ONE
I REALLY DON’T WANT TO GO, but Mama says I have no choice. She needs to be at the salon all day cutting hair, and there’s no way she can afford a sitter.
“I could leave you by yourself,” she says, “but all you’d do is play video games and eat. Cold mac and cheese, my chocolate-covered raisins. You know it’s true, June. Sorry, bud. Sending you with them really is best for both of us.”
I guess it’s one more thing to be mad at Daddy about. I’d call him and let him hear about it if only I knew where he was.
Mama and I are at the pizza place next door to the Déjà Do, where she rents a booth. I’m a nice size for eleven and would love to know why she had to order the medium cheese when the large cheese is only a few dollars more.
“I could sweep up the hair,” I say. “I could fold the towels. Anything. You don’t have to pay me. Just don’t make me go, Mama.”
“What would my clients think? A big boy like you. Oh, June.” She’s trying to sound cheerful all of a sudden. “You’ll get to see the country. Isn’t that exciting? You don’t know it yet, but they’re giving you a gift. The mountains and the rivers? The fields that run on forever? Those trees that get so big they cut holes in the trunk so cars can drive through?”
It’s a mystery why she makes everything sound like a question. It must be because life comes at her that way—without the answers, ever.
“But they’re psychos,” I tell her. “They look like Civil War reenactors, and not ones for the good side, either.”
“They are not psychos. Take that back, please. They’re very fine men who want to make the world a better place.”
“Psychos,” I repeat, so loud the diners next to us turn to look.
I reach across the table and grab her phone. The restaurant has free Wi-Fi, and I punch up the website for Ball Garage. The site is as rinky-dink as they come, with a picture of Larry and Cornell Ball standing next to a jalopy and the number to call if you need them. Behind them is the building where they fix cars. I know the place because it’s in the town where I live, Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, and my bus drives by it to and from school each day.
“Look at ’em, Mama. And be honest, come on. They don’t scare you just a little?”
“Not me,” she says, and pulls the phone out of my hand. She drops it in her purse and zippers the top shut before I can get at it again.
Mama claims I’ve met them before—once at a restaurant in town, another time at church, maybe when I was still a baby. I must’ve blocked it out of my mind, not wanting to believe I could be related to such people.
She’s also explained how they’re family, and I repeat it now only because you need to know. A long time ago there were three brothers, and they each got married and had a son. So that made the sons first cousins. Their names were Larry Ball, Cornell Ball, and Henry Ball. Larry and Cornell grew up without ever getting married and having kids, but Henry did marry and have a kid. Henry married my mom and they had me, Henry Junior, which makes Larry and Cornell my cousins, too. Mama says they’re my first cousins once removed. I guess it’s possible, not that it’s something I care to advertise.
“June, honey, they welcome the chance to get to know you,” Mama is saying. “They grew up with your dad. And they were thrilled when I asked them to take you on the road with them. It really touched my heart to hear how sweet they were about it. I cried so hard out of relief and gratitude I got raccoon eyes from my mascara running.”
“You cried? Over those dudes?”
It must be true, because there she goes doing it again, the tears plowing trails in her makeup even as her little yellow teeth rip into more pizza.
“How long, Mama?” I ask her. “How long do I have to go with them? Please tell me it’s not the whole summer.”
We’re down to the last slice, and I let her have it, hoping she’ll think well of me and cut me a break.
“A month, maybe two.” Mama’s got big football shoulders, and she gives them a shrug. “They want to see how it goes before they commit long term. I’m sure they’re as nervous about leaving with you as you are about leaving with them.”
“Did you just say two? Two months?”
“It could be that. It could also be the whole summer, although I’m not sure I could stand being away from my little buddy that long.”
Her little buddy, huh? But I’m still getting the boot.
It’s almost more than I can bear sometimes.
* * *
When the time comes I don’t pack much, mainly because I don’t have much. Mama pulls one of Daddy’s old travel bags out of the shed. He got it in the army, and it has his name in stenciled lettering, and when I see the words there, white against the green, I swear I don’t know if I should bawl or grab a Sharpie and blot them out.
Mama opens the bag and uses one of her hair-dryers to blow out the dead bugs, then she holds the top open and I start throwing things in: shoes, jeans, shorts, T-shirts, a bunch of underwear. Toiletries like my comb and toothbrush and cherry ChapStick. She says I should also bring some reading material, and she leaves the room and comes back with a small stack of books she found at a thrift shop. They’re held together with a rubber band, and all but one are Dork Diaries.
“No way, Jose,” I say.
“What’s wrong with them? Aren’t they for kids your age?”
“For girls my age. Boys don’t read that stuff.”
“They’re about dorks. There aren’t any boy dorks?”
“If there are I don’t want to know about them. What’s that other one?”
She pulls it out of the stack. “The Red Pony by John Steinbeck,” she says. “Are you too good for horses, too?”
Mama isn’t letting me take any electronic devices like her phone or the family laptop, so I’m fine with the book. I throw it in the bag. What’s wrong with the pony to make it red? I wonder. Did it get blood all over it? I doubt that I’ll read enough to find out, but a book might come in handy to hide my face in if my so-called cousins get to prying.
Mama will tell you I’m addicted to video games, but that’s just another unfair fabrication. She screams, “Oh, no, you don’t!” every time she sees me sitting in front of the TV. If she bothered to check she’d know that a lot of the time I don’t even have the video player on. Instead I’m on YouTube watching reunion videos. You know the kind. They’re the ones where kids are surprised by absent parents, most of them war veterans who’ve been away from home a long time.
My favorite is the one where an army dad turns up at his son’s school during an assembly. The kid thinks the dad is in Afghanistan, but there he is in the gym. Everybody at the school seems to be in on the surprise but the kid. The moment he sets eyes on the dad, the kid takes off running. He leaps into his dad’s arms, and they fall to the shiny floor and roll around while the band plays and people in the bleachers stand and applaud. Everybody bawls, too, even the principal. I must’ve watched it a thousand times.
Daddy and I never had a reunion like that. He left the army in 2015 after thirteen hard years as a Ranger, and we fled the base in Georgia and moved back home to Wisconsin. I had a lot of friends in Fort Benning, but it’s been harder to make friends in Sheboygan Falls. I could blame the kids for not accepting me, but it’s really been my fault. The mental health professional at my school told Mama I have anger issues. Mama told her no, I only had a bad temper, inherited from her side of the family. But anybody whose dad is as messed-up as mine would be mad, and anybody would have his guard up about trusting somebody new.
copyright © 2021 John Ed Bradley
