“It’s no wonder Wayne’s so skinny,” Patsy said. “That poor woman can’t cook worth a lick. Nobody can live on just rice.”
“What did she bring this time?” Margie asked.
“Plain Jell-O,” Lovey said.
“I wondered who brought that,” Virginia said. “Anybody knows Jell-O turns to soup in this heat.”
“Stop it, all of you,” Ruby said. “She does the best she can. What if you was in Vietnam? You think they’d like your cooking any better? Straighten up and act like you’re somebody. All of you.”
“At least she keeps a clean house,” Margie said. “You know Wayne won’t do a thing.”
“How do you know?” Lovey said. “I’ve never been invited over there for even one bite of food.”
Shannon and Liz trashed their soggy paper plates and made their way to the ice cream churn. Horseshoes rang from the pit and people gathered on the softball field.
“What was that all about?” Liz asked.
“Nobody was too happy when he came home from Vietnam with a wife. But she’s all right. She’s quiet. My mom hates Uncle Wayne.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They’ve never liked each other. Mom says he’s a lowlife. She thinks he’s on drugs from the VA. She says stay away from him.”
The girls got bowls of ice cream and made their way to where cousins were fanning out on the softball field. Shannon tasted rock salt. She skimmed off a small part of her ice cream and flicked it into the grass where a yellow jacket quickly found the sticky, sweet cream. Ballfield lights began sporadic buzzing as they tried to kick on.
“Where’s that brother of yours?” someone yelled. “We need our pitcher.”
“He’ll be here,” she yelled back. Then to Liz she said, “Momma’s gonna be mad.”
People argued as they divided up for teams. From the picnic area came the sounds of food scraped into the trash and the zip of foil being ripped. Children squealed and splashed in the creek, and occasionally a horseshoe would hit a spike with a ringing wang. Shannon and Liz walked to the park’s swings and began to pump until they were gliding high in the air and the chains were screeching a familiar rhythm. Soon they were swinging so high that the chains went slack and they were free-falling for a second before gravity snapped the chains straight again.
Shannon recognized Jim’s shiny new car coming down the park’s drive, going way over the speed limit. Maybe he didn’t know there was a cop right on his tail. He pulled into the parking lot and the police car followed him in.
“Man,” Shannon said. “Jim’s getting a ticket.”
The girls stopped pumping and their swings began to slow. They watched Jim get out of his car and a young officer get out of the squad car.
“It’s Mark Watson,” Liz said. “He’s so cute.”
The two men walked quickly toward the picnic area. Shannon was still swinging high enough to see Virginia touch her hair at Jim’s approach. They made a small circle, talking to Virginia with their heads down, and Shannon saw her mother’s hand fly up to cover her mouth. She took off on a run toward the parking lot. Shannon shot out of the swing and landed on her knees. She jumped up and ran to the parking lot with Liz right behind her.
“Momma, Momma, what’s wrong?” Virginia was already in Jim’s car and they had pulled away. “Mark, what’s going on?”
“Get in. I’ll give you a ride to the hospital. Your brother’s had an accident.”
“I’m going,” Liz said. Both girls piled into the front of the squad car. They drove fast. It took only a minute to drive from the park, past the lake and Liz’s neighborhood, to the hospital.
“What happened?” Shannon asked. “Is Will okay?”
“That I don’t know,” Officer Watson said. “There was an incident down to Green River.”
“What does that mean?” Liz said.
“All I know is that he’s at the emergency room.” Watson adjusted his dark blue milkman’s hat and gripped the steering wheel. “They tried to give him CPR.”
“CPR? He just swallowed some water,” Shannon said. “Right?”
“He’ll be okay,” Liz said. “Will’s a great swimmer.”
Watson drove to the emergency entrance, and the squad car was hardly at a stop before the girls were out. Inside, a pale receptionist sat at a tiny metal desk.
“Will Lemmons!” Shannon shouted. “Where’s Will Lemmons?”
