Last Summer Boys(27)

“What’s got into him?” Frankie asks.

“Snake,” Pete observes from where he stands on the porch. “He’s found a big old black snake.”

I squint and try to see. For just an instant, I catch sight of something sleek and shiny—a glimmer of sunlight on scales, a line of quicksilver ribboning for the trees.

“That snake probably had his home under those oak roots,” Will says. “I bet we woke him up with all our chopping.”

We watch Butch follow the snake across the yard, bouncing on his paws, nose to the dirt, tail swishing back and forth.

“Butch,” I call out, “leave that old snake alone.”

Butch ignores me and keeps up his yipping.

Then Caleb Madliner does a funny thing.

Without saying a single word, he gets up from where he’s been sitting on the porch and picks up one of the hatchets we’d left in the yard. Walking his funny walk, he carries it over to where Butch is still bouncing, still barking into the grass. Caleb Madliner lifts the hatchet.

Thunk.

Butch’s barking stops. Caleb’s killed the snake.

Leaving the hatchet stuck in the dirt, Caleb turns, walks back to the porch. He goes back to eating his sandwich. It’s a minute before he looks up and sees all of us looking at him. He turns to me.

“What are you staring at?”

“What’d you do that for?”

“I couldn’t kill your dog, could I? How else was I supposed to get him to stop yipping?”

He takes another bite from his sandwich.





After lunch, Dad drops the tail of the pickup and lays two boards against it so us boys can load up the Ford with as many logs as it will carry. Late afternoon sun pours down around the top of Madliner Hill as we grunt and heave them logs up into the bed, but even the day’s changing light doesn’t make the place look any nicer. Instead, the bleached bone-white walls turn sickly yellow and the shadows from the surrounding trees get longer, weaving across the yard like a web.

At last it’s over and us boys are spent, covered in wood chips and bark. Dad, Pete, and Will climb into the cab and Frankie, Butch, and me set ourselves on top of those logs in the bed. When the Ford rumbles to life underneath us, I think I’ve never been so happy to leave a place.

We’ve just about reached the safety of the trees when, in one of those dark windows, movement and a glint of sunlight on shiny metal catch my eye, and I see her. She’s sitting in a silvery wheelchair that shines back the sunlight, her face peering through one of those old panes so it’s like I’m looking at a framed portrait. Her black hair is pulled back, letting late-afternoon sun break against a hard nose and jutting cheekbones. Mrs. Madliner’s eyes are dark and empty as the space between stars.

I am not even sure that she sees us, but I do it anyway.

I lift my hand and I wave.





Chapter 10


CRASH CALLAHAN





Atop the logs in the pickup bed, Frankie and me hold Butch between us, not talking until we see Madliner House draw back among the trees, shrinking out of sight. Frankie’s face is pale, like the ends of the freshly cut logs. My stomach feels twisted in knots, and it stays that way until we turn us onto Hopkins Road once more. Dad keeps it slow on account of the logs in the bed, but that honeysuckle breeze is still blowing, warm and delicious, and soon as it hits us I feel my body begin to unwind, all the tightness lifting off and floating away like last autumn’s leaves on the wind. Frankie leans his head back against the cab, closing his eyes, one hand absently petting Butch. My dog is a sight: pink tongue hangs out his open mouth, flapping as we go. I rub my knuckles between his ears, the way he likes.

Up front, Will turns the radio on and goes hunting through heavy static for music. Dad lets him, and soon Jimi Hendrix’s electric guitar crackles on summer air as Pennsylvania rolls on past us. On our right, Knee-Deep Meadow beams golden and bright. Beyond its yellowy grasses, Apple Creek ripples under the sun.

It’s too late in the day now to start after that fighter jet, but maybe we can get a swim in after all, wash our bodies and our minds of the Madliners.

There’re some animals you just don’t go near. A possum that looks dead. An old raccoon stumbling through your yard in the middle of the afternoon. A mama snapping turtle looking to lay her eggs. You steer clear of them because they’re dangerous. There are people the same way. If they come looking to make trouble, that’s a different story. But otherwise, you don’t have anything to do with them.

That’s how I feel about the Madliners. I don’t fault Dad for taking us there. Mr. Madliner came and asked him for help, and my father is the last man who will refuse someone help who really needs it. But I still wish he’d just said no.

I’m grateful when Frankie interrupts my thoughts.

“What’s that?” He’s still leaning against the cab, but now he has one hand shielding his eyes as he squints down the road behind us. A yellow cloud is rising over it and there are shapes rolling beneath it, shimmering in the heat, like water.

Butch’s toenails scrape against the logs as he gets up.

Jimi Hendrix’s guitar is still wailing from our radio, but there’s a new sound on the summer wind now: a deep growling of pumping pistons and firing cylinders. Butch answers with a low growl of his own, and his ears twitch.