Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  Chantry knew what he meant. The quibbles had to do with him. He stepped forward. He just hoped he got out the words without choking on them.

  “Mr. Quinton, I apologize for what happened last night. I’m sorry.”

  Sharp eyes shifted to him and got even sharper. He sat back in his chair and it didn’t make a sound even though he was a big man. He let the papers he held go flat on the desk and put his hands together, finger-ends to finger-ends as he studied Chantry for so long he began to feel his throat go tight and his stomach knot up like it did when Rainey got on him. This was different, though. Rainey was just all fists and bluster. Bert Quinton held real power, and he knew it and made sure everyone around him knew it. He could change lives with just a word or two.

  “An unfortunate incident,” he said softly after a moment, and Chantry nodded.

  “Yessir.”

  “Not the first time young men have come to blows over family honor, but I trust it won’t happen again. Chris felt it his duty to protect his cousin from—unwelcome advances.”

  Chantry stared at him. Mama made a faint sound but he couldn’t tell if it was dismay or surprise. He’d told her the truth, but now Mr. Quinton was saying something totally different.

  “I’d never do anything to hurt Cinda,” he said finally when it seemed that Mr. Quinton expected him to respond.

  “There are ways of harming impressionable young girls without touching them. Cinda has always had a soft heart. Not particularly wise, but sympathetic. I trust she’s learned her lesson now and there will be no more such incidents. You’d do well to take a lesson from this also, Mr. Callahan. Families can get hurt by the actions of their children. Do we understand one another?”

  It was a not so subtle threat. He understood it very well.

  “Yessir. I understand.”

  “Excellent. You and your little brother will wait out in the hall while your mother and I finish our discussion.”

  Chantry took Mikey’s hand, and with a glance at his mother sitting rigidly in the chair in front of that huge desk, they left the office and he closed the door behind them. Mikey walked awkwardly in his leg braces, and he lifted him onto a striped satin bench set against the wall.

  Mikey played with the stuffed bear, dancing it over the beige stripes and humming softly to himself. He envied him. It’d be nice to be totally unaware of trouble, to just accept whatever came without worrying about it.

  He didn’t feel like sitting down and stood with his back to the wall, arms folded across his chest and his head pressed against satin wallpaper that matched the bench. It was secluded back in this part of the hallway, though he could see all the way to the front door. Beveled glass windows on each side of the wide door let in plenty of light. A staircase curved up at one side.

  In a few minutes he heard steps on the stairs, and wasn’t too surprised to see Chris come down them. He paused at the bottom, and turned to look at Chantry. His face was pretty battered. His lips had swelled up to the size of orange slices, and one eye was swollen shut. Ugly bruises darkened one side of his face.

  When Chris started toward him, Chantry pushed away from the wall, tensing. He sure didn’t need any more trouble, not here, not now.

  “My dad said you came to apologize,” Chris said when he got close, and Chantry sucked in a deep breath and nodded.

  “Yeah. Sorry it happened.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Chantry didn’t say anything, just looked at him. Chris stared back. After a minute, he looked down at Mikey and the stuffed bear. Then he looked back up at Chantry.

  “You gonna take that bear everywhere with you?”

  “I . . . gave it to Mikey.”

  Chris nodded. “I told my dad we had a fight over you and Cinda.”

  “I figured that much.”

  “Say any different and I’ll deny it.”

  It was as close as he’d come yet to admitting the real reason for the fight: Tansy.

  “I’m not exactly in a position to say much of anything,” he said then, and Chris gave him a look like he knew that already. They stood awkwardly for another moment; then Chris just turned around and left.

  Chantry leaned back against the wall. Life sucked.

  Old man Quinton signed the papers Mama needed, and the surgery was set for the second week after school was out. Mama made all the arrangements, and said Chantry would have to go with her. She didn’t say it out loud, but she knew it wouldn’t work if she left him behind with Rainey.

