Four Times Blessed (19 page)

“Leave that door open,” my zizi calls. “Salvatore, what are you doing? I didn’t ask you to sweep the floor.” There’s a sizzle as she squeezes a half of a lemon into her cauldron. It adds a bitter, acrid flare to the muddy smell of a moment ago.

I hold my breath, grab a hunk of bread, and get out of there.

             
Once in the yard, I take a few thin-skinned strawberries from the bush and amble through the trees to the old graveyard. I sink down and bite into a berry. Ah. It’s cooler with my back on the rocks. I roll my legs back and forth over the damp, tender grass.

             
I can hear my cousin Cecilia outside of her house informing two of my uncles that she specifically asked for the best mussels, not the half-dead ones they’ve brought her. I smile at a headstone.

Her mussels will go along with my Uncle Westerly’s bread for tonight. We’ll have that plus my zizi’s pasta salad with lemon and oil and marinated vegetables and little nuts, someone will make a crumble and someone else will make the whipped cream, and my Uncle Avery will have his lemonade for us.

That’s what we usually make for this party. Plus other unexpected things that people want to bring. I think I smell my grandfather Pawcatuck’s firepit, and I wonder if he’ll be cooking some sausages. Last time I didn’t like them, they were way too spicy.

Either way though, the food will be good. The weather is supposed be nice.

I’m looking forward to it.

             
“Crusa, honey, there you are.”

             
“Huh?” I start, even though the voice is familiar. My Uncle Groton lifts one leg over the dilapidated wall. I stand up. I have no idea why he’s out here. Nobody comes out here. Except for me. For no real reason, I feel I’ve been caught doing something I wasn’t supposed to.

             
“Hi, I was just-”

             
“How are you dear?” my uncle holds open his arms for a hug, so I go to him. He pinches my chin gently.

             
“What are you doing out here?” he wonders.

             
“Uh…”

             
“You know these people have been dead a very long time. There’s one here that’s sixteen-hundreds.”

             
“Yeah.” It’s the stamp-like one right over there. It’s a little odd getting a tour of my own secret hideout.

“Crusa, dear, I want to tell you something. I’m getting you a guard.”

He’s not surprised when I’m confused. He just says it all again, slower this time, and adds a bright smile. None of this really helps, though.

             
A guard? I’ve had chaperones. Babysitters, someone to walk with me through the wooded paths at night, and my zizi of course to keep track of me always, but the word guard seems, I don’t know, a bit much. Especially here, on the island.

             
“Ah,” my Uncle Groton puts an arm around me, taking my fingers in his hand. He holds them lightly, in no hurry, I guess, because instead of going on, he bounces my hand around. Then he strokes each finger.

He starts humming to himself, nudging and tapping my nails with a calloused fingertip, as if fascinated. I guess because compared to his, so hearty they have bristles, mine are no more substantial than a ghost’s. Or maybe he’s just bored.

              “I’ve brought him to you, since you ran in and out so fast this morning. You were in such a hurry. You should slow down, dear. Let’s see, he’s around here somewhere…Lium!” he calls. And the boy in question wanders out from behind a large tree. What the…?

             
He strolls through the clearing, gawking at everything.

Spiraling over to us, he says, “Hey, sweetie.”

              “I’m not sweet.”

             
My uncle laughs, “Yes, you are, so you really can’t fuss about being called it. Niece, this is your guard. His name is Lium. I’ve tested him out and I think he’ll be perfect for you. Plus, he has a brother already, so if you end up needing two, there you go. Although I have that one busy for me right now, so try just to need one, ok?”

             
“I don’t need a guard. Any guard.”

             
“Honey. Sweetie,” I think he winks over my head. Dumb men. “I don’t want anything to happen to you now that you’re engaged. I didn’t want to tell you, but your zizi, she worries. The other side of the family, you never know. They say to me many things. They sometimes say they will kidnap my niece, so she cannot marry the rich foreign man. They say they have someone of theirs for her, but they really just want the gifts your husband’s family is so generous to send here, for him to share with his new family. But if they take you over there, then they think they will get all this. That would never happen, but they think it, still.

“So you see, they talk too much. They make me myself worry about you, my own lovely young niece who I love more than anything. It’s very cruel. So, I found a strong man to watch over you, to ease my mind, and there you go. Now we can all rest in peace,” his eyes glimmer.

Good God.

“Uncle Groton. Nobody’s going to kidnap me. People haven’t done kidnapping for years.”

“Years are not that long ago, to an old man like me. What’s wrong with him? Do you not like the one I chose?” he seems hurt.

I examine Lium. Smiling like my grandmothers at a pleasant garden party. He lifts his eyebrows.

“He doesn’t want to do this,” I tell my uncle.

“Nonsense. It’s an honor to do this.”

I open my mouth to say something, but then I have only enough time to skirt my gaze to my side, as Lium has already interrupted me.

“Yup, an honor. Also, following a…you…” he bows, “around is much better than shop duty, which your uncle said was my other option.”

Awesome. Good to know I’m preferable to fish guts and miniscule beads on hooks. Confidence booster, there. 

             
I sigh and say calmly, “I’m going to talk to Zizi.”

