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***
Aunt Vicky comes out with a tray of iced tea and cookies.
“I thought you boys could use a little cooling off about now,” she says. “Josh?” She holds a glass out to me and I take it.
“Thanks, Vee,” I say, using the nickname I’ve had for her since before I could say Aunt Vicky. I set my hammer on the sawhorse beside me. I’m dripping wet from the heat, and from working so hard.
“It’s coming along, isn’t it?” she says, running her hand along the new drywall seam, then handing the other glass of iced tea to Rick, my brother.
“Great,” Rick says, smiling. “We’ll finish the walls today. I guess it’ll be another week or so before we’re done with everything.”
Rick is going to be living up here, in San Luis Obispo with our aunt, so he can go to Cal Poly. My folks said they couldn’t afford to send Rick away to college, but when my aunt offered to let him stay in a little room at the back of her property, my parents agreed to let him go. That was good news for me. I’ve been trying to get Rick out of my room ever since Dad moved him in about twelve years ago. When my dad started his own business, he took over one of our bedrooms for an office. Rick’s a nice enough guy, I guess. But he thinks he can boss me around just because he’s two years older than I am. And he’s a slob. It’ll be a relief not to have to smell his sweaty socks and T-shirts all the time. He has this habit of tossing everything into a comer until it practically rots and then, when my mom refuses to let him borrow her car until his laundry is caught up, he does a mammoth wash. So for about two days a month our room doesn’t stink. But things will be different from now on.
When I leave here in a week or two, I’ll go home to my own private room, with my own private stereo. My dad promised me a new stereo for all the work I’m doing up here on my aunt’s place.
––––––––
“I just can’t believe the change in this place,” Vee says, looking around the room.
It really was a mess when we first got here. Someone had lived in it a long time ago, before Vee moved into the front house. But nothing had been done to it for years. The ceiling tiles were all rotted out because of a leak in the roof. The floor tiles were messed up, too. Water had seeped into the walls, and if you leaned against the wrong spot, your hand would go right through the wall. We’ve been working steadily from morning to night since we got here a week ago, and it’s beginning to show.
The first thing we did was check out the electrical connections and hook up Rick’s stereo. Then we started making repairs. My dad does remodeling and we’ve been helping him on jobs for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it’s a pain in the butt, going to a job on Saturday when my friends are off having fun, but at least I know how to fix stuff.
Sometimes in the late afternoon we take a break for a quick swim at Avila beach. Man, that is cold water compared to the beaches down south. And the waves are little, no challenge. But it’s refreshing. After that, we go back to Vee’s and work until dark.
“Have some more cookies,” Vee says. “Keep your energy up.”
I grab three more. I don’t want to seem like a pig, but I could easily eat about two dozen of these things right now.
“When do you register for classes?” Vee asks Rick.
“I see an advisor on the twelfth.”
“I’m glad this is working out for you,” she says.
“Me, too,” Rick says. “It’s really important to me to be able to go away to college. Thanks, Auntie Vee,” he says, smiling the smile that some girls find charming.
“Hey, I’m getting plenty out of this deal besides the pleasure of your company. Having this room fixed up probably adds thousands of dollars to my property value.”
“We’re all happy,” I say. “I finally get Rick out of my room.”
“Your room?” Rick says.
“It is now,” I laugh. “I can hardly wait to get back home—put my new posters up on the walls, get my own stereo set up, hear my own music. Not have to be hearing that old-timey jazz stuff that you always play.”
“Yeah, now you can listen to Michael Jackson all the time,” he says sarcastically. I swear, I liked Michael Jackson for about a week once, and Rick won’t ever let me forget it.
“And you can listen to redneck music,” I say.
“Hey, watch it, Josh,” Vee says. “Don’t start insulting my music now. We may not be as sophisticated up here as you folks are down in Southern California, but we’ve got music with heart.”
“You’re just like Mom,” I say, nodding at the ancient wreck of a Toyota parked in the driveway. “You put more money into Patsy Cline and Willie Nelson CDs than you do into your cars.”
She laughs. “Your mom and I have to keep in touch with our roots, Josh.”
The phone rings in Vee’s house and she walks quickly out the door and across the yard. Rick and I get back to work. We’ve just one more drywall panel to install and that part of the job will be over. That’s the hardest part. The floor tiles will be easy, then we’ll paint, replace a broken window, and put on a new front door. I think that will be it.
––––––––
It’s nearly five now, and cooler. One thing I’ll say for San Luis Obispo, the air is fresh, not all smoggy like at home. It feels good to take a deep breath and not feel like you’re poisoning yourself just by breathing.
“This is going to be so cool,” Rick says. “My own little pad. I think I’ll get one of those futon things, and a couple of bright colored pillows. We should have about a hundred bucks left even after we buy paint.”
I can’t believe Rick the slob has his mind on interior decoration. I’m looking to see if maybe he’s suffered some kind of heat stroke when I hear the creak of the screen door again.
“That was my cousin, Precious,” Vee says. “Aunt Chickee died this morning.”
At first I don’t understand what she’s talking about. The people next door have chickens. Did one of them die? But Vee looks like she’s trying not to cry. This probably isn’t about a chicken. I just stand there, looking at my hammer. I really hope she doesn’t cry. I never know what to do when people cry.
“Aunt Chickee from Arkansas?” Rick says.
“Yes,” she sighs. “I just feel so sorry for Uncle Tweetie. You remember them, don’t you?” she asks, looking back and forth between me and Rick.
“You probably don’t remember him,” she says to me. “I think you were only about three when we all made that trip to Arkansas. But you probably remember some, don’t you, Rick?”
“I remember getting car sick and throwing up on Josh,” he says. God, I remember that too, now.
“Thanks for the reminder,” I say, sarcastically.
Vee laughs. “We were in that old Dodge van of your dad’s. No air conditioning, and you guys fought all the way across the state of Texas. That’s probably the reason I decided never to have kids,” she says.
