The Summer of Winters

by Mark Allan Gunnells

  When we walked into the kitchen, the woman looked up. “About time you showed up, little girl. I was about to send a posse out looking for you. This your little friend from next door?”

  Paige nodded. “This is Mike. I told him he could come over for lunch. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Sure, more the merrier,” Mrs. Moore said, getting up from the table. “You two have a seat, I’ll fix you some plates.”

  Paige and I sat side by side on the bench across from where Mrs. Moore had been sitting. After taking one last drag on her cigarette and stubbing it out in an overflowing ashtray next to the sink, Mrs. Moore went to the stove where the spaghetti was heating in a large metal pot. She scooped two mounds out onto chipped, mismatched plates and placed them before us. Then she went to the refrigerator, took out two slices of cheese, unwrapped them from the plastic, and tossed one on each of our plates. The slices instantly started to soften and melt from the spaghetti’s heat. My stomach grumbled at the smell.

  Mrs. Moore took two glasses from the cupboard and said, “Paige, I know what you want to drink. Mike, we got cherry Kool-Aid and Shasta. Which you prefer?”

  “Shasta, please.”

  She poured us each a glass of soda and placed them next to our plates.

  I smiled up at her. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Ooh, I like this one,” Mrs. Moore said with a laugh, ruffling my hair. “This here is a boy with manners. Your folks taught you right.”

  I neglected to mention that it wasn’t my parents who had taught me to say “thank you” but Miss Davis, my kindergarten teacher. I could still remember her lesson vividly. It had only been the third or fourth week of class; all us kids were sitting Indian-style in a circle while Miss Davis went around handing out lemon drops, which happened to be my favorite candy. She told us not to unwrap our candies until everybody had one and she told us to go ahead. It was all I could do to wait, but I managed.

  Only after she was done passing out the lemon drops, Miss Davis went back around and snatched the candies away from certain children, me being one of them. She said, “Those of you who don’t know enough to say ‘thank you’ don’t deserve a treat.”

  Surely there had to be better ways for her to teach students proper manners and gratitude, but all I knew for sure was that since that day every time I was given something, I remembered the feeling of having that candy snatched out of my hands, and I made certain to say “thank you.”

  The three of us ate mostly in silence. The spaghetti was delicious, and I kept getting the sauce all over my face. Mrs. Moore tore off some paper towels from a roll on the table so I could clean myself up. Since she’d had a head start on us, she finished first. After placing her plate in the sink, she said, “I gotta get ready for my shift at Pizza Inn. I sent Brody down to Food Lion to pick up a few things, but he’ll be back before I leave.”

  “’Kay, Mama,” Paige said around a mouthful of spaghetti.

  Mrs. Moore left us alone in the kitchen, and Paige and I began talking about our favorite cartoons. I liked The Smurfs while Paige preferred Shirt Tales, but we both agreed Scooby Doo was pretty damn cool. We were in the middle of debating whether the character of Scrappy Doo hurt or helped the show when Brody came in, carrying two brown paper bags full of groceries.

  He placed them on the table and started unloading, stowing the items away. He looked at us and said, “Hey Paige, hey Matt.”

  I didn’t say anything, just nodded shyly, but Paige corrected him.

  “So I picked up a copy of The Gaffney Ledger at the store, and guess what?” Brody said to his sister.

  “You were halfway through it before you remembered you don’t know how to read?”

  Brody flicked her earlobe with his thumb and forefinger, but he was smiling. “Very funny, squirt. You better be nice to me or you’re not going to get your treat.”

  “What treat?”

  A lemon drop, I thought absurdly. Better say thank you or you won’t get to keep it.

  “Well, it seems the theater here in town is showing the new Superman movie this weekend.”

  Paige gasped; I was fairly certain it was the first time I’d ever heard someone actually gasp. “The one with the black guy from The Toy in it?”

  “Richard Pryor, yup. And I’m taking my favorite sister to see it tomorrow.”

