Chapter Eighteen - Lisa
Two weeks after Cody left, I got a call from the school to come pick up Brandon for fighting. That was nothing new, unfortunately. The school year had barely started and he’d already been in trouble three times.
He was sitting there in the office with a tight-lipped scowl on his face when I went to pick him up, but I pretended not to notice.
“Here, Lisa, just sign him out and he can come back in a week. Five day suspension,” the secretary said. I wordlessly signed the papers and left, wondering what it would take to knock some sense into the kid’s hard head. I don’t think I was ever that stubborn when I was fourteen; God knows I hope I wasn’t. If I was, then I wouldn’t have blamed Mama for killing me.
“What happened?” I asked, as soon as we left. I was casual about it, being careful not to raise my voice or seem upset. I’d already learned from past experience that that didn’t help.
“Got in a fight,” he muttered.
“Yeah, so I heard. Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Broke Brayden’s nose, though,” he said, and I was sure I detected more than a trace of pride in his voice.
“Hmm. That must have really hurt him,” I said.
“Maybe. I hope so,” he said.
“Why is that? How come y’all got into it anyway?” I asked.
“He was running his mouth, that’s all. Talking trash about Lana,” he said. I’d been too preoccupied with my own issues lately to pay much attention to Bran’s crushes, and it’s never been his nature to volunteer much unless you pry it out of him. But I knew Lana was a Russian exchange student who lived with one of the families at church. Just your typical flash-in-the-pan junior high relationship, no doubt; short, sweet, and intense while it lasted. But if he felt compelled to defend her honor then I guessed they must still be together, if you wanted to call it that.
“I see. And do you think breaking his nose will make him change his mind?” I asked gently.
“I don’t care if he changes his mind. He can think whatever he wants to. But I bet you he’ll learn not to say stuff like that,” he said with conviction. I gave up; there are times when you can’t reason with somebody, and this was obviously one of those times.
We rode home in silence, and I guess he must have been thinking about what I said. At least that was a definite improvement.
“You’re not mad at me?” he asked after a while.
“No, Bran, I’m not mad at you,” I said.
“How come?” he asked. Most people wouldn’t have asked such a question, but my brother is nothing if not blunt. I wanted to tell him it was because I knew it wouldn’t do any good, but that would have been unkind, I guess. So I chose my words carefully.
“Because I know you meant well, by defending her. I just think you could have picked a better way to handle it, that’s all,” I said.
“Like how?” he asked.
“Well, you know how in chat rooms and stuff there are always people who like to start trouble by saying nasty things?” I asked.
“Yeah, trolls. What about them?” he asked.
“What do you do with people like that?” I asked.
“You block them,” he replied promptly, and I mentally sighed. Of course.
“And if you can’t do that?” I asked.
“Then you don’t pay them any attention and sooner or later they’ll go bother somebody else,” he said.
“Right. Never feed the trolls. It sounds to me like Brayden is a troll in the real world, and he runs his mouth just like the others do. So handle him exactly the same way,” I said.
“You think I should just ignore him?” he asked.
“I think you might be better off. You can’t pay attention to what stupid people say or you’ll never have time for anything else,” I said.
“Maybe,” he said, sounding unconvinced.
I left it at that. He could think about it for a while and maybe he’d decide to give it a try or maybe he wouldn’t, but that was the best I could do.
Still, there would have to be some consequences put in place, too. I’d have to talk to Miss Josie about that since she’d be the one who mostly had to enforce them, but extra chores would probably be part of it at the very least. I’d probably have to spend most of the week at Goliad to make sure he did them and didn’t go anywhere, even though he’d probably drive me crazy talking about how bored he was.
I really don’t know what to do with him sometimes, and over the past few weeks I’ve come to see very clearly why his aunt didn’t want to deal with him. I don’t agree with her, mind you, but I do understand. He’s a handful if ever there was one. I sent him outside to mow the grass when we got to Goliad; that was something to keep him occupied.
