CHAPTER FIVE

1957

I headed out between rows of corn going brown from no rain. I ran down the paths, my knees lifting out between the silk, the sweat sliding down my back. The drier husks stinged and tore my arms, but I ran fast as I could, sheltered in the stalks.

I made for the cool shadows of the cottonwoods on the edge of the field, gnarled and gray in the sun. The leaves danced like yellow pennies in hot little fingers. I could hear Mother screaming on the porch and Betty Sue starting to cry. I went toward the trees like I knew I’d be offered something. It was like I already knew the tree house would be there. It was a shadow in the back of my mind maybe, a hand reaching out.

There were boards in the tallest tree laid to make a floor and a splintered roof above it. The sun shined down through the cracks, winking at me to come on up. I was not surprised by the broken ladder: one board nailed above another, climbing up the trunk. I placed my feet on the rungs like I knew they would hold me and did not fear to fall, though the wood twisted where my toes dug and tore at the bark. The sketchbook tucked under my arm made the climbing hard, and my robe fell open a bit. But the tree was not so very high. The boards wiggled and creaked with my weight when I thrust myself up into its arms and then down on the floor, where I hung my legs over. I rested my feet on a branch and breathed hard. I peered down at my toes and the leaf shadows over them. They felt some part different from myself. My feet were dusty and bleeding where the corn had stripped them. Way off I could see Nig by his tree, a little black speck, beating his tail in the dirt and rattling his chain. The screen door slammed. Roe’s car started up and my heart lifted in my dry throat. Everything went tight, even though I knew he had gave up. Everybody gives up when it comes to me.

I was lying back on the boards, my hands behind my head, staring at a blade of blue through the gaps in the roof. I had been sketching things in my book from my mind all morning long: Nig’s pointed little face with the one ear down where the stiff part had broke and I had tried to tape it; a clump of blue flowers; my own hand thin against the wood, with a thread of blood around the thumbnail.

When a stick broke on the ground, I sat up straight. My heart jumped up. I tucked my legs under my robe and tried to make myself small against the trunk of the tree. I listened close. I imagined Roe coming back from work early with his belt in his hand, or Mother having called the truant officers on me and them hunting me down all over the neighborhood. She would feel sorry for it later when everybody knew how misbehaved I was. She would blame it on herself for marrying Roe and giving her heart away so cheap. I held my breath. I had a gentle sense of something coming. I wasn’t scared. Around me, nothing breathed.

After a spell of waiting, I could not help myself or keep still another moment. I peeked over the edge of the floor, so quiet with trying not to make a sound. My legs were flat out behind me. My knuckles gripped at the edge of the floor.

That’s when I saw Charlie below me, the leaves making quarter shadows over the red of his hair. My visitor was slinking through the shadows beneath the cottonwoods, thinking himself alone. I saw him first, through the branches, but he did not see me. I had no idea how long he had been there, weaving around the trunks of our trees with the .22 cocked, listening to the sounds in the brush. He had been so quiet. My heart caught in my throat.

The bright sun glinted off the gun’s metal barrel that was pointed toward the brush where pheasants nested and ate on the corn. The light shined off everything and filled it with a hardness. Charlie was small and wiry as a cow dog with his ears sticking out his head. From where I lay flat on the floor, I thought him to be young and not fully grown, just a boy, standing at the base of the tree, hunting, playing a man. I was not afraid. I could never imagine in that moment that he would change my life.

It filled me with a secret thrill for the boy not knowing himself to be watched. It gave me a power. I imagined all the animals watching the hunter, and how silly he must seem, to rattle around with a gun, while they buried themselves safe in the beady-eyed blackness, still as stone. But when he heard me take a breath, Charlie swung that gun around so fast and pointed it up in my face, lining his eye down the barrel. I did not hide behind the boards or press my body against the trunk. I stared right back at his turned-up face through the leaves, not breathing, not moving a muscle. His face was sharp. His gaze was so far off. All of a sudden, it seemed like the joke was on me. So I tried and showed how I was nothing but a girl, not doing a thing wrong but sitting in the tree. I tried a smile. But he didn’t look back at me with any expression of niceness. He stood below, the barrel turned up. He did not take the gun off me. He kept it there.

Suddenly, it did not matter. I did not care what happened to my life. It hit me with a flash how none of it mattered. I didn’t care if everything ended right there with some crazy boy shooting me out of a cottonwood tree in my own backyard. Everyone would feel sorry for it, sorry for chasing me away and making me repeat the eighth grade.

I sat straight up then and shoved my legs over the boards. I balled up my fist and jammed it in front my face. I shook it at him.

He did not make to fire. I gathered the kimono around my thighs and stared right down at him. “Go on,” I said. “Shoot me, you want to so badly—you ape-shit nuthouse. I don’t care.” I lifted up the silk and showed him my panties.

Charlie took his face away from the barrel then. His cheeks went red as if I had slapped him. He lowered the gun and shook his head. He stood there looking up. He speculated me like a person, like he couldn’t believe it. I felt ashamed in that instant, for what I was wearing.

“Quit acting like a whore,” he said finally.

I covered myself, feeling silly then, to be left in a situation such as this. I cinched myself back on the floor so he could not see my body, so he could not see what sort of a girl I was.

It was quiet. I didn’t know what to say.

“What do you mean, pointing that thing at me?” I called at him. I did not look down. I tried to sound sure, like I had never done a stupid thing like show him my underwear, and how it was old and worn.

Charlie didn’t say a word. I couldn’t tell if he had left. It filled me with some kind of panic.

I peeked over the edge. I couldn’t help to look. He was standing there, staring up. I tried to make my face seem mean. “You’re trespassing,” I said.

“You’re the one trespassing.” Charlie’s voice was hard, though his face did not look mad. “It’s my tree house. I built it.” He nodded his head like he could tell I was surprised, like he could tell I was ashamed having showed him all I did. His face was all of a sudden kind. The gun rested down by his side. I could not say a word. I just sat there, my mouth hanging open. I was lonely, maybe, from being in the tree.

“Well, you should have did a better job,” I said. “Everything’s crooked and falling down up here.” I stood. The boards wiggled under my feet. I crossed my arms over my chest, but I could not help to smile. Charlie’s eyes were deep green. They seemed to twinkle at me with little secrets. His face was half in the shadows.

He looked up at me, standing in my kimono. “What are you”—he laughed—“some kind of crazy-assed Jap?”

I could not help laughing too. I laughed so hard I cried. It came in a deep relief to my tired heart. I could not offer Charlie a word but my laughing. I didn’t need to. In those moments we both understood it: how the whole world had gone and drug us together. The sun shined brighter for it. The roof of my house was washed in gold. The sky seemed bluer than you could ever imagine.