Sometimes, mostly at night while waiting for sleep to take him or perhaps as he rested against his shovel snatching breaths of air pungent with the manure he cleaned from the stalls of the barn, John would catch his chest tightening in grief and guilt. He knew Walter’s death was his secret to take to the grave. By the age of forty-one he’d buried the truth for far too long to dredge it back up or pull himself from beneath the shame of it. And, as the weight crushed him a little more each time he thought on it, he often worried that not only would he take that burden into the earth, but that it’d be the very thing to put him there when it eventually proved too heavy for his heart to bear any longer.
Chapter Four
In an arc that saw it catch the sun a few more times than the human eye could discern, a bright, newly-minted penny flipped end over end as if it were the smallest of heavenly bodies. Its transit was brief—spanning only a half-breath of the boy who’d tossed it, barely a wink in time—before it plunked into a corner where concrete sidewalk met the brick wall of Colonel Richmond Melby Elementary School. Before it had even settled, it was declared a loser. Two other coins—much better played—rested between it and the wall.
“Loser,” Bo Taylor yelled unnecessarily to the small crowd of children gathered for the afternoon’s pastime of pitching.
He could have announced himself the winner, instead, but that wasn’t in his character; he’d rather proclaim his rivals’ failure than acknowledge his victory. That was just his way.
In a little less than fifteen minutes, Buckshot had managed to lose the quarter he’d gained through his mother’s generosity, as well as thirteen cents more. Like so many gamblers, Buckshot’s strategy had at first been to double his money. After a few rounds of bad tosses he didn’t know well enough to quit and so he’d stuck with it, seeking to recoup his losses. When that plan had failed, his revised scheme shifted to merely getting out before he was down so far that he’d be crying on the bus ride home from school.
“C’mon, losers, who all’s up?” Bo asked the group although he fixed his eyes on Buckshot.
Several boys lurched forward, eager to give more of their money to Bo, but Buckshot hung back. He didn’t have sense enough to steer clear of Bo Taylor’s pitching prowess to begin with, but after handing over thirty-eight cents he’d reined in his enthusiasm to—as his mother had pointed out—literally throw his money away.
“In-er-out?” Bo pressured.
Buckshot let his hand fumble about with the dwindling coins in his dungaree pocket.
“If ya quit now ya can’t be in no more today,” Bo said.
Bo Taylor was handsome and manly for a boy of fourteen years. He possessed a stronger, more pronounced jaw as an adolescent than most others would have even as men. Unfortunately for him, Bo was also a bully, a braggart, undereducated and ignorant, and a know-it-all. But, worst of all, he was the best penny pitcher, marbles player and all-around athlete in the school. To top things off, he was also skilled at working his shills. In another fourteen years, at the age of twenty-eight, all of his less than spectacular traits and talents would come to their fruition in a pool hall two counties away as his abrasive personality and ability to goad others out of their money would earn him a fatal knife stab in the groin. As his femoral artery spewed crimson over the scattered bills of his last night’s winnings, Bo Taylor would leave the world in a whimper. For the moment, however, he was as loud and brash as ever, enjoying his time in the sun. He was up by two handfuls of pennies.
“Naw,” was all Buckshot replied to Bo’s self-imposed rule.
“Can’t quit now, loser. Ya still got some money left, don’t ya?”
“Yeah. But—”
“Loser!”
“I just don’t wanna.”
“Loser got to do what a loser got to do,” Bo said, eliciting nods and grunts of agreement from the dirty-palmed, motley bunch gathered around him. Turning his back on Buckshot with a sneer of disdain, Bo Taylor started another series by sending a penny to rest right against the wall.
A collective moan went up from the little crowd, and one boy, Buckshot’s best friend, Casey, tried to step away and pocket the coin in his hand.
“No ya don’t, loser. You’re in. Or else,” Bo threatened.
Casey had no choice but to step to the line—a crack in the concrete sidewalk—and let another penny escape his nervous grasp.
