I stepped up on to the porch of the old house cautiously, thinking that a porch swing would have made it a perfect place, once upon a time. Since we didn’t have our own in Kansaska-Nebransas, Poppa would take us to the World’s Largest Porch Swing in the park in Hebron. That swing could hold fifteen people at one time. Poppa would load the whole family into the car and let Rocket’s spark drive us up there on Sunday afternoons to sit all together on that long, crazy swing that had no porch attached.
‘Just use your imagination, Mibs,’ Poppa would say when I complained that a swing couldn’t be a porch swing without a porch. ‘Close your eyes and imagine what kind of a grand house might have a porch swing this size.’ I’d do as he said, but the only place I ever pictured was our own home.
‘Every good country home needs a place to sit and think and watch the clouds roll by,’ Poppa had said to me. Poppa wanted to build us our very own swing; it was always near the top on his list of important things to do. I knew I had to get to Poppa soon. I couldn’t let anything happen to him, not with that list left unfinished – he wouldn’t want to abandon our dreams. He’d want to build that swing so that we could sit there together.
The porch creaked and groaned. I turned around to find Will Junior standing on the porch behind me. He didn’t come close, like he’d done before. Now he had his hands in his pockets and was looking at me as though he’d never seen a girl before.
‘What’s going on, Mibs?’
‘What do you mean?’ I said, not looking at him straight on.
‘I mean, maybe you should start telling me what happened back there on the bus with Fish and that storm of wind,’ Will Junior said, still studying me.
I ran my hand across the porch rail, absently brushing at the peeling paint that covered the old grey wood like lacy splinters, still not able to stare Will Junior in the eye.
‘I don’t know what you want me to tell you,’ I said, feeling false and fickle, knowing exactly what he wanted to hear and knowing that I could never tell him. When I braved a glance at his face, I could see that Will’s eyes were bright and eager with curiosity, like a small child waiting for a parade to come around a corner.
‘I’ve always known there was something different about you, Mibs Beaumont, and your brothers too,’ Will Junior said. I shrugged my shoulders, not agreeing, but not saying anything either.
‘Don’t get me wrong – I like that about you,’ Will added awkwardly, stepping a bit closer.
Surprised and embarrassed, I stood speechless on that porch until the silence grew itchy and uncomfortable. Searching desperately for some way to change the subject, I rounded fully on Will Junior and demanded in a fluster, ‘So, just why are you called Will Junior, anyway? I know your daddy’s not Will Senior. His name’s not even William, for heaven’s sake.’
He smiled back at me with a devilish grin. ‘Maybe you’re not the only one with a secret, Mibs.’
I looked up and down at that boy, and for some reason I couldn’t help but smile back at him, even if it did make my cheeks burn red.
‘I suppose I can live with that,’ I said finally, like he and I had come to some kind of arrangement. Our secrets would stay secrets.
Will Junior pulled one hand out of his pocket. He was holding the wrapped-up happy-birthday pen set. He’d retrieved it from the floor of the bus and now he held it out to me. The bright wrapping was ripped on one side and a bit worse for the wear.
‘It’s still your birthday, you know.’
I took the present from Will and smiled even wider. He was right. It was still my birthday and I hadn’t yet opened a single present. I stuck one finger into the tear on the side and ripped the paper away from a thin, hinged box. A gust of wind I hoped did not belong to Fish swept the wrapping paper out of my hands and sent it up and across the road and away from us. Opening the box, I found two fine and fancy ballpoint pens with shiny silver finger grips and rounded caps. I set the box down on top of the porch rail and pulled out one of the pens.
‘I could have tried writing something if that paper hadn’t blown away,’ I said. Will Junior swept his arm out in front of him with a gallant gesture before kneeling down on the cracked and flaking boards at my feet, like he was a grown-up man proposing. He held one hand out to me, palm up, offering it as a writing surface.
Nervously, I took his hand in mine. The blue ink flowed out smooth and easy against Will Junior’s skin, and in a moment I’d drawn a smiling sun. The next moment, I jolted backwards, tripping over a jutting porch plank and falling on to my tail end, as that smiling sun blinked its eyes and cleared its throat like it had just woken up.
