Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (11 page)

Trey began to sob. Ralph held him close.

Back at the cabin, Trey lay on his bunk with his pillow covering his head. He didn’t move. He refused to eat supper, and even skipped swim time, which he loved. “You guys go on. Trey’ll be all right,” Pancho said, shooing the rest of the boys out of the cabin. When they were gone, he whispered to Ralph, “He’s pretty upset. You think we should call his mother?”

“Not yet.” It was 9:00 by then and Trey had gone to sleep. “Let’s see how he is in the morning. I’ll sit up tonight in case he wakes up crying or needing something.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m not that tired, and I can sleep in the morning.”

But at 1:30 Ralph fell asleep, in spite of his best efforts. It was Kevin who woke up and heard Trey sniffling. Not sure what to do, Kevin woke up Josh, who woke up Carl, who woke up everybody else—except for Pancho and Ralph. The boys slid out of their bunks and stood in a huddle on the cabin’s concrete floor, shifting and shivering in their boxers and T-shirts.

“Trey’s crying,” Kevin whispered. “We gotta do something.”

“What?” asked Josh.

“I dunno. Talk to him or something.”

“Trey? You all right?” Josh spoke to Trey’s back.

“We’re sorry about Maggie,” said Rudy.

“Yeah. She was a really good dog,” said Max.

“When my dog got hit by a car, I cried for a week,” said Lindon.

“You did?” Trey rolled over and faced the seven.

“I cried for a month when my dog died,” offered Carl.

“I cried for three months when my cat died,” topped Rudy.

No one knew what to say next.

“Man, I’m hungry,” said Kevin. “Anybody got anything to eat?”

“I do. I’ve got Pringles and M&Ms,” said Lindon. “I’m starving too.”

“Me too. I’ve got some jerky,” said Max.

Just then Ralph rolled over and Pancho’s snoring stopped. “Shhh! Keep it down,” hissed Josh. “We’ll get in trouble if anybody finds out we’ve got food. Let’s go to the bathhouse. Nobody’ll catch us there. Everybody grab what you’ve got and let’s go.”

“Come on, Trey.” Kevin helped Trey slide out of his bunk. “Where’s your shoes? Careful now. Do your hands hurt?”

“Just when I move ’em.”

“Stick your foot up here and let me tie.”

“Thanks, Kevin.”

“No problem. Ready?”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
,
when Ralph realized that he’d drifted off, he felt really bad. He told Pancho that he feared Trey might have cried during the night. “Trey? Time to wake up. You sleep okay, buddy?”

Trey didn’t want to wake up.

But, then again, neither did Josh, Kevin, Rudy, Carl, James, Max, or Lindon. The whole cabin acted like they were worn out.

“What’s up with you men?” teased Pancho. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that y’all had been up all night running around the camp or something.”

Sixteen bare feet hit the gritty cabin floor. “We’re up,” said Kevin.

“Yeah, we’re up, Pancho,” the rest agreed, suddenly intent on looking wide awake.

Pancho looked over at Ralph and shrugged. “Whatever. Flagpole devo in ten. Let’s not be the last cabin there.”

When he stepped out of the cabin, Trey must’ve remembered that Maggie was gone, because he looked like he was about to cry. Max, who had walked out with Trey, threw his arm across Trey’s shoulders. “Come on. It’ll be all right. You ready? We don’t have to wait on those guys.”

The others, minutes later on their way down the hill to the flag, discussed a plan of action amongst themselves. “Man, he lost his best friend,” Lindon said.

“Trey was crazy about that dog,” Josh agreed.

“We gotta keep him company so he don’t feel so bad,” Carl said.

And so they did their best.

That afternoon, Max played in the dirt with Trey while the other guys shot hoops. They made roads and bridges and tunnels and stuff.

Josh and Kevin sat by Trey at lunch and listened to him tell knock-knock jokes. Some of the ones he told were funnier than the ones printed in their book. “We gotta write that one down,” said Josh. “Trey, you want me to open up your milk?”

Their efforts, though well meant, weren’t enough. Trey was still sad.

“We should have a funeral for Maggie,” Lindon suggested.

“You mean with prayers and preaching and stuff?” James asked.

“We can’t. It’s too late. I heard Pancho tell Ralph that the staff buried Maggie behind Craft Hall last night,” Carl said. “You can’t have a funeral without a body.” Having recently lost a great-uncle, Carl was knowledgeable about such things.

“It could be a memorial service then,” Lindon said.

Memorial service. You didn’t have to have a body for one of those. The cabin agreed that Lindon had a good plan. And despite day-long whispered preparations, the boys managed to keep the service a secret until sunset.

“Don’t ask any questions. Please. Just come with us,” the boys said to Pancho and Ralph. “Trey, come on. We’ve got something to show you. Up the hill. Behind Craft Hall.”

“But that’s where they . . .”

“Come on, Trey.” Josh and Kevin took him by the hands.

“Quiet please. Gather ’round,” said Lindon when they arrived at Maggie’s grave. He removed his cap. The other guys took theirs off too. “Maggie was a good dog.” He
coughed. “She was Trey’s special friend. We’re gonna miss her.”

