A Summer Nowhere

Mama's office was downtown on State Street, right where they ran the parade in the Tobacco Festival every year. She'd called me at home to tell me to bring her her lunch that she'd forgotten in the fridge. It was leftovers from the night before—a piece of meatloaf, some mashed potatoes, and green beans. Gary drove me down there and I just kind of stood outside her office door, waiting for her to finish getting this pregnant lady set up with a medical card and WIC.

Every time I came in, everybody in the office acted like I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Betty and Susan, the two receptionists in the front office, always offered me stuff to drink or candy from one of their bowls. Everybody had heard the news, so when I came in that day it was like walking into your own surprise party. It kind of made me wish that Gary wasn't waiting in the truck, because he'd've eaten it all up.

“Don't forget. They're recommending two-percent milk now.” Mama was saying to the client in her office. “Says it cuts down on childhood obesity. And rice cereal's supposed to be better than wheat. Just keep that in mind.”

I waited a little bit for the lady to leave before I went in and sat down where she'd been sitting. Mama was pulling a pair of reading glasses off her face and she looked up at me like I was an angel sent down from Heaven.

“Thank you, baby.” She said, grabbing the little sectioned plastic container she'd put her lunch in. “I'm about to starve to death. Betty brought some kind of Jello salad and all I've eaten all day is a spoonful.”

She made me get back up and follow her to the break room so she could put her food in the microwave, even though I told her Gary was waiting in the car. We were gonna' drive into Bowling Green so he could pick up a trailer that a guy had borrowed from them and never brought back. Leslie and Gwen were two other ladies Mama worked with, and they were waiting at the coffee maker. When we came into the room, both of 'em just started screeching at me like a couple of banshees. They made me show them my ring and asked me about a million questions about flowers and colors and dresses and venues and I was pretty sure I could feel my eyes rolling around in my head like they were in one of those lottery ball machines.

When I finally got out of there, I told Gary that I'd changed my mind. Maybe I did just want to go to the courthouse. Or maybe, on second thought, we could elope and go somewhere nice just the two of us. He said, again, we could do whatever I wanted and my eyes finally started to settle back to where they were supposed to be. Gary thought it was funny that the ladies in Mama's office had gone so crazy over it and I told him that, to be honest, I was worried people would be thinking we were way too young. Because I was kinda worried about that myself.

“People have gotten married earlier.” He shrugged, getting on Highway 68/80 and heading north. “I told you, if we were back in the old days, we'd have kids by now.”

“That's true.” I told him. “So many girls in my homeroom last year got pregnant, it's ridiculous. Like at least three.”

“Are you trying to tell me something?” He asked, looking at the road and not me.

“No!” I hollered at him, pulling my legs up into the seat and crossing them Indian style. “I take my pill every day.”

“What pill?” He asked, looking at me like I was crazy.

“Birth control.” I rolled my eyes at him. “You have to take it every day at the same time or it doesn't work. And I take it every morning when I wake up.”

“What if you don't wake up in the morning?” He asked. “What if you sleep late? Does that make it not work as good?”

“I guess.” I shrugged. “But that doesn't happen very often.”

“What if you're sick and can't keep it down?” He pressed me. “Do you have to take another one?”

“No.” I shook my head. “There's one for each day. Did they not go over this with you in health class?”

Now he was rolling his eyes at me.

“The only thing I remember learning in health class is what herpes looks like and I never want to think about it again.” He shuddered, like he'd gotten a cold chill.

I had to laugh. Leave it to a man to only think about the gross stuff or the fun stuff. Now that I remembered it, they'd separated the boys from the girls for those little sex-ed classes. In our class, we learned about birth control and condoms, but mostly abstinence, because in the bible belt, nothing was worse than committing a sin against God. But legally, they had to teach us the rest of the stuff. The law just didn't say how much emphasis they had to put on it.

“The curriculum in this country is seriously lacking.” I shook my head.

“Maybe that's because they pay teacher's about the same as they do people who flip burgers at McDonalds.” Gary said.

