“You look awful,” I tell him, surprised to hear myself say it.
“You look worse.”
We stand on the steps, both of us bone-tired and still trying to figure out what we should do.
“Jack!” Pete, from below.
“Well, Pete, what are we shopping for?” I call down the stairwell.
Pete’s voice booms: “Beer!”
Beer?
I look at Frankie. He shrugs.
“Might as well, Jack,” he says. “I’m too tired to sleep.”
Four cases of beer. Ten pounds of ground beef.
That’s what we bring back to Stairways that afternoon.
“And Ma said to buy all this?” I ask Pete as he swings one of the beer crates my way.
Pete ignores my question. “Take this up to the barn.”
I stagger off with the box of beer clinking in my arms. Behind me, I hear Frankie puffing along with another crate.
“Don’t make no sense,” I say. “We’ve beer and beef enough for an army.”
“That’s the idea,” Pete says.
It’s long after dark when Dad and Sam come back. Sam’s truck sputters off down the lane, honking once in farewell as he goes.
Dad stands in the drive, lifts one arm in a funny kind of way as a goodbye. He sways a little, then turns and comes for the porch in slow, measured steps. It ain’t until he tousles my hair with one heavy hand and the evening breeze blows just right that I smell it on him: alcohol.
Dad and Sam been out drinking all day?
All of a sudden I’m scared.
Everybody knows somebody who got into a tight spot, somebody who turned to the bottle for relief. Lots of those same folks don’t ever let go of it.
Dad goes to where Ma is sitting in the deepening twilight. He lowers himself down next to her, and I listen careful to hear what she’ll say then.
For a while she don’t say anything, and all there is to listen to is the cicadas humming in the trees behind our home. Then: “Did you find them?” Ma asks in a tight voice.
My father nods and lets out a bushel of air. “Eventually. Some hole-in-the-wall joint three counties over.”
He puts his arm around her. My parents sit together.
“Will they come?”
“Hard to tell. They might.” Dad is quiet for a long time. “They might.”
It’s morning on the first day of July. The council vote is set for three o’clock.
Dad has us splitting pieces of firewood to keep us from getting too restless. He and Pete and Will trade out taking swings with the sledge. Frankie and me roll the logs into position and set the wedges for them. I’m kneeling beside one of those stumps and just about to set a new wedge when Mr. Halleck’s black Cadillac eases up our drive. He don’t even bother getting out.
Through his open window he calls to my father: “Got a call this morning, from a friend on the council. They will vote to flood.”
“We’ll testify anyway,” Dad replies instantly.
Mr. Halleck nods, smiles. “Good. I’ll be there.”
Dad stands a minute alone after Mr. Halleck drives off, then he goes inside.
Us boys stand silent around the stump. The screen door slams, and suddenly hot tears spring into my eyes.
So it’s over before we even have a chance to fight.
I don’t understand.
“How can they make up their minds without listening to us?” The fire pours up out of my stomach all at once, burning hot and cold. I’m trembling.
Pete sets down the sledge. “John Thomas Elliot, you stop your crying this instant.”
I don’t ever remember Pete using my full name before.
“Didn’t you hear Dad?” he asks.
“Yes, but—”
“But nothing. We’re going down there and we’re gonna fight anyway.”
Pete looks at me hard.
“But, Pete, we’re gonna lose,” I cry.
“What difference does that make to whether we fight?” he asks. “Load up another wedge.”
I pause. Sniffle a little.
Pete is still looking at me hard.
I do like he says and slide another wedge into place as he lifts that sledge again.
There’s a heaviness in the air when Dad leaves for the council meeting. He’s leaving early to make sure the council don’t vote before it’s supposed to, at three o’clock. He wears his one and only suit, gray, with his brown shoes and the tie Ma got him for Christmas a few years back. Our family gathers on our sinking porch to watch him go.
I’m wrapped up in my quilt again. I got that hot lead feeling in my stomach, but I know it ain’t from any Lyme disease. Butch sits next to me and rests his chin on my lap.
Sometimes, when you know a good thing is over and done and won’t ever come back, everything about it gets a whole lot sweeter. Each little leaf becomes something beautiful. You see the sunlight glowing through it, tracing out all those tiny veins inside. Each blade of grass is suddenly its own living thing, and not just one of a billion others that you stomp over on your way somewhere else. Suddenly it all appears in a way you’ve never seen it before, and it’s so beautiful you wonder what in the world you were looking at in all the time that came before.
You notice it about people too. Looking around me, I see the lines around Ma’s eyes and at the corners of her mouth appear deeper, and for the first time, I see the gray in her dark hair.
I see the scar on Will’s chin where he busted it on the hearth one winter, years back. His face is the color of pale clay, like when he first learned about Bobby Kennedy’s killing. Will was gone for days then. Where could he walk, if all our land got flooded?
Frankie cries silently. It don’t matter it’s not his house or that he’s leaving come summer’s end. Stairways has become his home, and he’s losing it forever too.
The Ford rumbles to life. Dad looks once more at us, at Ma, and then puts the truck in gear and starts off down the lane. We watch him the whole way to Hopkins Road. An awful quiet falls over us then.
I wish like mad somebody would talk. Desperately I search for something to say, but I can’t think of a thing.
Ma speaks in a soft, slow voice: “Pete, fire up the grill.”
Going on in that same, even voice, she tells Will to get all that beef ready and to bring the glassware down from the cupboard. Frankie she asks to put a kettle on the stove for sweet tea.
“John Thomas, I’d like you to rest. On the porch if you like, or in bed, but I don’t want you moving about.”
None of us moves.
Suddenly Ma whirls about and charges across the porch for the screen door. Whipping it open, she shouts over her shoulder in a voice that is suddenly harsh and near to breaking. “Boys, do not make me tell you twice.”
In the yard, my brothers stand about the charcoal grill’s shimmering fire. Will holds the plate of beef patties, bloody in the day’s heat. He has to wave his hand every so often over the plate to keep the flies away. Any other summer afternoon, it would be perfectly ordinary to see them like this. Not today.
None of it makes one lick of sense to me. Feels like somebody’s taken the edges of the world in their hands and is tearing it right down the middle. Dad off to a meeting of liars who will flood our valley; Ma ordering us to prepare for a picnic.
Butch barks.
Turning from the grill’s heat, I spy Sam Williamson coming up the lane. He parks, climbs out, and we see he’s wearing a wrinkled blue shirt that’s too small for him, with a faded brown tie. Blue suspenders hold a pair of pants high over his big belly. Never in my life have I seen Sam in anything but his long underwear, floppy hat, and mud-caked hunting boots.
“Figger better to be early.” Sam stuffs another wad of chewing tobacco in his cheeks and goes to work on it.
Ma’s glassware is set up on the picnic table. We watch from the yard as she pours Sam some iced tea. Sam leaks brown juice over the porch railing before accepting it.
“Pete, you got any idea just what is going on?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I am at a loss, Jack.”
“You see Sam wearing a tie?”