To Come and Go Like Magic (15 page)

After dinner we sit in the front yard breaking beans. The garden rows are thick now with Cherokee yellows, purple snaps, Jacob’s Cattle bush beans, and Kentucky Wonders. Green, yellow, purple, and speckled. We strip away the strings and break each bean into sections for canning.

The Murphys drive by in their green Chevrolet and beep the horn to let us know they’re headed to the park. Ginny and Priscilla wave from the backseat.

“We need a break from this,” Momma says. She dumps the bean strings and ends from her apron into an empty bushel basket and goes to the house to get her pocketbook while I put on my sandals and Pop starts the station wagon.

Rose stands up to dust off her dress and calls after Momma. “Tell Myra to come with us tonight,” she says.

Myra won’t come. She hates to go to the park because of the bugs and all the questions from the women. She hasn’t talked much since she and Momma went to Jellico Springs and discovered a lot of Jerry Wilson’s clothes missing. There’s no way he could have been wearing all those clothes when he drowned. And, if he knew ahead of time that he was going to drown himself, why did he take a bunch of clothes? Questions whirl in the air and never land on the answers.

I see Myra standing at the bedroom window watching us leave. She’s too big for regular clothes, so Aunt Rose, who is plenty overweight, gave Myra some of her big flowered tops and muumuu dresses, which fit perfectly. She looks like a walking flowerpot.

At the park the men choose partners for horseshoes and go off to play under the floodlights. In the speckled tree shadows the women talk about the good old days. There’s Momma, Mary Martin, Aunt Rose, Edna Murphy, Mrs. Nelson, and the Tubbs girls. The Tubbs girls are twins, never married. Momma says one can’t do anything without the other and no man would put up with that.

We sit with the women, listening to stories about the good old days until I’m bored to the point of misery.

“Let’s go to the bandstand,” I say.

The bandstand sits on stilts like a giant tree house,
and the bushes around it are full of lightning bugs flickering like tiny Christmas lights.

“When’s Myra going to have that baby?” Ginny asks.

I shrug. “Not sure.”

“How can you not know something like that?”

I catch a lightning bug and let it crawl up my arm. “Do you know why these bugs light up?” I ask.

“Because it’s nighttime,” Ginny says sarcastically.

Priscilla laughs. Even Priscilla knows there’s got to be a better explanation.

“It’s called bioluminescent light,” I say.

Priscilla likes it when I use big words, but Ginny acts like big words are no better than little ones. She doesn’t need them. Ginny knows more about regular life than anyone I know, but when it comes to books, she won’t even read a comic.

“So?” Ginny says.

“The males send out messages with their blinks,” I say. “And the females of the same species send back the message and they mate.”

“What if she’s not the same speezes?” Ginny asks.

“Species,”
I say. “Then the male stays away from her unless he’s tricked.”

“Tricked?”

“Fireflies never eat their own species,” I explain, “but the females gobble up bugs from other families.”

“Yuck,” Ginny says. “Can you imagine somebody trying to eat Willie Bright?”

Both girls giggle like this is a great joke.

“That’s not funny,” I say. “He’s a boy. Not a bug.”

“He’s a
welfare,”
Ginny says. “That’s another speezes. He wouldn’t taste good.”

I laugh, too, even though it doesn’t feel right.

“But how
are
the boy fireflies tricked?” Priscilla asks. She likes the idea of tricking boys.

I explain how the females copy the blinking of other species. It’s like a code, and they use it to lure the males in close enough to eat them.

Ginny bends over and peers into the bushes to see if any such activity is going on at the moment. “Who cares about lightning bugs,” she says. “Where’d you learn this stuff, anyway?”

“From Lenny,” I say.

“Ha. My dad says Lenny’s a sissy,” Ginny says.

I think for a moment about how I might better classify Lenny and it comes to me. “He’s more like a scientist,” I say.

“A scientist?” Priscilla says. “He dances like the girls.”

“So?” I catch another bug and watch it crawl across my palm, flick out its wings, and take off. My hand smells like I’ve been holding nickels. I’ll have to ask Lenny why fireflies smell like metal.

“So, he
is
a sissy,” Ginny says. “Regardless.” She swings on the railing to the steps and hangs underneath. It’s too dark to see that smug look on her face, but I know it’s there. I want to tell her that I’d rather be a smart sissy than a dumb jock like her brother Lewis. Lenny says Lewis Murphy can’t even tie his shoes without looking at the instructions. We laugh about this, Lenny and me. We laugh about all the stupid stuff people do and say in Mercy Hill. Lenny says if he didn’t laugh sometimes, he’d be bound to cry.

When the bandstand goes completely dark, we head for the picnic table where the women are sitting, waiting for the men to send their own messages, to say it’s time to go.

“Someday we’ll be sitting here watching
our
husbands play horseshoes,” Ginny says proudly. “Won’t it be great?”

I feel chill bumps slide up my arms in spite of the hot night. I can’t visualize myself sitting under these trees talking about canning beans with some old versions of Ginny and Priscilla. Instead, I’m on a boat headed up the Rhine River, climbing the stairs of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, riding a train across France. I wish on the stars speckled across the sky above the floodlights. I wish the black night could alight like a moth and carry me away on its silent wings.

L
ooking at the Stars …

“We live in the suburbs of Mercy Hill,” Willie Bright says.

