Last Summer Boys(15)

Frankie wipes his eyes, still frowning, but the anger’s gone out from him, out of his voice now. “And I think that’s why I want to help you, Jack. Because I can’t protect my father. But maybe I can help you save your brother. Maybe I can help you keep Pete.”

The candle’s tiny flame sways, and the liquid wax around the wick brims over the edge and goes running down the candle, cooling and slowing as it goes.

“Frankie, I had no idea,” I manage, and I feel tears starting in my own eyes now. “I’m sorry. God’s honest truth, I’m sorry. And I’m thanking you from the bottom of my heart for helping me.”

Frankie sniffs one last time and wipes his nose with his sleeve.

“Forget it.”





The next morning I find Pete whittling on the porch. Will sits on the picnic table, reading a newspaper article on Bobby Kennedy, who’s ahead in the polls.

I come right out and say it: “Pete, me and Frankie want to come along with you and Will to find that old wrecked fighter jet.”

Will, from the table: “No.”

Pete pauses, his knife perched at the edge of the stick. He cocks an eye at me through his long, straw-colored hair.

Will again: “No. Pete, they can’t come!”

Pete grins and closes his pocketknife. “That’s a hard slog into them hills, Jack. A whole county away and likely bombs laying about. Is Frankie tough enough for it?”

Frankie comes around the side of the porch. “Even city boys know not to step on bombs.”

Will throws the paper down. “It’s miles away over rough country. No way!”

“Frankie’s plenty tough!” I tell him. “He’ll do just fine!”

Pete turns his green eyes on our cousin. “You ever been camping, Frankie?”

“Never.”

My jaw drops. “Never?”

Will grins triumphantly and jabs a finger at us. “See? Useless! Pete, tell him he can’t come.”

“I am not useless,” Frankie shoots back. “I can carry whatever needs carrying.”

I feel the whole thing slipping away. “Frankie has to come!” I cry out. “He just has to.”

Will draws a deep breath, and I can tell he’s about to let loose, but Pete waves his hand and everybody goes quiet.

“If Frankie can prove he’s tough enough, then he can come. If not, then he can’t.”

Will’s face darkens. He’s been overruled and he’s mad.

I grin. “Ha!”

“I’ll be the final judge of whether he’s tough enough,” Pete declares. “And I’ll decide what he has to do to prove it.” His eyes sweep over the three of us, daring us to argue with him. Will is fuming; I can almost see smoke coming from his nostrils, but he keeps quiet.

Beside me, Frankie says not a word, but his dark eyes are leveled right at Pete.

Pete flicks his pocketknife open again and goes back to whittling his stick.

“What do I have to do?” Frankie asks.

Pete don’t even look up. “Nothing too hard. Jump into the Sucker Hole is all. Off them railroad pilings.”

My eyes grow wide. “The railroad pilings?”

Will grins. “Hope city boys can swim,” he says as he goes back to his newspaper.

“Of course they can!” I insist, hoping hard that it’s true. “You’ll see.”

Frankie is silent, but his eyes jump to me.

“Oh, we will,” Pete says. “This afternoon.”

I lead Frankie for the barn, walking slow and easy. When we get far enough away from the porch that my brothers can’t hear, he whispers to me.

“I have to jump from where?”

“Just off some old railroad pilings, that’s all.”

“And what is the Sucker Hole?”

“A nice, deep part of Apple Creek. It’s great for fishing. It’s great for catching suckers.”

Frankie shakes his head. “I’ll say.”





Chapter 7


THE SUCKER HOLE





The Sucker Hole is dark and green and flat as a windowpane, a still stretch of Apple Creek that lies between the teetering stone pillars of the ruined Coatesville railroad bridge. On either bank, the crumbly stacks lean toward one another like old men in a long talk, moss and tufts of green grass poking through here and there and flicking in the wind like hair on their stony scalps.

The builders of the Coatesville line placed those stones a long time ago. They laid tracks, they raised a bridge, and poor Apple Creek had to amble along underneath it while freight trains thundered across day and night. Then came a war. The railroad and its bridge were stripped, their steel skeletons carried off to cities to be made into guns or tanks or bombs, and all that was left were those two towers—and ’course Apple Creek, same now as it was then or would ever be.

The creek took them in, those lonely heaps of stone, and now herons nest on top of the stacks and fish collect around their bases in thick, silvery clouds—minnows and smallmouth bass and largemouth bass and trout.

Or, as we call them, suckers, which is how this place came by the name the Sucker Hole.

The piling this side of Apple Creek is charred black in places from a brush fire long ago. The moss grew back extra thick and soft, but you can still fit your fingers in between the rough stone blocks. That’s extra helpful for the climb, near thirty feet straight to the top.