Darnay Road (27 page)

Darnay
Road 48

Abigail
and Ricky can’t stay long. Friday nights are game nights and they both have to
be at the gym early. I must admit I am so relieved for Ricky to be gone and if
I have to sacrifice Abigail May too, so be it. Before she left, Abigail invited
Easy to the game. He said it was up to me. I was proud of that, that he would
make me the big deal.

I
wouldn’t say so without talking to him in private. I don’t know if he is still
sad about his mom, even though she didn’t take care of him very well when she
was alive. She left him on Scutter. Maybe he can overlook that, but it’s harder
for me. I remember how hungry he was, how worried he was and how alone.

I
just don’t want people to look at us if we go to that game. And I wonder if
I’ll ever get to talk to him without a bunch of people around. But then it’s
kind of terrifying too. I’ll probably say dumb stuff. I feel so excited around
him, but I remember how it was, the old Easy, and there is an ache in me for
that friendship. Not even Abigail May has been able to fill it.

But
I think my Granma will allow us to go to the game. I’m pretty sure. Especially
since Abigail volunteered Aunt May to drive us. She wants me to get Easy to ask
Cap too. Well I know she is dying to see him. Or more like dying for him to see
her doing her twirl in the two-toned skirt.

“You
should bring your brother here so we could meet him,” Granma says to Easy. “Is
he as well-behaved as you?”

“No,”
Easy laughs. “But he’s all right. I mean…he behaves.”

Abigail
and I laugh because it’s just funny. Easy makes it sound like he’s Cap’s
trainer or something.

“Oh
please bring him to the game,” Abigail whines. How does she know without even
seeing Cap that she will be happy to meet him again? He doesn’t look like a
jock, not with that hair and he doesn’t wear the right clothes, matter of fact
he looks like a hippie and that is certainly not her type at all not that she’s
been allowed to have much of a type .

We’re
not allowed to date because Aunt May and my granma have joined forces like
Ozzie and Harriet or Ward and June and exchanged their ideas for the rules like
they’ll have better luck if they co-ordinate or something. And that’s not even
fair cause Abigail May and I have given them no trouble at all, even Abigail
May, in love all the time, obeys mostly.

And
speaking of, once Abigail and Ricky are gone, Aunt May comes next, carrying
Little Bit. She often takes her over to visit while I’m at school, or to clip
her toenails as she is the only one with the nerve to do it. She is all smiles
for Easy and that’s saying something because Aunt May doesn’t smile so much
since the ‘Father Anthony also known as just Anthony,’ experience.

 
It had caused a huge scandal when Father Anthony
left the priesthood. Word got around that he’d been keeping time with Aunt May.
Aunt May left the church over it too, not that anyone seemed to notice. She
went straight to the Lutherans and it caused her and my Granma to get into it
some, but this day and age people are searching for truth, or so Aunt May says,
and she couldn’t stay where she was condemned without a trial. So now she
attends the Lutheran church and Gloria Sue insists she not pull Ricky and
Abigail from Bloody Heart, even though Mr. Figley was probably so ready to
finally have an excuse to stick them in public and save the tuition. But Aunt
May said of course she would never do that, but she had a right to ‘work out
her own salvation.’ Now that she reads the bible she quotes it all of the time
and the whole thing seems to have been written to support her arguments.

May
also reads about women’s liberation quite a bit. She’s got Granma wearing a
short haircut and pretty much living in stretch pants now. I don’t think I ever
saw my Granma in pants until the last couple of years. She still won’t wear
them to church, and she doesn’t like me to either so of course I do not, but
people are starting to here or there.

And
Aunt May had a book called,
The Feminine Mystique
, by Betty Friedan and
another called,
The Bitch
. I told Abigail May she has to get me the one
called,
The Bitch
, but she keeps forgetting. If it’s half as interesting
as,
Valley of the Dolls
, I’m ready.

So
some of Aunt May’s books Aunt May loans me, and some, Abigail May loans me.
Either way I return them so what’s the harm? Americans are meant to be free
thinkers. That’s what makes us different from the rest of the world. We can
imagine something, then make it actually come true, not that I’m going to make
Valley
of the Dolls
come true, but I can read something and figure it out for
myself. That’s why people are trying to end the war in Vietnam. Americans
believe in the power of Joe Nobody to change the world.

Aunt
May wants Abigail to finish her education and not get entangled with foolish
crushes on boys. She tells Abigail that a boy will only confuse her. They are
all after one thing only and if a girl makes a mistake and gives in it can
change the course of her entire life and ruin it probably.

Then
she says there is so much more in life for a girl than being a housewife. She
believes we girls should get educations and have careers. She believes women
haven’t been properly encouraged to reach their full potentials but get scooped
up by men too quickly, before they can have fulfilling lives even. It almost
sounds like she’s saying men are like Martians invading earth and taking us on
spaceships before we get to explore our own planet.

Granma
just sighs when May gets going. After May leaves Granma usually says, “May
never did marry and Father Anthony, that heretic, did nothing to help her out.”

Granma has never read a
book on women’s lib in her life, and she seems to believe that the best thing
that could possibly happen to me is if I fall in love. She seems to think it’s
to be expected. She is a romantic crazy lady from reading thousands of romantic
stories. I don’t think she knows about boys, how they really are, except for
Dennis at school, but especially Easy. I’ve already hugged Easy twice and I
feel fine. Fine. Maybe that’s why I am so, so happy around him.

