Whippoorwill (11 page)

“He doesn't like it,” Holly said. “Not one bit.”

“But at least he's staying with us,” Danny said. “At least he wants to be with us.”

That was true and it was a good point.

Then for a while we didn't do anything or make ridiculous sounds. We simply stood on a rainy day in spring underneath a curtain of water and looked out. The water refracted everything and turned it hazy and wavering, so that whatever you set your eyes on wanted to be a dream. Leaves slipped off the spillway sometimes and became dots of color as they passed. It all made me feel happy inside, and scared, too, though I couldn't have said why if you had asked me a thousand times.

“Why is it called the Peppermint Bridge?” Holly asked on the way back to the car.

Danny shrugged. He looked tired suddenly.

“I mean,” she continued, “why not the Tunnel Bridge, or the Underwater Bridge, or anything? Anything at all? Why Peppermint?”

“A mystery of the universe,” Danny said.

“I hate when things aren't named what they should be,” she said.

I ignored her and concentrated on Wally. He was gloriously muddy and happy and his tail went a million miles an hour. I thought about what Father Jasper says, how walking in the woods does a dog great good, and I knew what he meant. Wally continued to move and cover ground, but now he did it more thoughtfully, not like a spaz who felt he was going to be caught and put on a pole at any moment. He didn't mind coming back to us, because we simply rewarded him and let him continue on his way.

“I've got a little bit of a headache,” Danny said when we got back to the car. “Sorry, but I'd maybe better call it a day.”

“I should get home anyway,” Holly said. “Clair, did you do the French homework?”

“Not yet.”

“I hate that class,” she said, climbing in after Wally.

“You okay?” I asked Danny over the car roof. He hadn't climbed in yet. I wondered if he had been up late, fighting with his father again.

“I don't know. Just feel a little rocky, I guess.”

“Sorry.”

He shrugged and ducked into the car. A minute later we were fishtailing back along the road we had taken to arrive at the Peppermint Bridge.

Danny texted me almost as soon as we got home.

You want to go for a ride on Wednesday?

I wrote back a bunch of question marks. A few seconds later he texted again.

Teacher in-service,
it read.
No school.

Maybe,
I wrote back.

It struck me as a little strange that Danny knew the school schedule better than I did.

Around eight Holly called and wanted to go over everything that had happened that day. She wanted to know what I thought of Danny, did I like him, what did I think of his car, what did I think of his sideburns, wasn't he good with Wally, and on and on. Listening to her, I realized part of her truly wanted to know the answers to those questions, but another part, just as big a part, wanted to see if I had anything to say about Danny flirting with her. Or at least what he thought about her. She didn't mean it to be selfish, it was merely human nature, but she had questions inside the questions.

“Peppermint Bridge? It wasn't a mill,” Jebby said. “It was rigged for a turbine. It powered a commercial dairy farm up that way. Isn't that right?”

He looked across the kitchen table at my dad. My dad nodded.

“I haven't been up to that place in a million years,” Dad said, his hand tightening a nut down on a bolt that had something to do with an engine mount. As usual he had a bunch of things spread out on a newspaper on top of the table. “I'm surprised it's still in one piece.”

“Oh, they built things to last in those days,” Jebby said, swigging a jolt of his beer. “Not like now.”

“We build things just as good now as we ever did,” Dad said.

“Not projects like that. Not dams and things. I'll admit, planes are better and cars, for the most part, but dams and bridges? No way.”

I knew they had launched an argument that could go on for hours, so I interrupted.

“Did you guys go to school with Elwood, Danny's father?”

Jebby nodded and peeled his beer label.

“He's one strange bird, I promise,” Jebby said. “He liked nothing better than to get into a fight. I never saw him beaten. It wouldn't have mattered if he had been beaten. He just liked hitting and liked getting hit.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

I had an egg sandwich on a plate, but I didn't want to sit at the table with them. I stood next to the counter and kept an eye on Danny's house. He had Wally inside with him. At least I didn't see Wally outside on the pole.

