Poked

by Naomi Niles

  That’s what he didn’t seem to get—he may have been younger once, he may have been stupid and immature and ridden a motorcycle along the top of the tallest building in Waco, but he had grown up now. Getting older and getting some perspective will do that to you. And so, I knew, would losing your wife. His problem was he still thought of himself as that awkward, jug-eared boy who had spent a night in jail for cow-tipping on Friday nights. He just needed someone to show him that he was older now, that the past was behind him, and that he could proceed, comfortably and with great dignity, into the future.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Curtis

  The next morning over a breakfast of bagels, pork beans, leftover green beans, fried eggs, sausage, and hash browns, Mama gave me her assessment of Allie.

  “She’s a smart girl,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “But she doesn’t let it go to her head. It’s obvious she comes from money, went to a good school, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she acts around people. Most kids, they go away to a fancy college and come back strutting around like they own the world. I didn’t sense any of that from her.”

  “She’s humble,” said Dad from behind his morning paper. The president was returning from the Middle East and had promised to visit Galveston, which he had declared a federal disaster area. “Humble and level-headed.”

  I poured myself a glass of Mama’s celebrated blue lemonade. “Yeah, I guess I hadn’t really thought about it,” I said as I stirred the glass thoughtfully with a long spoon. “But that’s one of the things I really like about her. She’s smart, but I don’t feel like an idiot when I talk to her. Or at least, no more than usual. Like, I can have a conversation with her, and it doesn’t feel like she’s talking down to me.”

  “It seems like she really wants to fit in here,” said Mama. “Not just with us, but around here, in general. Did you notice how much she talks like a Texan?”

  “I did.” I took a sip of my drink. It was way too sugary and yet somehow just right. “I wonder what she sounded like before.”

  “You ought to get on Facebook and see,” said Mama. “I bet there are old videos.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that. Besides, she hasn’t even friended me yet. But it sure seems like you both liked her.”

  Dad nodded, which was as close to an endorsement as I was going to get. Mama said, “I don’t have any complaints. When you told me you had met a girl, I admit to being a little worried, but she’s so charming, and she fit into our family perfectly. I’m actually looking forward to having her in our back yard, coming over for breakfast every couple of days, maybe dinner a few nights a week, maybe staying in and watching a movie.”

  “Almost sounds like you’re the one going out with her,” I said with a smile.

  “You could do a lot worse than her,” said Mama quietly. “A lot worse. Anyway, whatever happened to that girl who used to come around here every so often?”

  “Who, Lizzie?” I shrugged. “We ain’t seen each other in a while. I think that relationship is pretty much DOA.” I didn’t want to have to think about the conversation we’d had the other night, about the dejected tone in her voice.

  Just then the front door flew open, and Darren walked in wearing long cargo shorts and a sleeveless Pink Floyd t-shirt with a rainbow on it. “So where’s this girl?” he yelled as he strode into the kitchen. “When do I get to meet her?”

  “Whenever you promise me you’re not gonna steal her away,” I said. Darren gave me a puzzled look and reared his head back. “I’m joking, but also, I’m completely serious!”

  “Sounds like someone’s getting a little paranoid,” said Darren, loading a couple of slabs of leftover pork roast onto his plate and sitting down next to Mama.

  “Do you want me to repeat the conversation we had the other day?”

  “Nah, I’m good,” said Darren, reaching for the lemonade pitcher. “How about we cut a deal: I’ll stay away from your girl if you stay away from mine.”

  “Soon as you get yourself a girl, I am prepared to honor that agreement,” I replied.

  “So you’re saying she’s fair game in the meantime?”

  I threw him a deadly glare, which shut him up right quick.

  “Now boys,” said Mama, rising from the table and picking up her plate and Dad’s, “women come and go, but you two still have to be brothers for the rest of your lives. I don’t want to get a call from the police in the middle of the night saying two of my boys have been tryin’ to murder each other. I’ll know which two boys it is, too, without them having to tell me.”

