Sons from Afar (19 page)

“Maybe I'll do mythology,” Sammy said.

“We've got a lot of books on that here,” James told him. “I guess our grandfather got interested in it. It would make a good topic.”

“Maybe I'll look for them after dinner. Thanks for the help, James. The only thing I could think of was that old Francis Scott Key report I gave in fourth grade.”

“A report you gave in fourth grade? You'd give it again?”

“I'd have added stuff. I'd have changed some stuff.” Even so, Sammy grinned to himself, it would have sounded like a fourth grade report, which would have been pretty funny. As long as you did something, teachers would pass you. He could picture how it would be, he could hear himself giving this fourth grade report and the way the class would catch on. Miss Karin would probably catch on first and he bet she'd enjoy it, too; she did a lot of laughing. She seemed to think seventh graders, and especially Sammy, were pretty funny. It was tempting, and maybe he
would
just rewrite that one; he didn't mind looking stupid.

Sammy pulled out a clump of weeds and tossed it over, then moved down the row. What did James mean, anyway, calling him lazy?

*   *   *

With less than four weeks until summer, it was as if all the teachers suddenly woke up. Tests and projects, all the wrap-up things, everybody was assigning more homework, making the classes toe the line because there was so much to be done before they graduated from seventh grade, before they moved on to the high school, where, if they thought things were tough here . . . Even in PE they had wrapping up to do.

At the end of every year, all the students were weighed and measured during one of the PE classes. The weights and heights were entered onto their records. The school nurse was in charge, but the PE teachers did the actual measuring, writing down, and keeping the gym quiet. While this record keeping was going on, the kids milled around in groups that moved slowly along toward the scales.

When it was time for the seventh graders to line up, Sammy made sure he was next to Custer. Custer would be a good person to work with. “So what are you doing this summer?” he asked.

Custer kept his voice low to answer, although his eyes looked eager, excited. “I'm going out West. To a ranch. It's a camp, actually, but—I'll learn to ride western style, not this eastern stuff for shows, but like cowboys. There'll be some white-water canoeing, too. And I'm going to learn how to shoot. A gun.”

“A real gun?”

“No, a water pistol.” Custer punched Sammy on the arm. “I'll learn how to use one of those Darth Vader death rays, too, there's a two-week course on death rays.”

Sammy laughed. “How to shoot like a storm trooper?”

“They never hit anyone,” Custer pointed out.

Sammy explained it to him: “It used to be black hats. Now it's bad shots. That's how you can tell the bad guys—they miss. How come you're doing that?”

“My father grew up out West. Not California, that's not the real West, he lived in the Rockies. In the mountains. He didn't live on a ranch, but he had some friends who did and they used to go off, on horses, with bedrolls just like in the movies. They'd camp out. They had to take their guns, because it was dangerous—and he wasn't any older than I am. He shot rattlers and jackrabbits. My grandfather used to shoot moose and deer for their winter meat. You know that moose head we have?” Sammy remembered it, a huge gentle-faced hairy head under wide antlers. “My grandfather shot that.” Sammy used to feel sorry for that moose. He didn't tell Custer that. “My father would wear just an Indian loincloth, they all would, and they'd fish for their meals and cook the fish over the fire. He says the West is an experience he doesn't want any son of his to miss, so I'm going to this camp. We're all going to drive across the country, my sisters and everyone, and I'll fly back at the end of the summer.”

“That sounds great,” Sammy said. It did. He wouldn't have
minded it for himself except he didn't have any father to want him to do it.

“I'll probably go back for lots of summers. Dad says, the mountains are a good place to grow up. He says it teaches you things about being a man.”

Sammy guessed he just couldn't understand that.

“They used to pan for gold, too. Like the old miners, they'd be up there beside some stream, panning for gold.”

“Did he find any?”

“Not enough to spit on, he says. At camp we're going to do a lot of trail riding. Hiking, and climbing, too. There are marksmanship contests.”

Custer was really looking forward to the summer, talking fast. Their line moved slowly forward.

