Finding My Thunder (12 page)

I
took my book over to the tree and got pretty comfortable against the trunk. I
decided to turn to my favorite part and just skim. It was such a pretty day,
and I was with Danny. It was weird to think Sukey was there, but I didn’t need
to see him at least.

There
were a couple of families not so far away. One of them was having a picnic. A
man threw a baseball back and forth with a boy around my age. If I was in a
place like this…Naomi would find a way to come. And maybe Danny…if he was home.

I
thought of his stomach again, and how beautiful he was, and how this trip was
nothing, not long enough, for I could sit by his side forever. I replayed how
those two girls we picked up flirted with him, like I didn’t even matter. I
couldn’t imagine how he gave me the time of day, but he had whispered, “Pretty
Girl.” And me…I had been so bold…like Nina Simone…maybe like Mama had been
once. I rubbed my hand over the skirt. She had worn this…that night I’d met Danny
and when she was feeling good. She looked just like Ava Gardner a man said once
when we were in town. I asked her who Ava Gardner was and Mama just laughed. “Men
just talk like that for one thing,” she said. “They will lie and lie and lie to
get it.”

“Pretty
girl,” I heard Danny say. You’re wrong, Mama. You didn’t ever meet Danny. That’s
the thing.

There
was a boy came around and asked me my name and I told him, and he said his name
was Peter and I said that was the name of my favorite artist and he said he
thought I would say favorite apostle. He liked artist better. And I said well
maybe the apostle Peter was an artist, and he said no, just a fisherman. And I
asked him if he fished cause this place was on the river and he said he did and
he liked it.

I
was laughing and I looked up and Danny was coming, Dickens behind swinging the
empty box. Didn’t seem like they’d been in there very long. Boys. They probably
forgot to talk or something.

I
stood up and dusted off and Peter had just asked who I was there to see and I
nodded at Danny.

“Hey,”
Danny said but his eyes were not friendly. “We got to go now,” Danny said to
me.

“Okay,”
I said like he should smile once in a while. He took my hand and I said, “See
you,” to Peter.

We
all went to the car then and got in without too much fanfare.

“What
happened?” I asked him cause apparently he was upset. Dickens threw himself in
back and stretched out on the seat face down.

“I
don’t know,” Danny said pulling out. When we passed Peter Danny flipped him the
bird.

Last
I saw Peter he was looking at us like we were straight out of the Twilight
Zone.

“Why’d
you do that for?” I asked Danny.

Dickens
lifted his head, “Do what?”

“Hush
Richard,” I said, then back to Danny, “Did you see him?”

“Yeah
I saw him…and saw you
talkin
’ to him just like I said
not to. No self-preservation…none,” he said.

He
just kept staring ahead and driving out. He slowed at the guard’s little house
again and the guard looked through the car and Danny had to get out and open
the trunk and he looked in there, then Danny had to sign the clip-board and he
got back in and drove to the gate and turned back onto the road that ran
through the town.

“Hungry,”
Dickens said, still laying there.

“We’ll
stop in a little while,” Danny said his voice more gentle. But I could see the
strength in his jaw as he kept tensing and releasing.

I
turned the radio on and Simon and Garfunkel were singing, “The Sounds of
Silence.”

We
were silent for a long time. Danny drove and I put my feet up on the seat, my
knees bent and I let the hot wind blow my hair around my face.

Finally
Danny had his hand on my arm and he was pulling on me and I looked behind and
Dickens seemed to be asleep and I slid over next to Danny and his arm was
across my lap and he had his hand on my thigh and he gripped me firmly, and
such a feeling went through me that I couldn’t get close enough and he looked
at me for a minute and there was emotion in his face, and this look that melted
me inside. And pretty soon he pulled off the road and down this dirt road until
it opened up a little into this cleared off place that widened the shoulder and
he pulled over there and got out and pulled on me to follow and I did and he
closed the door softly and Dickens did not so much as lift his head. He walked
a ways to a bank on the river and he sat down on a log there and I sat beside
him. He already had a cigarette in his mouth and his fingers pulled a book of
matches from the pocket on his t-shirt. He lit that and pulled from it and sent
that smoke up.

“I
shouldn’t of gone in there,” he said. “He threw a big fit to come home with me.
Like a big baby…worse than Dickens did when he thought I was leaving him.” He
shook his head. “They had to haul him off.” He smoked for a minute. “They’re
thinking about sending him further in to a lock-down facility and he’ll be with
the real offenders then.”

I
stayed quiet while he got it out.

“I
tried to set them an example. But here I brought Dickens all this way to get a
dose of that. Like Paul don’t show it enough.”

