“Take Peer Counseling,” I say. “It’ll be fun.”
“Which period are you signing up for?”
“Fifth. It’s either that or second, but I’d rather take it in the afternoon. Get the boring stuff over with in the morning.”
“Maybe I’ll do that, too.”
God, will she really change her plans to take a class with me? Is it possible she might secretly love me, the way I secretly love her? I doubt it, but there she is, smiling at me like she at least really likes me.
After I get signed up for classes I go down to Barb ’n Edie’s with Brian. He’s a really good friend, but he’s been away most of the summer, too. We get caught up, and I eat my way through a garbage- burger. I love those things. There was no place in San Luis Obispo that had anything like it. We hang out for a while, stop by McDonald’s, where our friend Jason works, but he’s busy, so we leave. Brian tells me all about how things are going with him and Danielle, but I don’t tell him my hopes for Tracy.
“It’s time you got a woman in your life,” he says.
“I’m working on it.”
“Who?” he asks, but I won’t say.
When I get home late in the afternoon, the TV is blasting out, louder than I would ever play my stereo, if I had a stereo, and a place to play it. The house is empty. I turn off the TV and start looking around. Maybe Mom got off school early and took Uncle Tweetie somewhere. I get myself a Coke and a bag of potato chips and go outside to shoot a few baskets. That’s when I see him, sitting on the ground in his overalls, staring up into the big walnut tree that grows in our backyard.
“What’re you doing?” I ask.
“Well, Son, the danged TV was too loud, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t change it. So I left.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“Since I tried to find that program about the other side, and it got so loud I couldn’t stand it.”
“Well, I’ve turned it off. You want to go inside now?”
“I reckon. I get a little stiff sittin’ on the ground for a very long time. But you’ve got you a coupla big old squirrels up there,” he says, pointing into the tree. Then he turns and gets on his hands and knees, crawls to the trunk of the tree, and grabs onto it to help himself up.
“I don’t get around so good anymore,” he says. “I got the Arthur Ritis.”
He brushes off his hands and knees and starts walking toward the house.
“You know, son, we’d get us a pretty good stew outta those two fox squirrels. Get me your gun and I’ll get us some dinner.”
At first I think he’s kidding, but then he says, “My eyes ain’t as good as they used to be, but I can still shoot me a squirrel. And those things in your tree don’t even have sense enough to run away. I already told ’em they was dinner, and they just sat there. Arkansas squirrels are smarter than these California squirrels, but I reckon these’ll taste just as good.” He laughs a high-pitched laugh that, no matter how much I don’t like sharing a room with him, makes me smile.
“Go on, Son, get me your gun.”
“I don’t have a gun,” I say.
He gives me a long, slow look, tipping his head back to look me in the eye. Then he shakes his head slowly, back and forth.
“Don’t have a gun?”
I shake my head.
“Ooooie, we must be comin’ into the last days if a boy like you ain’t even got somethin’ to shoot a squirrel with.” He looks me square in the eye, then turns slightly away and spits a big glob of that crankcase stuff in the dirt.
“Well, then, bring me your daddy’s gun,” he says. “Them squirrels are gonna get tired of waitin’.”
“Dad doesn’t have a gun, either,” I say.
“Lordy, Lordy, this is about the sorriest mess I’ve been in,” he says. “Squirrels just waitin’ to be dinner, and me without a gun.”
Uncle Tweetie shuffles dejectedly back to the house while I start banging away with my basketball.
When I go inside, about an hour later, Uncle Tweetie is sitting on the couch, staring out the window.
“It ain’t your fault,” he tells me as I walk past him.
“What isn’t?”
“That you cain’t shoot a squirrel,” he says.
“I don’t want to shoot any squirrels,” I tell him.
“Well . . . that ain’t your fault, either,” he says. “Besides, a handsome movie star boy like you, I guess you don’t need to shoot dinner even if it is right under your nose,” he laughs. Honestly, he does look a lot like that Happy dwarf, except Uncle Tweetie’s not as chubby. And I don’t think Happy spits gunk into a can.
“I’m not a movie star boy,” I tell him.
“Well, you could be. You was cute when you was little, too.
I’d crawl around with you on my back and you’d laugh ’til you got the hiccups. You used to laugh all the time.”
“I don’t remember,” I say.
He nods, watching the tree again.
“Do you want me to turn the TV on for you? I can show you how to fix it so it won’t be too loud.”
“No, thank you, Son. I’ll sit here with Chickee for a while. We always talk a little near sundown. Sing in the mornin’, talk at day’s end, and sing at night. All these years I been doin’ that, I ain’t fixin’ to stop now. She’s somewhere listenin’ to me, I know that sure’s I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be back after awhile.”
I walk across the street, take three deep breaths, and knock on Tracy’s front door.
“Hi, Josh, come on in,” she says, flashing a smile that makes me think she’s glad to see me. I follow her into the house. Photos are spread all over the coffee table and couch, and on the floor.
“I told Mom I’d put our pictures in albums before school starts. I didn’t know I was talking about millions of photos,” she laughs. “Look,” she says. “This is when we were a family together, before my mom kicked my dad out.”
