The Great Good Summer (3 page)

“I have to go to the restroom,” I whisper to Daddy, and I slip out of our pew and tiptoe down the side aisle toward the back of the church. Kimmy and Kaitlyn Roy are sitting on the edge of the second-to-the-last row, playing hangman on the church bulletin, clear as day. Which Pastor Lou might call an abomination if he were paying any attention.

And I'm left to wondering why he doesn't focus on the “sinners in our midst”—that's what he calls us sometimes, the “sinners in our midst”—instead of the sinners holed up in The Great Good Bible Church of Panhandle Florida.

Chapter Four

W
ell, what do you know? Ivy Green! I sure never thought I'd see the likes of you skipping out of church.”

I would like to act either innocent or appalled, but it's true, I'm skipping out. When I came out of the ladies', I just couldn't make myself walk back down that aisle. Instead I tucked out the side door, thinking I'd sit on the cellar steps and kick stones around instead. But it turns out the cellar steps are taken up already by none other than Paul Dobbs, whom I haven't seen since Wednesday morning when the Murray babies and I had a meltdown in East Loomer Park.

“I'm not exactly skipping out, Paul-calling-the-kettle-black,” I say, because you just know that Paul's mom and dad and sister, Jenny, are sitting in there, all fancy and proper while he skips out too. “It's just that I don't feel quite right,” I say. “I needed a breath of air. And I'm pretty sure I can pray from out here,” I say, like I'm kind of irritated with him, which for some reason I am.

“I'm pretty sure you can't,” says Paul with a little twitch
of a smile as he scootches over to make room for me on the steps. “Pastor Lou thinks his God only looks after the folks inside Loomer Second Baptist Church, and preferably those in the front few pews like my family. He's got a stricter rubric than Mrs. Murray has for English papers, and if you don't follow it, you flunk straight out, no matter who you pray to.”

I close my eyes and feel hot dots of sun, filtered through the leaves of the giant cedar elm, prick the skin on my face. My head starts to spin a little, and I realize I wasn't fibbing. I really don't feel well at all.

“Okay,” I say as I open my eyes back up gently. “I'm sorry you're angry about the rules in both church and school, but I've got a headache, and I am not in the mood for a lecture. And by the way, I think Pastor Lou's God is the same God who looks after all of us.”

I know it's a little hypocritical for me to be defending Pastor Lou right now, but the way Paul talks, it's like he knows better than all of us, including God. Which is what Daddy would call “high-and-mighty.”

“Anyway,” I say, “if you're so sure we're going straight to hell for sitting out back during service, what are you doing here instead of siting inside with your family in the front few rows?”

“Nope, you've got it wrong.
I
don't think we're going to hell. I'm just saying
Pastor Lou
will think we're going to hell. Here's a little news flash, Ivy. There is no hell, unless you count Loomer, Texas, in the summertime. And there's no heaven unless you mean the one Neil Armstrong and the boys got to fly through on their way to the moon. You can sit out here and try to get your prayers heard if you want, but I'm just killing time and looking for contrails.”

I glance at Paul again. He's leaning back on his elbows, shirtsleeves rolled up, head tilted toward the sky.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I say. “I don't see a thing up there, not a cricket or a crow. Maybe God's hiding the contrails from you since you basically just said he doesn't exist, which I'm pretty sure is sacrilegious, especially if you're on church property when you say it.”

“Do y'know,” says Paul, “that later this summer, one of the space shuttles is gonna fly over Loomer? We'll probably be able to see it from right here on these steps if we want to.”

Paul can apparently change subjects just as quick as Daddy.

“The real space shuttle? Doesn't the space shuttle go
up? Into space? Why would anyone fly a rocket ship over Loomer?”

And here's where I should be getting the nervous willies, because church will be letting out soon and I am gonna have to explain myself. And explaining may well entail lying, which isn't exactly recommended at Second Baptist. Plus, I seem to be stuck in the middle of a conversation with one of the top eggheads in school, and no good can come of that, that's for sure.

I close my eyes and feel the sun prick my skin again.

“Well, first off, y'know it's not a rocket ship, right?” says Paul.

My eyes slide back open, and I turn to look at him. Here we go with the science.

“It's a spacecraft,” he says. “And there's actually more than one of them, even though we call them all ‘the space shuttle.'” Paul does finger quotes around the words “the space shuttle” as he speaks.

“But, yeah. Other than that, you're right. It
should
be going up to where it's built to go—space. Instead, the politicians have decided that we're done with all that, no more space shuttle. Before most of us even got a chance to be a part of the whole deal. So they're strapping one of 'em onto an airplane and flying it to Los Angeles and
puttin' it up in a museum forever and ever. Amen, as y'all would say.”

“Oh. Well, that's too bad,” I answer, because I hear an ache in Paul's voice that makes me feel a little sorry, even though I'm not totally sure why. When I turn toward him, he's looking down, like he's given up on finding contrails or anything else in the sky. “But a museum's nice, right?” I say. “So lots of folks can see it?”

