Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (15 page)

I
T WAS IN PART
because of the good times he enjoyed with his Aunt Effie that Chief even considered taking into his house his New York City sister Chesley’s fourteen-year-old grandson, Pinkie.

Chesley had always been a fast talker. This time, as usual, she ran on and on. Pinkie’s single-parent mother, Chesley’s daughter, had been called upon to spend the entire summer working overseas. No one in the young man’s immediate family, including her, was available to keep him. His mother was at her wit’s end. And she had come up with the great idea to see if perhaps Chief would look after Pinkie. It would only be for two months. He was a good boy, Pinkie was—typical teenager, you know how they are—and would be no trouble.

“Chesley, I’m flattered that you thought of me, but why send the boy here? I haven’t seen him since he was about three. There’s not much for a kid to do in Ella Louise. Well, yes. Yes. I understand. How about you give me till tomorrow to think it over? I promise. I will. All right. Good-bye.”

Chief did think it over. He sat up most of the night thinking it over. By morning, he had not come up with a single good reason to say no. Actually, he told himself, this shouldn’t be so hard. He had been a fourteen-year-old boy once. He remembered what it was like. Things couldn’t have changed much.

Finally, Chief gave it up. He decided that he would do his best to show the boy a good time. A really good time. Shoot, he would take the boy exploring and camping, maybe to the dry river bottom where folks still found Indian artifacts with surprising regularity. Maybe they’d even join the Boy Scouts—surely the Boy Scouts had some kind of summer program. Come to think about it, the kid might already be a Boy Scout. Wouldn’t that be fun! And didn’t the Boy Scouts have some kind of badge or patch you could get for learning about Indian lore? Chief bet that such a badge would be hard to get living in New York City. Why, Pinkie would have it made in the shade. He’d be the envy of all of his friends. Imagine the paper Pinkie would write on what he did during his summer vacation. He, Chief, would personally see to it that Pinkie had a lot to say.

In preparation for the young scout’s arrival, Chief bought new sheets for the sofa bed and stocked up on groceries, laying in a big supply of beef jerky, which made a great snack and would be easy to pack when they went camping.

“W
HICH FLIGHT
are you putting him on? All right. That will be fine. I’ll be there at the airport to meet him. You’re welcome. No, he won’t be any trouble. You don’t worry about a thing. We’ll be just fine.”

Pinkie missed his flight.

He must have, Chief reasoned, because there was no one in the group of passengers coming off Pinkie’s flight that could be his nephew.

“Uncle Bill?”

Chief jumped at the voice behind him, then turned to face it and jumped again.

“Excuse me, but are you my Uncle Bill? Bill Johnson? Are you, uh, the
Chief?
” Pinkie looked a bit confused. I mean, the man didn’t have a braid or anything (didn’t Indians wear braids?), but he
was
wearing a green windbreaker, which was what Pinkie’s grandmother had told him Uncle Bill would have on.

“Yes, I am. But you wouldn’t be . . . I mean, you’re not . . .” Chief’s voice trailed off hopefully.

“Yeah, I’m Pinkie.”

Chief didn’t know whether to hug the nephew he hadn’t seen in twelve years or put him back on the plane.

Likewise, six-foot-two-inch Pinkie, sporting spiked hair, three earrings, and sagging, ragged, three-sizes-too-big jeans, looked like he didn’t know whether he should shake the hand of his uncle or get back on the plane.

Oh my. Earrings? Chesley hadn’t mentioned them. What did it mean to have three in one ear? Chief racked his brain. He thought he remembered that
one
earring used to mean
something,
but if a person has
three,
does that cancel out the meaning of
one?

Chief was sure the Boy Scouts didn’t allow such things.

“Son,” Chief whispered so as not to embarrass the young man, “your underpants are showing.”

Pinkie looked confused, like he hadn’t heard him, so Chief,
as unobtrusively as he could, motioned in the general direc
tion of Pinkie’s rear—a skinny rear, clad in royal blue boxers with tan monkey faces on them that were visible a good six or eight inches above his pants.

“Oh, uh, thanks.” Pinkie gave his jeans a tug. “Should we go and get my bag, you think?”

P
INKIE AND
C
HIEF STOOD
side by side, separated in height by a good six inches if you counted Pinkie’s hair. Neither of them spoke but instead concentrated on locating Pinkie’s bag on the luggage carousel. When Pinkie spotted the bag and pointed it out, Chief moved forward to retrieve it. Funny, Uncle Bill didn’t look like any Indian Pinkie had ever seen in movies. The guy had
red
hair, was wearing polyester pants, and was not wearing moccasins but instead silver sneakers with Velcro! Hadn’t his grandma said that he was going to stay with an Indian chief?

No way. The man drove a twelve-year-old Buick. Four door.

