Eli the Good

by Silas House

  Josie gave a brief look to Nell, who nodded and widened her eyes in a way that suggested Josie should follow our mother’s advice and not push it any further.

  On the porch, Daddy was saying that the best Mustang ever was the 1964½ two-plus-two. “That swayback,” Daddy said. “Man, it was sharp.” Daddy talked to Charles Asher the way he did to other men. I supposed he would talk to me in such a way someday, but I couldn’t imagine that happening anytime soon.

  And then Edie was coming up the steps and opening the screen door to the porch. She looked small, defeated.

  “Hey there, half-pint,” Daddy said.

  Daddy had called her by Pa’s nickname for Laura on Little House on the Prairie, her favorite show. Edie’s face noted this term of endearment, and a look of joy and sadness flitted across her eyes.

  “Hey,” she said to my father, although she looked at me at first, then back to my father. “Can I ride to the fireworks with you all? Daddy’s decided to just watch everything on television tonight.”

  “Sure you can,” Daddy said. “You’re welcome to go anywhere with us. You know that.”

  “I brought these for us,” she said to me, and lifted her hand. Only then did I realize that Edie was clutching four or five long boxes of sparklers. Edie handed me a couple of the boxes, and I looked down at the labels. Across the box was written HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA SPARKLERS and, in smaller letters, Show your patriotism in brilliant flashing lights!

  “You wearing that hat?” Edie asked.

  “Yeah, it’s cool.”

  “I guess,” she said, curving her words to let me know she didn’t think so.

  “You all ready, then?” my mother said, suddenly right behind me as I stood in the door.

  “We were born ready,” Daddy said.

  My parents rode up front, but Nell had climbed in the back of the truck with Edie and me. Nell sat on the floorboard (Edie and I were on the little humps over the wheels) and stretched her legs out in front of her. She wore a long paisley skirt that flapped up and down in the wind and had brought along a quart jar of sweet tea with the lid tightly fastened. The ice in the jar clinked against the glass and made a bit of music. When we came to a stop sign, she lit a cigarette with her Zippo, which clicked open and shut with a loud, pleasing pop. She lay her head back against the side of the truck bed and closed her eyes, the wind stirring her hair into a wild, red mess. She didn’t care. She couldn’t very well sit up front because she and Daddy still hadn’t spoken since the guitar episode. Supper was often an awkward affair of silverware noise.

  I had entrusted my Uncle Sam hat to my mother so it wouldn’t blow off my head, but to my disappointment she had laid it on the seat instead of putting it on.

  Charles Asher and Josie followed close behind in his shining Mustang. At the next stop sign we could hear the music from Charles Asher’s car floating up to us — “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

  There were people out in their front yards all along the road, lighting fireworks. The daylight was still too bright to see things like Roman candles, but kids were letting off bottle rockets just for the little bang and the trail of blue smoke that arched up into the sky. As we drove by one house a grown man without a shirt lit a pack of firecrackers and threw them out onto the yard, where a group of children scattered like bugs in the shadow of a lifted rock, laughing and squealing. Most everyone waved to us, and Edie and I did, too. Nell lifted her chin in greeting, the way my father did.

  The smell of burning charcoal had overtaken the air. This was a pleasing smell that made me hungry. At every other house we passed, there was a man standing at a grill or a woman carrying a platter of chicken down to picnic tables set up on the yards. Children everywhere, running and playing. Free.

  I had never seen so many flags in my life. Everybody had one up. They were hanging from porch eaves and poles and clotheslines. They were draped across the backs of porch gliders, fastened somehow to windows, clothespinned to tree limbs. We drove past a barn that had been painted to look like an enormous, stiff flag. “Good God,” Nell said to this. Daddy blew his horn to the barn, and Charles Asher did, too.

  Once we neared town, Daddy slowed, since traffic was backed up. I stood, leaning on top of the truck’s cab, and there was a line of cars that went on as far as I could see. Beyond that were the big steeple at the college, the steeples of the two large churches in town, and the courthouse tower, which was decked out in red, white, and blue bunting. People bobbed down the sidewalk like a sea of bodies, carrying small flags and coolers and chairs.