There’s Tracy’s mom, dad, and older sister. Tracy is about four. They’re all smiling and happy. That’s the thing with pictures. Everybody looks happy, whether they are or not. Or maybe, for an instant when the picture is being taken, everyone gets happy. I think of the photos Vee got out when she first heard of Aunt Chickee’s death. I guess that’s why we take pictures— to remind us of happy times after people are gone from our lives.
“Look at this,” she says.
It’s a picture of me in the driveway, getting ready to shoot a basket. It looks like it was taken a year or so ago. I didn’t even know she took it. I look at her, puzzled.
“I wanted a picture of you, and I was too shy to ask,” she says.
I know I’m blushing. I can tell. And my face isn’t the only place where there’s an increased blood flow.
***
The second week of class Mrs. Woods hands out questionnaires as part of an expanded understanding project we’re starting. So far, Peer Counseling is my favorite class of the day, mainly because I sit next to Tracy, but also because the teacher is cool and it’s more kick-back than any of my other classes.
“We’ll look at racism, sexism, ageism, anything that treats people unfairly, or judges people unfairly.”
We’re supposed to get answers from at least two people in each decade, from pre-school to sixties. If we get one over seventy, we get ten extra credit points. If we get one over eighty, we get twenty extra credit points. Finally, a use for Uncle Tweetie besides the human alarm clock trick he does every morning at sunrise.
This morning, about five-ten, I was awakened by him singing, “Never grow old, never grow old, In the land where we’ll never grow old . . .” The funny thing was, he sounded almost young when he was singing it. Then he said, “Chickee, Sugar, watch for me. I don’t reckon it’ll be too much longer.”
I’m not in any hurry for him to die. I wouldn’t admit this to my mom or dad, but I’ve even started to like Uncle Tweetie a
little.
He’s a funny old guy, and he’s always cheerful. But I sure would like my room to myself.
“Is it okay if we interview some of the same people?” Tracy asks Ms. Woods.
“Well . . . I don’t want all thirty of you interviewing the same seventy-year-old, just for extra credit . . . How about if we say no more than two students can interview the same person?”
“Good,” Tracy says, then turns to me. “Can I interview your uncle?”
“Sure,” I say, all cool. But I wonder if she’ll start thinking I’m weird because I have a weird uncle. We walk home together after school and I go into her house with her, like I’ve been doing every day since school started. Her mom doesn’t get home from work until about six-thirty and her sister lives with the dad, so we have the house to ourselves. Yesterday I brought a bunch of my CDs over, so now we’ve got good sounds. We go into her bedroom and I start the new Pearl Jam. We sit on the floor, leaning up against her bed, listening for awhile.
Then Tracy says, “Come on. We can interview each other and get one of the teen decade out of the way.” She takes the Peer Counseling questions from her notebook and asks, “Earliest memory?”
“Rick throwing up on me in the car.”
“Yuck.”
“How about you?”
“My dad banging on the door and yelling for us to let him in after my mom changed the locks,” she says, looking away. “You’re lucky that way. I bet your parents never even argue.”
“Not much,” I admit.
“Favorite childhood game?”
“Tether ball,” she says. “But I was good at jump rope, too.”
“Skateboarding. Does that count as a game?”
“Why not? If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?”
“I’d do away with all homelessness,” I say.
“I’d do away with all violence,” she says . . . “If you could
change one thing about your personal life?”
“I’d have my own room,” I say. Then I add, “And I’d know for sure that you were my girlfriend.”
Now it’s Tracy’s turn to blush. It’s like the world is standing still, just for an instant, then she says, “I’d know for sure that you were my boyfriend.”
I pull her close to me and kiss her on the lips.
“I am for sure your boyfriend,” I say.
“I am for sure your girlfriend,” she tells me.
I kiss her again. It is kind of awkward, like our lips are at an angle or something. I’ve kissed girls at parties, but no one I’ve ever cared about very much. When we stop kissing I keep my arm around her.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asks.
“Yes. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve wanted you to be my girlfriend for a long time,” I confess.
“I’ve wanted that since before I took that picture of you,” she says.
I guess, right now, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. I start kissing her again, but then she pushes me away. But in an easy way, not like she doesn’t like me.
“Let’s go ask your uncle these questions,” she says.
“I’d rather stay here and kiss you,” I tell her.
“My mom’ll freak if she comes home and finds us kissing. It’s okay for you to be here if we’re just friends, but if she even thinks we’re holding hands she’ll go ballistic.”
Uncle Tweetie is on the couch, staring out the window when we get there. I forgot about it being his time with Aunt Chickee.
“Shhhh,” I say to Tracy. “Let’s go back outside for a few minutes.”
She follows me out and we sit on the back steps. “Why can’t we talk to him?”
“We’ll go inside in a few minutes. He’s talking with his dead
wife now.”
She looks at me like I’m totally crazy.
“Well, it’s hard to explain,” I say. “You’ll just have to meet him.”
She keeps giving me this strange look.
“You won’t stop liking me just because I have a weird uncle, will you?”
She laughs. “I’m going to like you for a long time. I already have.”
