by Ike Hamill
“You’re gonna ice it up,” she said.
Ricky flipped it shut.
“What’s the point in being here if I can’t make any tips?” Ricky asked. “Joey doesn’t pay enough to make it worthwhile.”
When Sarah turned her eyes back towards the window, she jumped back with surprise.
Their boss—Joey Dawn—was poking his head through the order window.
“You can always give up your spot,” Joey said. He gave them a big, carnivorous smile. Sarah folded her arms across her chest. Joey had a little New York gangster in his voice, even though he had grown up just a mile down the road. Sarah figured that he came by his accent from watching too many movies.
Ricky shook his head. “I’m just looking for something to do, sir.”
“That’s good. Stay hungry, kid,” Joey said. He put his arm through the window. “Why don’t you grab a broom, come out here, and knock down some of these spiderwebs?”
Ricky and Sarah looked at each other. He didn’t have to say anything for Sarah to know what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing.
“Uh, Joey, your mom said to leave the spiders be. She said that if we get rid of the spiders we’ll have flies everywhere.”
“She said that, huh?” Joey asked. He sounded more like a gangster each second.
Ricky nodded.
“How ’bout you listen to me since I’m the one what signs your checks, huh?”
Sarah blinked hard and fought to keep a straight face. He had to be kidding, talking like that, didn’t he?
“Yes, sir,” Ricky said. He reached behind the drink refrigerator and grabbed the big push broom. It would be useless for knocking down spiders, but Sarah thought that might be a good thing. Ricky headed for the door.
Joey pointed to Sarah. “You get some of those little baggies and fill them halfway with water. Pin them up in the eaves and it will scare away the flies.”
“Okay,” she said. She had seen the trick before, but it didn’t work. She wasn’t about to argue with him. What was the point?
Joey withdrew from the window and Sarah uncrossed her arms. She puffed out her cheeks and exhaled through her nose. She had worked hard to cultivate a good, healthy crop of pragmatism. It was much better to do a useless task than argue about it and jeopardize her cushy job scooping ice cream. Business wasn’t always going to be this slow, and tips would easily make up for the terrible hourly wage that Joey paid. She would fill bags and pin them up. Eventually, Joey’s mom would make them take the bags down and the spiders would return. Then everything would go back to normal.
She filled six of the little bags at the sink and lined them up on the counter. Before going outside, she grabbed her hat from the rack. She didn’t mind spiders, but didn’t like the thought of one dropping into her hair.
When she got out to the deck, Ricky was halfway up the ladder. He was swinging the heavy broom over his head at the massive webs.
“You know there’s a smaller broom in the closet, right?” Sarah asked.
Behind them, a bicycle streaked down the gravel. The bike was headed right for the rocks that divided the short lawn from the water’s edge. The rider—Sarah’s friend, Lily Hazard—jumped from the bike and let it fall in the grass. She ran to meet Sarah on the edge of the deck.
“Your brother just quit!” Lily said between gasps.
“Quit?” Sarah asked. Her face registered her complete shock. If there was one job in Kingston Lakes that was more coveted than the ice cream shop, it was working at the stables. Her brother had mucked stalls all winter for free just to be considered for the position.
“You have to go talk to him. Maybe if he apologizes, they’ll let him stay.”
Sarah leaned on the railing and tried to imagine that conversation. She wouldn’t even know where to start. Her brother was older, angrier, and a million times more stubborn than she was. He would never listen to her.
“What happened, do you know?”
Lily looked down and scraped her teeth against her lower lip. “I mean, I don’t know for sure, but they put down Big Jack today.”
Ricky rested the broom against the railing and joined the girls. “Big Jack?” he asked.
Sarah sighed and shook her head. She looked out over the lake. The water was usually a perfect blue, reflecting the sky. Today, with the wind, the surface was dark. Out in the middle, they said that the water was a hundred feet deep. Looking at the troubled surface, Sarah could imagine that it went down a mile or more.
Sarah took off her hat and put it on top of Ricky’s head.
“Tell Joey I had to go, okay? If he gives you any trouble, tell him it was lady problems. That always shuts him up.”
She left them on the deck and trotted up the gravel drive towards the street.
[ Stable ]
Sarah’s arms swung with her stride as she walked up the shady road towards the stables. She had only been in the bunkhouse once, but she was pretty sure that’s where she would find her brother. Sarah ran her hand up the railing as she climbed the tall stairs to the second floor of the barn. It was hot up there, despite the overcast day and stiff breeze.
In the row of six beds, her brother had chosen the last one. It was closest to the window that overlooked the woods. Jeffrey was packing his shirts into his canvas bag.
She put her hands on her hips. He glanced up at her and then opened the drawer of his nightstand. He had toiletries in a plastic bag, a book, and a baseball. Those were all the things he had deemed crucial to take with him on his brief career as a ranch hand.
“You can’t quit,” she said.
“Already did,” he said. His voice was flat and low. He was in perfect control. She knew that wouldn’t be the case if she really pressed him.
“Dad won’t let you come back if you quit.”
He zipped his bag and straightened up. “I’ll be eighteen in three months. It doesn’t really matter what he wants.”
