Nickel played with the other kids. She and Peepbean spit at each other. He pushed her down. Although half his size, she bounced up and knocked him sideways with all the force of her fists. O.B. stepped in before more damage could be done.
“That’s enough. You don’t hit girls.”
Peepbean, rubbing his eyes to hide the tears, remarked, “She’s not a girl. She’s a bitch.”
O.B. grabbed him by the ear. “You shut your trap!”
Nickel watched with obvious satisfaction.
Jackson Frost, almost seven and a half years old to Nicky’s five and a half, put his arm around her shoulders. “Let’s get ice cream.”
Mary Miles and Harold filled tables with hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, cole slaw, baked beans, three-bean salad, pickled eggs, deviled eggs, cold hams, and fried chicken. The dessert table had big tubs of ice cream packed around with dry ice, everyone’s favorite candy bars, and little peanut clusters that Mrs. Anstein made especially for the occasion.
Louise took up residence on a big air mattress. She paddled with both her hands.
Juts swam over. “Let me get up there, too.”
“There isn’t room.”
“Take a swim and let me have it for a while.”
“No. I don’t want to get my hair wet. I went to Pierre today and it’s just the way I like it.”
“It’s a pool party.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to swim.” Louise closed her eyes. “Just let me float around up here. You know how many chemicals there are in pools. Might turn my hair funny.”
Nickel watched as her mother dove under the air mattress and flipped it over. Louise rose to the surface, sputtering, while Juts swam away.
“Your mother’s mean.” Peepbean snuck up on Nickel.
“Shut up,” Jackson warned him. “You shut up.”
“Peepbean, you’re a real cootie.” Nickel turned away from him to watch the scene in the pool. She was wearing her red cowboy boots, her bathing suit, and her bandana. Much as Juts tried to tell her this wasn’t pool-party attire, Nicky would surrender neither the boots nor the bandana.
“I can’t swim!” Louise hollered.
Mrs. Mundis turned up the radio, probably not to drown out Louise’s cries. She wanted more music and she wasn’t much paying attention to the drama in her pool.
Nickel ran to Chessy. “Daddy, Aunt Wheezie is taking on water.” Nickel, hearing so much military talk because of the veterans, had picked up the phrase.
“Juts!” Chessy called to his wife, who was emphatically not paying attention to her sister.
“I’ll drown!” Louise wailed.
“I’ll save you.” Nickel jumped in, boots and all, and sank like a stone. Soon the curly head popped to the surface. She dog-paddled toward her aunt.
“I’m drowning!”
“Not fast enough.” Juts saw that her sister wasn’t kidding. Worse, her hair was getting wet.
Juts put her arm under her sister’s back, pushing her up. “Kick with your legs. Not me, goddammit,” Juts said as she felt a thump on her thigh. She guided a struggling Louise to the air mattress.
Once she grabbed the side of it, Louise spit water at Juts. “You knocked me off.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You are not!”
A little yelp from Nickel alerted Juts and Chessy.
“Daddy, my legs are tired.” And they were. “It’s hard to swim in cowboy boots.”
Chessy dove in, spitting water to either side, and grabbed his child. She put her arms around his neck. “Sugar pie, Daddy’s got you.”
“I can swim, I really can swim.”
“I know, I know.” He patted her back. “But it’s not a good idea to do it in cowboy boots.”
“Is she all right?” Julia called out.
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m not!” Louise paddled to the side of the pool.
By now the partyers watched.
Louise clambered out of the pool and sank down on the coping, breathing heavily. “She’s trying to kill me. She wants my half of the inheritance.”
Julia ignored this, further angering Louise, still gasping for air.
Pearlie, pushing through the crowd, finally reached her and ministered to her. Mary made it to her mother’s side as well.
Peepbean cornered Nickel near the dessert table. “What a dumb-ass you are.”
Nickel shrugged. As Peepbean had just overheard an aside concerning Nickel’s parentage he felt powerful. She brushed by him. He followed in her trail of water.
