Dad set me straight. “I’m afraid we didn’t always treat his dad right when we were kids. Back then, it seemed harmless, but over the years, I’ve realized it probably hurt Malcolm more than we knew. There were a couple of other guys who were tough on him too. Cal and I moved on, but the other guys never let up.”
“You and Uncle Cal were bullies?”
Dad cleared his throat before answering. “It wasn’t our usual way. We thought we were only pulling a couple of pranks, but in hindsight, it was mean-spirited. Malcolm was humiliated by what Vernon did. I think it opened up some old wounds. Caused him to take his anger out on his son.”
After he told me that, I figured that was why Dad put up with Vernon. He may have not been picking up trash at the square, but Dad was serving his own time.
CHAPTER 7
It was September 11, and things would finally be getting back to normal. Twig was due to fly home on the twelfth. The last few nights, I tossed and turned from excitement. Instead of waking before the alarm went off like usual, I hit the snooze button twice, and might have pressed once more, but Mom was on the other side of my door, saying, “Rylee, I just woke up. Make Mayzee some oatmeal.”
I almost said, I just woke up, too, but didn’t. It wouldn’t have made a difference. Mom took forever getting ready—hot rollers, full makeup, manicure touch-up.
Why couldn’t we eat Cap’n Crunch or Pop-Tarts like everyone else? Instead we had to eat slow-cooked lumpy oatmeal with chopped apples.
Mayzee followed me downstairs, both of us still wearing pajamas. Already dressed in his khakis and white shirt, Dad sat at the kitchen table, paying bills.
“I hope one of you girls becomes a plumber,” he said, tearing a check from his checkbook.
While I stirred oats into the boiling water, Mayzee insisted on giving me a solo performance of the songs she planned to sing for Saturday’s opry night.
“And then I’m going to twirl around.” She stretched high on her tipped toes and twirled in place.
She continued to ramble. “And everyone will think that I’m finished, but I won’t be. I’ll sing—”
“Get dressed!” I snapped.
The oatmeal swam in the pot of water. I stirred and stirred. I still had to slice the fruit.
“But I’m not finished.”
“I’m not even dressed,” I said. “Go!”
Dad closed the checkbook. “Rylee, you can get ready, and I’ll finish the oatmeal.”
I dropped the wooden spoon on the counter, not even thanking him.
Mayzee turned her attention to her new audience. “Daddy, do you want to hear what I’m going to sing?”
“Mayzee,” I yelled. “Go get dressed! You’re going to make me late for school.”
Upstairs, Mom stuck her head out of the hall bathroom, half of her hair rolled and half untouched. “Rylee, stop shouting.”
“I’m going to be late!” I said.
“You’re not going to be late,” Mom said. “You’ve never been late a day in your life.” She made it sound like a character flaw.
“Why don’t you get up earlier so I don’t have to do your job?” The words slipped out before I could stop them. For a split second, I felt great. She overslept at least twice a week and depended on me to take up the slack.
Mom shook a hot roller at me. “Excuse me, young lady, but I’ll remind you, I’m your mother.”
Then why don’t you act like it? I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue, slamming my bedroom door behind me instead.
On the way to school, I stayed silent while Mayzee chattered about what she’d wear at the Saturday opry night. I didn’t ooh and ah like I usually did when she described her outfits, this time a black western shirt with pink flamingos and fringe. Her closet was crammed with outfits from Amarillo’s Boot and Spur.
We were almost at school when she stopped talking and looked up at me. “Are you mad?”
I stayed tight-lipped.
“Do you wish you still played the mandolin?”
For some reason, her question made me more irritated. “No,” I snapped. “Now, hurry off to school or you’ll be late.”
She took off. Halfway to the entrance, she stopped, turned around, dashed back, and wrapped her skinny arms around my hips. I stood there stiff as burnt bacon. Then Mayzee sprinted off, crossing the field until she reached one of her many friends.
