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  I shook my head. That was the last thing I needed. “Thanks, but I’ll handle it.”

  “Issa so beautiful,” Rosasharn said, pretending to burst into tears. “Thissa young love issa so beautiful, I’ma tellin’ you.” He pulled out a handkerchief and honked into it.

  “He’s not gonna ask her out,” Jeremy said.

  “I’ll do it,” I told him, hoping to convince myself at the same time I was convincing him. “I don’t see you asking that many girls out.”

  “I do whenever I want to,” he said. “I just don’t give up eating and get all spastic like you do.”

  “Issa so beautiful,” Rosasharn said, bursting into a fresh round of sobs.

  “I said I’d ask her out and I will,” I told Jeremy over the racket Rosasharn was making. “So don’t worry about it.”

  “When?” he demanded in that stubborn way of his.

  I shrugged. “There’s not much going on at the school this time of year. Maybe in a couple of weeks I’ll ask her to a movie or something.”

  “What’s wrong with that drug thing?”

  “What drug thing?”

  “That stupid drug thing they’re having tomorrow. Ask her to that.”

  I looked around. Everybody was still studying me pretty good. Bo was wearing the little half smile he usually gets whenever I’m in the middle of one of those exchanges with Jeremy. Ethan looked a little stricken-like he wanted to help but couldn’t think of a way to do it.

  I turned back to Jeremy and shook my head. “Too short notice,” I said. “Besides, a drug field day isn’t exactly a date kind of thing.”

  “Buk, buk, buk.” Jeremy flapped his arms like chicken wings.

  “Why don’t you ask somebody, mouth?”

  “You mean a real live girl?” he said in mock horror. “Oh, I’m so scared.” He went back to his Jeremy voice. “I will if you will.” And then back to his chicken voice. “Buk, buk, buk.”

  You’d think at my age I’d be mature enough not to be goaded into decisions by a sour-faced guy making chicken noises. And you’d be wrong.

  “No sweat,” I said, hoping my voice held steady. “We’ll do it tomorrow morning.” Just saying it gave me a little burst of courage. I grabbed the container of Malai kofte, stuck a fork in it, and took a big bite. “This stuff’s good,” I said. “You oughta try it.”

  • • •

  “Hey, scrub.”

  I lowered my Emerson book and looked up to see Jeremy scowling at me from the other side of the campfire. He sat there gawking away but didn’t say anything more. “What?” I said finally.

  “You got your stupid face in that book, and you don’t even know when people are talking to you,” he said.

  “So talk,” I told him, and closed the book. It was strange, but after agreeing to ask Katie out, I’d started feeling more like myself than I had all week.

  “I wasn’t the one talking to you,” Jeremy said. “Why would I wanna talk to you?”

  Ethan tapped me on the knee and pointed at Sudie, who being used to this kind of cross fire, was waiting patiently. “I asked what you were reading,” she told me.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sorry. It’s something Pop got me—a collection of Emerson’s essays and poems.”

  “You mean the Emerson we did in school?” You could tell she wasn’t a big fan.

  I nodded. “It’s kind of fascinating actually.” I flipped the book back open and tried to find the right page. “Listen to this. . . .”

  “Oh, God,” Jeremy moaned. “He’s gonna read to us.”

  I found the paragraph I’d been looking for and twisted around so some light from the fire would shine on the page. “Listen,” I said, and started in.

  If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbados, why should I not say to him, “Go love thy infant; love thy woodchopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace; and never varnish your hard uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles away Thy love afar is spite at home.”

  I looked up at everybody. Bo was wearing the same smile he’d had during my discussion with Jeremy earlier. Ethan was studying me with big serious eyes the way he often does. Jeremy was scowling. Sudie had kind of a politely blank look.

  Rosasharn broke the ice. “Attsa so beautiful,” he said, and started sobbing harder even than he had earlier.

  “Does anybody see any black folk around here?” Jeremy wanted to know.

  “No, no, that’s not the point,” I said, getting all excited. “Don’t you get it? He’s talking about people like Emmett St. Andrews.”