Paul stands up and shakes out his pants and stretches his arms above his head, like he's just waking up. “Ha,” he says, in this really sarcastic way. “You sound just like my mom. I'm sure both of you mean well, but a museum means it's history. Over and done with,” he says. “The end of curiosity and exploration and discovery, not only for guys like me who thought we'd hitch a ride to the International Space Station someday, but for everyone. I mean, I guess they'll keep sending unmanned spacecraft out there—y'know, rovers and stuff—but sometimes you've gotta go somewhere in person to understand it, right? You can't just plant yourself in a place like Loomer for the rest of your life and expect to learn anything.”

And right then Paul Dobbs turns around and walks straight up the cellar steps, across the sidewalk, and out past the big cedar elm. He keeps walking through the hot
paved parking lot of Loomer Second Baptist Church and turns left onto Allen Avenue. He doesn't look back, not once, and he doesn't look like he plans to stay planted anywhere.

Chapter Five

S
o here's when I know for certain that things with Mama have gone all kinds of wrong. We're sitting at Snow Drugstore, sipping our after-church shakes, and Donnetta Snow steps over from the pharmacy counter to say hi.

“Max, Ivy,” she says. “Best chocolate shakes this side of Houston?”

“Well, hello, Donnetta,” says Daddy. “Good to see you. And yep, they're as good as ever. My little Ivy-girl was suffering a bit of heatstroke after church, and a chocolate shake seems to be the cure-all!” Daddy winks at me, and Donnetta smiles her famous Donnetta Snow smile. I sip my shake and feel relieved I've been forgiven for ducking out of church. Daddy hardly seemed to mind at all, which makes me think he's been feeling sorrier for me than he's let on.

“Aw, I'm glad, honey,” Donnetta says, and she ruffles my hair so that my skin tingles. In a good way.

“Now, Max,” she says, “I've been meaning to call you to ask what you want me to do with Diana's prescriptions. She hasn't picked them up, and I understand she's out of town, but if my calculations are correct, she's run out of two of them. Are you sending things to her?”

I suck up a quick, nervous straw full of ice cream, and it goes straightaway to my brain and gives me a freeze headache. So much for a milk shake being a cure-all.

Mama
needs
her pills. She always has. She has high blood pressure from her daddy and something she calls “swell finger” from her mama, and she never, ever misses a single day of her pills. But then she's never missed any of my school events before this year's end-of-year ceremony either.

“Well, that,” says Daddy, “is a very good question, Donnetta.”

And then he looks at me like
I
might know what to do about Mama or her pills or Donnetta Snow. He looks at me like he's got no idea what to do about any of it himself. He looks at me like he's afraid. Afraid that Mama's not of her right mind. Or that Hallelujah Dave isn't. Or that we may never get Mama back home with us in Loomer, Texas, where she belongs.

And I decide right then and there that there's hardly
a thing worse in the world than seeing your own daddy look that afraid.

In the car Daddy says nothing. He buckles up and sets the bag with Mama's pills on the seat between us, and he drives. His lips are tight and white again, and I can tell he doesn't want to talk, but I do. So I say, “Daddy, Mama thinks all the best conversations happen in the car.” Y'know, sort of as a hint. But he doesn't take it that way. At all.

He stops super-suddenly at the four-way stop near Kleindorf's Meats—so suddenly that I think he's gotten an itching to run in and pick up a brisket or something, but no. He turns to me with his tight, white lips and says, “Ivy Green, there's no ‘best conversation' to be had here, do you understand? Your mama has gone off after that god­forsaken preacher. She's left us and her medication behind, and there's not a darn thing to do about it, at least for a guy who's got even a shred of pride left. Do you understand?”

The air in my lungs goes straight up into my throat. “No,” I say. “I don't understand. I want to know what's going on! I want you to go find Mama and bring her home!”

And right then someone behind us beeps to remind us
we're still at the stop sign, mucking up traffic, so Daddy starts up again and says very quietly—so quietly, I'm not sure I hear him right, “Sometimes you have to wait till a person wants to be found.”

Each morning as I put up the cereal boxes or the peanut butter in the kitchen cupboard, I look at the pharmacy bag that Donnetta Snow sent home with us the other day. Daddy hasn't touched it since—it's just sitting there on the countertop, waiting for Mama to remember herself. Or remember us. Or something.

I tried one more time when we got home that day, suggesting maybe Daddy could send the pills to Mama if he wasn't going to go get her personally, and he said, “Ivy-girl, I'm gonna be straight up with you. I do not know where to send them. Your mama didn't exactly leave behind a good address.” And then he shut his eyes for a second—just a second, like an extra-long blink—and took a deep breath. It's hard to say if that was the scared dad or the mad dad, breathing like that, but either way, it didn't seem good.

I'd been hoping it was just me who didn't know how or where in heaven's name to find The Great Good Bible Church of Panhandle Florida. (Well, except for being
pretty sure that it's in Florida.) But it turns out that Daddy doesn't know either. Which I take to mean that Mama is actually missing. Or, like Daddy said, not wanting to be found.

