A Rambler Steals Home

by Carter Higgins

  “Knock, knock,” I said, and spun past the pennants.

  “My girl,” June said. “There she is.”

  It made my stomach bubble up like the onion‑ring oil when she said that, both because I was so happy to be her girl and also because I wondered about her other girl, who seemed to be nowhere close.

  “You’re looking a little better,” June said when she saw my face.

  “Wouldn’t be summer without a bunch of Band-Aids,” I said.

  “Well,” June said, “doesn’t change your smile.”

  “I brought you some strawberries and apples,” I said. “Betsy had a real good idea about some pinks, and so here we go.”

  June and I sat on the stadium’s front steps, right back onto those Rockskipper seat cushions, swatting the flies that tried to taste the fruit.

  “Betsy?”

  “I know.” I took a big, loud bite of an apple to get busy with something else.

  “Lump Emmett says she’s real good at pedicures,” June said. “My hands might be past nail-painting age, but maybe she can fix me up at the Rally.” I got stuck somewhere between thinking that was a spectacular idea and not liking it at all, not liking the sharing‑June‑with‑Betsy‑Plogger part.

  June inspected her wrinkly, rough hands, and then pressed them to her face. “They’re not what they used to be.”

  “How long have you known Ferdie?” I asked her, trying to change the subject from something small that I didn’t like to something big that she might not want to remember. They must have shared Franklin if they had shared tissues.

  Instead of moving her hands away, June scrunched them higher up toward her temples, rubbing them in a way that said it was a long story to tell. But she started anyway.

  “Ferdie? He’s been a friend to our family since the early days. Used to play ball right on this field before it had all these metal seats wrapped around it. That’s how once-upon-a-time works, did you know?”

  I didn’t.

  “It’s what you know all about, things changing and the times along with it. Once-upon-a-time becomes the next thing upon a time.”

  My mama was the once-upon-a-time, and June was the next thing.

  “What was here once upon a time?”

  “An empty lot—​a bunch of dirt and boys and ball. A bunch of friends.”

  I wanted to ask about her once-upon-a-time girl, and what happened next, but I’d almost finished up the strawberries and June’s not-painted fingernails were still up near her head.

  “Took a while for this place to grow on Ferdie, but he’ll be here caring for it as long as it takes.”

  Above, Ferdie’s marquee said POSTER NIGHT! KEEP THE ROCKSKIPPERS AT HOME EVEN WHEN THEY’RE AWAY!

  “Well, he told me he liked sweet‑potato fries, so maybe next time you come by the Grill, you can bring him along? He’s never come before.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” June said, and we ate the rest of the strawberries.

  Twenty-One

  I SMEARED on some Christmas Nutmeg before I walked into the Heritage Inn to use the facilities. Lollie Plogger was right there in the lobby.

  “Derby!” she said, looking left and right and left again—​maybe watching for Betsy, maybe since she sounded happy to see me and shouldn’t have.

  “Hey, Lollie,” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Well, Betsy decided to throw a fit about something, and my mom is up there trying to get her over it so she’ll come with us to the drugstore. It was her idea, to get supplies for the Rally.”

  “Interesting,” I said, and it was.

  “I mean, you know Betsy,” Lollie said, and shook her head the way Garland did when someone told him they didn’t believe in Santa Claus.

  Without Betsy nearby, it was almost like Lollie was in charge now, standing there like she’d been trying on her mama’s confidence. It looked good on her, even if she had to grow into it a little. Since my mind hadn’t been all the way changed on Betsy Plogger, that thought made me crinkle my nose so I wouldn’t let out a laugh.

  “Bless you,” Lollie said.

  “Lollie, what? Bless me?” The laugh slipped out and felt real good.

  “Yeah. Uncle Scooter taught me that. If you think you’re gonna sneeze and someone says Bless you, you don’t. And if you are all alone and nobody can bless you, you just think Blue cow over and over and over again until you’re not making that funny face anymore.”

  “Well, I’ll have to remember that. Sometimes we kick up a lot of pepper in Garland’s Grill,” I said. “Good luck with Betsy.” And I thought I mostly meant it.