We laugh again, and then she turns away. I guess she’s crying, but I don’t know if it’s because of this Aunt Chickee person, or because she never had kids. She’d have been a really good mom. I don’t think us fighting was the reason she didn’t have kids. I think she knew her husband was a butthole, and she knew what a rotten father he’d be. She finally left him about ten years ago. That’s when she moved up here.
“I told Precious I’d call your mom and let her know, too,” Vee says, walking back toward the house.
Rick and I stand watching her for a minute, then turn back to our work.
“Maybe I do remember him,” Rick says. “I think he’s the one who let me sit on his lap and steer his car all the way into town one day. I liked him. And Aunt Chickee took me with her when she milked the cow. Man, that was creepy. I stopped drinking milk until we got back home to the stuff that came in cartons.”
By seven o’clock we’re finished taping the last piece of drywall. We go into the house to wash up.
“We’re going to go get some pizza, Vee,” I say. “Want some?”
She sighs. “No, thank you. I’m not very hungry right now.”
“Did you call Mom?” Rick asks.
“Yes. She’s worried about Tweetie, too. You know, when your mom and I were kids, after our dad died, Uncle Tweetie and Aunt Chickee used to have us spend summers with them. Uncle Tweetie was kind of like a second dad to us . . . he’s eighty-seven years old, and he’s all alone now.”
––––––––
At the restaurant, over pizza, we start laughing about the names of relatives on my mom’s side of the family.
“What, is this the bird family or something? Tweetie and Chickee?” I laugh. “What’s the name of that place where they live?”
“Flat Hill, Arkansas,” Rick says, choking on his soda.
“They should live in Aviary, Arkansas,” I say.
“There’s that other guy mom told us about, too,” Rick says. “Uncle . . .” he can’t say it for laughing. “Uncle . . .” I don’t even know what’s so funny and I’m laughing so hard I can hardly catch my breath. Finally, Rick blurts out for the whole restaurant to hear, “GOOBER! UNCLE GOOBER!”
Now we’ve totally lost it. The waitress is watching us like
maybe we’re dangerous. I can’t help it.
“I think they named him after a peanut,” Rick says.
“Or boogers,” I say, prompting another loud burst of laughter from Rick.
––––––––
When we get back home I go to Vee’s house to shower. She’s sitting at the kitchen table with a box of photos in front of her.
“Come look at this,” she says, holding a photo out for me to see. “There’s Uncle Tweetie and Aunt Chickee, and me and your mom in front. I think we were nine and ten there.”
I peer intently at the two little girls, Vee and my mom, trying to see what remains of them in the grown-ups I know today.
“There’s Uncle Goober and his boy, Taft Hartley, standing next to Tweetie . . . both of them are gone now, too,” she says sadly.
I look through the pictures with her, listening to her stories.
“I don’t know why they called her Chickee,” she says. “Maybe because she was little and cute. She was strong, though. She could work circles around most of the men. But Tweetie, your great-grandma named him. Grandma’s mother. You remember stories about her—our Grandma Tucker?”
I nod. I don’t really remember stories about her, but I don’t want to say that.
“Well,” Vee says, “when Uncle Tweetie was born, his mama started calling him Sweetie, because she said he was the sweetest baby she’d ever had. That was saying something, because she’d already had twelve by the time he was born.”
“Twelve? Twelve?” I ask, amazed.
“Right. Twelve,” Vee says. “That’s how they did things then. Anyway, pretty soon everyone was calling him Sweetie, except for your great-grandma Tucker, who was only two and couldn’t say Sweetie. She called him Tweetie, and it stuck.”
“So what’s his real name?” I ask. “You know, like on his birth certificate.”
Vee laughs. “From what I’ve heard, no one gave a thought to birth certificates down in the country then. And by the time the last of the fifteen kids were born, the parents had run out of names, I guess. The later ones didn’t even get named at birth— the parents just waited to see what people would call them, and their names sort of evolved—like Tweetie, and Goober.”
“Where’d that one come from?”
“He was little, like a peanut.”
“Weird,” I say, but as I look at all those photos of people when they were young, and old, and in-between, I get this strange feeling, like I’ve got part of them in me. And I feel guilty for laughing at their names.
***
Two weeks later I’m on my way home, driving down Highway 101 in my dad’s pick-up truck. I feel so free it’s like I’m flying. I’ve never ever driven so far alone. The windows are down and the radio’s on full blast. I can’t find anything but country western but I don’t even care. Life is cool.
First thing when I get home I’m going to go pick up my stereo. Then I’m going to put the posters that I got at the Cal Poly bookstore up on the wall in my bedroom. They’re weird in the extreme—drawings by some old guy named Escher—full of optical illusions and misleading things—like you think a staircase is going to one place but when you look closely it’s totally different. I don’t even know why I like them so much. Just because they’re weird, I guess.
Anyway, after I get my music set up, and my posters up, and spray a little pine scent in the room to get rid of any leftover Rick odors, I’ll go across the street and invite Tracy to come listen to some music with me. Tracy is who I love, but she doesn’t know it. No one knows it but me. We’ve been friends for a long time, but one day, just before school was out, I looked at her, and I looked again, that was it. I was in love.
Tomorrow morning I’ll register for classes at Hamilton High School. This is going to be a cool year, my junior year—no more hearing Rick yell at me in the halls at school, “Hey, baby brother.” And I’ll get to use the car more often because Rick won’t be around to be borrowing it.
I think I’ll probably make varsity basketball this year. I’ve grown taller in the past six months, and I’ve beefed up some too, with all the construction work I’ve been doing. I don’t feel so much like a kid anymore.
By the time I can get a decent rock station on the radio, the sun is covered with a gray haze and I’m tasting smog. I don’t care. It’ll be good to be home.
––––––––
I pull into our driveway about six-thirty. In time for dinner, I hope. I grab my duffle bag and the carefully rolled Escher posters and get out of the truck. God, it feels good to stretch my legs. Mom and Dad come out to greet me.
“Hi, Josh. I’ve missed you,” Mom says, giving me a big hug. Dad hugs me, too.
