Suddenly, I just can’t handle the pressure. So I take off, riding for home.
“Hey!” he calls.
But now I feel like such a goon, rushing away like that, I just wave and keep on pedaling. This day is falling seriously flat. I’d best head home anyhow, see to it Dog’s got his chores done.
I’ve lived in the same house my whole life—a little yellow square with one bathroom and two bedrooms, which, as you might have guessed, is totally insufficient. Can you imagine a fifteen-year-old girl having to share her bedroom with her twelve-year-old brother? It’s downright embarrassing. I’ve been trying to convince Mama to let Dog move into the living room or down to the storm cellar. But as of yet, I’m having no luck. She’s sure if he was in the living room he’d never cut off the television; and the cellar, well, if I were to be truthful, it ain’t exactly what you’d call habitable. But with a little work . . .
I come in to find my brother kicked back on the couch looking at TV.
“Have you done your chores?” I ask him.
He grunts in response.
“Dog, I asked you a question.”
“She ain’t back yet,” he replies.
“I refuse to take any heat for you on this.” I turn the television off and stand right in front of it.
“What in the hell is up your butt?” he yells.
“I don’t feel like being in trouble—again—for not making sure you get your chores done. I just got home from breaking my back shelving books all afternoon, while you were off playing.”
“Calm yourself, woman,” he teases, “I’m on it,” then saunters out of the room.
All I can say is, three more years then I am out of here. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but I do know this: college is my ticket to somewhere else. I’ve worked my butt off my whole life to see to it that I get to go. I’ll be the first one in my family to do so. How we’ll afford it is a question I ain’t ready to tackle just yet. But I’ll tell you, I sure as hell am not sticking around this crappy-ass town. Mama says the ocean will call me back, keep me from straying too far. I think she’s crazy as a cuckoo bird.
She grew up on the northern coast of North Carolina, on the edge of an area called—I kid you not—the Great Dismal Swamp. Can you imagine? When she finished high school, she cut out like a light—went over to Cary, this little town over by Raleigh. She got herself a job waitressing. That’s where she met my daddy. But Mama missed the ocean something fierce and Daddy wanted to be a fisherman. So they moved down south to the beach. Mama likes it better here than where she grew up. I ain’t clear on why. But I’ve never been up there to the Great Dismal Swamp, never even met my own grandma. She and Mama had some kind of falling-out—I expect having something to do with my daddy. That was before I was even born.
I’ve never been anywhere, really. We had a vacation once, when I was a baby—went up to the Blue Ridge Mountains to see the fall foliage. Mama says it was right beautiful. I don’t remember a thing. That was back when she and Daddy were still happy and all. I’ve seen mountains on the TV and in the movies, of course. But I can’t imagine what it’d be like in person, having that big old mound of earth rising up in front of you. I guess some folks can’t imagine what the ocean is like, and I’ve got that right here in my own backyard.
Towards the end of this school year, my English teacher, Mrs. Avery, put my name in for something called the Program for Promising High School Students, which is like a semester-long college experience for tenth-graders. It’s up in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m real excited to have been nominated. Each school can only recommend one student. Then only fifty kids get to go, and that’s from both of the Carolinas. They live up there in the dorms just like real undergraduates. I ain’t getting my hopes up too high. Nobody from our school has ever been selected to go. I keep wishing this time it might be me. But even if I was lucky enough for that to happen, we couldn’t never afford it. I filled in my part of the application anyhow and sent it along with Mrs. Avery’s forms. I didn’t bother telling Mama about it. I just stuck the parent-signature page at the bottom of a stack of papers from school she needed to sign on a night when she was particularly tired. She didn’t even look at it. No matter, it ain’t exactly likely that they’ll choose me. I reckon I’ll have to wait until after high school to get out of this town. Then my first stop will be them mountains. I’ll go check out that fall foliage, maybe on my way to college, wherever that may be.
Life here is just too boring. Or, at least . . . it was.
