I was fairly obsessed with
The Diary of Anne Frank,
which Edie had read the previous winter and had talked about so much that I had to read it to find out what all the fuss was about.
“There’s a lot of wisdom to be found in that little book,” Jack said after I told him what I was reading. “It’s amazing, really, what that little girl wrote. That one line, ‘Despite everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.’ That right there, now, I’ll just tell you, that’ll stand the test of time, buddy.”
I hadn’t gotten that far into the book yet, so I tried to tune out anything he said lest he spoil the entire plot. On his lunch break he ate a baloney-and-mustard sandwich he had brought from home, drank a Mountain Dew, and immersed himself in a book called
Jude the Obscure,
sitting on a stack of tires in the cool corner of the garage. Once when I asked him what the book was about, he told me it was only the best book ever written and that as soon as I got old enough, I ought to read it, and he was about to go on and on but the bell clanged, drawing my attention to a car that needed to be filled with gas, which was my job when I went along with my father to the station.
The drivers were tickled by the sight of a ten-year-old pumping their gas (I was too short to clean the windshields or check their oil, so Jack had to run out and do that) and sometimes gave me a quarter tip, which I saved up for the movies. I was hoping to go see
The Bad News Bears,
although my mother said Josie would have to take me since she couldn’t stand Walter Matthau. Lots of actors got on my mother’s nerves, and she had strong opinions about all of them.
I longed for a shirt like the ones my father, Jack, and String all wore. The shirts were dark blue, heavily starched. The best part was that they all had a little blue-bordered patch over their left pocket that announced their names. I had begged for such a shirt for the last two years but had never received one, always expecting it as a birthday present. Daddy said they didn’t make them in my size.
The gas station was situated on the side of the road between our house and Refuge in a space of countryside that had been devoted to a scattering of businesses. On one side of us was a small grocery, and on the other side was a pay-by-the-week motel where a few old bachelors lived year-round. The motel was painted turquoise and had a dry pool in its courtyard. This had once been the main road, before the interstate came through on the other side of town, and my father said that when he was a child, the motel had been considered fancy. People told how Lucille Ball had once stayed there, back in the fifties. On the two occasions I had ventured close to the motel to spy on people, it had smelled of lard and rotting sawdust. The first time I had seen nothing except an old man in Bermuda shorts, black socks, and a gray fedora with a red feather in the band, reading the newspaper as he sat outside his door on one of the plastic patio chairs that came with each room. The second time there had been a group of old men playing poker around a card table they had set up on the courtyard. They smoked and cussed, but that had been the extent of anything interesting.
The other side of the road was taken up by a mile-long cornfield. Beyond that was the river, which was why the cornfield was situated there in the first place, in the rich bottomland. And beyond the river were blue mountains that always seemed striped with jagged lines of heat.
It was especially hot that day, so hot that Jack pointed out to me how the gases shifted and moved over the pavement. He said that it was because of the oils trapped in the blacktop being conjured up by the heat. This was like something my mother would say, since she was always seeing the world through its science, and I thought how she and Jack would probably get along very well.
“Did you have my mother for a teacher in high
The Diary of Anne Frank,
which Edie had read the previous winter and had talked about so much that I had to read it to find out what all the fuss was about.
“There’s a lot of wisdom to be found in that little book,” Jack said after I told him what I was reading. “It’s amazing, really, what that little girl wrote. That one line, ‘Despite everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.’ That right there, now, I’ll just tell you, that’ll stand the test of time, buddy.”
I hadn’t gotten that far into the book yet, so I tried to tune out anything he said lest he spoil the entire plot. On his lunch break he ate a baloney-and-mustard sandwich he had brought from home, drank a Mountain Dew, and immersed himself in a book called
Jude the Obscure,
sitting on a stack of tires in the cool corner of the garage. Once when I asked him what the book was about, he told me it was only the best book ever written and that as soon as I got old enough, I ought to read it, and he was about to go on and on but the bell clanged, drawing my attention to a car that needed to be filled with gas, which was my job when I went along with my father to the station.
The drivers were tickled by the sight of a ten-year-old pumping their gas (I was too short to clean the windshields or check their oil, so Jack had to run out and do that) and sometimes gave me a quarter tip, which I saved up for the movies. I was hoping to go see
The Bad News Bears,
although my mother said Josie would have to take me since she couldn’t stand Walter Matthau. Lots of actors got on my mother’s nerves, and she had strong opinions about all of them.
I longed for a shirt like the ones my father, Jack, and String all wore. The shirts were dark blue, heavily starched. The best part was that they all had a little blue-bordered patch over their left pocket that announced their names. I had begged for such a shirt for the last two years but had never received one, always expecting it as a birthday present. Daddy said they didn’t make them in my size.
The gas station was situated on the side of the road between our house and Refuge in a space of countryside that had been devoted to a scattering of businesses. On one side of us was a small grocery, and on the other side was a pay-by-the-week motel where a few old bachelors lived year-round. The motel was painted turquoise and had a dry pool in its courtyard. This had once been the main road, before the interstate came through on the other side of town, and my father said that when he was a child, the motel had been considered fancy. People told how Lucille Ball had once stayed there, back in the fifties. On the two occasions I had ventured close to the motel to spy on people, it had smelled of lard and rotting sawdust. The first time I had seen nothing except an old man in Bermuda shorts, black socks, and a gray fedora with a red feather in the band, reading the newspaper as he sat outside his door on one of the plastic patio chairs that came with each room. The second time there had been a group of old men playing poker around a card table they had set up on the courtyard. They smoked and cussed, but that had been the extent of anything interesting.
The other side of the road was taken up by a mile-long cornfield. Beyond that was the river, which was why the cornfield was situated there in the first place, in the rich bottomland. And beyond the river were blue mountains that always seemed striped with jagged lines of heat.
It was especially hot that day, so hot that Jack pointed out to me how the gases shifted and moved over the pavement. He said that it was because of the oils trapped in the blacktop being conjured up by the heat. This was like something my mother would say, since she was always seeing the world through its science, and I thought how she and Jack would probably get along very well.
“Did you have my mother for a teacher in high
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