“Vee called a while ago. She said you boys did an excellent job on the room. I’m proud of you,” Dad says.
“We have a surprise for you,” Mom says.
Maybe they decided to get that weight set I’ve been wanting. We could take Rick’s bed out and there’d be plenty of room. I hope that’s what it is.
I’ve still got visions of a padded bench and weight rack when I see him sitting at the kitchen table—white-haired, skinny, wrinkled up like some old turkey neck. He’s eating Cream of Wheat. I don’t know much about fashion, but I’ll bet his suit has been in and out of style three or four times since it was new.
“Uncle Tweetie,” Mom says to me, like she’s announcing the President of the United States. She’s all beaming, like this must be the best news I’ve ever heard.
“Is this Josh?” he asks, standing and stretching his hand out to me. It’s bony, and cold, but he’s definitely got a grip. He can’t be more than five feet tall, and he’s got a broad nose and a wide smile that makes him look sort of like Happy in that Walt Disney movie about the seven dwarfs.
“Well, ain’t you just as handsome as can be?” he says, still pumping my hand. “You could be a movie star I betcha. You ever go down to Hollywood where all them movie star people are?”
“Uh, no,” I say.
“Well, it’s close, ain’t it?”
“It’s about fifteen miles from here,” Dad says.
“Ooooie,” he says in a long drawn-out sound, “I didn’t know it was that far away. I thought y’all were right close.”
Mom laughs. “You’ve just flown over fifteen hundred miles, Uncle Tweetie.”
“I know that’s what they say, Sugar, but I cain’t believe it.”
––––––––
I carry my stuff back into my room. There’s a Bible setting on the bedstand between the two beds. I hope he doesn’t turn out to be a religious fanatic. God, I wonder how long he’s staying? I put my rolled-up posters in a corner of the closet. It doesn’t seem like they’ll fit here, with Uncle Tweetie.
Next to the Bible, on my table, is a can that once had creamed com in it. What’s that doing in here? I pick it up and check it out. It’s got some nasty brown gunk in it. I carry it to the kitchen, throw it in the trash, and wash my hands.
“You got anything sweet, Baby?” Uncle Tweetie asks Mom as she picks up his cereal bowl and takes it to the sink.
“I got you a rhubarb pie,” she says to him.
“Rhubarb? Y’all got rhubarb clear out here in California?”
Mom just laughs and gives him a peck on the cheek.
“Well, let me try some of it,” he says, reaching into his back pocket and pulling something out.
I can hardly believe my eyes as I watch Uncle Tweetie slip his lower plate of false teeth into his mouth.
“Want a piece of pie?” Mom asks me.
“Is that the only kind you got? Rhubarb?”
She nods.
“No thanks.”
“Why, I swear, this pie is about nearly as good as Chickee’s rhubarb pie,” Uncle Tweetie says to my mom. Then he makes a funny choking sound. Mom goes over to him and puts her arms around him while Dad pretends to be totally involved in TV.
“I know she’s in a better place,” he says, “but I miss her so much, all the time. Sixty-eight years I’ve been wakin’ up to her purty face.”
“I know,” Mom says. “I know . . . You must be tired now. Why don’t you go to bed, and we’ll talk some more tomorrow.”
He gets up and walks to the sink, rinses his lower plate, and puts it back in his pocket. Gross. I watch Mom leading him to my room, my room. So much for the first thing I’m going to do when I get home is set up my stereo. I flop down on the couch in front of the TV.
“How was your time with Vee?” Dad says.
“Okay,” I say. I really don’t feel like talking.
“I thought we’d run over to Circuit City and get the stereo setup I promised you.”
“Nah,” I say.
“What do you mean ‘nah’? You’ve been dying to get your own stereo and now you’re saying ‘nah’?”
“I’ll just wait until Uncle Tweetie leaves,” I say. “I mean, he’s going to bed at seven o’clock. It’s not like I’d have a place to listen to music.”
“Well, get one with headphones,” Dad says.
“It’s not the same, Dad,” I say.
“Well, I won’t beg. Let me know when you’re ready.”
Mom comes back into the kitchen and starts rummaging around, moving papers and dishes.
“Lose something?” Dad asks.
“Uncle Tweetie can’t find his spit can. Have you seen it?” “Not since he got here,” Dad says. “I thought he left it in the bedroom.”
“Spit can?” I ask. “What do you mean, spit can?”
“Well, it’s Uncle Tweetie’s,” Mom says. “It’s what he spits his dip of snuff into when he’s finished with it.”
“You mean that creamed corn can?” I ask, feeling my stomach rise.
“Yes. Have you seen it?”
“I threw it away. God, Mom, it was rank.”
“Well, I’ll just have to find another can for him,” she says. She opens a can of tomatoes, empties the contents into a plastic dish, rinses the can, and takes it back to what I’d recently been thinking of as my bedroom.
“That makes me want to puke,” I say to Dad.
“Well, you know, Josh, he has different ways than we do. He’s just a country old-timer.”
All I can think of is the gunk in the creamed corn can that looked like something you’d find in the oil pan of some wreck of a car.
“Come on, Josh,” Dad says. “I know how you feel about your room, but he’s old and he needs some help. You’re hardly ever home, anyway. Don’t over react.”
That’s what my dad always says when I’m about to get screwed—I know how you feel and don’t over react. God, he doesn’t have a clue. Right now I feel like taking my sleeping bag and hibachi and going to live in a cave in the foothills, in private.
“How long is Uncle Tweetie going to stay?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Mom says. “As long as he needs to. He helped me and Vicky out a long time ago, when we needed help. Now it’s our turn to help him.”
“Why didn’t he go to Vee’s then? She’s got as much room as we do now that the back house is fixed up.”
“Because he came here. That’s all. And we’ll all make him welcome, Josh . . . You’ll like Uncle Tweetie. You’ll see.”
Right. My mom thinking I’ll like someone is a good sign of the absolute opposite. Like the time she set me up with her friend’s daughter. “You’ll really like her,” she’d said.
