Authors: Diane Munier
Darnay Road (38 page)
“Oh,” I blow through my lips, “nothing I
can’t handle,” as my granma would say.
“Why don’t you come to public with me?”
he says. “I’ll take care of you. Make Easy happy at least,” he says.
I don’t know what to say. “No offense,
but I take care of myself. Granma says so.”
He likes that. He offers me a hit on his
cigarette.
“No thanks.” I remember I have a Milky
Way left over from lunch so I get that out of my purse and we split it and
we’re just finishing when I hear that old truck pull in across the way on the
parking lot.
“Well, that’s my bus,” I tell Cap.
He stands then. It also looks like practice
is finishing. I know we can ride with Ricky. I say that.
“You go on. Tell Abigail May I’ll see
her at home,” he says jumping off the bleachers.
“Where you going?”
“I’ll ride with them. See you at home.”
He means he’ll go with Easy and Disbro and I can go with Abigail and Ricky.
“Beaucap!” Abigail calls, running across
the field in her gym suit and letterless jacket.
I wave then and he’s out of the truck.
He always takes my breath. I hurry toward him. Then I run.
Darnay Road 62
“Hey pull over here,” Easy says to
Disbro. He has his arm around me and my bag with all the books is at my feet
stuffed like I’m Santa Claus or something.
We pull off the road. Disbro says, “Give
me a cigarette.” His very active good hand does all the work while the other is
curled against his chest like a broken pigeon.
Easy pays up so we can get this time
alone.
“Granma will know…,” I start to remind
Easy. As soon as Ricky gets home Granma will know I’m with Easy because Easy
asked her if he could go for me once I didn’t come home on the bus. This
happens sometimes, I miss and go home with Ricky and she doesn’t worry about
it. But I don’t want to push it now.
Disbro gets out and goes down to the
river. We are near home, but parked near the woods around the trestle.
I don’t know what this is about.
Easy is digging in the high pocket on
his jacket. He gets out a velvet box and hands it to me. “I told you I’d get
you something, right?” he says. He just seems so serious. He hands me this box.
I look at him before I open it and smile but he doesn’t smile back.
“Go on,” he says meaning I should open
the box, and I do and it’s a ring with an opal. I know it is because I love
opals very much and he says it. “It’s an opal.”
I take it out and it fits just right.
“Abigail told me the size,” he says.
Well she didn’t spill the beans at all.
I put it on my finger and I keep my hand in a fist because my nails are just
plain Jane. I don’t do much to them unless Abigail and I do it together, but we
haven’t lately.
“Thank you,” I say. I look at him.
“Thank you,” I say again because he can’t have much money and there are a
million places for it.
He takes in a big beath. “Well I wanted
to,” he says.
I look at his lips and he leans a little
and kisses me. I am overcome.
“Easy,” I whisper. I’ve got tears.
“What’s the matter?” he says low.
“I…,” I laugh a little, “never thought
I’d get a ring from you in Disbro’s truck.” That’s not what I was going to say,
I don’t know what I was going to say, but it’s the truth about this truck.
He laughs too. “Yeah. I’m just looking
for time with you when they aren’t all around.”
It has been that way. We’re being
watched.
“I’m,” I lick my lips and try to keep my
eyes off of his, “going to ask Granma if we can do something.”
“Like what?”
“Like
go to the movies or something.” I look at him and he’s waiting, “She said she
would trust me.”
“She told me that. On the phone when she
invited me to dinner Monday night.”
“I’m…going to hold her to it, I guess.”
“Hey, let’s walk from here,” he says.
“My books….”
“Disbro can take them and we’ll get them
when we hit Darnay.”
“Can he go by and tell Granma?”
“I don’t know if he will. He’d tell
Ricky,” Easy says.
I am shaking my head. That won’t do us
any good.
We get out and Easy calls Disbro. He
comes up from the direction of the river.
“Hey anyone asks we’re walking,” Easy
says.
“It’s cold,” Disbro says.
“We’re fine,” Easy says and Disbro
doesn’t say anymore.
Once he’s gone it’s quiet and Easy is
holding my hand and we’re walking along a trace path and it’s rough, you have
to watch your step.
“We ran all over here when we were
kids,” Easy says like he’s thinking back.
“I’ve been around here a few times,” I
say. Abigail and I more kept to the sidewalks and alleys.
“I like your shoes,” he says and I think
he’s being sarcastic. They are my saddle shoes, well polished for school.
I laugh and stop to pull up my knee
socks and then I take his hand. “Your hands are cold,” he says.
Well not the one he’s holding. I have
the other in my pocket. “I’m fine.”
He stops and tugs on my arm, “Georgia.”
I’m waiting.
“This time next week I’m gonna have to
go back.”
“I don’t want to think about it.”
“We have to. I think about it every
day.”
“I can stand it long as you’re in the
United States of America. But…Vietnam…Easy….”
