How the Soul Sings

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

            For Mother’s Day, my mother and Willa Jane kinda got their wish; the boys both sent them a letter. It wasn’t exactly what they wanted. Instead of coming or calling home, they wrote home. Both letters were pretty much identical. They were fine. They had found work in some resort town, in far south Mexico, near Guadalajara, as bus boys and bellhops. And of course, not to worry. Their letters practically made them sound like they were living like the Beach Boys. In their spare time, they were surfing, fishing and lounging by the sea. The weather was usually always nice and it never got cold. 

“Damn it! Why don’t they just come on home?” My mother said, tossing my brother’s letter down on the kitchen table. “Or frickin’ call??” She was quite annoyed. “I’m half tempted to plan my next vacation down there just so I can grab them both by the collar and drag their asses on home!” Of course, my mother actually taking a vacation was a whole other thing, because she didn’t. 

Then Willa Jane gave her thoughts on it. “Maybe this is good for them. I’m just glad to know that they’re safe.”

“Well, they’ve been gone forever and day, and all we hear from them is twice and on paper. There are others who are hearin’ from their boys more than that, clear from Nam.”

It had been nearly two years since the tornado and the boys uprooting to somewhere else. In a way, despite life still going on, like it does, it was like it had been standing still for my momma and Willa Jane.

Speaking of life going on and all, I was growing up, too and becoming more keenly aware of the boys at school, the girl chatter about those boys at school, and of course, my secret crush on Daniel. As I was growing, I was growing more restless about keeping it to myself. I don’t know if it was young pubescent girl hormones going on, but I was starting to care a little less about what others might think. I compared all those boys I thought I might be interested in, to Daniel. No one could hold a sword to him.

I think it was the James Dean aura about him that kept me hanging on. He had that rough around the edges, seen-it-all, done-it-all, bad-boy-with-a-soft-heart thing, kinda like Elvis, too, in his hay day. And I know what you’re thinkin’… What about the wheelchair? That didn’t detract anything from him one bit. In fact, he’d gotten so good at getting around in it and even doin’ some crazy stunts and tricks, that you kinda forgot about him not being able to stand on his own, anymore. I’d even come to notice the muscle he had built in his arms and the six-pack he’d developed on his chest, when he’d sit outside when it was hot, to have a smoke without his shirt on. Or maybe it was always there and I was just now gettin’ around to noticing it.

It didn’t help that I had started having romantic type dreams, neither. Each one would fan the flames of my budding teen passion. I’d dream about moonlit encounters by the river bank; a hand slid across my thigh, touching of my breasts (which I really didn’t have any to speak of), a kiss. It nearly made it embarrassing to have to look across the breakfast table at him in the morning, like we were guilty of something. I’d pinch myself whenever I’d start to have ‘feelings’ and even mulled over giving myself an ice water bath; anything to make what I felt go away. Mostly in part in of how badly things went when I finally blurted out riding with him in his truck, one day, how I felt about him. It wasn’t at all like I had been day dreaming ways to tell him. It just CAME OUT.

“I love you, Daniel.”

“I love you, too, Squirt.”

I let silence hang in the air for a few moments while I gathered the gumption to elaborate.  “I mean, I love you… I’m in love with you.”

Daniel slid his truck to halt on the gravel road.

“You can’t say that. I’m not going to turn into some Jerry Lee Lewis, marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin, for you.”

“What do you mean that I can’t say that?? It’s how I feel!”

“You’re just a little girl, to me, like my sister. That’s all you’re ever gonna be, you got that? Now get that idea outta your head, but keep it to yourself. We’ll never hear the end of it if it gets back to anyone at home.” By this point, I’d jumped out of his truck and started marching myself down the road and back home. “Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” He shouted at me, pulling up beside me. I refused to answer back or look his way. I didn’t want to give him the notion that anything he said had caused tears to run down my cheeks or affected me at all. Then he’d prove his point that I was just some stupid, little, love-sick girl. I wasn’t going to give him that power. I was both sad and mad. He didn’t have to be so mean about it. “Alright.” And he sped off, leaving me behind.

By the time I got back to the farm, it had been a good thirty-minutes or so, since the whole ‘I love you’ incident. Daniel wasn’t on the front porch, where he usually camped out when he had nothin’ else to do, as a matter of fact, his truck wasn’t even out front of the house. I cared and I didn’t care, about where he was at that minute. I barely dared to let myself wonder if he was wondering about me and this whole thing, for only a second.

I tried to keep myself busy, so I wouldn’t drive myself crazy wondering where Daniel was. It was hours before he came back home at dusk. I heard his truck honk twice, like he always does, when he finally pulled up outside.

“You gonna go out and help him?” Willa Jane asked me after I didn’t jump up right away.

I went to the front door and held the screen door open and shouted out to Daniel, “Figure out how to get your own damn chair outta there!” and slammed it behind me, taking off down the driveway and down the road.

I was hoping that Daniel would come chasing after me, in some act of chivalry, but he didn’t. I found my way back home from that dirt road, alone, again.

“What’s going on between you two?” My mother immediately asked me as I came crawling up to the front porch.

“Nothing.” I mumbled, going inside the house, my head hung low.

“It doesn’t seem like nothing.” She said following in behind me. “Willa Jane said you took off all huffy about having to help Daniel outta his truck.”

“We just had an argument is all.” I said quietly.

“About what?”

“Nothing, ok?” I poured myself a glass of milk and went upstairs to my room with my mother telling me to get ready for supper, but I didn’t bother to come down. Later in the evening, my aunt knocked outside my door, but I wouldn’t let her in. A little while after that, I heard her loudly confront Daniel downstairs in the kitchen and I crept out toward the top of them to listen.

“Did you do something to her, Daniel?” She demanded.

“What? NO!”

“Then just what the HELL is going on? She doesn’t usually act like this.”

“Nothin’, alright. She just wants to try to make me into her boyfriend or somethin’ and I told her to shake that idea from her head.”

“Oh. Well I’m glad that you said something to her, because that would be wrong.”

Daniel lightly chuckled. “Like the two of you isn’t?” A moment later, I saw him move past the stairs, looking up at them for a second on his way by, catching me standing there, and then kept on going.