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“Sorry, Mom.” I dropped my spoon beside my bowl and lifted it to slurp up the last of the sweet milk. I did it for two reasons—I loved the dredges of super-sugary milk and, two, drinking from the bowl annoyed Mom.
I shouldn’t have tried to irritate her. She’d always done the best she could for the two of us. Whenever I bemoaned our sorry-ass house, our piece-of-shit car, and our general lack of prospects, she always told me, “We may not have much, but we have enough.” I retraced my conversational steps, knowing that my wise-acre approach wasn’t gaining me any points. “Sorry. We got off track here.” I hoped I’d shaped my face into the picture of contrition. “Please, could Jeb come with us to the Fourth of July fireworks or not? I’d really like to bring him.”
She stood and cleared the table, rinsing the dishes in the sink. Facing the window over the sink, she said, “I have to get myself ready to go in.” She worked across the river, at a commercial pottery in West Virginia, where she stood on her feet above a hot plate for eight hours a day, waxing as-yet-unglazed pottery for piece-work pay. She’d been at the job since she was seventeen. It was hard work and she came home exhausted after every shift. She often fell asleep on the living room sofa shortly before six. “You be sure to wash these dishes up before you go outside, okay?”
“Sure thing, Ma. But what about—”
She turned and cut me off. “And of course you can bring your friend. Thank you for asking first.” She brushed by me on the way to the bathroom.
I watched her go. Sometimes, we were mistaken for brother and sister, even though I was thirteen and she was just about to turn thirty. But she was small, barely over five feet, and weighing right around a hundred pounds sopping wet. Put her black hair in pigtails and she’d be mistaken for myyoungersister.
What I didn’t say was that Jeb was more than a friend. We’d been proving that on a daily basis down on the banks of the Ohio, groping, experimenting, and exploring since late spring.
What I didn’t say was that I was in love.
II
The river sparkled in the sun—diamonds cast upon the mud-brown waters.
Jeb and I had taken the rickety wooden steps down the steep bank to the pebbled shore and now sat on an old plaid blanket he’d brought from home. He’d also snagged a couple of Iron City beers and a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos—his idea of a grown-up picnic. I agreed—and the cold beer, bitter, hoppy, and delightful, made me feel wild and rebellious.
We’d spent the day foraging on the riverbank. We’d often found cool stuff washed up on shore, along with the usual assortment of junk—old tires, small appliances, numerous cans, condoms, once even a full mannequin. That had been a shock, because at first glance I was horrified, thinking we’d stumbled across a corpse.
But the treasures made the foraging fun and worthwhile. There was contorted driftwood that, with a little work and polish on my part, could be transformed into something beautiful. There were examples of my found art all around our little house in the east end of St. Clair. Mom had one on her bedroom dresser and on it, she hung all her necklaces.
One time, we’d found a man’s watch. The links appeared to be solid gold, even though the watch itself no longer worked. The back was engraved with “Terry and Butch—HOLLAND.” I’d learned that HOLLAND stood for “Hope our love lasts and never dies.” I wondered if Terry and Butch were a same-sex couple. Had their “forever” relationship outlived the tragic fate of the lost or cast-off timepiece?
We’d also once found a vaguely dissatisfying stash of porn hidden behind the truck of a maple tree. The magazines were allHustlersandPlayboys. And, even though they featured women and we’d already known our interests were in men, there remained an illicit thrill to the cache.
One of theHustlers, my favorite, the one that made it home with me, and the issue I still had hidden between my mattress and box springs, showed a threesome—two men and a woman—acting out a baseball locker room fantasy.
Jeb and I, once we were certain we were truly alone and no prying eyes could see us from the top of the riverbank, had spent more than an hour making out. I’d wanted to go further—I always did, but Jeb said he wasn’t ready for anything beyond kissing and touching. He’d told me that even those seemingly innocent displays of affection made him feel guilty, but I was simply “too cute to resist.”
One day, though, I was hopeful I’d get Jeb to come around to my way of thinking. And that day, I believed, would be the July Fourth fireworks, when I’d convince Mom to let me bring Jeb home afterward. I’d call it a “sleepover,” although I believed very little sleep would be accomplished. Dreams come true, maybe.
Smiling at the thought and the prospect, I jumped up, stripped down to my white briefs and jumped in the fast-moving water. It was as warm as a bath. I dog paddled a little way out, toward Harker’s Island, the tiny tree-covered strip of land in the middle of the water. I didn’t fail to heed the internal warning that many boys just like me had drowned making such a journey. The Ohio’s fast-moving currents were often hidden and could be treacherous. Actually, I was forbidden to swim in the river or even to play on its banks.
But what kid listened to that advice when the river was so close and offered so much?
I got out a few feet, where I could no longer touch the muddy bottom, and turned over to float on my back. The sun glinted down, hot, and the water buoyed me up like a cork.This is a little bit of heaven. I lifted my head to scream, “Get in here!” to Jeb.
It didn’t take a lot of convincing.
Before the sun even hit high noon, we were on Harker Island, alone and exploring the lean-to camps boaters had created on its shores for fishing, impromptu barbeques and beer busts. Sometimes, we’d find leftover cans of beer or discarded condoms.
As we rested, panting, on a patch of grass, Jeb turned to me, “You know I really love you.”
I thought the sun had nothing on the warmth it emitted when compared to Jeb’s simple, yet complex, declaration.
I peered into his green eyes, lit up even more by the July sun. I saw only affection and truth there. “I love you too. And I always will.”
After we’d been on the island for an hour or so, clouds moved in to the east—they were dark, foreboding, hanging low on the horizon. The ozone smell of imminent rain arose. We decided we’d better head back. “The last thing we need is to get caught in the middle of the river with lightning striking. Jesus.”
We hurried to the river’s edge and hoped we’d have time to make it back to shore before the rain started—or the storm took hold.
A flash of heat lightning, white, lit up the dark clouds in the distance. The air grew cooler. Thunder grumbled.
“Wait.” I stopped in my tracks. There it was, hanging on the lowest branch of a tree. A silver chain, cheap, with a small piece of violet quartz attached as a pendant. It swung in the breeze that was rapidly becoming a gust. Amethyst. I recognized the quartz stone from the geology portion of science class last year. I was pretty sure amethyst, according to Mr. Pletcher, our science teacher, had protective qualities.