              My zizi thinks it’s a fantastic idea. She’s always wanted me to have a guard. She wishes she could find two more, for Cassie and Eleni, who, when asked, support her statements wholeheartedly. Whole hearts of evil, is what I tell Eleni. Not Cassie. Cassie cried because she realized a guard is just the thing to keep the squirrels at bay. I suggest Benito or Gino, and she darts off, muttering about things that pit-pit-patter in chimneys.

I stop speaking to my zizi at some point midafternoon, but when people begin to drop by on their way down to the beach, she somehow gets every single one of them to agree with her. Now, she tries not to smile while I glare at the bowl we’re carrying down the path.

Betrayed by my whole family, I spend the cook-out minding my own business, and then help my aunts wash the dirty bowls in the whimpering surf.

At one point, Eleni comes over and gets mad at me because I told her I have to help and won’t go swimming with her. She tells me I’m no fun, so I tell her something mean that just slips out. Then I get banished from dishwashing duty, but that doesn’t mean I’ll swim with her, so I stomp off and go stew on the bluff.

              I’m facing the drop-off, so I don’t hear the person approaching through the underbrush.

             
“Hey, babe. What’re you doing?”

             
“Plotting to kill my cousin.” And I’m sorry, but that’s the kind of answer you get when you interrupt someone who’s stewing.  

             
“Doesn’t look like that’s going too good.”

             
Impressed by his intuitiveness, some of the bite goes out of me. “No, it’s not. I’m too mad to be able to think of anything.”

             
He laughs. He tried to hold it in, I guess, but I heard that burble. Clearly. He coughs several times. I sigh, or rather, growl. And clench my fingernails into the meat of my palms.

             
“Come over here.” The boy’s arm comes over my head, pulling me onto my toes when he squeezes.

It’s odd coming from him, but actually very nice. I feel my insides start to melt and I don’t mind it when he touches me again to stop my hair from blowing all over our faces.

              I turn into his side. It’s hard to look him in the face, as he makes me uncomfortable for no reason and it would be rude if I let him see that. At the moment, I cover myself by twisting and untwisting a bit of cloth I’ve pinched up from his shirt. Which is his, not mine. I pat it back down.

             
“It’s nice up here.”

             
I shrug.

             
He’s quiet, then, and it makes me squirm.

             
“You don’t have to guard me or whatever,” I say in a rush.

             
“If I do this, they’ll let us stay here.”

             
Oh. That makes sense. His service, generously given, for a favor, generously granted. Very much my uncle. Very much the island. No wonder everyone thinks it’s such a great idea. Of course, nobody’s thinking what I am right now, which is, awesome, I’m homework.

             
I’ve never been homework before. I should apologize to my textbooks, if this is how it feels.

             
“And how are you qualified?” I snap. “My chaperone at school had to pass a national certification test. Have you taken a certification test?”

             
He moves me back to arm’s length. I have to bend my spine rather unnaturally, but it’s worth it because my pride doesn’t want to move.

“What do you think the other night was? On the docks,” he says.

              Oh.

             
I say, “And falling off a dock means you pass?” I am a terrible person. But I don’t want a guard babysitter man following me around. 

             
“I didn’t fall.”

             
“No? What did you do, then?”

             
“I…crash-landed.”

             
“Oh, well. So you’re an expert crash-lander, plus your pirate experience, correct? That’s what got you the job?”

             
“I was never a pirate.”

             
“Oh,” I deadpan.

             
“I was captured by pirates.”

             
I squint while he listens to how that sounds. His mouth is hanging open, and he’s turning red. I wonder if I’ve embarrassed him. I have mixed feelings about that. Pirates are very dangerous, so he shouldn’t feel too bad.

             
In a low tone, he says, “What I’ve done, isn’t meant for your ears. You wouldn’t like to hear it.”

I blush, hard.

              “I’d like to hear anything, if you’d say it.”

He considers that, which I wasn’t really expecting him to. I was hoping he’d just be more offended.

              Very carefully, he says, “I was on a shipping vessel. But before that, I worked, for years, in a professional rodeo.”

             
“And did you guard the cattle?”

             
“No,” he says, yet he appears conflicted. Men.

“What’d you do then?” I frown, curious, “And where do they have rodeos that are professional?”

              “South. At least, I was born more north of that, less north of this, but Hale and I went out west together, to get jobs. That’s how we got picked up by the rodeo.”

             
“So you lived at a rodeo? That sounds kind of interesting. Was it fun?”

             
Slowly, he nods. “When we were younger, it was. We did odd jobs, tickets, and selling stuff, I wheeled a cart around one season, where we sold tacos made of the bulls’ meat.” He stuffs his fists in his pockets, so when he goes on, his shoulders start dancing, “I always had to change the sign to say meat of the winner or meat of the loser, or meat of the king or however they wanted to sell it. The guy could never make up his mind. We got to help with the shows, too. It traveled around so we saw lots of places, lots of people.”

             
Sweetly, I say, “Oh, how nice.”

             
He shrugs, noncommittal, “They’re ok.”

             
I imagine him as a little boy, herding livestock, riding a horse and lassoing things. I’m not really sure what else happens at a rodeo.

             
“Can you ride a horse?” I ask.

             
He perks up, “Yeah, yeah, I used to all the time.” He stares at me, and I think he looks fresh from a centrifuge. I remind my stupid brain that it already took the general science boards last spring. “But what they kept us for, was the after hours events.”

             
He doesn’t explain further. I wonder out loud in my chipmunk voice, before I can think that I shouldn’t. “Which were those?”