Deep Down Popular

by Phoebe Stone

  Granddaddy says, “I won’t use that shopping mall. I’ll go to Bailey’s Hardware just like I always have. When I was young you could get an ice cream cone in there, you know that, Jessie Lou?”

  “That shopping mall’s gonna be real nice,” says Mama. “The huge store over there is gonna be called Big Box Home and Hardware. Should have everything in the world, I imagine. Fifty-four different varieties of hammers and the like. You’ll be just like a kid in a candy shop, Granddaddy.”

  Then Miss “Everybody’s Favorite” (my older sister) comes primping up to the table. Every curl is lying there on her head like it is made out of plaster. She has an itty-bitty little ribbon in her hair and her fingernails are all done up in pink. Everything about her is per fect, even her handwriting. She dots every i with a fat little perfect circle. She doesn’t even bother to talk to me, especially now that I’ve gone and cut off all my hair so that my head looks like an old rug.

  She moves through the kitchen nibbling a celery stick and then she comes into the living room and flops down into the La-Z-Boy recliner and calls out, “Mama, did you sign that paper I gave you?” Then she puts her hands over her eyes and says, “Jessie Lou, your hair looks even worse than yesterday. What did you do to it? Mama, I gotta get back to school. Will you sign that paper?”

  Granddaddy sits down next to me on the couch and sets a plate of chicken salad sandwiches on the coffee table in front of us. He has a can of Dr. Pepper soda with him. My granddaddy just loves Dr. Pepper. Mama says he doesn’t have blood in his veins, he’s got Dr. Pepper soda in there instead. “Well, sugar pie, have yourself a sandwich. Your mama made them and she’s got the touch,” he says, looking at me with his face all sweet and crinkly. “Well, I guess your hair does look like an old sheep-shorn throw rug. But you’re still my little Jessie Lou, aren’t you, sugar pie?”

  “Jessie Lou, quit knocking your foot against my chair,” says Melinda. “It’s making me crazy.”

  I lean my head back against the prickly brown wool couch. It tickles my neck and I’m kind of feeling afternoon-lazy-sleepy. I wish I didn’t have to go back to school for the rest of the day. I just can’t stand the thought of having to say anything to Conrad. I don’t know how anyone is expected to talk to somebody they’ve been in love with forever and a day. Especially me, the most unpopular girl in Cabanash County. I wish I could stay here and lie against this old brown couch forever and ever and ever.

  About halfway back to school after lunch, I realize that I’m gonna be late. Realizing doesn’t ever help. You can’t do anything about it. Mama couldn’t drive me ’cause she had to go back to Discount Beverage since her manager over there broke his right hand and can’t run the cash register. “Honey,” she said to me as I was picking up my backpack, “if he’d broken his left hand it would be different. But I gotta get over there pronto.”

  Nothing in the world is so quiet as when you’re late. Suddenly there’s nobody in the world but you and the sound of your breathing as you run. I don’t see a car on the road. When I get to the parking lot, it’s all full of sunlight and silence. The same with the playground. It’s like everyone vanished from the earth, like something wonderful happened and I missed it, like everyone is somewhere else, and here where I am is the loneliest place in the world. And no matter what I do from now on, all afternoon that lonely late feeling is going to hover around me like a ghost.

  My teacher doesn’t make a move when I open the door and walk in. She doesn’t pay me any mind at all but goes on talking about discoveries and discoverers. I pass Conrad’s chair and I almost stumble, but I don’t. Still, it sets off a series of muffled noises from the next table that sound to me like a bunch of ducks trapped in a box trying to get out.

  “Has anyone noticed on the news on TV the space shuttle sitting on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center waiting to take off? Has anyone noticed that space shuttle is named the Discovery?” My teacher erases the chalkboard. “I want you all to make some kind of discovery yourself, and I want you to write me a two-page paper explaining that discovery. It will be due at the end of the year. Okay?”

  “Even the fourth graders?” a kid calls out.

  And Mrs. Duster says, “Yes, ma’am, even the fourth graders.”

