A Life of Bright Ideas (6 page)

My grades may have nose-dived, but I
did
learn something that year. I learned that people have short attention spans. After report cards that semester, I became an apparition who drew less attention than the ghost of Dauber’s old grave digger, Hiram Fossard. Except to Jesse, who talked to me some every day—sometimes on the phone, if he and Karen were fighting—but he eventually stopped asking how I was doing, too.

Sometimes I felt bad, though, thinking of Ma looking down on me with disappointment that I wasn’t in college—she’d wanted that for me so badly—but when I felt bad about that, I’d remember that most girls from my class weren’t going. Some, like Jo Laski, Karen’s friend, were getting married, and the rest would take jobs at the paper mill where Dad worked if they were lucky enough to get in, or else they’d just check groceries at IGA, or wait tables. I hoped, though, that if Ma was watching me, I was bringing her at least some happiness, because I was sewing for Jewel’s Bridal Boutique and doing my best to help Aunt Verdella raise Boohoo. I didn’t know what the future held, but for now, I’d go on believing that something more powerful than time would come along and pull our family out of this emotional dormancy.

I breathed in determination and pulled myself out of bed. I’d shower, then go pick up the gowns Linda had for me—Jo wanted beading on the bodice, and her gown needed fifty-one pearl buttons. And I’d be sewing one of the bridesmaid’s dresses, so I’d bring that home, too. I had a stack of alterations to do, as well (neighbors were always asking me to hem, and
patch; sometimes they paid me, sometimes they didn’t) and then I’d pick up some clothesline because the ropes hanging in the back were rotted and frayed. I’d stop at Dad’s if his truck was gone and dust Ma’s bells. And I’d write to Jesse.

I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of bell-bottoms, slipped into my sandals, and headed across the road to tell Aunt Verdella what I was up to. Uncle Rudy was sitting in his red metal lawn chair, his eyes closed, a cup of coffee resting on his knee. Knucklehead was lying like a bag of bones at his feet. “Mornin’ Button,” Uncle Rudy said, without opening his eyes.

I had planned to hurry so I could get into town and get back to sew, but the empty blue chair next to Uncle Rudy looked inviting. I sat down, reaching over to give Knucklehead a few poor-thing-pats.

“Whatcha doing, Uncle Rudy?” I asked, saying it exactly how I used to.

“Just sitting here being with the breeze,” he said.

Other than a glance up to make sure the sky was clear as I hurried down the steps, I hadn’t noticed anything about the day’s weather. I paused, feeling the air, then asked, “What breeze?”

“Close your eyes,” Uncle Rudy said. “You gotta be still, though, or you won’t feel it.”

I sat up straight and did as he instructed, turning my palms up.

At first all I felt was the sun warm on my skin, but then I felt it. A breeze so soft it was like an echo from a whisper.

“See?” Uncle Rudy said quietly.

We sat in silence, feeling the ever so placid breeze that occasionally rose enough to puff a faint whisper through the trees and flutter a few single strands of my hair. Maybe life was like the breeze, I thought. Moving so slowly at times that it
seemed it wasn’t moving at all, even if it was. Uncle Rudy reached over and cupped his hand over mine, giving it a pat.

Behind us, the screen door squealed, then slammed shut. “Here comes our little whirlwind now,” Uncle Rudy said, cocking one eye open. Boohoo streaked across the yard, towel flapping at his shoulders. He dove at me, jumping up on my back, his scrawny arms choking my neck. He smelled like maple syrup and Mr. Bubbles. “I’ve got you, Dr.
Octeropus
,” he shouted as we toppled to the ground.

I loosened his arms. “Oh yeah? Well take this, Spideyman!” I said, flipping him onto his back and tickling him until his makeshift cape fell off and he turned into a rolling ball of giggles.

Linda and Hazel and Marge were off to lunch (they went at eleven, so local brides-to-be could pop in on their lunch hours), the sign on the door saying they’d be back at noon. I used my key and found my work boxed and waiting on the desk. A note was taped to the lid with instructions and a clumsily drawn illustration showing me where the beadwork should go. I’d worked at this shop after school and during summer vacation since I was twelve years old, and every few months Ma used to give me another responsibility. I felt so grown-up each time I walked in the door back then, but for some reason, in the handful of days since graduation especially, coming here made me want to curl up in the fetal position and cry like a baby. I grabbed the oblong white dress box, the bolt of apricot
chiffon, and the bag of sewing essentials packed for me like a school lunch, and left.