Like it had just woken up, and now it had something to say.
12
Before the blue-inked sun could utter a word, I picked myself up and ran away from Will Junior and the falling-down house. I ran past Lester Swan where he sat with his feet on the Astroturf, and past Bobbi and her gum bubble. Up the steps and into the bus, I ran straight past Fish, where he sat hunkered and grumpy in the front seat. I didn’t stop until I’d pressed myself underneath the cot in the back of the bus, pushing in next to Samson, who moved over without a question or a word as though he’d been expecting me. I plugged up my ears with my fingers. I squeezed my eyes shut and began to hum, hum, hum, hum, hum.
It was no good. I could still hear them all. As Lester and Bobbi climbed back on to the bus wondering what was wrong with me, I could hear Carlene and Rhonda and the little angel with the pointed devil’s tail all there inside my head. But now I could hear a new voice too, the voice of the smiling blue sun, gaining volume like a deep-toned bell as Will Junior climbed up into the bus.
‘A secret for a secret for a secret… Will has a secret. Want to know the secret?
Not knowing what else to do, I shouted, ‘You have to wash your hand, Will Junior!’ though it sounded stupid, even to me, as my voice echoed through the quiet bus over the din of voices in my head. I didn’t want to know Will’s secret. I didn’t want to know things I wasn’t supposed to know.
‘Mibs? Are you okay?’ Will called out to me as he made his way down the aisle of the bus, the voice of that noisy blue sunshine growing louder and louder as he got closer.
‘Will’s got a secret
‘Don’t come near me!’ I shouted back at him.
Fish, seeing me upset and not bothering to find out what might have happened, closed in on Will Junior and spun him around, clocking him hard and fast in the eye with his fist. Will took the blow, stumbling backwards along the aisle of the bus, and Bobbi joined the scuffle, climbing over the seats and throwing herself at Fish, scratching his cheek with her fingernails.
Ignoring Bobbi and scrambling after Will Junior, Fish demanded, ‘What did you do to my sister? What did you do to her?’
‘Will’s got a secret… Want to know the secret?
‘WASH YOUR HAND, WILL JUNIOR!’ I screamed again, raising my voice to be heard over the brawl and over the sound of breaking glass. As my brother’s pressure system grew, the windows closest to Fish began to fracture, spreading splintering cracks outward like spider webs, zipping and pinging through the glass as Fish’s gusts and gales swelled in speed and strength. Bobbi screamed and Lester cried out as first one and then another window shattered outward. Ducking and dancing and wincing and flinching with every new outward explosion of glass, Lester grabbed both boys by their collars and pushed and pulled and dragged them off his bus with Bobbi following after.
‘… a secret for a secret for a secret…’ quieter now, but still that ink-doodle sun yammered in my brain. I scrambled from beneath the cot and peered out of the nearest broken window.
‘Please, Will, just go wash that ink off your hand!’ I shouted, knowing he couldn’t understand. Now outside the bus, Fish’s wind blew out across the parking lot and through the trees around the church. A dark storm cloud was forming overhead and a smattering of rain began to pelt the ground. It was a good thing we weren’t too close to any large bodies of wat
er, or that storm over Bee could have been one to rival Fish’s worst.
Crunching on the broken glass that lay scattered across the parking lot, Fish suddenly stopped struggling against Lester Swan and looked up at my face in the window. He looked at me screaming and plugging my ears and at the tears dripping like the kitchen tap down my cheeks; my words finally hit him, and he listened. Fish twisted sharply from me to Will Junior as though suddenly adding two and two and getting twenty-seven, even though most people could only ever get four. Storm subsiding, he grabbed Will by the wrist to behold the drawing of the sun inked in blue on his palm. My brother took one last look up from that simple doodle to my sorry, sorry self framed inside the broken window. Then, understanding that my upset must have something to do with the unexpected things that happen when a Beaumont turns thirteen, Fish did what he had to do.
Still holding tight to Will’s wrist, Fish worked his mouth for one long second, then spat a big, thick wad of juicy spit right into Will Junior’s hand.
