Frankie pours himself a glass from my pitcher of lemonade. After a long, slow sip, he sits back in his chair and cocks one eye at me.
“We went swimming at the Sucker Hole,” he says. “We jumped off the pilings for a while. Then we raced. Pete won every time, but Will came close once—”
“They always do that,” I interrupt. “What happened to Will?”
“Hold your horses!” Frankie says. “We’d just finished racing when suddenly a voice calls out to us. A voice from across the creek.”
He sips lemonade.
“Who was it?” I ask.
Frankie looks at me. “Anna May Fenton.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Her again? What was she doing at the Sucker Hole? Did she bring a whole pack of girls to spy on you again?”
Frankie shakes his head. “It was only Anna May. Nobody else. And she wasn’t spying. In fact, she called out to announce herself. And when we looked up, there she was on the far bank, walking backward toward us.”
“Backward?”
“Backward,” Frankie says, “so she couldn’t see us. Then she says, ‘I don’t mean to embarrass you, so I won’t turn around. I’ll stand here until you get your clothes on.’”
“Are you fibbing?” I ask. I look at him close.
Frankie puts a hand over his heart. “God’s honest truth.”
“So what happened next?” I ask suspiciously.
“Well, Will thought it was a trick, but Anna May called out again. ‘No, it is not a trick,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want to talk with me then I’ll just leave.’ Well, that did it. We got ourselves dressed real quick. But even then, Anna May wouldn’t turn around. She said, ‘I’m embarrassed for my sake now, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just stand like this until I’ve said what I have to say.’”
“And what did she have to say?” I ask.
Frankie shakes his head. “She only wanted to talk to Will, so she asked Pete and me to leave.”
“You mean you didn’t hear what they said?” I ask incredulously.
“No, of course we did,” Frankie replies. “Soon as we were out of sight, Pete and me doubled back so we could listen.”
This is the oddest thing I’ve ever heard. I imagine it: cranky old Will on one side of the creek and beautiful Anna May on the other side standing with her back to him.
“So what’d she say to Will?” I ask.
“She asked him why we hadn’t been to the Sucker Hole for a while. She said she’d been coming every week since the day she found us sleeping there, hoping to see us again.”
“Anna May came to the Sucker Hole every week hoping to see us?”
“Not us,” Frankie says seriously. “Just Will.”
My mind does a somersault. This is shaping up to be the weirdest story I’ve ever heard.
Frankie goes on, “Will asked her to turn around so they could talk face-to-face. Well, she did. But then a funny thing happened: they stopped talking. Both of them just stood there staring across the water at each other. It seemed to last forever. It was downright boring, until Anna May took a tiny step forward. That did it. The bank she was standing on was all worn away beneath her. It was nothing but baked mud. She took that step and it crumbled!”
“She fell in the creek?” I gasp, sitting up. “What’d Will do?”
Frankie laughs. “You’ve never seen a boy move so fast in your life. Will swam over and got hold of her and pulled her out.”
Will rescues Anna May from drowning—and I missed it!
“And then what?” I’m on the edge of my seat.
“She was embarrassed,” Frankie says. “And she was crying. And there’s poor Will trying to wring out the hem of her dress. It didn’t do any good because they were both soaked. Eventually she stopped crying and the two of them went back to staring at each other.” Frankie sits back. He sighs. “And then he kissed her.”
“What?”
Frankie nods.
“On the lips?”
Frankie nods again.
I can’t believe it. Will not only rescued her; he kissed her.
“What happened next?” I ask.
Frankie shrugs. “Will asked if he could walk her home. Last we saw, the two of them were walking down the trail together. Will never even looked back.”
I’m quiet for a while as I try to make sense of it all. Of all days to miss being at the creek! Will kisses Anna May at the Sucker Hole, and I’m stuck with Ma and her church-lady friends playing bridge.
Still, it is strange, to think of your older brother kissing a girl. It’s just something I ain’t ever thought of before. Anna May is pretty and all . . . but to kiss her?
Frankie don’t seem at all bothered by it. He sits with his hands behind his head and a dreamy look on his face. Over in Knee-Deep Meadow, the crickets start up.
“Do you think they’re having a good time on their walk?” I ask Frankie.
“I imagine they are, Jack.”
Will returns later that night, when the moon is low over the meadow and everything seems soft in milky light. He crosses the porch planks slowly, easily. He don’t say a word to us, just smiles kind of gentle and goes right on in.
All through breakfast next morning we wait for him to say something, anything, about it. But he doesn’t. He just eats his eggs and drinks his orange juice. Afterward he wanders off somewhere with a couple of sheets of lined paper and a pencil behind one ear. We watch him drift toward the meadow.
“I can hardly believe it,” I say. “Will Elliot writing love letters.”
Pete leans against the railing, watching him go. “I guess sometimes things work out.”
“Think we’ll ever see him again?” Frankie asks.
“He needs a stamp if he’s going to mail that thing,” Pete says. “He’ll be back.”
Next afternoon, it’s just me on the porch, sipping my lemonade and watching our valley gleam golden and beautiful under the sun.
Things are duller than ever now that Will’s in love. He disappeared early, walking toward town. Pete decided he needed some money and went to pick up a few hours at the gas station. Dad’s at the game preserve. Ma is in town. I figure I’ll ask Frankie to play another game of Battleship, but he just shakes his head and takes off across the flagstones for the barn.
“Sorry, Jack. I’ve got writing to do,” he tells me.
I got no idea why he’s even bothering anymore, but I let him go anyway. No use making Frankie miserable about our failed expedition.
Alone on the porch, I start to get mad about it all. I know I shouldn’t, but a good part of me just wants to blame it all on Caleb Madliner. If we hadn’t run into him in the creek that day, well, maybe we’d have had time enough to find that fighter after all. I’m chewing that over in my head when I hear another car coming up the lane.
It’s a police car. State trooper. But he ain’t got his lights flashing or his siren sounding. It pulls up in front of our barn, and I see there are two people in the front seat. Only one of them gets out of the car, though.
It’s Kemper.
He glances about the yard. Then when he’s certain Butch ain’t coming for him, he begins to study our house and yard with his black ferret eyes. He stands there a long time, blinking in the sun. The way he looks at our land makes the skin go tight across the back of my head.
Then he sees me. He scowls.
“Your parents here?” he calls from the drive. The voice is squeaky.
“No, they are not,” I tell him. “Whatever you’ve got to say, you can to me.”
Behind him, the police officer rises from the car and looks about. He rests his hands on his belt and there’s a sound like a little metal jingle.
Kemper crosses the drive for the porch.
“You the one threw those stones, aren’t you?” He licks his lips as he comes and looks around him again, like he’s checking to see if anybody else is here.
When he gets close, he puts one polished black shoe on the porch step. Then he looks me over. I feel his eyes on my faded shirt, the one that used to be Will’s. Those eyes jump to the patch on my pants, the one Ma sewed on after I cut up the knee running.