Nobody else was there, and I prepared myself to hang around until Miss Josie got back from wherever she’d gone.
Cody rarely calls except during the evenings, but now and then he’ll surprise me at lunchtime. Well, lunchtime for him, anyway; it’s three hours earlier in Alaska than it is in Texas. But I was happy to hear his ringtone just then.
“Hey, Lisa, what’s up?” he asked.
“Nothin’ much, just now had to pick up Brandon from school again,” I said, letting a little bit of my frustration show.
“Fighting again?” he asked.
“Yeah, he broke another kid’s nose for talking trash about this girl he likes,” I said, and Cody laughed a little. He really seems to love Brandon and calls him his little scrapper, which doesn’t help things at all, I’m quite sure. I guess I should be thankful those two get along so well, but sometimes they both aggravate me to no end.
“It’s not funny. He got suspended for five days,” I scolded him.
“Yeah, I know it’s not funny. I’ll talk to him later, okay?” he said.
“You can try. Maybe he’ll listen to you. Where are you, anyway?” I asked.
“Fixing to eat some steak, my love,” he said, and as usual that melted me. He knew that, and probably did it on purpose for that very reason, but even though I knew all that the words never failed to make me smile.
“Okay, babe, I guess I’ll let you eat, then. I’m glad you called, though,” I said, and that was that.
I still didn’t hear the mower running, so I went outside to check on what Brandon was up to. He was nowhere to be seen, which irritated me. The mower might have been over at the bunk house or something like that, but it still shouldn’t have taken him so long to go get it. I was determined to say something to him about it as soon as he showed up again. He was already on thin ice. But when he still didn’t show up for fifteen minutes or so, I decided to go looking for him.
There’s a flowing well on the back side of Mount Nebo, where Cadron Creek comes up from underground and flows down to fill the lake. It’s always clear and cool, and I suspect that stable source of water is one of the reasons why Reuben McGrath picked this place to homestead. At some point in time, one of the family members had built a rock wall around it to form a pool about thirty feet across. The water spilled out over a low spot in the ledge to flow away down the creek bed like it always had, but on most days the pool itself was smooth as glass and reflected the sky like a mirror. There were a couple of benches in the clearing, and for some reason or other Brandon had loved that place ever since the first time he laid eyes on it. That’s where I decided to look for him first.
Sure enough, that’s where he was, staring at the water like he might find some wonderful secret there.
“What are you doing, Bran?” I asked, not even trying to hide my annoyance.
“God loves reflections,” he said absently, still so intent on the water that I doubt you could have torn his eyes loose with a pry bar. I didn’t see anything but clouds and sky.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked, nonplussed. Brandon has his moments like that, when he says things that utterly confuse me and I’m not sure whether
he’s saying something deep and profound or whether he’s lost his mind. Interpreting dreams is one thing; I could accept that as at least semi-normal, if only because I had to. But there are other times when he gets that faraway look in his eyes, like he’s seeing something nobody else could ever see, and then he’s liable to spout out some weird stuff about how God loves reflections, or something equally bizarre.
“He loves reflections. Hints and images. Things that remind us of something bigger than themselves,” he said.
I pondered that for a minute, and finally decided it was probably true. God is indeed fond of things that remind us of something greater than themselves. I’ve seen it in the way that we love people who remind us of Him, in the way that the moon reflects the sun and the lakes reflect the sky. It’s a theme written across the whole face of the world, in letters so large that sometimes we miss them completely.
Which might make an excellent starting point for a sermon, I guess, but I still couldn’t fathom why Brandon had said it.
“So what’s your point?” I finally asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“All that, to say nothing?” I asked skeptically.
“Well, maybe not nothing. This pool reminds me of something, but I can’t remember what it is or why it matters. So I was just thinking out loud, I guess,” he said, shrugging.
“I see. Well, you still owe me some mowed grass, kid,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, I know. I’ll be up there in a minute,” he said, and with that I had to be content.