I didn't know how he knew that, but it didn't surprise me. He was fully of information, it was just that some of it never came out. I wished I could be like that sometimes. Mama called me a know-it-all because, if I knew something, I was gonna' tell you about it. Like with Heather, I was always correcting her when she pronounced something wrong, which was a lot because she was kind of an idiot. Or if I knew some little historical fact, I'd bring it up if I thought the time was right. I didn't do it on purpose, though. Except for sometimes.

There was a little grocery store and gas station right when you got into Rockfield—one of Bowling Green's little suburbs—and Gary pulled in to fill up the truck. I stayed in my seat while he went inside to pay, and when he came back out, he had a soft serve chocolate ice cream cone in his hand. He handed to me and smiled. I loved that about him. He was always being so sweet to me I could barely stand it.

“Thank you.” I grinned.

“You're welcome.” He leaned forward a little bit. “Gimme a kiss.”

I pecked him on the lips at first, then I grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him closer. He tasted like chocolate, so I knew he'd tasted my ice cream before giving it to me.

“Busted.” I giggled.

He stole another lick from the cone and started the truck, heading out toward this guy's place. It was so far out in Rockfield that it almost looped back around into Logan County. But not quite. There was a pond on the farthest edge of his property and I could hear bullfrogs making all kinds of noise. He was an older guy—about Papaw's age, I guessed—and I could tell Gary was pissed off as soon as he got out of the truck. The trailer—one of those bright, shiny metal ones with little cut outs so you could see the horses or livestock from the outside—was caked in mud and who the hell knew what else.

He'd been out to the Dulworth's place a handful of times and he always brought his dog Sadie with him, so she was happy to see me. She was the biggest dog I'd ever seen in person in my whole life. Her head came up to my belly button and it made me wonder if she had a little bit of some kind of wolfhound in her. She jumped up, real gentle, and rested her big, fuzzy paws on my shoulders.

“Hello to you, too.” I laughed, letting her lick my cheek before nudging her off of me.

She followed me to the guy's truck where he and Gary were having a real heated discussion.

“You didn't think to hose it down?” Gary was saying. “Jimmy, this thing is filthy.”

He was kicking at a big wad of dried, caked on mud that was on the front right tire.

“My back's been real bad.” Jimmy said, looking like that mopey little Basset Hound on the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. “I was gonna' get to it. Doctor says I'm not supposed to strain too much.”

The vein in the side of Gary's neck was huge and I could practically see it pulsing. But he didn't say anything, because he was too nice. He got in the truck and backed up to the trailer, then started hooking it all up while the old man talked him half to death. I just sat down in the grass and let Jimmy's dog lay her head in my lap while I fiddled around with her big, floppy, pointy ears. Maybe there was some shepherd in her, too. Sam always made fun of me for taking care of all the stray dogs in our neighborhood. She said I should be a veterinarian, except I told her I couldn't ever put an animal to sleep and she and I both knew that I'd try to take every single one of 'em home with me.

Also, it was a lot of school to go through. The more I thought about it, the more I thought I didn't want to go to college at all. I was already dreading going back for my last year of high school and when I was done, I just wanted to be done. All of my teachers just kept talking about how important college is, but the idea of being that deep in debt when I didn't even know what I wanted to do with myself in order to pay it all back gave me anxiety that I could feel in my chest. Like I was having palpitations and maybe I was gonna' go into cardiac arrest.

Mama told me not to worry about stuff like that because she never went to college and look at how her life had turned out. She had a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a nice little town and worked at a job she really actually liked. All of her kids—she was including all of the ones that weren't hers, because there was really just me—were healthy and happy for the most part. There wasn't much more she could want, except maybe less of a shithead for a boyfriend. And she'd said that in front of Dennis a bunch of times, so it wasn't exactly a secret.

She'd always told me that if I ever felt like I needed a job after high school, I could always come and work with her. There were two empty spaces where one girl had transferred to the Simpson County office and where another lady had retired. All it was, she said, was reading through these books that had all the policies and rules for the food stamp and Medicaid and Medicare programs. There were computers that did all of the rest of the work. You just put in their income and it told you whether or not they could get what they came in to apply for. After a while, she said, you just had it all memorized and they'd come in and say that they made X amount of dollars and you could either sign them up or you could say, “Sorry. You're ineligible.” Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. Her words, not mine.

