Firebirds Soaring (40 page)

Erl Jack is very fit and popular with the ladies, and so the little girls clustered around. Clarisse is like a bee around a pot when she sees a man, and Erl Jack is as close to a man as we have around here. Her mama’s useless boyfriend sure doesn’t count. Erl Jack’s sixteen but works three jobs in the summer, and when school’s on, he works two and makes good grades as well. When he waits tables, he’s always telling people that he wants to better himself and go to college, even though he doesn’t have a daddy and his mother’s a crack addict in Miami. Sometimes he says that she was eaten by alligators, though that part’s not true. It may be wish fulfillment because he’s probably mad at her, deep down. He never says so. You’d be surprised at some of the tips he gets. I couldn’t stand to tell all these strangers my business about how Deirdre—that’s my mother—didn’t want me, or about how I don’t begin to know who my father is. Sometimes, listening to him go on, I feel sure that Erl Jack and I have way too much in common.

I was looking at Erl Jack out of the corner of my eye and taking a certain amount of pleasure in exactly how fit a boy with no shirt on and a chest positively corrugated with muscle can look. Since he had on suspenders, and long pants, I guessed he’d just finished a shift ripping boards at the lumber mill. It’s a first-rate job for a teenager. Last spring he told Mr. Skellig at the mill that he wanted to better himself and so on and so on—and the old man gave him a job starting at twelve dollars an hour.

“. . . do a little magic,” he was saying to the girls.

Clarisse and Maudie squealed and jerked up and down with excitement, and the doll joggled.

“That baby head is going to fly off,” I warned.

I knew what Erl Jack was up to.

“Show me some power and magic, and maybe I will,” I’d said to him. It was just a way of turning him down, but he’d taken me seriously because Erl Jack is ever and always determined to get what he wants. But he’d have to do more than yank a rabbit out of his hat to impress me.

Off hours and Saturdays, he’s Wizard Erl Jack Falchion. Around here, he’s the prime man when it comes to birthday parties. If you’re a middle-class kid, Erl Jack’s for you.

That’s why Maudie and Clarisse were so excited. They had a chance to see Erl Jack in action, and it wasn’t even somebody’s birthday.

“Here.” He handed Clarisse a cardboard box and let Maudie carry a rusted hibachi. “That’s all I need.”

“Where do I put it? ” That little rat Clarisse looked sheep-eyed at Erl Jack, who laughed.

“By the Chevy,” he said, half squatting to be on her eye level.

“The Chevy,” Maudie said, impressed. “We’re not allowed to go up there without a grown-up.”

I could see the crumbs of pine and splinters stuck to his arms and chest, making his tan look golden.

“You ought to wear a shirt-and-mail at the mill,” I said, “or at least a shirt.”

“It was a big mistake,” he admitted.

Clarisse looked at me as though she’d forgotten I existed and was displeased to be reminded.

“She’s in one of her moods,” the brat confided to Erl Jack. When the head bobbled in agreement, he took the doll away from her and jammed the neck back into place.

“That thing gave me the willies,” he said.

“Oh!” she said, and “thanks.”

Clarisse looked mortified at being caught with a doll, as though Erl Jack might decide she wasn’t old enough for him, and this made me laugh.

“You could pick out the pine mess,” he said, coming up to me. “I was just too hot for a shirt.”

“You’d like that,” I said, “wouldn’t you?”

I lay back on the lower branch of the tree and gazed up at the light twinkling between the fronds of tiny mimosa leaves and the puffs of the flowers. Really I love a mimosa in bloom, though my gran calls them “suckerwood” and wants to get rid of this one. They may be weed trees, but once a year they’re delicate and frothy, before the blooms start to go orange with rot.

He leaned on the branch, staring at me, his long hair sliding forward and half obscuring his face. I looked at him without blinking as I considered.

“Ask Maudie and Clarisse,” I said finally.

He shrugged and let them dust him off with a wadded-up shirt from the backseat. Afterward they tweaked off a few stray pieces, and he let down his suspenders and put on the shirt, wearing it loose and unbuttoned.

“You looked like three baboons,” I said, “having a lice party.”

“You’re a baboon,” Clarisse told me. She was barefoot on the grass, and I could see where the shoes had pinched her toes. “Baboon butt, that’s what.”