“Dumb. You’re a dumb bastard.”
Nickel didn’t know exactly what “bastard” meant except that it wasn’t a good word. “Shut up, Peepbean.”
“You think you’re so smart but you’re a dumb bastard.”
Extra Billy Bitters, just behind Peepbean, heard this. He didn’t want this conversation to progress any further. “Peepbean.”
Peepbean turned to see the towering blond man behind him. “Yes, sir?”
“Time for you to swim.”
“Yes, sir.” Peepbean walked back to the pool and slipped in.
Extra Billy walked over to O.B., told him what he had heard, and asked O.B. to see if he couldn’t give Peepbean some fatherly advice. O.B., already disenchanted with his offspring, turned pale. Billy patted O.B. on his narrow shoulder. “It’s just … the kid shouldn’t have to know—not now, anyway.”
O.B. nodded. “She won’t hear it from Kirk.” Rarely did O.B. use his son’s nickname.
Meanwhile, Nickel was madly unwrapping Baby Ruths. The adults, most of them, were still occupied with Louise. Nicky tossed the Baby Ruths into the pool.
“Honeybun,” Harold Mundis bellowed as Peepbean swam around. “There’s shit in the pool.”
“Harry, there can’t be. No one’s had time.”
Undaunted by this wisdom, Harold pointed to the offending candy bars. “Shit floats.”
“Don’t look at me!” Louise shouted. Her lungs recovered from her travail. “I was scared but I wasn’t that scared.”
Juts, oozing sisterly love and relishing the moment, purred, “Now, now, Louise, fear does that to many people.”
“I did not defecate in Mary Miles’s pool!” Louise sat upright, her eyes blazing.
“Well, someone did,” Harold, not a sensitive man, observed.
Nickel piped up. “Peepbean Huffstetler.”
Just then Peepbean surfaced from his underwater swim. He was showing off how far he could swim while holding his breath. All eyes were upon him. He smiled, held his nose, and flipped over backward, going underwater again. This time when he surfaced, a Baby Ruth bobbled in, eyeball level.
“Ugh.” He pushed water at it, which sent that one away, but a few others headed toward him, tiny brown torpedoes. He yelled, splashed water everywhere, and swam to the side of the pool. He climbed out with everyone staring at him. They were too polite to point the finger, but everyone there just knew Peepbean Huffstetler had pooped in the pool.
69
The backs of Chessy’s legs glowed, diaper-rash-pink from too much sun. He winced as he slid under the covers that evening.
Yoyo, languid across the end of the bed, observed his discomfort. She roused herself, stretched, then padded across the sheet, placing herself right by his hand. He petted her.
Juts, a jar of Noxema in hand, emerged from the bathroom. “Roll over.”
“I don’t think that does a damned bit of good.”
“The menthol helps. Come on.”
He rolled over and she pulled back the sheet. Yoyo moved to the pillow for a better view.
“You know what Extra Billy told me? I nearly forgot.” He winced as the first white glob hit his calf. “He told me Peepbean Huffstetler called Nicky a bastard. Said he had a word with O.B. about it.”
“That kid isn’t wrapped too tight.” Juts rubbed too hard.
“Just—”
“Sorry.”
“I think we’ve got to tell Nickel befo
re she starts first grade. Everyone knows. Eventually the kids she plays with will know. I don’t want her to hear it from them.”
“September’s a long way away.”
“No, it’s not. This is June. Time flies!”
“Oh, let’s not tell her right now.”
“We’ve got to do it before school starts.” Juts stopped smoothing on the cream. “Let her be mine for a little longer.”
He twisted his head to see her. “She is yours, Juts. If you don’t tell her, I will.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice rose.
“I’m not having some snotty brat like Peepbean—”
She interrupted. “He’s mad at her because she rides so much better than he does. O.B. pays more attention to her than to his own son.”
“I don’t care why, I care when.” He turned over, his legs tingling. “We need to sit down with her.”
