The Summer of the Swans (7 page)

Her father’s remoteness had begun, she thought, with Charlie’s illness. There was a picture in the family photograph album of her father laughing and throwing Sara into the air and a picture of her father holding her on his shoulders and a picture of her father sitting on the front steps with Wanda on one knee and Sara on the other. All these pictures of a happy father and his adoring daughters had been taken before Charlie’s illness and Sara’s mother’s death. Afterward there weren’t any family pictures at all, happy or sad.

When Sara looked at those early pictures, she remembered a laughing man with black curly hair and a broken tooth who had lived with them for a few short golden years and then had gone away. There was no connection at all between this laughing man in the photograph album and the gray sober man who worked in Ohio and came home to West Virginia on occasional weekends, who sat in the living room and watched baseball or football on television and never started a conversation on his own.

Sara listened while Aunt Willie explained to the operator that the call she was making was an emergency. “That’s why I’m not direct dialing,” she said, “because I’m so upset I’ll get the wrong numbers.”

“He won’t come,” Sara whispered against her knee.

As the operator put through the call and Aunt Willie waited, she turned to Sara, nodded emphatically, and said, “He’ll come, you’ll see.”

Sara got up, walked across the living room and into the kitchen, where the breakfast dishes were still on the table. She looked down at the two bowls of hard, cold oatmeal, and then made herself three pieces of toast and poured herself a cup of cherry Kool-Aid. When she came back eating the toast Aunt Willie was still waiting.

“Didn’t the operator tell them it was an emergency, I wonder,” Aunt Willie said impatiently.

“Probably.”

“Well, if somebody told me I had an emergency call, I would run, let me tell you, to find out what that emergency was. That’s no breakfast, Sara.”

“It’s my lunch.”

“Kool-Aid and toast will not sustain you five minutes.” She broke off quickly and said in a louder voice, “Sam, is that you?” She nodded to Sara, then turned back to the telephone, bent forward in her concern. “First of all, Sammy, promise me you won’t get upset—no, promise me first.”

“He won’t get upset. Even I can promise you that,” Sara said with her mouth full of toast.

“Sam, Charlie’s missing,” Aunt Willie said abruptly.

Unable to listen to any more of the conversation, Sara took her toast and went out onto the front porch. She sat on the front steps and put her feet into the worn grooves that Charlie’s feet had made on the third step. Then she ate the last piece of toast and licked the butter off her fingers.

In the corner of the yard, beneath the elm tree, she could see the hole Charlie had dug with a spoon; all one morning he had dug that hole and now Boysie was lying in it for coolness. She walked to the tree and sat in the old rope swing and swung over Boysie. She stretched out her feet and touched Boysie, and he lifted his head and looked around to see who had poked him, then lay back in his hole.

“Boysie, here I am, look, Boysie, look.”

He was already asleep again.

“Boysie—” She looked up as Aunt Willie came out on the porch and stood for a minute drying her hands on her apron. For the occasion of Charlie’s disappearance she was wearing her best dress, a bright green bonded jersey, which was so hot her face above it was red and shiny. Around her forehead she had tied a handkerchief to absorb the sweat.

Sara swung higher. “Well,” she asked, “is he coming?” She paused to pump herself higher. “Or not?”

“He’s going to call back tonight.”

“Oh,” Sara said.

“Don’t say ‘Oh’ to me like that.”

“It’s what I figured.”

“Listen to me, Miss Know-it-all. There is no need in the world for your father to come this exact minute. If he started driving right this second he still wouldn’t get here till after dark and he couldn’t do anything then, so he just might as well wait till after work and then drive.”

“Might as well do the sensible thing.” Sara stood up and really began to swing. She had grown so much taller since she had last stood in this swing that her head came almost to the limb from which the swing hung. She caught hold of the limb with her hands, kicked her feet free, and let the swing jerk wildly on its own.