  “I’m your only sister, nimrod.”

  “Then it looks like it’s you and me.”

  “But how will you afford it?”

  “I still have that money from all those odd jobs I did for people in the neighborhood back in Columbia.”

  “Yeah, but you were saving that for a new stereo.”

  “I can spare a little to treat my sis to a movie. I’m sure Dad will let me borrow the car.”

  “Can Mike come?”

  I paused with a forkful of noodles halfway to my mouth. Brody was looking at me as if I were something nasty he’d stepped in and was now stuck to the bottom of his shoe. I recognized that look because I’d seen it in my father’s eyes on more than one occasion.

  “I don’t know,” Brody said. “I might not have enough for three of us.”

  But Paige would not be deterred. “Come on, please. I won’t have any popcorn or candy. You want to go, don’t you Mike?”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. Of course I wanted to go. I’d seen the first Superman when they aired it on TV and it was just incredible, but my mother had always told me that just because we didn’t have much didn’t give us the right to seek out charity. She always said I shouldn’t take anything I didn’t earn. It was bad enough I was taking the Moore’s food when I knew how little they had.

  However, Paige took my silence as a “yes” and turned back to her brother. She stood up on the bench and threw her arms around his neck, showering his face with kisses. “Please, please, please, please. I’ll do your chores for a week.”

  Brody held out for a moment more but then he broke into laughter, wrapping his arms around Paige’s waist and spinning her around. “I can never say no to you. Okay, your little friend can come as long as his mom says it’s okay.”

  And just like that, I was going to see Superman III.

  Chapter Four

  “But why can’t I go?” Ray whined.

  “Because you weren’t invited,” I said.

  It was all I could do to keep from saying something really nasty to my brother, but my mother was kneeling in front of me and might not have let me go to the movie if I did. At first it had seemed she wasn’t going to let me go anyway, lecturing me again about not asking for charity. I could have made a pointed comment about the food stamps she got monthly, or the huge industrial-sized blocks of welfare cheese and butter in the refrigerator, but I didn’t want to blow my chances of seeing the movie, so instead I just told her repeatedly that I hadn’t asked to tag along but had been invited. Finally my mother had walked next door to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Moore. When she’d returned, she not only agreed to let me go to the movie, but she’d suddenly seemed almost giddy at the idea. Adults were hard to figure out.

  I stood still as my mother fiddled with the cuffs of my pants. She hadn’t let me pick out my own outfit, but had insisted on dressing me in my least worn clothes—stiff jeans that seemed made of cardboard and a turtleneck sweater that made me feel like I was being strangled by my own clothes. It was like I was her living, breathing Barbie doll. Or Ken.

  Ray began stomping his feet up and down, like he was marching in place, a sure sign a tantrum was on its way. “It’s not fair, I wanna go to the movie, too.”

  “Give it a rest, Ray,” my mother snapped, fixing him with the glare that said she meant business. “You’ve been caterwauling for hours. You can’t go, and that’s final.”

  When my mother looked back down to fiddle with my pants some more, I stuck my tongue out at Ray. He retaliated by holding up his middle finger. I was shocked…and also thrilled. More blackmail material.

  When my mother seemed content with my app
earance, she stood up, ran her fingers through my hair to get my bangs out of my eyes, then stared down at me with an expression that seemed almost sad. I honestly thought she was about to start crying. Instead she took a deep breath and said, “I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe what?”

  “You’re just growing up so fast. I mean, look at you, you’re becoming a young man. Your first date. I wish I had a camera.”

  “It’s not a date,” I said defensively. “Paige is just my friend.”

  “Of course,” my mother said, but her sly grin suggested she knew otherwise.

  As I feared, this just gave Ray fodder with which to torment me. He began hopping up and down, chanting, “Mike’s got a girlfriend, Mike’s got a girlfriend…”

  “Shut up, gay-beau.”