The receptionist pointed to double doors and the girls pushed through into a somber blue-green fluorescent world. A nurse immediately said, “Can I help you?”
“Will Lemmons?” Shannon said. That was when they heard Virginia scream.
“No!” Virginia shouted. “No! Will. No, no, no…”
Liz was crying before they parted the curtain and stepped into the cubicle.
“Girls,” a doctor said. “Don’t come in here.”
“It’s my brother,” Shannon said. Virginia stood over her son, gently brushing hair away from his eyes. Will was like a china doll, his lips colorless, his entire body straight, arms at his sides. He was still.
“Is he dead?” Shannon asked, surprised at her own sudden calmness.
“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said.
Liz grabbed Virginia’s hand and held it to her chest.
Shannon reached for her brother. His coldness made her think of being a child in winter, of forts and snowmen and sleigh riding. They would come in, sweaty under their jackets and hats, with frozen cheeks and fingers and feet. She thought of holding her hands to the fireplace and the prickly pain that throbbed her hands back to life.
Virginia raised her vacant stare to focus on Shannon.
“He’s gone,” she said. “Your brother’s gone.”
Shannon pushed through the curtain and made for the exit. She ran outside to the edge of hospital property. Grass clippings stuck to her sandals and feet. She dropped to her knees in the moist, manicured sod. An explosion overhead made her look up. The sky burst with green and blue and red sparkles that trickled down, popping silver and then fading away. Another rocket shrieked upward and exploded with a pounding report, and fingers of light fell toward the earth.
16
Central Kentucky News-Journal, July 9, 1980
ATHLETE LOST IN FISHING ACCIDENT
Local athlete William (Will) Boyd Lemmons, 18, drowned Saturday fishing in Green River below the dam. Around two in the afternoon, Lemmons and his fishing companion, Jim Pickett, 39, were angling for bass and crappie when the accident happened.
The two were using rubber waist waders to walk out into the stream. Apparently, Lemmons, who had fished in this location on numerous other occasions, accidentally stepped off an underwater ledge and sank. Authorities said it is likely that when his waders filled with water it created a suction that would have been hard to break. According to Pickett, a strange sound made him turn to look and he saw the top of Lemmons’s head going under.
“I went to him as fast as I could,” Pickett said. “I got a hold on one of the straps and I pulled and pulled, trying to bring him up, but he was way too heavy.” Pickett said that Lemmons tried to free himself from the shoulder straps on the waders without success. Pickett tried for many minutes and was only able to pull Lemmons out of the water once the boy stopped struggling. Pickett administered CPR, but was unable to bring Lemmons around. Pickett dragged Lemmons to his truck and raced to the county hospital, but doctors were unable to resuscitate the victim.
Local authorities are calling this a freak accident. “Mr. Lemmons is not the first person to ever drown in this manner, but it is unusual,” Sheriff Wendell Jones said. “Once he went all the way under and the legs of the waders filled up, he would have been pulled right down. It was probably impossible for him to save himself. People should be aware of this danger.”
Family and friends say that Lemmons was a strong swimmer. “Will was a great athlete,” his father, Roger Lemmons said. “If he couldn’t save himself, nobody could.”
<
br /> Will Lemmons graduated this past spring from Baylor County High School. Lemmons was the pitcher for the high school’s baseball team and received a partial scholarship to play ball for Western Kentucky University. He was looking forward to leaving for college in August of this year.
“We’re all proud of Will for getting that scholarship. He worked real hard and he deserved it,” his father said. “Now we won’t get to see him play college ball.”
The body was held for investigation until Monday, when the coroner confirmed no foul play was involved. The funeral is scheduled for today at Lyon Funeral Home. Services start at 11 a.m. Interment will follow at Green Lawn Cemetery. The family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the athletic department at Baylor County High School.
