Three Day Summer (3 page)

chapter 7

Cora

I'm afraid, Cora.

I think of Mark's letter. This is the first time that he has ever said those exact words to me.

His terror is terrifying. My fearless older brother who's been gone so long now. Almost two and a half years. What could have happened that would cause him to be scared now when he never has been before? Or is it just that he has never told me before? Does he think I'm getting old enough to handle the truth now?

“Cheer up!” a voice says to me, and I look up to see an older guy in a big cowboy hat and white jumpsuit grinning at me. He's missing several of his front teeth.

“Ready for the time of your life?” he asks.

I give him a small smile. Despite my worry, something about his easy joy is infectious.

“Hugh, I can't find the gruel.” A girl with frizzy brown hair and a guy with a long beard come up to the jumpsuit guy. They are both festooned with red bandannas with a picture of a white flying pig silk-screened on them. The guy wears his around his arm, and the girl uses hers to pull back her hair.

Hugh looks at them thoughtfully for a minute. “Aha! It's in the back of Lisa's van,” he finally says triumphantly.

He turns around to walk away and I see that the back of his suit has a large embroidered blue and red star design. Very patriotic.

“I'm worried we won't have enough food,” the girl says as they walk toward some food tents that have been set up across the small woods from the medical tents. She glances nervously at the significant number of people already gathering in small herds. There are a lot more of them than there were this morning. If I had to guess, I'd say the number has at least quadrupled.

“Worry? Now, why would you go and do a silly thing like that for?” Hugh says cheerfully. “We can feed fifty thou a day easily. It'll all be groovy.”

Their voices fade as I veer to the right and walk past the woods to my little yellow tent, Hugh's red, white, and blue emblem watermarking my thoughts.

I wonder what the American flag means to Mark now, whether he still shares Dad's enthusiasm for it. He's tired of fighting in its name, that much I know.
I want to come home, Cora. More than that, I want all of us to come home.

He didn't even finish the story of Jack and his underwear. It's the saddest letter he has ever written me.

I eye the knots of people everywhere, a lot around Mark's age of twenty-two, a lot around mine. He should be here with them. If he hadn't signed up for the army when he was the eager-eyed, antsy nineteen-year-old I had last seen—gung ho to follow in his father's footsteps instead of continuing college—he would be.

I catch a glimpse of one small group that seems to have somehow procured a sheep. A guy with shoulder-length red hair, a long orange tunic, and white pants is lovingly petting it. He looks like a reverse flame. My eyebrows raise and I'm immediately worried for the animal, especially in the hands of city folk. I decide I can keep an eye on it from my medical tent.

“How's it going?”

I turn. Wes, my brother, is sitting cross-legged right outside my tent, his light brown wavy hair hanging down to his shoulders. Even though he's my twin, we hardly look alike at all. Aside from the curl in his hair, Wes has almost all of Dad's coloring and features, and I have almost all of Mom's. Wes and Mark look a lot more like they could be twins than we do.

“You left me with the hens,” I protest.

“Couldn't deal with the Drip kissing Mom's ass today. It was destroying my morning.” The Drip is Wes's nickname for Ned. To be fair, he never really liked him even when he was my boyfriend. But ever since he accidentally caught me red-eyed the night we broke up, he's been particularly furious with him. Wes has seen me cry maybe twice ever, and I've cried maybe a lifetime total of five times. It's usually not how my emotions work, unless something bomb-shelter levels of catastrophic has happened.

“We have a letter from Mark,” I say.

Wes smiles. “Cool. I'll check it out later. For now, do you have a bandage?” He holds up his right palm, where a pretty sizable wound is bleeding.

“What happened?” I ask as I kneel down beside him.

“No big thing. Just a splinter.” He gestures nonchalantly at the sign next to him.
END THE WAR NOW
it blares. It's mounted on what looks like possibly the most decrepit piece of wood I've ever seen.

“Wes!” I squeal. “You're going to need a tetanus shot.”

His eyes flash a second of fear and then narrow. “Small price to pay to try and save the millions who are, I don't know, being
killed
over there,” he says with an attempt at valiance.

I sigh. “You're preaching to the choir, you know,” I say as I take his noninjured hand in mine and help him up.

I turn around without another word, and he follows me into the tent, grumbling a low apology.

Walking over to the table we've set up, I take out some bandages, cotton balls, alcohol, and a dark bottle of Mercurochrome. I take his hand and examine it.

“There's a little piece of wood still in there. I'm going to have to take it out.”

Grabbing tweezers, I wipe some alcohol on it, and start digging around in Wes's hand as gently as I can. He winces.

Wes isn't so good with physical pain. My father, the two-war veteran, rides him about it all the time, constantly comparing him to the derring-do of Mark, especially when Wes starts talking about dodging selective service.

Threshold of pain aside, I can't say I exactly blame him. Being a girl, I don't have to put my name down for a draft when I turn eighteen, so I'm not faced with the high probability of being sent into a battlefield. Though I am faced with the heart-wrenching possibility of coming out an only child at the end of everything. I'm not sure which is worse.