“Will you leave that dog alone?” Gary pulled me out of my thoughts. “She's gonna' end up following us out of here and when she gets hit on that highway, you're gonna' feel awful.”

“She can come with us, then.” I joked, patting the big mutt on the head and getting to my feet.

“She's got an owner.” Gary got snippy, pointing at his truck. “Get in. Let's go.”

“I'm going, I'm going.” I gave him a side eye on my way to the passenger's side. “What crawled up your butt?”

“That guy pisses me off.” He said, starting the truck and peeling out of the driveway.

Just like he said, the dog started running after us. Luckily, she stopped after a couple of yards and sat down, looking like she'd lost her best friend.

“Aw.” I put on a pout. “She misses us.”

“She misses you.” Gary corrected me. “Sometimes I think you like dogs more than you like people.”

“Dogs don't get cranky.” I told him, turning around to give him my full attention. “What's wrong?”

“I'm just tired of doing stuff for people who don't appreciate it.” He grumbled, turning onto the highway. “One day, somebody's gonna' need me for something and I'm just not gonna' be in the mood.”

“You're too sweet.” I said, leaning forward and kissing him on the shoulder. “You just have to stop being so nice to people.”

He looked at me like he was thinking about it.

“Except me.” I added. “You still have to be nice to me.”

“I'll try.” He was still grumbling.

“I know what'll make you feel better.” I said, grinning at him. “Pull over.”

“You're awful!” He yelled, trying to keep a straight face. “I'm not fucking you on the side of the road.”

I didn't know why, but hearing him curse did something to me.

“So pull into a parking lot.” I egged him on.

“Do I have to hose you down along with the trailer?” Gary asked, giving me a real smile.

“Maybe.” I shrugged my shoulders, grinning at him. “Whatever floats your boat.”

“You're gonna' make me wreck if you don't stop.” He laughed.

It was just exactly the response I was looking for.

“Stop what?” I kept on, taking my finger and flicking tickling his cheek with it. “I haven't done anything yet.”

“Just you sitting there is enough.” He said, swatting my hand away gently.

“Oh, okay.” I nodded. “You want me to just jump out of the truck, then?”

“Not funny.” He tried to quit laughing. “Hold your horses.”

I fought off the urge to tell him I'd rather hold his horses, because one: I didn't want him thinking I was some crazy horny toad, and two: it was kinda gross, since had actual horses at home and I didn't want any of that getting misunderstood. Instead, I told him I'd try my best.

“Thank you.” He said, grabbing my hand and smooching the back of it real loud.

“You're welcome.” I smooched him right back.

When we got back to Gary's, I offered to help him hose off the trailer. He said I could, if I let him put my ring in his wallet so it wouldn't get lost in all the mud. It was a good thing, too. An hour or so later, we were covered in it and the trailer was just as shiny as it probably was the day they got it. When I started to spray some of the gunk off of my legs, I saw Sam coming up the driveway and I didn't even know what to do with myself.

Sam had this way about her that just kind of always made me want to look my best. Like she was a boy I had a crush on or something. She always looked good, no matter what we were wearing. Sometimes, if we were going out to do something, I'd take extra care to look nice and she'd just throw on something and she still always ended up looking better than I did. It wasn't supposed to be competitive, but if it was, I'd be losing big time.

She had on a pair of cut off shorts that looked like they'd been bleached to death. They were all ripped up to the point where I wasn't even sure why she still had them and her shirt was just as ratty, with the big sun logo from Sublime's 40oz. to Freedom album. And still, somehow, she looked ready to be a super model.

She stomped her way towards us in her big, oxblood red Doc Martens and stopped when she got to me. Her big blue eyes darted from the hose in my hand and back to my face. I could tell she was pissed and I got that real cold feeling you get in the bottom of your stomach when you're scared. I felt—and heard, since there was so much water on the ground—Gary step up behind me to see what was happening.

“You weren't even gonna' tell me?” She asked, looking like I'd run over her dog.