“You
got my same problem.”

“What’s
that?”

“Trying
to fix things can’t be fixed.”

“What’s
that mean?”

“Well…it
just means you can’t help people who don’t care they are broken. Sukey has to
want to get better. If he don’t care…you can’t fix it. He’ll just have to live
it out…his choices.”

“That’s
like giving up.”

“Or
maybe…it’s really loving someone. Like about you going to war. You told me it’s
what you want to do. So even if I don’t agree…I have to stand back…and stand
by.”

He
stared at me his eyes dark as storm clouds fixing to burst. “I don’t understand
one thing you just said.”

“I
said…let him go.”

“I
can’t. It wouldn’t be right.”

“He
has to want to do better.”

“What
do you think I been trying to teach him?”

“He
don’t want it. He wants to have fits and be mad. Maybe if he does suffer
enough…maybe he’ll figure it out.”

“There’s
something wrong with him. Me going to war is a good choice. It’s honor. Him
wanting to be a jailbird is shit. He’s breaking my mom’s heart and he’s
teaching these others to be just like him.”

“Danny…if
I’m going into a pen with a dog who barks and bites…what would you tell me to
do?”

“Wouldn’t
do me no good to say it cause you’d do what you wanted,” he said.

“Okay
then. I’m going to do what I want. So is everybody.”

“You’re
saying he’s a waste of time. He’s going to do what he wants.”

“He’s…got
a right to go straight to hell…if he wants.”

He
looked at me. “I fight,” he said.

I
nodded. “Find a better cause.”

“You
don’t understand,” he said.

“You
think I don’t?” I said.

He
stared at me some more, finished his smoke and stood up and pulled me up. He
put his hands on my face. His thumbs stroked over my cheeks. “I’m fighting for
you,” he said softly.

“You
already got me,” I said.

He
shook his head. “I don’t know how it’s ever gonna work.”

“It
never has worked. But it’s right.”

“You
got an answer for everything?”

“It’s
Naomi. She’s in the answer business and…I guess it rubbed off. But really? I
don’t know shit.”

“That’s
okay…I’ll do what I want.”

“See?”

He
laughed some and then he moved his beautiful face toward me and kissed my lips,
his hands still on my face.

The
horn honked and we sprang apart like we’d been squirted with a hose.

“When
we gonna eat?” Dickens yelled from where Danny had parked the car.

Finding My Thunder 17

We
went to a market and got bread and lunchmeat and chips and Cokes and went back
to the river and ate our food and Danny and Dickens had a contest skipping
rocks on the water.

Danny
said if he could skip a rock all the way across he could get a kiss. Dickens
said, “What about me?”

I
said any time they got one across they got a kiss.

Danny
worked to perfect it and pretty soon he was getting every other one all the way
across.

Dickens
said, “Oh man.” And he worked and he worked and finally he got one and then he
got too shy to come and get his kiss so I got up and chased him. He ran all
over and I never could catch him. Then when I sat back down he ran by and
pulled on my hair and I took off after him again and this time I outsmarted him
and doubled around the table and got him and he pretty well let me and I
wrestled him enough, with Danny near warning him not to hurt me. I pecked his
cheek.

He
jumped up and said “
Ew
,” with his hand on his cheek. But
he was pretty much mine after that.

When
we were back in the car and on the highway he sat behind and I felt him tugging
on my braid again. Then his face was right there and his salami breath pretty
much in my face and he wanted to know about my book and I told him the story
some, him hanging over the seat and touching my little hoop earring, and Danny
said, “Sit back now.”

He
did and pretty soon he was asleep again.

And
Danny pulled me across the seat again and I sat close to him until I slid down
and laid on the seat on my side and put my head on his thigh for a pillow and
he kept his hand on my shoulder, then he slid his hand slow up and down my arm
and it settled on my wrist but that was pretty close to my breast, so I looked
down without moving my head and his wrist was across my breast so he was kind
of getting a feel. And I thought of
Tahlila’s
breasts, bigger than mine, and I guessed he probably felt those and I hoped he wasn’t
disappointed in mine but I didn’t know how he couldn’t be even though I’d never
waved them at everyone during every athletic event. I didn’t think mine could
wave. They couldn’t. So this is what I had to offer and there wasn’t much I
could do about it.

I
couldn’t sleep, I was lying on Danny’s leg and I loved him so much I could feel
it in myself like a flower opening wide or a wound kind of raw, like life and
death, breathing and weeping filling me.

No
wonder every song was about love. There was so much you could say about it. Even
the bible. Love always protects. That was my favorite. It spoke so well about Danny.
Except when it came to hitchhikers. Then he kind of lost his mind.