  Chantry fretted about leaving Shadow at home, and finally asked to board him at the clinic while he was gone to Jackson. Doc said that’d be fine, and he’d give him a discount. With Doc, that usually meant free these days. For some reason, he seemed to think Chantry deserved it.

  Or maybe he just wanted to help out Shadow, because he said a couple of times how much he liked that dog. “He’s smart. Quick. Make a fine stock dog. You got a winner there, Chantry.”

  Trials came up soon, and Chantry had decided to enter Shadow. He’d paid the fee back in January, and had the money set aside for the Nursery class. He just had to figure out a way to get to the trials that’d be held over in Clarksdale at the end of July. Maybe Rainey’d take him, since he hoped to get a big paycheck out of the dog.

  Mikey’s surgery was scheduled the same week as Chantry’s fifteenth birthday. He’d be in Jackson on his birthday, and Mama had promised they’d celebrate two birthdays at once even though Mikey’s birthday wasn’t until September. It’d be just like new for all of them, she said. He worried that if something bad happened, he’d never forget that it happened on his birthday.

  Jackson wasn’t as big as Memphis, but it was sure a lot bigger than Cane Creek or even than Clarksdale. The hospital sat near the Interstate that looped through town, with cars whizzing by so fast they were just a blur at night. Chantry sat and looked out the window the night before the surgery, his stomach tied in knots and everything around him seeming to fade.

  Mikey was so little he was lost in that big hospital bed. He liked the attention, and was so cheerful that all the nurses said he was the best patient they’d ever had. He didn’t even complain when he got stuck with needles that drew blood, needles that would give blood, and needles that injected medicine into him. He’d just flinch and hug that damn white bear harder against him, and everyone said how brave he was.

  Mama went downstairs to get them something to eat, and Chantry sat with Mikey. He had his own TV up on the wall, and was fascinated with the variety of programs offered on cable. He watched cartoons for a while, and then some documentary, with equal delight.

  “Hey sport,” Chantry said when Mikey flipped the channel with the remote, “why don’t you try to rest?”

  “That’s okay. I hafta watch. It’s got sharks. I like sharks. If I don’t wake up again I might not get to see them.”

  Chantry went real still. Then he turned to look at Mikey, but he had his eyes trained on the TV and sharks swimming on the documentary channel.

  “What’d you say?” he got out, his voice sounding all raspy.

  Mikey didn’t look at him, just watched the flickering images up on the screen. “I want to see the sharks.”

  “You’re gonna wake up,” Chantry said so fiercely that Mikey finally looked over at him, his eyes big and wide. “You hear? You’ve got to if you want to see the sharks for real someday. So don’t you even think different.”

  Mikey sighed. “I might not, you know. It’ll be okay if I don’t, Chantry. I don’t want you to worry. You got enough to worry about.”

  God. Chantry couldn’t say anything for the hard lump in his throat. He just stared at Mikey while everything around him seemed to dissolve. He thought of the angels in that picture that looked so much like Mikey, and then he thought how scared he was that Mikey might be one of them soon. Then all he could think was that he wouldn’t be able to stand it if that happened.

  After a minute he got up and went over to stand by Mikey’s bed. He
took his frail little hand and held it, looked down at the difference, his so big and brown and Mikey’s so tiny and pale. His eyes burned like he was going to cry, but he didn’t, just stood there.

  “Want to lie down next to me, Chantry?”

  “Sure,” he got out, and lay down in the bed next to Mikey, still holding his hand so tight it was like he could just give him some of his own strength. He’d wanted to give blood, but his wasn’t a match so he couldn’t. He hadn’t been able to do anything for Mikey except be here. And now he wondered just how much good that would do.

  “You like sharks?” Mikey asked.

  Chantry glanced at the TV. “Sure. Someday I’ll take you to see real ones.”

  Mikey seemed happy at that even though Chantry didn’t watch the TV as much as he did his little brother. He didn’t move from beside him all that night except to go to the bathroom, and when a nurse suggested he move to the cot set up in the room, he just looked at her and shook his head. Mama didn’t say anything either. And he didn’t tell her what Mikey had said.

