Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread

“I’m going to miss you like crazy, Junior!”

And she flung herself on him and wrapped her arms around his neck, but he pulled her arms off him and said, “You’d better go on, now.”

Of course he didn’t get word to her. (He didn’t know how she had thought he would do that, seeing as he’d said they couldn’t tell anyone else.) He stayed strictly within his own territory — two acres of red clay outside Parryville bounded by a rickrack fence, in the three-room cabin he shared with his father and his last unmarried brother.

As it happened, the three of them did have work that week, replacing the roof on a shed for a lady down the road. They would set out early every morning in the wagon, with a tin bucket of buttermilk and a hunk of cornpone for their lunch, and they’d turn their mule loose in Mrs. Honeycutt’s pasture and go up on the roof to work all day in the blazing sun. By evening Junior would be so bushed that it was all he could do to force supper down. (His brother Jimmy had taken over the cooking after their mother died — just fried up whatever meat they’d last killed, using the half-inch of white grease that waited permanently in the skillet on the wood stove.) They’d be in bed by eight or eight thirty, workingmen’s hours. Three days in a row they did that, and Junior didn’t give more than a thought or two to Linnie Mae. Once Jimmy asked if he wanted to go into town after supper and see if they could find any girls, and Junior said, “Nah,” but it wasn’t on account of Linnie. It was just that he was too beat.

Then they finished with the roof, and they didn’t have anything else lined up. Junior spent the next day at home, but he was bored out of his mind and his father was acting ornery, so he figured maybe the next morning he would walk on down to the lumberyard and look for work. They were used to having him come and go there; they could generally use a hand.

He was sitting out on the stoop with the dogs, smoking a cigarette — the twilight still at that stage where it’s transparent, the fireflies just beginning to turn on and off in the yard — when a car he didn’t know pulled in, a beat-up Chevrolet driven by a fellow in a seed-store cap. And a girl jumped out the front passenger door and walked over to him, saying, “Hey, Junior.” One of the Moffat twins. The dogs raised their heads but then settled their chins on their paws again. “Hey back,” Junior said, not using a name because he didn’t know which one she was. She handed him a piece of white paper and he unfolded it, but it was hard to read in the dusk. “What’s this?” he asked.

“It’s from Linnie Mae.”

He held it up to the faint lantern-light that was coming through the screen door. “Junior, I need to talk to you,” he read. “Let the Moffats give you a ride to my house.”

He got a lump of ice in his chest. When a girl said she needed to talk … oh, Lord. Part of him was already trying to figure out where to run, how to get away before she delivered the news that would trap him for life. But the Moffat twin said, “You coming?”

“What: now?”

“Now,” she said. “We’ll ride you over.”

He stood up and stepped on his cigarette. “Well,” he said. “All right.”

He followed her to the car. It was a closed car with four doors, and she got into the front and left him to settle in the rear beside the other twin, who said, “Hey, Junior.”

“Hey,” he said.

“You know our brother Freddy.”

“Hey, Freddy,” he said. He didn’t recall ever meeting him. Freddy just grunted, and then shifted gears and pulled out of the yard and set off down Seven Mile Road.

Junior knew he should make conversation, but all he could think about was what Linnie was going to tell him and what he was going to do about it. What could he do about it? He wasn’t such a bastard as to pretend it hadn’t been him. Although it did cross his mind.

“Linnie’s folks are throwing a party for Clifford tonight,” the first twin said.

“Who’s Clifford?”

“Clifford her brother. He’s finished eighth grade.”

“Oh.”

It seemed to him kind of funny to make such a fuss about eighth grade. When he had finished eighth grade, the big to-do was over why on earth he was set on going on to high school. His father had had it in mind to put him to work, while Junior was thinking that there were still some things he hadn’t learned yet.

Linnie surely didn’t expect him to come to the party, did she? Even she couldn’t be that dumb.

But the twin said, “She’ll be able to slip out of the house easy, being as there’s family around. They’ll never notice she’s gone.”

“Oh,” he said, relieved.

That seemed to use up all their conversational topics.

They cut over on Sawyer Road instead of driving on into Yarrow, so he supposed the Inmans’ farm must lie to the north of town. The smell of fresh manure started drifting through his open window. Sawyer Road was just gravel, and every time the Chevrolet hit a bump the headlamps flickered and threatened to die. It made him nervous. Shoot, everything made him nervous.

He wondered if this was a setup, if they’d have the sheriff ready and waiting at the house. Junior wasn’t liked by the sheriff. As a boy he’d caused a near-accident when he and some friends of his were riding on the back of a wagon and they signaled to the car behind that it was okay to pass. And there’d been a few other situations, over the years.

Freddy turned left where Sawyer Road butt-ended into Pee Creek Road, which was paved and gave a much smoother ride. Some distance after that he turned right, onto a dirt driveway. The house looked big to Junior. It was painted white or light gray and all the windows were lit. A few cars and trucks were parked at different angles on the grass out front. Freddy drove around to the rear, though, where Junior could make out the silhouettes of several dark sheds and barns. “ Here we are,” the first twin said.

A shadow moved away from the nearest barn and turned into Linnie, wearing something pale. As she approached the car, Junior asked the Moffats, “Are you-all going to wait for me, or what?”

Before they could answer, Linnie stepped up to his window and whispered, “Junior?”

“Hey,” he said.

She leaned in close, although she couldn’t be thinking he would do anything soft in front of these people, could she? He fended her off by opening his door, nudging her backward. “You-all wait here,” he told the Moffats. “I’m going to need a ride home.”

Linnie said, “Thanks, Freddy. Hey, Martha; hey, Mary.”

“Hey, Linnie,” the twins said in chorus.

Junior stepped out of the car and shut the door behind him, and immediately Freddy shifted into reverse and started backing up. “Where’re they going?” Junior asked Linnie.

“Oh, off somewheres, I guess.”

“How am I getting home?”

“They’ll be back! Come on.”

She was leading him toward the barn she’d come out of, gripping him by the hand. He resisted. “I’m not going to be but a minute,” he said. “They should have stayed.”

“Come on , Junior. Someone will see you!”

He gave up and followed her into the barn, which was pitch-dark once she had shut the door behind them. “Let’s go up in the loft,” she whispered.

But that didn’t feel right. You could be cornered, in a loft. “We can talk down here,” he said. “I can’t stay long. I need to get home. Are you sure the Moffats know to come for me? Why’d you tell them about us? You swore you wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“I didn’t! Just the twins. They think it’s romantic. They’re real happy for us.”

“Good God, Linnie.”