“Ow!” he yells when I finally pull the piece of wood out. To be fair to him, it is a rather long piece.

He hisses when I rub Mercurochrome on his wound, staining his skin orange before I wrap it up in a bandage.

“Thanks,” he mumbles as he steps back toward the entrance of the tent.

“Not so fast.” I grab the sleeve of his green tie-dyed shirt. “Tetanus shot.”

“Oh, come on! It was just a tiny splinter,” he whines.

“Not based on the noises you were making,” I say. Turning around, I spot the middle-aged brunette I'm looking for. “Anna,” I yell over to her, not daring to leave my brother's side in case he attempts escape. It wouldn't be the first time. “Can you give this fool a tetanus shot?” I point a thumb at Wes.

Without any hesitation, Anna looks into one of the dozens of bins neatly stacked up on the side of the tent and emerges with a syringe wrapped in plastic. She rummages around in another bin and comes up with a vial of liquid.

I turn to Wes, noticing his wide-eyed look of fear. Time for a distraction. “So where are Adam, Laurie, and Peter?”

“Protesting.”

“
Obviously
,” I say with an eye-roll. “But where are they? And really, you and Dad are opposite sides of the same coin. What do you think is going to happen by protesting
here
?”

Wes turns to me with a glare. “Millions of people are going to be watching this weekend, Cora. We're protesting for them to
see
. To hear just what this generation wants. And it ain't war! OW!!” he howls. Anna has stuck him with the needle.

“All done,” I say with a grin as Anna places another bandage on his arm.

“Were you trying to get me riled up just so I wouldn't feel that?” he spits.

“Well . . . yeah,” I say.

“Oh. Well, thanks. I guess.”

I shake my head. “You're welcome. Try not to get into any more trouble out there, okay?”

Wes grins and, for a moment, his face sheds its conscientious-citizen mask and shows the unbridled excitement of a seventeen-year-old boy. “I can't believe this is happening in our own backyard. Can you?”

He practically skips out of the tent, carrying his sign in his unbandaged hand.

If nothing else, he'll definitely be getting another splinter.

chapter 8

Michael

Once the sun starts to set, I realize how wrong I've been about Bethel being a plain sort of girl. All her hidden beauties just come out later in the day. As we leave the lunch counter, the sky starts to streak pink and violet and orange. The colors are as unbelievable as a psychedelic concert poster and the entire scene is made kaleidoscopic by the reflection in the town's great big lake. Far out.

By the time we're back by the festival site, the stars have come out. More stars than I'd have ever known existed back in Boston. It's like someone is poking holes in a piece of sapphire paper and they have no sense of moderation. I wonder if this hypothetical person has any relation to Evan.

Speaking of which, our resident comedian has been amusing us by narrating the thoughts of the other kids we see heading toward what we've already come to feel is “our” field. “Your cantaloupes are as supple as your tits,” Evan says as one guy in a fringed vest stares freely at a braless girl in a thin shirt walking with a shopping bag of food, the rough green skin of a cantaloupe peeking out from the top. The girls scream in laughter.

“Evan, man, you get away with murder,” Rob says with a chuckle.

“Tell me about it,” I respond.

Soon, we've staked a claim to a corner of the field. There are two sleeping bags and six of us but, somehow, it seems to work out fine. Either Catherine or Suzie (or both) is in Evan's sleeping bag, while Rob is lying on a blanket. Things keep shifting over there, though, and there are plenty of giggles, so I have no idea how they end up.

Amanda is with me in my sleeping bag, sprawled out across my chest. Despite everything, I can't deny that she's nice to hold on to, warm and soft. Her hair is tickling my bare chest, its blond strands practically glowing by starlight. I bend down and kiss a piece of it.

I hear her laugh slightly and then sigh in contentment.

I look down at her profile. She's just so damn beautiful. I'm crazy to want to end things. Maybe it can always be like this: peaceful and perfect. Waiting on a tomorrow that is going to fuel everything that is wonderful about being young. I think again of the first time we met, that cold day in January, with the smell of dusty plastic in the air as I flipped through some older LPs—the way I always did whenever I went to Jerry's Music—just on the off chance that I would come across an original copy of
Yesterday and Today
. When she caught me checking her out over the tops of my records, she immediately smiled and asked me what I was looking for. I admit, I was a little smug when I said the name of the record, not the band. But she knew what it was right away, knew all about the Beatles' infamous record that had been pulled almost immediately because of its controversial cover. What's more, she had actually seen the original cover itself; a cousin of hers had the reissued version, but had managed to pull off the new cover without damaging the one underneath. We talked a lot about music that day and I couldn't believe my luck: that a girl with the face of an angel knew so much about people like Bob Dylan, and Simon & Garfunkel, and even Keith Moon. Some of the people we spent that magical first day talking about, we are going to see live over the next few days.

In the distance, I can just make out the shadows of the flimsy fences. They don't look like they are too much higher, or more complete, than when we saw them this afternoon. I hope Evan is right about not needing those tickets. I can't imagine having to turn back around after making it all this way.