“Let's go back to the jets!” says Devon as I'm putting him into the stroller. I've gotten so I can do this part myself so Mrs. Murray doesn't even have to come out with us in the morning.

“Your mama's right,” I say to Devon. “You're a man with a plan.” I start to strap him in, but he takes over and buckles himself. Which I guess is why we really don't need Mrs. Murray—it's not me getting more capable. It's Devon.

“See planes fly,” says Lucy. She's like a little mockingbird now that she can talk, constantly copying Devon's words and ideas.

But really, her request is not a shock. Pretty much all that Devon and Lucy have wanted to do these last couple of weeks is watch remote control planes fly loop-the-loops in the airspace over East Loomer Park. It never seems to get boring—not for them, and not for me either. We don't know how they work. Or which way they're gonna turn next. Or how they can be up in the air, easy
as birds, one moment, and thumping along the ground like a dog with a limp the next. But that's what we like, I think, all three of us. It's the surprise and mystery of it that makes us want to watch.

Meanwhile, it turns out that this is where Paul Dobbs usually hangs out too. Which means that I'm spending big chunks of almost every day with one of Loomer's official certified brainiac science guys.

I should clarify. We hang out, but we couldn't be considered real or actual friends, if being friends requires having something in common. Besides skipping out of church together, I mean.

My family couldn't be more different from Paul's if we tried. Mrs. Dobbs is a teller at the County Credit Union, and Paul's dad is the branch manager. Mrs. Dobbs is pretty if you like red hair, which I do—it is so much more interesting than all the other colors—and Mr. Dobbs is what Mama calls “distinguished.” (Mama's always hoping Daddy will become a little more “distinguished,” but Daddy says he's cleaned up as best he can.) Paul's sister, Jenny, is redheaded like their mama, and she's part of the popular group.

But Paul says he's about as different from the rest of the Dobbses as I am. “They've never once come over to
watch me fly,” he told me one day. “It's not that they're mean about it—they even gave me a fancy new remote for my birthday this year—but they just don't get it.”

I don't tell him that we don't really “get it” either, but that's okay by me. And Lucy. And Devon.

Paul isn't a redhead like his mama and sister, and he isn't exactly distinguished-looking either, but he
is
nice to look at. For a boy that I'm always getting a little mad at, I mean. This morning we're back on the topic of the space shuttle and how we aren't gonna know a thing about the universe anymore, once the space shuttle gets laid up for good.

“The only folks who're gonna be up there are robots and rich folks,” Paul says. “'Cause that's the new thing, y'know. It's not even for scientists anymore. It's for tourists! If you've got enough money, you can fly. Otherwise, forget it.”

“Well, good for the rich people,” I say. “Honestly. Who cares? You and your friends are playing with fire, Paul Dobbs, thinking scientists have all the answers in the whole wide world. You're not paying a lick of attention or respect to God, who is the real answer man. I mean, you'd think the world was coming to an end instead of just a simple space program.”

I look at Paul through the fence, his fingers hooked
onto the metal loops like they're holding him up. My fingers rest on Devon's and Lucy's heads, like
they're
what's holding me up.

“Is that so? You're so sure about God?” Paul says, and he sounds a little angry. But I can see around his lips that he's almost laughing a little too.

And then he says, “Well, I think you and Abby and Kimmy and y'all are just silly. You're always swearing by these made-up fairy tales about a ‘God' that nobody's ever even seen in person. It's one thing for grown-ups to buy the whole thing, but we're young! We should be more . . . skeptical!” Which was a Mrs. Murray vocab word, by the way. So he does listen in English after all. “At least I care about something actual, something testable,” he says. “That's the kind of thing a person ought to believe in, if you ask me.”

And then Paul unhooks his fingers and shrugs a little, like he doesn't want to be pushy about it. Even though he is being pretty pushy, if you ask me. I guess we both are, never mind that we're not really getting anywhere.

“So, hey,” I ask, “do you want to share our crackers and our grapes?” 'Cause they're real and actual too, and I'm hungry. And the next thing you know, Paul Dobbs and
I are sitting up on Picnic Hill with the Murray babies. Which becomes sort of our habit almost every afternoon in June.

I'm at home on an off day from the Murrays, trying to come up with something for Daddy and me to have for dinner, something hot and homemade that might fill up the very quiet space that's taken over our kitchen. Chicken Kiev, maybe. Or something with dumplings or a crust. And then there's a knock on our screen door. “Who is it?” I yell as I walk from the kitchen toward the knocking.

“It's Abby, silly.” By now I can see her straight through the screen, so I guess that does make it kind of a silly question.

“Hey, Abby. What's up? Wanna come in? I'm making a PB and J.” Because the truth is, while I've been dreaming about dinner, I've actually been half-making a sandwich and half-turning pages in Mama's cookbooks while I do.