Boy's Life (39 page)

     Instantly my heart jumped and I stepped behind a tree, more afraid to startle her than anything else. Her legs kicked blissfully, the small buds of her breasts visible above the surface. She wore nothing to cover the area between her long, sleek thighs either, and I was ashamed to be looking but my eyes were spellbound. She turned and slid underwater. When she came up again, halfway across the pond, she swept her thick wet tresses back from her forehead and flipped over once more, gazing up at the blue sky as she floated.

     Now, this was an interesting situation, I reasoned. Here I stood, hungry and thirsty, covered with mosquito bites and thorn welts, knowing my mother and father were calling up the sheriff and the fire chief by now, and twenty feet in front of me was a shimmering green pond with a naked blond girl floating in it. I hadn’t gotten a good look at her face yet, but I could tell she was older than me, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She was long and lean, and she swam not with the splashy giddiness of a child but with an elegant, easy grace. I saw her clothes lying at the base of a tree on the other side of the pond, and a trail led off into the woods. The girl dove under, her legs kicking, then she resurfaced and slowly swam toward her clothes. She stopped, her feet finding the slippery bottom. Then she started wading in toward shore, and the moment of truth was thrust upon me.

     “Wait!” I called out.

     She spun around. Her face turned red and her hands flew up to cover her breasts, and then she ducked down in the water up to her throat. “Who’s there? Who said that?”

     “I did.” I came out, sheepishly, from my hiding-place. “Sorry.”

     “Who are
you?
How long have you been standin’ there?”

     “Just a couple of minutes,” I said. I followed it with a white lie. “I didn’t see anythin’.”

     The girl was staring at me with open-mouthed indignation, her wet hair crimped around her shoulders. Her face was illuminated by a spill of sunlight through the trees, and I looked beyond her anger at a vision of beauty. Which surprised me, because the power of her beauty hit me so hard and suddenly. There are many things a boy considers beautiful: the shine of a bike’s paint, the luster of a dog’s pelt, the singing of a yo-yo as it loops the loop, the yellow harvest moon, the green grass of a meadow, and free hours at hand. The face of a girl, no matter how well-constructed, is usually not in that realm of appreciation. At that moment, though, I forgot about my hungry belly and my mosquito bites and my thorn stings. A girl with the most beautiful face I’d ever seen was staring at me, her eyes pale cornflower blue, and I had the feeling of waking up from a prolonged, lazy sleep into a new world I had never realized existed.

     “I’m lost,” I managed to say.

     “Where’d you come from? Were you spyin’ on me?”

     “No. I… came from that way.” I motioned in the direction behind me.

     “You’re tellin’ a story!” she snapped. “Ain’t nobody lives up in them hills!”

     “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

     She remained hunkered down in the water, her arms around herself. I could tell that the anger was gradually leaving her, because the expression in her eyes was softening. “Lost,” she repeated. “Where do you live?”

     “Zephyr.”

     “Oh, now I know you’re tellin’ a story! Zephyr’s all the way on the other side of the valley!”

     “I was campin’ out last night,” I told her. “Me and my friends. Somethin’ happened, and I got lost.”

     “What happened?”

      I shrugged. “Some men got after us.”

     “Are you tellin’ me the honest truth?”

     “I am, I swear it.”

     “All the way from
Zephyr?
You must be worn out!”

     “Kinda,” I said.

     “Turn around,” she told me. “Don’t you dare look till I say for you to. All right?”

     “All right,” I agreed, and I turned my back to her. I heard her getting out of the water, and in my mind I saw her naked from head to toe. Clothes rustled. In a minute or two she said, “You can turn around now.” When I looked at her again, she was dressed in a pink T-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. “What’s your name?” she asked, pushing her hair back from her forehead.

     “Cory Mackenson.”

     “I’m Chile Willow,” she said. “Come on with me, Cory.”

     Oh, she spoke my name so fine.

