Gemini Summer Page 3

  “Stop!” said Mrs. River. “You’re scaring the boys.”

  “Well, they should be scared,” said the Old Man. “We should all be scared. Then I wouldn’t be digging here by myself night after night. I’d have some help.”

  “You need it,” said Mrs. River. She was staring into the hole, at the mud and the bones of the animals. “You think I could take the boys down there? Into the dirt? Do you think we could live in the dirt while a war goes on, then come up like—like moles when it’s over?”

  “It will be survivable,” said Old Man River.

  “Survivable!” she scoffed. “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee, you and your war talk. Come along, boys.”

  But the boys didn’t come along. They stayed down there in the pit, with the Old Man towering high above them, and little Flo River looking sick with worry.

  “You can’t run away from it, Flo,” said the Old Man. “There’s nowhere to run to.”

  He came down from his mountain, then took up his shovel again. “And it is survivable. The government says it is. We’ll have concrete walls three feet thick, a roof banked up with dirt. We’ll have food and water, and we’ll be safe here, the four of us. Darn it, Flo, that’s all that matters. I want to keep us safe.”

  He kicked his shovel into the ground and pried away the dirt. He was going deeper. Danny started digging out the bones of Billy Bear, scraping with his hands around the edges of the rotted blanket. Beau looked at his mother, then at his dad. “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “Help your brother,” said the Old Man. Mrs. River turned and left, her shoes scuffing through the spilled earth.

  The boys moved all three of the skeletons. They used Danny’s old wagon for a bier, carrying each of the animals in a big cake of dirt. They dug one long trench behind the house and buried the bodies side by side. Danny got so caught up in the ceremony of it that he forgot his sadness about Billy Bear. He found blankets for covers, and made wooden crosses from sticks that he gathered in the woods. He sang “Jesus Loves Me” in time to the drumbeats of the Old Man’s shovel.

  When it was done, Danny still had the name tag that Billy Bear had worn. He got a piece of string from the kitchen drawer and made a loop to go around his neck. Beau said it was a creepy thing to do, to wear the tag of a dead dog. But Danny said that one day he would have a dog and call it Billy Bear, and then he would hang the tag on its collar. “I think Billy Bear would like that,” he said.

  ten

  Old Man River took to his digging with a fever greater than before. He dug in the mornings now, before driving off in the pumper truck. He spent so long in the pit, it seemed to Danny that it was the only place he ever saw his father anymore.

  All the games they’d played—there was no time for those. The Old Man would come in for his supper and go right back out again. He never sat and watched TV, never helped Beau with his model rockets or Danny with his construction sets and card houses. He didn’t come in until the boys were asleep, so there were no more bedtime stories, and Treasure Island—half finished—sat dusty on the table between the beds.

  The Old Man and his hole became a curiosity not only in the Hollow but all around the heights. It was a mystery to Danny how everyone suddenly knew about his father’s dream. Danny had told fewer than a dozen people and had made sure they all knew it was a secret. But crowds sometimes gathered, everyone staring down from the edges as though they were watching the fat polar bears in the concrete pit in the zoo. Once Danny saw Creepy Colvig driving by very slowly, his elbow poking out from the window of his wood-paneled station wagon. Even Dopey came and peered into the hole one morning, scratching his bottom with one hand, his round head with the other.

  Danny thought the Old Man would be furious to be watched so much. But, instead, he often stopped his work to explain about the shelter, showing where the food would go and where he’d build the bunk beds. “I’ll tell you what we should have done,” he’d say. “We should have got together and made one big shelter for all of us.” But Danny was glad that hadn’t happened. He wouldn’t have wanted to live in the ground with Creepy and Dopey.