  “Let ‘em kill each other if they want to,” said Dad, pulling out his churchwarden pipe and reaching into his shirt pocket for his matches. “Just means I get second helpings at breakfast.”

  “Then you can pay for the funeral out of your own pocket,” said Mama. “I, for one, plan to die before any of my children. So, Darren, you had better stay away from Curtis’ girl.”

  Darren raised his hands in mock surrender. “Seems like y’all are jumping the gun here. I ain’t even met her yet!”

  “No, and you’re not going to today,” said Dad, as he slowly rose from the table. “One of the fence-posts is still damaged from where the hogs rushed it last week, trying to bring it down. So today, you and your brother and I are gonna repair it and hope they don’t murder us in the meantime.”

  I accepted my fate with a resigned shrug, but Darren didn’t seem too happy about it. “Is this really what I’m doing with the rest of my day? What if I had plans?”

  “Do you?” asked Dad, raising his right brow shrewdly.

  “Well, no,” said Darren slowly. “But I could have! Why does it always seem like there are chores to be done whenever I come around?”

  Instead of answering, Dad came around the table and went out the back door. Darren swore under his breath and followed him outside. I walked over to the sink for a glass of water; Mama’s lemonade was great, but it dried up my mouth like nothing else.

  We spent the rest of the morning digging up and repairing the fence-post. The hogs’ assault had been remarkably vicious, as if they had charged the fence together in fear for their lives. There was still a gap in it just big enough that one of the smaller hogs could have snuck out—and in fact, when we rounded them up and counted them at the end of the day, there was one missing.

  “Want me to go out and look for ‘im?” I asked Dad.

  Dad made a dismissive motion with his arm. “Forget it,” he said angrily. “If they want to get out that bad, there’s no point in trying to keep ‘em holed up.”

  Meanwhile, to fill the silence, Darren was still going on about how much he wanted to meet Allie.

  “Well, you probably won’t get to tomorrow,” I said as I planted the shovel firmly into the ground. “Zach’s getting here in the morning, and the parents are probably gonna want us to spend all day with him. And then tomorrow night, we’re going camping.”

  “You ought to invite her along,” said Darren. “I bet she loves the outdoors.”

  “She probably does,” I said. “I’ll think about it.” Really the only reason I was hesitant to invite her was because Darren seemed a little too eager. “Are you coming?”

  Darren shook his head irritably. “I can’t. I’m supposed to go bowling with the little league team tomorrow.” I stared at him in disbelief. “As part of my community service, I got drafted into helping out with the Brensley-Dunkins Elementary Little League team three times a week, so that’s where I’ve been lately. Don’t tell your girlfriend.”

  “What, that you went to jail for getting in a bar fight and now you have to do community service with fourth-graders? I’ll try to remember not to bring it up at dinner.”

  “Good, because she’s coming up the road right now.” He motioned to the driveway. Allie’s green Honda was lurching through the potholes, Allie gritting her teeth and looking stressed.

  “Hey, you,” I said, coming over and giving her a side hug as she came
through the fence. “Sorry, I’m all sweaty and covered in dirt. This is my brother, Darren.”

  “Pleasure,” said Darren gruffly. He shook her hand. “I don’t usually look this nasty; it’s just, the hogs have been tearin’ down the fence and diggin’ up the garden.”

  “It’s alright,” said Allie. “I don’t look so great myself today.”

  “Look better’n me, that’s for damn sure,” mumbled Darren.

  “Hey, my brother Zach is flying in tomorrow and we’re probably gonna go camping.” I rested my head on the handle of the shovel. “You wanna come with us?”

  I half-expected her to make up some B.S. excuse, but to my surprise, she said, “Yes, I would love that. Where are we goin’ camping?”

  “Shadow Creek Park? Have you heard of it?” She shook her head. “Okay, well it’s tremendous. Some of the biggest and oldest trees in Texas, limbs the size of my pickup. Last Christmas, a girl got lost there, and it took ‘em three days to find her.”