I can't imagine what Amanda will do to me. I look down at her serene face again and feel a tiny shrapnel of fear go through me. I hope I won't ever have to know.

“That one there is the soupspoon,” I hear Evan say, and I crane my neck to see what's going on. He's silhouetted against the moonlight, just a dark hand pointing up into the air, tracing some constellation of his imagination.

“Really?” Suzie asks from beside him, a note of disbelief in her voice.

“And that's the mashed potatoes, see the chives sticking out.”

Suzie giggles, and I see her hand go up into the air too. “And I suppose that one there is the wineglass.”

“Champagne flute, actually. But you seem to be getting it, baby.”

I hear rather than see Suzie playfully punch Evan. “You are out of your mind, Evan Mather.”

It's true. He really is.

But then again, that's usually what makes him so fun.

I realize this is the happiest I've been in a long time. The world seems infinite and my worries so small. My parents, my problems with Amanda, the looming question of what I'm going to do with my life once this summer is over—minuscule. There is only one thing that seems as substantial and weighty as the sky before me: the glorious music that will consume the next three days of my life. Hearing Jimi Hendrix pluck those strings, or Janis Joplin wail those notes, or Roger Daltrey weave a story, that's going to be what my heavens consist of.

For now, I choose not to think beyond that. I choose here and now. I'm going to choose the here and now every single moment of this weekend. Maybe that will be enough to make it last forever.

chapter 9

Cora

Dinner is a subdued affair.

I don't leave the medical tent until eight p.m. and Mom, as usual, waits for me, the meatloaf getting a little crispier than normal in the oven. Dad, naturally, grumbles about my tardiness.

I don't bother telling him that I'm pretty sure the next three nights will be even worse.

And that I'm looking forward to it. Today was the largest number of people I have ever seen. Maybe it's twisted of me to say, but I get excited thinking about the possible medical cases that could walk through the tent flap.

For most of my life, I've been certain that I want to be a nurse. The human body fascinates me, all the tiers of it, like when you scrape your knee badly and sometimes you can see layers of skin and tissue, blood and muscle. Once in the hospital I saw actual white gleaming bone.

Ned wants to be a doctor. That's how we met, actually. He used to volunteer at the hospital, just like me.

For some reason, he got to do more and see more. Probably because he's a guy and, in my candy striper uniform, I look more like some sort of sickbed cheerleader than someone serious about medicine.

Once, when he got to sit in on a heart surgery and I was relegated to getting rid of patients' wilted flowers, a seed got planted in my head.

He told me all about the surgery later. It was our idea of a hot date, him explaining the blood and valves and ligaments he saw. And I started daydreaming. Not about becoming a nurse, but about being a doctor.

I told Ned about it, once. It was after he told me about yet another surgery that he got to witness (a ruptured appendix). I said it casually, belying the way my heart was pounding near my throat. It's not that women doctors are completely unheard of. We don't have any at Community General, but I do know of one in Ellenville, about twenty miles away. But still. I wasn't sure anyone close to me would understand.

It's not that Ned said he
didn't
understand. It's not like he tried to talk me out of it, or told me it was a silly dream. He took a slight pause, just long enough for one blink behind his glasses, and then changed the subject to taking me out to the movies.

I never brought it up again. To anyone.

As I think about it now, I slice a carrot neatly in half with my butter knife, a beautiful, precise cut. I imagine I'm holding a scalpel.

“What happened to your hand?” I look up to see my dad pointing a fork at Wes's bandaged palm.

“Splinter,” Wes grumbles.

My dad frowns. “Must have been an awful big splinter.” Maybe inadvertently, he glances at his own arm then, the one that got shot in Korea and sent him home early, much to his dismay.

I catch the angry glint in Wes's eye and butt in. “It was. I wrapped it up.”

“Hmmmph,” Dad says before turning back to his loaf. I can't help but notice how both he and Wes stab their meat at the exact same moment with the exact same amount of unnecessary force.

Seems like the china is going to get the brunt end of their relationship today. Mom catches my eye and we shake our heads at each other. She gives a little sigh and I wonder if she's going to try to talk to my dad tonight. Once when I was little and the bathroom on my landing was backed up, I went upstairs to use theirs in the middle of the night and I heard them whispering to each other. I couldn't make out what they were saying, only catching all our names—Mark's, Wes's, and mine—woven throughout the conversation. I was up there for at least twenty minutes and they never stopped talking.

Even still, sometimes, it's hard for me to imagine how my parents ever got together. How my dad got home from World War II and, against his parents' wishes, married a half-Indian girl who lived on a reservation. I wonder if something in that made him go superconservative all of a sudden, like he had reached his rebellion limit by loving Mom.
Love is strange,
I think, as I move on to cutting gorgeous slices of green beans.

I hardly remember even getting into bed. I must be exhausted, because with all there is to think about—Ned, Mark, Wes, the patients, and the next three days—I fall into a deep sleep the moment my cheek touches the pillow.