This girl didn’t have a date to some big dance, which should have told me something from the beginning. But my mom told me it was because she, Penny was her name, went to an all-girls school and so she didn’t have a chance to meet any guys. I swear, I don’t know how I let myself get talked into stuff, but I do. Besides, my mom said she’d buy me three new CDs, and she’d let me borrow the car either Friday or Saturday of the next four weekends. I guess you could say I took a bribe.
When I went to pick Penny up for the arranged date, just as I was leaving, Mom said, “Remember, it’s the inner person that counts.” Man, I should have never left the house that night.
Then there was the time my mom was being Mother Teresa or somebody. She had this kid in class, Isaac, who lived just with an older brother and was like totally unsupervised. Mom teaches English at Margaret Sanger Junior High, near downtown. Anyway, she decided what this thirteen-year-old wannabe gangbanger needed was a role model. “You’ll like him,” she’d said. “You just have to get to know him.” So she brought him home after school one day and I taught him how to play backgammon and shot a few baskets with him out in our driveway, and after she took him home I was missing twenty dollars and two CDs. So to hear my mom say I’m going to like Uncle Tweetie does not make me feel great about Uncle Tweetie.
––––––––
I go out to the garage, get the basketball, and start shooting baskets. Under my breath I mutter every cuss word I’ve ever heard, the “F” word, the “M-F” word, the “C” word, and all the little ones like shit and crap and bastard. I’ve about come around to the “M-F” word again when I feel Mom’s hand on my shoulder. I shut up.
“Josh, why are you so angry?”
I shoot another basket.
“Josh.”
I don’t look at her. I stand bouncing the ball.
“Josh, Honey, Uncle Tweetie may not even be here very long. Don’t be mad about something that may not even be a problem. Okay?”
“But, Mom, it’s like I don’t have any say at all. Every other guy I know has his own room, a place to have friends over, to play music. I’ve been waiting sixteen years for my own room! Then you and Dad just decide you’ll move some old man into my room without even bothering to talk to me about it.”
“Be reasonable, Josh. You weren’t even home, and it all happened so fast . . .”
“But you didn’t even care about how that would be for me!”
“We do care, Josh. But we care about Uncle Tweetie, too.”
“More than your own son?”
“Of course not, Josh. Now you’re being extreme.”
“Why isn’t he sleeping in your room? You’re the one who invited him. Or how about the bedroom Dad calls his office—put him in there.” I shoot another basket. It’s stupid to try to talk to her. She’ll never get it.
“You know, Josh, there’s more to life than having your own room.”
I shoot another basket. She stands and watches me for a while, then turns and goes inside.
I throw the ball hard against the backstop, back up, catch it, throw it again. I stay out there until the next door neighbor calls out his door, “Eleven o’clock!”
That’s all he ever says to anyone—eleven o’clock. When we first put up the backstop and hoop we had to agree not to play past eleven o’clock. I think he’s got his alarm set. I slam the ball against the garage door, twice, then go inside. My first evening home was not at all what I planned. No new posters up, no new stereo, no listening to music with Tracy in my room—just this old shriveled-up old Tweetie-bird in the bed across from mine.
***
In my dream I’m with Tracy in a forest. She’s holding my hand and smiling at me. We hear a funny sound, like an animal that’s hurt. Then we see a box of kittens, like you see sometimes outside a market, with a sign saying “Free to good home.” Tracy picks up a kitten and hands it to me, but it keeps mewing and mewing, and then she’s gone and the kittens are gone but I keep hearing the mewing. I turn over and know I’ve been dreaming, but the sound from my dream is still there. Through my window I can see the beginning of the grey light of early morning. I glance at my clock. Five-twenty. God. I listen, only half awake.
“. . . all our sins and griefs to bear. We should never be discouraged, take it to the Lord in prayer.”
It is Uncle Tweetie, lying flat on his back in Rick’s bed, singing.
“Uncle Tweetie,” I say, ready to tell him I don’t like to have to wake up before my alarm goes off at seven, but he starts talking.
“Mornin’, Son,” he says. “The Lord gave us another day.” He smiles a toothless smile.
I see that his teeth, both uppers and lowers, are sitting on the table between us, next to the can Mom gave him to replace the one I threw away. I turn over, hoping to go back to sleep.
“Me and Chickee met at a singin’ at a church over in Arkadelphia,” he says, in the kind of mushy way people without teeth talk.
“Every mornin’ when we woke up, and every night before we went to sleep, we sang a song. Sang together ever’ Sunday down at the Free Will Baptist Church, too. I don’t reckon we coulda lived together without that regular singin’. We both have strong opinions,” he says, as if she were still alive. “I been meanin’ to ask you, Son. You been saved? I don’t see no Bible in this room but mine.”
I stick my head under the pillow and will myself back to sleep.
––––––––
The smell of coffee, bacon, and fried eggs fills the kitchen. Mom, Dad and Uncle Tweetie are sitting there munching out.
“Is it Sunday?” I ask, thinking maybe I’ve got my days mixed up and can go back to bed.
“Wednesday, Josh,” my dad says. “I’ll fry you an egg as soon as I finish eating,” he says.
“Okay,” I say. I don’t know why we’re having a real breakfast when it isn’t even Sunday, but I’m happy to eat it. Maybe they’re trying to impress the old guy. I look over at him, peppering his egg. He has his teeth in now.
“How is Cleopatra doing?” Mom asks.
“She’s the same, Baby. You know, she was out hanging up her washin’ one day and she just fell outta the world. I don’t think she’s ever comin’ back.”
“But she’s still living by herself, isn’t she?”
“Conrad brings her food, and they have someone go in and clean twice a week in the mornings. I reckon she’s as well off there as anywhere.”
Mom asks about Conrad then, and Precious and Henry and about a hundred people I’ve never heard of. Usually it’s rushed at our house in the mornings but I guess Mom and Dad must have gotten up earlier than usual. Maybe Uncle Tweetie sang them awake this morning, too.
