closed again. Still my grandfather didn’t emerge. I sat in the car for a
while, but the heat was so bad my sweat drenched my shirt and I had to peel
myself off the seat and get out again. I paced up and down in front of the
house, and I paused to watch ants stripping a dead pigeon to the bones. Maybe
an hour went past. At some point, though, I realized my grandfather was
treating me like a little piece of nothing, and that was how he was treating
Grandmomma Sarah, too. Anger started building in me, beginning in the belly
like a dull, throbbing heat. I stared at the door, trying to will him to come
out. The door remained closed.
The thought came to me, shocking in its decisiveness: To hell with him.
I got the box of ice cream salt, and I started walking.
The first two miles were all right. On the third, the heat began getting
to me. Sweat was pouring down my face, and my scalp felt as if it were aflame.
The road shimmered between its walls of pine forest, and only a couple of cars
passed, but they were going in the wrong direction. The pavement started
burning my feet through my shoes. I wanted to sit down in some shade and rest,
but I did not because resting would be weakness; it would be saying to myself
that I shouldn’t have tried to walk six miles in hundred-degree heat and
blazing sun, that I should have stayed at that house and waited for my
grandfather to come out when he was good and ready. No. I had to keep going,
and worry about my blisters later.
I started thinking about the story I was going to write about this. In
that story, a boy would be crossing a burning desert, a boxful of priceless
crystals entrusted to his care. I looked up to watch hawks soaring in the
thermals, and when my attention roamed from what I was doing I stepped in a
pothole, twisted my ankle, and fell down and the box of ice cream salt burst
open beneath me.
I almost cried.
Almost.
My ankle hurt, but I could still stand on it. What hurt me most was the
ice cream salt glistening on the pavement. The bottom of the box had broken
open. I scooped ice cream salt up in my hands, filled my pockets, and started
limping on again.
I was not going to stop. I was not going to sit in the shade and cry, my
pockets leaking salt. I was not going to let my grandfather beat me.
I was nearing the end of the third mile when a car’s horn honked behind
me. I looked around, expecting the Jaybird’s Ford. It was, instead, a
copper-colored Pontiac. The car slowed, and Dr. Curtis Parrish looked at me
through the rolled-down passenger window. “Cory? You need a ride?”
“Yes sir,” I said gratefully, and I climbed in. My feet were about burned
to the nubs, my ankle swelling up. Dr. Parrish gave it the gas, and we rolled
on. “I’m stayin’ at my grandfolks’,” I said. “About three miles up the road.”
“I know where the Jaybird lives.” Dr. Parrish picked up his medical bag,
which was sitting between us, and put it onto the back seat. “Awful hot day.
Where were you walkin’ from?”
“I… uh…” Here was a crossroads of conscience, thrust upon me. “I… had to
run an errand for my grandmother,” I decided to say.
“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment. Then: “What’s that spillin’ out of your
pocket? Sand?”
“Salt,” I said.
“Oh,” he said, and he nodded as if this made sense to him. “How’s your
daddy doin’ these days? Things ease up at work for him?”
“Sir?”
“You know. His work. When Tom came to see me a few weeks ago, he said his
workload was so tough he was havin’ trouble sleepin’. I gave him some pills.
You know, stress can be a mighty powerful thing. I told your dad he ought to
take a vacation.”
“Oh.” This time I was the one who nodded, as if this made sense. “I think
he’s doin’ better,” I said. I gave him some pills. Dad hadn’t said anything
about his work being tough, or that he’d gone to see Dr. Parrish. I gave him
some pills. I stared straight ahead, at the unfolding road. My father was
still trying to escape the realm of troubled spirits. It occurred to me that
he was hiding part of himself from Mom and me, just as the Jaybird hid his
poker fever from my grandmother.
Dr. Parrish went with me to the front door of my grandparents’ house.
When Grandmomma Sarah answered his knock, Dr. Parrish said he’d found me
walking on the side of the road. “Where’s your granddaddy?” she asked me. I
must’ve made a pained face, because after a few seconds of deliberation she
answered her own question. “He’s gotten himself into some mischief. Uh-huh.
That’s just what he’s done.”
“The box of salt busted open,” I told her, and I showed a handful of it,
my hair wet with sweat.