  They came early to get him the next morning. Chantry was still awake. They walked with Mikey all the way to the doors of the operating room, and then had to stop there. Mama leaned over and whispered, “I love you enough,” and Mikey grinned drowsily.

  “I know.” He looked so small in that big bed being rolled down the hall, and Chantry saw his little hand come up for a last wave just before the doors closed behind him. He looked over at Mama, and she had tears running down her face but she didn’t make a sound. After a minute, she turned and walked away and he went with her.

  It took all day. Chantry couldn’t focus on anything, not TV, or the traffic outside, or the way all the trees were so pretty and green. He even tried to read but the words were just like chicken scratches in dirt. Nothing made sense. Mama bought him a hamburger and he only got half of it down. She didn’t eat either, he noticed.

  Finally, the call came for Michael Lassiter’s family and the doctor came out to the waiting room. He smiled at them, and Mama clapped a hand to her mouth as he said Mikey had done just fine and he’d be good as new in a short time. Chantry let go of the breath he’d been holding. He heard all the technical stuff the doctor added after that, but none of it mattered. All that mattered was that Mikey was going to be all right.

  Two days later, they celebrated Chantry’s fifteenth birthday and Mikey’s first as a new boy. He said he was like Pinocchio now, a real boy at last, and Chantry thought if that was true, the doctors would have fixed his feet as well. But it seemed like nitpicking to think that when the best news was that Mikey would recover. Some things just had to be endured, and maybe Mikey’s twisted feet was one of them. Besides, Mama had a way of getting things done. She’d manage it.

  Mama was as happy as could be. She had a big cake brought to the room with sixteen candles on it, fifteen for Chantry and one for Mikey, and all the nurses came in to sing Happy Birthday and embarrass him. Mama laughed and said his face was really red, and one of the pretty nurses who didn’t look but about twenty gave him a big kiss on the cheek so that his face got even more red.

  To his surprise, he got several cards, some with money in them, and Mama said that he’d have to write thank you notes to everyone before he left. She gave him twenty dollars and said she wished it could be more, but he hadn’t even expected that. It cost money to be here, and even though transportation was covered, it’d cost more once they got back home, too. Mikey would have to have medicine for a while yet.

  Before they left the hospital to go home, Chantry went down to the gift shop and picked Mikey out a present. It was a big gray stuffed shark, with jaws open wide and white felt teeth. It cost most of his birthday money, but it was worth it. He went back upstairs and gave it to him in the plastic bag, and Mikey pulled it out and grinned.

  “Now you’ve always got a shark,” Chantry said, and they shared a look that said they’d keep that between the two of them.

  CHAPTER 10

  Summer school started soon after they got back to Cane Creek, and this year Mama had several classes to teach. She was going to teach in both sessions, something she didn’t usually do because she said it was her only free time to be with her family. Chantry guessed that old man Quinton had something to do with it. He remembered what Chris’s dad had said about one hand washing the other. Since Mama didn’t get paid extra for it, this must be the trade for signing that paperwork.

  Chantry had nearly eleven hundred dollars saved up in the old tin hidden in the top of the dog house. Soon he’d have two thousand to give Rainey. Then he’d get the papers for Shadow and the dog would be all his. He worked with him every Sunday, and any other day he could get enough time after babysitting Mikey half a day for Mama and working at the clinic. He still gave half his paycheck to Mama, and what he didn’t have to spend on expenses, he saved. There wasn’t anything else to spend his money on, anyway.

  Sometimes he thought about Cinda, and how he’d liked to have taken her to the movies or to the Dairy Queen. She wouldn’t even look at him now. Some of her friends did, though. He was surprised when Cathy Chandler came up to him one day at the grocery store and ran her fingers along his arm.

  “Hey Chantry. How you doin’?”

  “Okay.” He didn’t know quite what to say to her after all that had happened, and sure didn’t know why she’d be touching him like she was or smiling up at him through her lashes.

  “I heard your little brother had an operation and is doing a lot better.”