As I leave for school, Dad is trying to teach Uncle Tweetie how to use the remote control for the TV. I’m halfway down the block when I hear Tracy calling me. “Josh. Wait up.”
I turn to see her in white shorts and a top that shows part of her stomach. Her hair is sunbleached and she’s got a great tan. I think about how she held my hand in the dream and I feel my face and neck getting all hot. I hate that! I hope she doesn’t notice.
“Walk with me,” she says. “Are you on your way to register?”
“Yeah. I have a nine o’clock appointment.”
“Me, too,” she says.
We walk the seven blocks together, talking about our summers. She’s been at her dad’s most of the summer, someplace down near San Diego. I want to tell her how great she looks, but the words get stuck in my mouth.
“What classes will you be taking?” she asks me.
“You know, the usual college prep stuff. And Peer Counseling. I want to take that. My brother liked it a lot. He says Mrs. Woods is a cool teacher.”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Tracy says. “But I want to take ceramics, too. I can’t fit two electives into my program.”
“Take Peer Counseling,” I say. “It’ll be fun.”
“Which period are you signing up for?”
“Fifth. It’s either that or second, but I’d rather take it in the afternoon. Get the boring stuff over with in the morning.”
“Maybe I’ll do that, too.”
God, will she really change her plans to take a class with me? Is it possible she might secretly love me, the way I secretly love her? I doubt it, but there she is, smiling at me like she at least really likes me.
After I get signed up for classes I go down to Barb ’n Edie’s with Brian. He’s a really good friend, but he’s been away most of the summer, too. We get caught up, and I eat my way through a garbage- burger. I love those things. There was no place in San Luis Obispo that had anything like it. We hang out for a while, stop by McDonald’s, where our friend Jason works, but he’s busy, so we leave. Brian tells me all about how things are going with him and Danielle, but I don’t tell him my hopes for Tracy.
“It’s time you got a woman in your life,” he says.
“I’m working on it.”
“Who?” he asks, but I won’t say.
––––––––
When I get home late in the afternoon, the TV is blasting out, louder than I would ever play my stereo, if I had a stereo, and a place to play it. The house is empty. I turn off the TV and start looking around. Maybe Mom got off school early and took Uncle Tweetie somewhere. I get myself a Coke and a bag of potato chips and go outside to shoot a few baskets. That’s when I see him, sitting on the ground in his overalls, staring up into the big walnut tree that grows in our backyard.
“What’re you doing?” I ask.
“Well, Son, the danged TV was too loud, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t change it. So I left.”
“How long have you been out here?”
“Since I tried to find that program about the other side, and it got so loud I couldn’t stand it.”
“Well, I’ve turned it off. You want to go inside now?”
“I reckon. I get a little stiff sittin’ on the ground for a very long time. But you’ve got you a coupla big old squirrels up there,” he says, pointing into the tree. Then he turns and gets on his hands and knees, crawls to the trunk of the tree, and grabs onto it to help himself up.
“I don’t get around so good anymore,” he says. “I got the Arthur Ritis.”
He brushes off his hands and knees and starts walking toward the house.
“You know, son, we’d get us a pretty good stew outta those two fox squirrels. Get me your gun and I’ll get us some dinner.”
At first I think he’s kidding, but then he says, “My eyes ain’t as good as they used to be, but I can still shoot me a squirrel. And those things in your tree don’t even have sense enough to run away. I already told ’em they was dinner, and they just sat there. Arkansas squirrels are smarter than these California squirrels, but I reckon these’ll taste just as good.” He laughs a high-pitched laugh that, no matter how much I don’t like sharing a room with him, makes me smile.
“Go on, Son, get me your gun.”
“I don’t have a gun,” I say.
He gives me a long, slow look, tipping his head back to look me in the eye. Then he shakes his head slowly, back and forth.
“Don’t have a gun?”
I shake my head.
“Ooooie, we must be comin’ into the last days if a boy like you ain’t even got somethin’ to shoot a squirrel with.” He looks me square in the eye, then turns slightly away and spits a big glob of that crankcase stuff in the dirt.
“Well, then, bring me your daddy’s gun,” he says. “Them squirrels are gonna get tired of waitin’.”
“Dad doesn’t have a gun, either,” I say.
“Lordy, Lordy, this is about the sorriest mess I’ve been in,” he says. “Squirrels just waitin’ to be dinner, and me without a gun.”
Uncle Tweetie shuffles dejectedly back to the house while I start banging away with my basketball.
When I go inside, about an hour later, Uncle Tweetie is sitting on the couch, staring out the window.
“It ain’t your fault,” he tells me as I walk past him.
“What isn’t?”
“That you cain’t shoot a squirrel,” he says.
“I don’t want to shoot any squirrels,” I tell him.
“Well . . . that ain’t your fault, either,” he says. “Besides, a handsome movie star boy like you, I guess you don’t need to shoot dinner even if it is right under your nose,” he laughs. Honestly, he does look a lot like that Happy dwarf, except Uncle Tweetie’s not as chubby. And I don’t think Happy spits gunk into a can.
“I’m not a movie star boy,” I tell him.
“Well, you could be. You was cute when you was little, too.
I’d crawl around with you on my back and you’d laugh ’til you got the hiccups. You used to laugh all the time.”
“I don’t remember,” I say.
He nods, watching the tree again.
“Do you want me to turn the TV on for you? I can show you how to fix it so it won’t be too loud.”
“No, thank you, Son. I’ll sit here with Chickee for a while. We always talk a little near sundown. Sing in the mornin’, talk at day’s end, and sing at night. All these years I been doin’ that, I ain’t fixin’ to stop now. She’s somewhere listenin’ to me, I know that sure’s I know the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.”
“Okay, then. I’ll be back after awhile.”
––––––––
I walk across the street, take three deep breaths, and knock on Tracy’s front door.
“Hi, Josh, come on in,” she says, flashing a smile that makes me think she’s glad to see me. I follow her into the house. Photos are spread all over the coffee table and couch, and on the floor.