“He's a bit of a socio-something,” Jebby said. “A whatchamacallit?”

“A sociopath,” Dad said. “Most people, they get in a fight and they stop when they've vanquished the other guy. You know what I mean. But not Elwood. He would keep kicking the guy, punching, even when it was clear he had won. People had to pull him off to get him to stop, and even then he'd try to get back to the guy on the ground. He was like a crazy person, really.”

“That's some family, I'm telling you,” Jebby said. “Hard people, believe me.”

“Danny's nice, though,” Dad said, glancing over at me.

“He's pretty nice,” I agreed.

“Of course, you shape wood with a plane, you blame the plane if the work doesn't come true, not the wood,” Jebby said.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Dad asked, his look going over the pair of reading glasses he wore. “You just say anything, Jebby, don't you? You live to be controversial, I swear.”

“I mean, the child is the father to the man. Isn't that right, Clair? The way a child is raised is the way he ends up turning out.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Sure it is,” Jebby said, warming to the subject now that he had his hook in the water. “A plane shapes the wood just as a parent shapes a child. You don't blame the wood if it doesn't come out right, do you? No, of course not. You blame the plane.”

“So parents are carpenters? Or block planes?”

“It's a metaphor,” Jebby said, his eyes running into mine to see if I approved.

“Jebby, you're just a regular philosopher,” Dad said, and went back to fiddling with his project. “It must be like a rush hour inside your head with all those thoughts driving around.”

I finished my egg sandwich and ran my plate under the faucet. Then I straightened up the kitchen from earlier. I put all the ingredients for biscuits away and hung the dishtowel on the door of the fridge. The kitchen looked as tidy as it could be with my dad's engine projects scattered around and Jebby lounging with his heavy boots under the table.

“I'm going up,” I said. “It was a long day.”

“What are you watching these days?” Jebby asked, because we both watched a lot of movies on Netflix.

I told him and he traded back a few recommendations.

“Good night,” I said when we finished.

“I should be shoving off too,” Jebby said, tilting his beer back and finishing it.

I went upstairs and brushed my teeth and washed my face, then climbed into bed. The house felt cold and damp and I switched on a heating pad I sometimes used for a backache. It only took a second to start throwing heat and I felt my body spilling down, down into the bed and through the floor and into the earth. I imagined all my parts coming undone and melting away. Distantly I heard Jebby's bike start, stall, then start again. A while later I listened to Dad turning off lights and slowly making his way upstairs. He sang an ancient Steve Miller song under his breath, but the song mixed with the sounds of the house, and the wind outside, and soon the world went away and didn't come back until the morning.

“I
DON'T KNOW
the family,” Mrs. Cummings said. “The Stewarts? I can't place them.”

“Elwood and Desmond,” I said. “Strange names, I know. And Danny is Elwood's son.”

“Danny, huh?”

She looked at me. Beside her chair she had a bucket of carrots to peel. The tips of her fingers, and her nails, already glowed orange with carrot skin. The door stood open to a nice morning.

“He's Elwood's boy,” I explained.

“Elwood Stewart? Yes, I guess I know the name. Funny that I can't place him. And Desmond?”

“Jebby says Desmond used to steal porch furniture and things from people's houses. Things outside, and he would try to pawn them over at Gary's.”

“Oh, I remember that. I remember him now that you jog my memory. He was some squirrelly son of a sea cook. He was little and wiry and used to wear big black boots, and the rumor was he had a knife that fit in one of the boot tops and that's why he always wore them. That's who you're talking about?”

“Well, I only know Danny.”

“You keep your wits about you. Don't cross those people. Are you sweet on Danny?”

“No, not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we kind of like each other, but it doesn't count for much.”

“That's how it starts,” Mrs. Cummings said. “That's how it always starts.”

