Rosie sank down to the ground like her legs were as faded and frayed as her cut-offs. Her face went whiter than pale against her black hair, and even her lips lost their colour. “Where would you go?”
I stopped pacing. I hadn’t thought of that. And then I remembered what Mr Harrison said about Mama wanting to go to Ohio as fast as possible. Did that mean permanently? “Ohio,” I breathed. Then I shook my head. “No, it couldn’t be.”
She raised her eyebrows and pressed her lips together like she was a math teacher waiting for me to give the answer to a simple division problem.
“What, Rosie?”
“That’s where your mama grew up.”
“So? She’s lived in Virginia since before I was born!”
“But Ohio’s her home. When Mama’s feeling poorly and your mama brings food over for us, she sits by Mama’s bed and talks about her sisters, Nancy and Patty. Your mama misses them, Red.”
“Well, I miss my daddy, and that’s a whole lot worse!” My lip started quivering, so I turned away from Rosie, picked up another stone, and threw it towards our house. Hard. Ohio? “We’re not moving to no Ohio.”
“How are you going to stop her?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll think of something.”
She picked at the pink nail polish on her thumb. “Maybe we need to talk to your daddy.”
I stared at her. Was she making fun of me for talking to him? I expected that from her brother because that’s what Darrell was like, but not Rosie.
“We’ll have a séance,” she explained. “That way we can bring your daddy back. So you and me can talk with him.” She looked past me. “And Darrell, too.”
I looked over my shoulder and there was Darrell. Tall, skinny, with hair as dark and dirty as his boots. You’d never think he was Rosie’s brother, although you’d figure out pretty quick that he was Mr Dunlop’s son. The way he lounged against a tree, he looked like a snake waiting to strike. Darrell loved sneaking up on people and scaring them. He’d done it to me I don’t know how many million times.
Darrell chuckled. “The kid already talks to his daddy.”
Rosie sniffed. “Well, I never had a chance to say goodbye to Mr Porter.”
“Yeah, dingbat,” Darrell said, “because when someone has a heart attack they can’t exactly stop to say goodbye.”
Rosie shot Darrell her killer vampire look she learned from that Dark Shadows TV show she’d been watching for years. She stared at him so long I figured she was putting some kind of hex on him. It almost made me smile.
“How does a séance work, exactly?” I asked her.
She sat up on her knees. “I’ll bring my Ouija board, and you be sure to wear some of your daddy’s clothes.”
“Why?” I thought about how Mama had given all Daddy’s clothes away, but as Rosie was explaining how spirits worked, I remembered that not long ago he’d given me one of his old work shirts since I’d outgrown my ripped-up T-shirt I used to wear in the shop. “I can wear his old shirt. It’s even got his name sewn on it.”
“Perfect! We’ll meet at your daddy’s grave tonight at midnight.”
“Why does it have to be by his grave? And why midnight?”
She rolled her eyes. “Red, it’s a good thing for you I know how to call up spirits. First, they only come out at night because they sleep during the day.”
Darrell snorted. “I thought that was vampires.”
Rosie shot him another of her looks. “Second, we have to be right by his grave because that’s where his spirit lives. And third, he can’t talk like we talk any more, what with being…you know, not alive and all, but he can move the plastic eye over the Ouija board and spell out words so he can talk to us.”
“Will he be able to hear us? Or do we have to spell stuff out, too?” I was thinking it would take a while to spell out, “What should I do about Mama’s dumb plan?”
“He’ll hear us. That’s how a Ouija board works. You say something and then the spirit responds by pushing the plastic eye around the board.”
Darrell snorted again.
“You don’t have to come, Darrell,” Rosie said, “if you don’t believe.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I’ll come. Who knows? You might get lucky. Besides, you kids are too young to be in the graveyard at night. Never know who you might find there.”
Rosie crossed her arms. “Darrell Dunlop, you better not have your gang show up.”
“I didn’t say that, I’m just—”
“ROSIE!” It was Mr Dunlop’s voice, followed by a whole bucket load of swear words.
Rosie stood up fast, her face going pale.
