Seeing Red (2 page)

I heard J screaming another tantrum inside and Mama saying, “I’m trying, baby, I’m trying.”

I decided to take charge, since I was the man of the place. “You want your oil changed, Mr Harrison?”

He acted all surprised, like he’d just noticed me. “Oh, well, son, that’s nice of you, but I think Beau’s got enough to handle over in the store right now.”

I tried not to let my voice sound like I thought Mr Harrison was ignorant. “I know that, sir. I can change your oil for you.”

Mr Harrison stared at me for a moment. His eyes moved over to the What-U-Want and back to me, like he was deciding which was worse, having a dumb kid change your oil or a retarded grown-up. Not that I thought Beau was a retard, but most everyone else did. Daddy said Beau might be on a different track from the rest of us but sometimes he was way ahead, and that Beau’s mind raced around so much, you could get whiplash just trying to keep up.

Finally, Mr Harrison made his choice. “Beau!” He yelled so loud Miss Georgia could probably hear him even though she lived half a mile away.

I heard the jangling bells on the front door of the What-U-Want and Beau’s lumbering footsteps coming down the stairs and across the gravel.

“Yes, sir, Mr Harrison, sir?”

“You got time to let young Red here help you with an oil change?”

I looked at Beau hard, not because I was mad at him, but because I was mad at Mr Harrison. Still, Beau gave out a little moan and sank his three hundred pounds lower into his baggy jeans and giant blue shirt. He reached a hand up and tugged at the tufts of grey hair that stuck straight out from under his Quaker State cap. “I-I guess so.”

A couple of minutes later, the three of us and the Chrysler were in the shop.

Mr Harrison was stuffing his red tie underneath his vest but there was barely enough room in there for him, never mind his tie.

“Yes, sir,” Beau said, “Red is real good at oil changes. I-I think he might could be better than me.” He fingered the fancy red letters Mama had sewn on his shirt:
BEAU
. “Plus, I should go back to the What-U-Want.” He said it almost like a question.

Mr Harrison squinted his eyes at me. “How old are you, boy?”

“Almost thirteen.”

Beau coughed and tugged his hair again.

The truth was, I’d just turned twelve. “Well, I’m a good solid twelve, and I’ve been changing oil since I was nine. By myself.” I wanted to say,
Who do you think has been changing your oil for the past three years?

Mr Harrison shook his head, chuckling. “Huh, I think an oil change is too much to handle even if you’re a good solid twelve.”

How come when it’s something you want to do, grown-ups say, “You’re only twelve,” but if it’s something you don’t want to do, like homework, it’s, “You’re almost thirteen years old, for heaven’s sake!” and they act as if you ought to have been doing it since the day you were born.

“I can hack it,” I said loudly, and picked up a new filter from the shelf for a ’71 Chrysler 300 and the right-size wrench, along with the oil pan and some rags.

Mr Harrison was wiping the sweat off of his face and eyeballing me. “What about oil? Don’t forget to put the new oil in.”

I took a deep breath the way Daddy always did when customers said ignorant stuff like that, and answered slow and patient, “Yes, sir, Mr Harrison, but I can’t reach the top of the engine to pour in the new oil while your car’s up on the jack. We’ll need to bring her down to ground level. Then I’ll be putting four quarts of top-of-the-line Quaker State motor oil 10W-40 in your engine to keep this baby running real smooth.”

Mr Harrison grunted like he was a pig and I was a low-class piece of dirt not worth rubbing his nose in. After he watched me drain the oil, he followed Beau out of the shop, still grunting. I swear, he made me want to do something bad, like leave the oil out of his engine on purpose, but messing up would only let Mr Harrison say he was right all along that no twelve-year-old can change oil. I let out a sigh. “I know, Daddy. We fix it right, and I will.”

I’d already lowered the Chrysler on the jack and was pouring the new oil in when I heard a pounding outside and figured Mama must’ve given Beau another job to do or J was up to no good. Either way, I decided to ignore it. Until the shop door opened and I heard Beau’s voice, nervous-like. “Red?”