  “Gosh, you make it sound so appealing,” said Allie. I couldn’t tell whether she was joking or not. “Should I bring my own sleeping bag?”

  “Unless you wanna head back early, but Zach and I were planning on spending the night. He’s been emailing me about it all week. He’s excited.”

  “I’m excited,” said Allie. “It’s been ages since I last went camping. It was in the forests of Vermont during the summer, and it was freezing. I’ve never been camping in Texas.”

  I smiled, trying to ignore the feel of my heart pounding, my insides doing the conga. “It’s a hundred times better than Vermont camping, trust me. I wouldn’t lie to you about this.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Allie

  The next morning was a Monday. First thing I did when I woke up was call Dave and let him know I would be taking the week off.

  “What’s that?” he yelled. It sounded like he was caught in the middle of a windstorm; I heard a loud, high-pitched whistling and the screams of distant voices. “You’ll have to speak into the phone. I can barely you!”

  “I said, I’m gonna have to take the week off!” I said, with more than a hint of impatience.

  “But there’s no receptionist! If you leave, there will be no one left to man the office! Excuse me for one second.” In a lower voice, he said, “I told you, I’ve already given blood. No, I’m not interested!” Turning back to me, he added, “Who will run the clinic in your absence?”

  “I ran the clinic alone for four and a half days last week,” I replied. “We had maybe one person come in while you were gone. I spent most of the week at the front desk reading Nicholas Nickleby on Project Gutenberg.”

  “Well, do what you think is best,” said Dave. “But if we get back and there are three hundred old ladies waiting at the door for their heartworm medication, I’ll know who to blame.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” I hung up.

  At first, I had been hesitant to tell him I wouldn’t be coming in that week. But once I had made the call, it felt like a weight lifted off of me. Now I could focus my attention on the camping trip and on packing. While the cats crowded around curiously, I spent the next half-hour loading up my duffel bag with toiletries, toilet paper, cosmetics, enough clothes for three or four days in the wilderness, sunscreen, bug spray, and a large Crocodile Dundee-style hat with a rounded crown and medium brim.

  Right as I was finishing, there came a light knock on the door. I opened it, half-expecting to see Curtis’ mom, but it was Curtis.

  “Hey, we’re havin’ breakfast over at the house,” he said. “Dad’s down at the airport picking up Zach, and they ought to be here in a few minutes if you want to join us.”

  When I had first heard that Curtis’ Navy SEAL brother was flying into town for the week, I had been nervous. One of my uncles had been a career army officer, and one morning when we were eating breakfast, he leaped up from the table, grabbed his rifle, threw open the door, and blasted a hole through a raccoon that had shown up on our front lawn. Since then, I had retained a vague notion that all military guys were like that. But Curtis and his mom put me at ease over breakfast.

  “I always thought Zach was the sweetest of the boys,” said Mrs. Savery. “When he was a baby, he used to climb up onto my chest and lay there for hours and not wanna get up. And eventually I’d have to tell him, ‘Sweetheart, I have to get up. I have to cook supper.’ I was so surprised when he decided to join the Navy.”

  “Well, he’s not a baby anymore, Mom,” said Curtis. “Though I still think he decided to join on an impulse, just to upstage me on the day of my engagement.” He narrowed his eyes and shook his head.

  Mrs. Savery continued to tell stories about the boys during lunch when Zach, a reserved young man in a blue uniform with short black hair and tattoos spanning the length of his arms, arrived at the house. After giving me a perfunctory hug, Zach sat himself down at the head of the table and began quietly spooning fruit preserves onto his plate. His serenity was reassuring; he had more of Curtis’ Zen-like self-composure than Darren’s bluster.

  “You excited about the trip?” Curtis leaned over and whispered. “We’ll be leaving right after lunch, if you’re ready. If not, we might just throw you in the back of the truck and go anyway.”