“Loser,” Bo commented even before it’d ceased its wobbling a good foot shy of the wall.
Casey stared dejectedly at his losing toss.
“C’mon, Casey. I don’t wanna pitch no more,” Buckshot said as he took his friend by the arm and the two abandoned the other boys to what was most certainly Bo’s game.
It was only a short while past the noon hour, but the mercury had already achieved triple digits. Buckshot and Casey crossed the grassy field that doubled as both playground and baseball diamond. By the time they’d made the shade of the trees at the far edge, the other boys left behind pitching pennies had transformed into distorted specters moving amongst the hazy waves of the heated air.
“I’ll be glad when that Bo Taylor flunks out fer good,” Casey said, plopping down beneath a pecan tree only to pain his bony rear on one of the tree’s prolific nuts. He reached under with a grimace and pulled it free.
“Yeah, me too,” Buckshot agreed, watching the ghostly silhouette of the boy they both despised lording over his pawns.
Casey spent a few seconds mouthing the pecan to crack it in-between his teeth before giving up and throwing it in Bo’s direction.
Although the mirage made it more difficult to discern the faces of the boys pitching pennies, Bo was easy to spot. He’d been held back in the third and fifth grades and so he stood a full head taller over everyone else at Melby Elementary. That tallest ghost slapped another one on the back of its head, and the call, “Loser!” was heard once more.
“I lost thirty-eight cents to that lunkhead,” Buckshot pined.
“Wished I had thirty-eight to lose.”
“Ya don’t understand. I nearly had ‘nough saved up and now I gotta start over.”
Casey curled up his nose, which would always be a little pug, but even more so in his youth, and inquired, “Saved up for what?”
Buckshot started to explain, but then thought better about it. He decided that if his secret was so well kept that even his best friend didn’t know, then that made it the biggest secret he’d ever had. Something about the thought of that captured the boy’s fancy.
“Can’t say,” he said rather solemnly.
Casey couldn’t believe his ears. “Can’t say, or don’t wanna say?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Well…I’m your best friend, ain’t I?”
“Yeah, super best,” Buckshot said, to which the two shared an odd, fist over their heart and then with fluttering fingers gesture. “But this is super secret.”
Casey didn’t protest. If Buckshot wanted his secret so bad, he could have it.
“Oh, sure. Yeah, I can’t tell you my really super secret, secret either,” he said nonchalantly, and then set his mind to work on coming up with something he could call his own secret. Buckshot didn’t bite. He was busy with new calculations on how best to get his wayward finances back on track. He only had fifty cents now, and he needed much more.
“Whatcha doing fer summer?” Casey inquired after a bit.
“Gotta help my daddy.” By the tone of it, Buckshot might as well have been reporting that his dog had died.
Casey’s lamentation was just as pathetic. “Yeah…me too.”
“Guess I’ll see ya Saturdays now and then,” Buckshot said, trying to find some silver lining.
“And at church,” Casey added.
“Yeah…I don’t know. I think my folks might stop going. They been arguing o’er it about near every Sunday fer the past few weeks or more.”
“Why come?” Casey asked, squinting at the sky.
Buckshot rolled over onto his
side and searched the dry ground for a length of weed or blade of green grass to stick in his mouth. Much of the growth thereabout was wilted and as brown as the mass of tangles that fell around his face, however. After a moment he found what he was looking for and stretched out to yank a stalk of yellow foxtail from the earth. He took its freshly-plucked end between his lips and laid back. It was something he’d seen his father do more than once.
“My mama don’t like Minister Scott, I reckon,” he said while he and his friend watched a trio of buzzards doing lazy circles far above on high a little ways off to the south. “That, and all that stuff about the coloreds moving over here from Ternsville, ya know? She called Minister Scott a bigot.”
“What’s a bigot?” Casey asked.
“Mama said it were somebody what don’t like the coloreds.”
“Yeah...my pa’s a bigot,” Casey noted innocently, and then left it at that for half a minute. “You think the Kanes is coming back to church?”
