What Dies in Summer

by Tom Wright

  But not in my mind. I thought about her and knew I would never forget her. And I wondered what she could have been trying to tell me during those long nights when she had stood by my bed.

  FORESTS OF THE NIGHT

  1 | Audience

  L.A. AND I both had to answer a lot of questions from the police and reporters about the girl—it turned out her name was Tricia Venables—and of course every kid we knew had to come by to hear the story firsthand. But most of the excitement had worn off by now and I was ready for a break from all the fuss.

  “Going for a walk,” I said to L.A., grabbing my Red Sox cap and pushing through the front screen door, not even thinking about where I was going, just wanting solitude. L.A., grooming Jazzy’s fur with a hairbrush, glanced up at me as I went by but didn’t say anything.

  Walking and thinking, mostly about Tricia Venables, I eventually found myself passing the church, dark and silent now on a weekday, and it deflected my thoughts into the hopeless mental thicket of godliness. Gram never used the word herself, but it was the only one I could think of to describe her sub-intense and inexact requirements for doing the right thing, which seemed to mean behaving at all times as if the Sunday school teacher were watching. The concept was easy enough to talk about but amazingly tricky to put into practice.

  Church was an every-Sunday thing under Gram’s rules, but she could be a little perverse about holiness. She had this thing about insisting on actual right conduct, almost like it mattered as much as going to services. Not to say the sermons had a reverse effect on me, but they did sharpen my awareness of how confusing and tiresome doing the right thing can be and caused me to have doubts about even being saved in the first place. I knew if it was something you could directly feel, like long underwear or a toothache, I wasn’t.

  I thought of all the times I’d sat in the polished oak pew between Gram, who was a believer, and L.A., who wasn’t, and I wondered—had Tricia Venables been saved?

  It sounded like a horrible joke to me.

  Tricia had probably prayed herself cross-eyed, but there she was, dead just the same. I pictured her standing naked in front of God with her head swaying on her ruined neck and her arms and legs gangling around like a puppet on strings, trying to point to where her nipples were supposed to be and asking God what happened, was He off duty that day or just out for coffee or what, and could He please put her back together again, thank you very much.

  What it came down to was that I had a hard time seeing prayer as a practical tool in the face of real danger.

  On the other hand, I remembered when I was just a little kid back in Jacksboro, walking out between two parked cars into the street, a strong hand grabbing my sweater to yank me back, a second later a truck bombing right through the space I’d been about to step into. But when I looked around there was no one behind me, nobody anywhere near me. Nobody on the whole block. I had no explanation for this, but for me it raised possibly the trickiest question of all: Why save me and not somebody else? There had to be thousands of candidates who were more deserving than me.

  I had a new mental image of Tricia, in her damaged state, standing side by side with me while some ghostly hand pinned a blue ribbon on me instead of her. Which for the first time ever gave me a feeling I hadn’t even known was possible—it made me angry at my own mind.

  But then came another idea. Maybe the big plan didn’t call for people being entitled to explanations. Maybe all you got was the chance to think about things and try to figure out for yourself what’s true and what’s not. Maybe not explaining everything, all the whys and why-nots, was a form of respect for human intelligence.

  The thought almost made me laugh out loud.

  I had once asked Gram about talking in tongues the way some people did in church, and she said, “We do not scorn other communions.” Okay, but did that cover drinking poison and picking up snakes to dance with? And what kind of store would you go to for the poison, some kind of anti-pharmacy? Would you need a prescription to make sure it was safe and effective? What would it taste like? Did it come in small quantities like eyedrops or in bulk like Epsom salts, or some other way? And the snakes—either you’d have to catch fresh ones for each service or have them on hand all the time, like communion wafers, meaning somebody would have to clean their cages and keep them fed. Or if they came from some kind of supplier who stocked the poisonous ones, possibly as a specialty item, would it be a matter of buying them outright or just checking them out for the day? Maybe paying a fine for late returns or any damage to the snake? Did you get your money back if the snake bit somebody and they died, or was it if they didn’t die?

