Darnay Road (11 page)

Darnay
Road 22

Abigail
May and I share the last night. We lay in my bed facing one another. “We should
prick our fingers again,” she says.

Close
as we lay, like two hamsters in the sawdust, that’s what we’ve said before, but
I feel so strange. A pricked finger is a fire-fly in all the dark.

I
used to feel like things wrapped around us, this house, my room, my double bed
with the thick green paint on the headboard and the decals of Bo-Peep and Jack
and Jill and Mary with the Lamb. But all I can think, it’s like a bike-ride in
the night, I’m going fast, looking scared into the dark.

She’s
going to Florida. It’s a far away planet at the end of the line.

I
feel it’s all bigger. There is Darnay Road and the tracks behind the house, and
Scutter too. And all the trains that come through. And all the trains…that come
through.

We
say we ain’t the same as folks back there with their thin clothes. We don’t
know what they believe. We say don’t go there and we’ll be safe. It will go
away, those houses thirsty for paint, those houses frayed and frazzled from
mysteries inside.

We
went there. We smelled that sour dark thing that came out of the open door.
Easy’s head shaved and dark red marks under his skin. Easy’s eyes and Easy’s
voice. Cap’s lips pressed so tight.

The
fires that burn inside a person like love and hate maybe, like mystery, and I
know something so big, so big and deep, mystery is on the inside before you
ever see it, smell it, mystery is the inside.

Scuttertown,
Scutter Road. A boy that lifts my arm so gently. A boy on a bridge who saves,
for a while. A boy with a terrible light in his eyes who says I must go away, a
boy who scares me.

“Hide
your eyes,” Granma says.

But I have faced that
altar, our Lord’s treasure chest. Mops and buckets underneath the gold chalice,
the sacred wine, the wafers we must not bite into so the blood runs down our
throats and not our chins.

I
am crying now, but it’s not just what she thinks, her going away. I got deep
and mysterious tears for that and they aren’t ready to show. I know it.

Ricky
said the man was dragged a distance of eight cars. He was lying on the tracks
and he was mincemeat. If he’d been standing he might have been thrown and maybe
lived, but a man dragged under would be cut in pieces and he was and they had to
find them—the pieces--and they had to count them to make sure they got the
whole person.

Prick
our fingers she says? It’s a firefly in all that blood.

While
I lived on Darnay Road, a crow’s line, a skip, a fast ride on someone’s
handlebars, a man lay on the tracks and a train came barreling down and it
didn’t slow, it couldn’t.

I’m
crying because for hours I didn’t know if that man was Easy. Or Cap. I just
didn’t know, and it wasn’t okay not to, to even have an idea. But I can’t tell
that to Abigail May when she has to leave in the morning. I can’t say it.

Door
to door the police went, all along both sides of Darnay Road and both sides of
Scutter. They called Miss Little. There was evidence the man might have come
from there but it hadn’t rained and it was dry and they’d been paroling the
streets watching for fire and everyone knew Miss Little’s property was a cut
through.

I
know it best, I know the line that makes us safe is cut there, a doorway where
two worlds run together, like the place where the rivers meet and crash, one
green, one brown, but there it mixes in and muddies up and you can’t hardly
tell unless you know, unless you look, so it flows…and flows…and goes.

But
nothing was said about who it was or who it was not on those tracks, but it
wasn’t a girl, that’s for sure, though they could barely tell at first Ricky
said.

I
would think it was Miss Little maybe, but it was not. It was not.

So
we didn’t do so much, we spoke more quietly, we waited is what we did.

Ricky
came with the news. “Adult male, they said.”

And
I went off then, in the cellar to cry, but I couldn’t cry.

And
I knew it was Abigail May’s last day and there was no joy in us. It was already
over. I felt like she was already gone. She had her mother and it’s the
strongest thing. I just didn’t know, but I can feel it with Gloria Sue around.
Abigail is near starved for her so I don’t take that rope, I don’t pull.

So
now we’re almost nose to nose, but far enough back to really look at each
other. “We never did buy those bras,” Abigail says.

“Or
go up top at the school,” I say, but I don’t mention Easy or Cap. I don’t want
to.

“We
never did rescue those kittens,” she says.

I
don’t know what to say, what I know.

“I’ll
write every day,” she says.

“You
will not,” I say.

“I
will.”

“Don’t
say what you cannot do,” I rebuke her.

“Don’t
tell me I won’t when I say I will.”

“Well I won’t write you
every day, that’s the truth,” I say rolling onto my back to get off my cast.

“I
won’t get to see your pruny white arm when they take off the cast,” she says.

“I
don’t care.”

“Well
that’s mean.”