  “Oh, God,” Jeremy said. “Here we go again. And which guy was Emmett supposed to be, scrubby—the woodcutter or the infant?”

  I glanced at Bo. He folded his arms and his smile got a little bigger.

  “Neither,” I said, being too used to Jeremy to let myself get pulled too far off-line. “He’s the bigot. Don’t you get it? Emerson was talking about people like Emmett—people who run around acting like these great do-gooders, but they’re really not even nice people. See, Emmett spends all his time traveling around the countryside pretending to care about people like us he doesn’t even know. And meanwhile he’s treating all the real people in his life, the people he really knows, like crap. He tells anybody who’ll listen all about how his family is dysfunctional, and describes in detail every time they didn’t praise him enough, or every time somebody looked at him the wrong way and damaged his self-esteem. . . . I’m telling you,” I said, thumping on the book, “this is Emmett to a T. It’s Bob Chirillo and all of them.”

  Jeremy snorted. “Every time he reads a book or sees a movie, he thinks it’s about Bob Chirillo or . . .” He snapped his fingers. “Who’s that lady he always used to go off on? What was her name?”

  “Mrs. Quinby,” Bo said, looking at me and shrugging as if he’d been subpoenaed and had no choice but to answer.

  “He’s like obsessed with those people,” Jeremy said, getting into the mood of the whole thing and waving his arms around.

  “Obsessed” may have been a little strong, but there was no denying that everyone there had had to sit through at least a few of my tirades about Mrs. Quinby and Bob Chirillo. Mrs. Quinby, the elementary and middle school psychologist, was kind of like a firefighter who liked fires a little too much. Only her fires consisted of people’s problems. Within two days after my mother took off with the embezzler, Mrs. Quinby had me in her office for a chat, trying to fan the embers of any damage my mother’s departure may have done to my psyche. Even though (or maybe because) I told her I was fine, she decided I must be crying out for help. Before I knew it she had me officially enrolled in WAFA (standing for “We Are Families Also”), an after-school thing for kids from broken homes. In WAFA what we did most of the time was sat in a circle and told each other about (or drew pictures about) how sad we were and how difficult everything was and clapped for anybody who told a really pitiful story, and clapped and cheered if they broke down and cried. But this was a barrel of laughs compared to the recreation part of the meetings. We used to play a hide-and-seek kind of game, only we weren’t looking for each other—we were looking for little scraps of paper with brilliant messages on them like “I am special” and “I like myself just the way I am,” or the fun-filled and informative, “My parents’ divorce was not my fault.” And when you found one of these scraps (which wasn’t hard since they weren’t even really hidden), you had to read it out to the group and they’d all clap for you and Mrs. Quinby would act thrilled that everyone was having such a good time and achieving sound mental health to boot.

  I quit WAFA one afternoon after throwing what normal people might call a tantrum (Mrs. Quinby called it a breakthrough). I’d had a bad day at school, and Mrs. Quinby, as soon as she saw I was in a lousy mood, started moving in on me with her hook and ladder. She’d made it her personal go
al to get me to share my feelings for the benefit of her and the other kids. Mostly her. At first I wouldn’t say anything, but she didn’t let up, so finally I let her have it. I told her we should play games that were fun for a change instead of stupid things with messages that weren’t even hard to find. Mrs. Quinby did a fair job of keeping her smile intact and told me she felt that the games we played were fun and, possibly, was there something else troubling me—something deeper? I didn’t answer, so, no doubt to prime my emotional pump, she announced it might be a good time to play “The Feelings Game.” This was kind of a board (“bored” would be more accurate) game where each square contained the name of a feeling such as “jealous” or “hurt” or “happy,” and whatever one you landed on, you had to tell the group about a time you felt that way. When Mrs. Quinby, her whole face wreathed in that infuriating smile of hers, handed me the dice and suggested that maybe I’d like to go first, I took them and heaved them out the window, at the same time saying what I hoped was a very un-WAFA-like thing concerning her family tree. When I told Pop what I’d done, he had me go to her office the next day to apologize, but he also agreed that I didn’t have to go to any more WAFA meetings.