My first class, language arts, had only just started when Mr. Arlo’s voice came over the speaker. “Team A teachers, head to the office immediately.” Our teacher, Mrs. Webb, left the room.
The last time I’d heard an announcement like that was when I was in fifth grade and an inmate from the Amarillo prison had escaped. Back then, the principal had announced, “Lockdown.”
Mrs. Webb returned a few minutes later, her face white and the space above her mouth moist with perspiration.
Then Mr. Arlo announced for Team B teachers to report to his office. Mrs. Webb told us the World Trade Center Towers in New York had been hit by planes. She turned on the television, but said anyone who didn’t want to watch could go to the cafeteria and read.
No one left the room.
We watched.
Planes crashing.
Flames and smoke.
Firefighters,
Police officers,
Men and women,
Running,
Yelling,
Crying,
Sirens.
We watched.
Replay.
The planes crashing.
Flames and smoke.
Firefighters,
Police officers,
Men and women,
Running,
Yelling,
Crying,
Sirens.
We kept watching.
I touched my desk,
My notebook,
My pen,
To feel something real.
But what we watched was real, too.
Someone muttered, “Kate McKnight.” Uncle Cal’s sister had lived in New York for years, working as a costume designer. Now I searched for Kate’s face.
Then I remembered Twig. She was due back tomorrow. Would she be flying through New York?
The scenes of the planes crashing into the towers kept replaying on television. I closed my eyes, remembering Mayzee, her thin arms hugging me. I left the room, hurrying down our hall, making a left toward the elementary wing, passing the fifth-grade classes, fourth, and third. Outside the second-grade classes, the teachers had posted students’ stories about their summer on the hallway walls. We went to the beach, said one. And when the essays changed into small rainbow-painted handprints, I slowed down until I reached Mayzee’s first-grade classroom.
Staring into the door’s small window, I surveyed the room for Mayzee. “All the Pretty Little Horses” was playing on a CD player.
When you wake, you shall have …
“Mayzee, where are you?” I whispered.
All the pretty little horses …
I scanned each row. Mayzee, Mayzee.
And then I saw her. She was in the front row, coloring. They were all coloring.
Way down yonder in the meadow …
I stood there watching, not wanting to leave. Then I turned and made my way back to my class. I’d only been gone a moment, and the television was now saying the Pentagon had been hit by another plane.
The bell rang just as the South Tower collapsed. Instead of hurrying out of the room, everyone sat frozen.
“Go ahead to your next class,” Mrs. Webb said.
My legs felt heavy as I moved down the hall through the quiet. How could one hour change everything? How could I feel safe at the beginning of class and terrified by the end of it? It was as if someone had yanked a sturdy door off its hinges.
When I entered history class, Dad and I exchanged glances. It took every bit of effort to keep from clinging to him, but I obeyed the unspoken rule. When my teacher happened to be my parent, I had to act like th
ey weren’t, even if everyone knew it. Even if the world was coming to an end.
Walking between the rows, Dad took attendance. As he passed my desk, his hand touched my shoulder. It was so quick, I wondered if it happened. But I knew that it had. And for the rest of the class, I clung to that moment. Replayed it like that morning’s news coverage.
Dad kept the television on, and when it was announced that a plane had crashed in Pennsylvania, two girls left the room crying. Dad turned the TV off.
“Turn it back on, Mr. Wilson.” Vernon Clifton leaned forward, his chin resting on his fists.
“We’ve had enough for today, Mr. Clifton.”
Dad told us to use the remainder of the hour silently reading from our textbook. But the words blurred, the letters transforming into people running and crying, buildings collapsing, again and again. I thought about Kate in New York and Twig on a plane and what happened before school, what I’d said to Mom.
At lunch I searched for her in the teachers’ lounge, but she wasn’t there. Then I headed to her classroom, where I found her and Dad, their backs to me. Dad’s arm was around Mom’s shoulders, and her head rested against him as they gazed out the window at Mayzee swinging on the playground. Before they could hear or see me, I backed away and went to the cafeteria, settling across the table from the Garcia twins.