“You’re
talking like you feel sorry,” I say, and she knows I hate that.

“Well
Mama says you can visit at Christmas vacation if Granma says, and I will come
back here for summer as Florida is just an oven.”

“I
ain’t coming on Christmas. I can’t leave Granma alone.”

“She
can come too. On the bus.”

“She
won’t leave. She barely goes to the market.”

“She
said she would.”

“No
she didn’t. And what about Little Bit?”

“Well
what about next summer then? It’s not so long.”

“You
won’t come,” I say. I really believe she will not cause people lie all the time
and once they go away they don’t see how special you are, if you are special,
and maybe you’re not.

“Well
you’re such a sad sack I don’t want to talk to you.” She gets on her other side
and rocks the bed and I stare at the ceiling and hear the ten fifteen wail and
rumble.

Darnay
Road 23

“I’m
going to stay here and play with Little Bit,” I tell Granma next morning. I
don’t even look her way.

She
is almost all the way down the cellar stairs, standing where I can see the tops
of her nylons rolled to the place before her knees start up, and Granma has
really big knees. So I don’t look anymore, I am sitting on one of the blankets
like I do with Abigail May, lying back mostly. Little Bit is chewing on my
fingers like I don’t have a care in the world.

Granma
sighs. “What do I say when that nice Mr. Figley is waiting on you to say
good-bye to Abigail?”

“I
already said good-bye,” I tell Granma, looking at her very quickly.

“Sometimes,”
Granma says, “you have to make yourself do something you don’t want to do.” But
she just stares at me for another minute then she goes up.

She
is so mad she snaps out the light and it’s dark down here, but I am not afraid
of the dark. What’s lovelier than a sky filled with stars?

There
are no stars in this cellar.

I
take hold of Little Bit and walk slowly until I reach the steps then up I go.

I
meet Abigail May in the kitchen. She is coming for me. She’s been crying, but
not now. She is angry and we stop near the table.

“You
won’t even say good-bye?”

“Well
go on then,” I say.

I
have Little Bit and my cast.

She
swallows it down cause Mr. Figley honks the horn.

“Tell
Cap good-bye for me,” she says quick.

I
shake my head no and stare at her feet. She’s wearing the sandals with the blue
flowers and red centers that look just like gumdrops.

“Good-bye
I guess,” she says.

I
just look at her. I can feel those tears rising now. She needs to go.

She
comes for me and hugs me on my good side. Then she lets me go and runs out.
Then she runs back and gives me a paper wadded up, two papers. She almost
knocks me over she pulls away so hard.

She’s
back out the door then and it slaps shut and I watch her brown pixie cut
disappear.

I set Little Bit on the
table even though I’m not allowed. I open that first paper and it’s from Ricky.
In it is a ribbon he got from winning a race. Well I don’t want that. He writes
he will never forget me. I open the second and it’s from Abigail. It says,
“Darnay Spies forever.” It’s signed Abigail May Brody—Blood Sister.

I
gather up both papers so Granma will never see them and I go up to my room.

I
put Little Bit on my bed and I hurry to my window just in time to see that Cadillac
disappear.

It’s
loud enough I hear it for the count of ten, then nothing. I feel her going
away, like I’ll go to the mirror and my reflection will be gone. So I go there
to check and my braids weren’t done over this morning. I can’t see any hope
that my smile is there so I try Easy’s smile, just a half, but it’s so dumb, so
I try a whole smile and it’s dumb too and I break out crying then, and there’s
drops on the mirror, spit or tears or something. I don’t make it to my bed
even, I fall on the floor and all the mystery comes out of me, the way I feel
about Abigail I guess, all of it gushing like the fire hydrant end of the
street when they open it up and you can’t believe the force.

But
I stop pretty quickly. I can stop it so I do. It just won’t do any good, that’s
the thing about it. It just won’t change a thing.

Darnay
Road 24

A
week later I got my cast off and a week after that word came round it was Carl
Caghan they found on the tracks. That was Easy and Cap’s dad. He’s been missing
but the family said he’d go off sometimes so they didn’t know. He never made it
home that fateful night so the police had been looking for him and they had
reason to believe it was him.

The
paper said he left Don Kenny’s tavern about an hour before that train was due.
What it did not say was how it happened. How he got on the tracks.

He
was watchman at the electrical plant and he got off work and went about having
his beer and all the while that train was somewhere headed for here. Headed for
him.

He
lived on Scutter. After the funeral Cap got sent to Tennessee Aunt May said.
Well she said, “The younger boy.” And I knew. My ears were growing long and
pointy out my head to hear any word of the other, the older boy with a
half-smile and eyes that have sharp points of light that pierced me through in
my memory.