  “Yeah.” Mama was over by the frozen meats, and he’d been looking at the magazines. It felt funny to be standing here with Cathy, like he was doing something wrong. She had pretty brown hair and eyes, and the kind of skin that always seemed to shine. He guessed she was pretty enough, but he’d never really thought of her that way. He’d only thought about Cinda for so long that he hadn’t noticed any other girl at school.

  While Cathy didn’t come from an affluent family like Cinda, she was still one of her good friends and that felt even more strange.

  “So what are you doing during vacation?” she asked, leaning close to him so that he could smell the perfume she wore. Her hair smelled vaguely like coconuts, too.

  “Working.”

  “All summer? Don’t you ever get time off?”

  “Not much.”

  “Um. Well, I’m pretty flexible.” She ran her fingers over his chest, lightly as if playing. “I hear you’re dangerous, Chantry Callahan.”

  He looked at her. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You know. Gettin’ into fights, beatin’ up on guys. That kind of stuff. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Some of it. Maybe.”

  She smiled. “Then maybe we could get together when you have a little time.”

  “Right. That’d be . . . fun.” He wasn’t really sure it would be. Cathy had a hungry look to her that made him wary. Where Cinda had been sweet if a bit spoiled, Cathy made him think more of one of Mikey’s sharks. She moved in on him a little closer, and he wondered if she knew that her breast was right up against his arm.

  “I can get my mama’s car and we can go for a ride, Chantry. Maybe down to the river.”

  The blood beat faster through his veins. He got a real tight feeling in his belly and lower. It was embarrassing.

  “What’s down at the river?” he asked when he could talk, and she laughed softly.

  “With any luck, me, you, and a few beers. Don’t you think that’s all we’d need?”

  Oh yeah. He suddenly really wanted to be with her. She made him feel like he did when he had those dreams.

  “How about Saturday night?” he heard himself say, and couldn’t believe he’d be so reckless. She smiled.

  By Saturday night, he was kicking himself for ever being stupid enough to say he’d go. He knew that Cinda would hear about it, not that it should matter if she did. She’d made it pretty plain she wanted no more of him. He started to call Cathy and tell her he coul
dn’t go, but never did. Maybe it was time he moved on just like Cinda had. He knew she was seeing Justin Dawson again. Apparently, Mrs. Sheridan approved of him, because he was always at their house.

  Since he didn’t want Cathy coming by the house where Rainey would see, he met her at the park. He showed up a few minutes early just because he hadn’t been able to stick around the house any longer without Mama thinking of something for him to do, so he’d escaped.

  He hadn’t lied to her, but he hadn’t told Mama where he was going, either. She had the idea he was going to meet Donny Ray Caldwell for a game of pool at the Wreck Room. Maybe because he’d told her that Donny had asked him to go, which he had, but he just hadn’t added the part where he’d told Donny he had other plans.

  Cathy showed up just as it was getting dark, driving her mama’s new Ford Taurus. It still smelled brand new, and the console between the front seats held a six pack of beer. He looked at it, then at Cathy, and grinned.

  “Not bad.”

  “I’m very resourceful. Besides, my dad has cases of it and won’t ever miss a little here and there. We’ve got more in the back if we want it, but I thought we could start out slow.” She slid him a glance from beneath her lashes. “Sometimes I like it nice and slow.”

  Just her tone made him hot, and he looked out the front window and focused on the road instead of how she made him feel. It was really weird. He hadn’t felt about any other girl like he had about Cinda, but Cathy made him want to be with her anyway. He wasn’t stupid. He knew he wanted something very different from Cathy than he had from Cinda, but it still made him feel almost like he was cheating. Maybe because Cathy was her friend.

  There was a spot along the river everyone called Makeout Point for the obvious reason. He hadn’t ever been there before, but he knew about it. It wasn’t a big surprise that Cathy took him there. The night was warm so she left the car running and the air conditioning on. If they put down the windows, mosquitoes as big as bats would probably eat them alive anyway. She popped the top on a beer and handed it to him, then opened her own.