“Anyway,” Aunt Willie said, “this is no time to be playing on a swing. What will the neighbors think, with Charlie missing and you having a wonderful time on a swing?”

“I knew he wouldn’t come.”

“He is going to come,” Aunt Willie said in a louder voice. “He is just going to wait till dark, which is reasonable, since by dark Charlie will probably be home anyway.”

“It is so reasonable that it makes me sick.”

“I won’t listen to you being disrespectful to your father, I mean that,” she said. “I know what it is to lose a father, let me tell you, and so will you when all you have left of him is an envelope.”

Aunt Willie, Sara knew, was speaking of the envelope in her dresser drawer containing all the things her father had had in his pockets when he died. Sara knew them all—the watch, the twenty-seven cents in change, the folded dollar bill, the brown plaid handkerchief, the three-cent stamp, the two bent pipe cleaners, the half pack of stomach mints.

“Yes, wait till you lose your father. Then you’ll appreciate him.”

“I’ve already lost him.”

“Don’t you talk like that. Your father’s had to raise two families and all by himself. When Poppa died, Sammy had to go to work and support all of us before he was even out of high school, and now he’s got this family to support too. It’s not easy, I’m telling you that. You raise two families and then I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say against your father.”

Sara let herself drop to the ground and said, “I better go. Mary and I are going to look for Charlie.”

“Where?”

“Up the hill.”

“Well, don’t you get lost,” Aunt Willie called after her.

From the Hutchinsons’ yard some children called, “Have you found Charlie yet, Sara?” They were making a garden in the dust, carefully planting flowers without roots in neat rows. Already the first flowers were beginning to wilt in the hot sun.

“I’m going to look for him now.”

“Sawa?” It was the youngest Hutchinson boy, who was three and sometimes came over to play with Charlie.

“What?”

“Sawa?”

“What?”

“Sawa?”

“Sawa, I got gwass.” He held up two fists of grass he had just pulled from one of the few remaining clumps in the yard.

“Yes, that’s fine. I’ll tell Charlie when I see him.”

S
ara and Mary had decided that they would go to the lake and walk up behind the houses toward the woods. Sara was now on her way to Mary’s, passing the vacant lot where a baseball game was in progress. She glanced up and watched as she walked down the sidewalk.

The baseball game had been going on for an hour with the score still zero to zero and the players, dusty and tired, were playing silently, without hope.

She was almost past the field when she heard someone call, “Hey, have you found your brother yet, Sara?”

She recognized the voice of Joe Melby and said, “No,” without looking at him.

“What?”

She turned, looked directly at him, and said, “You will be pleased and delighted to learn that we have not.” She continued walking down the street. The blood began to pound in her head. Joe Melby was the one person she did not want to see on this particular day. There was something disturbing about him. She did not know him, really, had hardly even spoken to him, and yet she hated him so much the sight of him made her sick.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No.”

“If he’s up in the woods, I could help look. I know about as much about those hills as anybody.” He left the game and started walking behind her with his hands in his pockets.

“No, thank you.”

“I
want
to help.”

She swirled around and faced him, her eyes blazing. “I do not want your help.” They looked at each other. Something twisted inside her and she felt suddenly ill. She thought she would never drink cherry Kool-Aid again as long as she lived.

Joe Melby did not say anything but moved one foot back and forth on the sidewalk, shuffling at some sand. “Do you—”

“Anybody who would steal a little boy’s watch,” she said, cutting off his words, and it was a relief to make this accusation to his face at last, “is somebody whose help I can very well do without.” Her head was pounding so loudly she could hardly hear her own words. For months, ever since the incident of the stolen watch, she had waited for this moment, had planned exactly what she would say. Now that it was said, she did not feel the triumph she had imagined at all.

“Is that what’s wrong with you?” He looked at her. “You think I stole your brother’s watch?”

“I know you did.”

“How?”

“Because I asked Charlie who stole his watch and I kept asking him and one day on the school bus when I asked him he pointed right straight at you.