“Almost done, Beau,” I said, screwing on the oil cap.

“Red?” He said it so pitiful, my scalp prickled.

I turned around fast. He was tugging at his hair with both hands and his face looked fit to start bawling.

“What’s wrong, Beau?”

“Out there.” He looked over to where the pounding was still coming from. “Your…your mama…” We heard a few more taps. Like the final nails going into a coffin.

I felt as if my insides were turning to ice and I froze for a moment. Then I pushed past Beau and ran out the door.

I stopped dead when I saw Mama. She was standing there with Mr Harrison. There was nothing wrong with her. It was the sign that was wrong. The new sign in front of our house. FOR SALE.

CHAPTER TWO

Rosie

Mama called after me, but I took off and didn’t look back. I jumped the creek and ran into the woods behind Rosie’s house. I stomped up and down, kicking every little acorn, leaf, or stump I could find. I picked up stones and ran back towards the creek, throwing them across, aiming at our house. “No!” The sweat on my skin was making me feel hot and cold at the same time, like when you stick your foot in real hot bath water and you can’t tell for a second whether it’s freezing you or burning you.

I shook my head hard, walking in circles, trying to get my brain to work. What was Mama thinking? Bad enough we’d lost Daddy, now she wanted to sell our place? “No way!” Daddy’s heart and soul were still here. My mind went back to late June and tried to put the pieces together.

The first week after Daddy died, Mama sat on his La-Z-Boy recliner, clutching its padded arms, staring at nothing. By the second week, she was curled up in the La-Z-Boy underneath an afghan throw so we wouldn’t see her crying. But we could still hear her, day and night. I felt real sorry for her until, come the third week, she boxed up Daddy’s clothes, threw his
Motor Trend
magazines in the trash, and dragged his La-Z-Boy out for the Salvation Army pickup. As if that weren’t enough, she painted their bedroom, her and Daddy’s, pink. Pink! It was like she was trying to paint Daddy clear out of our lives. “No! I won’t let her!”

“Red!”

I whipped around to see Rosie standing there, all out of breath. “I heard you yelling. Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not!”

“What’s wrong?”

I started pacing. “Mama’s trying to sell our place.”

Rosie’s dark eyes opened wide as she tied and untied the strings on her peasant blouse. “Are – are you sure she’s really aiming to sell or is she just talking about it?”

“Well, she’s talking about it to Mr Harrison and there’s a For Sale sign in front of our house right now!”

Rosie sank down to the ground like her legs were as faded and frayed as her cut-offs. Her face went whiter than pale against her black hair, and even her lips lost their colour. “Where would you go?”

I stopped pacing. I hadn’t thought of that. And then I remembered what Mr Harrison said about Mama wanting to go to Ohio as fast as possible. Did that mean permanently? “Ohio,” I breathed. Then I shook my head. “No, it couldn’t be.”

She raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together like she was a math teacher waiting for me to give the answer to a simple division problem.

“What, Rosie?”

“That’s where your mama grew up.”

“So? She’s lived in Virginia since before I was born!”

“But Ohio’s her home. When Mama’s feeling poorly and your mama brings food over for us, she sits by Mama’s bed and talks about her sisters, Nancy and Patty. Your mama misses them, Red.”

“Well, I miss my daddy, and that’s a whole lot worse!” My lip started quivering, so I turned away from Rosie, picked up another stone, and threw it towards our house. Hard. Ohio? “We’re not moving to no Ohio.”

“How are you going to stop her?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something.”

She picked at the pink nail polish on her thumb. “Maybe we need to talk to your daddy.”

I stared at her. Was she making fun of me for talking to him? I expected that from her brother because that’s what Darrell was like, but not Rosie.

“We’ll have a séance,” she explained. “That way we can bring your daddy back. So you and me can talk with him.” She looked past me. “And Darrell, too.”