“I told Mom I’d put our pictures in albums before school starts. I didn’t know I was talking about millions of photos,” she laughs. “Look,” she says. “This is when we were a family together, before my mom kicked my dad out.”
There’s Tracy’s mom, dad, and older sister. Tracy is about four. They’re all smiling and happy. That’s the thing with pictures. Everybody looks happy, whether they are or not. Or maybe, for an instant when the picture is being taken, everyone gets happy. I think of the photos Vee got out when she first heard of Aunt Chickee’s death. I guess that’s why we take pictures— to remind us of happy times after people are gone from our lives.
“Look at this,” she says.
It’s a picture of me in the driveway, getting ready to shoot a basket. It looks like it was taken a year or so ago. I didn’t even know she took it. I look at her, puzzled.
“I wanted a picture of you, and I was too shy to ask,” she says.
I know I’m blushing. I can tell. And my face isn’t the only place where there’s an increased blood flow.
***
The second week of class Mrs. Woods hands out questionnaires as part of an expanded understanding project we’re starting. So far, Peer Counseling is my favorite class of the day, mainly because I sit next to Tracy, but also because the teacher is cool and it’s more kick-back than any of my other classes.
“We’ll look at racism, sexism, ageism, anything that treats people unfairly, or judges people unfairly.”
We’re supposed to get answers from at least two people in each decade, from pre-school to sixties. If we get one over seventy, we get ten extra credit points. If we get one over eighty, we get twenty extra credit points. Finally, a use for Uncle Tweetie besides the human alarm clock trick he does every morning at sunrise.
This morning, about five-ten, I was awakened by him singing, “Never grow old, never grow old, In the land where we’ll never grow old . . .” The funny thing was, he sounded almost young when he was singing it. Then he said, “Chickee, Sugar, watch for me. I don’t reckon it’ll be too much longer.”
I’m not in any hurry for him to die. I wouldn’t admit this to my mom or dad, but I’ve even started to like Uncle Tweetie a little.
He’s a funny old guy, and he’s always cheerful. But I sure would like my room to myself.
“Is it okay if we interview some of the same people?” Tracy asks Ms. Woods.
“Well . . . I don’t want all thirty of you interviewing the same seventy-year-old, just for extra credit . . . How about if we say no more than two students can interview the same person?”
“Good,” Tracy says, then turns to me. “Can I interview your uncle?”
“Sure,” I say, all cool. But I wonder if she’ll start thinking I’m weird because I have a weird uncle. We walk home together after school and I go into her house with her, like I’ve been doing every day since school started. Her mom doesn’t get home from work until about six-thirty and her sister lives with the dad, so we have the house to ourselves. Yesterday I brought a bunch of my CDs over, so now we’ve got good sounds. We go into her bedroom and I start the new Pearl Jam. We sit on the floor, leaning up against her bed, listening for awhile.
Then Tracy says, “Come on. We can interview each other and get one of the teen decade out of the way.” She takes the Peer Counseling questions from her notebook and asks, “Earliest memory?”
“Rick throwing up on me in the car.”
“Yuck.”
“How about you?”
“My dad banging on the door and yelling for us to let him in after my mom changed the locks,” she says, looking away. “You’re lucky that way. I bet your parents never even argue.”
“Not much,” I admit.
“Favorite childhood game?”
“Tether ball,” she says. “But I was good at jump rope, too.”
“Skateboarding. Does that count as a game?”
“Why not? If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?”
“I’d do away with all homelessness,” I say.
“I’d do away with all violence,” she says . . . “If you could
change one thing about your personal life?”
“I’d have my own room,” I say. Then I add, “And I’d know for sure that you were my girlfriend.”
Now it’s Tracy’s turn to blush. It’s like the world is standing still, just for an instant, then she says, “I’d know for sure that you were my boyfriend.”
I pull her close to me and kiss her on the lips.
“I am for sure your boyfriend,” I say.
“I am for sure your girlfriend,” she tells me.
I kiss her again. It is kind of awkward, like our lips are at an angle or something. I’ve kissed girls at parties, but no one I’ve ever cared about very much. When we stop kissing I keep my arm around her.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asks.
“Yes. Did you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve wanted you to be my girlfriend for a long time,” I confess.
“I’ve wanted that since before I took that picture of you,” she says.
I guess, right now, I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. I start kissing her again, but then she pushes me away. But in an easy way, not like she doesn’t like me.
“Let’s go ask your uncle these questions,” she says.
“I’d rather stay here and kiss you,” I tell her.
“My mom’ll freak if she comes home and finds us kissing. It’s okay for you to be here if we’re just friends, but if she even thinks we’re holding hands she’ll go ballistic.”
––––––––
Uncle Tweetie is on the couch, staring out the window when we get there. I forgot about it being his time with Aunt Chickee.
“Shhhh,” I say to Tracy. “Let’s go back outside for a few minutes.”
She follows me out and we sit on the back steps. “Why can’t we talk to him?”
“We’ll go inside in a few minutes. He’s talking with his dead
wife now.”
She looks at me like I’m totally crazy.
“Well, it’s hard to explain,” I say. “You’ll just have to meet him.”
She keeps giving me this strange look.
“You won’t stop liking me just because I have a weird uncle, will you?”
She laughs. “I’m going to like you for a long time. I already have.”
I tell her the story about how Uncle Tweetie got his name, and how he sings to Aunt Chickee when he first wakes up and just before he goes to sleep.
“I think that’s sweet,” she says.
“Yeah, well maybe he could come share your room then.”
––––––––
We go back inside and I introduce Tracy to Uncle Tweetie.
“Ooooie, you’re a purty girl. You’re one a them movie star kinds, too. When’re you gettin’ married?”
“We’re only sixteen,” I say.
“Well, that’s not too late. Chickee was sixteen when we was married. You find a purty girl like this’n and you better grab her before she gets her cap set for someone else.”
Tracy laughs. “Listen, Uncle Tweetie—is it okay to call you Uncle Tweetie?”
“Yep, cause you’re gonna be part of my family real soon. I can feel it in my bones.”