I tell her the story about how Uncle Tweetie got his name, and how he sings to Aunt Chickee when he first wakes up and just before he goes to sleep.
“I think that’s sweet,” she says.
“Yeah, well maybe he could come share your room then.”
We go back inside and I introduce Tracy to Uncle Tweetie.
“Ooooie, you’re a purty girl. You’re one a them movie star kinds, too. When’re you gettin’ married?”
“We’re only sixteen,” I say.
“Well, that’s not too late. Chickee was sixteen when we was married. You find a purty girl like this’n and you better grab her before she gets her cap set for someone else.”
Tracy laughs. “Listen, Uncle Tweetie—is it okay to call you Uncle Tweetie?”
“Yep, cause you’re gonna be part of my family real soon. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Uncle Tweetie, we’ve got this questionnaire thing that you can help us out with. It’s for school.”
We explain the whole thing to him.
“Sure, I’ll answer questions. I ain’t got nothin’ better to do. Unless—you got a gun, Tracy?” he asks, looking out toward the walnut tree.
“No.”
“Well, then, I ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”
We’re still asking him questions, writing as fast as we can, when Mom and Dad come in from work, loaded with groceries and papers.
“Hi, Tracy,” Mom says. “I haven’t seen you around much. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Finley. I’ve been away all summer.”
“Well, we’re all back in the swing of things now, aren’t we?” my mom says, pointing to a stack of tests she’s just put on the table. She’s always grading papers, or making up lessons, or calling students.
My dad goes to the phone to call out for Chinese food. That’s what we do once a week, on grocery shopping nights.
“Would you like to stay for a bite to eat with us, Tracy?” he asks.
“Well . . .”
“C’mon. It’s really good stuff we get,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ll call and leave a message for my mom, so she’ll know where I am.”
After she makes the call, we get back to the questions for Uncle Tweetie. When we get to the one about what he’d change about his personal life, he says, “I’d be with my Chickee.”
Most of his answers go on and on, one thing leading to another. He tells us of his grandfather, who fought in the civil war, and of his grandmother, who threw boiling water on a Yankee who was trying to get into their smokehouse. I can’t believe the stuff he’s got in his head.
“I’d be on the Yankee side,” I say. “There should never have been such a thing as slavery.”
“Well, Son, if you was on the Yankee side, your great-great-great-grandma woulda threw boiling water on you, unless she’d had a gun handy. But that’s war. It’s all a sorry mess. I was too young for the Great War and too old for number two. Fine with me. I’m a farmer. I want to see things grow, not make ’em die.” He tried to explain his favorite childhood game to us, something called Snap. But we never got it.
He told us about how he’d been saved and how they’d baptized him in the river, next to a water moccasin, and it never even looked at them.
“You been saved?” he asks Tracy.
“Not that I know of,” she says.
“You’d know it, Sister,” he says. Then he shakes his head sadly, “I worry about you younguns, not bein’ saved, livin’ here where you get them big earthquakes, and not havin’ sense enough to get married when anyone can see you been bit hard by that old love bug.”
“Just two more questions,” I say, eager to change the subject.
Those answers take another hour. It is eleven by the time Tracy leaves
and Uncle Tweetie goes to bed. I think because he’s stayed up so late he may sleep past dawn tomorrow.
No luck. At the first light of day he’s singing, “I will meet you in the morning by the bright riverside, where our troubles will all pass away . . .”
He must know about a million songs. I bury my head under the pillow, but it’s not enough to keep him out. “You’ll know me, in the morning, by the smile on my face,” he sings. Then he starts talking to Chickee. I finally drift back to sleep after he gets up.
Saturday morning, when I’m doing some clean-up stuff on the job site, Dad comes over to me with a soda.
“Want to take a short break?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, reaching for the can, wiping the sweat out of my eyes.
“I thought I’d offer you the stereo again,” he says. “I’m glad to see you’re liking Uncle Tweetie. He’s a good man. I hope you’re not still mad about the situation.”
I don’t know what to say. I am still mad at them, for the way they handled it. Liking or not liking Uncle Tweetie has nothing to do with it.
“I’d still like my own room,” I say.
“So you don’t want the stereo now, even with headphones?”
“Not until I have my own space for it,” I say.
“Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” Dad says, and walks back to where the carpenter is working. I don’t even know what he means by that.
The truth is, I’m at Tracy’s house a lot more than I am my own now. Her mom is hardly ever home. Last night she called Tracy from work and said she had a chance to go to Laughlin with some friends for the weekend. Would Tracy mind? So she’s going to be away until Sunday afternoon. Cool.
After we get back from the movies, I go home and check in. Tracy’s kind of afraid to stay alone in her house all night, so I wait until my mom and dad go to bed. Then I go into my bedroom and lump pillows under the covers so it looks like someone is sleeping there, if no one looks too closely. Uncle Tweetie is sound asleep.
I could have just told my parents I was staying at Tracy’s, but what if they’d said no? Better not to bring it up.
I tiptoe to the chest of drawers, reach into the back corner of the bottom drawer, and take one of the condoms Rick left behind. Then I sneak quietly out the front door and go over to Tracy’s. I have plans.
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