“My dad says he thinks I'll make a marksman, because I've got a steady hand and a true eye.” Then, as if he could see that Sammy was getting tired of hearing all this, Custer asked, “What're you doing this summer?”

“The usual.” Custer knew what that was. “I was going to see if you wanted to be in the crabbing business with me, but I guess you can't.”

“I guess not.” Custer didn't sound like that bothered him.

Sammy shuffled forward with the rest of the kids. He could see why Custer would rather go to camp out West, and learn how to shoot a gun, and all. It wouldn't make sense for Custer to wish he could stay in Crisfield and go crabbing with Sammy—Sammy wouldn't wish that, if he were Custer and his father wanted to take him West.

“I thought your brother—” Custer started to say, but then he fell into the silence that was spreading backward from the head of the line as Ernie stepped onto the scales. Everybody always wanted to know how much Ernie weighed. It was a standing
joke. Sammy stuck his elbow into Custer's ribs and Custer punched him lightly on the shoulder. They stood side by side to watch. One PE teacher settled the height bar on top of Ernie's head, while the other adjusted the metal weights on the scale. Ernie slouched there, chewing gum; he didn't care. His gut hung down over his belt, all around his body. Ernie already looked like he had a beer belly.

“One forty-seven,” the teacher said, neither raising nor lowering her voice. The third teacher entered the figure on a piece of paper, then called the school nurse over. “Just stay right there, young man,” she instructed Ernie, who had started to slouch down off the scales.

Ernie looked back at the kids. He lifted his arm and scratched at his armpit, letting everyone see how bored he was. He grinned, making his face hang loose, like a retard's face. Then, slowly, he started to pick his nose.

“Ugh,” Custer said, turning his back. But Sammy watched. He hadn't had much to do with Ernie for years, not since second grade when he was new and thought he had to prove he wasn't a sissy, and Ernie had been the biggest and meanest kid in the class. Mostly, now, he didn't even notice Ernie was in the world. Nobody had anything much to do with Ernie; nobody was even frightened of him any more. Everybody just—didn't like the kind of trouble Ernie got into. Ernie got in trouble for cussing at teachers, which was pretty stupid, and for saying the kinds of things you were never supposed to say to girls. He'd slam little kids around in the hallways, sometimes. And here he was, standing there, picking away at his nose, trying to gross everyone out. And succeeding.

Maybe that made him happy, Sammy thought, although he kind of doubted it. What made Ernie happy was being able to bully people, only now he couldn't any more.

The nurse came up and Ernie gave her a bored look. At least, Sammy thought, with Ernie around, things got knocked off their rails. The nurse started talking at Ernie about diets and health. Ernie slouched there, his head lowered so she couldn't see his face, his face bored and inattentive. “I'm going to have to talk with your parents,” she finally said.

“Go ahead,” Ernie answered. He didn't care.

“Don't they worry about you?”

“Nah,” Ernie said. “My father says he went through a heavy phase, too. He says I'll outgrow it.” In Ernie's voice was absolute confidence that his father knew better than the nurse, better than anyone.

“Lucky for you that he knows all the answers,” the nurse said, sarcastic.

“Yeah. He says besides I can always be a wrestler on TV. Can I get down now?”

The nurse wanted to keep him there and talk at him until he changed, but she knew it wouldn't do any good, so she let him go. Ernie slouched on away. Sammy watched him slouch along. He'd be willing to bet Ernie was ashamed of himself, but he wasn't sure he'd win that bet. Ernie sounded pretty sure of what his father said. Sammy didn't know—he sure didn't want anyone telling him that what wasn't true was true. And asking him to believe it.

You certainly wouldn't want to work on a fourteen-foot boat with Ernie. Sammy looked around, trying to think of someone else to ask, someone he wouldn't mind spending hours in the boat with. But he didn't know how to tell who'd be able to work and who'd give up easy. He knew how these people behaved in school, and who played sports how, but that didn't necessarily mean that would be a person who could haul crabs, day after day. What you really needed was patience, Sammy thought, but how could you tell if someone had enough of that? He thought,
some people did know how to tell, because people hired men to do jobs, so they must be able to tell something.