“Where are those sandwiches? Can’t you do anything around here?” Mr Dunlop came storming down the front steps of their house – his boots like to bust each one, he was stomping so hard – and strutted past the shed towards us. Rosie took a step back. So did I.
“I forgot to make his lunch,” Rosie whispered.
Darrell’s expression turned serious as he hissed, “Don’t say a word.”
He spun around and faced Mr Dunlop like he was a bullfighter and his daddy was the charging bull. “Hey, Daddy! I’m real sorry. Would you believe it? I ate those sandwiches.”
Mr Dunlop stopped, like bulls do while they’re getting up steam before they charge. He growled. “You ate my sandwiches?”
“I thought they were for me,” Darrell said with a nervous laugh. “I’ll go make you some right now.”
Mr Dunlop swore some more. “You got exactly two minutes or else I’ll meet you in the shed, boy.” And he pointed to the shed like we didn’t know what that meant.
“Coming right up!” Darrell grinned like it was all a big joke, but he moved fast and by the time he reached their porch he took the steps in one big leap.
I heard a whimper out of Rosie.
“Next time,” Mr Dunlop said, his forefinger punching the air in front of her face, “you deliver the sandwiches directly, you hear me?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Rosie squeaked.
His head jerked over to me so fast I flinched.
“What are you looking at, Porter?”
“Nothing.”
“Well, take your nothing and get on out of here.” Mr Dunlop turned and stormed back to the house.
I heard Rosie squeak again, and I was sure hoping Darrell had those sandwiches ready.
“I better go,” she whispered.
“I’ll see you tonight, Rosie,” I whispered back.
She nodded but was already heading for the rickety steps.
CHAPTER THREE
The Séance
That night I lay on my bed, waiting for midnight and wondering what Thomas would think of Mama’s idea to move.
I was real little when me and Thomas became friends, but I still remember when we met. He’d just finished kindergarten and had come to spend the summer with his grandparents. They came to our store, and I followed Thomas up and down the aisles as he read some of the words off the packages, something I was a long way from doing, so I was amazed that he knew more about my own store than I did.
“That’s ‘big’, ” he said. “That’s ‘red’. ”
“That’s me!” I told him. “Big Red.” It wasn’t really my name, but I guess I wanted to feel big and smart like he was, since he was a couple of years older.
He stared at me for a moment. “Wanna play?” And we ran outside.
We tried playing leapfrog, but I kept getting stuck trying to jump over Thomas, since he was bigger. That set us off giggling so much that, as I struggled to get over him, he fell down with the weight of me. Mama came running over, but we were full-blown laughing by then. Little kids don’t get hurt that much when they fall. Plus, Thomas has this laugh that’s like birds chirping and the creek gurgling at the same time. Maybe because it’s so crazy hearing those sounds coming out of a person’s mouth that it just makes you laugh. As she brushed the dirt off of us, even Mama started laughing.
“It’s okay, ma’am,??
? Thomas said, “I’ll take care of him.”
Mama smiled at him, but I frowned. “I’m Big Red! I can take care of myself!”
Thomas, his dimples showing, looked at me, then at Mama, and back to me. “Okay. Let’s be friends!”
After that, we spent every summer together, and he called me Big Red like it was my real name. Daddy called us the Dynamic Duo because we were always up to some adventure or science experiment, like when Thomas wanted to see if a whole newspaper would burn if you shine sunlight on it through a magnifying glass. It does. Both of us stared at the flames, and Thomas even let slip a curse word because we knew we’d get in trouble, especially if we caught the whole woods on fire. Right as I was wondering how we could stop it, Thomas yelled, “Fire hoses!” and just like that I knew what he meant. We stood there and peed the fire out. After we stomped on the embers, we looked at each other and started laughing, more and more, because that’s what Thomas’s laugh does to you.
His laugh infected you however old you were, from J to Miss Georgia and everyone in between. Except Mr Dunlop. He didn’t like Thomas hanging around our place because, as he told Daddy, he didn’t want a black boy so close to his property. Daddy told Mr Dunlop to get over it. When Mr Dunlop said, “I have a daughter, you know!” Daddy narrowed his eyes at him and said, “That doesn’t even deserve a response.”
