Jesse was hiding — but not in the woods. He hid where we were forbidden to swim, where we didn’t bother to look because we all obeyed, except Jesse that day in July. He didn’t come out till he was good and ready, till his swim trunks had ripped in the place that they’d snagged, till the lake had stilled, its surface turned to glass, hard and imperturbable, God’s great blind eye, a perfect mirror of a cloudless sky.
Only then did Jesse come out, his body bobbing to the surface at the end of the dock. Justin and Uncle Les pulled him from Moon Lake, and the boy hung in their arms. Mother tried to hold me back, but I saw everything: the ripped trunks that had held him fast beneath the rotting planks; the long, bloodless scratch down his back; the gaping mouth, his surprise: his eyes flung open, blue, blue, the water, the sky, Jesse’s eyes, the wide, open eyes of the unexpected dead.
Nina fell on him, pounded his chest until the water spurted out of his violet mouth, breathed into him and yelled at his face: Wake up, damn you, wake up. But our Jesse was cruel and cold and did not answer. Still, he was not as cruel as Nina, not cruel enough to take even his body away and leave us to wonder, and imagine.
5
IF I’D gone to Aunt Arlen looking for that advice she’d offered about men, she probably would have told me they were all as selfish as Jesse. She was still mad at him for leaving her the way he did, as if he’d done it just to punish her, with no thought at all for his own sacrifice.
That’s what she thought of all her boys. Everything they did was just another way of getting back at her. “What did I ever do but love them?” she often said. “Well, that’s how a mother’s rewarded for giving too much of herself.”
Arlen was already pounding at our door by eight o’clock the next morning. “Will you come look at this?” she said. Mom and I followed her through the backyard. She pointed at the truck in the driveway. “Now, what do you suppose happened here?”
My cousin Marshall lay sprawled on the seat between two black-haired girls with smeared mouths. Marshall’s pants were unzipped and his neck was covered with red blotches. Both girls had flung their lavender sweaters on the floor. They spilled out of their bras, and I swore I saw fingerprints on their breasts, pale purple bruises, the size of Marshall’s thick fingers. One of the girls woke and rubbed her eyes. She laughed when she saw us, and made no effort to cover herself. Her teeth were small and sharp. Her turned-up nose looked like a plug on her fleshy face.
“Justin’s upstairs,” Arlen said, “facedown on his bed with his boots on. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with my boys. Some night one of them’s gonna mess with the wrong woman and wake up with a knife in his butt.”
The girl with the pig nose unrolled her window. “Mornin’,” she said. “I don’t s’pose I could use your bathroom, could I?”
Mom was pulling on my sleeve.
“You s’pose right,” said Arlen.
“Mighty unfriendly of you to feel that way.”
“Come on, Lizzie,” Mom said.
The girl opened the door and jumped out of the cab. I was letting Mom tug me home, but I wasn’t moving fast. “Last chance,” the girl said.
Arlen crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head.
“Have it your way.” The girl with no shirt wriggled out of her pants and squatted. Mom was behind me now, shoving me toward the house. I thought, I’ve already seen it all. What good does it do to drag me away?
“You filthy scum,” Arlen screamed, flailing at the girl’s head. The big-bottomed stranger rolled in the grass, laughing, her pants bunched down around her knees, her thighs quivering. Mom hustled me inside and slammed the door behind us.
A few days later I learned how my cousins’ evening had begun. Mother gave me permission to go for a bike ride with Gwen Holler — as long as I promised to beat Daddy home. She thought I’d been punished long enough but saw no sense in starting another argument.
I met Gwen at the corner, and we headed out to Ike’s Truck-stop to visit her mom. When Ruby Holler was working, we got fries and Cokes for half price.
Ike’s sat on a treeless lot north of town. Out here, the wind was always blowing; dust foamed from the eighteen-wheelers hauling up to the pumps, and diesel fumes hung in the air. Even the truckers coughed when they leaped out of their rigs.
Standing on this stretch of scrabby earth, I realized how close the mountains were. In July the snow still hadn’t melted off the highest peaks. By late August a fresh dusting of powder appeared. Strangers said the mountains made them feel trapped, but the Rockies sheltered the people of Willis. Hidden in this valley, we were protected from the whimsical Chinook winds that whipped down the eastern slopes, raising the temperature by 40 degrees in a single hour. We knew that if you climbed in these mountains, you would find only more peaks and clear pools that reflected hard sky and bare rock, pools that held the fine glacial silt in perfect suspension, turning the water unbelievable shades of blue and green. An avalanche of snow could bury a man for a hundred years. A sharp thaw could flood the valley, rip houses from foundations and send cows and children swirling toward Moon Lake.
We accepted these dangers and learned not to walk on the ice fields in spring when the snow is heavy, sodden and dense, when a man’s footsteps can shake a hillside loose. Tourists died in our mountains: boisterous skiers plunged to early deaths and hikers sank into blissful hypothermic sleep. But we survived. We knew the simple truth: a mountain is greater than a man.
I wasn’t worrying about avalanches that day. I was thinking about a plate of salty fries dripping with ketchup. I was thinking how good it was to be free to ride my bike with Gwen Holler.
Gwen’s mother seemed almost glad to see us. “Haven’t had a customer for an hour,” she said. Ruby didn’t need to wait for our order. “Drop a pair of fries,” she yelled to Ike as she pulled two Cokes from the cooler. When we had our food, Ruby Holler leaned over the counter and whispered, “Your cousins nearly lost their noses out here the other day.”
According to Ruby, the boys had stirred up some trouble with the Furey woman. They were Mary Louise’s last customers and she was in no mood to chat. “I was here to take over,” Ruby said, “but I had ten minutes to spare, so I made myself an iced tea. I don’t owe that woman any favors.
“I recognized Marshall Munter right off. He was grinning at Mary Louise and I knew he was looking for a little excitement.” My cousin Marshall had big hands and a flat belly. Grown men with firm stomachs were rare in Willis. He wore his jeans tight and liked his own smell after a day at work. I could just see him, running his fingers through his hair, trying to tame his cowlicks. “That cousin of yours has a way with women,” Ruby Holler said. “He talks nice and slow. Makes me think he might know how to take his time when it really mattered.” She winked at me and Gwen. There wasn’t much about Marshall that appealed to me, but Gwen grinned as she stuffed three fat french fries in her mouth. She knew just what her mother meant.
“So your handsome cousin points to his pie and says, ‘Hey, Mary Louise, this here’s a nice piece. You cooked this pie up just right.’
“He may be pretty,” Ruby said, “but he ain’t so smart.
“‘Ike does the pies,’ Mary Louise told him, and he says, ‘Don’t you like to cook?’
“I knew she was aggravated, so I told her I’d fix my face and be right out. I left the bathroom door open just a crack to keep one eye on the activities.
“I heard your other cousin, the short ugly one — what’s his name?”