“You been listening to the news? It’s
hell over there. There’s no way I’m not going.”
I’m shaking my head. “I don’t know what
I’ll do.”
“You’ll keep going to school
and…living.”
“Not if you….” I can’t say it.
“Hey.” He makes me look at him, his
fingers light on my cheek. “I’ll always come back to you. Always.”
But how? Alive?
“You want that?”
“Of course,” I say. I wasn’t not
answering because I don’t want him back.
“All the school stuff you’ll have….”
“I don’t care about that. I told you.
None of it matters, Easy. All I care about is you. You better know it,” I say.
“You better remember it while you’re over there.”
He closes his eyes and nods.
“There is no one comes close,” I say.
“Listen to me. I won’t be here, Georgia.
And there’s going to be stuff and they’ll come around and ask. And no matter
how it is with us you’re fourteen.”
“So?”
“You should just go if they ask. Don’t
sit home and wait.”
“What? You’re telling me not to wait?”
“I’m just saying go on and go. Just…have
fun.”
“Fun? I’m not halfway, Easy. It’s you or
someone else, not you and…everyone else.” I’m mad that he doesn’t know this
about me.
“I just mean you’ll be sitting home….”
“You don’t think you’re coming back.”
“Yes I do. I’m coming back, Georgia.”
“You can’t know that. You’re talking
like a dead man.” I can’t believe I said that word, that terrible word.
“I am not,” he’s holding my wrists. “I
am not talking like a dead man. I’m thinking about you. Miss Vi said I have to
think of you.”
“When? When did she say that?”
“It
was good. She made me think of things…I ain’t been raised right.”
“She said that?” I can feel my eyes
about popping out of my head.
“No. Listen a minute. She said I need to
think about you. You’re just…young.”
“You talking to her while I’m at school?
About me?”
“No. Yes. I’ve been working at the
house. We talked is all. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“No. Guess not. Just…it’s about me. And
I don’t get a say?”
“I asked her advice. I don’t have….”
“You have me. If it’s about you and
me…ask me.”
“I want to do right.”
“I know right. And wrong. I know that.”
“I asked her what she thought about us
promising each other.”
“Promising what?”
“I told her we’re going steady. She sees
it. She sees how it is.”
“I don’t care.”
“You have to care. And so do I. We’ve
learned that, right? You have to care.”
“I am going along with all of their
rules. Her and the school. I’ve been doing it right. So what are you talking
about?”
“Us. She thinks you’re too young. You’ll
miss stuff.”
“I won’t miss anything.”
“Rite of passage stuff. That’s what she
says.”
“She doesn’t understand. I hate school
and I hate all the rites of passage. I just want you. I want you, Easy.”
“She,” he says this loudly to be heard
over me, “says we should just be friends and when I get back then you’ll be
older and if you still feel the same way it will be better and you won’t have
missed out…on stuff.”
“I’m not….”
“She says,” he’s loud again, “I’m being
unfair to you. She can see how you are…we are and it’s not fair to you. I’m
being unfair because I don’t have much family and I’m trying to make you my
family so I don’t feel alone. I told you I do get lonely…that feeling of
floating away….”
I scream. I turn in a circle and scream.
“And you believe this?”
“I don’t know…yes.”
I scream again.
“I don’t know,” he says very frustrated.
“I don’t want to hurt you…keep you from things. I’d be using you then. I want
to be good for you, good in your life. She’s not a liar. She’s not mean. She
says this and I know she has always treated you so well. She’s trying to
protect you. From me. She thinks you need protected. From me.”
I have my hands over my ears now. “I
don’t want to hear this.”
“She says you’re like in a crush. That
there’s no time to have a real boy-girl deal with me, it’s always been mostly
you having like a soft-heart toward me and that’s not a grown person’s love,
not the good kind that lasts or something. It’s rushed because of me, going
away and you could have regrets cause it’s all dramatic or something.
“She says I should go back to the base
and leave you alone, give it some time, give you a chance to grow up and give
myself a chance to accomplish something. Then…later…she says we could see.
Until then, friendship is all a girl your age can really give and all a good
man, especially one that’s got a lot ahead and won’t even be around…would ever
ask for.” He takes a deep breath.
“She doesn’t understand,” I say. “You
believe this. All of it.”
“I don’t know.”
“You gave me the ring.”
“I would do that anyway.”
“You’re lying. You know what it was.”
“From
me…yes. From you? I don’t know.”
“I have told you.”
“I’m not trying to get you to say
stuff….”
“I love you. I don’t want anyone else.
If you do this to me….”
“Do what?”
“Leave. Say we’re just friends. Expect
me to go with others….”
“I love you, Georgia. I always have. But
if I thought something was for your best….”
“I’m telling you what’s for my best.
You’re not listening. You’re not going to even do this. You just want me to
swear and swear because you’re afraid I don’t love you. Are you breaking up with
me?” I have my fingers on the new ring, ready to pull it off.