“Doubt it. Mr. Kane didn’t sound none-too-happy with the minister, either. I don’t reckon he’s much of a shepherd after all.”
“Nope.”
One of the buzzards broke from the others and began to move off to the east. After a few more laps, the remaining two veered off as well, going in search of their wayward brother. As they did, across the field a bell clanged, summoning the children back inside to suffer the remaining heat of midday and the frustration of fractions that refused to be divided without a fight.
The rest of the day, being just one of the few left in the school year, drug by at an excruciatingly slow pace. After the fractions were dispatched with, the last chapters of the Civil War needed to be closed. A good deal of time had been spent on the subject, especially the details surrounding Colonel Richmond Melby’s regiment, he being the town’s founding father and the school’s namesake. But where bloody conflict and battleground gallantry had previously held Buckshot spellbound, the signing at Appomattox Court House and the subsequent Reconstruction of the beloved South did little for the boy as he sweated in his seat and daydreamed himself far away.
“Since we’re almost out of time, tomorrow we’ll wrap up with English composition. For most of you there will be an essay assignment, due next year, covering what you did over this coming summer, and we’ll get to that as well. Fifth and sixth graders, don’t forget you have to keep your weekly journals over the summer. All composition assignments will be due the first week we’re all back in September,” Miss Kyle announced to much collective moaning.
“We ain’t even started summer and we already got homework for next year,” Buckshot whispered in complaint to Casey.
“Mr. Sayre, is everything copasetic, or do we have something to share?” Copasetic was one of Miss Kyle’s words.
“Copasetic,” Buckshot sighed.
“In that case, since I see the school bus is early for a change, and all things considered, we’ll end class for the day.”
The clock read twenty minutes until the hour and the students couldn’t believe what they were hearing. For three audible tocks of the second hand the children looked at one another in disbelief. This had to be a trick. Miss Kyle had never released class early. Of course, it’d never reached one hundred and nine degrees during the school year, either.
“Or we can open our readers if that’s what we’d all prefer instead,” she said with a lift of her thick brows and tilt of her ever-so-pointed chin.
The chaotic exodus created in that moment wasn’t one that Miss Kyle normally tolerated. However, it was almost the end of the school year, and it was so god-awful hot. Furthermore, and unbeknownst to her, Miss Kyle was drained not only by the heat but by the fact that she was four weeks pregnant. Before the school year was out, her morning sickness would give up that little secret surprise to her, though.
The bus ride home was bedlam. Just like Miss Kyle, the bus driver, Clem Harper, usually never allowed such “hyper-jinks” and “damnanigans,” but, considering that his job for the year was all but over, and, more so, how hung-over he was, his compunction to put up a fight was limited. He hunkered down into his seat and let the excited children have their way. Spitballs flew, Dutch and Indian rubs burned rampant, laughter and cries mingled, and more than a few things flew out the windows when Clem’s eyes weren’t watching the oversized rearview mirror above his head. From the small Zenith radio strapped haphazardly atop the dashboard, a lonesome crooner with a velvety voice serenaded a long-lost lover.
Across the aisle from Casey and Buckshot, Bo Taylor was engaged in a game known as slaps. His opponent, Gil, a boy even more dim-witted than Bo, held his red and swollen wrist out to receive another smack. As Bo struck him violently with just his first two fingers—as the rules called for—the bus lurched and there was a sudden explosion from somewhere that surprised and silenced everyone. Casey, who’d been watching the game between Bo and Gil, thought that somehow Bo had been responsible for the startling sound.
The bus lurched again, and Mr. Clem, as the children called him, cursed for the first time that day.
“Everybody sit down and shut the hell up, damn it all! Damn-it-all!”
The children did as they were told and all went still and quiet as Mr. Clem did his best to steer the cumbersome vehicle to the shoulder of the blacktop. Beyond him, the children could see the eruption of steam boiling out from under the hood as it escaped an engine that had otherwise gone silent.