Finding My Thunder 18

Danny
woke me up, and I was surprised I had gone to sleep. His thigh was flexing
beneath my cheek. “Hilly…could you talk to me?”

I
sat up and rubbed my eyes. “How much farther?” I asked, not because I wanted
the trip to be over…but because I didn’t.

“Another
twenty minutes.”

I
was starting to recognize things.

“Did
you have a good nap?” he asked smiling.

“Yeah.
Sorry.”

“Don’t
be sorry,” he said working his arm around me. “I like your sleepy eyes. Just
talk to me a little bit so I stay awake.”

I
settled against him. “You never did tell me about Tahlila…when you left the
shop and all.” My love had awakened with me. I had the hand closest to him
twisted in his t-shirt right over his heart.

“Is
that little monkey still asleep?”

I
looked back at Dickens and his face was plastered against the seat, his mouth
open. He was out.

“Yeah.
Look at him.”

Danny
moved his arm away and readjusted the rearview. He laughed when he saw him. “He’ll
sleep through anything.” He put his arm back around me.

“You
gonna tell me what happened?” I looked at him…all the way in to his brain. He
didn’t want to tell me.

“You
know that story you told me at the river…about someone
goin
’
into the yard with the biting dog?”

“Yeah.”

“Well…sometimes
you just got to go for the dog.”

I
thought about it for a minute. “Like Mama did for me…with Lonnie. I mean…I
noticed that…recently.” I didn’t want to talk about it.

“How
about the night with the chairs? The night we took her to the hospital?” he
reminded me in a soft voice.

“Yeah…I
got between them a few times. I guess getting older…it was going to be more
that way.”

“Same
with me. Mom and Paul…or Sukey and Paul,” he said. “Or Sukey and half the
town.”

We
were quiet for a while.

“I
told her we were friends…you and me…and she almost cost me my job. She
apologized, but she went on…you know about what she thinks I gave up…and I told
her it was over…again…and she doesn’t get why. And I told her again I was wrong
to let it go as far as it did. She says…can we at least be friends. And I said
yes…so she’d back off you.” He looked at me.

There
was a lot I could say, but Naomi always told me, ask yourself before you
speak…will it help? I didn’t know.

“I
mean, she needs to apologize to you, but that’s not going to happen.
 
And her word don’t mean shit anyway. All I’m
wanting is her to leave you alone. So we have to be careful about being seen. Once
I’m gone you should be alright. She’ll have moved on to the next guy, the next
game, the next party.”

I
was thinking it all over, but that made him nervous. “Say something,” he said.

“I
was wondering…you won’t ever lead me on like that…will you?”

He
was quiet now. I saw that jaw thing again where he ground his back teeth, and I
felt it in the arm around me, before he lifted it and took it away from me and
put two hands on the wheel. I didn’t move away. I didn’t think he wanted that. I
didn’t. But he was pulled into himself.

Dickens
woke up and sat up and sighed a lot and said he couldn’t believe we were that
close to home. He was already working on Danny for the next thing…could he
sleep in his room? In Sukey’s bed again? He shared a room with two others
younger than him and they kept him up at night with bad dreams and bad
behavior.

“You
can,” Danny said stern, “…and same thing we talked about.”

I
didn’t know what that was, but I guessed he’d tell me if he wanted.

Once
on our street Danny went around the block and hit the alley. He followed this
to Naomi’s door. He got out of the car and held the door for me. I grabbed my
bag and scooted out past the steering wheel dragging my bag off the seat. “I’ll
just let her know I’m home then I’ll walk over to my house.”

I
looked at him, and he was looking back, the two of us caught in that staring we
did.

Naomi
pulled the door and she spoke to him and he spoke politely to her and
introduced Dickens. I knew he wanted her to see he’d kept the rules. And since
I didn’t expect him to ever come over again the way he’d been so quiet, I knew
some relief with my embarrassment when she said, “You all can ride with me to
Temple in the morning or follow in your car.”

“I
will follow. Can Hilly ride with me?”

“That
would be fine,” she allowed pretty much beaming. He said a polite good-bye to
me then and I waved and Dickens, at Danny’s urging as he got in the car, called
to Naomi, “Nice to meet you Miss Naomi.”

And
she nodded and waved. She was looking at me ready for a full report and I said,
“Naomi I am so beat. I fell asleep on the way home. I’m
goin
’
back to my room and I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay,”
she said wrinkling her brow some. “You gonna be okay in that big empty house?”