Carl had made a cross for Maggie’s grave out of two whittled sticks and a leather lace from one of his hiking boots. Reverently, he stuck it in the ground at the northernmost end of Maggie’s grave. Josh and Kevin had gathered enough smooth stones from the creekbed to surround the mound of her grave. When Lindon gave them the signal, they pulled the stones from their pockets and placed them all around. Max had picked a big bunch of wildflowers. When the stones were in place, he pulled out the bunch from under his shirt and placed it on her grave.

James read Psalm twenty-three, and Rudy said a dismissal prayer. Everyone raised their head. At first, no one seemed to know what to say or do next.

It was Josh, finally, who broke the silent, solemn spell. “Amen.”

“Amen,” said the rest in unison.

“Last one to the cabin’s a rotten egg!”

“Come on, Trey!”

“Trey, wait for me!”

As Pancho and Ralph stood back and watched the boys urge slow-moving Trey along, as they saw Max catch him when he stumbled and Carl bend to tie his shoe, as they took note of the entire rowdy bunch stalling so that Trey wouldn’t come in last, they concluded that Josh was wrong. There wasn’t a rotten egg in the bunch.

While Maggie had been Trey’s first camp friend, she was not his last.

I
AM A SPIRITUAL PERSON
.
I believe in God and Jesus, in heaven and in grace. I believe in angels too, though there’s a lot about them that I don’t understand.

What do they look like?

Do they have halos and wings?

Do they all play gold harps?

The Bible, in Hebrews 13:2, says “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”

They appear incognito?

Now that’s a thought.

Can you imagine a better disguise for an angel to don than scruffy brown fur and a cold, wet nose?

Not me.

7

M
ILLARD AND
M
ILLIE

M
ILLARD AND
S
UGAR
F
RY MOVED
from Chicago to Ella Louise in the fall of 1958, soon after they got married.

Having lived all of their lives north of the Mason-Dixon line, the Frys, especially Sugar, wondered how they, a black couple, would be accepted in a small Southern town.

“You think we’ll have any friends?” asked Sugar. “Are there any other people like us living there?”

“I don’t know,” Millard said optimistically. “Might be a few. Now Sugar, it’ll take a while, but we’ll be all right. Don’t worry about it. We’ve got each other. What more could we need?” He pulled Sugar to him and plopped a kiss on her cheek.

Sugar, who was leaving behind her two big sisters, her mother, and her best friend since third grade, kept her thoughts to herself. However, she could think of a lot more things than just Millard that she needed. A man is a good thing to have, but women need friends. It’s in their natures, her grandmother had always said.

“Long as we work hard, we’ll be fine,” Millard assured her. Millard, a carpenter and handyman, was not afraid of hard work.

“We’ll make us a good life, baby. You’ll see.”

And though it took them almost a year to get used to Southern ways, as well as Southern foods (“Okra? What do I do with it?” asked Sugar the first time Millard brought home a sack of the fuzzy green stuff), Millard and Sugar were quite happy in Ella Louise. He found plenty of work, and the two of them became good friends with another newlywed and new-to-the-community couple, Alfred and Tiny Tinker. The fact that Millard and Sugar were black, Alfred and Tiny white, mattered not a whit.

Within a year of moving to Ella Louise, Sugar gave birth to a sweet little baby girl, whom Millard named Shonda. He was wild with plans and with pride.

“She’s gonna have the best of everything,” he proclaimed. “Books, pretty dresses, and music lessons. I’ll see to it.” And he worked even harder than before.

As Shonda grew up and blossomed into a lovely young lady, one who caught the eyes of young men, Millard began to fret. “Shonda, don’t even be thinking about boys. You’re going to college. And you’re going to do good. You’ve got to keep your head in your books. Understand?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Me and your mother never had the chance to go to college.”

“I know, Daddy.” Shonda had heard this lecture about a million times before.

Millard’s obsessive determination that Shonda get an education provides explanation as to why he was so upset when the disturbing word got back to him. Someone had seen his baby girl, by now a university student, sitting in a Chevy pickup at the Sonic Drive-in, necking with some boy. At 2:00 in the afternoon!

Now, it is joked in Ella Louise that if a person hasn’t heard a rumor by noon, it’s that person’s civic duty to start one.
So Millard figured the story to be nothing more than a silly town rumor. Hadn’t he raised Shonda better than that? Of course he had! Still, on the off chance that there was even a shred of truth to the tale, he thought it best to have a little daddy-daughter talk with his girl.

“Sugar, get on the phone and tell Shonda that she needs to come home this weekend. I want to talk to her.”

But Sugar wasn’t able to reach Shonda.

“What do you mean, not in? Ten o’clock on a Tuesday night? Well, then leave a message at the dorm. Tell her to call home as soon as she comes in.”

When Shonda didn’t call back for three days, Millard fumed. When she finally did call, she spoke to the answering machine. “Sorry Mama and Daddy. Can’t come home this weekend. Lots to do. Maybe I’ll make it in another week or so.”

“She probably has a test to study for,” Sugar said, trying to soothe Millard. “Honey, it’s her junior year. She’s got more on her mind. She’s not our baby anymore, and we can’t be ordering her around like she is.”