Valentine(57)

They are quiet for a few minutes, each of them sitting up from time to time to dip their washcloth into the bucket and wring it out and lay it on whichever part of their body is most miserable. Forehead, neck, chest.

I haven’t seen our cat for a couple of days, Jesse says. We ought to give him a name.

Tricky Dick? Debra Ann says. Elvis? Walter Cronkite?

Nah, you can’t give a cat a human name, Jesse says. He’s a good hunter. How about something to do with that?

Archer? D. A. says. Sharpshooter?

Archer, Jesse says. We’ll call him that.

She wraps the washcloth around her wrist and leaves it there for a count of five, then wraps it around the other.

It is late afternoon and the shade has moved a little farther down the flood channel. Jesse scoots over a bit and sits quietly for a moment. His mama never knew what he and Nadine were up to when they were kids. As long as they showed up for dinner, she didn’t care. D. A.’s a tough little kid, he thinks. He will miss her when he goes home.

She has been watching him carefully, studying the play of emotions across his narrow face. My mama used to let me drive all over hell’s half acre, she says.

She did not, Jesse says. You couldn’t even reach the pedals.

Oh, yes I can. I have to sit at the edge of the seat, but I can reach them. Again, she feels around the bucket of water but all the ice has melted. She draws her finger out and traces a heart on the hot concrete. It fades almost immediately.

If you need somebody to help you get out to Penwell, she says, I could borrow Mrs. Shepard’s truck for an hour. You can drive us out, we’ll get your truck, and I can follow you in Mrs. Shepard’s truck. If we time it right—like maybe when she’s running errands—she won’t even know it’s gone.

If she doesn’t know it’s gone, that’s stealing, Jesse says.

It’s not stealing if you bring it back.

And if you had a wreck driving that truck back to town, I wouldn’t ever forgive myself.

I won’t wreck it.

Maybe if you were a little older—thirteen, or even twelve.

D. A. stands up and walks over to him. She crosses her arms and narrows her eyes. Well, I guess I’m old enough to be helping you out all summer. I guess I’m old enough not to tell anybody there’s been a man living out here, eating Mrs. Ledbetter’s casseroles and working at the titty bar.

*

The four girls lean an old aluminum ladder against Mary Rose’s new six-foot-high concrete security fence, and because she has the smallest feet and is good on the balance beam, Casey sets up the targets. Every two feet she bends carefully and sets an empty Dr Pepper can on top of the wall. When she has set down a dozen cans, she walks to the end and sits with her legs straddling the concrete. The girls watch Aimee practice. With each shot, a can flies off the fence and falls into the alley. When the last can has fallen, Lauralee gathers them up, climbs the ladder, and hands them up to Casey. And they do it again.

Aimee is generous with her .22 gauge rifle, but Casey is afraid of it and Mrs. Ledbetter says that Lauralee is not to lay one finger on a firearm. So Lauralee is the record-keeper: how many shots fired, how many holes in the cans. D. A. takes a turn, but when she hits the wall instead of the cans and the bullet ricochets so wildly off the concrete and dirt that Casey gets tangled up in her long skirt and falls off the fence, D. A. decides she’ll just watch Aimee.

Every day Aimee stands a little farther away from the targets, and every day she is a better shot. Aimee tells D. A. that some nights, after the rest of them go home, she and her mom stand in the backyard and practice until it is so dark out they can’t see the cans.

Every morning, while the other girls are at swim lessons or vacation Bible school, D. A. carries food to Jesse and asks him if he’s earned enough money to go back home. Every afternoon, she watches Aimee set the rifle against her shoulder and shoot row after row of cans off the fence.

In early August, Mary Rose stands on the patio and watches Aimee shoot forty in a row off the fence. She steps into the house for a few minutes and returns with two skeins of old crochet yarn and a small wooden awl. The girls form an impromptu assembly line—D. A. stabs a hole in the bottom of each can, Lauralee feeds the yarn through the hole and jiggles the thread until it comes out the top, Casey ties a knot to keep the can from slipping up the thread, and so on. It’s a Christmas garland made of aluminum cans, Casey says, when they have a strand of twenty. They drape half the strand over the lower branches of the small elm tree that Mary Rose planted the week they moved into the house. The rest of the strand dangles in the air. D. A. runs over and gives it a hard push and jumps out of the line of fire. The girls watch Aimee hit every one of the cans before she runs out of pellets. While Aimee rests her trigger finger, Debra Ann gathers up the cans and counts the holes in them. Five shots, she calls to Lauralee, five holes in a single can. Five cans, five shots, one hole in each can. Lauralee writes it down in her notebook.

You’re a sharpshooter, D. A. tells Aimee. Maybe next summer you can teach me how to do it.

*

Here’s a good story that my mom used to tell me, Debra Ann says when Jesse tells her he’s too tired to come out and sit next to her on their milk crates. If it’s okay with you, he calls weakly from deep inside the drainpipe, I’ll just lie here on my bed and listen to you tell it.

Is everything okay with the money? she asks and he tells her yes, he’ll have it soon, but this afternoon he’s real tired. It’s too hot to sleep nights, and his ear has been aching. D. A. stands up and walks to the mouth of the pipe. Can I sit down here at the edge? she asks him. You’ll be able to hear me better.