Last Summer Boys(6)

“Aunt Addie, can I have some more meat loaf?”

Frankie’s voice is so soft I can hardly hear him over the rain. At his question, Ma’s mouth opens. I hold my breath for a whole minute while Ma ladles more of the loaf onto his plate. Next thing I know, Frankie’s telling her how good it is and asking for more carrots. By the time Ma’s done telling him they come from her garden, and how the rabbits have been after them all spring, she’s forgotten me and my question.

I throw a sideways glance at Frankie, but he keeps on talking. I never heard him talk so much. Didn’t know he could.

“It’s beautiful here,” Frankie says, again in his small, quiet voice. “I’ve never been anyplace like it. And it’s so . . . far from anybody else.”

That ain’t true. Old Sam Williamson’s trailer is a mile down Hopkins Road, and the Glattfelders own a farm five miles beyond it. And there’s one more family, across Apple Creek on the other side of Knee-Deep Meadow: the Madliners. We don’t see too much of them. That’s fine by me because Mr. Madliner is as sour-faced a man as you’ll find. His wife, Elmira, is awful sick, so that she can’t hardly walk. And their son, Caleb . . . well, there’s some people you just steer clear of.

Dad’s cigar glows orange and bright. “Get the boys to show you around.”

“Sure, we’ll show him around.” Pete grins.

Across the table, Will looks up from his paper and frowns.

“We’ll introduce Frankie to the bears,” Pete goes on. “And the cougars. Maybe a snapping turtle or two.”

Ma gives him a swat.

“Don’t you pay any attention, Frankie,” she says. “Pete, you and Will clear the table.”

Around us, the rain begins to slacken. The storm is wearing itself out, the nasty howling now a softer rumbling; the lightning a flicker on the far side of the valley.

After Pete and Will clear the table, Ma brings the cobbler and a pitcher of cold milk. Even Frankie brightens up when he gets a taste.

“It’s delicious,” he says.

“Got the blueberries fresh this morning.” The pride in Ma’s voice is plain to hear.

Over cobbler, Ma asks Frankie about her sister, Aunt Effie, and how she and Uncle Leone are. My brothers and me listen close then for any news about the fires and the riots, but Frankie don’t spill anything good. When they finish their talk, Pete tells Dad about the joke he and his friend Davy Porter tried to play on Herb Mooney, the mailman. Pete had the idea they would wait in the trees for poor Herb to drive up our lane, and then swing out on a pair of monkey vines right before he reached them, screaming like Tarzan. Dumb old Davy Porter jumped too late on his vine and smacked right into the side of the mail truck. Dad laughs. It’s a deep, rumbling sound. A thunder all its own.

Butch melts out of the wet night, his fur sprinkled with rain, pink tongue lolling out. He lumbers up the porch steps and finds his way over to me, his wet nose doing a dance.

“You’re too late,” I tell him, scrubbing the enormous head with my knuckles. “You missed it.”

We sit, feeling full and fuzzy, smelling Dad’s cigar and the clean freshness of the rain around us. Behind Stairways, the cicadas make their music, answering each other from dripping pine branches. In the meadow beyond Apple Creek, the frogs are singing: knee-deep, knee-deep.

I wonder how much the creek’s risen from the rain. The thought of all that dark water moving so fast just a few hundred feet from our porch makes me think of Mr. Kemper and his dam. I shudder.

It’s 1968, and the town of New Shiloh is growing. New streets and new houses all laid out in neat squares. All the same. White fences and tiny young trees, not like the giants that stand tall all around our hill. The county wants a reservoir to make sure there’s enough water for all them people.

Could they really flood our valley, and Stairways with it? Dad would never let them. I look over at him and Ma, together at the end of the picnic table. Night has fallen and our porch is so dark it’s not two separate shapes I see, but one. Neither of my parents speaks, but I know they’re sharing thoughts just the same.

About Mr. Kemper and the dam.

About Pete and the war. Pete and the draft.

There is no thought in anyone’s mind about Pete taking a deferment. Even if my brother wanted to go to college, he would never do it. My father would pretend he did not hear you even say such a thing. Ma would not speak of it. In our family, serving is one of the last great things you can do.

Grandpa Elliot made sergeant in the US Marine Corps for shooting a German sniper out of a tree in France in World War I. Same as shooting squirrels, he told me once. As for Dad, he spent his time in the Marines in Korea and saved a man’s life at a place called the Chosin Reservoir. He don’t ever talk about it—not ever—except when he and his friend Dickie Howell get together, and then only because Dickie was also a Marine. Dickie, who only has one leg.

For us Elliots, if the country calls, you answer. Simple as that. Maybe you lose a leg. Maybe you lose much more. But you go. Which is why I hate myself for feeling how I do. Because I don’t want Pete going to Vietnam. I don’t want my brother to die.

Rain’s stopped. Dad’s cigar burns hotly one last time in the blue dark, then fades. At almost that same moment, a tiny glow answers it from the grass beyond our porch. I wait and when it comes again, I spot two others floating near it. Tiny lights winking on and off, bobbing in the dark.