  Which was when it came to me that things like these probably weren’t as important as they seemed. They were only ceremonies. They had about as much to do with God as lighting birthday candles did with the passage of time, and most of them were probably made up by people as confused and ignorant as I was.

  Two days later we went to church, just like always.

  To my surprise, Colossians Odell was standing by the white steps that led up to the heavy carved double doors of the sanctuary, holding an imaginary broom and sweeping the paths of certain worshippers as they came abreast of him, shouting, “Hark! Hark!” in his huge voice as they passed.

  His eyes were blood-red and he didn’t seem to recognize me at first. But then suddenly he did, and for just a second he looked right into and through my eyes and all the way to the back of my skull. Then the recognition was gone and he went back to his sweeping. It had been at least a year since I’d seen him doing the mummy-shuffle that went with the medication I knew he was supposed to be taking, and at the moment it was obvious his mind was in the grip of some irresistible power that didn’t affect the rest of us. I started to tell Gram this was the basso profundo we’d talked about, but she was already halfway up the steps, and after another glance at Colossians I decided to let it go.

  The steps were made of white marble, smoothly worn down in the center from all the hopeful feet that had come this way, and they were my idea of the way into heaven. Except for the clouds that would probably be scattered around and the golden light playing across the scene, this must be what it would be like, with the saved people in their serious clothes climbing on up and filing in through the sacred gates with nods and smiles as they took their places in eternity, which at the time I thought of as being constructed primarily of varnished oak and stained glass.

  Gram was wearing her white hat and blue Sunday dress with the small white dots, and L.A. had on her A outfit, the cream-colored dress with red circles and her black patent-leather pumps. Diana was with us today too, dressed in a light blue skirt and white blouse, looking so perfect it made my throat hurt. Both of the girls carried white Bibles with gold lettering on the covers. The transformation they went through in an hour or so on Sunday morning was amazing. But it wasn’t just the clothes and hair—this was what Gram referred to as a sea change, the girls moving and talking differently and somehow altering the gravity and atmosphere around them, changing the significance of everything.

  Shepherd Boy Shepherd greeted us at the top of the stairs, standing there by the doors in his black suit, with his hands and heels together like a mortician. As usual, and unlike Colossians, he didn’t look anybody in the eye. Making him a greeter seemed like a strange idea to me, Shepherd Boy being about as welcoming as a muddy grave, but you could tell he took the job seriously by the deep sober way he tried to talk when he greeted you.

  Shepherd Boy was his real given name, or names. Gram’s theory was it might have been the result of some confusion with the birth certificate at the hospital, maybe because his parents didn’t have a name thought up yet when it was filled out. He wasn’t very old as adults go, but he was earnest. He was also soft and white and had big sleepy gray eyes with long lashes and one of those damp, super-limp handshakes. He never had any friends that I knew of and wasn’t married, but he was youth and music director at the church, which as far as I coul
d tell was the only job he ever had.

  A girl we knew named Lisa Childress had told me that back when she went to Vacation Bible School, Shepherd Boy had offered her five dollars to let him spank her. His idea was to wait until the other kids had left and then he and Lisa would go into the bathroom and do it. The five dollars was going to be for ten licks—seven if she’d lower her panties. He had the five dollars out and a Ping-Pong paddle ready and everything. She said he had clothespins too, but she didn’t ask him what they were for.

  Looking at her expression, I just had to ask. “Did you let him?”

  “Not that time,” she said.

  Shepherd Boy had had himself crucified in the church basement for Good Friday last year. The worshippers all gathered down there for the “special blessing,” and when they pulled the cotton sheeting aside, there he was in a white diaper, with ketchup on his hands, feet, forehead and side, standing on a little box in front of a cross cobbled together out of four-by-fours with his arms out wide like Jesus on Calvary. There were a couple of turns of dried grapevine around his head, and they’d rigged some fake nails for his hands and feet. His eyes were closed, but you could see that his eyeballs were moving around behind the lids.

