Passage
by d.b. mcneill
It was still summer, no matter what Suzy Jacobs said. Crickets were chirping down
below my window last night. Frogs were singing at the edge of the lake this morning.
I dangled my feet into the water. Small silver fish nibbled on my toes. It tickled.
Suzy sat beside me. Her skin was pink from the summer sun. The seat of her swimsuit
had worn thin. She pulled on the fabric and let it snap back, as much as it still
could. Leaning forward, she kicked her foot up. Water splashed and, for a moment,
the fishes stopped nibbling. I still wore cut-
Suzy said the last day before we had to go back to school just didn’t count as summer. The suspense was too great. No one could stand that bursting feeling, she said. It was too much. She wondered which teacher we would get. We could get Mr. Spence, who was nice, but he never made bullies go to the principal. If you were in his class, recess could be scary. We could get Miss Felder, and that would be good. Or we could get mean old Mrs. Drury. That was the worst. She hated everybody. We didn’t know if our friends would be in class with us. We didn’t even know if we would be in the same class. Suzy talked about Mrs. Drury for awhile. There were rumors Mrs. Drury ate the students she hated the most, usually poor kids with good grades. Kids like us. Suzy stopped talking, eyes wide, frightened by her own wild speculations.
I looked up at the sky and sighed. “I don’t believe that,” I said. “We’re too old to believe teachers eat students.”
“Well, it might be true!” Suzy replied, chewing her bottom lip.
“I don’t care…I just don’t care,” I said. Suzy didn’t believe me.
“Now, don’t you be lying to ME, little Miss Scaredy Cat,” she said.
“I am NOT a Scaredy Cat!” I yelled. Jumping up, I chased her down the rocky edge of the lake. “It’s not summer anymore! It’s not summer anymore!” she shouted.
Before she disappeared into the trees, she turned and stuck her tongue out at me.
“Bleh!” I called after her. I crossed my arms, made an angry face, then stomped back to my toe nibbling spot. “I don’t care,” I grumbled. “It is TOO still summer. It’s not over yet.”
We had spent a good part of the summer together, playing house under the trees in the woods. Some days, we were too mature to play house. On those days, we walked down to John Ervine’s BoatHouse. We petted our way through his pack of friendly, mangy dogs. Suzy liked to hold the screen door open as I walked through. Then she’d drop it. Slam! The door bounced shut behind us. We lifted the glass door of the battered bench cooler and picked out the sodas in the frostiest bottles. We felt very grown up as we gave old John Ervine our dollar and waited for change. The animal heads mounted along his walls watched us with indifferent glass eyes. John popped the caps off the sodas for us, and handed the bottles back with a flourish.
“For two of my loveliest customers.” He said the same thing every time.
We walked along the dirt road back to Suzy’s house, sipping our sodas and talking about the weather.
“Lovely afternoon,” she’d say.
“Hot enough for you?” I’d reply.
When we got to her house, we went inside, turned on the fan, and watched television. The fan blew our hair back. We created shampoo commercials. We usually tried to find a movie on the television. We especially liked the monster movies, but we watched romances and war stories too.
The fish nibbled more fiercely now on the tips of my toes, worried perhaps that they wouldn’t get their fill before I ran off again, taking my toes with me. I shut my eyes and thought about the movies. Suzy and I knew exactly what life would be like when we were grown. It would be a lot like a movie. The women mostly stood around and screamed while the men sprang into action. We made a pact to be like the men. We would save people, discover lost civilizations, and have other grand adventures. So far, I was a failure as a great adventurer. I had to be redeemed.
I knew Suzy had taken the short cut to her house. I’d have to go get her later, but it was still early in the afternoon. I leaned back and looked up into the sky. The clouds looked like horses and windmills. I squinted, hoping to see angels or God, but I guess they’d all gone home too.
Big Ellen, who lives next door to my Ma and me, told me once that God can always hear you. He knows what you’re doing and what you’re thinking. Big Ellen goes to church three times a week, so she ought to know. The thought of God spying on me, peeking in on my private thoughts kept me pretty scared. Today, though, it might be a good thing. I shut my eyes and tried to think real loud, just in case God wasn’t close by right then. “God,” I thought, “summer’s not over yet. I’m not a liar yet.”
Last year, Suzy and I walked home together every day after school. On the last day we walked across the street to the highschool and waited for the buses to pull out. We watched the big kids throw their books and papers from the windows. We ran behind the buses and had a parade. Suzy sang, “Ta DA Ta DA!” I marched and played invisible trombone.
We stopped at the ice cream parlor before we went home. We lingered a long while over the glass counter, looking carefully into each tub. We had enough money between us for one scoop apiece. I got vanilla and Suzy got Rocky Road. The lady at the counter put our ice cream in sugar cones, even though she knew we couldn’t pay for them. “You girls be good this summer,” she said and smiled. Her eyes were sad when she said it. The ice cream lady always had the saddest eyes, even though she had a better job than anybody.
We ate our ice cream and wandered down to the lake, stopping at Deadman’s Cove where the highschool kids go swimming. Some of them were all ready there, laughing and splashing one another. There is a pier that floats in the cove, far out from the shore. Sunlight danced on the water that afternoon but the pier remained dark and mysterious. Nevertheless, teenagers swam out to it. They were unimpressed by the riddle of the pier. They stood, balancing, then jumped off. Light flashed sharply on the splashing water. Droplets flew, arching through the air, forming temporary diamonds. After awhile, a boy and two girls stretched out on the old smooth wood of the pier. Propped up on their elbows, they watched their friends. They looked on coolly as the pier bobbed in the water.
My stomach felt funny. I was missing something. “I’m going to swim out to that pier this summer,” I said.
Suzy’s eyes widened. “It’s a hundred miles out to that pier,” she said.
“Not a hundred, I don’t think,” I answered, “Maybe fifty.”
“Wow,” she said, “When do you think you will?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “This summer.”
That had been three full months ago. Now summer was almost over. I hadn’t been anywhere near that cove. Suzy hadn’t said another word about it, but I knew what she must be thinking. I’d never told a lie before. I didn’t want to start, especially not with my best and only friend. I sat up and pulled my toes away from the nibbling fish. I stood up and brushed myself off. I took a deep breath and walked down the path in the woods to Suzy’s house. Her door is enormous. I knocked.
Suzy grinned as she opened the door. “Let’s go,” I said solemnly.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“You’ll see,” I said. “I’m going to show you that summer isn’t over. Not yet.”
We took the old dirt road. We walked past my house. Big Ellen was sitting in a chair in her front yard, drinking a soda. She waved as we walked by. Suzy waved back. We walked past Ervine’s, where Big Ellen had most likely purchased her soda. We didn’t stop. Suzy grew solemn. Soon Deadman’s Cove and the pier were in sight. Suzy stopped and held out her hand. “Good luck, old friend,” she said. We shook hands. We’d seen that in a movie. I wiped my mouth on my arm. I said, “Well, here goes nothing.” That had been in the movie too.
I walked to the edge of the cove and stepped in. I waded out until the water was up to my chest. I took a deep breath. I started to swim.
Author’s Bio
d.b. mcneill grew up in the south-
Contact: dbmcneill@live.com
© 2008 eMuse-
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