  The only person in Hog’s Hollow who never went near the hole was Mrs. River. It might have been full of crocodiles, the way she avoided it. She parked her car on the road—her big Pontiac with its fenders and tail fins—and went in and out of the house through the side door. She tried not to look toward the window as she made dinner, as she washed the dishes, now in silence. Before the Old Man started digging, she’d sung little Southern songs as she’d worked in the kitchen. She’d sung about Camptown races and shortening bread, and Danny had loved to hear her sing. Now she never spoke a word as she worked, and never mentioned the pit until the thirtieth of August, the twenty-first day of the Old Man’s digging. Suddenly she pushed the window open and shouted at him, “Will you never be finished with that?”

  “Not until it’s done,” he said.

  “Great balls of fire! How deep will you go?” she said.

  “To bedrock,” he answered. “I’m going down to bedrock, Flo.”

  That made Danny shriek with laughter. He was sitting on the porch with Beau, the two of them eating watermelon and trying to see who could spit the seeds farthest up the pile of dirt. Their pieces of watermelon lay on the ground like the ribs of a green animal. Danny laughed so hard that watermelon juice squirted from his nose, and that made Beau laugh, too.

  “You’re like a pair of hyenas,” said the Old Man from his hole. “What’s so damned funny?”

  “Bedrock,” said Danny, for a picture had come into his mind of the Old Man reaching Bedrock, and of all the funny people pouring out. He imagined Barney Rubble driving up in his stone-wheeled car, and Dino the dinosaur raising his head. “Yabba dabba doo,” he said, just like Fred Flintstone.

  That made all of them laugh, his mother in the kitchen and his father in the hole. Danny heard the laughter booming up from the ground and thought, for a moment, that they were just a happy family again. Then the window closed, and the shoveling started, and he felt the sense of something awful on its way.

  eleven

  Down in the cells at the sheriff’s office, the boy heard a door open. He heard shoes tapping on the floor, then the lady’s voice.

  “Where’s the kid?” she asked.

  “I put him in the cage,” said the sheriff.

  “Well, take him out,” she said. “That’s no place for a boy.”

  It wasn’t long before they both came down to the cell. The lady brought a donut and a bottle of Orange Crush for the boy, and a box of treats for the dog. The sheriff opened the door and let her in.

  The boy ate his donut. He drank the cold pop. He said, “Thank you. That was good.”

  The lady looked at the narrow bed, at the toilet in the corner and the lightbulb on the ceiling. “Don’t you want to go home?” she asked.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Why not? Does someone hurt you at home?” she said. “Is that it, Beau?”

  “I told you twice that’s not my name,” said the boy.

  “Well, it’s a funny thing,” said the small, red-faced sheriff in the doorway. “That’s what the truck driver called you. Now, are you saying he just made that up, sonny?”

  twelve

  On the last weekend of August, Mrs. River cleaned her dolls. She stood on a chair and leaned over the sink, finding pleasure in the crinkly touch of the miniature clothes, in the softness of Scarlett’s hair.

  She saw the Old Man climbing from his hole, its edges now so high that he had to pause at the top for a rest, bent over with his hands on his thighs. Then he came down, and straight into the kitchen.

  “Where are the boys?” he asked.

  “Oh, Charlie, don’t make them dig today,” she said. “It’s their last weekend before school.”

  “I know it, Flo.” He twisted his cap, then took it off. “I was thinking I haven’t seen all that much of them and…”

  The Old Man seemed uncomfortab
le, as though he wasn’t used to being inside a house. “I thought I’d take them with me to the dump. I should empty the truck; I’ve got to pump the taverns on Tuesday.”

  “Ugh,” she said with a shudder. Even the Old Man didn’t like pumping the taverns. Their septic tanks, too full of disinfectant, were nothing more than cesspools.

  “So, where are they?” he asked.

  thirteen

  Danny and Beau were up in the attic. They’d climbed through the hatch in the hallway closet and dragged out the metal box from its corner. When Beau pulled on the latches, the lid sprang up half an inch, as though the box had ached to be opened.

  The boys looked at each other; then Beau raised the lid all the way. They smelled old wool and mothballs.

  In the box was a sailor’s blue shirt, carefully folded with its big collar on top. They lifted it out, then a pair of bell-bottomed trousers of the same color, with buttons embossed with anchors. Underneath was a crushed-looking cap, a couple of old books, and a bunch of paper. At the very bottom was an album full of pictures.