  Now Shepherd Boy said, “Good morning, Miz Vickers,” looking at Gram’s throat, bending slightly at the waist and letting her take his hand. “It’s so good to have you with us today.” He pushed his noodly black hair back up across his forehead with the other hand, showing us his zits.

  “Good morning to you, Brother Shepherd,” said Gram, giving the limp hand one businesslike shake and then dropping it.

  Then he offered his hand to me, L.A. and finally Diana, who looked up at him through her eyelashes as she took his hand. When we went on into the church she said something into L.A.’s ear that made both of them cover their mouths and snicker.

  For a change Mom and Aunt Rachel were both here, and I looked around for Jack, feeling lighter in my chest when I didn’t see him. Gram slid into the pew next to them, glancing down at Aunt Rachel’s short red dress as Mom leaned over Rachel’s lap to hand Gram a bulletin. Rachel wouldn’t look at Gram. I noticed her eyes were puffy, but Mom looked fresh and pretty. It was easy to see they were sisters.

  Diana, L.A. and I sat in the next row up and across the aisle, L.A. slipping in first, then Diana and me. Diana shifted around a little to get settled, my favorite part of the whole sitting-down process.

  I liked the booky smell and royal feeling of the church almost as much as the singing. The hymns themselves were okay, with simple lyrics and easy chords, but what I really enjoyed was trying to hit harmonies with L.A. and Diana, whose voices went together perfectly.

  We had even caught Shepherd Boy’s attention with our singing, and he was always trying to get the three of us to join the choir. I could have gone either way on this myself, meaning I’d probably have been willing if the girls were interested, but they definitely weren’t, possibly because of the way Shepherd Boy always looked at us. His eyes just never seemed to make it any higher than our necks, and with Diana and L.A. especially he’d sometimes just stare at their breasts while breathing through his mouth. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand his feelings on that point and, being fair, that was more or less the way he looked at everybody. Still, something about him froze us out, and the choir thing never happened.

  As Brother Wells began his sermon I was enjoying Diana’s occasional movements and the warm feeling of her body against mine. She was gripping her small white Bible and looking serious, the way you try to do when you’re in trouble and getting a lecture. It was from past sermons that I knew too much talk about eternal damnation would scare her, and I was hoping for something more along the lines of brotherly love and Christian charity today.

  I watched Brother Wells getting his momentum up. He was a big, hearty, pink man who looked as if he’d been squirted down into his clothes like drive-in ice cream, with a little overflow at the collar, the fancy ring on his little finger flashing impressively as he opened his Bible. As it turned out, his text this Sunday was Jesus in the desert and temptation, which meant the fright factor was going to be a toss-up, depending on the angle he took. I glanced at Diana to see how she was taking it, and to my relief she looked composed and unworried.

  I looked up at the huge stained-glass window in the eastern wall, where Jesus seemed to be standing on a little puff of cloud and holding his punctured hands out with an expression of unbelievable forgiveness, and wondered why nothing like Noah’s flood or the loaves and fishes ever happened anymore and why moments in history didn’t light up like colored jewels the way they had in biblical times.

  But then I gradually lost my awareness of Brother Wells and started reviewing my plan, which involved some thorny issues. One of these was my inability to think of God as a three-man crew, which I usually dealt with by ignoring the concept of the Trinity altogether, at least in the privacy of my own mind. And because I had no new ideas on the subject, that’s what I did today, settling on what seemed like the most practical approach based on Gram’s notions about how things got done. In other words—meaning no disrespect to the Lamb of God or the Holy Ghost or anybody, just going straight to the top when the situation was serious, as Gram always recommended—it was God Almighty Himself I had business with today.