  It was hot outside, the kind of hot that made the creek feel extra nice, and that’s when I remembered Triple down there, all alone with Peter. I still owed him a lesson in Rockskipper high-fives, with or without Twang.

  Marcus and I met up in the parking lot, him on the tail end of his groundskeeper lunch break and me free from getting blessed by Lollie Plogger. We didn’t have a lot of time, but I had to show him how I thought our plan would work.

  “Marcus,” I said, “we’ve got to go through the stadium to get there.”

  “What if June sees us? And besides, if Ferdie sees me now, then I’m going to have to get back to work. He’s an honest kind of guy, and the Skipper is too.” Marcus reminded me a little of Lollie just then, with how he puffed up his chest and acted bigger than his britches.

  “Lunch break, Marcus,” I said. “You still have some time. It’s a Rally emergency anyway, and that’s a high priority for the turf‑management team, right?”

  He couldn’t say anything to that, even though I was exaggerating a bunch. So the two of us scraped our shins through the wide row of grass and gravel that separated the Heritage Inn’s parking lot from the back side of the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium. Marcus ran his fingers along the boards, knowing just where to hop them up to avoid the splinters, and then the two of us slipped right between the bowing boards.

  “Grass, Marcus,” I said. “For Peter.”

  Marcus looked at me real funny, but he still made a beeline for the bullpen, and I followed close behind. I only peeked up once to see if Garland was in the nosebleeds, and when I saw that he wasn’t, I bumped right into the back end of Marcus.

  “Derby, honestly,” he said. “We’re about to go see June’s house and you said it was full of weeds, right? Is Peter too good for that kind of green?”

  He wasn’t, of course. He was just a turtle. But there was some kind of magic in the stadium’s grass, and that’s what Triple deserved.

  Marcus picked up a white plastic bag that used to have pistachios in it and maybe even still had some spit-out shells, and that’s what he used to stuff some grass clippings in.

  It would have to do.

  “Come on,” he said, and we ran through the outfield, past where Lump had left him alone on Thanksgiving Day.

  Marcus hopped up into the corner seats where left field became the infield, right at the edge of the away team’s dugout. He snaked up through a few rows, and I was right behind him, the Skipper. We were two ghosts of the season, slipping through time and traditions only to slide out again. And then we were outside once more and it was my turn to lead.

  It took as long to get to the Mattingly house as it did to get an order at Garland’s Grill on a day that the Rockskippers lose, when everyone wants ice cream. Scooping takes a lot of muscle that Triple doesn’t have yet, so you’d better not be in a rush. It wasn’t that June’s house was too far away, but Marcus and I slowed down. I think we were both a little nervous about this plan’s bigness.

  Once we got there, I saw again how bad it was.

  “I don’t know too much about flowers,” Marcus said.

  “Yeah, but how hard could it be to rip these out and plant some new ones?”

  We crouched down by the bed under the mailbox’s sun that always shone, not sure whether to pull a flowering weed or leave it. And that was only the beginning. We stayed slow and hushed while we wande
red around, because this place deserved some kind of reverence. I’d have to figure out what to do with the frog-sized gulp in my throat in order to say anything anyway.

  “It’s everywhere,” Marcus said, pushing piles of this and that out of the way with his feet so he’d have a place to step.

  I armed myself with sticks and twigs and flowers that had wilted right off a magnolia tree, and said, “I know.”

  “Even this door could use some sprucing up, don’t you think, Derby?”

  And he was right. The paint on the front door was chipped, a faded red like the one at the stadium, and even though that had probably been happening before Franklin died, it looked extra sad peeking out over the yard like that.

  “I wonder if Garland has a wreath to share,” I said, blowing off the spiderwebs as best I could. “She might not want to remember Christmas all the time like he does, though.”

  I whispered that last part a little, but it felt real loud in my gut. Marcus took a handful of sticks out of my grip and we stood there on the porch like we’d just knocked and were waiting to be invited in.