     I followed her along the trail through the woods. She was taller than me. She didn’t walk like a little girl. She was sixteen, I figured. Walking behind her, I inhaled her scent like the aroma of dew on newly cut grass. I tried to step where she stepped. If I’d had a tail, I would’ve wagged it. “I don’t live too far,” Chile Willow said, and I answered, “That’s good.”

     On a dirt road stood a tarpaper shack with a chicken coop next to it and a rust-eaten car hulk sitting on cinderblocks in the weedy yard. The place was even worse than the rundown house where Granddaddy Jaybird had lost his shirt playing poker. I had already taken notice that Chile’s jeans were patched and ragged, and there were dime-sized holes in her T-shirt. The house she lived in made the poorest dwelling in Bruton look like a palace. She opened the screen door on squalling hinges and said into the gloom, “Momma? I found somebody!”

     I entered the house after her. The front room smelled of harsh cigarette smoke and turnip greens. A woman was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting as she rocked. She stared at me with the same cornflower blue eyes as her beautiful daughter, from a face seamed with wrinkles and burned dry by hard work in the sun. “Throw him back,” she said, and her needles never stopped.

     “He’s lost,” Chile told her. “
Was
lost, I mean. Says he came from Zephyr.”

     “Zephyr,” the woman said. Her eyes returned to me. She wore a dark blue shift with yellow needlework across the front, and she had on rubber flipflops. “You’re a long way from home, boy.” Her voice was low and husky, as if the sun had dried up her lungs, too. On a scarred little table near at hand was an ashtray full of cigarette butts, and half a cigarette still burning.

     “Yes, ma’am. I sure would like to call my folks. Can I use your phone?”

     “Ain’t got no phone,” she said. “This ain’t Zephyr.”

     “Oh. Well… can somebody take me home?”

     Chile’s mother plucked the cigarette from the ashtray, took a long pull on it, and set it back down. When she spoke again, the smoke dribbled from her mouth. “Bill’s took the truck off. Be back directly, I reckon.”

     I wanted to ask how long “directly” might be, but that would be impolite. “Can I have a glass of water?” I asked Chile.

     “Sure thing. You ought to take off that shirt, too, it’s wringin’ wet. Go on, take it off.” While Chile went back to the dismal little kitchen, I unbuttoned my shirt and peeled it away from my skin. “Done got yourself in some thorns, boy,” Chile’s mother said, her mouth leaking smoke again. “Chile, bring the iodine in here and doctor this boy.” Chile answered, “Yes’m,” and I folded my sweat-drenched shirt up and stood waiting for pleasure and pain.

     Chile had to pump the water out of the kitchen faucet. Coming out, the water spat and gurgled. When it got to me, it was warm and tinged with brown and contained in a jelly glass with a picture of Fred Flintstone on it. I took a taste and smelled something foul. Then Chile Willow’s face was near mine, and the sweetness of her breath was like new roses. She had a swab of cotton and a bottle of iodine. “This might hurt a little bit,” she said.

     “He can take it,” her mother answered for me.

     Chile went to work. I winced and drew in my breath as the stinging started and then deepened. As the pain progressed, I watched Chile’s face. Her hair was drying, falling in golden waves over her shoulders. Chile got down on her knees before me, the red cotton swab leaving streaks of red across my flesh. My heart was beating harder. Her pale blue eyes met mine, and she smiled. “You’re doin’ just fine,” she said. I smiled back, though I was hurting so bad I wanted to cry.

     “How old are you, boy?” Chile’s mother inquired.

     “Twelve.” Another white lie rolled out: “I’ll be thirteen soon.” I kept looking at Chile’s eyes. “How old are
you?
” I asked her.

     “Me? I’m an old lady. I’m sixteen.”

     “You go to the high school?”

     “Went one year,” she said. “That was enough for me.”

     “You don’t go to
school?
” I was amazed at this fact. “Wow!”

     “She goes to school,” the mother said, her needles at work. “School of hard knocks, same as I did.”