I noticed she had new earrings. Or at least earrings I hadn't seen before. They glimmered blue and a little purple like sapphires, only fake, of course.

“Where did they come from?” I asked, mostly to change the subject.

She touched her earlobes and smiled.

“My hubby gave them to me. How about that? He found them in an attic he was cleaning out, doing an odd job for a rental firm down in Concord. The earrings might actually be worth something. At first I thought they were just costume, but good-quality costume, but now as I wear them, I'm not so sure. They have heft and the settings are pretty nice.”

“You should take them in to get them appraised.”

“I intend to,” she said, picking up a carrot and peeling it down as though she were whittling a stick of wood. “I just haven't had a minute.”

First bell went off, loud and crazy. Mrs. Cummings put the heels of her hands over her ears, the carrot and the peeler sticking out like rabbit ears.

“I should go,” I said, standing. “Good luck with the carrots.”

“I'll let you know.”

“About the carrots?”

“No, the earrings. And look out for those Stewarts, you hear?”

I nodded and hurried through the kitchen, then the cafeteria, then into the hallway, and finally into Mr. Masteller's social studies class. Mr. Masteller gave me a sideways look as I found my seat. He sat at his desk and did roll call from there.

That's how school went until Holly texted me during the last period of the day. She said:

Danny in parking lot. Wants to take us for eyes cream.

A dozen questions flitted around my head as I filled up my backpack with books at my locker.

How did Holly know Danny was in the parking lot before I did? And what does Danny want, anyway? Doesn't he have other things he should be doing? Did he text her? And when did he get her number?

Like that. A thousand questions like that.

He was smart about showing up, though. He had Wally with him. When I came out, he stood leaning on his car, Wally sniffing around the parking lot at his feet. A few girls stopped and bent down to pet Wally, and a Frisbee skidded on the pavement right beside the car and made Wally hop to one side, but Danny had his best game going and looked kind of like a rebel—all jacked-up car and sideburns—if you didn't know him any better. Holly already stood next to him, not bothering with Wally, really, but making sure to wave extra hard when she saw me. And it was
weird
that she waved so hard, because I knew it meant to convey an entire string of reassurances:
Hello, how are you, here's this guy you found first, and I'm standing here innocently beside him, and the dog you guys are training together is right here too, no, no way I'm interested in him. He's all yours.

That's what her wave said.

“My treat for ice cream,” Danny said when I came closer. “Let's go to Fat Bob's. What do you say?”

I knew somehow he had rehearsed that offer, because he said it casually, just throwing it off, but underneath he meant it harder.

No matter what, though, it beat riding the bus home.

“Eyes cream,” Holly said, using an old joke line between us. “I'm starving.”

“What do you say?” Danny asked. “Then I can swing you both home. I've got nothing to do this afternoon.”

“Me neither,” Holly said.

I shrugged and did something a little passive-aggressive. I grabbed Wally and hopped in the rear, and when Holly protested that she would get back there, I told her not to bother, I wanted to spend time with Wally. It made everything awkward for a second, until Danny spun his keys around on his index finger and walked around the front of the car. Holly tried to catch me with
meaningful glances,
but I suspected, also, that she didn't hate the idea of riding up front with Danny. It made my bones hurt to think it all the way through.

So we went. Danny revved the engine like a madman as he queued up for getting out of the parking lot. It was a boy thing. Other guys around the lot gunned their engines in answer and the whole thing struck me as idiotic, but inevitable. Holly sat in the front with one hand on the dashboard, the other on the seatback, and she looked like a baseball player taking a lead off first base, her weight shifting back and forth. I knew she wanted to be sure to include me in everything, because to do less was to ratify certain notions about her and Danny.

I put my head against Wally's shoulder and took a deep breath. He smelled like dog, but that was a good smell, I decided. He leaned into me a little and I hugged him hard. His tongue hung like a spool of wrapping paper from his mouth, and his teeth held small bubbles of air near his gum line.