So
here’s what Granma offers since Abigail May left me. Dance lessons.

I
say, “No thank you I am not a ballerina or something.”

I
could go to the pool, but I don’t want to go to the pool and watch some baby pee
and some stupid boy swim too close under water and say bad things when he comes
up close while his friends laugh.

I
was brave for her. Abigail May made me brave. But I went to Miss Little’s
alone, with my cake. “Now how would a piece of your birthday cake get all the
way to Miss Little’s? It can’t grow legs and walk,” Granma says.

The police found that
slice of cake I’d dropped at Miss Little’s. They asked up and down looking for
the owner of that cake. They were looking for a witness and they believed it
was possible the dead man came from that yard.

But
I say I don’t know. Granma calls me out on the porch and I just say, “I don’t
know.”

The
Bad Seed
.
They never suspect you if you have pigtails.

“Maybe
Ricky,” I say.

But
Ricky doesn’t know. And I wait to be found out, but I never ever am. Without
Abigail May I’m invisible.

So
Granma calls Dad and Dad sends the money and I get a nice new basket for my
bike, and I can put Little Bit in there, on my pink sweater of course, and we ride
and ride and ride up and down Darnay Road.

But
I never see Easy. Not even when I ride to the ball fields. Not even then.

So
I go to the library and you could fry an egg on the sidewalk. Abigail May and I
tried once last year, and you really can it just takes a lot longer than a
skillet. But I take my sweater in my basket, put it over the books I’m
returning and Little Bit on top of that. I get in the library and I put my
books on the return cart. I look like I’m just carrying my sweater, but it is a
dog in a sweater but no one ever thinks it is possible.

So
the whole time I’m in there Little Bit is trembling against me. I find my new
books and fold my arms over my dog while I check out. Then I put everything in
my basket with Little Bit on top and I ride home.

But
I don’t hardly smile except for her. Little Bit that is. Cause none of this is
her fault. And she deserves some happiness. She’s just a dog.

But
then one day I’m riding her up and down. I stop to watch some kids skating
where me and Abigail used to skate, the L around Moe’s. I’m watching them take
that corner, but they’re a bunch of babies the way they do it.

I
wonder what she’s doing right now, this minute. I look up at the sun, and even
with my sunglasses I have to shield my hands over my eyes. That is the same sun
over Florida. If she’s looking up right now our eyes are connecting sort of.

“You’re
gonna see spots,” he says. And right away I know.

He
straddles his bike beside me. He rests his arms on his handlebars and lights a
cigarette right there in the sunshine. Then he sucks it in and I can’t look
cause…I can’t.

Well
I don’t know what to do. Abigail May would. She’d say something and he wouldn’t
be looking at me like this. His dad. I mean…his dad. Cap. She’d say something.

Does
he know about Abigail? Well…what’s it matter.

“C’mon,”
he says and he takes off a little. He stops then and looks back because…I ain’t
moving.

Little
Bit sticks her head up then and yap, yap, yaps, and she hardly ever does, and
then just once, but never three.

“What
in the world…?” he says and he sticks that smoke in his mouth and walks his
bike backwards until he’s next to me. “That a rat?”

I
am pretty hurt for Little Bit. “She’s my dog.”

Now
he is laughing and laughing. Little Bit has on her pink collar and she is looking
at him, holding her neck alert, her tiny eyebrows are twitching.

He’s trying to say
something, but he looks at me, takes one more pull and pitches that smoke. “Can
I see?”

“Well,
she don’t like anyone but me,” I say putting my hand on her.

“Oh.”
He’s just smiling now. “Where’d you get a dog like that?”

“For
my birthday,” I say, then the guilt cause that was that day.

Maybe
he remembers. He gets quiet looking at my dog. “Well today’s my birthday,” he
says.

“It
is?” I can’t believe he’s out here all alone in those same shabby clothes.

“Yeah.”

“How
old?”

“Twelve.”

“I’m
ten,” I say.

“I
know,” he says.

“You’re
eighth grade?”

“Seventh.
Got held back in fifth.”

I
nearly gasp. Just nearly. I never knew someone held back. I can hardly think of
it.

“I’m
not stupid,” he says and he does that half smile.

“Oh.
No.”

He
laughs. “You don’t sound like you mean it.”

Well
I don’t know what to say.

“I
had trouble reading. But I’m getting it.”

I
can’t believe he told me that. I would never tell it.

“C’mon,”
he says again. “That dog like to ride?”

“Yes,”
I get out.

“Well
c’mon.”

I
know I should make an excuse. I’ve got to get home. That’s all. But I just go
after him. I don’t know why. It’s like I don’t have a mind I guess.