Down Sand Mountain

I GOT UP BEFORE EVERYBODY ELSE the next morning. I don’t know how, since I hadn’t hardly slept at all, but my mind was wide awake as soon as it was light outside. I leaned over the edge of the bunk bed and looked down on Wayne. His pajamas were all twisted around him like he’d been wrestling somebody and lost the fight. His blanket was on the floor, where he must have kicked it off, and his pillow was crammed up against the headboard. His head was barely on it. You’d have thought it was him out the night before, having the wild adventures instead of me. I wanted to wake him up and tell him about what happened with me and Darla, and the other stuff with Darla’s mom and Walter Wratchford. But as soon as I thought that, I thought I didn’t actually want to tell him or anybody. I wanted to keep it a secret to myself. Plus, what if I told him about the whole thing with Darla and he said, “Oh yeah, me, too”? So I decided I would keep the secret. Maybe I wouldn’t even say anything about it to Darla, in case she changed her mind and decided it didn’t really happen, which was just the sort of thing she might do.

I was starting to feel really lonely, which I guess is what secrets do to you, but then remembered I had to get up and do something I had never done before.

I had hid my jeans from the night before under the bottom bunk, so now I had to get on my belly and reach way in to fish them out of there along with my underwear. I scoured the room and got all the rest of the clothes I could find that were dirty: more underwear, and socks and T-shirts, plus Wayne’s football gear, and I carried it all out of the bedroom, through the living room and the kitchen, out to the back porch. The jalousie windows were open and it was cool back there but not too dark, so I didn’t have to turn on the light to see the washing machine. I dragged out a kitchen chair to stand on, then threw the stuff in and turned on the washer, which I had thought would be hard but wasn’t once I figured out that you didn’t just twist the knob around to “Normal,” but you also had to pull it out toward you, until you heard a click, to make the water rush in. Since I didn’t know how much soap to use, I went with three scoops, which seemed like a good number. After that was when I realized Mom was standing behind me, in the doorway to the kitchen.

She had on bedroom slippers and a light blue bathrobe, and hadn’t brushed her hair. Her face was kind of puffy, I guess from sleep, which was a way I had never seen her before. She still looked like Mom, only not the usual Mom. She said, “Don’t forget to close the lid or it won’t rinse and spin after the wash cycle.”

I said, “Yes, ma’am,” nervous about what she would say next, or what lie I could tell her about why I was doing what I was doing.

She asked if that was my sheets in there, and I realized she thought I must have peed the bed, which would have been a great lie if only I’d thought of it. Unfortunately my sheets were still on the bed, so I had to tell her no, I just thought I would help with the laundry today, that’s all.

Mom lifted some hair off her forehead with the back of her hand, sort of brushed at it, then let it drop down in the same place. She crossed her arms. “You decided to get up early on a Saturday morning and help with the laundry?”

I said, “Yes, ma’am,” again, and then asked could I help fix breakfast with her — would she like for me to do that, or set the table or something? When she didn’t say anything back, I said also I was all ready for the job jar, wasn’t it time for the job jar, shouldn’t we get going on the Saturday chores?

Mom said she didn’t know what on earth was going on with me today, but she guessed if it had me eager to do work, she wasn’t going to worry about it. Then she changed her mind and got out the thermometer and checked my temperature. “It’s a little high, but you don’t have a fever,” she said. She felt my face with her hand, then hugged me, then let me go and said I could help with breakfast if I wanted — I could get out the orange juice and everything to go on the table — and if I wanted to go ahead and pick first out of the job jar, I could do that, too.

I was hoping I’d get lucky, but instead picked out the worst jobs there were: CLEAN THE BATHROOM and TAKE OUT THE TRASH.

On Monday at school I stabbed Moe in the hand with my fork. I’m not sure why. He took my roll the way him or his big fat twin, Head, always did off my lunch tray, but that had been going on since school started — so long that I was almost used to it. Maybe part of the reason was Connolly Voss, who had been bothering me more than usual for letting Moe or Head take my rolls: How come I never did anything about it? What was I, a man or mouse? He had started calling me Darwin Turkel, which was worse than being called a girl, as everybody knew, and the other guys at the table actually thought that was funny and laughed when he said it. Once he was doing that and I was telling him to shut up or else, and the real Darwin walked by. I don’t know if he heard or not, but he gave me a look like he was sad but at the same time used to that sort of thing, and I felt bad.

Probably all of those things were good enough reasons for what I did, but I guess the other one was that I was very hungry that day because I was almost late for school so missed breakfast, and all they had for lunch was canned peas and carrots, canned meat with canned gravy, canned banana pudding, and those homemade rolls they baked in giant trays that were fluffy and warm and brown on top from where they painted the margarine with big paint brushes and you could smell them cooking all over the school for about an hour before lunchtime. It was clear that the only good thing I would have to eat all day until I got home from school was my one single solitary roll.