‘Eww, man!’ Will hollered out in disgust. ‘That’s just foul!’ Will tried to pull his hand away, but Fish held on tight, smearing that spit in and around to mix with the ink until there was nothing left but a great messy smudge, resembling nothing much more than the big blue-black bruise that was already forming around Will Junior’s eye where Fish had popped him a shiner.
‘Let go!’ Will demanded, pummelling at Fish with his free fist.
With Fish’s spit, the new voice in my head gurgled and gargled and sputtered and spluttered until ‘secret’ turned to ‘slucbref, and ‘slucbref turned to ‘sluppef, and ‘sluppef slipped away like water down a drain, leaving Will Junior’s secret safe and only three voices remaining in my head.
Lester Swan was doing his best to keep the boys apart and Bobbi off his back, slipping and sliding on the broken glass. As soon as Fish saw the muscles in my face relax and my shoulders drop back down to where they normally rested – as soon as he saw the relief in my eyes – my brother backed off, pulling free from Lester’s grip and stepping out of the way of Will’s fists. Fish may not have known precisely why he’d needed to get that ink doodle off Will Junior’s hand, but he’d known it was important to me, and I was grateful. Sometimes it was good to have older brothers.
Looking grossed-out and suspicious, Will Junior wiped his wet and sullied hand on his trousers. His shirt had come completely untucked and his hair was wild and unruly above his blackening eye.
I realized I was still holding tight to the fine and fancy silver pen that Will had given me. It felt heavy in my hand, like it was made of lead. I replaced the cap on the writing end and slipped the pen into one of the deep pockets in my skirt; I’d left the box and the other pen back at the falling-down house. I was worn out and tired, and I didn’t think I liked being a teenager all that much. As the last ray of sun surrendered to the deep blue of evening, I sank to the floor of the bus, trying again not to think, and not to listen.
‘What’s Lester got himself into this time? muttered Carlene behind my eyeballs.
And Rhonda answered with a cluck of her tongue: ‘The usual trouble, of course. The usual trouble.’
13
As Lester Swan loaded the others back on to the bus, assigning them seats well away from each other and surveying the damage to the windows mournfully, I tried making a deal with God. I vowed that I would eat my green beans without complaint, I’d be a good person and I’d never take more than one half of a powdered sugar doughnut after Sunday school ever, ever again. If only I could stop hearing voices when someone nearby had ink on their skin – especially voices that insisted on sharing secrets and feelings others preferred to keep hidden.
I hadn’t cried once since Poppa’s accident, but now that I’d started, there on that big pink bus, I couldn’t stop. Everything felt broken and hopeless. What if this had all been for nothing? What if Poppa was already better and sitting up in bed laughing and talking with Momma and Rocket? Or what if Poppa was worse; what if he was…
I sobbed harder, trying to push my worst fears out of my mind. Samson wiggled out from under the cot, dragging the almost-empty bag of crisps and the Peperami wrappers with him. Sitting down on the floor next to me, offering me the last salty crumbs of crisps without a word, he rested one gentle hand on my arm.
I’m not sure what it was about my shy and shadowy Samson, but his gentle touch always made a person feel more braced up inside. It happened now and then, I knew, that some folks got their savvy early. Momma’s brother, Uncle Autry, had five-year-old twin girls who could make their plastic ponies hover a few centimetres above the ground as they played, moving them up and down like carousel horses. But, outside of our cousins, that sort of thing was rare. Maybe it made a difference that the girls were twins and seemed to share a savvy between them.
Perhaps Samson’s strengthening touch was just an ordinary sort of human magic, the kind of magic that exists in the honest, heartfelt concern of one person for another. Regardless of the reason, with Samson’s small hand on my arm, it wasn’t long before my eyes began to dry.
‘What’s the half-baked idiot thinking? Lester should have his head examined,’ Rhonda was saying from Lester’s left arm. ‘How could any son of mine turn out to be such a namby-pamby?’
‘What he should do is leave these rotten kids on the side of the road, the same way I ditched that mangy dog of his when the beast chewed up my best red shoes,’ said Carlene from his right. ‘Instead the dolt bandages their boo-boos and pats them on the head.’