“We’ll get us a new box. We’ll save what’s in your pockets for the
Jaybird.” I wasn’t to know it for a while, but for the next week every meal
the Jaybird sat down to eat would be so loaded with salt his mouth would
pucker until it squawked. “Would you come in for a cold glass of lemonade, Dr.
Parrish?”
“No, thank you. I’ve got to get back to the office.” His face clouded
over; a concern was working its way out of him. “Mrs. Mackenson, did you know
Selma Neville?”
“Yes, I know her. Haven’t seen her for a month or more, though.”
“I just came from her house,” Dr. Parrish said. “You know she’d been
fightin’ cancer for the last year.”
“No, I surely didn’t!”
“Well, she put up a good fight, but she passed on about two hours ago.
She wanted to pass at home instead of a hospital.”
“My Lord, I didn’t know Selma was sick!”
“She didn’t want a fuss. How she got through her last year teachin’ I’ll
never know.”
It hit me who they were talking about. Mrs. Neville. My Mrs. Neville. The
teacher who’d said I should enter the short-story contest this year. Good-bye,
she’d said as I’d left her room on the first day of summer. Not see you next
year or see you in September, but a firm and final good-bye. She must’ve known
she was dying, as she sat behind that desk in summer’s light, and she had
known that for her there would be no new class of grinning young monkeys in
September.
“Thought you might like to know,” Dr. Parrish said. He touched my
shoulder with a hand that had two hours ago pulled a sheet over Mrs. Neville’s
face. “You take care now, Cory.” He turned around and walked to his Pontiac,
and my grandmother and I watched him drive away.
An hour later, the Jaybird came home. He wore the expression of a man
whose last friend had kicked him in the rump and whose last Washington had
snickered as it sailed off into another man’s pocket. He tried to work up a
show of anger at me, for “runnin’ off and worryin’ me half to death” but
before he could get steamed up on that route Grandmomma Sarah derailed him by
asking, very quietly, where the ice cream salt was. The Jaybird wound up
sitting by himself on the porch in the fading light, moths whirling around
him, his face long and haggard and his spirits as low as his flagging jimbob.
I felt kind of sorry for him, actually, but the Jaybird was not the kind of
man you felt sorry for. One word of regret from me would’ve made him sneer and
swagger. The Jaybird never apologized; he was never wrong. That was why he had
no true companions, and that was why he sat alone on that porch in the company
of dumb gleaming wings that swirled around him like his ancient memories of
pretty farmers’ daughters.
One last incident marked my week with my grandparents. I had not slept
well on Friday night. I dreamed of walking into my classroom, which was empty
of everyone but Mrs. Neville, sitting behind her desk straightening papers.
Golden light slanted across the floor, bars of it striping the blackboard. The
flesh of Mrs. Neville’s face had shriveled. Her eyes looked bright and large,
like the eyes of a baby. She held her back rigid, and she watched me as I
stood on the threshold between the hallway and classroom. “Cory?” she said.
“Cory Mackenson?”
“Yes ma’am,” I answered.
“Come closer,” she said.
I did. I walked to her desk, and I saw that the red apple there on its
edge had dried up.
“Summer’s almost over,” Mrs. Neville told me. I nodded. “You’re older
than you were before, aren’t you?”
“I had a birthday,” I said.
“That’s nice.” Her breath, though not unpleasant, smelled like flowers on
the verge of decay. “I have seen many boys come and go,” she said. “I’ve seen
some grow up and set roots, and some grow up and move away. The years of a
boy’s life pass so fast, Cory.” She smiled faintly. “Boys want to hurry up and
be men, and then comes a day they wish they could be boys again. But I’ll tell
you a secret, Cory. Want to hear it?”
I nodded.
“No one,” Mrs. Neville whispered, “ever grows up.”
I frowned. What kind of secret was that? My dad and mom were grown-up,
weren’t they? So were Mr. Dollar, Chief Marchette, Dr. Parrish, Reverend
Lovoy, the Lady, and everybody else over eighteen.