  Seems everybody in Virginia is named Duster or Ferguson but they aren’t related, or if they are, they don’t know it. When my mama married a Ferguson (my daddy), she didn’t even have to change her last name ’cause it was already Ferguson. And our school is full of Dusters and Fergusons. First names are a different matter. We have all manner of first names, but a few of the kids have hippies for parents. You can tell by their names, like Moon n’ Stars Montgomery and her little sister, Sunflower. I think I’d feel half stupid to have a name like Moon n’ Stars but I notice Conrad seems to think it’s a pretty name ’cause he talks to her a lot and that just about burns a hole in my heart.

  The last part of the afternoon, we end up drawing pictures of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea and the wilderness that America once was. Quentin Duster, a little hippity-hoppity bean of a boy at the fourth-grade table near me, draws a great big dinosaur in his wilderness sticking its head up above the trees. Our teacher comes over and puts her hand on Quentin Duster’s shoulder and says, “Quentin Duster, there weren’t any dinosaurs in America during the time of Lewis and Clark. Those dinosaurs died out millions of years ago. Maybe you’d better start over and do a bear or a buffalo instead.”

  But Quentin Duster decides to draw in Clark with a boom box riding on the dinosaur’s back. Our teacher takes a deep breath like she’s doing some kind of special breathing exercises like that neighbor of ours who came over before she had her baby and practiced deep breathing with Mama while my sister, Melinda, held the stopwatch and timed everything.

  I keep looking over at Conrad drawing quietly there at his table. I just have no idea how I am going to be able to help him with his bike. Why me? Why me? What am I gonna say to him? He has part of a smile stretched across his happy face, and I can only imagine what he’s drawing but I know it’s probably good. Conrad draws the best robots and space aliens of any boy in this class. And his space aliens aren’t stiff and stupid-looking like some. His robots and space aliens always have faces full of expression and meaning.

  Used to be when Conrad was drawing, there’d be several kids hanging over his shoulder like swamp trees hanging over the Cabanash River. But kids around here change. They change like the wind. They change like that river, one minute high and clear, the next minute all dark and muddy and low, leaving those cattails and swamp ferns standing there dry as a bone, all mucky and thirsty-looking.

  When the bell rings, it’s the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. The teacher starts rattling off which buses are where and who should line up in which line and when, and before you know it, the room has emptied out too quickly, like it was a recycling bin full of paper and somebody just dumped it outside into the wind.

  And there’s nobody left in here, not one single person except for me and Conrad. Conrad is gathering up a small pile of books and I pick up my backpack that suddenly won’t zip closed and I kind of walk over to him and stand there like a stupid piece of furniture, like the time I was a chair in a Christmas play at church. Conrad doesn’t say anything and I don’t either. I pick up half his books and we kind of walk out of the room, me following him down the long dark endless hall.

  At last we go through the double doors and the bright sun outside about kills my eyes. The soft heat of the air makes it hard to push on out into the schoolyard. I can see the bike stands from here, and I can see Conrad’s blue bicycle sitting there just the way it has been for the last couple of months since Conrad’s leg started to go bad.

  If only I could think of a few words. Finally I come up with, “Oh, there it is.” And those words just kind of fall through the hot, soft, full air. They seem to collapse onto the ground at my feet all broken and twisted. Conrad doesn’t say anything and I kick those words aside, my face fu
ll of sun, just burning up.

  Conrad doesn’t exactly look at me. He’s kind of turned away as he ties his books to the rack on the back with a bungee cord. Then I step forward and push the bike out of the schoolyard, and he walks along on the other side of it, his leg brace making a dragging sound as he pulls it along.

  Out on the dirt road that follows the river I see water birds flying overhead calling to each other. The wind gets in the new leaves and makes a rushing rinsing sound. Spring gnats and bluebottle flies hover over the muddy slow water. Fish come to the surface making bubbles and ripples. I just keep pushing that bike, not stopping to rest, not stopping for anything.

  Halfway home along the river, Conrad takes over pushing the bike for a minute, and while I’m swiping at the mosquitoes that are going after my head, Conrad kind of lunges forward into the tall grass along the river. I look up and see him plunging toward the bank, pushing the bike through a group of cattails and ferns. Then he shoves that bike down into the water. It falls forward and the current picks it up for a minute and then that bike sort of spins partway out into the river and comes to rest against a floating log, water pouring through the spokes and over the handlebars.

