“I was just bored,” I said, eyes still on the acorn top. Finally I looked up.
He was staring straight into me. “You don’t need to be doin that no more,” he said again—softer this time.
I nodded, then looked out over the town.
“How’d he die?” he asked after a time.
“Hit by a car,” I lied.
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“My brother Cleo coulda died when he was a kid. But he jus broke both legs instead.”
“How did he do that?” I was eager to change the subject.
“Fell off the barn roof. Climbed up there to get this airplane he carved.”
“Is he older or younger than you?”
“Older; he’s seventeen. Gonna be a senior this year. Bad-ass football player. Third-team All-American QB last year. Broke the state passing record again,” Buzzy said proudly. His face came alive at the talk of his older brother. “Lets me train with him, most times. Shaggin balls an stuff. Man, he is a machine—probably gonna go pro.”
“That’s cool,” I said and looked back over at the line of lopped-off mountains, hoping to shake thoughts of the brother that Josh would have grown into. Buzzy went on about Cleo’s college and pro prospects, and gradually the sad wonderings and guilt about Josh folded back into a dark closet of memory.
We stayed there, in the tree, on the porch, talking about everything all afternoon. The way toenails go hard after they’ve been clipped; the way dust clings to spiderwebs like dew; spit and the specks that float in your eye when you look at the sun a certain way; scorpions and Hissy Pillsucker, who would strip to her underwear for twenty-five cents; breasts and moles with hair, and Chucky Dingle, who had only one nipple. How wood feels in your hands when it’s wet; how to carve a whistle from green willow; what the ocean must look like; what horses smell like after rain.
“My grandaddy’s gonna hide me if I’m not home by Clinch Mountain sunset,” Buzzy said suddenly and was halfway down the oak in an instant, running off on the whisper of trail. “You help yourself to my smokes and make sure the lock is tight before you leave.” His voice threaded the darkened woods.
I stayed another minute, then locked the tree house and shimmied to the ground, tumbling onto a cushion of last year’s leaves. I made my way back over the blurred footpaths on the hills outside of town and reached the porch at Chisold Street in full night.
Back in Indiana, arriving home after dark and two hours late for dinner would have won me a half-hour lecture and a weekend pass to my bedroom. But things were different now. As I aired up the steps and onto the dim porch, I could hear the spinning of ice in a glass.
“Evening, Kevin.”
I stopped. “Hi, Pops. I’m really, really sorry I’m so late and I missed dinner; I know you and Mom are really mad but I was out in the woods and I got lost and I—”
“Son, relax,” my grandfather said in his soothing southern way. “Audy Rae put your dinner in the refrigerator. You know how to work an oven. Heat it up or save it for tomorrow if you’re inclined.”
“Is Mom really mad?”
“Your mom’s still thinking about other things, so I’m gonna be mad for her.”
“You don’t sound mad.”
“Well, I’m only mad for her. If I was mad for myself, your hide would be bright red about now. Go on in and eat your supper.”
Just then, Audy Rae pushed quietly through the screen door, summer sweater on her shoulders, walking-home hat in her hands. The hat was rounded and brimless and loaf-bread brown with fabric flowers sewn into the band.
“I see the prodigal come back at last,” she said, rolling her eyes over to Pops.
“He has indeed.”
“Ummm, umm,” she hummed and shook her head. “My day, a child miss supper does without.” She affixed the hat to her graying hair, paused for a moment, then readjusted it so the flowers were to the side. “See you gentlemen tomorrow,” she said and walked purposefully off the porch, down the stairs, correct and true to the corner of Chisold, her hat flowers captured by the streetlamp light.
I went into the house. Mom was on the wing chair in the dim living room. Her hobbled body followed the slips and contours of the chair as if woven to it. I paused for a moment and looked for any sign of the person I knew from Indiana—the easy laugh that was always the last in the room to quiet; the warm way she would make my childhood tribulations disappear like a late snow; the backbone she showed when standing up to my father about her painting, and about me.