“He was confused—”

“He wasn’t that confused. You probably thought he wouldn’t be able to tell on you because he couldn’t talk, but he pointed right—”

“He was confused. I gave the watch back to him. I didn’t take it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You believe what you want then, but I didn’t take that watch. I thought that matter had been settled.”

“Huh!”

She turned and started walking with great speed down the hill. For some reason she was not as sure about Joe Melby as she had been before, and this was even more disturbing. He did take the watch, she said to herself. She could not bear to think that she had been mistaken in this, that she had taken revenge on the wrong person.

Behind her there were sudden cheers as someone hit a home run. The ball went into the street. Joe ran, picked it up, and tossed it to a boy in the field. Sara did not look around.

“Hey, wait a minute,” she heard Joe call. “I’m coming.”

She did not turn around. She had fallen into that trap before. Once when she had been walking down the street, she had heard a car behind her and the horn sounding and a boy’s voice shouting, “Hey, beautiful!” And she had turned around. She! Then, too late, she had seen that the girl they were honking and shouting at was Rosey Camdon on the opposite side of the street, Rosey Camdon who was Miss Batelle District Fair and Miss Buckwheat Queen and a hundred other things. Sara had looked down quickly, not knowing whether anyone had seen her or not, and her face had burned so fiercely she had thought it would be red forever. Now she kept walking quickly with her head down.

“Wait, Sara.”

Still she did not turn around or show that she had heard him.

“Wait.” He ran, caught up with her, and started walking beside her. “All the boys say they want to help.”

She hesitated but kept walking. She could not think of anything to say. She knew how circus men on stilts felt when they walked, because her legs seemed to be moving in the same awkward way, great exaggerated steps that got her nowhere.

She thought she might start crying so she said quickly, “Oh, all right.” Then tears did come to her eyes, sudden and hot, and she looked down at her feet.

He said, “Where should we start? Have you got any ideas?”

“I think he’s up in the woods. I took him to see the swans yesterday and I think he was looking for them when he got lost.”

“Probably up that way.”

She nodded.

He paused, then added, “We’ll find him.”

She did not answer, could not, because tears were spilling down her cheeks, so she turned quickly and walked alone to Mary’s house and waited on the sidewalk until Mary came out to join her.

S
he and Mary were almost across the open field before Sara spoke. Then she said, “Guess who just stopped me and gave me the big sympathy talk about Charlie.”

“I don’t know. Who?”

“Joe Melby.”

“Really? What did he say?”

“He wants to help look for Charlie. He makes me sick.”

“I think it’s nice that he wants to help.”

“Well, maybe if he’d stolen your brother’s watch you wouldn’t think it was so nice.”

Mary was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but he didn’t steal that watch, Sara.”

“Huh!”

“No, he really didn’t.”

Sara looked at her and said, “How do you know?”

“I can’t tell you how I know because I promised I wouldn’t, but I know he didn’t.”

“How?”

“I can’t tell. I promised.”

“That never stopped you before. Now, Mary Weicek, you tell me what you know this minute.”

“I promised.”

“Mary, tell me.”

“Mom would kill me if she knew I told you.”

“She won’t know.”

“Well, your aunt went to see Joe Melby’s mother.”

“What?”

“Aunt Willie went over to see Joe Melby’s mother.”

“She didn’t!”

“Yes, she did too, because my mother was right there when it happened. It was about two weeks after Charlie had gotten the watch back.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well, it’s the truth. You told Aunt Willie that Joe had stolen the watch-remember, you told everybody—and so Aunt Willie went over to see Joe’s mother.”

“She wouldn’t do such a terrible thing.”

“Well, she did.”

“And what did Mrs. Melby say?”

“She called Joe into the room and she said, ‘Joe, did you steal the little Godfrey boy’s watch?’ And he said, ‘No.’ ”

“What did you expect him to say in front of his mother? ‘Yes, I stole the watch’? Huh! That doesn’t prove anything.”