Grand’s other articles were of fewer stars. He covered everything from activities of the local chamber of commerce to the farmer studying drought-resistant vegetation. He wrote about craft exhibitions, quilt bazaars, and the marijuana growing in a cornfield.
About the movie theater renovations, bigger screens, plusher seats. About the local fan drive and the mayor’s continued effort to keep the town cool. Boring things he was unable to make interesting, so he’d crumple them into a ball. Gripping this ball like the old ones he used to. Winding up, a slow pitch to the wastebasket. That was his baseball those days.
I went to the wastebasket, unrolled the balls, and found so many ways Sal was being blamed. Grand quoted a man as saying if Sal touches your mailbox, you’ll get nothing but bad news.
“I’ve taken to freshly paintin’ my own mailbox every couple of hours,” the man said, “that way if he does touch my mailbox, I’ll know it ’cause wet paint always saves things.”
A woman claimed she’d seen Sal in the middle of the train tracks.
“He was shinin’ a small penlight on a ball of foil. A couple hours later, I turned the radio on and heard about that terrible train crash in the next town. So many folks died, and all ’cause the conductor said he was blinded by a bright, white light.”
No need in saying there wasn’t even a train crash. I crumpled the articles back up as I’d found then. When I turned, Grand was there, standing in the doorway.
He didn’t say anything as he walked past me to lay his notepad and pen by the typewriter. I knew something was wrong by the way he rubbed his head, as if there were a drum there, pounding until it’d won.
He looked out the window and I would be reminded of him doing just that years later when I read a line in a book that spoke of water slipping out a crack in the bottom of a jug.
“Grand?”
He looked out at the columns of the Parthenon painted on his walls. His bedroom was Greece, and Mom had made it as classic as Aristotle.
“They’re gonna throw stones at the house, Fielding. Later tonight, they’re going to throw stones. Yellch told me. I saw ’im just now.”
“I thought—”
“That he don’t speak to me no more?” He finished my sentence with a look down. “Yeah. I thought him warnin’ me ’bout the stones, I thought it might mean we could be friends again. But he said he was just tellin’ me ’cause of that time I saved ’im from the stones.”
“Why they gonna throw stones? ’Cause of you?”
I thought for a moment he’d ask me to call him a faggot just one more time. The way he looked at me, it was as if family was the point of collapse and all happiness was going, gone, and impossible.
“No, Fielding, not because of me. Not this time, at least. They’re doin’ it ’cause of Sal.”
“What should we do?”
“Stay away from the windas, I reckon.”
“We will do more than that.”
We turned to Dad’s voice and him standing in the doorway. He told us to follow him outside to the cannas. Along the way, Sal tagged on and I told him about the coming stones. His voice cracked when he apologized.
“It’s because of me.”
Dad said everything would be all right. Then he instructed us to pull up all the cannas. Mom hovered on the porch, yelling at us to stop. Dad said, to my surprise, “Come out and make us.”
She placed her foot on the top porch step. It was the farthest I’d ever seen my mother from the house. “Another,” I whispered. “Come on, Mom, just one more.”
She looked up at the sky, yanked her foot back, and shrugged her shoulders, probably said the word rain. We jerked up the cannas harder, and she looked away. When we returned to the porch with the flowers, she asked for one. Sal handed her an Alaska.
And then we waited. On the front porch we sat. The flowers were so tall, I felt like I was holding another me. We waited in silence for the danger ahead. No longer ahead, coming around the corner. Marching down the lane. Bare feet slapping dirt and led by a short man in white.
Mom lifted the bundle of flowers from Sal and added them to Dad’s.
“Best if they not see ’im.”
With Sal and Mom under the darkness of the porch, me, Dad, and Grand walked to the edge of the yard. First they came fast, determined to use the stones in their hands. Stones that filled their palms and stretched their fingers into scary bends at the knuckles.
They slowed when they saw us, looking around at each other, uncertain of what to do. They had not discussed this situation. They had planned to see only the brick of our house, the windows, the door. It’s easy to throw stones at these things. It is not so easy to throw stones at people they know. People not like the boy and the devil they’d created from that very image.
They met us at the edge of our yard. They were quiet. We were quiet. Somewhere a cricket wasn’t.
Finally, Dad spoke. “Who wants one of my wife’s blue ribbon cannas? Hmm? All they cost is a stone. One stone for a flower. Sounds like a bargain to me.”