Juts screwed the cap back on the cobalt-blue glass jar. “Do you feel like she’s yours?”
He blinked, then stammered a little. “She is mine. She’s my baby. I don’t care how she got here.”
“Yeah.” Juts rubbed the embroidered hem of the sheet between her left forefinger and thumb. “I don’t see me in her at all.”
“You aren’t supposed to see you. You’re supposed to see her.”
“Louise looks at Mary and sees herself. I know she does. Maizie looks like Pearlie.”
“What do looks have to do with it?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I see a little stranger.”
He felt a bubble of anger rising in his throat and fought it down. “Well, Juts, maybe she looks at us and sees big strangers.”
“Could be”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. More, I guess. Something. She’s so goddamned independent. I thought she’d need me.”
“She does.”
“No, she doesn’t, Chessy. She goes off by herself. She’s—” She couldn’t think of another word. “—independent.”
“That’s good. Look at how Maizie had to fight to get away from her mother. If those girls had been given more freedom maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, especially for Maizie.”
“I don’t know. I never thought Louise smothered them.”
“I did.”
“Men are different. You don’t love children the way we do.”
“Julia Ellen, that is the dumbest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay, then why is it so easy for men to leave their children?”
“Those aren’t real men,” Chessy shot back. “And you can’t judge everyone by your father. Nickel’s curious about the world and she’s not afraid. Leave her alone, Juts. Be glad she’s not some fraidy-cat.”
“But I don’t think she cares if I’m her mother or not.”
“Of course she does.” He sat up and put his arm around her. “She’s a kid. She’s not thinking about you, she’s thinking about herself. Kids don’t mean to be self-centered, but they are.”
“I keep thinking something’s missing.”
“Nothing’s missing. Really. Now, we’ve got to have a sit-down before school starts, Julia.” He emphasized her name.
“Louise says the opposite. She says we should never tell. If we do, Nickel won’t feel like our child.”
“Louise is full of shit—for starters.”
Juts placed the Noxema jar on the nightstand, then crawled in the other side of the bed. She turned on her side, getting a full view of Yoyo. She wiggled down to see Chessy’s face as Yoyo’s tail flicked over it.
“Honey, do you think I’m a good mother?”
“Sure.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
She waited some more. “I wish Wheezie had stayed in the water longer.”
“Huh?”
“Then everyone would have thought the Baby Ruths were hers.”
“The look on Harry Mundis’s face when he fished them out and discovered they were candy…”
“And Peepbean running around the pool shouting, ‘I told you I didn’t crap in the pool.’ Jeez, it was worth the price of admission.”
“Did you ask yourself how those Baby Ruths got in the pool?” He chuckled.
“Nicky. I know it was Nicky. Who else would think of such a thing?”
They exploded with laughter.
Chessy said, “She had him dead to shit.”
70
The next morning, Juts was trimming back her wisteria, which threatened to take over the entire front porch, when Louise screeched into the driveway, slammed the car door shut, then charged up the front steps.
“How could you?”
“How could I what?”
“You humiliated me in front of everyone. I will never forget this. I may forgive but I will never forget.”
“I shouldn’t have tipped over the raft.” Juts sounded contrite. She wasn’t.
“That was the least of it. I lay there, lungs filled with water, fighting for air, then I had to defend myself against the idea that I’d defecated in the pool!”
“Wheezie, everyone knows you didn’t do it.”
Her long black eyelashes fluttered. “It was nip and tuck there for a while. The humiliation.”
“Look at it this way.” Juts tapped the end of a fresh pack of cigarettes, the cellophane smooth to her touch. “No one will ever forget the party or you.”
Buster trotted around the corner, saw Wheezie, and bounced up for a pet. Nickel barreled up behind him.
“Hi, Aunt Wheezie.”
“What’s this I hear about you getting in a fight with Peepbean?”
“He started it.”
“Nickel, he’s slow in the head.”
“Probably didn’t get enough oxygen in the womb,” Juts added.
