“We best split up,” L. J. said.
Welp grumbled, but steered himself toward the woods.
Emerson touched my arm. “Turtle, you stay with Jimbo.”
I knew without being able to make out all the features that Em had on his big brother face, the kind that says all kinds of outrageous things about superior knowledge and upper-body strength—so I bristled. “I can do it myself.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“Too late,” I told him in my best grown-up voice.
“Turtle’s all right,” I heard Jimbo whisper to Em. “Kid can take care of herself.”
And I’d have been grateful, except for the “kid.”
Truth was, I was feeling chipped and cracked on the inside, what with the poor silky-eared Stray and the shadow he left of what might come next. It was the mights and what ifs all strung heavy and too close together that were making me wobble a little over my feet.
I tugged once on Bo’s sleeve. “Just this one time maybe alone’s not so good. But, Jimbo, it’s not that I’m scared….”
“Glad you’re not. I wet my pants twice since we pulled in the drive.” Jimbo reached for my hand and we walked into what we couldn’t see.
The last I heard of Big Dog before I split off toward the rim of the woods was her trotting along beside Emerson and whining, her tail straight out and stiff.
“Now and then,” Emerson defended her later, “she put her nose to the ground.” But I’d lay money she was snuffling out more barbecue.
Groping our way from loblollies back into hardwood, Jimbo and I both kept our outside arms mapping tree trunks and branches, and once, a spider web—which is unspeakably creepy at night, not knowing if you’ve taken on the spider as a stowaway in your hair, now that you’ve destroyed her home. With our inside arms, Bo and I kept track of each other.
The other boys crunched on back through underbrush, dead leaves our only radar to each other, and that growing dim. I leaned on one tree—maybe a dogwood by its satiny bark—and listened. Then remembered I didn’t even know for what.
We walked on.
“Y’all were lost, is all I’m saying,” Emerson would insist later.
“‘Was lost,’” Jimbo sang softly back, “‘but now am found.’” He nodded in my direction. “Aw, give the kid credit. It was Turtle found the Pot of Gold.”
“Lost was what she was.”
Truth was, I’d tripped over the pot—metal can, actually. But it was the smell, too, that let me know we’d found something we’d been looking for and didn’t want to find.
“Hey!” I called into the darkness as loudly as I dared—which wasn’t very loud at all. “Hey! Guys!”
Bo, right beside me, dropped to the ground to feel out what I’d found with my feet.
By that time, Emerson had returned to the truck where he and Big Dog had tunneled into the contents of an overstuffed glove compartment and found the flashlight Momma insisted all gentlemen’s vehicles must carry, particularly those transporting young ladies. But Emerson couldn’t hear the not-much-of-a-girl he’d left back in the woods by herself.
Help arrived in a pack led by, of all people, Bobby Welpler, followed by Emerson, his Big Dog, and his light. Em stabbed the beam in my face.
I defended my eyes. “The ground, idiot.”
The beam dropped to the ground.
The gas can at my feet was rusted dark, but its smell on the leaves was new and strong as could be. And the smell of gas trailed on ahead through the woods toward the house. I bent over and took a deep breath—to be sure what it was, maybe—and for a minute, the vapors unrooted the trees and rocked the ground under my feet.
We stood there. Just staring. And sniffing. And trying not to. And staring. Not at each other.
I’d found the can and figured I ought to speak first, the voice of reason and calm: “Now, it doesn’t mean anything. Necessarily.”
Jimbo grunted. “Right. This plus the other events of the evening puts us at nothing.”
“I meant … look,” I started again, stumbling, my thoughts slow and crippled a little by the edge to Bo’s voice. “Look, it could’ve been here a long time. Long before the Moulavis moved here. It might have nothing to do with … anything.”
Em lit into me: “Turtle, how many times you gonna make a flashing-light danger sign into a big Welcome Friends plaque?”
I crossed my arms and tucked my head lower into my shoulders. “It’s just that some random can by itself doesn’t mean necessarily that anybody’s setting a fire. Not yet, anyhow.”