  The words were out of my mouth before I could stop to consider them, and my mother popped me one on the back of the head, knocking my hair back out of place. “Mike! You know I don’t tolerate name-calling in this house.”

  I hung my head, face burning with shame. Not for what I’d said, but for saying it in front of my mother. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize to me; apologize to your brother.”

  “Sorry Ray,” I said, but I refused to meet his gaze.

  “I have half a mind to put you on restriction and not let you go see this movie tonight…but I suppose I can cut you some slack this once. If I hear you call your brother anything like that ever again, I’m gonna bust your liver.”

  Bust your liver. That was my mother’s standard threat. I never really understood what it meant, plus she never laid a hand on me and Ray in anger beyond a pop on the back of the head or a swat on the butt, but the threat remained effective anyhow.

  “And you,” she said, turning to my brother, “stop jumping around and hooting like a monkey. Now it’s just the two of us tonight, so we’ll play some games.”

  “Hungry Hungry Hippo?”

  “Sure, if you can find the marbles.”

  Ray ran off to our bedroom to pull the game out from under the bed and search out the little white marbles. My mother gave me that on-the-verge-of-tears look again, which made me feel rather uncomfortable, but I was saved by the bell. Or by the knock, to be more precise. A rapping on our front door.

  My mother answered. Paige stood there on the stoop, dressed in a simple white dress with a matching ribbon in her hair. She looked very pretty. Brody was standing back near the sidewalk, wearing a pair of holey jeans, a white T-shirt, and a brown Member’s Only jacket despite the warmth of the evening.

  “Well, don’t you look just lovely,” my mother said to Paige.

  “Thank you.”

  “The movie lets out around nine,” Brody called from the edge of the lawn. “I’ll bring him straight home.”

  My mother thanked him, then much to my monumental embarrassment she leaned over and gave me a big kiss right on the side of the mouth. “You have a nice time.”

  She stood at the door and watched as I walked with Paige and Brody back to their house, where Mr. Moore’s long boat-like Chevrolet was parked in the driveway. It was painted a muted yellow, and I’d heard Paige jokingly refer to it as a “lemon-sine.”

  The front seat was a long, bench-like thing, and the three of us all piled up front. Brody driving, of course, me sitting by the passenger’s door, and Paige in the middle. It took Brody three tries to get the car cranked, and it chugged and rattled like something dying, but he pulled out into the street and we were on our way.

  ***

  I had been to the Capri Theater only once before in my life. Two years prior the school had given out free tickets to some old Disney movie called Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I couldn’t say I’d enjoyed the movie too much, but there was something about the experience itself—sitting in the darkened theater with a group of people, watching the film on the big screen—quite literally larger than life—that was almost magical. I’d been dying to go back ever since.

  And now here I was, and seeing a movie I actually wanted to see. I just hoped that you didn’t need to have seen the second Superman movie for this one to make sense because they hadn’t aired that one on TV yet.

  Despite his worry that he might not have enough money if I tagged along, Brody ended up buying popcorn and sodas for all three of us, and even a box of Goobers for me and Paige to share. The Capri’s lobby/concession area was quite small, people packed in like crayons in one of those 64-piece Crayola boxes. There was actually only one theater that seated less than a hundred people. I’d heard about a couple of multiplex theaters in Spartanburg, but the Capri was all Gaffney had to offer, and it seemed plenty impressive to me.

  We took seats near the aisle in the middle of the theater, Brody and I on either end again and Paige in the middle. The popcorn was so buttery and salty, I couldn’t stop shoveling handfuls of it into my mouth, and I had eaten two thirds of the tub by the time the lights dimmed.

  “This is going to be good, I just know it,” Paige whispered to me, shaking a few of the chocolate-covered peanuts into my palm.

  I nodded my agreement, too breathless with anticipation to speak. There was a tingling in my gut that spread throughout my body, a feeling not unlike static electricity. The Warner Bros. logo appeared onscreen and I realized I was bouncing in my seat, I was that excited.