  “I didn’t think there were this many people in the entire county,” Edie said.

  Nell took a long drink of her tea, draining the contents of the jar, and then screwed the lid back on and wiped her mouth with the whole length of her lower arm. “I think I’ll walk the rest of the way into town,” she said. “Too hot to set in the back of this old truck.” On her last word, she threw her legs over the side of the truck and joined the people who were headed toward the courthouse square. As she sashayed off, she hollered to my mother that she’d meet us all up there. I watched her for a long time, as she did not become a part of the crowd, really. Her red hair caught the sunlight and her strong walk set her apart from the others. The crowd parted for her determined march.

  I positioned myself on the edge of the truck bed and leaned down into Daddy’s window and begged to walk on in, too. He was looking straight ahead, his wrist leaning on the steering wheel and the square muscle in his jaw clenching. He looked over to my mother, and she leaned forward. “You meet us in front of the courthouse in thirty minutes,” Mom said. “I want us to all watch the parade together.”

  Edie and I scrambled out of the back of the truck, waving to Charles Asher and Josie, and then we were part of the thick line of people, too. Here was great chaos, and I liked it. A cop stood in the middle of the street, directing the cars toward a detour to make way for the parade, so eventually we walked in the middle of the street, occasionally running, sometimes skipping. Edie and I fell into a rhythm with this, and it seemed that we could both anticipate the other’s next move. All along the street, the houses were close to the sidewalks, with short little yards where people sat out on their porches, considering the passing crowd without any expression on their faces. I couldn’t understand how everybody stood living so close to one another like they did in town. It would have driven my mother crazy.

  The courthouse square teemed with a thousand people, all darting this way and that like crazed birds. There were stands selling cotton candy and popcorn, candied apples and peanut-butter fudge. A big woman with huge glasses that magnified her eyes concentrated on squeezing lemons for homemade lemonade. A trailer with open sides held a group of army recruiters who hollered at all the teenage boys and told them how much money they could make by joining the service.

  Everything was decorated in red, white, and blue, which made me realize that I had left my Uncle Sam hat back in the truck. I grieved over this a few minutes, but there was too much to take in, so I forgot it before long.

  The courthouse sat in the middle of the square like a red box cake, its bricks baking in the July heat. The grass around it was unnaturally green, since it was watered every day. Every window was filled with the faces of people who had ventured in for a good view of the parade. All of them waved lazy fans and pushed against one another to feel the barely moving air that made its way to the windows. The radio station was set up near the courthouse steps, and they were playing music way too loud. A girl in a halter top and cutoffs flitted around in front of the big speakers, offering handheld fans to everyone. Most of the girls and women looked at the girl with a sneer and plucked the fan away from her, taking in the whole length of her outfit while the boys tried to strike up conversations with her, which she ignored. She simply called out, “Free fans. Courtesy of WYMR,” in a bored repetition while she gave them out. Edie and I were seized by the opportunity to get something free, so we pushed against the crowd until the half-
naked girl had given us one apiece. The fans were square with little wooden handles stapled to a thick sheet of paper. On one side there were pictures of all thirty-eight presidents, right up to Gerald Ford. On the other side were the words to the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, and “America the Beautiful.”

  I started fanning with mine right away, but Edie paused long enough to study hers. “It always seems like Abraham Lincoln is looking you right in the eye,” she said. “You ever noticed that?”

  “Yeah, it’s creepy.”

  “My mother had a terrible crush on John F. Kennedy,” she said, not taking her eyes off the fan. I was busy looking around at everybody.

  “That is creepy.”

  “She’s so messed up,” Edie said. “What’s creepy is that she had a crush on him even after he was dead. Her and Daddy got into a big fight about it one time.”