I couldn't say anything, because my throat got real dry all of a sudden and it felt clogged, like I had come down with strep right out of the blue or something. Mostly, I was afraid that if I talked to her at all, I'd just go right back to being her best friend and everything would be normal and she'd forget all about how she ditched me in a strange place and she'd never feel sorry for doing it because, by talking to her, I was saying that it didn't matter when it actually did matter to me. A whole lot. I was still mad as hell, but not talking to her at all hurt worse than anything.

“Tell you what?” Gary finally talked for me.

“You know what.” She cut her eyes at him, like she was double dog daring him to say something else.

But he wasn't scared of her.

“Why are you coming up here all pissed off?” He asked her, moving his body so that his stance matched hers: legs planted wide, arms crossed over the chest, chin in the air.

“I'm not talking to you!” She yelled, looking back at me. “I'm talking to Jobie.”

“Well, you're standing in my driveway, so you must be talking to me!” Gary shot back. “She clearly doesn't want to talk you, so just let her settle.”

“Is he the boss now?” She raised her eyebrows, looking at me.

I wanted to ask if she was just mad because she wasn't the boss. She'd always worn the pants in our relationship, so to speak. We did whatever she wanted to do. I never got to make any of the plans, and more often than not, all of our plans involved her being with Chris. If I told her I didn't want to go wherever it was she wanted to go, she threw a fit like I was abandoning her and didn't love her enough or care enough about her to let her be happy “just this one time”, except “this one time” turned into “every single time”.

But I didn't say any of that. I just focused on hosing the mud off of my legs so it'd look like I was too cool to even listen to what she was saying. I knew it'd drive her crazy and I knew it was nothing but childish behavior, but I couldn't help it.

“You haven't even apologized and you're coming up here with an attitude?” Gary continued, ignoring her.

“He's your first real boyfriend.” Sam kept talking to me instead of him. “You didn't even like him until you found out he liked you.”

That made me want to cry. I felt like one of those nerdy girls in movies who gets invited to a slumber party by the popular girls, only to get made fun of when they get there. I knew Sam would call it tough love or just telling it like it was or calling it like she saw it, but really it was just mean. She may as well have just stood there and pointed out everything that was wrong with me, because that wouldn't have felt any worse.

“Go home, Sam!” Gary was yelling now.

“You're too young to get married, Jobie!” Sam was still ignoring him. “Think about this! Did you say yes because you wanted to or did you say yes because you're afraid to be by yourself?”

She had a fat lot of nerve when she'd never been without a boyfriend for more than a day since who knew when. She'd never broken up with somebody and then taken a break. She always had somebody lined up. She was never single. She'd broken up with a boy named Shane for Chris. She'd broken up with a boy named Jason for Shane. She'd broken up with a boy named Jeremy for Jason. It went all the way back to the elementary school and it was endless. Chris was who she'd been with for the longest, but that didn't mean it'd be forever. She thought all the other ones were gonna' last forever, too. And where were they now?

I didn't even know what I was doing when I did it, but I couldn't stop it from happening once it happened. I clicked the little dial on the hose sprayer to the shower setting and turned it on her before I even knew what was going on. She screamed into the water, which hit her face first before it dripped down her body. I waggled the hose around like I was watering tomatoes or something and in just a few seconds, she was drenched from head to toe. She was too dramatic to even run away from the water. She just stood there, looking like she was being stoned to death. Except there wasn't anybody there to feel sorry for her. Without anybody to defend her being an asshole, she kinda just fell apart.

Sam crumpled, landing on the wet grass and bawling her eyes out. I couldn't understand a word she was saying, but she was trying to say something. Eventually, I caught something about how she could never do anything right and nobody loved her and nobody cared about her and I wanted to smack her across the face. Instead, I started crying too. But I didn't throw myself onto the ground; I dropped the hose and walked down the driveway, toward the road, and in the direction of my house.

I looked a hot mess. Here I was dressed in a t shirt, shorts, and flip flops, my hair pulled up on top of my head in just a messy wad, covered in mud from my head to my knees, walking down the highway. I had already turned right to cross the street and was halfway down the road that led to my subdivision when Gary pulled up next to me in the truck.

“I'm muddy.” I told him when he motioned for me to get in.

He gestured down at his own body, even muddier than mine was, and I just climbed on up.