Mama was red-faced when Daddy told her what Mr Dunlop said. Her foot tapped the kitchen floor real loud and she turned to me and J, saying, “You boys should try to be as much of a model citizen as Thomas.” I figured she meant because he was nice to J, even teaching him how to climb a tree. And he always remembered to say “ma’am” and “sir”. And because of his clothes.
Thomas’s grandmother made him wear school shorts and a white button-down shirt, even for playing. Once I asked him if he was ever embarrassed being dressed up like that. He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I look like, as long as I get to do what I want.” And that day we built the coolest fort out of old car parts, played Mission: Impossible in the woods, crawled under logs, and then ran into the creek to cool off, and I realized Thomas was right. He could do anything.
A few years ago, Thomas decided we should earn enough money to buy what we both really wanted: Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots. We made lemonade, which we sold out front of the What-U-Want, mostly to Beau, and even paid Mama back for the lemons, sugar and paper cups – “Otherwise, it’s not right,” Thomas told me. We took turns “owning” the Robots, and as soon as Thomas got in to town this summer I gave it to him because this was his year. We used to play it all summer. Sure, we were getting old for it now, but it was a tradition. Until this year. We hadn’t played it at all.
Thomas hadn’t been friends with me since the first week of summer, right before Daddy died. Mama said it was his age, being a teenager and all, and Daddy said Thomas would come around. But I knew better. There was a reason. And it wasn’t even my fault, which made me real mad.
I looked over at my dresser where the Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots had been until June, and I saw my alarm clock. Shoot! It was almost midnight. I had to get to the séance!
I jumped out of bed and put on Daddy’s old blue shirt. On the left side of the chest Mama had sewn FRANK in fancy red letters. It smelled like the repair shop and Daddy, and I put my arm up to my nose to take an extra big whiff of the sleeve.
Carefully I snuck out through my window. Dang if I didn’t rip Daddy’s shirt because of the raggedy old pine that was stuck to the side of our house right by my window. “Sorry, Daddy,” I whispered, and I cursed the tree.
J wanted Thomas to teach him how to climb that stupid pine, but Thomas said it was a tough one and J would get pretty scratched up trying. But he also said that one day J could handle it. Mama always said it should be cut down on account of it was a fire hazard. Daddy didn’t like it, either, but he figured it had practically grown into the house so as to be a part of it, and he didn’t know what would happen if we tried to tackle it. So he had trimmed away the branches that were trying to get in the windows or fill up the gutters, but he never did get around to hacking the whole thing down.
I rolled up my ripped sleeve and forgot about that mess of a pine tree pretty quick, though, as I headed for the graveyard. It’s no fun being out alone in the middle of the night when the owls are hooting, every twig you step on cracks like a gunshot, and the moon is spotlighting down on you, showing all the black bears where you are.
I hadn’t been in the woods at night since Thomas quit hanging out with me. That night in June we were playing Mission: Impossible, as usual. Thomas was Barney because he was going to be an electronics whizz like that someday, and I was Willy, the strong guy. Our impossible mission that night, should we choose to accept it, which of course we did, was to infiltrate Mr Dunlop’s shed and disable the weapon – a horsewhip – that he used for beating Darrell. Thomas didn’t much care for Darrell, but he said it wasn’t right for a daddy to beat his son. He also didn’t like how Mr Dunlop spoke to Rosie, but we didn’t have any ideas for disabling that.
We had a great cover because raccoons had been getting into the shed and messing things up since the spring. Still, my heart was pounding as we creaked the shed door open, and I swear every shadow looked like Mr Dunlop ready to jump out at me. I could even smell his sweat. I hung back by the door as lookout while Thomas got the can from the shelf, right where Rosie said it was, and took off the lid. I wrinkled my nose up at the stink. The moonlight came in through the window, so I didn’t need to use my flashlight, which was good because I didn’t want to risk Mr Dunlop’s noticing anything. Thomas felt for the whip, on the same shelf by the cans, and tipped the can of contact cement so that stuff poured over the whip like honey on a wound.
