Last Summer Boys(3)
Around us, the day blazes to its hottest time. Sky’s grown darker in the west. Up in the cab, the Bob Dylan song has fizzled out. We’ve lost the station. Will twists the dial trying to find another, but all he gets is static.
The Ford follows the curve of the road, and Frankie’s suitcase slides over the bed. Rip-rip-rip.
I decide to try again to make conversation.
“We’re awful excited you’re here, Frankie. Ma’s made a blueberry cobbler for dessert tonight, and Dad said he’ll drive us into town to the movie theater, if we want.”
Us Elliot boys love the movies. First one I ever saw was Moby Dick at a Saturday matinee. Dad piled us into the Ford and drove us down to the State Theatre on Main Street. That white whale scared the life out of me, but Will insisted it was Captain Ahab who was the most frightening. That made no sense to me, though Will’s smarter than I’ll ever be so I figure he’s right.
The cornfields have dropped below and behind us, a swaying green ocean of their own now that Pete’s driven us into those blue Pennsylvania hills that looked so far away before. More often than not, you’ll find streams curling around their rocky toes, passing between gray sycamore trunks. There’s panfish in the shallows, sunlight glinting off their flat bodies, and in the deeper, greener holes, the trout sit fat and lazy.
Pennsylvania’s rocky ribs close in around us as we wind through miles and miles of narrow mountain passes, dark in the shade of sycamores, poplars, and pines, until all of a sudden we bust into a sweep of honey-colored meadow. The smell of honeysuckle comes to us on warm wind.
“Almost home now, Frankie.”
Frankie isn’t looking at me. Instead, he’s staring at the sparkling ribbon of water rolling deep and wide before us: Apple Creek. The road bends toward it, drawn as if by magic, and now we’re following the creek upstream.
Beside us the creek twists like a fat black snake in a patch of Bermuda grass, past Jungle Junction, where drifters sit by glowing campfires waiting to trade ghost stories for fresh-caught trout (the bigger your trout, the better your story); past Blood Root Mountain, where Crash Callahan and his riders race motorcycle bikes down impossible cliffs of black earth; right up to the Hopkins Bridge, a rusty pile of metal that shakes and rattles every time our truck dares across its brittle bones.
At the top of the next hill is Stairways.
At the top of the next hill is home.
My dog waits at the end of the dirt road.
You might remember I mentioned Butch already. I guess he really belongs to all of us—Dad and Ma, Pete, Will, and me—but since he and I spend the most time together, I think it’s all right to just say he’s mine.
Old Butch waits for Pete to park us beside the barn, then trots over, tail swishing back and forth. Frankie sees him, and his eyes grow wide.
“Don’t you worry about Butch,” I say. “He’s as gentle a soul as can be.”
Butch showed up on our porch one day, a lean, dusty-coated German shepherd. He was starving. Dad took him a piece of meat and smoked a cigar while he ate it. When Butch was done eating, he laid down and put his chin on the toe of Dad’s boot. He’s been our dog ever since. Ma says God puts people in your life at different times for different reasons. I know it’s true for dogs too. Butch has been my best friend long as I can remember.
I grab Frankie’s suitcase and lead him for the house. Butch comes with us, sniffing Frankie’s pant leg. Dragging Frankie’s suitcase up the porch steps, I tell him Butch ain’t ever hurt anybody, which is mostly true.
Our house is two hundred years old. Made from stone, it didn’t have electricity when Ma and Dad first moved in. Electrical company man was too afraid to run cables through the attic because of the snakes, so Ma took his ladder, hitched up her skirts, and did it herself.
People throughout the county call our house Stairways because of the steep spiral staircase that rises up from the parlor, up through three floors, all the way to the room where my brothers and I sleep under the attic. Other things sleep in the attic, above the rafters. Snakes shed their papery skins on hot summer nights (sometimes I can hear them if I lie still and hold my breath), and come wintertime, the screech owls keep me awake all night.
My brothers and me like the room just fine anyway. Our bedroom window lets us look down on our yard and the lane, and Apple Creek beyond that. The window is convenient for sneaking out late at night, too, by way of the gutter down to the porch roof.
“This is where we sleep,” I tell Frankie as we puff up the last of those steep steps. “Those bunk beds are Pete and Will’s. That bed right there is mine. You’ll sleep on the mattress by the window.”
He looks at the mattress, then at me.
“You can look at any of Pete’s records, but don’t touch any of Will’s newspaper clippings about Bobby Kennedy or he’ll get awful sore.”
Will positively loves Bobby Kennedy, one of the men running for president, and reads anything he can find about him—books, newspapers, magazines. He’s got campaign posters on the wall, with pictures of the senator in a suit and tie waving, and he even has a blue-and-white campaign pin on his bookshelf. ALL THE WAY WITH RFK it reads. Dad likes Bobby Kennedy about as much as he likes Bob Dylan. He says he’s a runt whose family is ruining the country. Dad wants Nixon to win the election.