“Not yet!” It was the first time I’d ever heard Jimbo snap at anyone, least of all me. “Not yet and mowed grass don’t last a good week.”
I squared up my shoulders, but my words came out wobbly, petulant even. “You guys got better ideas what to do, then you let me know. Y’all just wanna all be the big knights that come riding to save—”
“You,” Em came back at me, “just can’t admit when—”
Bo lay a hand on Em’s shoulder and mine. “Hold on, now. You and me both gotta let her alone. No point in piling on Turtlest Girl just ‘cause we got the puke scared out—”
Em shook off Bo’s hand. “You’re one to—”
L. J. reached for the gas can. “That will suffice, gentlemen. Come on.”
We fell in behind Emerson’s light, all of us prickly and stiff, and L. J. with the gas can and Big Dog, who whined.
Stepping softly through the crunch of old leaves and crushed gravel, we followed the reek of gas through the woods and up to the drive, where it stopped. L. J. set the gas can in the truck bed, and we cleared the tailgate one by one without the usual thunder.
Jimbo paused just before launching himself up and over the side. “Ain’t no point in any one of us left hauling the blame all alone. Turtle here’s done good to keep calm and not jump to conclusions.” My brother opened his mouth to protest, but Bo held up his hand and went on. “Up till today, when it’d be time to start jumping away. I reckon it’s time now we all posse up on what’s going on here. And how we best head trouble off at the pass.” One by one, we lifted our heads, met his eyes, then each other’s. Even Welp looked me almost full in the face.
I let out the breath I didn’t know I’d held.
Bobby Welpler sat next to me and under what little light a splinter of moon and the truck lights gave out, I could see slits, unfrayed, in the knees of his jeans. “You just cut those with your knife?” I asked—for no reason at all, except maybe to talk out the gas fumes and the picture of the pup strung up by his neck, to clear all that out of my head. And maybe so I wouldn’t cry in front of the boys.
I maybe didn’t intend to be mean, or even to say much at all—just to talk so I couldn’t hear myself think. Everyone knew Welp had never slid into a base in his life, that the holes in his jeans couldn’t have been there for real, worn through by living like everyone else’s. His mom never having much money on hand, he wore his jeans till they got to be flood pants at the ankles, but they never ripped good through the knees. He must have knifed out slits in the knees to look a rugged-guy tough that he’d never been.
He ignored me.
“Won’t your momma be mad?” I asked him, then almost wished I hadn’t—even if it was only Welp. So I took one step toward what was supposed to be helpful: “Look, hey: It’s all right, though—your mom won’t even notice.” Which also was not how I meant it to come out.
His hands dropping over the knee slits, Welp studied the slash pine blurring past in a broad band of black that I knew to be green if it hadn’t been night.
L. J. and Jimbo looked at me, and then at Welp, and then back at me. Bo handed me what was left of his Coke, which was his way of passing me courage and letting me know it was my turn to speak.
I took a deep swig of the
Coke. “Hey, Bobby, what I said. That was … just plain mean. I’m a mean-spirited poop some days. And some nights. And also, Bobby, what I said … it wasn’t true.”
Welp turned from staring into the woods. “Yeah,” he said. “It is true.”
We watched loblollies whip by. I offered the Coke to Welp, and meeting my eye for the first time, he took it, tipped it up straight, and finished it, rivulets running down each side of his chin.
_________
Waymon’s Feed and Seed, known in three counties, was on our way home. There the new spotlight that had been installed out front, adjusted full beam on L. J.’s daddy’s new sign.
I read it out loud, for something to say: “Fresh Bait, Cold Beer …” I waited for Jimbo to deliver the punch line. For someone to say something.
But Bo’s head was down in his hands and his mouth making words I couldn’t hear.