  “We can do this,” I said, or breathed or felt or something.

  “Rally caps, for sure,” said Marcus.

  Twenty-Two

  WHEN we got back within spitting distance of the stadium, Marcus retraced our steps to get back to work and I swiped on some Christmas Nutmeg to undo the sweat and add some kind of glamour. Sneaky like the stadium pigeons, I rounded the corner out front to get closer to the box office, closer to the pennants, closer to June.

  “Derby?”

  A small voice came from the steps. It belonged to Betsy, and there she was, right under the marquee. Before, I would have thought she was sitting alone because she’d bossed everyone right out of the picture, but now she was a snapshot of lonely.

  “Betsy, hi,” I said, gentle like you would be if you saw a broken-winged bird. “What are you doing here?”

  She sighed a dramatic Woe is me kind of sigh, but I believed her. “Lollie and I were supposed to be planning the Rally booth. We’re the best at painting nails, you know.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Aunt Candy said she’d take us to the drugstore to stock up, and I said it didn’t even matter to me what the colors were, as long as they were beautiful and not tested on animals.”

  “Right. Vegetarian.”

  “And then Aunt Candy laughed at me but Lollie didn’t say anything and so they went without me because I wouldn’t come out of the bathroom and I really hope they got the best pinks.” Betsy unraveled right before my eyes.

  I didn’t really know what to say, mostly because I’d seen the other half of this ruckus in the lobby at the Heritage Inn. Plus, Triple and Garland and I had never had a conversation about nail polish, so I didn’t have any Been there, done that wisdom for her.

  “I wouldn’t come out because I cut my hair,” Betsy said, and she really had.

  She shook out a sloppy ponytail to show me what was left over. Her bathroom floor must have looked like the bullpen with all its grass clippings strewn about in clumps and piles—​that’s how much she’d hacked off.

  “Oh.” It was all I could find.

  Miss Houston’s organ was warming up behind us, providing a soundtrack for this moment that was equal parts horror and sympathy.

  “Well, don’t you both look like somebody trampled through your rosebuds?” That was June, and Betsy and I looked up at her in sync. “I can fix this. Come on.” June probably meant Betsy’s unfortunate haircut, but the way she said it made me think that she could have fixed the impatiens and the Christmas wreath and the peeling paint too. But the storm that had trampled through her rosebuds was too much, too strong, too gray.

  And so, believe it or not, we went to her house, the three of us.

  June ushered us in with all the tenderness and care she would use for picking up shattered glass. There I was again, inside the front hall with an invitation this time, a moving picture by the wall of stills. And then I caught a whiff of something sweet, a fresh smell, one that traveled farther than the mustiness that clung to the walls.

  “Strawberries.” June answered the question I hadn’t even asked yet.

  “Smells delicious,” Betsy said, and I agreed.

  While June went ahead of us, we stayed back. It was hot, so maybe it was the sight of the girl that made my skin go goosebumps.

  The pictures on the wall showed a family of three at birthdays and barbecues and celebrating the first day of school. June and Franklin were so young once, and even though they got older as the wall got longer, they were always looking at the girl. All three of them were dancing, dancing all the way down the hall. The scenes spoke of that girl’s shyness and her spunk. In just a few steps she grew up from a little thing to a girl my age, riding a lawn mower. And then there she was, nearly grown, in right field at the James Edward Allen Gibbs Stadium, wearing jean shorts, saddle shoes, and a grounds‑crew cap.

  “Wow,” I said, and this time it was Betsy who agreed.

  I didn’t hear June slip behind us until she clanked some ice against the sides of a glass. Maybe it was to get our attention, or maybe she was as startled as I was by that photograph.

  “Franklin took that one. That’s why she’s laughing so hard. He was too, which is why it’s a little blurry. Stole her daddy’s heart more often than she stole his riding lawn mower.” June handed us each a glass of lemonade, and used the cool napkin left over to dampen her sweaty forehead.

  “Who is she?” I barely heard myself ask.