Across the road, Aunt Verdella was hanging laundry, and Boohoo ran in circles around her, his arms outstretched. I tossed her a wave, then started unloading my work. I was on my second trip, pulling the plastic-covered bolt of fabric out of the backseat, when Tommy Smithy’s pickup pulled in behind my Rambler.

When Tommy was Uncle Rudy’s farmhand, I’d hated him because he teased me. Now he was just a pest.

“Hey there, Button,” Tommy said with a grin. His eyeteeth still came to vampire points, and his brown hair was still Toni perm-curly—especially on days like this, with the night’s gentle rain moisting the air—but at twenty-three, Tommy wasn’t nearly as ugly as he’d once been. In fact, he had a build that made me hate myself for wanting to stare.

“Evy,” I corrected.

“Need a hand?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Look what I just got,” he said, pulling a piece of paper out of his wallet and holding it out for me to see. “I did it,” he grinned. “I’m officially a pilot now.”

I slammed the car door and positioned the long bolt of fabric under my arm.

“As soon as my Piper’s inspected, I can take to the skies. If you’re lucky, I’ll be taking you up soon.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “I’d have to be in a coma before you’d get me in a plane with you. You can’t even keep your truck on course—as the Ford graveyard on your back forty proves.” That was the one good thing about having Tommy around—if there
was
something good about that: I wasn’t shy
around him like I was with other guys. I didn’t care what he thought of me.

“I’m still in one piece, aren’t I?” he said with a grin.

“Yeah, well you won’t be for long, flying in that old wreck that’s got to be from about World War I times.”

“Hey, that ‘wreck’ is a Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser!” Tommy looked boyishly defensive, and suddenly I felt bad, remembering him at about twelve, walking on the other side of Uncle Rudy, his skinny strides long, his dirt-smudged face filled with exhilaration as he talked about how he was going to join the Air Force when he was eighteen, and fly a Boeing B-29 Superfortress, like his uncle. But when he was a junior, their tractor tipped over and pinned his dad underneath, crushing his pelvis and doing heavy damage to his spine. Mr. Smithy only lasted a year after that, and I can’t say for sure, but I think Tommy was disappointed that he wasn’t drafted, because with his mother and the farm needing him, he couldn’t enlist in the Air Force as he wanted to. Maybe I didn’t have a dream, but Tommy did, and I knew what it felt like to try to take the place of a parent. Besides, I knew Tommy had worked hard to finagle enough time and money to get his pilot’s license and to buy that plane.

“I was just giving you guff,” I said. “I’m sure it’s a fine plane.”

“You damn bet it is! It’s been modified, it’s got a big-ass engine, new wing flaps … metal-skin fuselage …”

“Well I don’t care what’s been done with it, I’m still not getting in it. Even looking at planes in the sky and thinking about people being in them is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies.”

“Ah, you don’t know what you’re missing, Button,” Tommy said, lifting his eyes toward the sky. “Cruising up there, above all the hassle down here. You become a part of the sky, and feel freedom you just can’t feel down here.”

The roar of a vehicle sounded down Peters Road, and I groaned inwardly when Brody Bishop’s dusty red Mustang sped by, then jammed to a stop and zigzagged backward to block the driveway.

“Hey buddy,” Brody called from his car, his bronzed arm hanging out the window.

Brody and Tommy had been friends since childhood. They both liked to fish and hunt, suck beer and drive like bullets. But that’s where the similarities ended. Tommy was hardworking, while Brody was as lazy as a newborn. Brody also thought he was God’s gift to girls. I could never look at Brody—well built, though short, with dimples—and not think of how strange it was that someone so good-looking could start looking ugly to you when you figured out that what was beneath their looks was so unattractive.

I wanted to flee to the house before Brody reached us, but he was already slamming his car door shut. I knew the second I turned around, he’d be staring at my butt.

“What you up to today?” he called to Tommy. “Wanna do a little fishin’?”

