“It’s hot today.”
“Yes.”
“You have such coarse hair, Daddy.”
“Not like yours.”
“Mine’s so dry it breaks off when I brush it.”
“You used to have such pretty hair.”
“Yes.”
“Bound to break sooner or later.”
“My hair?”
“The weather.”
Perhaps that was all they said. But why, why did they have to whisper?
It was on the fourth day that Nina had another visitor, “another gentleman caller,” Mom said as she and Nina and I sat on the porch, and I thought of my gentleman cousins.
At first I believed the boy in the yellow Volkswagen across the street was Coe Carson, and I sat smug, thinking how surprised they’d be when they realized a boy was calling on me, not Nina. But this was a foolish thought. No boy had ever knocked on my door. No lover had thrown gravel at my window or sung to me in the dark.
My mistake was simple enough. The boy in the car was Rafe Carson, Coe’s older brother, one of those boys in the trees during the long summer before Nina ran away, the boy in the woodshed with his hand stuck down Nina’s bra, one of the dozen or so she left behind to pine for her, to imagine her golden hair in a hundred damp and hopeless dreams.
Rafe was almost as skinny as Coe, saved only by the fact that he wasn’t as tall. His red hair was cropped close to his skull. His cheek and chin showed a sparse fuzz, a futile attempt to grow a beard. He wore a white T-shirt, yellowed at the pits, and faded jeans.
Mom tried to scoot me inside, but I sat on the porch swing, smack in the middle, staring at the two wicker chairs. If at some later time Rafe and Nina decided they wanted to sit together, they’d have to ask me to move my ass. Nina shot me a look, an old look that spun through the years to a time when I would have done anything to please her — would have stood on my head in a corner till my face turned the color of a ripe tomato if it would make her happy. That look had sent me scuttling to my room night after night so she could be alone with some boy or another, but this time I just looked back at her with the blank eyes of a cow.
“Hey there,” said Rafe, putting his foot on the bottom step and waiting for an invitation.
“Hi yourself,” said Nina. She twisted a brassy curl around her finger.
“I heard you were back,” Rafe said, shading his face with his hand.
“Yeah, I’m back.”
“How long you staying?”
“Long as I want.”
“Mind if I get out of the sun?”
“I don’t mind,” she said.
He took the chair to Nina’s right, giving her a quick, sideways glance.
She rubbed her bare arms, and Rafe stared, his longing simple: he wanted nothing more than to touch those arms. Nina said, “Lizzie, honey, I’m about to drop from this heat. Be a sweet girl and get me a cool rag.”
I knew her, but how could I refuse?
When I returned with the damp cloth, it was just as I expected: Nina had moved to the swing. But Rafe still sat rigid in his chair.
Nina reached for the rag and read my mind, moving one leg onto the swing so I couldn’t plop down with her. I had to take the chair next to Rafe, bound like him to watch Nina wash her throat and the back of her neck. She dabbed at her arms. Rafe Carson had to sit on his hands to keep himself from begging her to let him wash her knees. She made each part of her body precious, then closed her eyes, oblivious to the suffering she caused this boy.
“I can’t remember a time I was ever this hot,” she said. “It wasn’t this hot when we were growing up, was it, Rafe?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, “it wasn’t.”
“Ma’am? Ma’am? What am I, your mama? Or some old woman on the street?” She leaned forward and the neck of her dress gaped, exposing a smooth white place the sun hadn’t touched.
“I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean that at all. You’re still the prettiest girl who ever lived in this town.”
“That’s not saying much.”
“In this county.”
“Thanks again. I feel like I’ve just been crowned Hog Queen at the state fair.”
Rafe Carson squirmed, thinking through his short list of compliments, tortured by his lack of words. “You know what I’m trying to say.”
“I’m tired of guessing what boys mean.” She stretched out on the porch swing; her eyes were slats. I wanted to warn Rafe that he’d better keep talking because Nina was apt to fall asleep the minute she got comfortable.
“I’m no good at talking to girls.”
“Well, it’s time you learned.”
“I haven’t had much practice.”
“What have you been doing for five years, living in a hole?”
“Something like that.”
“A monastery?”
“Not exactly.”
“Join the Army?”
“They wouldn’t take me.”
Nina sat up straight, truly looking at Rafe Carson for the first time. “They let anybody in the Army. Unless he’s some kind of cripple. Are you deformed, boy?” Something in her tone made me think she liked the idea and wouldn’t mind seeing a humpback or a clubfoot for herself.
“I’ve been in prison.”
“You mean that boys’ school, that country club for delinquents? That was ages ago. I didn’t think they even put stuff like that on your record.”
“They didn’t. I’ve been in a real prison. Over in Washington. Three years for armed robbery.”
“Three years? That’s all?”
“Well, the gun wasn’t loaded. Actually it wasn’t even a real gun, but the kid thought it was, crapped his pants, literally, said so in court. That’s why they gave me three years if you want to know the truth, three years for scaring the shit out of some pimple-faced kid.”
“Another gas station?”
“Seven-Eleven.”
“How much you get?”
“Nothing. Damn fool wouldn’t open the register. He was gonna die for minimum wage. How do you find a kid like that? Fifty lousy bucks, that’s all I wanted.”
“What for?”
“I was trying to get across the border before anybody got the bright idea of drafting me.”
“Why’d you go to Washington? You could have walked to Canada from here.”
“I had to throw my father off my trail. He wanted me to enlist. He would have tracked me all the way to the Northwest Territories if he knew how yellow I was. He’d rather kill me with his own hands than have people in this town call one of his boys a coward.”
“He’d rather have a convict than a coward?”
“Yeah, he would — as long as I don’t let on I didn’t have a real gun.”
“Well, you got out of it,” Nina said. “You didn’t have to go to Canada or Vietnam.”
“What a lucky guy.”
“I’d say so.”
“I missed a lot. I’m still missing it.” He stood up and paced. His face was dry and red, and he couldn’t look at Nina. “I feel like I got my arms cut off. You don’t know what it’s like, being locked up, looking at men every minute, never seeing a woman, never being alone. And then one day you’re staring at yourself in the mirror and you see there’s some guy behind you, and he’s watching you too because you’re skinny and the youngest one on the block, and he knows he can have you. He puts his hand on your shoulder, moves it down your spine. And you let him.”
Mom stood behind the screen door with a pitcher of lemonade and three glasses on a tray. Rafe yelled at her through the screen, “Do you know what I’m telling you?”
Mom said, “How about some nice lemonade?”
“No,” Rafe said, collecting himself, remembering his manners, “no, thank you, ma’am.”