We were quiet as we ate bites of beef stew and stole glances at the big clock that hung above the double doors. It was as if we were waiting for something big to happen that would prove the morning had not been real after all.
A few parents came to school, picked up their kids, and took them home. The rest of the day felt meaningless, like we were weaving in and out of classrooms as clocks marked off the seconds.
The last bell for the day finally rang, and I waited for Mayzee outside in our usual spot. When I saw her exit the building, I hurried across the grass, picked her up, and squeezed her.
Her shoes hit my knees as I spun her around, and she repeated what she’d started to tell me that morning. “And I’ll twirl exactly like this, and the audience will think I’m done, but I won’t be. I’ll sing another song.”
“And you’ll be so great!” I told her, still hugging her tight, trying to hold on to one good moment in this awful day.
After my parents got home, Mom called Aunt Scarlett. I’d forgotten all about her. Now I had one more person to worry about, but Mom found out she was at home in Paris and wasn’t scheduled to fly until next month.
I rode my bike to Allsup’s to see Twig’s mom, but another cashier told me Mrs. Wagner had been upset and left earlier that day. I raced home to call her.
“She’s okay, Rylee,” Mrs. Wagner said. “I finally was able to reach her. Her grandmother’s not sure when they’ll be able to fly home, but they’re safe at her great-aunt’s. That was so nice of you to check on her.”
Later Dad told me it might be a while before Twig made it home. Planes were all grounded in the United States and would have to wait until the FAA cleared international flights. Uncle Cal told us Kate was all right, too. The McKnights wanted her to rent a car and drive home, but Kate said she was fine and would see them at Christmas.
After Mayzee went to bed, Dad turned on the television and told me I was welcome to watch.
But I told him, “No, thanks. I’m sleepy.”
I wasn’t, but I needed to be in my room. To see everything the way I left it that morning, before everything happened. My unmade bed, my favorite books stacked in the corner, and my signed poster of my favorite group, Nickel Creek. They were a trio that had played together since they were younger than me and were barely out of their teens now. Sara Watkins played the fiddle and sang like an angel, and her brother, Sean, was a talented guitarist. Chris Thile was one of the best mandolin players in the world. The way their voices and instruments blended on “Sweet Afton” caused a chill to slip down my spine.
Opa had given me the poster. She had a friend who had a friend who knew a guy who owned a place where they performed. The poster used to hang over my bed, but when Twig teased me about it, I hung it on the inside of the closet door. Even though Twig went to the opry every Saturday night, she didn’t like bluegrass or country. She was a Weezer fan to the core.
I opened my closet door and pulled the mandolin off the shelf. The pick was still in the penny jar where I’d dropped it the last time I played. My fingers pressed the strings in the frets, remembering how to make the G, C, and D chords. The calluses I’d started to get on my fingertips a year ago had softened, and my wrist hurt from not practicing for so long. There were a lot of songs I could play with just those three chords, which was a good thing, because I’d never been able to accomplish bar chords to my liking. Using the pick, I strummed “This Land Is Your Land,” one of the first songs Opa taught me.
When I’d told Opa I wanted to learn to play the mandolin, she’d been so happy she could have clicked her cowboy boots together and shot like a rocket to the moon. She taught me to play and gave me her dad’s, my great-grandfather’s, mandolin. The gift meant a lot to me, not just because it had been his or because it was a Gibson mandolin from the 1930s, but because Opa had wanted me to have it. She never said anything, but I could tell she was disappointed when I stopped wanting to learn.
Mom knocked on my door and popped her head inside my room. “You okay?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
She smiled. “You’re playing again?”
“Nah,” I said. “Just goofing around.”
“I wish you’d goof around more often,” she said. “I miss your playing.”
As she started to ease the door shut, I called to her. “Mom?”