I knew I didn’t care much for Lester’s mom, Rhonda, and I was certain I didn’t care at all for Carlene. But Lester Swan must have felt something strong for each of them, having seen the need to tattoo their names right on his skin. To me, those two seemed like heavy ladies to heft around. Rising to my knees, I peered up over the seats and boxes through the dimming light to watch Lester root around under the driver’s seat then come up, looking triumphant, with a rusty old metal box with a red first-aid cross on it. He handed the box to Bobbi, who looked at it like Lester had just handed her a dead rat.
‘What do you want me to do with this?’ Bobbi asked.
Lester hemmed and hawed as he pointed towards the first aid kit. ‘Maybe you could tend to the b-boys so that I might try to c-cover some of these windows and get us b-back on the road?’
‘I don’t tend,’ said Bobbi, sounding snarly and sarcastic with her lip pulled into a sneer. ‘What do I look like? A nurse?’
‘Naw, you just look like the oldest,’ Lester said with a crooked half smile, though his shoulders twitched again, nearly jumping all the way up to his ears this time. He crossed and uncrossed his arms as though trying to figure out how to look like he required listening to.
‘This is all Mibs’s fault. Make her tend,’ said Bobbi, handing the first-aid kit back to Lester.
Twitch. Twitch. Lester took the box back from Bobbi and looked down the length of the bus, catching my eye where I peered over the last seat. Even through the gloom of early evening, I could recognize the look of a drowning man when I saw one. I couldn’t stand to listen to Carlene and Rhonda snicker and scoff as Lester sank below the tide of Bobbi’s attitude. Maybe this was my chance to show God how good I could be, show Him that I was worth some reconsidering on His part, that maybe I deserved better than what I’d got so far on my most important day.
Lester looked mighty grateful when I stood up and walked towards the front of the bus, taking the first-aid kit from him with a hiccup and an awkward, sorry smile. After all, Bobbi had been right when she’d said that this deep-fried pickle of a situation was all my fault. If it hadn’t been for my birthday, or the choices I made because of my birthday, things might’ve turned out different. I was discovering that sometimes the outcome of a choice was almost as hard to predict or to control as a new savvy.
I opened the first-aid kit as Lester tried in vain to cover the broken windows; three panes had blown out completely and a fourth looked ready to fall out o
f its frame at the first bump in the road. Lester appeared on the verge of tears himself as he finally gave up his attempts at wedging cardboard across the gaping holes and started the bus, the sound of the noisy engine doing little to dampen the voices still ringing in my head.
‘That Lester…’ said Rhonda.
‘Stupid man…’ said Carlene.
‘She’s not sure if she likes you, or if she thinks you re a freak,’ said Bobbi’s angel, sounding bored.
‘I’m not a freak, Bobbi,’ I said as I stubbornly pulled gauze and dried-up and useless antibacterial wipes from the first-aid kit.
‘What?’ Bobbi craned her neck around to look at me. ‘What did you just say?’
I swallowed hard and said nothing, realizing that I’d spoken out loud when I should have kept my mouth closed tight, tight, tight. I pulled a dusty cold pack from the first-aid kit, the kind you have to twist to make go cold, and concentrated on that. I could feel Bobbi’s eyes on me, trying to dissect me like a splayed and gutted frog. I twisted the pack with a crack, and felt a slow chill spread through the small plastic bag. Turning around, I moved three rows back to where Will Junior sat with his black eye.
The spring night air rushed through the broken windows as Lester took a turn too sharp and too fast, making the bus lurch and groan as he got us back on to the highway, sending boxes, magazines and Bibles sliding. I stumbled and tumbled down on to the seat next to Will, handing him the cold pack for his eye with a little more force than I’d intended, nearly hitting him in the nose with it.
‘Sorry,’ I said, trying to move quickly back into the aisle of the bumping, jumping bus. But Will Junior took hold of my hand and pulled me back down to sit on the seat next to him. He pressed the pack carefully to his eye, making a face. Still holding on to my hand, he looked at me full and square with his good eye.