Dad claimed that the Army made men out of boys. If that was true, then it was a pity for Brody’s wife, Marlene (everyone called her Marls), that the pin in his leg from a car accident six years ago wouldn’t allow him to pass an Army physical. Especially since he was going to become a dad in four months. Brody and Marls lived with his folks, and he used his bum leg as an excuse to quit every job he started. But his leg didn’t keep him from hopping from rock to rock down at Dauber Falls when he wanted to fish, or hiking miles over the Smithys’ eighty acres to hunt deer or birds. Nor did it stop him from hitting the dance floor on nights when there was live music in town, old and young women alike begging him for a dance so he never got to sit—or so Brody bragged.

Poor Marls, sick from her pregnancy as she was, her ankles
bloated bigger than my knees, waited on him like a personal servant because she worshiped the ground he walked on. I had no idea if she knew that Brody gawked at every girl over fifteen that crossed his path. Like he was staring at my chest at the moment. I moved the bolt of chiffon to hang in the crook of my arms to hide my boobs.

“Nah, I can’t. I’ve got too much shit to do.” Tommy spat on the grass like he was laying a period on his sentence. I didn’t know why men spit on the ground like dogs peed on tires, but I knew that after Tommy spit, Brody would, too. And he did.

“How’s Marls?” I asked, forcing myself to say anything at all to Brody, since guys like him made me jumpy. But I was concerned. “Aunt Verdella said she was sick.” I didn’t know Marls well since she was three years older than me and from Eagle River. I knew enough, though, just by looking at her, to know that she didn’t feel attractive enough to be with Brody. Just as I didn’t really feel attractive enough to be a match for Jesse.

“Ah, she’s always sick,” Brody said, talking to my chest, even if it was hidden. “Getting big as a heifer, too.”

“That was mean,” I said.

“What?” Brody said with a cocky grin. “It’s the truth.”

“See you guys around,” I said, backing up.

“Yep, and you’ll be seeing plenty of me, too,” Tommy said.

“So I heard.”

“At least you’ll have something to brighten up your dull days,” he teased.

I rolled my eyes.

“I knew she’d be thrilled,” he said to Brody. “As thrilled as she was to hear that she’s gonna be my copilot.”

“Hey, you got it?” Brody asked.

“Yesterday.

Brody pounded Tommy’s back, and as they headed to the field so Tommy could check the fences before he brought his cows over, Brody childishly spouted plans for their first flying adventure, hardly a limp in his stride.

It was fun, working with my stereo cranked to ten, chiffon gliding softly under my fingertips in a rhythm as soothing as a heartbeat, Jo’s bridal gown spread out behind me on the big, square butcher-block table Aunt Verdella found at the Community Sale last summer and helped me refinish. The morning ticked on and the bridesmaid’s dress took shape and I thought of how amazing it was to see a pattern come to life under my hands.

I would have stayed content that day, happy even, had it not been for Boohoo.

I was stitching a wide cuff when Boohoo came in for the umpteenth time. I didn’t look up, or listen as he chattered about what he’d found. I was too busy sewing and grooving to my Creedence Clearwater Revival album. “Evy, look. Look!”

“Just a minute,” I told him when he got louder than the stereo. I circled the fabric under the bobbing needle to finish the sleeve, keeping my eye on the seam I was stitching.

And then Boohoo started yelling loud enough to cut through the chorus of “Proud Mary.” “Get back here, Hoppy! You’re gonna fall and break your neck!”

I turned, and there was Boohoo, his muddy knee hooked on the edge of my worktable, one leg teetering on a footstool. “Boohoo!” I screeched. He was on the table by the time I got to my feet, his grubby hands reaching for the fat toad tangled with orange yarn that hopped over Jo’s gown.

“What are you doing?” I shouted when I saw the snow-white
skirt folding like an accordion under Boohoo’s grubby knees, tiny clumps of damp soil dropping from his mitts as the toad leapt out of his hand and he reached for him again.

“Don’t worry, Evy, I got him! I got him!” Boohoo stood up on the dress, and when I screamed, he quickly leapt to the floor. He held up his hand, his fingers squishing the toad’s pale green potbelly, its legs dangling.

I looked down at the trail of dirt over the lace bodice, and the smudged, crumpled skirt. I clutched my head. “Boohoo, look what you’ve done!”

Boohoo’s smile faded and he looked at the table. “I’m sorry, Evy,” he said. And before I could stop him, he reached out and brushed the dirt into one long, dark streak, grinding it into the lace covered fabric. “Stop!” I screamed.