Once they were stopped, and Mr. Clem had disembarked to disappear under the steaming hood, the children quickly began to get restless once more in the stifling confines of the bus. Before, the wind at the very least had rippled through the cabin as they moved down the road. But now that they were standing still, things were getting unbearable fairly quickly.
“Slung a rod right through the block and busted the radiator to boot,” Mr. Clem informed the children as he came back onboard.
Buckshot, Casey, Bo, and a few others of the older children understood what the man was reporting. With a piston rod shot through the block, the engine was as useless as tits on a boar, as Buckshot’s father was fond of saying.
“That motor’s as useless as tits on a boar,” Buckshot reported to Casey who nodded in agreement.
A few of the younger children started to cry and Mr. Clem mumbled under his breath. Buckshot was watching the man’s mouth in the mirror but couldn’t make out what he said. Nonetheless, he imagined it was something far worse than was usual.
“You older kids git the youngins offa here and go sit under yon’ tree while I think a spell,” the driver directed.
“So much for getting outta school early,” Casey said.
“Quit yer whining, Casey. Open up that emergency door to git some vent’lation going,” Mr. Clem barked, and then stomped back out to address the engine with a few more choice words, this time muttered just loud enough for the children to catch.
Casey and Buckshot climbed down out of the bus through the back emergency door and Bo Taylor surprised them both.
“Hold up, you two losers. Give me a hand here,” he said as he started passing some of the smaller kids down to them.
They were dismayed by Bo’s consideration for the others, as were some of the children who were suspicious of his motives at first, but, by and by, the three boys managed to empty several children out the back while the rest filed out the front.
Bo jumped down after the last first-grader was passed out the door and immediately resumed his old ways.
“Which of you losers wants to play for aggies while we wait?” he asked and then for no good reason Charlie-horse punched the third-grader, Gil Martin, standing next to him.
“Not me,” Casey said, turning away.
“Me neither. Count me out,” Buckshot agreed and followed his friend as the two joined most of the other children taking refuge in the shade as Mr. Clem had told them to do.
A few did take up Bo’s challenge, however, and that group moved to a dusty patch of earth near the r
oad where they entered into the pastime of giving Bo their much-prized marbles.
One of the few benefits brought about by the astounding heat wave was that for the most part it kept the mosquitoes at bay. From midmorning until dusk the winged nuisances clung listlessly to the underside of the foliage, tucked safely away in the shadows. Considering where the bus had broken down, the children and Mr. Clem were fortunate then to have the heat. The road was a chunky stretch of macadam with ragged shoulders centered atop a raised berm of earth. On each side, cypress trees rose, and at the base of those great splaying trunks, a tea-dark water gave birth to a horde of the pests.
Looking down from the road, Buckshot imagined that the cypress trunks looked like elephant legs. The way each was reflected in the brackish water, it appeared that those elephants balanced acrobatically on the soles of their upside-down mirror images.
Buckshot eventually dozed off, sinking slow into a sleep not nearly deep enough to support anything as tangible as elephants—even those who strode effortlessly on mirrors— only to be roused by Mr. Clem’s barking voice.
“Looks like we might be here a bit waiting on fer somebody to come ‘long, and it’ll be getting dark right directly. So which one of you older boys wants to see ‘bout going to fetch help?”
Other than to look around with cautious, darting glances to one another, none of the children made a move.
By all rights it should have been Bo Taylor to go. But, then again, just to be cruel, he’d probably just walk home and forget about them. Even in his fog, Mr. Clem still possessed the good sense to know that much and so he turned to look at Casey and Buckshot instead even as Bo shifted forward.
“C’mon now,” Clem goaded.
“We’ll go,” Buckshot announced, snatching Casey by his rolled-up shirtsleeve. He’d seen too many war movies, where the hero always volunteered, and now that influence had him swelling bold.
“We?” Casey protested and tugged back.
As if it were an aside no one was listening to, Buckshot leaned in a bit and whispered, “All we gotta do is go a mile or two down to the grade up yonder and my house ain’t but just a few miles more after we follow it up out the swamp.”
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