Clover (16 page)

There is not a one of Noah's old hound dogs in sight when I walk up on his porch. Maybe he's shot them, too.
They say, when the crows cry caw, caw in the spring, Noah claims they are asking, “Is the corn ready?” So he gets his shotgun and tells them, “The corn is not ready. But my shotgun is.”

Part of the porch is painted bright green. The other half is just old unpainted planks, gray with age. A step is broken half in two.

His sister is long gone now. Right after the shooting she took everything she owned to Gastonia, North Carolina. But she left the bloodstains behind. She never washed them up. She told her brother they would vanish at night like daylight swallowed up by the dark. “When the daylight comes,” she'd warned, “they'll come back to haunt you for your sins.” Everybody says it's the Lord's truth, too. You can see them stains as plain as your hand before your face. Noah has scrubbed and scrubbed, but he can't wash them out. The house smells like a chicken scalded in hot swamp water.

Through the screen door, I can see Noah sitting near the window with his shotgun across his lap. Imagine fooling around with a gun on a Sunday.

Trouble sure can change a person. Noah used to be a right nice-looking man, his hair parted in the middle and all slicked down. And so much after-shave lotion and stuff, he smelled twice like a woman. Now he has turned into a picture of pained ugly. I think about the blood spots on the
floor. A big family Bible on a table next to him is opened to a page with a picture on it. Cobwebs are everywhere. The room looks like it has been decorated for a Halloween party with spider's lace. An electric fan on the floor stirs dust balloons. They float all over the place. Maybe after all these years, Noah is trying to get saved. After the shooting he needs to do something.

I can hear his commode running. I need to go in and jiggle that handle. Gaten used to always check on stuff like that when he came over. Shucks, in the good old days I used to pick Noah's flowers in his yard, then sell them to him.

With Noah sitting there with his shotgun on his lap, I'm not about to touch that handle. I'm afraid to take the pie in and afraid to leave. I'm so scared, my hands are shaking.

Noah's mouth is stuck out like a twist clasp on a change purse. He cocks his shotgun when I drop the pie. I duck down and take off like a jack rabbit.

When I get to a patch of trees, I duck behind a bush and look back. Noah's old lazy hounds, Thunder and Lightning, are sneaking towards the pie. I think about the story of Epaminandos and how he stepped in his mother's pies. I don't turn back because I cannot bear to look.

Noah's sister's blood is still on that floor. A shotgun pellet still buried in her skull. And Everleen says Noah won't kill a dove. She claims the Lord's doing so much for Noah
after they started praying for him at prayer meetings. “The Lord will help him,” she said, “'cause Noah won't right in the head.”

If Everleen wants to keep giving Noah stuff to eat she's going to have to take it herself. I'm not setting foot over there again.

I know what Everleen will end up saying. And it solid gets away with me when she does it. I can hear her now. “Now what would your daddy say, Clover?”

My father is dead, yet he speaks. Yes, even from the grave his hand reaches out to me. But not to comfort, only to correct.

I can't figure out if Chase's daughter and niece came along to show off their new play shorts or to brag that they had been to camp. Those yellow and blue shorts are some kind of pretty. So is the girl in the yellow shorts.

“We went to camp last week,” they whine through their noses at the same time. I'm not too crazy over the way Sara Kate talks, but it's way yonder better than theirs.

“I started to go to camp this summer,” I say, “but I had to help sell my daddy's peaches. My daddy would have sat up in his coffin if we'd let all his peaches hit the ground. I went to Sweden, Norway, and Denmark last summer.”

Sara Kate looked at me and drew quick breaths. Two, to be exact. Sucking in the same way she did when she thought I wasn't telling the truth when I said I didn't put the snake in her garden basket. I'm beginning to learn her better and better every day. There is no way she can fool me now. She
doesn't a bit more believe I've been to Norway and Denmark than a man in the moon. I can't see why she's getting so bent out of shape about three little towns somewhere down below Columbia. Grandpa said Norway was so little, you could spit clean across it.