“Don’t insult my woman,” Erl Jack said, wriggling in the shirt. He finally tore the thing off and threw it on the ground, and after that he went over to the shack and rapped on the screen door. I could hear Gran sing out, “Erl Jack Falchion, where you been all my life?” My gran padded out on the porch in her slippers and gave him a hug, but she backed out of it mighty quick and fetched a tin tub and the garden hose.

“Don’t you dare,” I commanded the girls. I made them scramble up on my branch and sit facing the other way. We listened to the noises behind us for a good long time.

“Huh,” Maudie said, keeping her eye on the hibachi and cardboard box. “I wonder what he’s going to do with that little grill.”

“Cook Clarisse-cutlets,” I said.

Talk about baboons. My gran and Erl Jack were laughing their fool heads off, there on the porch. Gran loves Erl Jack Falchion.

“That boy is going to go somewhere,” she declares, just about every time she sees him, and that’s odd because she never went anywhere at all. She was born in a north Georgia shack, and I guess she’ll die in one.

I have a lot of good responses to that line, but I don’t use them with Gran because of two things. Gran wants me to go somewhere too, and I don’t want to discourage her. She’s about the only person who’s behind me on this. Also, I don’t sass Gran. Period.

Once I peeked over my shoulder and saw Erl Jack in the tub, with Gran sawing away at his shoulders with a big brush.

“You peeped,” Clarisse said, and turned around. “Me and her saw you.”

“Get back here, you,” Maudie said, slapping her sister’s hand.

“I did not look at Erl Jack Falchion,” I said with dignity. “I merely ascertained whether Gran was still busy on the porch. I don’t have all day.” That was a lie. I did have all day, at least until five, when I had to be at Rick’s Number One Bar and Café to wait on customers.

After considerable whooping, a big splash of water that meant the bath was done, and some banging of the screen door, Erl Jack strolled over to the mimosa tree, smelling like cheap Camay soap.

“Ladies,” he said grandly, bowing from the waist, “come with me to see the show of your lives.” He caught Maudie in midair and plunked her down by the grill. Clarisse he had to coax, so while he was fussing with her, I walked along the branch and jumped to the grass.

“I would have helped,” he said, looking reproachful.

“Hah,” I said.

“Gran thinks I’m wonderful. She thinks I’m good-looking and smart, well read and clever and a really good catch.” He gave a big, big sigh. “Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m not sixty-seven years old, maybe?”

“I’m hurt to the quick,” he declared, one hand on his chest. It was red from the scrubbing, and in several places beads of blood had welled up.

“Some people don’t need any more women saying they’re the cat’s pajamas.” All the same, I couldn’t help a glimmer of a smile slipping out. Erl Jack Falchion has more style and dash than anybody else in these parts.

He took that as license to grab my hand and then called to the girls to hoist their bundles and get going.

“We’ve got magic to catch, ladies!”

Erl Jack was fresh and sweet smelling, frisking along the path in a pair of my mother’s jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, threadbare to transparency, that must have belonged to my grandpa.

“I’m afraid of the Chevy,” Maudie confided.

“And right you are, my dear little chile,” Erl Jack said airily. “It is a frightful thing, the bane of locals and the horror of tourists.”

A lot of people had been trooping up in the woods to see the Chevy. For a dollar per head, I had hiked up there with a few groups. It was easy money.

“Just don’t get too near,” he went on.

In the woods, more and more cicadas were tuning up. They were probably shrilling against the heat and the oppressive windless air under the pines. If I were a cicada, that’s exactly what I would’ve been doing. Maudie found a shucked husk of one hooked to pine bark and detached it carefully.

“Got a monster in your pocket,” Erl Jack said to her.

He was lacing his clean, cool fingers with mine, and that made me feel oilier than ever. My shirt was damp, and I could smell the faint girl-stink of perspiration, though I knew he wouldn’t mind—would like it, even.

“We’re just friends,” he was explaining to Clarisse. I could tell that she wanted to hold hands too. “I’d like to be more, but you know how stubborn she is. I keep telling her that we’ll blast out of here together, but she’s not so sure.”

“She said my sister was bruising and cruising for a fall,” Maudie said, nodding.

“Be pregnant by fourteen, I’d guess,” I said. “Be working the bait-and-tackle shop before she knows it. Doesn’t know how to write her own name in cursive.”