  Conrad sits down in the reeds along the river. He drops like a dead weight and still he doesn’t say a word. He just stares out at the water.

  I stand here not knowing what to do. I look at Conrad’s back down there hunched over in front of the water. I’m feeling so shy crows could just about pick me up and carry me away by my shoelaces. So shy I wish a whole screaming flock of them would drop me tangled in a big old lonesome tree somewhere else.

  Suddenly I realize Conrad’s books are on the back of the bike. I can see them sitting there sticking up out of the water. I shout out, “Conrad, what about your books?” and before I realize what I’m doing, I’m down in the river up to my waist, my legs sinking deep into the muddy bottom. I push out toward the bike. My feet slip off a slimy rock underneath and I fall forward up to my chin, but I know this old river. I swim in it every chance I get.

  Even though it’s not over my head here, I glide forward kicking my feet out behind me, and I reach the bike and I pull those books off and I hold them high above my head. Then I wade back to the edge of the river, slipping in the mud, falling forward sometimes. And soon enough I’m climbing back up on the shore. I’ve got mud up to my knees like a pair of long brown stockings and I’m all wet and there’s mud on my face. I fall down on the shore among the reeds next to Conrad with the books wet but mostly safe in my arms.

  I sit there next to him like something dragged from the bottom of the river. We both stay there looking at nothing at all for going on twenty minutes, and the whole time neither one of us says a single word.

  It’s evening now and I’m walking home along the road alone. I’m thinking about Conrad just six months ago at the beginning of the year at the height of his popularity. It was the day that our sixth-grade soccer team beat the Culpepper Coyotes, who came over in a yellow school bus thinking they were the champs. Conrad had made the winning goal that game and the next day he showed up at school with a pile of T-shirts his mama made, one for everyone in the class. (His mama makes T-shirts and sells them.) I can just see Conrad Parker Smith standing there handing out those T-shirts looking so calm and nice and sure. The T-shirts said, Best Things in Life Aren’t Things. Didn’t have anything to do with our sixth grade winning, but everybody was so happy to get a T-shirt from Conrad. They were just inside-out with joy.

  I think it was Quentin Duster, the most unpopular show-off squirt in the class, who took a big Magic Marker and crossed out Aren’t Things and put in Is Winning. So his T-shirt said, Best Things in Life Is Winning. It was a glorious triumphant time for Conrad Parker Smith. He had scored three beautiful goals, the Culpepper Coyotes had gone home with their tails between their legs, and everyone in the class was wearing one of his mama’s T-shirts.

  On the road here as I walk along, there’s a wide field of blowing grass and there’s a silver-colored weather-beaten old house sitting across from the field. On the way home, if I have time, I always go up on the porch of that house and I sit there and think, looking at the overgrown yard full of purple phlox gone wild and what Mama calls old-fashioned lilac bushes. It’s a sorrowful old house and it gives me a feeling of sadness and at the same time a shiver of joy. That in my opinion is the magic combination for a poem. I write a lot of my poems on this run-down forgotten porch. I like to look in the windows into the empty quiet rooms. I always wonder who lived here and why they disappeared like the southern wind racing across these fields.

  Now even though it’s dusk I go up on the porch and let the wind sort of pour through my clothes. There is definitely a poem coming up from somewhere inside me. I’m just full to the brim with a poem. I keep seeing Conrad the way he used to be, when he was everybody’s favorite, walking into a room holding out his hands to a constant silent applause. Being so popular the way he was, stories used to circulate about him. Like on the hottest day of the summer last year I heard tell that Conrad had soaked his sneakers in cold water and then put them in the freezer for two hours. Then he got them out frozen solid and wore them. It felt real good, he had told everybody. Kept him cool for most of the afternoon. Before you knew it, half the kids here in West Taluka Falls were freezing their sneakers. That’s the kind of popularity I’m talking about. Popularity that bordered on magnificent.