“Uncle Tweetie, we’ve got this questionnaire thing that you can help us out with. It’s for school.”
We explain the whole thing to him.
“Sure, I’ll answer questions. I ain’t got nothin’ better to do. Unless—you got a gun, Tracy?” he asks, looking out toward the walnut tree.
“No.”
“Well, then, I ain’t got nothin’ better to do.”
We’re still asking him questions, writing as fast as we can, when Mom and Dad come in from work, loaded with groceries and papers.
“Hi, Tracy,” Mom says. “I haven’t seen you around much. How are you?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Finley. I’ve been away all summer.”
“Well, we’re all back in the swing of things now, aren’t we?” my mom says, pointing to a stack of tests she’s just put on the table. She’s always grading papers, or making up lessons, or calling students.
My dad goes to the phone to call out for Chinese food. That’s what we do once a week, on grocery shopping nights.
“Would you like to stay for a bite to eat with us, Tracy?” he asks.
“Well . . .”
“C’mon. It’s really good stuff we get,” I tell her.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ll call and leave a message for my mom, so she’ll know where I am.”
After she makes the call, we get back to the questions for Uncle Tweetie. When we get to the one about what he’d change about his personal life, he says, “I’d be with my Chickee.”
Most of his answers go on and on, one thing leading to another. He tells us of his grandfather, who fought in the civil war, and of his grandmother, who threw boiling water on a Yankee who was trying to get into their smokehouse. I can’t believe the stuff he’s got in his head.
“I’d be on the Yankee side,” I say. “There should never have been such a thing as slavery.”
“Well, Son, if you was on the Yankee side, your great-great-great-grandma woulda threw boiling water on you, unless she’d had a gun handy. But that’s war. It’s all a sorry mess. I was too young for the Great War and too old for number two. Fine with me. I’m a farmer. I want to see things grow, not make ’em die.” He tried to explain his favorite childhood game to us, something called Snap. But we never got it.
He told us about how he’d been saved and how they’d baptized him in the river, next to a water moccasin, and it never even looked at them.
“You been saved?” he asks Tracy.
“Not that I know of,” she says.
“You’d know it, Sister,” he says. Then he shakes his head sadly, “I worry about you younguns, not bein’ saved, livin’ here where you get them big earthquakes, and not havin’ sense enough to get married when anyone can see you been bit hard by that old love bug.”
“Just two more questions,” I say, eager to change the subject.
Those answers take another hour. It is eleven by the time Tracy leaves and Uncle Tweetie goes to bed. I think because he’s stayed up so late he may sleep past dawn tomorrow.
No luck. At the first light of day he’s singing, “I will meet you in the morning by the bright riverside, where our troubles will all pass away . . .”
He must know about a million songs. I bury my head under the pillow, but it’s not enough to keep him out. “You’ll know me, in the morning, by the smile on my face,” he sings. Then he starts talking to Chickee. I finally drift back to sleep after he gets up.
––––––––
Saturday morning, when I’m doing some clean-up stuff on the job site, Dad comes over to me with a soda.
“Want to take a short break?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, reaching for the can, wiping the sweat out of my eyes.
“I thought I’d offer you the stereo again,” he says. “I’m glad to see you’re liking Uncle Tweetie. He’s a good man. I hope you’re not still mad about the situation.”
I don’t know what to say. I am still mad at them, for the way they handled it. Liking or not liking Uncle Tweetie has nothing to do with it.
“I’d still like my own room,” I say.
“So you don’t want the stereo now, even with headphones?”
“Not until I have my own space for it,” I say.
“Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” Dad says, and walks back to where the carpenter is working. I don’t even know what he means by that.
––––––––
The truth is, I’m at Tracy’s house a lot more than I am my own now. Her mom is hardly ever home. Last night she called Tracy from work and said she had a chance to go to Laughlin with some friends for the weekend. Would Tracy mind? So she’s going to be away until Sunday afternoon. Cool.
After we get back from the movies, I go home and check in. Tracy’s kind of afraid to stay alone in her house all night, so I wait until my mom and dad go to bed. Then I go into my bedroom and lump pillows under the covers so it looks like someone is sleeping there, if no one looks too closely. Uncle Tweetie is sound asleep.
I could have just told my parents I was staying at Tracy’s, but what if they’d said no? Better not to bring it up.
I tiptoe to the chest of drawers, reach into the back corner of the bottom drawer, and take one of the condoms Rick left behind. Then I sneak quietly out the front door and go over to Tracy’s. I have plans.
––––––––
We are stretched out on the floor, lying close to each other, listening to Boyz II Men sing about love. The only light in the room comes from a streetlight, filtered through drapes. I have my hand under Tracy’s sweater, feeling the warmth and smoothness of her skin, below her bra. I move my hand up, to feel her breast. She moves my hand back down where it was. I kiss her, long.
“I can’t get enough of you,” I say. “I love you so much—I want to be with you in a way I’ve never been with anyone else.” I look into her eyes, searching for the answer I want to see.
“Oh, Josh. I love you so much it scares me.”
“Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. I’ll watch out for you,” I say, kissing her again, moving closer, holding her tight to me. “Look,” I say, reaching into my pocket and pulling out the foil-wrapped condom. “It’ll be okay. I love you,” I whisper, moving my hand up, slightly, closer to the place I’m longing to touch.
“Josh,” she says, moving away from me, letting a space come between us. “I’m not ready. I’m sorry. I love you, but. . .” She is crying now.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” God, I hate when people cry. I put my hand up to her face and feel her tears. What am I supposed to do now?
“I don’t want to lose you. I’m just not ready, you know? When I am ready, I want it to be you.”
“God. I’m ready,” I say.
“I know,” she says, resting her head on my shoulder. “And I really want to make you happy. And I want to be closer to you, as close as I can get. But I’ve thought and thought about it, and it just isn’t time for me yet.”
I sigh and put the condom back in my pocket.
“You probably won’t love me anymore, will you?” she says, getting all teary-eyed again.