  It seemed to me that Edie’s parents had had a fight about everything at some point, so this held little interest. “Let’s go down to the river,” I said, and before she could reply, I zigzagged across the courthouse lawn and crossed the street, then ran down the steep bank that led to the river. The shore was crowded with willows that gave a deep blue shade. Cicadas clicked in the branches of the trees, so loud they overtook the din of a thousand voices that drifted down from the street. I liked our riverbank at home much better, as this one didn’t seem real. The city workers maintained the grass along the river and had planted little clumps of impatiens around some of the trees. It didn’t seem right for something like a riverbank to be kept up; wild things should be free to remain wild. Lots of families had spread out quilts down here and were sitting on them, eating funnel cakes and fried chicken they had bought from the vendors along Main Street. Children were running everywhere, with sparklers sending glints of yellowish silver out behind them or playing catch and freeze-tag. I saw Paul and Matt, so I turned to go, almost running face-first into Edie, but then the boys hollered my name and I knew I’d have to speak to them.

  They sauntered over to us, and I caught a glimpse of what they’d be like by the time we reached high school — blond, golden-tanned boys like that one who had said Charles Asher’s daddy was a dopehead because he was in the war. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I already hated them, even if I didn’t want to. I had once truly thought they were my friends. Now I couldn’t even imagine wanting to talk to them.

  “Well, look, Eli’s hanging out with his girlfriend again,” Matt said, soliding his hands on his hips. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops.

  “Go eat another turd, Matt,” Edie said, and brought up her fan to swipe a breeze against her face.

  “And look,” Paul said, glancing down to my right hand, which I was trying to put behind my back. He capped his hand over his heart in mock joy. “They’ve got matching fans. That’s really sweet.”

  “Shut up, ass-face,” Edie said.

  The boys cracked up at this. They laughed and elbowed each other. “Well, I can see who wears the pants in this marriage,” Matt said. “She doesn’t let Eli say anything.”

  “Shut up, man,” I said, at last able to make my mouth move. “You think you’re cool, but you’re not.”

  “Is that the best insult you can come up with?” Matt said, and drew his fingertips up into his armpits with a hearty laugh. “That’s pathetic. You’d think a boy whose mother has the best boobs in the entire world would be cooler than that.”

  “Don’t talk about Loretta that way,” Edie said, taking a step forward. “I’ll mash your mouth.”

  “I’m shaking in my shoes,” Matt said. “Trembling.”

  I wanted to hit Matt, but instead I turned on Edie. “I can take up for myself,” I said. “So shut up.”

  When Edie realized I was talking to her, her face changed, flattened. I believe she might have grown up in that moment. Even her posture changed. She looked like a balloon that was beginning to deflate, but then she puffed up again, filled with the defiance and strength that would carry her through the rest of her life. “Do it, then, instead of being a damn coward,” she spat. “Don’t let them talk about your mother that way.”

  “Well, she’s my mom, not yours.” I could feel Paul and Matt watching us. So I added: “Yours left.” As soon as I said this, I knew what I had done. I could feel the betrayal crackling in the air, like the ice of an entire river was breaking all at once. I knew what a horrible thing I had just said, but instead of backtracking, I kept going. I made it worse. “So stay out of my business. I could stand up for myself if you’d stop following me everywhere.” I was breathing hard, my face heating up, my fists clenched. She was right: I was a coward and I knew it, so I took it out on the best friend I ever had.

  Her eyes touched mine for a time. I could feel the boys behind me, waiting to see what would happen. All the sounds of the crowd and the river and everything had fallen away.

  “You’re no better than them,” Edie said at last. She turned and stomped away. The worst part is that I let her. I watched her for a moment, wanting to call out to her or run and catch up with her, but I didn’t. I turned back to the boys.

  “It’s about time you got rid of her,” Matt said. Maybe he thought I had chosen him over her, that I was back to the nine-year-old he had known last summer who never thought about anything except playing Hot Wheels and swimming. But now I liked to read and I could hear the trees when they spoke and I was different from them. I was weird and glad of it. Nowadays I actually thought about things, which is that hardest thing to begin doing. The strangest thing was that I liked being different. But it had taken me betraying Edie to know that, so the realization wasn’t worth the price.

  And maybe for some demented split second I had wanted those boys’ approval, had wanted them to ask me to play with them again. But now I hated them more than ever.

