Last Summer Boys(10)

Mr. Hudspeth says, “Now, it’s different. Now, if you’re famous, you don’t have to go to war.”

My yellow balloon pops. With gum hanging across my chin, I go suddenly very still.

At the counter, the men murmur agreement. There are sighs. Some headshakes.

Mr. Hudspeth picks up his paper cup and leaks more brown juice into it.

Dad makes blue clouds of smoke with his Primo del Rey.

The men keep talking, but their conversation drifts back to where it began: the town, the weather, the crops. Though they are only a few feet away, I barely hear them. An idea is near. Hidden. Close. I don’t know what it is yet, but I feel it.

Beside me, Frankie chews his gum and blows bubbles. Eventually, he hops down and walks from chair to chair, chewing as he goes, stopping to look at some of the magazines stacked on the windowsill.

But I stay absolutely still. My idea is floating beneath my waking mind, like a granddaddy trout easing along under the water’s surface. I close my eyes, try to concentrate. The voices of the men fade, and I hear other sounds in the barbershop: the hum of the ceiling fan and the jingling of the metal cord hanging down as its end traces circles in the air over my head. I start chewing again, slowly, hoping maybe that will lure the idea up from the dark, up into the sun.

I come back to the voice of a man: my father, calling my name.

“Jack.” My father is already at the door, dark cigar trailing smoke. “Come on, son.”

I sigh to no one but myself as I clamber down from my seat. Mr. Hudspeth leans over the counter, over the newspaper with the pictures of students burning their draft cards, and takes my hand and gives it a good shake.

I hold on to his hand for just a moment, hold and hope that maybe that will bring the idea. Nothing.

“You all right, boy?” Mr. Hudspeth asks.

I blink. “I just wanted to thank you for the gumball, sir.”

He smiles. Yellow teeth below a bristly, red mustache. “Good, aren’t they?”

I nod. He spits again into his cup. I let go of his hand.

Frankie and I follow my father out into a hotter, emptier Main Street. The breeze is gone now, and the sun beats down as we walk back to church.

We find Pete, Will, and Ma waiting for us on the steps. I look for Anna May, but she and the other kids have gone. It’s only my family standing against the emerald cornfields.

I’m still chasing that idea in my mind when we climb into the Ford for the ride home, but like so many other fish, it’s gone deep.





Evening comes, soft and velvety. After dinner, Will argues with Dad about politics and Senator Kennedy in the back room. On the television, Walter Cronkite tells them both, though they ain’t listening, “That’s the way it is.”

Ma sends Frankie and me upstairs to wash. I let Frankie go first in the old white tub with the claw feet. I lie on my bed and wait and watch for the first stars in the purple dark outside my window.

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.

What’s my wish? To keep Pete from dying in Vietnam.

Below, the screen door wheezes open, slaps against the frame. I hear footsteps pound the porch boards, crunch gravel: Will. Leaving, walking off again, furious from his fight with Dad about Bobby Kennedy and the Democrats, Richard Nixon and the Republicans. And the war.

One of these days, he’ll go for good.

No, don’t say that. Not Will too.

Frankie appears, smelling like soap with his dark hair sticking every which way, and it’s my turn to wash in the white tub. As I pour warm water over my head, my mind goes back to the barbershop, to Mr. Hudspeth’s voice playing like a tape recorder over and over and over again:

Now, if you’re famous, you don’t have to go to war.





Chapter 5


THE PLAN





I wake to find my idea bobbing on the line in the shallow end of my brain, like an embarrassed trout that ought to know better.

I lie still, barely breathing and almost crying with relief because I know now how to save my brother—and it all depends on my cousin.

“Frankie!” I whisper. “Come on and get dressed! Come on now!”

I give him a shake and reach for a shoe. My fingers are trembling so badly from the excitement, I can barely get the knot tied.

Frankie comes up from his mattress blinking, one hand feeling for his glasses.

“They’re on the windowsill,” I tell him.

“What time is it?”

“Shh!” I jerk my head toward the bunk, to Pete’s and Will’s sleeping shapes. They can’t know. Can’t have any part of it. Not Ma or Dad neither. Nobody can know—until the right time, and then everyone will know.

“About seven o’clock. Now hurry up.”

“Where we going?”

“Apple Creek.”

“What for?”

The truth: because I can’t have Pete and Will hearing what I have to tell you.

“Just because,” I say instead.

“At seven o’clock in the morning?”

“Best time of day—as good as any other. Now get dressed while I grab us some breakfast.”

I leave him on the mattress and take the spiral stairs two at a time to the kitchen, where I spread some butter on a pair of yesterday’s biscuits and stuff both in my overalls before screwing the lid onto a jar of orange juice. Frankie is at the bottom of the stairs by the time I finish. His shirttail hangs out of his pants. His hair dives off his head at odd angles.