But Moe showed up at the exact minute I got out of the lunch line and put down my tray. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to think about it. He was reaching for the roll and saying, “Thanks, Sambo,” and I stabbed his hand with my fork.

Moe said, “What the heck.” He had the roll in his fist. The fork hung there for a second and then fell on the floor. He said, “What the heck,” again, but that was all for the first minute. There was hardly any blood, just a few drops was all. Moe shifted the roll to his other hand — I guess so he could examine the place where I stabbed him better — and the longer he stood there, the more you could see it was bleeding. I don’t think anybody else at the table breathed. They didn’t say anything, and my eyes got so big watching Moe and waiting for what would happen next that I thought I might go blind.

What he did was slap me so hard that tears squirted out of my eyes. I think they might have even landed on his shirt. My ear felt like it must have gotten knocked off, and there was a screaming noise inside my head that made me dizzy. Then, I guess because I really was the biggest idiot on the planet and also because I was in so much pain I didn’t know what I was doing, I slapped him back, although it barely grazed his cheek because he was a lot taller than me. He reached back to smack me again but Wayne pushed his chair away from the table and pulled me out of the way and said why didn’t Moe pick on somebody his own size?

Moe started after Wayne but that other guy Head appeared from out of nowhere and grabbed Moe’s arm. My face stung like anything and my ear was still ringing, but I touched it and it was still there, at least. Moe’s face looked like a big cloud of thunder about to break open and cause a flood of forty days and forty nights, but after Head whispered in his ear for a minute, he calmed down and got one of those evil grins on his face that you’re always reading about.

“How tall are you?” he asked Wayne. Wayne said he was five foot six inches. David Tremblay stood sort of next to Wayne and sort of behind him, I guess so Wayne wouldn’t feel all alone.

Moe, who must have been six feet tall, said he guessed Wayne and him were about the same size, then, so he guessed Wayne would do. Then he looked at his bloody hand and then he looked at his buddy Head and said, “Don’t you guess he’ll do?” Head said, “Yeah, I guess he’ll do.” Moe said he guessed he’d see Wayne in the parking lot after school, then, and Head nodded along and said yeah, he guessed the two of them ought to be able to get things all taken care of in the parking lot after school. I looked around, wondering where the lunchroom ladies were. Usually they came out of the kitchen and caught you if you so much as leaned back in your chair, but today they were nowhere around, nor any teachers, either.

The rest of the day was terrible. I wanted to turn all the clocks back and hold them back to keep them from getting to the end of school. Every time a bell rang for the finish of one period and then five minutes later for the start of the next period, my face hurt like Moe was right there slapping me again. I saw Wayne in the hall a couple of times, but he wouldn’t look at me or say anything, and that made me feel even worse.

Moe didn’t even say anything when Wayne showed up in the parking lot, he just hit him in the face and kept hitting him. We were all standing there — me and David Tremblay and the others over on one side, Moe’s friends on the other side, plus a bunch of other people who just wanted to see a fight. But it wasn’t a fight. It was just Moe beating up Wayne, and me doing nothing but watch, until one of the coaches, Coach Lundy, the baseball coach, came running out of the gym and yelled at them to break it up.

Moe didn’t look at Coach Lundy and didn’t say anything. He just walked off with his friends, even when Coach Lundy said, “Hey, you. Come back here when I’m talking to you. I want to know who started this.” I couldn’t believe he didn’t know who Moe was. Everybody knew who Moe was.

Wayne hadn’t ever fallen down the whole time he was getting beat up, which was a miracle, but you could see how shaky his legs were. Me and David Tremblay went over to hold him up, and I wanted to cry because of all the blood. David Tremblay actually took his shirt off and used it to hold against Wayne’s bloody nose. I said I was sorry, but Wayne spit out some blood and I figured that meant he didn’t want to hear it. David said, “Way to go, Wayne. I saw you get him one time. I think you got him in the kidney.”

Coach Lundy stuck his big meaty face down to look at Wayne’s. The bill of his baseball cap nearly jabbed into Wayne’s forehead. “Think you’re going to make it, there?” Wayne grunted something but I couldn’t tell what. Coach Lundy looked at me and David Tremblay. “Y’all know where he lives?”

David Tremblay said we could get Wayne home OK. Coach Lundy said, “That’s good. That’s good.” He straightened back up. “Now, I don’t want to see any more fighting around here, y’all understand?” I nodded but he wasn’t looking at me. “That goes for all of y’all,” he said to anybody who was still around, which wasn’t too many since most had run off when Coach Lundy first came out of the gym.

“All right, then,” he said. “Can you walk OK there?” Wayne nodded and the coach slapped him on the shoulder. I thought it was going to knock Wayne down, but he just swayed a little.

“Yes, sir,” David Tremblay said. “Come on, Wayne.” And he pulled Wayne over in the direction of our bikes. I took Wayne’s other arm, but he pulled away from me, so I said I would walk Wayne’s and my bikes home. David left his bike, so he could hold on to Wayne, and said he’d come back for it later.