     “Aw, Mom,” Chile said; from her cupid’s-bow mouth, two words could sound like music.

     I forgot about the stinging. Pain was nothing to a man like me. As Chile’s mother said, I could take it. I looked around the gloomy room, with its stained and battered sticks of furniture, and when I looked at Chile’s face again, it was like seeing the sun after a long, stormy night. Though the iodine was cruel, her touch was gentle. I imagined she must like me, to be so gentle. I had seen her naked. In all my life I had seen no female naked but my mother. I had been in the presence of Chile Willow only a short time, but what is time when a heart speaks? My heart was speaking to Chile Willow in that moment, as she bathed my cuts and gave me a smile. My heart was saying
If you were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass jar, so you could always see your way. I would give you a meadow full of wildflowers, where no two blooms would ever be alike. I would give you my bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you, and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle. If you would only like me, I would give you magic. If you would only like me.

    
If you would only—

     “You’re a brave little boy,” Chile said.

     From the rear of the house, a baby began crying.

     “Oh, Lord,” Chile’s mother said, and she put aside her needles. “Bubba’s woke up.” She stood up and walked in the direction of the crying, her flipflops smacking the splintery floor.

     “I’ll feed him in a minute,” Chile said.

     “Naw, I’ll do it. Bill’s gonna be back soon, and if I was you, I’d put that ring back on. You know how crazy he gets.”

     “Uh-huh, do I ever.” This was said under Chile’s breath. Something in her eyes had darkened. She swabbed the last thorn scrape and capped the iodine bottle. “There you go. All done.”

     Chile’s mother returned, holding an infant that wasn’t a year old. I stood in the middle of the room, my skin screaming as Chile got off her knees and went back into the kitchen. When she came back, she was wearing a thin gold band on the third finger of her left hand. She took the baby from her mother and began to rock it and croon softly.

     “He’s a feisty thing,” the older woman said. “Gonna be a handful, that’s for sure.” She went to a window and pulled aside a flimsy curtain. “Here comes Bill now. Gonna get your ride home, fella.”

     I heard the pickup truck clattering as it pulled up almost to the porch. A door opened and slammed. Then through the screen door came Bill, who was tall and slim and had a crew cut and was all of eighteen years old. He wore dirty jeans and a blue shirt with a grease stain on the front, and he had heavy-lidded brown eyes and was chewing on a match. “Who’s
he?
” he asked, first thing.

     “Boy needs a ride to Zephyr,” Chile’s mother told him. “Got hisself lost in the woods.”

     “I ain’t gone take him to Zephyr!” Bill protested with a scowl. “It’s hotter’n hell in that truck!”

     “Where’d you go?” Chile asked, her arms full of baby.

     “Fixed that engine for old man Walsh. And if you think that was fun, you got another think comin’.” He glanced at her as he strode past toward the kitchen. I saw him look right through her, as if she wasn’t even there, and Chile’s eyes had deadened.

     “You get any money?” the mother called after him.

     “Yeah, I got some money! You think I’m stupid, I wouldn’t get no money for a job like that?”

     “Bubba needs some fresh milk!” Chile said.

     I heard the faucet pumping slimy water. “Shit,” Bill muttered.

     “You gonna take this boy home to Zephyr, or not?” Chile’s mother asked.

     “Not,” he answered.

     “Here.” Chile offered the baby to her mother. “I’ll drive him, then.”

     “The hell you say!” Bill came back into the room, holding brown water in another Flintstones jelly glass. “You can’t drive nowhere, you ain’t got no license!”

     “I keep tellin’ you I ought to—”

     “You don’t need to do no drivin’,” Bill said, and he looked right through her again. “Your place is in this house. Tell her, Mrs. Purcell.”

     “I ain’t barkin’ up nobody’s tree,” Chile’s mother said, but she didn’t take the infant. She sat down in her rocking chair, put the cigarette in her mouth, and gripped the knitting needles.