  On this deserted porch with evening starting to roll in like dark fog, I can almost get a hold of that poem. Sometimes a poem will wait and hover under the surface, making me feel like I might split in two getting it out. I turn in circles now and I put my face up to the window and look into that plain dark living room. There’s a wooden table near the window and it’s always empty. I always wonder who sat there and what they were thinking.

  But suddenly, like to jolt me right out of my poem thinking, I see something. There’s a deck of playing cards on the table. They’re all spread out and tossed around. There’s even a few on the floor. Somebody’s been in there. And here I thought this was my old lonely forgotten house.

  When I get home it’s dinnertime. Things are in somewhat of a disarray ’cause Mama’s going to the PTA meeting to see Conrad’s mother give a demonstration on how to make angels out of clothespins. (Conrad’s mama makes and sells T-shirts and clothespin angels. Mama says it’s not fair, some people have all the talent.) Mama always goes to the PTA meetings anyway. She doesn’t need a bribe like clothespin angels. But some parents do. They don’t just want to go and talk about the school budget. They want to get something out of it, come away with something.

  We’re kind of hurrying through dinner. Granddaddy had to make it. When it’s his turn he usually cooks instant mashed potatoes and hamburger stew. “Granddaddy’ll take the easy route, if given the chance,” says Mama, putting a bobby pin in her hair and sitting down at the table.

  My sister Melinda’s taking her sweet time not coming to the table, probably finishing up with filing her nails. Granddaddy’s in the pantry getting in the refrigerator and pulling things out. So I sit down at the table, salt everything on my plate twice over, pepper everything to death, and then I say, “Are you gonna talk to Conrad’s mama tonight?”

  “Well,” says Mama, picking up her fork. Then she stops and tastes the mashed potatoes and says, “Granddaddy, you added too much milk again. Melinda, come on out and get your dinner. We’re gonna be late for the meeting, honey.”

  “I can’t, Mama. My nails are still wet. Something’s wrong with this nail polish. It isn’t drying,” calls Melinda from the bedroom.

  “Oh, for goodness sakes. Jessie Lou, run upstairs and get my little mini hair dryer, will you? Don’t bring the big one. She can use the half size on her fingernails.”

  “Want Mama’s mini dryer?” I shout.

  “No,” says Melinda. “Somebody bring me a plate of food. Oh, never mind. Guess I’ll skip dinner.”

  “I’ll make you a nice sa
ndwich, honey. We’ll take it with us,” says Mama.

  “Will you be talking to Conrad’s mama tonight?” I say again.

  Mama looks over at me for a second like she’s thinking about something entirely different, and then she says, “Oh, well, I suppose I will, if she doesn’t get too busy. People just love those clothespin angels and they flock around her like flies to butter. Are you gonna have any sweet tea, Jessie Lou? Did you know you’re supposed to get six to eight glasses of liquid per day?”

  “That’d be about enough to float me halfway to China,” I say. “Well, if you do talk to her, I was hoping you could ask her about Conrad’s leg.”

  “And you too, Granddaddy,” says Mama. “They say half the seniors in America suffer from mild confusion due to lack of fluids.”

  “Mama,” I say, “I was also wondering who used to live in that old abandoned house up the road?”

  “Now I haven’t a clue who lived there,” says Mama. “If I had an answer for every question that comes tralala-ing out of your mouth, Jessie Lou, I wouldn’t be here, I’d be up at Buckingham Palace eating roast duck. Wouldn’t I, Granddaddy?”

  “I don’t know,” says Granddaddy. “I haven’t drunk enough fluids today to be able to follow what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, of all the fathers to have in the world, Granddaddy, you take the prize. Doesn’t he just take the prize?” says Mama, giving Granddaddy a smile.

  Granddaddy gets up from the table, goes over to the counter, comes back and drops a big tub of margarine next to the pitcher of sweet tea. “I’ve been eating margarine instead of butter for most of my eighty-two years, Jessie Lou, and I’m not gonna stop now ’cause some old geezer at your mother’s church group said it was bad for you. I heard air was bad for you too.”

  “Do you know anything about Conrad’s leg brace, Mama? I mean whether it’s permanent or not,” I say.