Not but a quarter mile down, L. J.’s house came first, a green slab ranch skirted by what in springtime was the pink and white chiffon of his mother’s prize-winning azaleas. In the garden’s raised center, a black garden statue grinned, grasping a lantern. Bounding from the flatbed, L. J. tossed his wet, charred towel across the groom’s head, so that only one chipped black hand and the lantern were showing.
Welp stood up in the back of the pickup. “How ’bout if I spend the night?”
L. J. shrugged in agreement, without turning. Welp hopped to the ground, though he snagged one sneaker on the tailgate and had to scurry, half-shod, to catch up.
“Tomorrow?” Emerson called from the cab.
L. J. had the screen door open. “After work. Same time.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday, Saint Laban,” Jimbo called back.
L. J. winced. “After church, then.”
Em poked his head from the truck cab. “We pagans’ll wait on you. Same Sunday time then.”
I gave a halfhearted salute. “Same place,” I said.
“Same whole exact Blue Holing crowd,” Jimbo added.
And we all understood what he meant. That no one would be left behind, especially tomorrow.
L. J. lifted his hand, not in a wave, but as a flag to show he’d heard. Bobby Welpler hurled out a, “I’m still sayin’ we shouldn’t oughta include ...?” but L. J. shut the door behind them.
Emerson drove home through a summer darkness that blew thick against my face and stuck in my throat there in the back of the truck. With one hand I clutched the gas can, while the other reached through the cab window to pet the Big Dog, who licked my wrist and whined.
Jimbo scooted in closer to me, or maybe it was me scooted closer to him, but neither one of us talked.
I don’t recall thinking that I was about to cry, but then there were tears on my face and Jimbo brushing them away. I’d like to have said they were every one of them altruistic, those tears, born of compassion for the four-legged victim and for Farsanna. Truth was, though, the tears were for me as much as anything, my mourning the group we’d been, the peace we’d rested safe in, the belonging that nobody questioned.
The whole way to his house, or even as he squeezed my hand and climbed out of the truck, Jimbo never asked why I was crying, which was good: I’d never not told Jimbo anything, or Emerson either, whenever they asked. But I’d have been ashamed to hear myself say it out loud.
27 Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me ’Round
The next morning, Jimbo’s voice rattled us out of a shallow sleep, me still fully clothed but curled in a ball on my bed, and Em stretched full length on the floor, his guitar cuddled on one side, Big Dog on the other. I’d have died before I’d have asked my brother to sleep on the floor of my room because I was scared, but the truth was, I’d never have slept that night without Big Dog and Em there with me.
Jimbo turned up the volume on his own song:
Ain’t nobody gonna turn me ’round
Turn me ’round,
“Oh, help.” I covered my head with a pillow.
Emerson staggered up from the floor. My eyes still crusted closed, I had to paw my way out of bed. Em cranked open my second-story window, just as Jimbo took his song up an octave.
By the time I reached the window, Jimbo had upended himself into a handstand on our lawn, the half Windsor knot of his necktie dangling in his face, and he was handstepping to the rhythm of his song:
Turn me ’round—
Emerson was leaning so far out my window I thought he would tumble into the magnolia for sure. “Bo, give a guy a break up here!”
Bo remained on his hands—or one hand, at least; the other was over his heart as he switched songs, his voice dipping down deep and souldful.
People get ready—
For the train’s a-coming—
My brother wasn’t impressed. “C’mon, man. It’s the weekend. You wanna wake the whole street?”
Still upside down, Jimbo cocked his head. “You people got ready?”
“Ready to come down and beat the tar outta you, yeah.”
Jimbo righted himself and ran a hand down both dress shirt sleeves, as if to smooth their wrinkles. Ever since I could remember, he’d crumpled—he said stored—his Sunday dress shirts in the same drawer, never closed, that held his favorite T-shirts. Jimbo tugged on his half Windsor, raising it all the way up to the second button, as high as it had ever gone. “Hey, we got to git in a bigheaded hat of a hurry so’s they don’t frisk us for the offering. We’re—”
“What?”
