We pass under the steeple’s shadow, through the double doors, and into a creaky wooden pew. All around us, people fan themselves with paper song sheets so that the whole church seems full of giant white butterflies furiously flapping their wings.
Pastor Fenton reads a bit from the Bible and I try hard to listen close, but my button-down shirt clings to me like a second skin. Ma’s eyes flash John Thomas, stop your fidgeting or else, and that settles me long enough to catch some of Pastor Fenton’s sermon on redemption. With a voice that’s surprisingly powerful for how small a man he is, he tells us nobody is beyond God’s love, no matter what they’ve done, and thinking otherwise is a dangerous kind of pride.
After the last song, my brothers and me bolt for the doors before Ma’s church-lady friends can find us and make a fuss. Dad is already walking down Main Street with a few of the other men, making for Mr. Hudspeth’s barbershop. I’m about to run after him when Pete grabs hold of my collar.
“You ain’t leaving him like that,” he says, pointing me back to our pew, and I see what he means: Ma’s church ladies have got hold of Frankie.
I do like Pete wants and go back to rescue my cousin. Their talk as I come up is about Aunt Effie, who most of them grew up with—and the fires in the city. One of them asks how Uncle Leone is faring, being a police officer and in the line of danger and all. Frankie answers that he doesn’t know how his dad is doing, and I can tell he’s worried.
The talk changes once the ladies see me, and I give my fair share of the “Yes ma’am” and “No ma’am” answers to all the same questions I got asked last week and the week before. Didn’t I think Pastor Fenton’s sermon was wonderful? And was I thinking of being a pastor myself someday?
Ma’s dream. She’s given up on Pete and Will, but she ain’t given up on me yet and neither have her friends.
By the time I pry Frankie away, Dad is gone. Pete and Will are talking with some of the other kids out front, and the girls, and one girl in particular.
Anna May Fenton’s blonde hair is held up with a purple headband that matches her skirt and the socks that come up to her calves on her long, creamy white legs. She laughs at something, and it seems the cornfields behind her laugh too, flashing smiles of gold and green that ripple out for miles.
Frankie slows down when he sees her. “Who’s that?”
“That’s just Anna May. Pastor Fenton’s daughter.” I hesitate a bit, then decide to say it: “Will’s sweet on her.”
Next to Anna May, Will stands with both hands in his pockets, head down, like he’s seeing his shoes for the first time. Pete is telling a story.
“Will and Anna May are in the same class,” I tell Frankie. “He don’t see her much over the summer because she lives in town.”
In one of those new developments that Kemper says need more water. Which is why the county wants the dam.
“Come on,” I say, grabbing hold of Frankie’s arm. “Maybe Dad will buy us gumballs at the barbershop. You like gumballs, dontcha?”
“Sure . . .”
“Well, Mr. Hudspeth’s got a giant gumball machine in his shop. For a nickel you can get a gumball that’ll last you hours, if you’re careful with it.” Slowly, Frankie lets me pull him away.
We start after Dad with a little help from a breeze coming off the cornfields that blows us down Main Street like two tumbleweeds. Our reflections stare back as we roll by empty storefront windows: Wistar’s Hardware, which smells like grass seed and rubber; Geary’s Shoe Repair, with rows of polished brown and black leather shoes winking in the sunlight; Ernie’s Luncheonette & Homemade Ice Cream Parlor, with the soda machine behind the counter and all its shining silver levers standing at attention but nobody there to work them on account of it being Sunday.
Mr. Hudspeth’s barbershop ain’t open for business neither, strictly speaking, though his door is propped open with a brick, and if you really needed a haircut, I guess he wouldn’t mind giving you one. We go in and catch a whiff of aftershave and newsprint and listen to a ceiling fan hum somewhere above us while we wait for our eyes to get used to the dark. When they do, we see empty barber chairs in front of empty mirrors, and Dad and all the men gathered along the back counter.
Sundays after services, they come here to read baseball scores and trade talk. Behind his counter, Mr. Hudspeth watches them with a pleased sort of look. A wiry man whose vest and white shirts are always stained brown with tobacco juice, Mr. Hudspeth is bald except for a horseshoe of curly red hair that starts above one ear and ends above the other. He wears a mustache to match.
Dad fishes two nickels out of his pocket for us when we come in. I lead Frankie straight to the gumball machine, drop in the nickels, and give the lever a couple pulls. I let him have the cherry one, and then we climb into the barber seats to chew gum and eavesdrop.
“See you got an extra one with you today, Gene,” says Mr. Hudspeth, nodding toward Frankie.
“Seems I do.”
“Your nephew?”
“Effie’s boy. In from the city for a time.”
Hearing this, several of the men turn to Frankie, watching, curious.
“Effie married the policeman, didn’t she? I bet he has his hands full with all that bad business happening there.” Mr. Hudspeth leans forward and lifts his red eyebrows. “I heard it’s a war zone. People shooting each other on the streets. The kid ever say anything about it?”
“We don’t ask,” Dad answers, in a way that lets everybody know they shouldn’t ask either. Mr. Hudspeth lifts his hands and retreats across his counter as another man chuckles.
“Now why’d the boy know anything about a war zone when he’s sitting in your barber chair?”
“Unless he was getting his hair cut,” says another man, and even Dad laughs some at that.
The men carry on with their usual talk about the town, the weather, and the crops, but I see Dad cast a quick glance to us. To Frankie.
Next to me, my cousin is calmly chewing his gum.
“So I hear Crash Callahan and his boys stopped by to visit Sam Williamson last night,” says another man at the counter.
“Crash and his whole motorcycle gang,” says Hank Wistar, who owns the hardware store. Mr. Wistar’s stomach is a bowling ball behind his checkered shirt. Will says it’s because he drinks too much. “Them boys looped chains through the door to Sam’s chicken coop and rode off with it. Sam called up early this morning, asking if I’d open the store and get him some wire to keep his chickens in.”
“Where’d he put the chickens in the meantime?” one of the men asks.
“His trailer. I heard them clucking over the phone.”
More laughs.
“That Crash oughta have his ass kicked,” Mr. Hudspeth says, spitting a line of brown juice into a paper cup behind his counter. “Him and his whole gang.”
“That Crash is lucky he didn’t get killed,” Dad says. “Sam may be old, but he’s a deadeye.”
Dad’s words start somebody else on a story about Sam’s Fourth of July celebrations, how he lines up all his rifles against the porch railing, then, at the stroke of midnight, tears down the line firing each one lickety-split.
“Well now, what have we here, fellas, what have we here,” Mr. Hudspeth suddenly says, bending over the newspaper spread out on the counter. “Look at this.”
He sets his paper cup down and straightens up, bringing the paper close to his nose as he reads the headline: “‘Boston students stage hunger strike to protest draft.’”
Somebody swears then. Someone else hushes him, and the men go quiet while Mr. Hudspeth reads more.
“‘In protest of what they called America’s atrocities in Vietnam, students from Harvard and Boston University staged a public hunger strike in Cambridge on Saturday.’”
Dad pulls a cigar from his pocket and strikes a match as Mr. Hudspeth goes on.