The Dry Grass of August(2)

Mama turned onto Queens Road West, into the shady green tree tunnels formed by the towering oaks. “I hope there’s not much traffic between here and the highway.”

On the way out of Charlotte we passed Municipal Pool, and I saw Richard Daniels poised on the new high dive while another kid did a cannonball from the low board. Nobody was a better diver than Richard. Next time I talked to him, I’d ask him to give me lessons.

When Daddy and Uncle Stamos won the contract to build those diving boards, they had hunkered for weeks over blueprints spread on the dining room table. Huge papers that smelled like ether and had WATTS CONCRETE FABRICATIONS, INC. in a box on every page, with a caption: CHARLOTTE MUNICIPAL SWIMMING POOL, and subheadings: DECK. BASE FOR THREE-METER BOARD. BASE FOR ONE-METER BOARD.

Daddy showed me how to read the drawings. “Always check the scale. An inch can equal a foot or ten feet.” He held the papers flat to keep them from curling. “If you don’t know the scale, you won’t understand the drawings.” I learned about blueprints as I breathed in his smell of tobacco and Old Spice.

He liked teaching me things. When I was in first grade he gave me a miniature toolbox with painted wooden tools, which Mama thought was ridiculous. “That kind of thing is for boys,” she’d said.

“I don’t have any,” Daddy had told her. “Yet.” He patted her bottom. “And girls need to know the business end of a hammer.”

If Daddy wanted help, I grabbed my toolbox and ran to him, but he hadn’t asked for my help in a long time. Thirteen was too old for make-believe tools.

Puddin wriggled on the seat next to me. “I want to be in front when we get to Florida so I can see the ocean first.”

“That won’t be till tomorrow afternoon,” I told her.

She put her head against my shoulder. “I can wait.” Then she sat up again. “Do my braids so I look Dutch.” I knotted her skimpy braids on top of her head, knowing they wouldn’t stay, as fine as her hair was.

“Do I look Dutch?”

“You look like Puddin-tane with her braids tied up.” Silky blonde wisps fell behind her ears.

Davie started to fuss and Mama asked Stell to check his diaper. He was almost two but wasn’t taking to potty training, so Mama had him in diapers for the trip. Stell lifted him free of the car seat and asked, “Are you ever going to let me drive?”

“Yes.”

“His diaper’s okay. Take him for a while, Mary.” She helped Davie climb over the seat. Mary reached for him and he beamed at her, spreading his arms.

Stell asked Mama, “When?”

“At Taylor’s, but not on the highway. Not yet.”

“I’m qualified.” Stell was pushing her luck. Mama didn’t answer.

We were going first to Pensacola, Florida, to see Mama’s brother Taylor Bentley, who was divorced. His graduation photo from Annapolis was in our living room in a brass frame, taken when he was twenty-one, handsome in his white uniform, his hat held under his arm. When he kicked Aunt Lily out, a judge said their daughter would stay with Uncle Taylor. I heard Mama on the phone. “Lily Bentley is a slut.” My dictionary cleared up the mystery enough for me to suppose that Aunt Lily must have been caught in an affair, a word that made me long for details I was hopeless to know.

In the early afternoon, we ate pimento cheese sandwiches in the car and stopped at an Esso station west of Columbia. I dug through the ice in the drink box until my hand was red before I came up with a Coke, and stood in the sun gulping it despite Mama saying I could only have one and to make it last.

I looked around for Mary and saw her closing the door of an outhouse behind the filling station. She took Kleenex from her pocket and wiped her hands. I went to her. “You going to get something to drink?”

She shook her head. “Don’t know when I’ll find another outhouse.”

Stell walked up, tapping her Coke. “Want to play traveling?”

“Okay. Two bits.” I guzzled my drink and belched.

“Suave. Do that for the next cute boy you see.”

“I’m ready. One, two, three!”

We turned our bottles over. “Charlotte! I win!” I loved beating Stell at games.

“Atlanta,” she said. “You lose.”

I called to Mama, who was by the drink box, a Royal Crown in her hand, “Which is farther away, Charlotte or Atlanta?”

“Atlanta. Why?”

I slapped a quarter on Stell’s outstretched palm. She smirked.

An old man popped the cap off a Seven-Up and raised it as if he were playing traveling, too. He squinted at the bottom of the bottle, where a bubble of air was trapped in the thick glass, green and sparkling in the sun. “Ever who blowed this’un had the hee-cawps,” he said in a cracked squeal. When we got in the car, I told everybody what he’d said and the funny way he talked. Only Mary laughed.

We took off again, Puddin snuggling under the feather pillows we’d brought along, curling herself up until just her sandals showed. She hated air-conditioning. I thought it was because she was skinny, with not enough meat on her bones to keep her warm.

I always looked out for Puddin, because before you knew it, she’d disappear. Once, on a trip to the mountains, we left her at a filling station and went twenty miles before we missed her. I’m the only one who noticed how often she hid herself away. Mama wasn’t alarmed. “She’s only five. She’s only six. She’s only seven.”