Lemmons is survived by his mother and father, Mr. and Mrs. Roger Lemmons, his sister, Shannon Lemmons, his grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Clyde Spurling, and numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Shannon touched her fingers over the large photo of Will in mid-delivery on the pitcher’s mound, a photo that must have been from the newspaper’s archives. They had also used his senior picture. Shannon ran scissors around the article that spread across the entire top section of the newspaper and sliced it neatly away. She lay back on her bed and held the article over her, searching her brother’s face.
“You going to put that in your scrapbook?” Liz asked.
“I’ve never put anything sad in my scrapbook before.”
Liz had Shannon’s window open and she was smoking. Shannon had never seen her smoke cigarettes. Downstairs the house hummed with a volume of people. The old floorboards creaked and utensils scraped against bowls in the dining room. As soon as they returned from the funeral, Shannon, Liz, and Pam had come upstairs to get away.
“My parents are sending me to North Carolina to stay with relatives until I start college,” Liz said, letting smoke stream smoothly from her mouth out the window.
“Why?”
“I guess they think if I’m away from here I won’t think about Will so much.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Shit,” Pam said. “I wish I could get out of here. What does it say about a town when the nicest place is the funeral home?”
“I don’t want to go, but I don’t get a say. Oh, I brought you something.” Liz reached into her pocket. “Nerve pills,” she said, rattling a brown medication bottle. “Stole them from Daddy. You might need them. Or your momma.”
“Thanks, but Momma’s been whacked out on pills ever since the day it happened. I think I’ll keep them.”
Pam was slumped on the floor with her back against the bed. “I think I’ll go get something to eat. Y’all want anything?”
“I don’t,” Liz said. “I don’t think I’ll ever eat again.”
“I’ll go with you,” Shannon said. “I want some tea.”
At the top of the landing Shannon looked down on the heads of more people than had ever been in her house before. A few boys from the baseball team, the ones who had served as pallbearers, lingered around the sideboard eating brownies, but most of the kids who attended the funeral hadn’t come by the house. The dining room table and the kitchen table were both overflowing with casseroles, hams, and pies. Every flat surface held a flower arrangement or a houseplant with a rectangular card of sympathy sticking out. The house smelled like a flower shop, a restaurant, and a church congregation all at the same time. The cloying air was making her sick.
Dehydrated from crying, she went to the kitchen and poured tea into a plastic cup. Her mother was standing at the sink with her arms around her own mother. Ruby was holding her tightly. Suddenly Virginia raised her head from her mother’s shoulder, wiped a tear away and said, “I swear if I have to eat one more bite of casserole I’m going to be ill.” She faced the kitchen full of women and said, “Everybody take something home. I don’t have enough room in the freezer for all this food and I’ll have to throw it all away. The pies and cakes especially. Please take the pies and cakes.”
“Don’t bother over the food,” Patsy said. “We’ll wrap it all up. Put it in the freezer. It’ll keep good. You won’t have to cook for a month.”
“I’ll take some over to the nursing home,” Lovey said. “Those poor old souls never turn down home cooking, even leftovers.”
Shannon realized a sudden hush had fallen over the guests in the house. Her father stepped into the kitchen, his hands crammed down in the pockets of the blue leisure suit he had worn to the funeral. He had kept his distance, hadn’t brought Bootsie, had sat on the opposite pew from the family during the service, had skipped the receiving line, all out of respect for Virginia. Everyone in the kitchen held their breath.
Roger shuffled a little on his feet. “Virginia,” he said. “Can I talk to you?”
She hesitated. “Fine. Let’s go outside.”
They walked a ways in the yard and stopped under the thick shadow of an oak tree. Shannon could see her mother’s hate-filled expression. Roger pushed the tire swing and it moved a few inches and returned slowly the other direction. He watched it instead of looking at Virginia.
“Shannon, come away from that door,” Ruby said. “Let them talk.”