For reasons he didn't quite understand, it was the new kid, Robin Kelly, that Sammy asked next. He asked Robin while the boy was waiting in the bus line after school. He tried to explain how hard the work was, but he could see by the excited way Robin kept interrupting that the kid was more interested in being asked than in anything else. He wasn't listening. There wasn't anything Sammy could do about that. Besides, he thought, while he was trying to say how early you had to go out, and how uncomfortable it often was, he'd really picked Robin because Robin looked like James—dark and skinny—and like Jeff Greene, too. Sammy had worked with both of them, so Robin literally looked like someone he could work with. That wasn't much of a reason, but Sammy knew it was as good a reason as any.

“I'd have to have my mother's permission,” Robin was saying, practically bouncing up and down. “Boy. Boy, does that sound great.”

“I'm trying to tell you—” Sammy tried to tell him.

“She'll have to meet you. Because . . . anyway, she won't say yes until she meets you. So you should come home from school with me tomorrow, and you could stay and have dinner with us. My mother's a good cook. Ask your parents, okay? I'll ask mine. Then we can all talk about it. They like to all talk things over. Once they meet you, they'll see.”

See what? Sammy wanted to ask, but didn't. “I have a bike.”

“That's okay, I'll get a note so I can walk. It's not that far. Don't forget to ask?”

“I won't,” Sammy said.

“This is great,” Robin said, again. “Boy, would I like to be able to.”

Sammy just went to get his bike and ride home.

The Tillermans talked things over too; that was what families did when there was something one of them wanted to do. Sammy pedaled energetically, listening to the wind in his ears, feeling how strong his legs were. Just because you didn't have parents, that didn't mean you weren't a family. He pushed down, standing up to get more power into his thrust—left, right, left. His speed built up. A car overtook him, and passed him, with a rumbling motor sound that drowned out the wind.

In that temporary windless second after the car had rushed on, where he heard only echoing silence, a voice in Sammy's head called his name.

“Sammy.”

He heard it, clear. He looked around, as if he weren't sure the voice was really in his head, although he knew it was. This had happened before, not too many times, but enough. He'd heard his name being called, like some kind of optical illusion in his ear. When he was little, he'd almost thought it was Momma calling, and he'd try to rehear the voice, trying to hold on to it. He'd finally figured out that it wasn't, and it couldn't be. It was something like a dream that happened in your ear while you were awake. Sammy didn't know if other people had the same experience, because he'd never told anyone about it.

But something was different this time, he thought, sitting down on the bike seat, slowing down. The voice had seemed closer, realer. He didn't know the voice, but he thought it was a man. He knew he didn't believe in ESP and things like that, but there was something strange here.

He wanted there to be something strange. He hoped there was some ESP going on. But that wasn't like him. What was like him was to see how things really were.

He could almost still hear it, if he concentrated on remembering,
the way the voice had called the two syllables of his name. “Sammy.”

Sammy shook his head, but the voice stayed hooked there in his mind. He reminded himself to ask Gram about having supper at Robin's tomorrow, and that he had to finish the rough draft of his English report that night. That would give him the weekend to recopy it. He had done it on the Greek myths about the sun god, and he'd had a pretty interesting time doing it.

Now that he'd distracted himself, Sammy listened inside his head for the voice, to hear if it was still there. He couldn't find it, but he thought it was still there. He could almost re-create it from his memory—but that was a pretty strange thing to want to do. In fact—he turned onto the driveway and rode fast over the ruts, bouncing himself in the seat and laughing aloud as the bike jolted and twisted under him, like a bucking bronco—he was having some pretty strange ideas recently, now he thought of it. Sammy decided not to think of it.

R
obin lived a couple of miles inland, in one of a half dozen ranch-style houses lined up on the road's edge, backed by fields of corn and soybeans. Sammy walked his bike, because Robin didn't have one. “I wish I did. I'm old enough to ride to school,” Robin said. “You ride to school most of the time.”