  “That’s our girl, our one and only.” I heard a smile in June’s voice, even though the sparkle in her eye was turning a bit watery. “That’s Phoebe Susan.”

  Of course June had to go and have a daughter with the most beautiful name I had ever heard. I’d thought the name June was glamorous, but Phoebe Susan was exquisite.

  “She’s pretty.” Betsy nudged me a little, reminding me to snap out of it or say something, and that’s when I realized who she was.

  Sugar Sue.

  Twenty-Three

  “WHAT happened to her?” I whispered it.

  June smoothed the wrinkles in her dress, wrinkles that were a little bit darker because some sweat had soaked through. “Come into the kitchen, girls. Let’s have a bite. It’s late for lunch.”

  Betsy and I followed her into the kitchen, where a wide-open window was covered with a thin curtain that didn’t budge because there wasn’t any breeze to make it dance. A small fan on the counter tried to help, but it didn’t look like it had many nods left in its neck. June turned a little toward us and a little toward the counter, where she sliced cucumbers and tomatoes and slathered mayonnaise on pieces of white bread. The sweat was shiny on her face, not at all dusty like the pictures on the wall.

  And then she smiled a sad kind of smile. One like the Rockskippers had the other night during the fifth inning, the kind that turns mostly down and barely up.

  “We lost her right when she’d barely finished being a teenager. It was an accident at the creek, and she slipped under its current and drifted away.” June stopped talking for a moment, but she didn’t lose the look on her face.

  “The creek,” I said, looking for some kind of answer in my own wrinkled napkin.

  I thought about my creek, where Triple lost his best thing and was probably alone right then and where Garland didn’t let us go out too far. The creek, where Marcus had taught me all the best Rockskipper high-fives. The creek, where Betsy never showed up thanks to her hairdos and pedicures. It was strange to think of June and Franklin and me and Marcus knowing the same place so well, sharing some mysterious roots.

  That sad tale must have been a hard secret to keep. And I couldn’t figure out why June had decided to tell it now, just to me and Betsy Plogger.

  Betsy picked up a folded-over newspaper and used it as a fan. When she noticed me looking, she pulled out the sports page and gave it to me.

  “Thanks,” I whisp
ered to her, and she smiled back.

  “You’ve always reminded me of her, Derby,” June said. “You have her curiosity and the same disheveled head of hair hiding a brain so smart, the same ragged T-shirts that can’t contain a heart of love and good. You’ve got the same smile that can light up a stadium.”

  “Thank you, June.” I still could only whisper.

  “You’re welcome, Sugar Sue.”

  June brought over three plates of tomato‑and‑cucumber sandwiches and strawberries, a shaker of salt, and a bamboo fan that was a whole lot fancier than the sports page. “Show me something, Betsy,” she said. “I bet you’ve got a smile underneath there too.” She grabbed a hand of each of us from across the table. I should have been mad that I was somehow sharing this moment with Betsy Plogger, but knowing she had the same mama-sized hole as me had changed my mind on her.

  And then Betsy smiled.

  We didn’t talk about the heat as it rose or why a puddle of candle wax was stuck to the middle of the table, right in between our hands. June said she’d fix Betsy’s hair, but I think we all needed more fixed than that.

  So there at the kitchen table, Betsy told her story again. I helped out with some of the details this time, so June got the facts rather than the flair. And over three lemonades, three tomato‑and‑cucumber sandwiches, and a centerpiece of freshly picked Queen Anne’s lace, Betsy made her second new friend of the summer.

  “Stay here a minute.” June disappeared from the table, taking her bamboo fan with her.

  Betsy looked at me. “I know she belongs to you, Derby.”

  My heart sank like an anchor tied to all the bricks in the world. That’s when I knew that it wasn’t true. June didn’t belong only to me. She belonged to all of Ridge Creek, even Betsy. But June and I had a foundation built on spending summers and the rest of the year with boys—​the Rockskippers and Franklin, Garland and Triple. It was built on sharing Marcus, even before he was the Skipper. It was built on lemonades and lipstick and laughing on the front porch, and it was somehow built on the family we’d had once upon a time.