And it was as slow to pour as honey, too. I glanced at the Dunlops’ house. “Hurry up, will ya?” I hissed.
Thomas was slow and steady. “I want to make sure it’s glued to the shelf real well.”
“It’s glued, okay? Now let’s get out of here!” My voice was quiet but shaking.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I won’t let him hurt you.”
“I’m not scared,” I whispered back, which we both knew was a lie.
“Remember, raccoons have been here,” Thomas said, as he finally put the can of contact cement on its side by the whip and set a few cans of spray paint on their side, too.
“Oh, yeah.” I took the strawberry stems out of my pocket and threw them on the floor. The raccoons were always in Mr Dunlop’s garden patch, stealing his food.
“Done!” Thomas said, and we hightailed it out of there and didn’t look back.
The next morning, Rosie said Mr Dunlop was fit to be tied, and that he believed the raccoons did it. He switched to a piece of wood for walloping Darrell, though. I guess me and Thomas knew that disabling the whip wouldn’t end the problem, but we hoped it might make Mr Dunlop stop and think for a minute.
I sure wished Thomas were with me now. He would’ve said something like, “Why are you walking so slow? You didn’t spill contact cement on your shoes, did you?” And that would’ve made me laugh, and then he would laugh, and I’d still be laughing now.
In the distance, I heard Rosie and Darrell bickering, so at least I was close to the cemetery. When I opened the wrought iron gate, its squeal made me shiver.
Rosie stopped talking and smiled at me. She looked like a fortune-teller with a scarf around her head and bead necklaces hanging down, making a racket whenever she moved. Darrell had on black pants, a black T-shirt, even a black knit hat.
“Got to hide from the spirits so I can jump out and scare ’em.” He chuckled.
“Sit down right there,” Rosie said to me, “by your daddy’s headstone.”
I sat down like I was in church. The breeze picked the hairs up on my arms and made me shiver. I wondered if it was Daddy’s spirit touching me.
Mama stopped making me go to church after Daddy died. I guess she didn’t have enough fight in h
er to make me go. She and J visited Daddy’s grave after church every Sunday, and I felt kind of guilty about not going. I looked at it now and swallowed hard when I saw the mayonnaise jar with white roses in it. Daddy always gave Mama white roses for their anniversary. Now she was giving them to him. It didn’t seem right. Still, I hoped she never switched to plastic flowers like some people did. There wasn’t anything sorrier than seeing faded plastic flowers on a grave. It was like looking in a dime-store window at all the old junk that had faded so much no one would want it.
“Red, are you listening?” Rosie was staring at me. “I said, hold hands and close your eyes.” She linked one arm around Darrell’s elbow and the other around mine, which left Darrell and me to hold hands with each other.
We both looked away.
“Come on,” said Rosie.
“No way,” Darrell snorted.
Rosie got all huffy. “We have to close the circle!”
“Listen, dingbat,” said Darrell, “boys don’t hold hands.”
“But you have to for a séance!”
“Not for a séance, not for nothing. You got any brains in that fat head of yours?”
I put my foot on Darrell’s ankle. Hard. “There. That’ll work, won’t it?”
“Oh, all right.” Rosie shook her head at us before looking down at the Ouija board in front of her. She closed her eyes and started humming as she reached her hand out towards the plastic triangle with the “eye” in it, pulling my arm along with hers since our elbows were linked.
Quick as a flash, Darrell took his free hand and pushed the plastic triangle with the clear circle in it across the Ouija board. He whipped his hand behind his back and said, “Hey, look! It’s moving!”
Rosie’s eyes popped open. “What?”
Darrell couldn’t hide a laugh.
Rosie’s mouth got tight, and she gave him a squinty-eyed look. “Quit it, Darrell!”
She closed her eyes again, and the humming started. Only this time it was Darrell.
Rosie gave Darrell’s elbow a tug. “Darrell, I swear I’m going to smack you!”
“Ooh, I’m so scared.”