We take the shortcut through the woods, jump the stream that runs beside Miss Matlock’s house, and slip through a space in the boxwood hedge.

“This is definitely not the suburbs,” I say. The very idea makes me laugh.

“This is not town,” he says. “And it’s not a hollow.”

“We live in a valley,” I say, “a valley surrounded by hills. It’s the country, for goodness’ sakes.”

“But—”

“A suburb has streetlights and sidewalks.”

“Maybe not every suburb’s the same,” he says.

“The sky’s lit at night,” I tell him. “A suburb is close to a city and the sky stays lit up at night.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve seen pictures.”

“We have tons of stars to light up the sky here,” he says.

I jump the porch steps and knock on Miss Matlock’s screen door. “The suburbs have stars, too,” I tell him.

“Stars?” Miss Matlock opens the screen door, wants to know what we’re talking about.

I start to tell her that Willie thinks Persimmon Tree Road is a suburb but decide against it. She’d think I was making fun.

“We’re all sitting under the same stars,” Willie Bright says when Miss Matlock starts to pour the tea. “Don’t matter where you live or if you’re rich or poor. You’ve got the same sky.”

“That’s a good thought,” says Miss Matlock. She smiles at Willie like he’s a kindergartner who’s just finished reading his first book. I want to say something smarter but can’t think of anything.

“When you look at the stars, you’re looking at the past,” Miss Matlock says. “You’re seeing space
and
time. Billions of years—gone but still visible.”

“Like memories,” I say.

Miss Matlock smiles, looks over her glasses. “Precisely,” she says.

On the way home Willie Bright says to me: “If I was still a little kid and there really was a Santa Claus, I’d ask for a telescope.”

“Wouldn’t do you any good,” I say.

“Why?”

“A telescope’s way too expensive.”

He looks down at his feet and walks faster, doesn’t reply.

“It’s way too expensive for me, too,” I say.

D
rooping Flowers and Friendships …

The one to stay in the longest is the winner, so I stay in for all it’s worth, even if I get blisters or get hit on the leg with a red-hot rope.

The girls grab a second rope and I get doubles. You have to work both feet, each one at a different time, but it’s like dancing. All you need is rhythm. Lenny says some people are born with it but some can’t get it to save their lives.

Zeno Mayfield and his group of football players walk by just as I’ve made it to the end of the rhyme and he lets out a loud whistle. The other boys start laughing.

It’s midsummer catch-up. Jump-rope team practice and football practice on the same field. Not a good idea. If their coach started practice on time, the boys couldn’t bother us while we try to jump. It’s hard to stay focused.

Jump rope’s for babies, they say. But we’re a team. We’ve won more blue ribbons than any school in our district. There are only three others—Jellico Springs, Willow Branch, and Ivy. Jellico Springs almost beat us last year, but Willow Branch and Ivy have never stood a chance. They’re located way up in the hollows, where kids don’t spend much time practicing jump rope. Still, we work hard at it and we’re good.

After another round we take a break on the bleachers.

“Maybe I’ll quit jump rope,” Ginny says.

“Me too,” says Priscilla. “I
really
want to be a cheerleader this year.”

“You’ve already signed up,” I say. “You can’t quit the team now.”

Ginny shrugs. “Miss Hart says we can.”

I jump off the bleachers and head for the creek that runs alongside the ball field. Outside the place where the grass gets mowed, the field is full of wildflowers, yellow in spring, purple in summer, golden in the fall. In grade school we picked them for our teachers. Ginny, Priscilla, Chili. Murphy, Martin, Mahoney. The three Ms, three peas in a pod.

How can they do this? We’ll never find anybody to take their places on the team. Not now. Not in the middle of the summer.

I hear footsteps and turn to see Zeno Mayfield stomping through the purple wildflowers.

“Hey there, Chili Pepper. Where you going?”

I say I’m taking a walk, picking flowers, if it’s any of his business.

Zeno slides beside me and says if I let him kiss me just once, he’ll give me his allowance for a month.

My face turns burning hot. I tell him money can’t buy everything.

He stops and picks a purple flower, sticks it in front of my face. “So?” he says. “Is it a deal?”

“No. It’s NOT a deal.”

Zeno’s eyes are big and wet, like a puppy’s eyes. He
smells like Ivory soap. Still, I’d rather slap him than kiss him. I bend over and grab a whole bunch of flowers at once and head back to the bleachers with my hands shaking.

“What were you talking about with Zeno?” Ginny asks, twirling the ends of her blond hair around her finger. She looks like she’s been set on a low sizzle.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Did he ask if I like him?”

“He already knows the answer to that.”

“Did he say he likes me?” Her look is hopeful and desperate at the same time.

“No,” I say.

She puckers her lips like she’s about to cry. “He didn’t say he hates me, did he?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

“I saw him talking to you,” she says. “I saw it with my own two eyes.”

Her own two eyes are like darts, razor-sharp and aimed at me.

I shrug, stay quiet.

“What did he say?”
Her words slip out with a hiss.

I turn to stone. Ginny can’t see Zeno walking up behind her. She doesn’t know he’s there until he leans over her shoulder.

“I asked Chileda to make out with me,” he says, his
words pouring into her ear like scalding water. He makes a kissing sound and runs back onto the field.

Ginny stares at me but doesn’t speak. Priscilla and the rest of the team stare, too. I look down at the purple wildflowers drooping in my hands. Finally, Ginny stomps her foot.