The door opened wide, and Mom stayed in the doorway, her small frame backlit by the hall light.
“Yes?”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry … about this morning.”
“I know, pumpkin. Love you.”
Then she shut the door.
* * *
It was way after midnight when our phone rang. At first I thought I was dreaming and then I remembered everything that had happened since the morning and my heart began to race.
A moment later, there was a soft tapping on my door, and before I could say anything, Dad had opened it. He spoke in a hushed tone. “Rylee, someone’s on the phone for you.”
I picked up my phone, the one I’d received for my birthday, when I’d wanted a private line but got an extension instead.
“Hello?”
“Rylee? It’s me. Twig.”
“Twig!”
“I can’t talk long. My mom said you called, and I just wanted to let you know I’m okay. How are you doing?”
And even though I’d held it together all day, I burst into tears.
CHAPTER 8
Only two days had passed since the terrorists attacked. Flags started waving in every Antler yard like they did on Memorial Day, Flag Day, and the Fourth of July. At the post office and courthouse, they flew half-mast. The Bowl-a-Rama Café was now painted red, white, and blue. Ferris said it was Mr. Pham’s idea and that he was still busy stenciling stars on the roof.
Miss Earline bought hundreds of tiny flags and put them on the grounds around the square. Of course she also put a tag on each with her phone number that read EARLINE’S REAL ESTATE. BUY OR SELL. CALL ME.
Reverend Colfax led a prayer circle each morning in front of the courthouse at seven, and most of the town showed up. Between noon and one, the mayor piped patriotic music from the courthouse. It was so loud we could hear it during school lunch a quarter of a mile away.
Opa considered canceling Saturday’s show, but decided to open with “The Star-Spangled Banner” and end the night’s performance with “Oh, Beautiful.”
* * *
The sky remained eerily silent on the days that followed, because no planes were allowed to fly into, out of, or within the United States. School wasn’t quiet, though. The attacks were the only thing people wanted to talk about. Some of my classma
tes claimed they hated the terrorists and didn’t trust any Muslims. Vernon Clifton mouthed off about how he wished he could chain Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, behind his dad’s Jeep and drag him across Texas. Some of the same kids who talked about how much they hated Muslims made their own prayer circles before school the days following the attacks. To me, it didn’t seem right to act like it was okay to hate and then turn around and pray for peace.
For the first few days, our school held a moment of silence each morning in remembrance of those who died on September 11. We also had surprise lockdown and fire drills. Mr. Arlo was out for a district meeting and left our anxious vice principal, Ms. Lamb, in charge. She announced continuous drills. Just about the time we returned to our seats and the teacher started back teaching, Ms. Lamb would announce another one. Some of the kids said the reason she kept sounding the alarm was because Pantex, a nuclear facility, was located near our town.
“We could be next,” Vernon said as if he were a government authority.
Doing anything seemed pointless, even brushing my teeth. What did it matter if my molars turned black and fell out when so many people had lost their lives? All conversations seemed to lead to one thing—what had happened that Tuesday. In bed when I closed my eyes, all I could see was the Twin Towers crumbling. I just wanted to see Twig walking into our school building safe and sound.
Then, Friday, a sign went up in Miss Myrtie Mae’s yard.
ESTATE SALE
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
8:00 A.M.–6:00 P.M.
ALL PROCEEDS WILL GO TO
THE NEW ANTLER PUBLIC LIBRARY
BURGESS AUCTION HOUSE
* * *
Some people talked about how the timing was in bad taste. They believed they should postpone it, but the auction company said they were booked for months and warned us that people from all over the Panhandle would show up anyway. So the auction happened as scheduled.
Opa bought a Victrola to display in the opry house lobby. Mom secretly bought Miss Myrtie Mae’s camera after seeing Dad admire it. She said she’d hide it until his birthday. And when I discovered an unmarked box of used film rolls, I hurried with it to the cashier.
The Ambassador of Nowhere Texas Page 3