2
Mama was off to her job early again this morning. I don’t have to work today, and my two best friends are out of town. Stef is at sleepaway camp, where she spends nearly half the summer, and Joie is with her family in Florida, visiting their people down there. So, I’m going to lay down in my hammock with a big ol’ glass of sweet tea and a romance novel and relax, try to keep my mind from replaying how lame I must have seemed running off from that cute guy behind the library yesterday. I can’t quit ruminating on it.
I finished reading Stallion of My Heart late last night. In the summertime I generally like to read trashy books. You know the ones I mean, with the ladies with their big bosoms on the cover and the muscle guys tearing at their clothes. I never read that stuff during the year, but come summer, I can’t help myself. For school I’m always having to get through the likes of David Copperfield or Romeo and Juliet, books where the English is so thick you’ve got to go over every paragraph six times before you understand what it is they’re aiming to say. By the time summer comes around, my brain needs a rest. So you can see how a steamy romance would hit the spot like a cool summer breeze.
Speaking of which, there ain’t nary a draft in sight, and this humidity is curling up my hair something fierce. The bees are buzzing around my tea, and the mosquitoes are surely biting. So much for my long, lazy afternoon. I believe a storm may be headed this way—the air has that feeling of pressure to it. It’s hotter than a fish in a fry pan. I’m going to go inside, see if I can’t cool down a mite.
Just as I’m opening the screen door, I see a familiar red pickup drive by. It’s them Channing boys. I watch a minute to see if they’ve got my surfer in there with them and wonder again what he must think after I took off like that yesterday. He doesn’t notice me at first, but then he leans his head way out the window to turn and wave like he’s glad to see me. Then I hear them Channings howling with laughter. It is damn near hellish living in the same town since the day you were born, where everybody knows your entire life story and remembers the time you peed your pants in kindergarten. Can’t never get away from your past.
I’ve got the fridge door open to get some cool air, but what I really want is to climb on up inside it. I wonder what his name is—maybe Wade or Walker or Harrison. I bet it ain’t so ordinary and plain as his kinfolk, John William (that’s Junior) or William John (known as Billy Jo). Their truck was headed toward the beach. Maybe I’ll slip on my suit and ride on down there for a swim. Nothing can cool you off when it’s muggy like a dip in the chilly ocean waves.
There’s a bunch of kids from school laying out for a tan as if the sun was shining right through them clouds, but I don’t see no sign of Surferboy. I’d go on over and say hey to them, but they’re just a bunch of rednecks that live out to the farms up the road, always looking for trouble—tipping cows and whatnot. You may think I’m country, but you ain’t seen nothing till you met them farm folk. I’m talking country as a bowl of grits.
Oh Lord, I got a prickling on the back of my neck. Either somebody walked over my grave or else I’m being watched.
I turn to look and there he is, staring right at me from up by the snack shack. Some kind of crazy zingy feeling goes shooting right on up my chest. I should have brung my inhaler—all the sudden my breathing is clunky. Hell ’n’ high water, he’s headed this way. And he’s got that big ol’ smile plastered on his face like I’m his long-lost best friend. And I haven’t a clue what his long-lost best frie
nd would say. I drop my bike down in the sand beside me.
“Hey,” he says, just like last time.
Ah, hell. “Hey,” I reply, promising myself that no matter what happens I will not run off like a baby.
“We met behind the library,” he says.
“I remember you,” I say, all shy-like. “I’m Savannah, you know, as in Georgia.” Hells bells, I should have kept my mouth shut.
But he smiles at me with those sparkly sea-green eyes. “Jackson,” he says, “as in Mississippi.”
I’m fixing to fall out just turning that name over in my mouth. I knew he weren’t no John or William. And that’s when it happens. I feel my chest cave in, and all the sudden I can’t get no air. Mama’s going to kill me for forgetting my inhaler. My eyes seem to pop right out of my head. I reckon I must look like the devil’s own bride.
“Sump’n wrong?” he asks as I gasp and cough. I know my face is turning red.