The June bug I'd caught just before they drove up is digging its prickly legs into my hand. Sara Kate would die if she knew that I am planning to tie a string around the June bug's leg and make a helicopter. I guess I'd better turn it loose when she's not looking. I don't know why she got so upset over that old black snake. Looks like she'd have been glad I didn't kill him. Of course I didn't put that live snake in her basket. I won't let her know it, but I'm a little bit scared of snakes myself.

Yellow shorts whispers something to blue shorts. They giggle.

“I remember when you went, Clover,” says Chase. “You told me if I lived there, I'd never stop shooting, because they have some kind of birds in Norway and Denmark.”

Sara Kate's eyes are coming closer together. The green seems to darken. She's not too hot on Chase killing birds. I sure don't know how she ended up marrying Gaten. He hunted all the time, and like Grandpa would shoot anything but a dove. Maybe she didn't know that about my daddy.

Anyway, Chase's kinfolks are having a cookout on the
weekend and they are begging her to come. They don't say boo about me coming. Maybe it's because I look so bad. You see, Sara Kate fixed my hair. And that woman can't fix my kind of hair. I can't get it through her head that she can't set my hair when it's wet. My head looks like a puffed up fighting cock. They are looking at me like I'm a piece of moon rock or something. I really wish I were pretty.

My poor daddy. He always had a hard time with my hair. For years I had to ride the school bus, because my aunt messed over my hair too long to have me ready in time to ride with him. My hair would have still been a problem for Gaten. Because sure as there's a hell, Sara Kate couldn't fix it. After the peach season is over, Aunt Everleen is going to have a perm put in my hair.

Yellow shorts is telling Sara Kate about all the good stuff they are going to have at the cookout. “We are going to make two churns of homemade ice cream,” she says.

“Please, please come, Sara Kate,” blue shorts begs.

“I'm sorry, my dears,” Sara Kate says in that smooth breathy voice of hers, “but I'm not sure yet what plans Clover may have made for us.”

Chase grins his slow grin. “Clover, surely you wouldn't have anything planned that would be more fun for the two of you than the cookout?”

Sara Kate and I exchange looks. “It sounds like fun,” I
say. “Well, good,” Sara Kate smiles, “then it's settled. We'll be delighted to come.”

Yellow shorts and blue shorts are giggling and jumping up and down like a pair of hoptoads.

So we went to the cookout. I had a good time, but it sure isn't the way I want to spend the rest of my life. I got too many curious questioning stares when I walked about between the two of them with Sara Kate holding my hand.

Chase seemed to have been having a good time. I suppose he really was. Chase Porter happens to be a man who does whatever he wants and whenever. He said he doesn't give a damn what people say or think.

Come to think of it, maybe I didn't stand out so much after all. After a few weeks of sun Sara Kate could almost pass for one of us.

I guess it's the way she wanted to look. Even after she sloshed on a hundred different kinds of creams, moisturizers, anti-wrinkle cream, and sunscreen, she still added a suntan lotion. Seems to me the sun was enough. She spends so much money on stuff to block out the sun. Looks like if she didn't want the sun to hit her she wouldn't go out of her way to tan.

It's funny how the sun works. It may darken her skin but it sure takes the color out of her brown hair. It will be blonde if she's not careful.

It was barely getting dark when Chase drove us home from the cookout. I sat on the front steps waiting for Chase and Sara Kate to finish whatever it was that they were so seriously talking about. When they finally got out of the pickup they still stood talking at the edge of the yard.

I didn't hear Chase ask Sara Kate to marry him, nor the answer she gave him. All I know is in my presence she kissed him good-bye and said her decision not to marry him did not mean her caring for him had changed. “I think for now,” she added, “loving each other is all Clover and I can handle.”

Sara Kate made a pot of tea and poured a cup for each of us. She watched me dangle my legs from the kitchen stool.

“It's a good thing you were able to wear shorts to the cookout, Clover,” she said. “You've outgrown practically everything. You will definitely need new school clothes. Maybe we should start shopping soon.”

I think of all the money Sara Kate might spend on school stuff. “I hope you won't spend too much on new clothes,” I say. “Like Grandpa always used to say, ‘when push comes to shove you can always wash and wear the same clothes over and over again.'

