Читать книгу White Nights in Split Town City - Annie DeWitt - Страница 11

5.

The hay wasn’t the only thing growing early into the summer. That June, Father ordered a riding mower to keep up with the lawn. He’d been working overtime at Data General, the software engineering plant on Route 9. The riding mower came straight off the truck, factory direct. Being that we lived so far out of town, most items Father ordered had to be picked up at the Post. The rider was so large that UPS made a special delivery. The truck labored up the mountain. From a distance, I thought, it looked like one of the ready-made houses I’d seen tractor-trailers haul on the highway, the house expanding on the horizon the closer it came.

Father’s rider came in a large cardboard box lined with a thin plywood plank. He kept the box in the garage until Mother threatened to return the mower along with it if Father didn’t break down the packaging and take the refuse to the dump. The flower show was the following weekend, she said. The Separatists had ordered mums which they planned on storing in our garage.

The day after the flowers arrived, Mother went to church. The Separatists had organized a car wash after the service. The women, Father joked, planned on stashing the leftover cash for a trip to Palm Beach the local circular had been advertising.

The box was large enough that, side-by-side, Birdie and I could lie down in it. While Father was out mowing, Birdie and I snuck into the garage and made off with the box, carrying it on our shoulders along the riverbed to the far side of the marsh.

When we arrived, the green bottle was exactly as I had left it. Birdie and I dragged the box under the tree and cut a door out of the cardboard. I scored along three sides of the rectangular opening with Mother’s gardening scissors and bent the box back so the crease served as a hinge. The rest of the afternoon Birdie and I gathered stones to mark off the perimeter. As we worked, the white branches of the birch crept into shadow. By the time we made our way up hill from the marsh, dusk was heavy along the horizon. Floodlights overlooked the back porch.

As we approached the Bottom Feeder, Father was playing the piano. In the background I could hear high-pitched laughter and the clinking of cans. I ditched the gardening scissors in the crawlspace beneath the garage and washed under the spigot, running my hands over Birdie’s legs to scrub away the mud. Several welts were forming where the bugs had broken skin.

Together we stood on the back deck to survey our progress. If you leaned over the railing and trained your eyes along the riverbank, beyond the outer reaches of the floodlights, you could just make out the faint gleam of the rocks we had gathered, the white patches of mineral glinting in the dusk.

As we entered the kitchen, Callie was standing in the portico leaning over the piano. One hand on Father’s shoulder. The other hovered over the songbook. Otto sat in the recliner in back of them. He kept time with his knuckles. A row of beer cans lined the cedar chest where Father kept his music. Father was singing a song about the things people needed.

“Join us, baby,” Callie called to me in the doorway. “Your old man was just playing us some of his standards.” Faded jeans rode halfway up her stomach. Her undershirt was pulled tight over her bra and tucked into the front of her pants.

“We’ve been out at the barn all day loading the loft,” Otto said. “Your father invited us over to blow off some steam.”

“Otto says he’s heard you practice,” Father said.

Otto smiled. “Play us something,” he said.

I played the last piece in the book just as I’d heard it. Father stood behind me. Otto sat in the chair with Birdie in his lap. After the first several bars, Callie lost track and gave up on the pages. She sat next to me on the piano bench and hummed along. The piece didn’t come with any words, just several repeating passages, which I played best I could remember.

“Wouldn’t want anything to happen to an ear like that,” Otto laughed when I finished.