The Queen of Sleepy Eye (10 page)

My heart plunked like a rock because I knew what he'd said was true. Since receiving my acceptance letter from Westmont, I'd painted a picture of California as my refuge from Hurricane Mom. Her decision to move to California with me had already splattered that notion. What else lay between me and independence? It was a smart, forward-thinking question, but I didn't want to know the answer.

H flung his jacket over his shoulder. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

I looked at my watch. “I should get back. Mrs. Clancy will wonder where I am.”

“She thinks you're in Sunday school.”

True enough. I lifted my skirt to climb up the bank. “Does this something have legs?”

His grin broadened. “You're just going to have to trust me, aren't you?”

Trust him? He'd just torpedoed my dream. “You're not wanted in more than three states are you?”

H laughed and shook his head, “Only two … that I know of.”

Mom would be glad I asked.

* * *

WE SKIRTED A park and followed a two-lane road up a hill. The day was warming, and I regretted agreeing to the walk. Whenever I shook a stone out of my dress sandals, H reminded me of the importance of sturdy shoes. The land leveled at the top of the grade into hay fields dotted with freshly cut bales and a smattering of houses down gravel driveways, all with corrals for livestock—cattle, horses, goats, sheep. Left unpainted, the outbuildings stood gray and frail, something the Germanic farmers in Gilbertsville would have considered an abomination. And the farms seemed cobbled together from bits and pieces gleaned from other farms that had fallen on bad times. We turned up a narrow gravel lane lined with barbed-wire fences. A herd of goats munched on grass with their kids. All the while, H chattered on, updating me on the people who lived in the houses and farmed the land.

I stopped to shake yet another stone out of my sandals. “I should turn back. It's almost noon. My mother—”

“We're almost there.”

“Mom won't like me getting home late.”

“Let me carry those.” H took my Bible and notebook. “Only fifty more yards to go.”

We turned up a lane lined with tall hedges. Where the hedges stopped, a sign made of honed branches arched over the road, spelling out the word
cemetery
.

I groaned. “Honestly, H, I get plenty of exposure to death.”

“You can see the whole valley from here. I thought you'd like to get the lay of the land.”

The cemetery covered a wide slope. The upper slope, terraced by a maze of concrete retaining walls, lay brown and lifeless save for a few gnarled trees. A lush carpet of green peppered with dandelions covered the lower slope. H offered a pragmatic explanation of the disparity. “When they first started burying people up here, there wasn't irrigation water up this high. To a bunch of farmers, it probably seemed like a waste of water, seeing as they weren't growing nothing to take to market.”

There was no more irresistible and dissatisfying read than a tombstone. My creative writing teacher back in Gilbertsville had walked us through the cemetery to collect a character for a short story. I chose a girl, not much older than me at the time of her death, with the romantic name of Virginia Mae Ratliff. I made her a brilliant yet homely girl born at the turn of the twentieth century. She died rescuing her mother of questionable moral fortitude from a burning saloon. My teacher had been kind enough not to point out the obvious autobiographical nature of the story.

In Cordial's community cemetery, the tombstone of Barbara Louise McCulloh caught my eye. The infant daughter of Gavin and Aileen McCulloh had been born February 26, 1943, and died on April 17 of the same year. Someone had pressed multicolored stones into the concrete curbing that bordered the family plot before the cement had hardened. The stones, misshapened as arthritic fingers, reached out of their encasement. No embellishment spoke more eloquently of loss. A cluster of irises with tight buds grew out of the dry earth just where the tiny body of Barbara Louise lay. A soup can, now rusted, had also been pressed into the cement. It served as a vase for a wildflower bouquet. The flowers could have been a gift from one of Barbara Louise's
siblings, now a parent of school-aged children, or from her aging mother, still perplexed by the brevity of her baby's life.

H scratched at the dry earth with his incredibly sensible shoes. “The view is this way.”

More weeds than grass grew in the lush section, but at the town founder's grave, peonies bloomed as big as pom-poms. H pointed out the grave of a recent graduate of Cordial High School who had been killed in Vietnam. A bouquet of red, white, and blue plastic carnations decorated his grave.