Nickel put her hands on her hips. “Peepbean’s a dingleberry.”
“And what, may I ask, is a dingleberry?” Louise’s eyebrows raised.
“A heinie hair with poop on it.”
“Where do you hear such talk?” Louise was scandalized. Even Juts was taken aback.
“Jackson Frost told me Peepbean was a dingleberry. He is, too.”
“Be that as it may, young lady, I don’t ever want to hear that word out of your mouth again.” Juts pointed her glowing red cigarette at Nicky.
“Why not? Momma, he called me a bastard and that’s a nasty word, too. Why do I have to be nice? It’s not fair.”
Both sisters exchanged loaded glances. Louise gestured with her hand as if to say, “You first.”
Juts sucked hard on her cigarette. “A Southern lady does not return rudeness for rudeness. You smile and walk away.”
“Mom!”
Juts held up her hand. “I didn’t say it was easy, but you earn the respect of everyone around you. Peepbean isn’t worth fussing at.”
“Do you know what a bastard is?” Louise prodded.
“No. But it’s a bad word.”
“Well, why don’t we leave it at that?” Juts quickly said.
“If he hits me I’m hitting him back.” She defiantly glared at her mother.
“You do have to defend yourself.”
“You’re telling her to hit him,” Louise grumbled.
“No, I’m not, but kids are cruel. If she doesn’t hit back they’ll beat her to a pulp.”
“She’s not very big.”
“I’m big enough to hurt someone.” Nickel doubled her fists. “I’m not scared, either.”
“That’s obvious.” Louise sighed. “I don’t remember this kind of trouble with my girls.”
“That was a different time.” Juts was in no mood for a lecture on Louise’s feminine daughters.
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
“Maybe not in years, but in other ways. The war changed everything.”
Louise thought awhile. “Things are different.”
Nickel studied their faces. “When I grow up I’ll pound Peepbean to powder.”
“
That’s hardly the answer.”
“‘Turn the other cheek.’” Louise quoted the Bible.
“No.”
“Nickel …” Juts frowned.
“No.”
“It’s in the Bible.” Louise repeated a fact Nickel already knew.
“I’m not Jesus.”
“Of course you’re not, honey, but you must strive to live like Jesus.” Louise’s voice dripped saintliness.
“No.”
“All right, Nicky, that’s enough,” her aunt said firmly.
“Jesus was crucified. I don’t want to be crucified.”
“Jesus died for our sins.” Louise was positively unctuous.
“I don’t have any sins.”
“Of course you do. We are born sinful and unclean.”
“I take a bath.”
Set back by this intransigence, Louise bore down on the child. “We are born into Original Sin, Nickel. That is the word of God.”
“I don’t have any sins and I’m not turning the other cheek.”
“Oh, Nicky, what would Jesus think if he heard you?” She stared up at her aunt. “Jesus isn’t here.”
“‘Lo, I am with you always.’” Louise’s voice lifted to the heavens.
“He’s not here! He doesn’t care about me.”
“He does,” Louise, shocked, blurted out.
Juts, amazed, watched and listened without speaking, a first for her.
Nickel stepped toward her aunt, ready to fight her, too. “If Jesus loved me he wouldn’t let Peepbean pick on me.”
“He knows you’re strong enough to take care of yourself.” This was a clever argument on Louise’s part, but Nicky wasn’t buying.
“Jesus let children die in the war.”
“Not that again,” Juts whispered, then spoke louder. “Nickel, I don’t understand these things either. Why don’t you work on your soap box? Okay?”
The child gave them both a long, hard look, then left.
Juts exhaled. “Goddamn, I wish she’d never seen that news-reel. That was months ago.”
“The one with the dead dog?”
“And the gangs of orphans. What she remembers—” Juts shook her head.
“When we were knitting socks for the doughboys I don’t remember thinking about the children over there. Did you?”
“No.”
Louise shrugged. “Why is she building a soap box? Girls can’t run in the derby.”
Runny03 - Loose Lips Page 32