Dark River Road (10 page)

“Yeah, Mikey. You did good.” He gave his hand a little squeeze just to let him know he meant it.

“Shadow tried to bite that fat boy,” Mikey said after a moment, and Chantry looked down at him, surprised.

“He did?”

“Uh huh. But I held on to him so tight he didn’t get to. Now I wish I hadn’t.”

If his face didn’t hurt so bad, he would’ve smiled. Instead he just said, “Me, too.”

They were a lot alike even though he was a boy and she was a girl. They didn’t have anybody else, had grown up within spitting distance of each other. Chantry had taken to getting out of the house as much as he could when he was a little kid because Beau and Rafe made his life such a misery, and Tansy
 . . .
well, she just liked being by herself too, he thought. Always making up words in her head, pretty words that sounded good when she said them to him, and she said she liked it that he never laughed or made fun of her like other kids did.

“Ever think of leavin’ here?” she asked after a few minutes, and he looked at her.

“Every day. Why? You want to leave?”

“I will leave. Just like my auntie and cousins. They’re off up in Chicago now, don’t ever come back down to visit anymore. Daddy says it’s better that way. He and my auntie got in a big fight a long time ago when I was little. I heard her say one time that he shouldn’t have ever married my mama, but I don’t know why she’d say that.”

Chantry went quiet. He’d always liked Tansy’s mama, thought Julia Rivers soft and strong, just like his own mama. But there had been something about her that kept people at arm’s length, a sort of air like a princess. Untouchable. Distant. Sometimes even sad. He’d said that last to Mama one time and she’d just looked at him for a minute, and then said, “There are times I think you know too much for a little boy.”

Since he didn’t know why she’d say that when she was always telling him he needed to study more, he’d just thought it a little strange.

Now he said to Tansy, “Your mama was really pretty, just like you.”

Tansy looked at him. She smiled, with her mouth and her eyes and something deep inside that made her whole face glow like a lit candle. He liked it when she smiled at him like that.

“You always say the right thing, Chantry.” She went quiet, and after a minute she said in that dreamy voice she got sometimes, “One day I’m gonna be a star. I’ll make a lot of money, too. I have songs in me, Chantry, things I can’t say to anyone else unless I put it to music. Things that get all mixed up in my head until they come out as a song. There’s others feel the way I do. Maybe they’ll want to hear my songs so they’ll know they don’t have to feel alone, y’know?”

Yeah. He knew all about feeling alone.

They sat side by side for a while without speaking, until Tansy decided to leave before Rainey woke up and said something smart to her. He had a way of doing that, especially when Mama wasn’t home. He always said something nasty about Chantry being friends with a colored gal and her daddy, but never in front of Mama. She didn’t tolerate that kind of talk. Mama said prejudice against someone because of their skin color was as foolish as hating someone because of their hair color. Rainey always said it was the way God intended it to be, but he said it kinda smart-like. He never made much secret of the fact he didn’t really believe in God.

Chantry wasn’t sure about God either, but just knew there were a lot of folks who thought like Rainey did about black people. He didn’t think that way, though. Like Mama, he thought it was better to judge people on what they did instead of skin color or how much money they had. He wouldn’t like Chris Quinton no matter what color he was, but he liked and respected Dempsey who had no money and no education. And Tansy had always been his best friend. His only real friend.

But the strangest thing kept happening lately. For some reason, Chantry kept having these dreams that were crazy. Mixed up dreams. He’d start off dreaming about Cinda Sheridan and it’d end up being about Tansy. He didn’t know why. He’d never dreamed about Tansy like that before and didn’t ever think about her like that when he was awake. Not much, anyway. Not like in the dreams.

Maybe it was because he’d seen her breast that day her top slid down. It was the first breast he’d ever seen that wasn’t in a magazine. There was a world of difference, he’d decided, between the real thing and pictures. He’d found magazines once when Beau and Rafe were still living with them, with pictures of ladies without any clothes. There had been men, too, and they’d been doing stuff to the ladies that he couldn’t believe. Mama had found him looking at them one day and raised a big fuss, then she’d taken the magazines outside and burned them in the old fifty-gallon metal drum where they burned garbage, and Beau and Rafe beat him up later for getting into their stuff. But he thought about those pictures sometimes, a lot more lately when he didn’t even want to. It’d make him feel all hot and funny inside when he thought about it, and then he’d feel weird for thinking about Tansy that way at all. She was more like a sister than a friend, and he liked her better than most anyone he knew, even though he still couldn’t understand her stupid fascination with Chris Quinton.