I looked over my shoulder and there was Darrell. Tall, skinny, with hair as dark and dirty as his boots. You’d never think he was Rosie’s brother, although you’d figure out pretty quick that he was Mr Dunlop’s son. The way he lounged against a tree, he looked like a snake waiting to strike. Darrell loved sneaking up on people and scaring them. He’d done it to me I don’t know how many million times.

Darrell chuckled. “The kid already talks to his daddy.”

Rosie sniffed. “Well, I never had a chance to say goodbye to Mr Porter.”

“Yeah, dingbat,” Darrell said, “because when someone has a heart attack they can’t exactly stop to say goodbye.”

Rosie shot Darrell her killer vampire look she learned from that
Dark Shadows
TV show she’d been watching for years. She stared at him so long I figured she was putting some kind of hex on him. It almost made me smile.

“How does a séance work, exactly?” I asked her.

She sat up on her knees. “I’ll bring my Ouija board, and you be sure to wear some of your daddy’s clothes.”

“Why?” I thought about how Mama had given all Daddy’s clothes away, but as Rosie was explaining how spirits worked, I remembered that not long ago he’d given me one of his old work shirts since I’d outgrown my ripped-up T-shirt I used to wear in the shop. “I can wear his old shirt. It’s even got his name sewn on it.”

“Perfect! We’ll meet at your daddy’s grave tonight at midnight.”

“Why does it have to be by his grave? And why midnight?”

She rolled her eyes. “Red, it’s a good thing for you I know how to call up spirits. First, they only come out at night because they sleep during the day.”

Darrell snorted. “I thought that was vampires.”

Rosie shot him another of her looks. “Second, we have to be right by his grave because that’s where his spirit lives. And third, he can’t talk like we talk any more, what with being…you know, not alive and all, but he can move the plastic eye over the Ouija board and spell out words so he can talk to us.”

“Will he be able to hear us? Or do we have to spell stuff out, too?” I was thinking it would take a while to spell out, “What should I do about Mama’s dumb plan?”

“He’ll hear us. That’s how a Ouija board works. You say something and then the spirit responds by pushing the plastic eye around the board.”

Darrell snorted again.

“You don’t have to come, Darrell,” Rosie said, “if you don’t believe.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I’ll come. Who knows? You might get lucky. Besides, you kids are too young to be in the graveyard at night. Never know who you might find there.”

Rosie crossed her arms. “Darrell Dunlop, you better not have your gang show up.”

“I didn’t say that, I’m just—”

“ROSIE!” It was Mr Dunlop’s voice, followed by a whole bucket load of swear words.

Rosie stood up fast, her face going pale.

“Where are those sandwiches? Can’t you do anything around here?” Mr Dunlop came storming down the front steps of their house – his boots like to bust each one, he was stomping so hard – and strutted past the shed towards us. Rosie took a step back. So did I.

“I forgot to make his lunch,” Rosie whispered.

Darrell’s expression turned serious as he hissed, “Don’t say a word.”

He spun around and faced Mr Dunlop like he was a bullfighter and his daddy was the charging bull. “Hey, Daddy! I’m real sorry. Would you believe it? I ate those sandwiches.”

Mr Dunlop stopped, like bulls do while they’re getting up steam before they charge. He growled. “You ate my sandwiches?”

“I thought they were for me,” Darrell said with a nervous laugh. “I’ll go make you some right now.”

Mr Dunlop swore some more. “You got exactly two minutes or else I’ll meet you in the shed, boy.” And he pointed to the shed like we didn’t know what that meant.

“Coming right up!” Darrell grinned like it was all a big joke, but he moved fast and by the time he reached their porch he took the steps in one big leap.

I heard a whimper out of Rosie.

“Next time,” Mr Dunlop said, his forefinger punching the air in front of her face, “you deliver the sandwiches directly, you hear me?”

“Yes, Daddy,” Rosie squeaked.

His head jerked over to me so fast I flinched.

“What are you looking at, Porter?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, take your nothing and get on out of here.” Mr Dunlop turned and stormed back to the house.