The first time she played piano for him it was a cold Thursday in the reaches of the Super Outbreak of 1974. A hundred tornadoes in twenty-four hours and still he had shivered, surprised by thunderclaps so loud they rattled windows of the home and threatened to skin the roof from the honey house. Norma lit the fire and then moved to the porch where she sat in her rocker just shaded from hammering rain before trees stripped raggedy.
Patch had arrived soaked through, so Saint fetched a blanket while he stripped to his underpants and sat there in a puddle of rainwater as flames moved reflections in his eye. He did not smile that day.
“Why does your grandmother sit outside during storms?” he whispered.
“There was a storm the day my grandfather died.”
When the rain broke and the wind died, he took her into the yard and in the small bag he had brought removed a heavy-duty Sportsman slingshot and a small box of metal pellets. He fetched empty Progresso cans from the trash and with five built a pyramid on sopping grass and stood beside her twenty feet from them, hitting each in turn.
“You can hunt with these,” he said.
He stood behind her and taught her the draw distance, of muscle memory and the art of plinking. He told her to pull the pouch back below her aiming eye, and she got it then.
They practiced with stones.
The first time she whipped the top can from the tower she turned to grin but found him lost to her. She did not know that he worried they would not afford to heat their home that winter. That the refrigerator would remain bare. She did not know that kids worried about such things.
A couple of hours and she worked on her stance, accounted for trajectory and stone weight, and hit all five with ease. He taught her to stalk, of foot placement, to head into the wind, and of the magic hour. That last glimpse of daylight when rabbits venture out.
“You ever killed one?” she said, and held her breath till he shook his head.
“I could, though. I mean, if I had to kill. I could do it, you know?”
She nodded, and knew that she could not.
“You’re different today,” she said.
“I’m just tired, I guess.”
“Tired of what?”
“Of being me.”
He followed her inside when it was time to practice.
She sat at her piano and played, and at the first notes he drew his eye from the flames and watched her small hands as she played music.
Saint felt him sit beside her on the stool.
The heat from him.
And though she was certain he would mock her she sang of Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, and how rose trees never grow in New York City.
He did not interrupt.
Did not laugh at her.
“This is the most beautiful music I ever heard,” he said.
“Yes.”
“My mother lost her job cleaning for the Parkers. They said she stole.” He spoke while watching the fire.
His weight was now hers.
“You can come eat with us,” she said. “And if you’re cold you can come sleep here, too.”
He turned, his leg pressed to her.
She spoke quietly, “I can help with your homework. And if your mother needs to borrow some—”
Patch cried then.
His small shoulders shook.
Saint watched him and felt it like a pain in her chest, like she had not felt anything before.
She reached her hand out and wiped his tears. “There’s a place where the bees make purple honey.”
He listened.
“The North Carolina Coastal Plain. The sandhills. No one knows for sure why they do it. But it’s real purple. It glows. It’s like proof, Patch. There’s magical things out there just waiting on you.”
He dried his eye on his arm. “Swear it.”
“I swear it to God himself.”
“Can we go see it one day? Where they make the purple honey,” he said.
She nodded emphatically. “We absolutely can. It’ll be our place.”
“Where we can go hide from the world.”
“We won’t need to hide. Because we’ll be brand-new there. We’ll start over. I won’t be the girl who no one sees. And you, well you don’t need to change much at all. Because, I was thinking, to me you’re kind of perfect. Even with the missing eye. You’re the boy who—”
He kissed her then.
Her first kiss.
And his.
The next day at school Chuck Bradley took the slingshot from her bag and snapped it in two and shoved her down.
Patch had moved from the crowd and squared to the taller boy, small fist clenched as he threw the first punch. Always. And so Chuck’s friends fell on him and beat him long after the fight was over.
“That was dumb,” Saint said as she helped him to his feet and dabbed blood from his lip.
“You’re all I’ve got,” he said.
And she thought, I’m all you’ll need.