“I’m sorry,” I said one more time to Wayne, but he didn’t even bother to spit.

The official story was Wayne’s helmet came off during JV football practice and he got mushed in a pileup. Mom was the first to see him and she made him lie down with an ice pack on his face so big I thought if it melted he might drown. She wanted him to quit the team, but Dad said the kind of thing he was always saying: if a horse throws you off, you have to climb back on right away and ride him again.

“I think it’s stupid,” Tink said. “They ought to put them all in the jail.”

“All who?” Dad said. We were sitting down to dinner, all except Wayne, who got to have his on a TV tray in the living room and watch television while he ate, which ordinarily I wouldn’t think was fair but I felt so lousy about getting him beat up that I even helped set up the TV tray, which wasn’t easy. Wayne’s lip was swollen and he said his teeth hurt, so Mom had made him soup.

“All the football players that did that to Wayne,” Tink said. “I think they did that on purpose.”

Mom said something under her breath that I think he might have heard because he said, “Now, Rennie,” which was my mom’s name.

He seemed so relaxed about everything that I started to worry maybe he knew what had really happened and was just playing along for some reason, to catch us in more stories and bigger lies. But I didn’t worry too much about that, either, because of the silent treatment Wayne was still giving me — not so much as a word or a look, even though I tried everything.

I sat alone at lunch the next day, at a table in the corner of the cafeteria, but it didn’t matter. Moe still found me and took my roll, plus he took my carton of milk, too. I hardly noticed, though, because I was too busy watching Wayne and David Tremblay and Boopie Larent and all those guys talking and laughing and messing around, making fun of Connolly Voss, over where I used to sit with them. The worse I felt, the better the time they had, and it didn’t seem like anybody missed me, either. I kept waiting for them to look over my way, especially Wayne, and then I’d at least know that they knew I was gone and they cared some, but nobody did.

I guess I could have gone over and sat with Darla, or even Darwin. He was at another corner table, across the cafeteria from me, with one other boy from the tenth grade everybody called Hoot, who was supposed to be a math genius, although to be a genius in Sand Mountain didn’t take too much of an IQ, and anyway, he never looked anywhere but at his shoes when he was around people. They didn’t seem to talk hardly at all, and didn’t sit in any of the seats right next to each other.

I guess I could have gone over and sat with Dottie Larent, too. She didn’t have regular friends, and one day I saw her at the end of a table by herself with a couple of chairs between her and anybody else. People said she had a BO problem and didn’t take a bath or a shower except once every now and then like colored people, but I didn’t believe it. I’d been around Dottie some and never smelled her once.

But I guess I still thought it was better to be miserable and alone than embarrassed for people to see me hanging out with somebody that was supposed to be smelly like Dottie Larent, or worse than a girl like Darwin Turkel, or a retarded genius like Hoot, or even Darla, who dressed so funny and had the Shirley Temple hair and set off firecrackers with a colored boy in the cemetery, and you never knew when she might suddenly start singing or dancing, and you also never knew when she might take you up to the top of the Skeleton Hotel and do things that you didn’t know what to think about later so you tried not to think about them at all and you tried to not have to look at her anymore or talk to her or anything, even though that was probably mean —

Mom finally noticed something was wrong with me, I guess, because after school I went in my bedroom and shut the door and crawled up on the top bunk and stayed there until dinnertime. I might have fallen asleep, because she was just there next to the bunk bed with her hand on my head. When she saw I was awake, she said, “Do you not feel well, Dewey? You’re all hot and sweaty.”

I said I was OK. She said she thought she would get the thermometer and I said I wasn’t a baby. She said, “Well, you’re my baby.”

She laid her hand on my forehead and it felt cool, and for some reason I just about started crying. She asked if Wayne and I weren’t getting along, and I said, “Sort of.” She said it would get better. I said what if it didn’t? What if it got worse and worse? That could happen, too.

She seemed surprised by what I said. “Your brother loves you very much. That doesn’t mean you always have to get along. But he does love you, and he has always watched out for you.”

I said I doubted he would anymore, and she asked me why I said that. I said I didn’t know. Mom didn’t say anything for a little while. Her back was to the window and the blinds were closed and it was dark in the room, so I couldn’t see her face very well. There was an orange light coming through the blinds that made a kind of outline around her. She had taken her hand away from my forehead when I said that about Wayne maybe not watching out for me and stuff, but she put it back. She asked me if I remembered the song she used to sing to me when I was little.

“No, the other one, when you were a very little boy.” I said no but I really did. It was “Dewey Was an Admiral on Manila Bay.”

She started to sing and I said, “Oh, Mom,” again like it was embarrassing, but she kept singing, really soft, her cool hand still on my head.

Dewey was an admiral on Manila Bay.

Dewey was a morning in the month of May.

Dewey were her eyes as she pledged her love so true.

Oh, do we love each other? Yes, indeed we do.