Something ain’t right.
I lie awake in my bed and wait for my mind to catch up with what my body already knows.
Pink sky outside my window. Trees are still dark. The morning around me is silent.
And that’s how I know.
Stairways ain’t ever this quiet, not even so early in the morning.
Ma and Dad should be awake, in the kitchen together. But I don’t smell Dad’s coffee. I don’t hear nothing sizzling on the stove.
Quickly, I look to my brothers’ bunk. Both of them are still sound asleep. Same with Frankie on his mattress.
Quietly, I slip out of my bed and steal down the stairs to the kitchen.
My parents are at Grandma Elliot’s old table. Dad has his arm around Ma. Her face has a hard look to it and her eyes are red around the edges. She’s been crying.
“What’s going on?” I ask them.
My parents see me.
“Is Will awake?” my father asks.
I shake my head, but then a groggy voice behind me says, “I’m right here.”
Will is at the bottom of the stairs. His hair sticks off his head at angles.
He looks at our parents, then at me. “What’s wrong?”
Ma gets up. She moves toward him, arms out.
But Will steps away, a look of alarm on his face.
“Tell me what’s wrong!” he cries suddenly, his eyes wide.
Dad’s chair scrapes across the linoleum floor. In a low voice he tells Will: “Son, Senator Kennedy’s been shot. He’s dead.”
Chapter 12
TROUBLE IN THREES
He isn’t getting up, that man in the dark suit and tie. His sandy-haired head stays down, resting on the kitchen floor, and for once that face looks so peaceful. The man’s eyes are half-shut, like he’s taking a nap, and his body under the suit appears to be draining, losing its shape, the arms and legs splayed out more like a scarecrow than a senator. He seems to be relaxing more and more by the minute.
Everyone else is screaming.
Waves of people crash against each other. Some try to get closer. Others push them back. One woman shouts loud enough that a microphone records her panicked voice. My family and all of America hear her wailing on the evening news that night.
“Not again! Not again!”
Bobby Kennedy lies in a pool of his own blood, shot in the head by a man disguised as a cook in a hotel kitchen. He is dying on a million TV screens across the country. All we can do is watch.
Bobby Kennedy, like his brother the president, is dead.
And it’s just like it says in the Book of Ecclesiastes: Nothing under the sun is new.
Will is gone.
Just started across the fields by himself the day after Kennedy’s killing, his long legs carrying him away over the spine of our hill in the early morning light.
I’m through the screen door and almost off the porch after him when Pete stops me.
“Let him be, Jack.”
“But, Pete, he’s hurting!”
“It’s a time for hurting. Let him be.”
I do like Pete says and watch Will slip over the horizon.
Day breaks over the world and it burns hot and fierce. Knee-Deep Meadow’s golden yellow burns brown. The valley’s far wall is lost in haze. It stays lost all day in murderous heat. But Will does not return. The sky goes orange in a dusty twilight, and the pines burn black against all that bright color. Shadows pool at the bottom of our hill, preparing for their long march to our house. Still Will ain’t come back.
He don’t show for dinner or for Walter Cronkite on the TV.
Night comes down around our stone house, hot and humid. Dad greets the dark in smoky silence on the porch, his cigar burning slowly between his fingertips. Seems he’s taking a while with it tonight.
I stay and wait with him.
There’s flashlights on the wall inside. We could grab them and go looking for him. But Dad stays in his chair and so I do too.
When the cigar burns down to just a stub and Will still ain’t back, Dad makes a move like he’s going inside for the night. He drops the stub, crushes it out under his shoe. But instead of heading in, he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out another. He bites off the end, puts it between his teeth, and lights it. Fresh blue smoke spills through his knuckles. In yellow porch light, the scar on his hand shines a ghostly white.
“Go on up to bed now, Jack.”
I hadn’t been tired till then. But after Dad speaks, a great weariness invades my body and I feel like my bones have all turned to lead. It’s a great effort to even pull the screen door open. A greater one still to climb the stairs to my room.
Frankie is sprawled on his mattress, his arms and legs splayed out. At the sight of him, my mind runs right back to the TV and bleeding Bobby Kennedy lying that same way on the hotel floor. I push the thought away as I fall into my own bed.
It’s a jumpy kind of sleep, like you get when you’re sick with a fever. It must be hours later when I come all the way awake again, my whole body trembling, the sheets clinging to me, and the dead face of Bobby Kennedy that has somehow become Will’s face staring at me in the dark.
Will’s bed is still empty.
I sit, awake in my bed, and shiver in the warm night until a few minutes later, when I catch a whiff of the breeze coming through my open window:
Dad’s cigar. Still burning.
The days after Kennedy’s killing come hot and dry, with the sun hanging like a ball of white fire over our valley. Tree leaves scorch and crinkle. Islands appear in the middle of Apple Creek; the fish retreat to their darker holes.
I’m first one to spot the dust clouds rising at the bottom of our hill.
I raise a holler to Dad just as Kemper’s big black car comes out of the trees.
Kemper’s horn blares twice, but he never gets out. Through the dusty windshield he checks around for Butch. Then the tiny eyes fall on me. As best I can with my dry mouth, I spit.
Dad takes his time coming around the barn. Hands in his pockets. Walking easy. Real easy.
My father is mad.
Kemper rolls the window down and sticks out one arm. His small fingers clutch an envelope, and he waves it at my father like a flag of truce. Dad stops just out of reach of it and stands still beside the idling car.
“Days are numbered, Gene,” Kemper says. “Take a look and see for yourself. A judge has ruled that the county can have this land if they want it.” He pauses, adds, “And we want it.”
“If,” Dad says.
“When,” Kemper corrects. “Read it. Sell this place while you can. I’m giving you a last chance. This is the best offer you can get, and it’s not half as good as what you could have had last time. Chase me out now, I promise it won’t ever be this good again. Sell the house now. Half-price. Or I’ll take it from you and you’ll get next to nothing.”
It ain’t a big stone, just the closest one I can find, but I throw it hard as I can.
It dings off the side of the big car.
“He said no, the answer’s no!” I shout.
Before I know it, I’ve grabbed another.
“Even my dang dog knows what that means. Why can’t you figure it out?” I let fly again. This time my stone lands right on his windshield and leaves a thin spiderweb when it bounces off.
“Jack!” Dad whirls.
I’m on my hands and knees looking for another stone when Pete appears, grabs me from behind. My brother lifts me right off the ground and swings me away under one arm, carrying me toward the barn.
I fight him furious, but he’s holding me upside down and all the blood rushes to my head and it’s no use. I give up and just let the tears roll up my forehead to the earth that swings side to side above me.
Pete carries me past our barn to the woodpile, flips me over, and sets me down on one of the logs.
Standing back, he folds his arms.
“Why don’t he just go away and stay away?” I bawl. “Why’s he keep coming up here and botherin’ us like he does?”