“Wanna come?”
“Come exactly where with you?”
“It’s Sunday morning, Altar Boy. And we’re greeting the town head-on. Where the rubber meets the road. Where the pulpit meets the pepper sauce. The whole Pack of us.”
Em jerked back so hard he hit his head on the window sash. “Man, are you nuts? After what happened last night? You’d show up with us—with her—THERE?”
Jimbo was buttoning his sleeves at the wrists—something I’d never seen him do, not even in winter. And here it was, the hottest of summers.
Emerson was nearly falling out my window, just like he fell—or leapt—out of the pear tree. “What are you gonna do, march us all down front and sit on the first pew so the whole town can get a good look?”
“Good idea. We gonna let ’em think they got us lily-licked? Gonna let them think they run this whole town? Well, here’s one place they don’t, and we’re one pack they can’t mangy up more.”
“Look, Bo—”
“By the way, if we’re late, we’ll sure enough have to sit on the first row. You and Turtle better hop-to and get your goose gussied.”
It occurred to me then that Emerson and I had never told Jimbo about our seeing his daddy skulking around the Moulavis’ house, and the way we’d heard the voices bullying him, and the way he had let them. We’d meant to tell Jimbo. Not just me this time hiding my head, but Em and me both, the two of us putting it off, looking for a moment alone, a moment of quiet, a moment when what we had to say wouldn’t have wounded our Jimbo; that moment hadn’t yet come. Maybe because talking about it might have made it more real, made it mean something I didn’t want it to mean. And here we were marching into the Reverend’s own territory with him on the enemy side and Bo not even being prepared.
From the driver’s seat of the pickup, Emerson hissed across me, in the middle. I began tying the straps of the sundress I’d thrown over my shorts during the three minutes I had to get ready.
Jimbo smiled out the window.
Emerson pounded the steering wheel in time with his points. “Look, Bo, you know my old man walked with King. It’s not like I’m—”
“Since when do you hitch on your old man’s train?” Jimbo wanted to know.
“Fine. You know me. You know Turtle. You know we’re not like … some people are. I’m just warning you
, for your own good, and for Sanna’s….” Em stopped at the name, and all of us stared at the road. “Look, you stopped to think here about all the warnings we’ve had? The gas can and the pup. Not to mention the men in white sheets acting like ghosts running a roadblock.”
“And,” Jimbo offered, “the cross that burned Big Dog’s place in the passenger seat.”
“Yeah, and the … How’d you know about that?”
“My momma birthed me with eyes.”
“Fine. I just don’t think it can be any clearer, Bo, that these boys’ve been trying to send us a message.”
“Well, yeah. Message received. And back at ’em.”
“If you pull this stunt this morning—”
“If we do.”
“If we pull this stunt. Look, Bo, don’t be a fool! Gonna look like you’re throwing it in their faces, us showing up there with her … Are you listening to me?”
Jimbo turned his head towards me and bared his teeth. “Hey, Turtle, do I got jelly toast in my teeth?”
Emerson pounded his head on his window and groaned.
Me, I shook my head no and smiled faintly.
“So,” Em asked, his voice without its elastic, “does your daddy know about this? That we’re coming? That she’s coming with us?”
Bo shook his head. “But shoot, the good Reverend Riggs never yet left anybody out in the hot.”
I could feel Emerson’s eyes real intent on the road, on not looking at me, just like I was making a point of not looking at him.
It was my turn to ask: “So does her dad know where you’re—where we’re—taking her? You know that night I spent at her house: I’m telling you, he prays like a man nobody told he wasn’t devout.”
“Called her this morning. Made sure she talked to her dad, told him right precisely where we was headed.”
“And he’s letting us take her? I’d have thought—”
“Maybe he just trusts the looks of us. Turtle, you got no faith.”
“More like maybe he figures this is an American thing, going to church.”
“Could likely be. But there he’d be wrong. Why, look at you two specimens: as rank a couple of heathens as ever got hatched.”
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