  It was a major setback for Mrs. Quinby, but she didn’t give up without a fight. Until the day I got out of middle school I had the sense she was keeping me under close surveillance, and twice she suited up and came after me—once right after Margaret died, to try to teach me to grieve by numbers, and another time right after Pop had gone on a particularly colorful binge, to try to get me to join some kind of children of alcoholics group. Both times I came close to having another “breakthrough” in her office, but I held back, knowing that Pop would ask me to apologize to her, and I never wanted to put myself in that position again. When I entered junior high, Bob Chirillo decided he needed to get his therapeutic paws on me, and then finally Emmett. The whole bunch of them made me sick.

  “Uh, excuse me,” Jeremy was saying in a voice that was supposed to be mine, “but I just saw The Wizard of Oz and I think the Tin Man is supposed to stand for Bob Chirillo.”

  “You’re very amusing,” I told him. “Or is it just your face that makes you seem funny?”

  “Uh, excuse me,” Jeremy continued, “but I just saw Jaws, and I think the shark was supposed to be Mrs. . . . uh, what’s-her-face?” He snapped his fingers.

  “Quinby,” Bo said, and then gave me that same subpoenaed shrug again.

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said in his own voice, and then continued on as me. “Uh, excuse me, but I just saw Lassie Come Home, and I think Lassie is . . .”

  By now we were all cracked up—even Ethan, who’d put his comic book aside for the performance. “Lassie’s a dog.” Ethan said, giggling.

  “Yeah,” Jeremy said as himself before going on with the routine. “I think Lassie’s supposed to be Ray Phineas, the D.A.R.E. guy.”

  “Wrong,” I said, laughing. “Lassie has a higher IQ.”

  Rosasharn piped in with a bad Irish accent. “Oh, and ’tis always a good weekend that begins with Gabriel O’Roiley up on his high horse, doncha know.”

  “All right, all right,” I said. “You guys can make fun, but you have to admit there’s something wrong with that crowd. Searching around for any little problem they can talk to death.”

  “Yeah, just what you’re doin’,” Jeremy said.

  “Shut up,” I told him. Then I looked at Bo. His smile had widened and was taking on some definite characteristics of a smirk.

  “You’re just a bundle of support tonight, aren’t you, buddy?” I said, tapping him lightly on the head.

  Bo laughed and tapped me back. “We’d miss it if you stopped doing this,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t,” Jeremy said, and threw another log on the fire. Then he picked up a stick and pointed it at Ethan. “Anything you’d like to share from Tarzan?” he asked him.

  Ethan shook his head. Unlike me, he knew when to keep his mouth shut.

  • • •

  Sudie did a good job on the costumes. Jeremy’s wasn’t half bad—well worth the trouble of getting him into it, especially since most of that hassle took place while Rosasharn and I went into town for Pop. By the time I’d driven Pop home and walked back to Blood Red Pond, Jeremy was all decked out as Green Gal. In the light of the campfire, not only did he look a little like a real swamp creature, but with his red lips and green breasts I could see how something that just crawled out of the swamp might even find him attractive. Rosasharn seemed to agree. After he transformed himself into Green Guy and saw Jeremy as Green Gal, he let out what was supposed to be, I guess, some kind of swamp mating call and took off after him. On their second pass by the fire, Sudie snagged him. “You’re gonna ruin the costumes,” she said, and poked him in the head.

  Ethan looked good too—just as shy and quiet in his costume as out of it. When I first saw him I had to laugh—a little green swamp thing sitting in front of the fire reading Superman.

  We managed to get some pretty good footage, I thought, of family life in the swamp with Green Guy, the bad-tempered father, and Green Gal, the cringing wife (except when Rosasharn stepped out of character to be affectionate and Jeremy stepped out of character to belt him), and Greenie, their brilliant but at least slightly maladjusted son who sat around with a book called Cognitive Strategies for Qualitative Enhancement of Reading Comprehension which Bo’s mom had lent us. She used it in Advanced Placement English as an example of how supposedly intelligent people can do a number on the language.