“They may look grown-up,” she continued, “but it’s a disguise. It’s just
the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts. They
still would like to jump and play, but that heavy clay won’t let them. They’d
like to shake off every chain the world’s put on them, take off their watches
and neckties and Sunday shoes and return naked to the swimming hole, if just
for one day. They’d like to feel free, and know that there’s a momma and daddy
at home who’ll take care of things and love them no matter what. Even behind
the face of the meanest man in the world is a scared little boy trying to
wedge himself into a corner where he can’t be hurt.” She put aside the papers
and folded her hands on the desk. “I have seen plenty of boys grow into men,
Cory, and I want to say one word to you. Remember.”
“Remember? Remember what?”
“Everything,” she said. “And anything. Don’t you go through a day without
remembering something of it, and tucking that memory away like a treasure.
Because it is. And memories are sweet doors, Cory. They’re teachers and
friends and disciplinarians. When you look at something, don’t just look. See
it. Really, really see it. See it so when you write it down, somebody else can
see it, too. It’s easy to walk through life deaf, dumb, and blind, Cory. Most
everybody you know or ever meet will. They’ll walk through a parade of
wonders, and they’ll never hear a peep of it. But you can live a thousand
lifetimes if you want to. You can talk to people you’ll never set eyes on, in
lands you’ll never visit.” She nodded, watching my face. “And if you’re good
and you’re lucky and you have something worth saying, then you might have the
chance to live on long after—” She paused, measuring her words. “Long after,”
she finished.
“How’s all this stuff supposed to happen?” I asked.
“First things first. Enter the short-story contest, like I told you.”
“I’m not good enough.”
“I’m not saying you are. Yet. Just do the best you can, and enter the
contest. Will you do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what to write about.”
“You will,” Mrs. Neville said. “When you make yourself sit and look at a
blank piece of paper long enough, you will. And don’t think of it as writing.
Just think of it as telling your friends a story. Will you at least try?”
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Don’t think too hard,” she cautioned me. “Sometimes thinking gets in the
way of doing.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Ah, well.” Mrs. Neville pulled in a breath and let it slowly out. She
looked around the classroom at the empty desks carved with initials. “I have
done my best,” she said quietly, “and that is all I can do. Oh, you little
children, what years you have ahead.” Her gaze returned to me. “Class
dismissed,” she said.
I woke up. It was not quite light yet. A rooster was crowing to herald
the sun. The Jaybird’s radio was on in their bedroom, tuned to a country
station. The sound of a steel guitar, alone and searching over the dark miles
of woods and meadows and roads, has always had the power to break my heart in
two.
Mom and Dad came to pick me up that afternoon. I kissed Grandmomma Sarah
good-bye, and I shook the Jaybird’s hand. He put a little extra pressure into
his grip. I squeezed back. We knew each other. Then I went out to the pickup
truck with my folks, and I found they’d brought Rebel along, so I climbed into
the truckbed and let my legs hang over the edge and Rebel nudged up close to
me and blew dog breath in my face but it was fine with me.
Grandmomma Sarah and the Jaybird stood on their front porch and waved
good-bye. I went home, where I belonged.
7
My Camping Trip
THERE IS NOTHING MORE FRIGHTENING OR EXCITING THAN A blank piece of paper.
Frightening because you’re on your own, leaving dark tracks across that snowy
plain, and exciting because no one knows your destination but yourself, and
even you can’t say exactly where you’ll end up. When I sat down at my
typewriter to chop out that story for the Zephyr Arts Council Writing Contest,
I was so scared it was all I could do to spell my name. Concocting a story for
yourself and a story that you know strangers are going to read are two
different animals; the first is a comfortable pony, the second a crazy bronco.
You just have to hold tight, and go along for the ride.
The sheet of paper stared me in the face for quite a while. At last I
decided to write about a boy who runs away from his small town to see the
world. I got two pages done before it became clear my heart wasn’t in it. I
started on a tale about a boy who finds a magic lantern in a junkyard. That,
too, went into the wastebasket. A story about a ghost car was going pretty
well until it hit the wall of my imagination and burst into flames.
I sat there, staring at another fresh sheet of paper.
The cicadas were whirring in the trees outside. Rebel barked at something
in the night. From far away I heard a car’s engine growl. I thought of my
dream about Mrs. Neville, and what she’d said: Don’t think of it as writing.
Think of it as telling your friends a story.
