.

Delly knew that heaviness. She tried to lift some of it off him. “You never hit me,” she said.

“I couldn't hurt you.”

“And you're not in trouble now,” she told him.

“I met your ma. She thought I was all right, and that helped.”

Delly nodded. She knew what that could do.

“Then we had you kids, and I didn't want you to be ashamed of me.”

“I'm never ashamed of you,” she whispered.

“I'm glad,” he said. “Del.” He looked at her now. “You're doing good. You're doing what I couldn't do.”

Delly gazed at her dad, who was big and a boy and nothing like her. But in a way they were the same. Because they both knew what it felt like to be bad and to think that's what you'd be forever. They both knew how good it was to be wrong about that.

“Know what else works for trouble?” she told him. “Counting.”

“Yeah?”

“And questions. You got to ask questions.”

“I'll try that,” he agreed. “Where else do you want to go?”

“Let's go home,” she said, because she had something to check on.

Ferris Boyd was still in the drive when they drove by. She wasn't bouncing the ball anymore. She was just staring out the River Road, toward Brud Kinney's place. The cat was circling, bumping her with its body.

Delly'd never seen anything so lonely.

As the van passed, the cat sighted Delly. “Maoh,” it cried out, You did this.

“Shikes,” she muttered, scrunching down in her seat.

“What?” Boomer asked.

“Nothing,” she answered; but she knew it wasn't.