Valentine(20)
She spits in the dirt and picks out her next rock. This one lands in a small thicket of mesquite trees next to the spot where the land begins to curve toward the flood channel. I’m going to get one over the canal before summer is over, she says out loud.
*
Every day for a week, she rushes home from school to watch him. The first three afternoons she gathers information—What time does he leave? Is it always the same? Does he always go to the titty bar? Then she waits for her chance to get a closer look.
It is nearly five o’clock and the sun beats like a fist against the top of her head. Her mouth and throat are so parched that they ache. The heat presses against her chest and stifles her breath, and because she sweated through her T-shirt an hour ago, she doesn’t have any sweat left to cool her off. When she pulls the fortune-teller from the pocket of her shorts, it is dry and brittle against her hands. Should I check out his camp? Yes. Should I check out his camp? Do not hesitate!
The drainpipe is tall enough that she only has to bend a little when she steps in and sees a trash bag with dirty underwear and socks hanging out of it. Next to the bag, a small stack of pants and shirts lies neatly folded. A pair of boots sits next to a wire milk crate that has been turned upside down to make a small table, upon which rests a ceramic bowl and razor, along with two manila envelopes. One has the words PFC Belden, Discharge written on it in black marker. Medical is written on the other.
Ten feet in, the man has constructed a wall to close off the rest of the pipe, which carries water all the way to a field outside town when it floods. These days, that means never. The last time this channel flooded, D. A. still had training wheels on her bike. On closer examination, she recognizes an old appliance box from the previous summer, one the girls had abandoned after it was battered by a dust storm. Lauralee’s awkward, loping cursive is still clear on the side—the word Hideout with a large smiley face and two hearts with arrows through their centers.
A backpack and neatly rolled sleeping bag are stacked against the cardboard wall. Debra Ann walks to the man’s table and gently runs her finger across a crack in his shaving bowl. She picks up his razor and his small black hair comb, turning them over in her hands while she looks again at the envelope with his discharge papers. He’s probably a hero, she decides. He was probably injured in the war. Ever since her mama left town, D. A. has been looking for something to do with her weekends. She’s been looking for a project, and this man might be it. Maybe he is there to help her become a better girl, not the kind who drives her mother so crazy she feels like she has to leave town without telling anybody where she’s going, or how long she’ll be gone. Will Ginny be home before the fireworks show on the Fourth of July? Yes.
*
She leaves his first gift in a brown paper bag at the mouth of the drainage pipe and scampers back to her box to wait and see what will happen next. The man opens the bag carefully, as if he expects it to be filled with tarantulas, or at least a couple of cow patties. When he instead pulls out a can of creamed corn, a package of gum, and a brown crayon with a dull tip, he smiles and looks around. There is a note too, folded in half, the edges sticky and stained with candy, and Debra Ann can see his lips moving as he reads it. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. Write down what you need & put it under the big rock next to the fence. Don’t tell anybody. D. A. Pierce.
She watches him sharpen the brown crayon with his pocketknife, and later, when he knocks on the back door of the bar and steps inside, she runs down the concrete embankment to fetch the note. It reads Blankit cookpot can opener matches, thx & bless you, Jesse Belden, PFC, U.S. Army.
On the Monday after Easter, she brings everything he needs in a paper sack from Piggly Wiggly. In it, she has packed two hard-boiled eggs, a piece of corn bread wrapped in foil, a slice of ham, and a half-thawed casserole with most of Mrs. Shepard’s name picked off the label. COR is all that’s left, and that’s not enough for the man to trace it back to anybody in particular. She also brings him two ripe tomatoes, and a handful of chocolate bunnies from the Easter basket her daddy left on the kitchen table.
While he reads the note, she watches with joy from her spot in the field, her lips moving along with his. Happy Easter, Jesse Belden, PFC, U.S. Army, you are a great American. Do you like okra and pinto beans? Sincerely, D. A. Pierce.
At the beginning of May, three weeks since she first saw him, D. A. waits until he goes into the pipe and then climbs down into the drainage ditch with a bag of food and two cans of Dr Pepper. She shines her flashlight into the pipe. Are you in here? Her voice drifts through the dark. I won’t tell anybody you’re here. Do you need help?
Later, when they know each other a little better, Jesse Belden will explain that he had been resting on the bare concrete because it was cooler, counting his money and thinking about how to get his truck back from Boomer, the cousin who says that Jesse owes him two months’ rent and groceries. Jesse will tell her that he had been lying with his good ear to the ground—the world is so much quieter that way—and that’s why D. A. was practically standing on him before they saw each other.
Well, didn’t we scare the living daylights out of each other? Jesse says.
I nearly pissed myself. She watches him carefully, waiting for him to scold her for cussing, which he does not do. Jesse might be a grown man, but he sure doesn’t act like it. He might be a little stupid, she thinks, and he is surely ignorant of the ways people talk to kids. He tells her that his eyes had been dry as the dust he sleeps on every night, dry as the half-dead snake that old tomcat drug up one morning and laid at the opening of the flood pipe, but they still managed to fill with water when Debra Ann shined her flashlight in his face and asked, What do you need? And Jesse, who had not said anything more than yes sir or no sir for days, whose ribs were still sore from the blow to his back when he was standing in the parking lot, practically begging his cousin to stop the truck, Jesse said, I want to go home.