“You don’t have any money.”
Jeffrey shrugged. He lifted his bag and put the wide strap over his head. It crossed his chest like a bandolier. With that and his cowboy boots, he was a sixshooter away from looking like he belonged in a gunfight.
“I’ve got five-hundred in my donkey bank.”
“I don’t need it,” he said.
She shook her head. “Take it. You can pay me back when you get on your feet. Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t care. South, I guess. Maybe I’ll go to Florida and look up the cousins.”
“They don’t live in Florida anymore,” Sarah said. Jeffrey never did pay much attention to their relatives. They didn’t know their mother’s family, and Jeffrey had nothing but contempt for their father’s people.
“Then I’ll keep going south until I find a nice warm beach to crash on,” he said. “You don’t need money to sleep on a beach.”
“If there’s a beach nice enough to sleep on, they’re going to run off some trashy homeless teenager. And you have to eat, don’t you?”
Jeffrey never raised his voice to his sister. He saved his shouting for their father. With Sarah, he only got quieter when he wanted to emphasize.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “Drop it.”
Sarah approached him and lowered her own voice. “You promise me that if you get in trouble or run out of money, you’ll call.”
He stared at her.
“Promise me. No pride, and no thinking it will get better if you tough it out. You get in trouble and you call.”
He didn’t say anything. She knew what he was doing—he was waiting for her to break down and beg. She wouldn’t do it.
“I’ll promise if you don’t tell Dad that I left.”
She blinked slowly. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her. The concession was a bargain.
“Yeah,” she said. “I won’t tell Dad unless he asks.”
“Don’t tell him at all.”
She turned away. “If he asks, I’ll tell him.”
&nbs
p; “Fine,” he said. “I gotta go.”
He maneuvered around her and left the door wide open on his way out. She followed him down the tall stairs to the dirt parking area. Sarah saw Carla Gault waiting in the shade in her rusty shitbox. When Carla saw Jeffrey get to the bottom of the stairs, she cranked the engine. A mixture of oil-smoke and rust puffed out from the tailpipe.
“Jeff,” Sarah said. She put her hand out and touched his arm. Her brother had always been bigger than her, but now he was a different person. He was like a moving rock under those work clothes. She wondered if his feelings had hardened in the same way. “What happened to Big Jack?”
He turned back and gave his head a shake. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Jeffrey took his bag from around his neck as he walked. He fed it through the rear window of Carla’s shitbox and then climbed into the passenger’s seat. The car settled lower to the dirt as it accepted his weight. Carla didn’t hesitate. As soon as Jeffrey was aboard, she took off, leaving a plume of dust behind.
Sarah put her hands on her hips and sighed. She had a terrible feeling that she had seen her brother for the last time.
[ Girlfriend ]
Sarah didn’t walk as quickly when she left the stables. She was in that awkward time when Shari would be at the house but her Dad wouldn’t be back from work yet. It was the worst time. As she walked by the white, three-rail fence, she noticed how empty the field looked. When she’d walked up, she hadn’t noticed that Big Jack wasn’t there under his maple tree. Now that she wasn’t so focused on her brother, the absence felt like a hole in her chest. The giant horse had been a fixture there nearly her whole life. She couldn’t imagine that he was gone.
After the end of the fence, her side of the road squeezed down and she was forced to walk on the pavement. Cars accelerating out of the sleepy part of town veered around her as their engines whined. She could have switched to the other side of the road, but she was in no mood to make accommodations for Summer People. They could give her some space for once.
Sarah turned towards the flashing “OPEN” sign on the KLV Video store as she walked by. So many of the little summer camps were lucky to have power, let alone cable or internet. Renting a DVD was the only entertainment option for a lot of them unless they wanted to drive thirty minutes to the nearest movie theater. That was one advantage the locals had. Their houses were close to the main road. They had all the utilities, and they needed them in the dead of winter. Cable and internet were the only things that kept families sane in the dead of Maine winter.
“Hey,” a voice said.
Sarah nearly jumped out of her shoes.
It was her friend, Lily Hazard. She was back on her bike and still sounded out of breath. “Did you find your brother?”
Sarah nodded. “He just left. He’s going south.”
“That sucks,” Lily said.
Sarah frowned and nodded. She felt tears pressing at the back of her eyes, but she wasn’t going to cry in front of Lily. She bit her tongue, just to regain control of herself.
“Now I’m stuck with that damn Shari. At least with Jeffrey around, she kept her distance.”
Sarah looked uncomfortable straddling her bicycle. Her toes barely touched the ground. She pulled out a pack of gum and started popping pieces into her mouth.
“You want to come over?” Lily asked.
“No,” Sarah said. “I’m going to head home. Maybe I’ll get lucky and beat Shari there. Then I can hide in my room.” She knew it wasn’t true. Shari always beat her back to the house. But the last thing she wanted to deal with was Lily’s perfect little house. It was too much of a reminder that her own family was so messed up.
“Come over if you want later. You know, if you don’t want to be there,” Lily said.
“Thanks.”