“Asthma,” I croak, feeling desperate and dumb as a dishrag, both.
“You got one of them inhalers or something?” he asks, looking concerned.
“At home,” I manage to say.
He pulls up my bike and sets me on the seat, then straddles it in front of me. Without so much as a look back to his cousins, he rides me straight on home to my house, me sitting sidesaddle on the banana seat, my hand grabbing hold of his shirt to keep from falling. Even in my terrified state of oxygenless existence, I can’t help but enjoy the warmth of his body so near to mine. I guess it’s a good thing he drove by with his cousins earlier, ’cause I ain’t exactly in a state to give directions.
He follows me inside, and I take a couple of hits off my inhaler. “Sorry about that. It don’t happen too often,” I lie, feeling like God’s own fool.
“Ain’t your fault,” he says. Now ain’t that a gentleman?
“Naw, my daddy’s more like,” slips out of my mouth before I can stop it.
“How you reckon?” he asks.
Blushing, I wave off his question. “Sorry you had to carry me home. I mean, thank you.” It suddenly dawns on me how much trouble I’ll be in if Mama comes back and finds me there with a guy all by myself. I ain’t technically allowed to have boys over unsupervised.
He seems to catch my brain wave, ’cause he says, “I guess I best be going.”
But I so do not want him to leave. “I could give you a ride back down,” I offer, grinning ear to ear. “I owe you one.”
He laughs. It’s a magical sound—richer than I would’ve imagined. “A’ight then, but I get the seat this time,” he warns.
And then, as it often does right after an asthma attack, that funny feeling comes over me where I suddenly somehow know what’s heading down the pipe. It’s like when you’ve been trying real hard to remember something, and as soon as you quit, bam! There it is. This time what pops into my head is a big old feeling of heartache. But I set it aside and ride that grown boy right on down to the beach, him hanging onto the pockets of my shorts, as I stand in front of him, pedaling.
“Where’d you get off to?” Billy Jo asks soon as we hit the sand.
“We been looking all over for you.”
“I guess I better go,” he says quietly, looking away.
“Thanks again,” I say.
The Channings hoot and holler as if we’ve just been rolling around in the hay. And before Jackson and I can exchange so much as one more word, they haul him off, and I’m left there feeling as disappointed as a raccoon after the trash truck comes.
3
“Savannah, what are you carrying on about?” Mama asks me one afternoon as I’m blessing out my brother for leaving his crap all across my bed.
“Mama, I can’t take no more of this. I’m near ’bout ready to kill him,” I say, trying to keep myself from tearing Dog’s head off. It’s bad enough I’ve got to live with NASCAR posters plastered across his side of the room, but when there’s baseball bats and gloves and balls and dirty dishes all over the floor and his stinky clothes and comic books strewn across my bed, I have got to draw the line.
She takes one look at our room and says, “Young man, you best clean up this mess directly or you gonn’ be outside cutting me a switch.”
Now Dog and I both know perfectly well that’s an empty threat. Mama ain’t never used a switch on neither one of us. She may talk big, but she don’t hit.
So Dog says, “I’m heading out with Dave to play some ball.”
“Indeed you are not,” she replies, giving him that look that’ll set your teeth on edge.
I can see the exact moment when he caves. “Fine, but Vannah better help.”
“Don’t one piece of that mess belong to me,” I start in, but Mama cuts me off.
“Hush your mouth,” she says, shooing me out of the room. I leave, but I can hear her talking to Dog all civil, telling him how she needs him to straighten up right quick, and she ain’t just meaning his things.
I ambush her as soon as she steps out to the living room. “Please let him move in here. I am too old to be sharing—”
She interrupts me. “You are wearing on my last nerve, girl. I told you it ain’t gonn’ happen. You think I want his mess all over the house? It’s bad enough when it’s confined to y’all’s room.”
I know I’m pushing my luck, but I can’t stop myself. “Maybe we could get some church folk over here to help build us on an extra room or fix up the cellar.”