  But approaching God directly took nerve. I felt like a dumb farm hand tracking mud into the parlor, and didn’t know whether I could expect a fair and impartial hearing or not. But now that I thought about it, fair and impartial were not what I actually wanted. What I was looking for was a break.

  Naturally I had the regular mental picture of God as an oversized, fierce old man in a hospital gown, with thick white hair and a flowing beard, seated behind a huge golden desk in a high-backed swivel chair upholstered in black leather. And sure enough, that’s exactly how He did look in my imagination as I felt myself being surrounded by the holy air and perfect light of His presence.

  A semitransparent shadow that I could only assume was the Holy Ghost drifted silently in and out of view in the corners. Based on what little I understood of scripture, I wasn’t surprised not to find Jesus here, because I took it for granted he’d be at the jail or the Cowboys game or some other place where there’d be a concentration of needy souls.

  But it was beginning to dawn on me how many pitfalls were involved in dealing with authority at this level. I had questions about whether Shepherd Boy really worked for God, for example, and I wanted to know what was the point of letting the girl at the overpass die the way she did. I also wanted God’s holy word that nothing like that was going to happen to Gram or Diana or L.A. But asking those particular questions could be taken as criticism, and requesting favors for certain people might make it sound like I was willing to throw everybody else to the wolves. I decided to stick to the main topic.

  But it wasn’t actual conversation I was here for, because I pretty well grasped that God didn’t speak to humans straight out, generally relying on methods like writing on stone and blasting cities to get his ideas across.

  Thinking in complete sentences seemed like the best bet: Sir, it’s about my dad, I thought as hard as I could. I mean, I know You took him for Your own good reasons, and I swear I’m not trying to tell You how to do Your job, but that was really a terrible wreck—

  They’d said the troopers had had to shoot all four of the horses that had been in the trailer, but it was too late for Dad. He was burned, like they say, beyond recognition, like recognition would have helped somehow. I plowed on: Anyway, Sir, I know Dad wasn’t good all the time, maybe hardly ever, like Mom says, but I’d appreciate it very much if You could keep in mind that he was good to me. He let me go with him to the horse auctions all the time and promised he was going to teach me to ride his motorcycle someday. I don’t think the fights he got into were all his fault, and even though Mom is fairly honest about some things, she’s probably not Your best source when it comes to that woman she threw her scissors at
him about. Anyway, he told me it was only a onetime thing and Mom was blowing it all out of proportion. At least I know he didn’t mean any harm, because he hated having anyone mad at him.

  I realized I was starting to ramble, and edging toward dangerous ground to boot, but somehow couldn’t stop myself: So, I just hope You were able to see Your way clear to put Dad in, uh, heaven, Sir, because I think he made a pretty sincere effort to be good most of the time, and as far as I know he never did anything bad enough to belong in hell.

  Reminding God of the hell option may have been a reckless move, but living with Gram and L.A. this long had apparently weaned me away from half measures. Before I could think through the implications of that, though, Diana moved against me and I was back in the real world, just in time to pass the offering plate. I sucked in a deep breath and looked around at the ordinariness of everything, the high colorful windows, the sanctified spaces overhead, the dressed-up people in their pews. Focusing my thoughts on Diana’s clean peppery smell and the warmth of her body against mine, I decided to let myself believe I’d taken my best shot for Dad. This, along with the fact that the dead girl hadn’t visited my bedside since I’d actually seen her lying naked in the grass, tempted me to hope that maybe things were going to turn out all right after all.

  Outside, after the service, I saw Aunt Rachel talking to a man who had appeared from somewhere, a guy exactly the same color as Colossians but completely different in every other way, with close-cut hair, big knotty hands and edgy eyes. He looked quick, limber and hard all at the same time, like a riding whip. I wondered if maybe he was a friend of Colossians, but that idea made me uneasy. I looked around, half expecting Colossians to come at us out of the bushes with his red eyes and his broom, but he was nowhere in sight.