Their silence continued till they got out on the road. Finally, on the highway headed toward Ella Louise, Chief said to Pinkie, “We’ve got at least three hours ahead of us. ’Bout supper time. Are you hungry?”

Pinkie, seeing the Golden Arches up ahead, could not contain his grin. Uncle Bill had read his mind. “I sure am. They gave us stuff to eat on the plane, but it wasn’t very good.” He could already taste a Big Mac, french fries, and a Coke.

“I knew I remembered right. Boys your age, well, you can’t fill ’em up. Uh, Pinkie, reach down there under the seat, back between your feet.”

Pinkie bent to look.

“Find a paper sack? Yeah, that’s it. And a thermos? You may have to reach back pretty far for it. May have rolled. I packed some sandwiches—tuna, with lots of pickles and boiled egg—and a quart of cold sweet milk. That ought to hit the spot.”

Tuna? Pinkie unwrapped a sandwich. Stuff sort of
stunk. People eat this? His mother never cooked. Not even tuna.
Pinkie was accustomed to food that came wrapped in some
kind of plastic wrapper, Styrofoam package, or cardboard box.

“Go on. Those are all for you. I ate before I started out,” said Chief.

Pinkie took a bite and tried not to gag. He wrapped the sandwich back up. “You know, I’m pretty tired, and I’m sort of a vegetarian. Maybe I’ll wait and eat something later.”

Pinkie dug headphones out of his bag, put them on, leaned against the door, and pretended sleep.

O
N THE RIDE HOME
,
Chief snuck long glances at Pinkie’s strange hair, his piercings, and his choice of clothing. He came to the realization that Pinkie was not of the sort to join the Boy Scouts. Nor did he look to be the kind of boy interested in exploring the river or going camping or hiking. A kid from New York? A city kid? Spending time outdoors? What had he been thinking? It had been a foolish notion, Chief determined, to expect to spend the summer showing the kid around.

Chief steered the car off the freeway and let his thoughts ramble. No fool like an old fool. A boy like Pinkie was not going to be interested in Indian stuff, camping out, or hikes in the woods. He probably wished he was back in New York, going to rock concerts or whatever it was city kids did these days. And who could blame him? Wasn’t like it was Pinkie’s fault.

Chief made the decision then and there to cut young Pinkie some slack. He’d set a few rules, give the boy a wide berth, and go on about things like Pinkie wasn’t there. It had been a mistake for the boy to come, but two months wasn’t all that long.

“No drugs, no drinking, no loud music, and we’ll get along fine,” is how Chief explained things over lunch the next day. “There’s a TV in the living room. You can watch all you want. Fix whatever you want to eat—there’s peanut butter and cheese. Just clean up after yourself. Understand?”

Pinkie did.

“All right, then. I’ll be back after a while.” It was Tuesday, museum day. Chief grabbed the keys off the hook by the door.

Pinkie sat at the table and stared at the door. Not a word about the teepee or the museum, both of which he was dying to see. Had he done something wrong? He didn’t know what. But it didn’t matter. He’d gotten the message loud and clear that Chief wished he wasn’t here. Fine. He could take a hint.

And so for the first two weeks, though he hated being inside, that’s where Pinkie stayed—parked in front of the television or sprawled on the sofa bed, listening to music. Few people in Ella Louise even realized that Chief had company—which, honestly, considering how Pinkie looked, didn’t bother Chief all that much.

Yet Chief reported to Chesley when she called, “Everything’s going fine.”

“It’s okay, Grandma,” said Pinkie when it was his turn to talk.

But it wasn’t. It was lonely and awkward and not what either of them had had in mind. The only good thing? Just six more weeks to go. And so far, they really hadn’t had any problems.

Until Chief found cigarette ashes in the teepee. He didn’t have reason to enter the teepee often these days, but on a Sunday evening when he went inside the structure to retrieve a pottery bowl he planned to use for a special display in the museum, Chief discovered a nasty pile of ashes, butts, and black-tipped matches. He sat himself down and gazed at the evidence staring him in the face. He was shocked—and hurt. What was Pinkie thinking, sneaking out here to smoke? Chief had thought things were going okay, considering. They’d had no words, no arguments, no conflict of any kind. How could Pinkie have done such a thing? How could he have been so foolish as to leave the evidence for anyone to find it?

What should he do? Confront the boy? Ignore what he knew? Punish him?

Chief decided it was best to catch the boy in the act—which turned out to be no easy task. Several mornings in a row, Chief found fresh evidence that Pinkie had been smoking inside the teepee, but after several tries, he still had not caught Pinkie at it.

“I’m going over to Pearly to pick up some groceries. You know, they’ve got a wholesale place over there. I’ll be gone at least three hours,” Chief baited Pinkie before going down to the Wild Flour so as to kill an hour before sneaking back home. When he came back home, he parked the Buick around back and eased around the side of the house to get a peek inside the teepee.

No Pinkie.