“I am warning you, I can’t think no more about this today,” she says, sounding evil as a goat.
I know when to leave well enough alone, so I head outside to get out of her hair before she blows her top. I believe I’ll take myself a walk along the railroad tracks. It ain’t like I’m planning on going over to the Channings’ place. I ain’t that crazy. But you never know who you might could meet when you’re out walking.
Before I know it, I find myself just up the hill from the Channings’. I haven’t met a soul along the way, and the house looks still. I reckon nobody else is crazy enough to go out walking when it’s 95 degrees and humid as all get out. I choose me a spot in the tall, itchy grass to sit down and see if I can’t catch sight of Jackson. A fierce but silent trill runs right up my chest at the thought of that name. They could have gone out fishing first thing this morning for all I know. No matter. Long as I don’t got to be putting in my hours at the library or doing chores at home, I can spend my time however I like.
To be perfectly honest, during the school year, I study as if my life depended upon it, which, if you ask Mama, it very well may. She’s been on me since day one about getting good grades so I don’t end up working slave-wage jobs like her. I reckon all that work has paid off, though. I’m at the very top of my class, and I ain’t just bragging on myself neither.
Ever since I can remember, Mama has given me some kind of workbook to keep up my skills during the summer. They’ve got titles like Get Ready for Kindergarten, or Math Every Sixth Grader Should Know, or in this year’s case Preparing for the SAT. Some kids come home from school on the last day and get a swimsuit or maybe a new pair of skates for good report cards, something to encourage them to enjoy their summer. Not me, a workbook is my reward for a year of hard work. She gave up on Dog even opening his, somewhere around the first grade. Every year, I’ve got mine finished by the time school starts back. It may sound geeky, but I like being able to make her proud. All my brother has to do to please her is stay out of trouble.
Anyhow, since it’s only the beginning of summer and I don’t have to be at work until four, I’m going to just sit here and watch the daggum grass grow.
Holy Mother of God! There’s Jackson. He’s heading up to the tracks by himself, and here I am spying on their house plain as day. I hadn’t thought about the likelihood of having to explain myself. It ain’t even like I’m laying out at the beach or somewhere normal. I’m hiding in the grass right out by their place. My face is burning up. I can’t think what to do.
He’s got headphones in his
ears, the music turned up so loud I can hear it all the way over to here. Maybe he won’t notice me. Okay, the grass ain’t that tall. But then all the sudden I get a feeling that something just ain’t right. I haven’t a clue what it’s about. I just feel edgy is all. I’m thinking real hard on what it might could mean, when, holy swear word, there is an honest-to-God train coming up behind him. I swear there ain’t been a train on these tracks my entire life, and there is one racing up behind him faster than hell on wheels.
“Jackson! Jackson!” I yell, imagining that train plowing into him and his body flying off the tracks in a million bits. But he ain’t hearing me with them headphones plugged in. I’ve got no choice but to hurl myself at him like a crazy person. I run as fast as I can and literally throw myself at him, knocking him down to the grass as the three-car train whistles on by.
You can see he’s all confused and trying to make sense of what just happened. I can’t speak at all, I’m so choked up by the whole thing. And he’s sitting there looking at me like I’m Jesus himself.
“You saved my life,” he says all addled-like.
I shrug—what else could I have done? “I reckon I owed you one,” I say, finding my voice.
And then, glory hallelujah, that smile comes over his face that like to set me on fire.
“Sump’n tells me I may as well make a point of knowing you, Savannah as in Georgia,” he says, which sends a shiver right up my spine.
“I hurt you a-tall?” I ask, noting how he’s rubbing his neck.
He looks off after the train. “Not so bad as that woulda. I thought there weren’t no trains on these tracks.”
“There ain’t.”
“How’d you get here, anyways?” he asks.
Ruther than get into all the specifics of what I was doing sitting out in the grass practically stalking him, I just say, “I had a feeling is all.”
“That I was about to get run down by a train that ain’t s’posed to exist?” he asks.
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