“You won’t do that, will you, Clarisse? ” Erl Jack winked at her. “You show India that you’re going to be a rocket scientist, okay? ”

India
’s my name. I guess it’s the sort of goofy name that a heroin addict gives a baby. I’m just lucky that Deirdre was locked up the year I was born, or I’d be as stupid as Clarisse. India. I kind of like it, but it makes absolutely no sense. My mother’s never been anywhere, so why India? I haven’t seen her to ask, not in six or seven years. Gran just clicks her tongue when my mother’s name comes up.

“My sister did well in school,” I said. “Look what happened to her.” Vivienne has three kids and is married to a drunk. When he works, he roofs houses, and when he doesn’t, he wallows on the couch and throws things.

“Keep away from boys, Maudie,” I added.

“Boys are all right,” Erl Jack said, “when they’re the right ones.”

“Maybe,” I said, looking sidelong at his good-looking profile, “if it’s the right time.”

Tension, that’s what I’m good at, the inflicting of tension. I didn’t take my hand away, because I liked holding Erl Jack’s hand. On the other hand—the one that wasn’t holding on—I wasn’t about to let him take me on as an official girlfriend. My sister the high school honor student is always perched on the top of my brain, next to a little flag that waves at me cheerfully and squeaks, “Knocked up, knocked up.”

“You’re so dreadfully hard on a fellow, India,” Erl Jack said, glancing over his shoulder at the little girls as they stumbled along, carrying their burdens.

“I’m just going somewhere, remember? Somewhere that’s not here.”

“So am I,” he protested. “We’re going together. We’ll bag fat scholarships to the same school, and then we’ll scratch our way up.”

I let that one lie. Maybe we were, and maybe we weren’t. I wasn’t going to end up like my sister, cleaning other people’s houses with a toddler in tow. Someday I was going to get a scholarship and be gone, and I wasn’t going to be hindered by anything or anybody, and especially not by a boy.

“What’s wrong with some frolic along the way?” He let go of my hand and grabbed up the hibachi and the cardboard box.

I made the sign against vampires and said, “Vivienne.”

“Yeah,” he said, “too bad about her.”

He jogged up the steep part of the path, just before it twisted and was lost in a meadow. Phlox and Queen Anne’s Lace, bee balm and butterfly weed were all saying that it was the tail end of June. The ’53 Chevy loomed out of the spray of wildflowers like a boulder from surf.

The little girls were jumping up and down again, pointing at the car.

“It gives me the creeps,” I murmured.

“You wouldn’t be right in the head if it didn’t, would you? ” Erl Jack lit the hibachi while the girls crouched by him, watching as he squirted lighter fluid onto the coals and made flames blaze up with a tossed match. “Clarisse, back off. You go and set your hair on fire, and your ma will tack my hide to the outhouse.”

“We got no outhouse.”

“In a manner of speaking,” he said, tumbling her hair.

“Her mama doesn’t even have the slimmest idea where they are,” I said. “She was chugging beer on the back porch with her no-good boyfriend, last I noticed.”

“Hush,” Erl Jack said, nodding toward Clarisse and Maudie.

“They know what’s going on.”

“I do,” Maudie said. “I’m going to be a first-grade teacher when I grow up.”

“That’s great,” Erl Jack said. “I used to be in love with mine. When I got older, I realized that she had a mustache and a small cottony beard, but it was too late. I’d already given my heart to her.”

“I thought you loved India,” Clarisse said, cradling her dolly.

“I do. I gave up on the adorable Miss Bootle some years ago. For me, there is no one else but chilly, heartless, brainy India. She doesn’t have a mustache. She doesn’t have a little cottony beard. Her nose is a wee bit too large. Her amber hair is preposterously uncontrollable. She looks at me with those big brown eyes and says the cruelest things.”

“So why do you love her? Clarisse and I don’t,” Maudie said.

“But look at you two,” Erl Jack said. “Here you are, tagging along despite all her hard, pebbly words. Just like me. Besides, other than those few drawbacks, she’s perfect.”

“Nice. Let’s get on with the performance,” I said.

The hibachi burned wildly, threatening the end-of-June wildflowers as he took a black cape lined with cobalt from the box and hooked it around his neck.