  It had a paper cover that was tattered and torn, and black pages as thick as cardboard, all bound with red string threaded through holes at the side. Beau didn’t lift it out, but reached down and turned the pages over.

  Danny leaned forward. Billy Bear’s old name tag slipped from his shirt and swung against the box. “Where’s this famous dog?” he asked.

  “Just a minute.” Beau was touching the pictures. They were small and funny-looking, fitted into cardboard corners. Some had bumpy edges. Others had turned into yellow fog.

  Danny pointed at one. “Do you think that’s Dad’s ship?”

  “I think that’s the Constitution, Danny.”

  “Wow! Dad was on Old Ironsides?”

  “Sure, he’s a hundred years old. Don’t be a dope!” Beau pushed Danny away. “He musta gone and seen it, that’s all.”

  Danny leaned over the box again as Beau turned a page. “Look!” he cried, jabbing his finger at a picture of a sailor and a lady. “Is that Mom and Dad?”

  “Beats me,” said Beau.

  “Bet it is. See what it says.”

  They knew the story of how their parents had met, on the day before the Old Man went overseas. It was one of their favorite stories, how their mom—drawn to the city to work for the war—had thought the Old Man looked just like Rhett Butler, and how he thought she was from the Deep South because she talked to him like Scarlett O’Hara. Danny loved how his mother had hoped and hoped they’d meet again, and how his father had suddenly shown up at her house ten years later, to pump her parents’ septic tank. To Danny, his dad was like a white knight in a pumper truck. Now he reached out for the picture, to see what was written on the back, but Beau shoved his arm away. Danny cried, “Don’t do that!”

  “Then don’t touch,” said Beau. “You’ll get ’em dirty, Danny, and he’ll know we been here.”

  Danny knelt on his hands, watching his brother pry the picture from its corners. “That’s not Mom? What’s it say?” he asked.

  “‘A girl in every port,’” said Beau, frowning.

  “Where’s the one of the dog?”

  “On the next page. Just a minute.”

  Beau started putting the sailor and the lady back in place, but Danny couldn’t wait to see the dog. He tried to lift the bottom corner of the page.

  “Wait, I said!” snapped Beau.

  “You’re not the boss of me.” Danny pulled harder. He put his head down in the box, peering under the lifted page. “Geez, there it is!” He could see the picture now, a sailor crouching on the ground, ruffling the hair of a laughing collie. “Man, that’s peachy keen,” he said, trying to snatch it out.

  “Quit it!” Beau pushed down, and Danny slid his hand behind the picture, and the photograph of the sailor and his dog creased across the middle. A dark line suddenly split them apart, and Beau shouted, “Holy man! Look what you did.”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Danny. “You—”

  He stopped and looked at Beau. He could hear the jingle of the Old Man’s keys in the hallway below them.

  “Oh, geez,” said Beau. “He knows we’re here.”

  “Maybe not,” said Danny, in a whisper.

  “Sure he does.” Beau pressed the wrinkled picture flat, then closed the album.

  From the hall the Old Man shouted. “Boys! Where are you?”

  They put the books and papers in the box, then the crushed cap and the trousers and the jacket. They pressed them down and closed the lid, and the air hissed out round the edges.

  “Danny! Beau!” called the Old Man.

  “Coming, Dad,” said Beau. He pulled Danny away.

  As Danny fell back from the box he heard a small pop of a sound that made him think one of the buttons had fallen from the bell-bottomed trousers. He looked round the floor and down at his feet, but Beau was tugging at him, saying, “Come on. Come on.” Then the Old Man started thumping in the closet, and he hollered through the hatch, “What on earth are you doing up there?”

  “Just looking at stuff,” said Beau. He clenched his teeth and whispered to Danny, “Come on.”