After the day Chris and his friends had caught him at the edge of the park, Tansy didn’t say any more to him about Chris. He was glad. He didn’t like there being trouble between them. While it wasn’t like it’d been before, at least it wasn’t all tense now either.

With November came cool weather, and he began leaving his window open at night. He liked to watch the stars, and feel the brisk air wash over him. It was almost like sleeping outside, but without a lot of the bugs. Unless the winter got really cold, the bugs didn’t die off. Mosquitoes were the worst.

Thanksgiving was two weeks away, and this weekend the school planned a Fall Festival like they did every year. He didn’t want to go, but Mama had said he had to so he could help her with everything and watch Mikey. She’d been working so hard lately, and even though she never said, he knew she was more and more worried about Mikey.

When Chantry had given her his first paycheck, she’d looked at him for a long minute and then started to cry. It always made him feel panicky when she did that, but she told him that she was just fine, and so very proud of him. He didn’t regret doing it, even though it meant he didn’t have as much put back to keep Shadow. He divided what was left out of his pay between Mama’s savings and his own every week now.

Outside his open window, the moon tracked across the sky and the breeze got really cool. A bird whistled. It was soft and quiet inside, not even Rainey making any noise. He’d passed out early tonight. Chantry lay looking at the stars and waiting for sleep to come. For some reason he felt all restless. Maybe it was the cool air.

When he heard a faint scratching sound, his first thought was a mouse or maybe a raccoon had come up on the porch. Then a head suddenly appeared on the other side of his window screen and he sat up like a shot. “Hey!”

“Shh,” Tansy said with a soft giggle. “Come outside.”

He lowered his voice. “Are you crazy? What are you doing here?”

“Come outside and see, dumbass.”

This wouldn’t be the first time they’d snuck off at night to go walking or even down to sit on the riverbanks, but not in a long time. He grabbed his Levi’s and shoes and put them on, then snatched a hooded sweatshirt from the dresser and went out his window. Tansy waited for him under the black walnut tree at the edge of the front yard. Hard green and black shells littered the ground.

She had a sack with her, and held it up. “Thought we’d drink a little cherry wine.”

“You
are
crazy.” He shrugged into his sweatshirt. “Where?”

“I knew you’d be interested. Come on.”

“What’s the big occasion?” he asked when they were farther away from the house. Tansy walked slightly ahead of him, and when she turned off to take the field road, he knew where she was headed.

“Independence day,” she said over her shoulder.

“That’s in July.”

“Not mine.”

“Oo-kay.” She’d sounded a little funny. She wore a short skirt and a sweater, and her long legs were bare except for some little boots that came up to her ankles. Once they got back onto the road, it was pitch black. Only the moon provided any light, and now that the trees were bare, it flickered down to barely illuminate the familiar path. Not that either of them needed it. They’d been coming this way since they were six years old, and could have walked it blindfolded.

They didn’t talk again until they reached the gully near the railroad bridge. It was a lot cooler here, since the river was just down the bluff to the west. Long ago they’d made a hideout, their own personal place to go whenever they wanted to be by themselves. Sometimes they went alone, but by unspoken consent, neither had ever brought anyone else here. It was just theirs. Through the years they’d furnished it with candle stubs, lanterns, cast-off cushions and blankets, and plastic tubs with a changing supply of basics.

Tansy set the wine down on a wooden spool that had once held electrical cable, and felt in the dark for the lantern. Even though it was near the river, it rarely flooded here. The railroad had built up the entire area with tons of dirt and rock, and then planted trees to stop erosion. In the summer, kudzu got a good hold on the place, leaves draped down all green and thick to hide the entrance from view. Now the kudzu had died back and only brown leathery vines formed a veil.

Chantry spread out a blanket he took from the plastic tub. It smelled musty, and minty too from the sprigs of mint Tansy had put in to keep moths and mice away if they somehow chewed through the barrier of plastic. Light flared as the lantern took, then steadied to a flickering glow.

Tansy poured wine into two plastic cups and gave him one. “Cheers,” she said, and tilted back her head and drained hers. He stared at her.

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Everything.” She suddenly sounded miserable.

He took a sip of wine. It was sweet. It was warmer in here in the cave formed by dirt and rock and vines, and he unzipped the neck of his sweatshirt. When she was ready to tell him, she would. She just had to find her own way to tell it. He drank some more wine and waited.