“I can’t imagine not loving you,” I tell her. “I think I might love you even more, if I could be with you in that way. But I can wait.”
With this she starts crying again. I mean sobs, like a kid. “I was so afraid I’d lose you.”
I hold her close and listen to the music as she gradually stops crying. I am about to burst with wanting her, but when it happens I want it to be right for both of us. And like they say in the Safe Sex talks at school, nobody ever died of an unsatisfied hard-on.
“Go get us some sodas, will you?” I whisper to her. “Let’s watch TV for a while.” I turn the stereo off, turn on this improv comedy show. These guys are really funny, and pretty soon Tracy and I are both laughing so hard we can hardly talk. I stay until about three in the morning.
“Call me if you get scared,” I say.
“I’m fine,” she says. She gives me the world’s sweetest kiss, and I leave.
––––––––
I think Uncle Tweetie is asleep when I sneak back into my room, but just as I pull the covers up over me he says, “You been with that Tracy girl?”
“Yes,” I say. “She was afraid to stay alone, so I stayed with her for awhile.”
“You oughta have your tail jerked in a knot,” he says.
“Why?” I don’t even know what that means, but it can’t be nice.
“Because if’n you don’t marry her, she’s gonna get away from you, and then where’ll you be? Soon as I fell for Chickee, I married her. Smartest thing I ever did, and I’ve done some pretty smart things in my time. Don’t think I haven’t.”
“I’m too young to get married,” I say, turning on my side, away from him.
“Hogwash,” he says. “If’n you’re too young for marriage, you’re too young to be lettin’ your bull loose in her pasture.”
“My bull’s not loose in her pasture,” I laugh. “He’s still in the pen.”
“Thank the Lord. Me’n Chickee been piecin’ on that ever since I woke up and saw you was gone. We both know no good comes from a quick romp in the pasture. Now a union blessed by God, that’s somethin’ that’ll last you forever, not wear out by the end of spring.”
“Didn’t you ever, you know, want to . . . you know, let your bull loose before you and Chickee were married?” God, I can’t believe he’s got me talking this way.
“OOOIE, Son. I was on fire from the time I was twelve—on the farm, seein’ the animals and the crops live their natural lives and I had to keep ever’thing all held in. OOOIE, I know that ain’t easy. But it’s kindly like the difference between the easy way, plowin’ shallow and gettin’ a puny crop, or plowin’ deep and true, and gettin’ a plentiful crop, livin’ in abundance through the whole winter, with plenty left to sell . . . You asleep?”
“Almost.”
“Sometimes I don’t know when to stop talkin’.”
“No, it’s okay. I like your stories,” I say.
“Well, good night, Son. I expect it’s close to daylight.” “Good night, Uncle Tweetie,” I say, turning on my side and letting my mind drift back across the street to Tracy.
I hear Uncle Tweetie say, “Good night, Chickee.”
I swear, I practically say goodnight to Chickee, too. I’ve heard
Uncle Tweetie talk to her so much she’s beginning to seem real to me. I wonder if I could get Dad to let me partition off part of the garage and put my bed out there? I asked him once and he said no, but if he hears me starting to talk to dead women, maybe he’ll change his mind.
The truth is, though, old Uncle Tweetie has sort of grown on me. I’m still not wild about sharing my room with a spit can, or being awakened at dawn, every day, seven days a week, but I can’t help liking him. And he and Chickee have given me plenty to think about.
––––––––
Just before Thanksgiving holiday I come dragging in from school, loaded down with the books I need to get caught up on my homework. I toss my backpack on the bed, then go to the kitchen for a snack. Uncle Tweetie is sitting in the living room with his suitcase and his snuff can beside him.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“Well, Son, I’ve got to be going home soon. I’m going to spend a few days with Vee and then get back to where I belong.”
“But how will you get along, alone?”
“I’ll be fine,” he says. “Does it look to you like I cain’t take care of myself?”
“No,” I say, looking at his wrinkled, wiry old body and his broad smiling face.
“I’m more worried about what’ll become of you. I hoped at least I’d get to see you be saved or married while I was here, but you ain’t got sense enough to do either one,” he says.
“When did you decide to leave?” I ask, thinking again how nobody ever tells me anything.
“Just this morning. I called and got me a bus ticket for San Luis Obispo. Vee said she’d carry me into some other San place in a few days and I can fly to Shreveport from there.”
“San Francisco?”
“Nope.”
“San Jose?”
“Maybe.”
“But why don’t you just visit Vee and come back? Why are you going home?” I ask, forgetting for a minute that this is good news and it means I get my room to myself.
“I’m sure the Lord knows everything. If His eye is on the sparrow, He must know I’m in California. But I just cain’t help bein’ afraid He won’t know where to find me when he comes to take me to Chickee.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
Later in the evening, as he’s leaving, he hugs me tight. “I love you and I’m prayin’ you’ll get saved,” he says. “And if you don’t marry that Tracy girl right soon, you ain’t got the sense of a plowed-out mule.”
I laugh and hug him back. After he leaves I spend some time thinking about how it would be, if I were a farmer, and Tracy and I got married right away. And how it would be to be so certain about God and heaven and being saved. But that’s his life, not my life. I’m actually glad, though, that I got to know some things about his life.
I get out the Escher prints and tack them up on the wall. I clean the snuff dribbles off the table where his snuff can set. Then I start reading stereo ads. I’ll go to Circuit City tomorrow. And there’s a song I heard the other day that I think might help Tracy think it’s time for us to be together. I mean, really together. It’s not that I don’t respect her decision to wait. I do. But every now and then I remind her of how much I want her, and how nice it could be, just in case she’s ready to change her mind. And she reminds me of Uncle Tweetie’s advice, not to take the easy way, but to work on something that will last, that will be abundant.
––––––––
In the morning, I wake up with the sun, and it’s almost like I can hear Uncle Tweetie singing, “When the roll is called up yonder I’ll be there.” And I know my mom was right when she said there are more important things in life than having your own room. But I may not admit to her that she was right for a long, long time.