  They went down through the hatch where the Old Man was waiting. Beau went first, down to the shelf, then down to the chair they’d brought. Danny crowded behind him, for he didn’t like to be alone in the attic, not even for a moment. It was too spooky up there, with the shadows and the silence. He slid over the edge on his stomach, and as he dangled above the chair the Old Man took hold of him and lifted him down. Then up got the Old Man, onto the chair, and he poked his head through the hatch. “What’s up here, anyways?” he asked. “Been so long since I looked that I can’t remember.”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Beau, grimacing at Danny. “Just stuff.”

  “Yeah, just stuff,” said Danny. He tried to smile, but he felt terrible inside. He kept seeing the jagged crease appear across the picture, and felt as though he’d…well, he wasn’t even sure how he felt. As though he’d punched his dad in the stomach, sort of.

  “Huh. It’s a museum.” The Old Man’s voice echoed in the attic. “There’s Danny’s old Jolly Jumper, and your grandmother’s hatboxes. That’s the first little chair you ever sat in, over there, Beau. And look; there’s my old navy footlocker. Just sitting there in the corner. Why, I don’t recall what I even put in that thing.”

  The boys said nothing. Old Man River grunted. “Have to drag it out and see, I guess.”

  He knows, thought Danny.

  “Yup, we’ll do that,” said the Old Man. “But not now.” He closed the hatch above his head. “I’m going up to the dump, and I thought you boys might come along. Thought we might stop at the Dub.”

  It seemed to Danny that a miracle had saved them. It had been a month or more since the Old Man had asked them to do anything, and now it seemed the thought had come to him right out of the blue, at just the very perfect time.

  fourteen

  Danny loved to ride in the pumper truck, gloating down from its window as it roared and smoked along the streets. Poop-mobile or not, his best friends envied him that—or the boys did, at least. And what the girls might think…well, that didn’t matter to Danny. He didn’t give a hoot what girls might think.

  When Beau went along, as he did that day, Danny always sat in the middle. He had to scrunch his legs sideways, to give the Old Man room to work the big gearshift with its shiny eight ball on top. But he never felt so cozy and safe as he did then, squashed between his father and Beau.

  They drove up through the Hollow with the engine growling, and Danny held on to the eight ball so that the lever wouldn’t rattle. He looked down on the roofs of cars, down on the heads of people on the sidewalk. Riding in the truck made him feel enormous, like the little Martians in their great walking robots.

  At the top of the hill they turned right, over the big bridge with its metal grating that hummed from the traffic. All of Hog’s Hollow suddenly lay below them, and Danny stretched up on
the seat to watch his house flicker by in the row of others. His father’s hand nudged his own from the eight ball.

  The Old Man, in his coveralls and boots, changed up through the gears. The windows were open, and hot air blasted around them, so the Old Man had to pull his hat low. The truck surged and swayed from the weight that sloshed in its tank, and they went barreling through the city.

  “So it’s back to school next week,” said the Old Man, and that sort of destroyed the mood. It seemed to Danny that a hole opened inside him.

  “Now, I know I’ve been…preoccupied,” said the Old Man. “With all the digging.” His big hand rubbed the eight ball. “I haven’t seen much of you, and I’m sorry. I promise that next summer will be better. Next summer we’ll go on a trip.”

  “Where?” asked Danny.

  “Don’t know,” said the Old Man. “Your mother and me, we thought we’d let you boys decide. So give it some thought and—”

  “The Cape!” shouted Beau. “Cape Canaveral.”

  “Oh, that’s a long ways, isn’t it?” said the Old Man. “That’s down in the Carolinas or somewhere.”

  “Florida,” said Beau.

  “Florida! Geez.” The Old Man gave his cap a hard twist. “That must be a thousand miles.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” said Beau with a sigh. He turned toward the window, and the wind pushed his blond hair sideways, then forward and back. The truck was roaring up the four-lane street, past Kantor’s store, on to the north.

  They went three or four blocks before anyone talked. Then the Old Man looked across at Beau. “The Cape, huh? Well, I’d like to take you there, son, but I can’t see it coming that soon. Maybe two, three years from now. It’s—”