“You see, Sara Kate,” I blurt out, “if you really have the
money for school clothes I'd rather you not buy so many and save some towards a purple ten-speed bicycle for me.”

My wish, practically the only wish I've ever had in my whole life, just slid right out.

Sara Kate looked surprised. She smiled, “Why, Clover, if it's a ten-speed purple bicycle you want then that's what you'll get. But we'll still have to get some new school clothes.”

I smile. In my mind I can see myself racing up and down the road, cruising down every path in Round Hill. My wish has finally come true. I am going to get my purple bicycle.

When I look back and think about the way I treated Sara Kate that day at lunch, I can't help thinking, what in the world would Gaten have thought? I know one thing, I really hate I acted the way I did. I ran screaming and crying to my aunt Everleen like a little wild fool.

Maybe in the way things turned out, it all happened for the good. Because, you see, after that very day, Everleen and Sara Kate became closer. All because they were both siding with each other against me. I say that about them, but secretly I'm kind of glad that they both care enough about me to make me do the right thing. Maybe, when I am older, I will tell them that.

Sometimes, Sara Kate will pop in and out at the peach shed. When she takes a break from her “art work” as Daniel calls it, she will bring Tastee Freeze ice cream. Sometimes
she brings ice tea with fresh mint leaves. Aunt Everleen drinks it, but not me.

If things had not changed between the two women, Sara Kate would have never been there, that hot August day. But there she was. Standing and chatting with Everleen in one of her skimpy halter tops, and the shortest shorts I'd ever seen. It was then that we heard a weak cry for help. It was coming from over in the Elberta peaches.

“It's Jim Ed,” Everleen screamed. She started to run, but stopped and started running around and around in circles. She was going to pieces. “Go find help, Everleen, we'll find Jim Ed,” Sara Kate screamed, as the two of us raced in the direction of his weak cries.

Poor Uncle Jim Ed lay under a peach tree with stinging yellow jackets swarming all over him. He had gotten his foot all tangled up in a trumpet vine and fell into the army of yellow jackets feeding on a pile of peaches someone had emptied out in the grass. There was doubtless a yellow jacket nest there on the ground also.

I guess once the stinging things got hold of Jim Ed and started stinging him like crazy, he couldn't help what he did. Like he didn't have a grain of sense, instead of trying to free himself so he could try to get away, he started fighting and killing the jokers. He knew better. He'd known all his life, if you kill one yellow jacket, two or more will come in to sting you. It seemed every yellow jacket there multiplied.
They were everywhere. Jim Ed is allergic to any bee sting. You could almost see him swelling up. His eyes were already swollen closed.

Sara Kate didn't seem to think twice about the stinging bees. She plunged right into them and pulled Jim Ed out. The yellow jackets were soon all over her. She was getting stung like crazy. Yet she did not cry out in pain.

Jim Ed stopped gasping for breath. You could see he wasn't breathing. Sara Kate started crying, “Oh, no, Jim Ed, we can't lose you, too.” She dropped to her knees, and while I fanned away yellow jackets with peach branch leaves, she gave Jim Ed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

A new red Ford pickup roared right through the peach orchard. In a split second, two men that I'd never seen before leaped out, put Jim Ed in the truck, and with Sara Kate at his side, sped away. I had to try and outrun the yellow jackets.

At the hospital, the doctors said after Sara Kate had worked to revive him, they had gotten him there just in time. It was lucky she knew CPR.

Sara Kate had big welts all over her. She didn't swell up like Jim Ed, though. She is not as allergic to bee stings.

I think the people in Round Hill will talk about what she did for the rest of their lives.

Aunt Everleen has been having migraine headaches, one right after the other, ever since Uncle Jim Ed got stung. The big problem with her headache is, she forces you to have it along with her. My aunt does not like to suffer alone. So she tells you every pain she feels, everything she sees. I not only have to feel the throbbing pain that works its way up the back of her neck, pain that moves quickly across the top of her head to the eyes; I am also forced to see the flashing lights that dance a wild fire dance on her eyeballs. I do wish she wouldn't tell me about the people and things that sway and shimmer before her eyes like heat waves. It seems to make my eyes play tricks on me.