  “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t play with you two if you were the last buttholes on earth.”

  “What’d you call me?” Matt said. Without even glancing that way, just by the curl of his voice, I could tell he was clenching his fists.

  So before he had a chance to do it first, I let my fan flutter to the ground and brought my right hand up and smashed my knuckles against his mouth. His buck teeth split the skin on my hand, and blood popped out in three singular bubbles. When he gained his senses, he saw my hand, thought the blood was coming from his lip, and ran away crying to tell his mother. I stood there, looking Paul in the eye, waiting to see if I’d have to hit him, too. But he simply blinked at me a couple of times and took two steps back, then ran along behind Matt, calling for him to wait.

  I looked down at my hand and wondered what I’d tell my father. The one thing he had always taught me was to try to avoid violence of any kind. But sometimes it is unavoidable. Like that moment in the jungle when he had to look right in that man’s eyes and kill him. Because if he hadn’t, my father would have been the dead one. Like this moment, when I had to let these boys know that I was done with their games, that I chose myself over them. But no, I knew that I could have just walked away. It would have been the harder thing to do, but I could have done it.

  I trudged down to the river and put my hand in the water, watching it as if from very far away, as if I had floated above myself and was looking down, judging this little boy on the bank who was washing blood from his knuckles. The water was warm and immediately comforting to the smarts of pain that ran all the way to the tips of my fingers. I had the sudden urge to taste the river. I brought my hand around to cup up some of the water, but when I put it to my mouth, all I could taste was blood.

  My family was situated on the sidewalk near the courthouse, laughing and talking as they sat in the wooden chairs they had carried down after they parked. I stood in the milling crowd and studied them before they had a chance to see me.

  Nell was nowhere to be found, but Josie had already bought a bag of cotton candy and her lips were purple from eating it. Charles Asher had his arm stretched out across her should
ers, a crooked little smile playing out on his face. My parents were similarly hugged up, too, but my mother was paying more attention to Edie than to my father, who ran his thumb up and down my mother’s arm as he looked around, taking in all the people who had ventured out for the parade and fireworks. Edie was sitting on the curb, leaning back against my mother’s legs. Mom was bent over and talking to her, but Edie only sat there with her arms hugging herself, nodding. Her face was still square, and I knew that Edie hadn’t told what happened and was being questioned about where I was. My mother could tell something was wrong with Edie; I knew because she put her hand out and smoothed it over Edie’s head, five or six long strokes that caused Edie to close her eyes. No one could see her face but me. I couldn’t remember the last time my mother had touched me in such a way.

  I made my way over to them.

  My mother looked up with her eyebrows fretted. “You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago,” she said. “Don’t ever go off by yourself like that again. I told you and Edie to stay together.”

  I apologized and she smiled halfheartedly, letting her anger go so as not to ruin the day.

  “Did you bring my Uncle Sam hat?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I forgot it in the truck,” Mom said.

  I sat down on the curb next to Edie, and the concrete sidewalk scorched the backs of my legs. I slid my hands under my thighs and leaned into Edie, but she wouldn’t look at me. I wanted to apologize, but instead I just sat very close to her. I thought when our arms touched, my skin would shoot out little messages of penance, but it didn’t work. She scooted away. She could read my mind, anyway; she’d feel my grief. And before I could say anything else, the parade started.

  At first there were just a bunch of police cars, all of them with their lights flashing blue. The cops wore big sunglasses and looked straight ahead, as if the interest of safety and protection depended on them not looking anyone in the eye. Then came the high-school marching band. The horn players stomped by first, holding their trumpets and saxophones and flutes out stiffly in front of them while they walked in beat to the tapping of the drumline. Then, right on cue, all the horns came up to their lips and they started playing “You’re a Grand Old Flag” while they bobbed their clarinets and cornets back and forth in front of them, and a jagged line of girls behind the band thrust their flags into the air and waved them with such force I could hear them flapping even over the music. Lots of people started bouncing around to the music, and everyone was happy and caught up in the parade, except for me and Edie. My mother was clapping her hands to the song, and Charles Asher let out a wolf whistle.