  A couple of times I caught Ethan looking off into the woods as if he’d spotted something, but when I asked him what he saw, he just gave me a little shrug. Ethan has this way of seeing things before he actually sees them almost, so I didn’t bother looking too hard where he was looking. I have trouble spotting things even when Ethan is patiently pointing them out to me, so I didn’t expect to be able to see something he wasn’t even sure of. Plus I was kept pretty busy helping with setups for shots, not to mention refereeing the skirmishes between Jeremy and Rosasharn. I also had to deal with Jeremy one on one. It became his personal goal to see that I didn’t forget for one minute my agreement to ask Katie Lyons to the drug field day. Like clockwork between shots he’d amble over to taunt me with his off-key, sour-faced rendition of Little Orphan Annie singing like a broken record, “Tomorrow, tomorrow . . . Tomorrow, tomorrow.”

  “No sweat,” I’d say every time he got done singing in my face. “No sweat.”

  Eight

  The last bale dropped off the side of the conveyor. I heaved it over to Jeremy who was stacking along the roofline a little below me. A few seconds later both the elevator and conveyor stopped, ending the nerve-wracking screech the chains made as they slid along the metal trays. I collapsed onto the bale behind me. It had to be at least one hundred and ten degrees in that haymow. Jeremy’s father had never made the switch to haylage, which was the way more and more farmers brought in their early hay—chopped and blown into an automatic unloading wagon and then shot through a blower into a silo without ever being touched by a human hand. And he didn’t go for those giant round bales that you left sitting around outside until you needed them either. So there we were in that sauna of a haymow doing grunt work.

  “You look like a wet rat,” Jeremy said, coming over to where I was and sitting on the side of the conveyor.

  “And you don’t?” I said, looking up at him. We’d long since pulled our shirts off and were both slimy with sweat. I grabbed my shirt off a beam and wiped the sweat out of my eyes.

  “Anybody alive up there?” we heard through the opening in the side of the barn where the elevator attached to the conveyor. It was Jeremy’s father, calling from the hay wagon below.

  “No,” Jeremy yelled down.

  “Sorry I don’t have any more to send you boys just now, but that’s it for a few minutes.” You could hear the laughter in his voice. He’d spent enough time in sweltering haymows in his day to know what we were going through. />
  “Ha, ha,” Jeremy said, not even having the energy to make his voice carry to down below.

  “Don’t you worry though,” his father continued. “I’ll be back quick as I can with a fresh load.” His laughter wafted up through the haymow doorway.

  At one time I actually started thinking Jeremy must have been adopted. His parents were two of the most jovial people you’d ever want to meet, and they both seemed to enjoy nothing more than a good laugh. Even their property was set up for laughs. In addition to a second mailbox perched about ten feet over their regular box and labeled “air mail,” they also had the full line of yuk-yuk lawn ornaments, including the bending-over fat lady and the little boy who’s dropped his drawers and is supposedly peeing in the bushes. This adoption theory was making more and more sense to me until one day when I happened to be sitting on the Wulfsons’ porch waiting for Jeremy to come in from the field. I hadn’t waited very long before I spotted him walking across his yard toward me. Not knowing anybody was there watching, he stopped and did a second take at the fat lady’s backside (that’s the only side she had, really), and all of a sudden he actually began to smile—a real, regular-person kind of smile. He wiped it off his face as soon as he saw me, of course, but by then I already knew: Jeremy was a closet humorist.

  “Well, get going, rat boy,” Jeremy said, looking down at me from the conveyor.

  “Get going where?” I asked.

  “Weren’t you gonna call your little sweetie?” he said, puckering up his face on the word “sweetie.” “Or have you chickened out already?”

  I had actually forgotten, which goes to show just how hot that haymow was. “You were gonna call your sweetie too,” I reminded him.

  “I know,” Jeremy said, and then started doing this spastic shaking on the conveyor. “Oh, I’m so scared.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said, acting as cool as I could manage under the circumstances. “I doubt any female would say yes to you anyway. Not one of the higher primates, at least.”