  I would love to say the movie blew me away, but it was just so-so at best. Definitely better than Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but a big disappointment when compared to the original Superman. There were parts that were decent, dealing with Superman embracing his dark side and culminating in a pretty cool fight where Superman battled Clark Kent, but the main plot—having something to do with controlling the weather and monopolizing the world’s oil supply through computers—was simultaneously confusing and silly. Plus Lois Lane was barely in it. How could you have a Superman movie without Lois Lane? It was like Tom without Jerry, or Fred without Barney, Shaggy without Scooby. Just felt incomplete.

  I wasn’t going to complain though. Brody was treating me to a movie, even if his arm had been twisted by his sister, and Miss Davis’s lesson was not lost on me. On the drive over to the theater, I must have said “thank you” a half dozen times and would probably say it a half dozen more on the drive back. I wondered idly if it was possible to overdose on gratitude.

  When the movie was over, we got caught up in the mass exodus into the lobby. It was doubly packed now, with people waiting for the nine o’clock showing. The three of us wound our way through a maze of bodies, heading for the door. I don’t know if I had full fledged agoraphobia, but being in crowds always made me feel uncomfortable, and I couldn’t wait to get outside.

  Before we could make our escape, Paige said, “I need to go to the little girl’s room,” then disappeared through a door to our right.

  “I could stand to drain the lizard myself,” Brody said. “What about you, Mike?”

  I just shook my head.

  “Okay, you can wait for us just outside.”

  I watched Brody disappear into the Men’s room then pushed through the glass door onto the sidewalk. There was a metal bench just to the left and I took a seat, watching the other departing movie-goers dash across the street to the parking lot. Fact was, I did need to pee but I had a thing about public restrooms. I just couldn’t go with other people around. It was only a five minute drive back home, and I could hold it until then.

  The night was warm, but a refreshing breeze blew the hair off my forehead and cooled the sweat on my brow. Despite my tepid reaction to the movie, it had been a good night and part of me didn’t want it to end. There was no telling how long it might be before I was able to see a movie in the theater again, probably not until the next time the school gave out free tickets.

  I was just sitting there musing on what a pleasant night it was when the night took a decidedly unpleasant turn. In the form of Dennis Winters.

  I heard his voice before I saw him.

  “Well, lookie who it is.” />
  I froze on the bench, not wanting to turn my head, as if I thought ignoring him would make him go away. Which was stupid since past experience should have taught me otherwise.

  “I’m talking to you, dork-wad,” the bully said, thumping my ear so hard it brought tears to my eyes.

  I ducked my head down like a turtle trying to retreat into its shell and mumbled, “Leave me alone.”

  And perhaps if Dennis had been on his own or with his folks, he might have left me alone. As it was, he was holding court for his two best buddies—Marquis Jefferies and Brian Dawkins—with his kid sister once again trailing along at his elbow.

  “What are you doing here, Guthrie? Thought your mama was too poor to even give you an allowance, so how’d you afford a movie ticket?”

  “Maybe his daddy gave him the money?” Brian said.

  Marquis laughed. “Nah, didn’t you hear? His daddy run-off with that tramp from Fast Fare.”

  “Can’t say that I blame him,” Dennis said. “You seen his mama? She’s got the fattest ass in the Southeast. And he probably couldn’t stand having a little faggot for a son. I’d have run off, too.”

  I felt tears rising and tried to hold them back, but I knew it was a losing battle. And Paige would be out here soon to witness my humiliation, and that brought the tears even closer to the surface.

  Dennis thumped me in the ear again, then twice more for good measure. “Ain’t got nothing to say, faggot? Cat got your tongue? Can’t even—”

  Dennis’s words were abruptly cut off as a hand grabbed his arm and jerked him back. I looked up to see Brody standing there, glaring down at the bully. He held the arm behind Dennis’s back, wrenching the shoulder.