“His folks sold their place and moved to Florida. Mom says they wanted to be as far away from their hurt as possible.” H tugged on my arm. “This is depressing. Let's go.”

Below us, orchards like dark green corduroy padded the valley floor. Pastures and fields faded from springtime green to golden amber.

“That thick line of trees below us there, that's the river.” H moved in close so I could follow the line of his arm. “See the railroad tracks there? Follow that up valley and you'll find Raven Mesa Coal Mine. Every train that comes out of there is 101 cars long, and do you know why? It's because the law says trains can only be one mile long. One hundred and one cars equals one mile. There's the high school. Under that scar on Logan Mountain is a hippie commune. What a bunch of nut cases. They grow pot and do as they please. They give each other stupid names, like Arrow and Sunshine and Rainbow. Can you imagine naming a poor kid Rainbow? Geez. Some of them even tried to homestead on Arnie Spengler's land. They put a teepee right over his spring. He said the hippies smelled worse than his granddaddy's pig farm, and there's nothing worse than a hog farm in the summer. Have you ever—”

“I lived in Illinois all of my life.”

“Oh. I guess you have then. Straight across,” H said, pointing to a mountain, “where you see the cut of a road, follow that up a bit, past where the road disappears through the rise, and that's where the woodsies are held.”

I knew about woodsies in theory only. Being a good churchgoing girl like I was, I'd never received an invitation. Not that I would go if anyone had asked me, but I couldn't deny that Lauren and I had lingered after a basketball game or school play, waiting for an invitation to join every other senior down by the river where a bonfire blazed and the beer flowed. More than once Lauren and I'd eaten our way to the bottom of the ice-cream carton, lamenting our notoriety as the only senior girls watching
The Odd Couple
on a Friday night.

“Do you go?” I asked.

H toed the gravel. “Popular kids go.”

“It's no great loss. You'd spend the whole next day barfing and wishing you could die. At least, that's what I hear.”

From his wistful gaze, my consolation meant nothing to him. “Did they have woodsies where you came from?”

“Sure, but I didn't want to go.”

“I'd do anything to be in the popular group.”

“Anything?”

“Nothing stupid, but I'm tired of living on the edge of life. Since the first summer we lived here, I've been on the outside looking in. I had no way of knowing what siccing my dog on Jim Warner would cost me. Worse than that, I've been the object of every conceivable prank and joke since my freshman year. My name has become synonymous for
lame
.”

“Whatever you did—”

“My dad says the guys were bored, that what they needed was a job to tire them out. Maybe then they wouldn't deface private property.
I got pretty sick and tired of repainting the sign for the store, so I waited for them out behind the store for three nights with my dog, Buster. On that third night, I watched a truck pull into the parking lot with the headlights off. The guys fell over each other, laughing and shaking their spray-paint cans. I figured they'd been drinking up their courage. Hearing them laugh like that made my blood boil. I sent Buster after them. He ripped Jim's back pocket off. Jim screamed like a girl.

“Jim and them would have thought it was my dad, but I couldn't help myself. I ran behind the truck, shaking my fist in triumph. Now I can't turn my back on anyone. They won't stop at anything.”

“And you want those jerks for friends?” Irrational thought required desperate measures. I pulled out the speech I'd recited to myself a million times before. “Why? They're cruel, heartless, stupid, and a cliché. Someday, they'll come to you, begging for a job or to cure their glaucoma or treat their incontinence. They'll get fat and lose their hair, just like the rest of the world; only they'll wear ratty toupees and gold medallions, thinking they look cool.”

“I'll tell
you
what. I'm getting on the football team this year.”

I checked my watch and turned to leave, knowing H would follow. “You're not listening,” I said over my shoulder. “A year from now you'll be heading off for college, and they'll be dreaming of the day they'll get a job at the coal mine so they can feed their wife and snot-nosed kids.”

“The whole town comes out to watch the games. Even the theater closes down.”

“And then the team drinks their brains out?”

“It's not just that. They do everything together. They go to the drive-in and hang out at Burger 'n' Shake. Camping. Fishing. Hunting. Everything.” He sighed. “Cool.”