Of
course the two of them, Aunt May and my granma, get to the bottom of every
little thing about Easy. The way he seems so open to answering questions takes
me back some. He wasn’t like that before. He always seemed to guard a hundred
secrets and that drew me then. Now, well this more open Easy works even better
for me because I am fourteen and I need to know stuff.

His
mother died of a thing called Pancreatitis, and she went quickly but she had
not been well for a very long time, or ever. He said she was always weak and I
think of what he said way back, about the babies. Back home he and Cap lived
with an uncle and aunt by marriage and another uncle. His mother’s father is
still living and he’s there too, the whole bunch in the family home, he says.
And it’s a harsh place, he says. He brought Cap to Missouri and Darnay Road to
get him away.

May
and Granma want to know if any of the relatives are upset about this. Cap is
only fifteen, just a little older than me and Abigail May. They wonder if
someone will come looking for him or send the police. “Did you just leave
without the family’s blessing?” May says.

Well
I can’t look at the two of them—Granma and May for a minute. They have no idea
we’ve done faced the police and the subject of Easy kidnapping Cap never came
up.

Easy
says, “I signed up and Mom was okay. She would get sick but she seemed okay
when I left. I knew I had to get some money to get us out of there and it was
always the army for me. I knew I could be a good soldier and maybe get them far
away…back here maybe. Then she died and he was alone there and they were just
working him, like they do. He’d have to fight to stay in school, and he
wouldn’t. I don’t want him to end up like them. And he’s looking for a way to get
out. He’s just a kid. So I went by and told him to pack up. I told them I was
taking him and they said don’t come back.” He goes back on the chair legs
again, but there’s just a hard look this time.

I
am so angry.

“What
are you going to do with him while you’re serving? You are leaving in two
weeks!” Granma says.

“Disbro’s
granma will let him stay,” Easy admits. And you could cut a knife through the
silence after that.

“Easy,”
May says, “you are telling us there is no one for that boy?”

“I
don’t have anyone normal,” he says, his Adam’s apple working.

And
so is Aunt May’s.

“Well…,” Granma doesn’t
finish it, but what’s true is that Disbro and his granma are hardly what you’d
call normal. That place is just a hang-out. Cap would have to be like Easy to make
it there, and I’m pretty sure he’s not that disciplined. Disbro pretty much
runs the place. He talks to his granma like she’s a dog.

Granma
looks at Aunt May and she looks back.

Aunt
May blows through her lips. “I already have two to keep my hands full.”

“He
gets sixteen he can go in like me,” Easy says. “He’s not sure he wants to.”

“Well…,”
Granma doesn’t finish that either, but what she’d probably say is, who in their
right mind would want to go in the military with Vietnam raging?

I
don’t know if they can feel it like I do, Easy’s desperation.

“Is
this best, Easy? It may not be the best place but that’s what Cap knows back
home. Someone back there may love him and want to keep him. There’s his school
and friends,” Granma says.

“It’s
small, the school there, but I ain’t going to lie to you, he got in trouble a
couple of years ago and it’s so easy to get in trouble again. I’ll be sending
money for his keep. He just has to go to school and do his work. He’ll be all
right. Maybe one of you could ask after him from time to time.”

Even
I can see that hope of Easy’s is built on sinking sand.

“Well
he could stay here,” I say.

Granma
looks at me, and so does May. Here we go again.

“We
didn’t help before. Not like we should have,” I say. I am talking right in front
of Easy and Granma’s eyes are bugging. But May folds her arms and looks at
Granma like she needs to do something.

“What
are you looking at May?” Granma says.

“An
ostrich,” May says.

Granma
looks more like a fish the way her mouth is moving. “I have a fourteen year old
young lady under my roof,” Granma says to Easy.

“I
ain’t asking you to take him,” Easy says. “Disbro….”

“Hush
about Disbro,” May says. “Does this brother of yours listen? Is he
foul-mouthed? Does he smoke that marijuana?”

Easy
is speechless for a minute, then he laughs a little. “He’s all right. I can
make him listen.”

“Does
he respect women?” May says.

If
May is worried about that she could work more on Ricky. But I don’t say it.

“I
think so,” Easy says. He’s looking at me like maybe I could help him out.

“Um…he’s
a nice boy,” I say, but I have no idea. He looked pretty rough and I don’t
imagine he’s had to walk too much of a line, like no priests or nuns up his ass
ever, no ten commandments held over his head. Probably no guilt a person could
crank on when the need arose—like I just did with Granma and May.

“Well
for how long? You think he’ll go in the army?” Granma says.

“I
don’t know. Couple of years though. Maybe one,” Easy says.

“He’s
a sophomore in school?” Granma says.

“Freshman,”
Easy and I say together.

“Oh,”
Granma says like that’s terrible or something.

But
Granma calls May an ‘arm-chair activist,’ well the shoe fits. If you want to
change this world you have to start with what you can touch. Least it seems
that way to me.

“Well
May you’ve put me in a fine pickle,” Granma says.

“You’re confusing me
with your own conscience,” May snaps back and I’ve no idea what got into her
and her attitude but I take Little Bit and Easy laughs and reaches for her and
yep, she loves him just like time stood still.

“It’s
all right,” Easy says, Little Bit licking his chin. “He’ll be okay down there.”

Then
he winks at me, Easy does. And if I didn’t know better I might think he meant
for this to happen all along. But that would mean I didn’t crank the lever of
guilt on Granma and May until Easy cranked it on me.