Last Summer Boys(43)

“. . . I guess we can.”

“’Course we can. Let’s go.”

I start off the steps, but Will stays rooted where he is.

Behind him, inside the church, Ma is coming, her church ladies following like chicks. Trailing them are Dad and Pastor Fenton.

Will’s head suddenly snaps toward Anna May.

“Hey, Anna May?”

“Yes, Will?” she says real fast.

“Do you—?”

It ain’t just a thunderclap that comes then, it’s an explosion. With it, the sky opens, and it seems like every drop of water in the county comes down over the church parking lot. The kids scatter. Ma’s church-lady friends flood on past us and let out a whoop as they make for their cars, holding the white paper pamphlets over their heads.

I watch Main Street disappear into silvery sheets.

“Damn it all,” I say, even though we’ve just gotten out of church.

Will shuts his eyes and tilts his head back. Anna May ain’t moved, but she seems to be standing farther away now than before.

“Damn it all,” Will breathes, softly.

Dad, Ma, and Pete come up, Ma telling us to come on because we’re going to pick up Frankie and warning me not to dawdle, as if there’s any place to go now. I follow my family into warm summer rain. The cracks in the pavement are already filling up with splashing water, but I still hear Anna May when she says it, her voice faint over the rain.

“Damn it all.”





Chapter 14


THE EXPEDITION





When I wake up the next morning, my mind is still so wrapped up in Will’s wonderful fight that at first I hardly hear what he says when he tells Frankie and me:

“We’re going hunting for that fighter jet today. Pack your things and be ready by high noon.”

Will heads down the stairs to the kitchen, leaving me in my bed and Frankie on his mattress, both of us dazed and sitting like fools with our mouths open.

Frankie looks at me.

“We’re actually going!” he says.

The realization comes like the boom after fireworks, after the flash and dazzle’s disappeared and it’s nothing but spidery white clouds drifting through the night. We’re going on an expedition to find that wrecked fighter jet.

“This is it, Jack!” says Frankie. “The big story! The one to really make Pete famous. Peter Elliot Discovers Wreck of Long-Lost Fighter Jet. That’s the title that saves your brother!”

I can hardly move, can hardly breathe.

“Well, come on!” Frankie says, climbing off his mattress. “Will said high noon! What do we need packed by then?”

A million items cross my mind but I can’t speak a word, and then it all comes out, and it comes out as a laugh, and it’s all I can say but somehow it says it all.





At noon we meet in the yard in front of Stairways. Everything we need is in a pile before us: walking sticks, pocketknives, a spool of fishing string, a compass, canteens, two cans of beans, a book of matches, a coil of rope, fishing hooks, a roll of tinfoil, flashlights, blankets, an old fire-blackened skillet, a cardboard box of pancake mix, and a half-dozen potatoes. Butch eases over to sniff the potatoes, and I have to push him away.

Pete sets down a giant can of grape juice so big it looks like an artillery round for a tank. No clue where he got it.

Will frowns at it, then turns back to the map he’s got splayed over one knee. It’s Dad’s map and I know he ain’t asked permission to borrow it. With a worn-down stub of a pencil, he begins drawing.

“We’ll go north along Apple Creek, past Devil’s Hole, and pitch camp tonight here.”

He draws an X. The map crinkles.

“Old Sam says the crash site’s somewhere east of there. We’ll cross the creek and start the search tomorrow morning.”

We divvy up the equipment and load our packs. Pete grunts as he lifts his; that tank-round of grape juice swishes somewhere inside.

My brothers don’t know it, but I’ve packed a little something extra too. Will may have pinched Dad’s map, but I pinched his Kodak camera—and two rolls of film.

There ain’t a doubt in my mind whose sin is greater, but I figure it’s worth it.

When Frankie submits his story to the newspaper, it’s going to have photographs.





There’s no feeling like the kind you get when you begin a journey to find something you ain’t ever found before. Us boys were always going places in these hills, crawling through streambeds or climbing haystacks or sneaking across railroad bridges or wherever to find Lord knows what. But whatever things we found—arrowheads, old snakeskins or snakes still in their skins, or salamanders, or four-leafed clovers—we’d seen them all before.

None of us has ever laid eyes on a fighter jet.

Every boy loves the idea of flying. Some want to be astronauts, like Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin, and that’s sure something special. But astronauts don’t fly into a battle in the sky. That’s why us Elliot boys love fighter pilots. They’re fighters.

And though we tell Ma that we’ve decided to go camping for a time with Frankie, when my brothers and cousin and my big galoot of a dog set off to follow Apple Creek north for the ten thousandth time, it ain’t like any time before.