“Think barf, H, lots and lots of it—chunky, burning barf.”

“Jesus made wine. He probably drank it too.”

“Wine was the safest thing to drink. The fermentation process killed parasites in the water.”

“If Jesus was so concerned about their health, why didn't he make clean water?”

I didn't have an answer for him, and from the self-satisfied look on his face, H was enjoying himself. That didn't mean I was ready to surrender the point. “Alcohol lowers your inhibitions, messes with your coordination, and takes money away from more important things.” I knew all of this better than I wanted to admit.

“It's a moot point. Nobody in this town is inviting me to a woodsy. They'd rather contract dengue fever or kiss their sister or—”

I heard my mother screaming from a block and a half away. From what little I knew of Portuguese, I was no longer a sweetheart.

H stopped to listen. “Boy, somebody's pretty upset about something. You'd think they'd close the windows.”

My mother opened the windows when she ranted. An audience was an audience. I lifted my skirt to run home. “G'bye!”

Bonnie met me at the front gate. “I got a call from your neighbor. She said your mom was acting strange.”

“Have you talked to her?”

“Your mother?” Bonnie shook her head.

“Have you heard her say my name?”

“Lots of times.”

“I'm late getting home. I'm sorry. I'll take care of her. Go on home, Bonnie. When she gets like this, she needs time to settle down.”

“She sounds so …”

Wild? Mournful? Psychotic? Like a spoiled brat?
“I'm used to it.”

“Is she, you know, all right?”

“She lets her imagination get the better of her. She'll be okay when she sees me.”

“María Amelia Casimiro Monteiro, get your—” Mom yelled.

“I better go.”

I started apologizing once I stepped through the kitchen door. “Mom, I'm so sorry. I was very thoughtless. It was such a pretty day.”

“Change your clothes!”

I closed the kitchen window. “The funeral home opens in ten minutes. I don't think I should go anywhere.”

She followed me into the chapel. “Change your clothes!” she screamed. I closed the window. H stood at the edge of the lawn, his face creased with concern.

“Mom, keep your voice down.” I shook my head at H and mouthed that I would be okay. When he didn't move, I waved him off and turned to Mom. My words were a smooth lake on a windless day. “The car isn't getting dirty in the garage. We can wait until next—”

“Never! How can you be so thoughtless? I ask so little of you.”

Really?

“You know what that car means to me. You're being hateful. You'd rather be with your boyfriend.”

“All right!” I threw up my arms and headed for my room. “Me, a brat? You're the one throwing a temper tantrum because your car isn't going to be washed one week. Just one stupid week.”

Mom grabbed my hair, and she nearly pulled me off my feet. “Don't you ever talk to me like that. Go change your clothes, Amelia.”

I spoke from a new place, a fiery place that made me feel stronger. “Let go of my hair.”

That stopped her in her tracks. “Oh,
fofa,
I'm so—”

I shook off her embrace to pull my dress over my head. “We don't have time. Get the cleaning stuff together. There's a bucket under the sink. And call Tommy.”

* * *

TOMMY OPENED THE service bay doors and pushed the Pontiac out into the sunshine. “Need any help, Francie?” he asked.

In unison, I said no and Mom said yes.

Tommy looked from Mom to me and back to Mom. “I'll pull the hose around for you.” Before he left, Mom talked him out of his spare key for the garage door, and he promised to return in an hour to push the car into the garage.

I told Tommy we would be done in twenty minutes. “You can come back whenever it's convenient for you.”

* * *

WE FOUND MRS. Clancy sipping coffee at the kitchen table when we returned from washing the car. “Please join me,” she said. It was more of a command than an invitation. I felt Mom's gaze on me, but I didn't look at her. Neither one of us took the time to pour a drink, even though my throat stung from the effort of washing the car in Cordial's dry air.

Mrs. Clancy fingered a large paperclip. “I thought I'd been very clear with you. Clancy and Sons has a long and prestigious reputation for excellence. We're trusted to treat the dearly departed with respect and reverence. Never in our fifty-five years of meeting the needs of our community has anyone ever complained about a ruckus coming from this home. I had my doubts about you, but I gave you a chance—”