Chapter 3 : Hazard
[ Balance ]
LILY GOT SOME DECENT speed before she bounced over the expansion joint between the pavement and the bridge. The jolt caught her off guard and she inhaled her gum. A perfect picture flashed in her head—they would find her blue-faced body lying in the grass next to the dam after she choked to death on the wad of gum.
When the bike bounced back down to the pavement from the bridge, the image went from a possibility to a certainty. The gum was lodged in her windpipe and it wasn’t going to come out. She took a hand off the handlebars and punched herself fruitlessly in the gut. The gum seemed to wedge even tighter in there.
Little flashes of white appeared in her vision. Lily steered her bike off the road and the tires crackled in the gravel and then sang in the grass. The front tire wobbled. She looked up and saw Ricky at the ice cream stand. She waved at him for help. He was sweeping the walkway and took one hand from the broom to wave back. He must have thought she was waving “Hi,” but she was using the last of her consciousness to beg for help.
Concern fell over Ricky’s face as she wobbled. It looked like he was whispering something.
The gum shot from her mouth and her bike straightened out. Lily drew in sweet air and steered back towards the road.
“You okay?” Ricky yelled.
She waved casually and smiled, playing off the whole thing. She wondered if he had seen her spit out the gum and blushed as she rode. It took her half the trip home to catch her breath again. She left her bike alongside the garage and ducked under the hanging laundry. She smiled when she saw the basket on the back porch. Trina would be inside. That meant dinner on the porch, and light and fresh cooking.
She still wore the smile as she let the screen door bang shut behind her.
Trina wasn’t there. Her mom and dad were having a conference at the stove—never a good sign. They were likely trying to diagnose what had gone wrong with a recipe. All the recipes that grabbed her parents’ fancy were written in French, and her parents barely understood French.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,” Lily said.
“Oh good, you’re home,” her mom said. Her father turned and pushed his glasses up, like he had forgotten what she looked like and wanted to get a fresh perspective. Her mom wiped her hands on a towel and moved away from the stove. Her father turned down the burner and followed. They cornered her at the kitchen table and motioned for her to sit down.
Lily tried to guess what they wanted to tell her. Were they getting a divorce? No—they would never do that with Elizabeth abroad. Besides, her parents were fused together. They barely made up one complete person with both of them combined.
When they were all sitting, their attention naturally focused on Lily’s mom.
“What do you think of Barcelona?” her mother asked.
Lily shrugged. She remembered that wad of gum that had nearly choked her. She wondered what was about to be shoved down her throat in its place.
“You studied Spanish, correct?” her father asked.
“Latin,” Lily said. “You said it was the…”
“It’s the basis of all Romance languages,” her father said with a big smile. “Perfect!”
“I’ve only had one year,” Lily said.
“You’ll pick it up like water,” her mother said with a hand wave.
Lily chewed on her lower lip for a second. “What are you guys talking about?”
“We’re going to meet up with your sister and stay for the summer,” her mother said. “You’ll love everything about it.”
“The weather there is perfect,” her father said.
“It’s very hot,” her mother said, shooting him a look. “We’ll have to find a place with a good sea breeze.”
“Of course,” her father said.
“But Elizabeth is in Rome,” Lily said.
“Not for long,” her mother said. “Her host family is going to Barcelona for the summer and we’ve got some business there too. We’re all going to meet up there.”
“I thought the point of a year abroad was for her to get away from family.”
“We won’t interfere,” her father said. “The point is for you
to experience a different culture. You’ll still be doing that.”
Lily shook her head. For the first time, she was supposed to have a summer to do what she wanted. Elizabeth was out of the country, and Lily wouldn’t be forced to go along with whatever summer plans her older sister cooked up. There wouldn’t be gymnastics camp or sailing camp. Lily was going to ride her leased horse every day, go to events, and hang out with her friends. Now she was supposed to drop everything and go to Barcelona? The idea was enraging.
“My passport!” Lily said. The revelation made her heart soar. “My passport is expired. You remember how long it took to get Elizabeth’s.”
They had planned on Elizabeth’s departure for months, and procuring the passport renewal had taken every minute of that time. There was some complication with the way they had obtained the passports when they were kids. Some shortcut from before had nearly ruined Elizabeth’s year abroad before it had even started.
Her parents exchanged a worried glance.
“I’ll check on it in the morning,” her father said.
“Call Frank,” her mother said. “He’ll know what to do.”
They nodded to each other and then turned back to Lily.
“We’ll figure it out,” her mother said.
“Or,” Lily said. She dragged out the word like her mother did when she was trying to talk the kids into a more palatable option. The kids would tell their mother that they wanted to go down and jump off the dam with the other kids. Wendy would say, “Or… I’ll get Trina to drive you to the Point and you can swim out to the float and jump off that.” Only Summer People swam down at Foster’s Point. The locals—their friends—swam down at the dam or out behind Dawn’s.
Lily had learned the approach well. Now she was using it against her parents. “Or… I could stay at Renny’s bunkhouse and ride my horse this summer like you said I could.”
“Honey, they have perfectly lovely horses in Spain. Imagine yourself riding through the countryside where Hemingway wandered and Murillo painted.”