  I nodded eagerly. “No need to do any throwing; I’m already packed and everything.”

  Curtis blinked rapidly. “Look at you!” he said.

  Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Mr. Savery was grilling Zach on what life was like in Afghanistan.

  “You go into the mountains much?” he asked.

  Zach shook his head as he cut up his pork steak into perfect cubes. “No, as a team medic I spend most of my time in bombed-out hospitals, treating injuries for high-priority patients. We tend to stay out of the mountains unless we’re trained climbers, and that’s not a skill set I have yet. Although I’m working on it,” he added in a quiet voice.

  Mr. Savery nodded, looking impressed. “I would think climbing would be a very valuable skill for a Navy SEAL.”

  “Oh, it is,” said Zach. “There are so many places that can’t be accessed unless you have some climbing ability. Not just the mountains, which are pretty much off limits to all but the most skilled climbers, but also ships, the roofs of buildings, you name it.”

  “They ought to send you out there to fix that oil spill in the Gulf,” said Curtis. “You’d climb up on that oil rig and turn that thing right off.”

  The rest of the family laughed, but Zach retained his air of perfect seriousness. “You’d need a whole team to get that mess cleaned up. I understand they’ve been going at it for about a week now.”

  “Yeah, but it’s just getting worse,” said Mrs. Savery. “I don’t know what the deal is.”

  “Well, government can’t do everything,” said Zach, “not when its resources are stretched all over the world like this. In the last couple decades, we’ve fought two major wars, a couple of minor ones, and if you think that’s not a strain on our power, you’re kiddin’ yourself. We can’t do this indefinitely.”

  He and his dad went on talking about politics while I finished my grits and tried not to look too often at Curtis. Every now and then he’d catch me glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, and I’d return to my plate, blushing redder than the tangerines on Mrs. Savery’s plate.

  “I can’t remember the last time the four of us were in the same room,” she said, beaming at both of her sons as lunch was winding down. “Now if only Marshall and Braxton and maybe Darren were here, my joy would be complete.”

  “Darren I could take or leave,” said Zach with a slight roll of his eyes. “Marshall owes me money, so it’ll be good to see him again.”

  “How much?” asked Curtis.

  “About a thousand dollars.”

  “Yow! Good luck ever getting that back.”

  “Well, the thing about being in the Navy is,” said Zach, “you learn ways of getting things.”

  “You were nev
er one to be shy when you wanted something,” said Mrs. Savery. “I remember when you were four, you insisted on going to Babies R Us because you were tired of having brothers, you wanted a sister, and you thought that was the store where the babies came from. We tried to tell you that babies don’t come from a store, but you were adamant about it. ‘No, it’s Babies R Us. That’s where you got me and Curtis.’ You still didn’t believe us even when we took you to the store and there were no babies for sale.”

  “Mama, you’ve told that story like, a hundred times,” said Curtis, looking disgruntled. “Nobody wants to hear it again.”

  “I hadn’t heard it,” I said quietly.

  “Anyway,” said Curtis, rising and tapping his hands lightly on the table, “we’d better get going before it gets too dark.”

  “But it’s only noon!” said Mrs. Savery.

  I walked out the back door through the yard and retrieved my duffel bag from the tiny house. River and Phoenix were both meowing to be fed, and I swore under my breath when I came in and saw them: I had nearly forgotten to ask Mrs. Savery if she would watch them. As I walked back across the yard toward the kitchen, I saw Zach and Curtis standing out by the gate, loading up the back of the pickup.

  “Y’all know we’re only leaving for two or three days, right?” I asked. “You really gonna need all this?”

  “Better to be prepared,” said Curtis, laying down a shotgun underneath a pile of daisy-scented blankets. My heart leaped into my throat when I saw it, and for a single dizzying moment, I wondered if I wasn’t making a mistake.

  “Are you sure you need that thing?” I asked. “We’re not—we’re not planning on shooting anything, are we?”