“I’m
fine,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t be empty for long. And I didn’t mean Lonnie
and his new family. I didn’t mean them at all.

Lonnie
wasn’t home. I came through the back porch and the chrome set was piled there,
the one she had fought against. Sleeping there that first night had been a
foggy memory what with me full of illegal substances and getting in late and
leaving early. But now it was a little more real, the empty quiet, not the
crazy quiet that meant she brooded in some corner, but this kind of quiet that
meant she was gone.

It
kept hitting me fresh. She was gone. I hurried through the shadows and got to
my room and closed the door. Music was the thing I wrapped myself in. I sorted
through and there was Mama’s, “Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall.” I didn’t know if
I had the courage. Why do it to myself? But if he didn’t come…Danny…if he
didn’t…if he was through with me because I’d asked him if he was going to lead
me on when he’d never even spoken love…he’d said we were more than friends…he
couldn’t stay away…he needed me. But maybe he’d changed his mind. He said it
didn’t work. But I said it was right. He said he was going away….

If
he didn’t come, well then I might as well wrap myself in Judy and let the tears
come. Even the despair was better than nothing.

So
I put that record on and checked that the screen on the window was still
unhooked, even though I knew it was, all the time now. I fell on my back on my
bed, my arms spread out, my hands open to the ceiling and the sky above like
I’d laid on the field.

I
had put it on “The Man Who Got Away.” I had it blasting. And oddly, I thought
of Mama for the first few seconds, but once it got to the part where the brass
kicked up, my mind went to Danny. It was all Danny. Until he was there,
standing over me, looking at me, chewing on his lip, still winded from having
run here, his chest up and down, and I sat up slow and he fell beside me and
grabbed me by the arm and said, “Don’t you understand how I feel about you?”

I
was shaking my head, but I don’t think I really moved. I whimpered and put my
hands on his face. She hit a high note, Judy did and I smashed my lips on his
and pulled him down on my bed. Fifteen years. Nearly sixteen. But I was as much
a woman as I was ever gonna be. And I wanted Danny. As Judy’s shaky voice sang
that last line, “The man that got away,” I said to God above it won’t be Danny
Boyd. Before he left me…I would know him, give him everything and if it wasn’t
enough…if I wasn’t…then I’d have to find a way to live and breathe but that
wouldn’t stop me now.

So
he kissed me wild and rolled onto me and I tore at his shirt and got my hands
on his skin and pulled him into me and we rolled some and I was on top of him
and his hands ran over me, the shape of me and my legs were wide and I felt him
against me and I wasn’t even sure how it worked but the girls at school laughed
when a girl asked in biology if you could get pregnant from kissing, so I knew
more than that. And we’d been given drawings of a penis, a side-view, that
looked like a big sad clown nose or something, but I pushed that out of my head
because of Danny and I pushed on him and I was breathing out loud because he
had lifted.

“We’ve
got to slow this down,” he panted.

“Why?”
I said, pulling him to me again and kissing him.

He
pulled back. “Because I’m about to lose my mind,” he breathed.

“Lose
it,” I said and kissed him madly. I was on top now and I was over him like a
monkey and I was kissing down as I rolled up his shirt and oh my God above.

He
was going to think I was some crazy whore. And I might be. He was nearly crying
sounded like as he pulled me up and our mouths got together again and he had
his tongue in my mouth and I knew it was sin and the devil and oh God be
praised thank you for such a thing as this.

I
knew that was a mix of ideas, but this house had never known such love as was
breaking forth in my room fixing to burn it down to ashes.

“I
can’t…,” he said, but I kept going and his hands were on my breasts and they
might be small but they were working in ways I had no idea and when the air hit
them it was shock and wrong and right and he couldn’t get his mouth on them
fast enough and I cradled his head to me and rose off the bed and he pressed
down, one breast to the other his soft dark hair and Naomi would say I was
leaving God out of this but I was praising Him, I was.

“Oh
God,” I cried out, and Judy was still singing.

“Girl,”
he was saying when he lifted his head, “we…we should….” Then I smashed his
mouth back on me and my legs wrapped around him in Mama’s skirt, my legs bare
and his hands holding them and his jeans grinding into me, then push and push
and I rose to meet him every time like a cave woman…just something took over
like we were secret partners in a crime or something, him bringing it out, me
keeping it going, and I was watching myself and so deep in myself at the same
time he was everything, every feeling and touch and discovery and look, he was
the room, he was the air. “I love you, I love you,” I said as my body exploded,
and then him pushing into me and going still, just holding it, then gasping and
his heart hammering, “Hilly,” he said, “Hilly. My God…I…I love you.”