Melanie Thon: Meteors in August

Arlen clucked. “No, dear Evelyn, I know for a fact it’s not. You have to put up with Dean, and he’s not pretty sometimes, but at least you don’t have four of his brats besides. Excuse me, three brats. Lucy is an angel, a blessing, youngest child always is. She saves me. But Les and the boys are enough to drive a woman to the state home. All day long I run like a slave — washing clothes, scrubbing sinks, digging up potatoes — and Les comes crashing in the door stinking of sweat and railing at me because supper isn’t on the table. ‘Why don’t you wash up?’ I say, sweet as syrup. ‘Supper’ll be ready when you are.’ He yells, ‘I’m ready now, woman,’ screams it like he has to make up for being so short.” She sucked on her cigarette. “And the boys have all picked up his fine personal habits. Someday I swear I’m gonna tell them the slop bucket’s out in the yard, and if they smell like pigs, they’ll eat like pigs. Just last week Les went off fishing with Justin and Marshall, and all three of them dumped their fish in the sink when they got home, proud as can be, and not one of those fish was clean. Woman’s work, they can’t be bothered. Then Justin has the gall to say, ‘I’m starving, Ma. Can you fry up some bacon and eggs for me?’ Lucky for him I didn’t have a knife in my hand right then. I would have stuck him, I swear. That boy should be married and out of the house, twenty-five years old and still drinking his mama’s milk, but I wouldn’t wish him on any girl.”

Mom nodded. When Arlen got on a roll it was best to hear her out.

“I thank God,” Arlen said, “that two of my babies had the good sense not to wake up in this world. Lord, what would I do if I had six instead of four? Or seven, counting Jesse?”

“Arlen!”

“Oh, don’t try to hush me. I know it must be some kind of evil to stop grieving for a boy who drowned, or to be glad your babies were stillborn, but I am glad — well, not glad, but relieved.” Arlen didn’t stop long enough to see my mother’s eyes turn watery, or to notice how she twisted her napkin till it tore. “And I’m more than glad this spring has gone dry, and I don’t have to worry about any accidents. Not that I’d have to worry much anyway — Les hardly looks at me in a friendly way anymore. I think he’s got a girl. Fine by me. Only thing is there isn’t much choice in this town and I’m afraid he might be banging the Fat Lady; he’s bound to get the clap from her sooner or later. She even takes the Indians. I shouldn’t care about that either, I guess. Of course it’d be just my luck for him to get the notion to climb on top of me some night and I’d be stuck with it too.”

“Arlen, please,” Mom said, “Lizzie.”

“She don’t know what this is all about, do you, honey?”

I shook my head. The idea of flabby Uncle Lester forcing himself on Aunt Arlen struck me as ridiculous.

I didn’t think Uncle Les was so bad. He wasn’t as rough as my father. When he rubbed my scalp, it didn’t burn, and when he kissed my cheek, his whiskers didn’t scratch my face. He knew a couple of tricks. At church picnics, he’d pull nickels and sticks of Beeman’s gum out of the ears of all the children who talked to him. Uncle Les looked soft and harmless when he stood beside hard-angled Aunt Arlen. If he took advantage of her, Arlen would have to be halfway agreeable.

My aunt stayed an hour too long. She didn’t notice — or didn’t mind — that Mother kept popping up to wash one more cup, to scrub at grease on the stove, or to wipe the counter that was already clean.

Finally Arlen stretched and said, “Better be off before Lester comes looking for me.” Mom and I stepped out on the back steps with her. “Come here and give your old aunt a kiss good-night, Lizzie,” she said. Her strong fingers dug into my back. She bussed me, a loud, wet smooch, and whispered, “If you ever want to know the truth about men, you come see me, honey.” I thought of the kinds of things Arlen said about men, that they were helpless as children and smelly as goats. I knew she could never answer the questions I had, the ones that would help me understand why Nina ran away.

Arlen’s chickens squawked when she opened her gate. I had no affection for these creatures. The stink of them wafted through our kitchen door on summer nights. They lived petty, brutal lives, were stupid enough to hold their noses in the air and drown in the rain, cruel enough to pluck each other’s butt bald. After a thunderstorm the shells of their eggs were so soft they broke in your hand; the slimy white and brilliant yolk oozed through your fingers. Even when a chicken was a handful of fluff, even when you couldn’t resist holding it, stroking it with one finger, the ungrateful thing was still likely to shit in your palm.

Mother pulled me back in the house. “Don’t trust everything Arlen says,” she told me. “And whatever you do, don’t repeat anything she says.”

Who would I tell? I thought. Mother was always reminding me to be careful: Don’t talk about your sister. Don’t show anyone your grades. Don’t let on your daddy got a raise.

I didn’t like having so many secrets. They heaped in my head; my brain was full of things I wasn’t supposed to say. I dragged our stories behind me, a bag full of bones and dirty rags. I tried to forget my load, to leave it behind, but with a word or a touch my mother could remind me: pick it up, pick it up . And when I did, I never failed to see my sister, to hear the spray of gravel against our bedroom window, and feel myself jolt up in bed.

I was nine years old again. Nina put her cool hand on my forehead and told me it was nothing, nothing, a branch scraping the glass. I pretended to sleep. She slid out of bed and dressed, standing in the square of icy moonlight that fell on our floor. I heard her tiptoe down the stairs, her feet bare. I knelt on the bed to look outside and there was Nina, running across the front lawn, her shimmering hair flying behind her. Someone stepped out of the shadows near the hedge and I almost yelped to warn her, but he grabbed her, and she wasn’t afraid. She hugged him so tight I thought she wanted him to stop breathing in her arms.

They lay their hands on each other’s face, as tenderly as God must touch the souls of unborn children, the ones called back before they fell to earth, the ones too dear for human life.

In the morning Nina nestled next to me in bed. “I saw you leave,” I said.

And she whispered, “No, baby, I’ve been right here all night. It was just a dream.”

Now, looking back at that night, I recognized this boy in my memory: tall and black-haired, slim as a shadow — even at midnight Billy Elk was unmistakable. I had always known him, the son of the big Indian and that Furey woman.

So many boys loved Nina that summer. He didn’t steal her or tie her hands. I saw how she flung herself in his arms. She chose. She wanted him. The others she teased or ignored. If she could have loved someone else, a good boy, the right kind, perhaps she would have married him instead of running away, but I would have lost her all the same.

I tossed from side to side in the hot dark, thinking about what Aunt Arlen had said, that she was glad she ended up with four children instead of seven. Maybe she was relieved when those two babies were born dead. I wasn’t there. But I saw her the day Jesse drowned, and I saw Jesse too, and there was nothing peaceful about either one of them. We were all swimming at Moon Lake. It was the summer Nina left, but she was still with us that day in July. Jesse splashed me in the face and swam away. That was the last I saw of him. At first we thought he was playing a joke on us, hiding up in the woods; that would be just like Jesse, doing something mean that he thought was funny. We called and called. The sun was white, burning all the color out of the sky. Arlen wailed at the water, glittering and green, and at the white hot sun too, as if they could tell her. We dove again and again, a hundred places, a thousand. Then we sat on the beach shivering in the heat.