But Shannon slid out the door onto the screened-in porch and sat in the rocking chair. Roger made an attempt to put his arm around Virginia, but she shrugged him off. He made a pleading gesture and Virginia slapped him so hard that it sounded like a branch breaking. Roger stood with his face down, looking at the ground. Virginia put her hands to her face and he put his arms around her and held her, rocking from side to side until she got hold of herself and pushed him away.
Virginia stomped back toward the house and he followed silently. As they came near, Virginia turned to him and Shannon heard her say, “You’ve got some nerve talking about Will in the newspaper like that. ‘We’re all so proud of Will.’ You should be ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed. I was proud of him.”
“You have a funny way of showing it. You should have been here when we needed you. You can’t come here expecting sympathy. I’ve got a whole house full of people in there who care more about me than you do.”
“Can I at least talk to Shannon before I leave?”
“That’s up to her.” Virginia came into the porch and jumped when she saw Shannon in the rocking chair. “Oh, you startled me.”
“Sorry.”
“Your daddy wants to talk to you.”
“Okay.” Shannon got up and walked out to meet her father in the yard. “What do you want?”
“I brung you something,” he said. “I heard you needed some money for that Junior Miss pageant.”
When Shannon saw the roll of twenties in her father’s grasp, her hand tingled to slap him as her mother had done. “Daddy, that’s real nice,” she said calmly. “Will it make you feel better if I take that money?”
“I thought you needed it.”
She put her hand on her chest, smiled at him and let sarcasm speak for her. “For me? Really? Why Daddy, thank you so much. What does it mean if I take this money? That I forgive you for running out on us?”
“It don’t mean nothing.”
He looked away, past his old work shed and out to the field behind the house. In the distance, a giant white satellite dish bloomed beside a neighbor’s house.
“How long’s that thing been there?” he asked.
“Awhile. Don’t change the subject,” she said. “You always change the subject.”
“Well.”
“Look, I don’t need your money. You made sure that we don’t need you anymore.”
“Shannon,” he said. “There’s things in this world that you can’t understand until you’re older. Things like what goes on between a man and woman when they’re married. Bad things happen to people sometimes.”
“What kind of things, Daddy? I’m having to grow up pretty fast. I might understand.”
“Baby girl, hate me if you want, but that wo
n’t do neither of us any good. I thought if you could see past some of the things I’ve done, then maybe we could be friends. I’d like to be your daddy again. I done lost Will. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Shannon’s face quivered, but she held back the urge to cry and instead let out her anger. “How dare you pick this day to come here and try to make up with me, you son of a bitch.” She wanted to slap him like her mother had, but instead she ran out to the field. Briars picked at her skirt and she stumbled in her Sunday shoes. She ran so far that she could no longer hear people in the house, only her own rapid breath and heartbeat in her ears. Then she fell, scraping her knees and palms on rocks. She thought surely nobody could see her here, below the goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. She let go and sobbed.
“Shannon?”
“Go away.”
“Shannon, are you all right?” It was Kerry.
“I’m fine. Leave me alone.”
“You fell.” He crouched down and brushed dirt from her knees. He took a white handkerchief, his funeral handkerchief Shannon realized, and wrapped it around a scraped place on her palm. “What are you doing out here?”
“Nothing.” Her voice caught with her chest’s rapid hicks.
“Let me help you up.”
“I don’t want to go back to the house.”
“But you’ll get chiggers. Look, you got stick-tights all over your skirt.” He picked a few of the tiny cat claws off and pulled her to standing.
“When did you get here?” she asked.
“A few minutes ago. I saw you standing out back with your daddy when I pulled up.” He put his arm around her and steered her toward the house. When they reached the back yard Shannon stopped.
“I don’t want to go in,” she said. “Take me somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I don’t care. Somewhere away from here.”
Dozens of vehicles lined the driveway, the front yard and along the shoulders of the road. Shannon noticed Will’s truck, windows rolled down, faded green paint covered by a layer of dust, grill and headlamps flecked with mud.
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