“I talked to her.” He told me, his jaw twitching the way it did when he was mad. “I just told her that she did something shitty and now she just had to wait and see what happened. I said she couldn't just expect you to forgive her and she couldn't just expect you to think it was okay.”

“And what did she say?” I asked, not even wondering what he was doing when he only pulled into my driveway to turn back around.

“Hell if I know.” He shrugged his shoulders. “She was just blubbering like big ol' fucking baby.”

He passed his house and Sam's and headed out to Homer. Finally, I asked where we were going.

“I figured a way we could clean off.” Gary said, flashing his pearly whites at me.

Way out past the cemetery we went to that one night, there was a little swimming hole. It was fed from a natural spring and there was a little stream that you could wade in before it all sort of just bottomed out into a small, deep pool. People used to go to it all the time, but over the years, I guess it just lost its luster. It could've been because whoever owned the property around it stopped cutting the trees back. I'd been there a couple of times, but it was a bit of a trek to get to. Gary pulled off and parked the truck real carefully behind some of the bigger trees that lined the gravel road. We walked, dodging shrubs and little tree limbs, until we got to where we were going.

It looked exactly the same, except it was day time so I could see everything better. I remembered hearing somebody say something about the algae making it look blue, and so everybody called it the Blue Hole. Or maybe some kind of moss. Or something. But it was beautiful and the water was cold. I stood in the shallow end while I watched Gary strip, trying to get used to the temperature and work up the nerve to take my clothes off.

Gary dove headfirst into the hole and scared me half to death, because it took him a while to come up for air. That thing had to be at least a hundred feet deep. Nobody had ever seen the bottom of it. Obviously. He swam up to where I was standing and stood up in front of me, naked as a jaybird. I couldn't stand it. There he was—looking perfect—and there I was, looking like a train wreck. It wasn't just the mud. I wasn't tight and trim. I didn't have any business being naked anywhere in public. Sometimes, if I thought too hard about how much I hated my body, I didn't even want to be naked when I was alone. If I spent more than two minutes looking at myself in the mirror after a shower, I started to kind of get disgusted with myself.

But Gary didn't look at me like that. He looked at me like I was Cindy Crawford or something. And every time he did it, I had to wrack my brain looking for reasons why, and I still hadn't come up with anything. He took all my clothes off, just staring at me and smiling like he knew something I didn't. Which made me nervous.

“It's just us.” Gary told me. “Just you and me.”

I nodded my head, 'cause I didn't know what else to say, and dropped to my knees, swimming around him until I was totally submerged in water, kicking my legs so I didn't sink. I wasn't the best swimmer, but I was pretty confident that I could manage to not drown. Gary swam after me and dunked under the water, putting his lips on my belly button and making me giggle like an idiot. I was worried he was gonna' run out of oxygen and pass out, but he kissed his way up just in time for his head to pop over the surface of the water, gasping for breath.

“See?” He asked, lifting my arms to show me the mud was gone. “All clean.”

“All clean.” I repeated.

I let him hold my weight when he kissed me deep and thought that there was no way this could actually be my life. It felt like I'd lived a whole life in three months. I kissed three different boys—four if you counted Brad—lost my virginity, got dumped, fallen in love, gotten engaged, and maybe lost my best friend in the whole world. And I hadn't even had to go anywhere to get all this stuff done.

I always heard about people spending their summers in places away from home; they'd go to camp or go to Florida or somewhere out of the country, somewhere fancy, anywhere but at home. Once summer break came around, I would've killed to be one of those people. Nothing ever happened in Russellville. It was nowhere. I was spending a summer nowhere, and still my life had done a complete one-eighty.

I still felt the same, though; and I wondered how long it would take for me to feel like a different person. Except for having a tiny little scar under my eye from Brad scratching the hell out of me, I looked exactly the same. And you could barely see it, so it wasn't even worth mentioning. I still hated the way I looked, and I was pretty sure that was never gonna' change. But Gary liked the way I looked, so I guessed that was something.

I felt him move us so he was propped up against the edge of the hole, his back resting against some mossy rock. Even though the water was ice cold, I could feel Gary get hard against my belly. He kept one hand on my back and reached down with the other one, grabbing the back of my leg to lift it a little bit.

“We're gonna' get arrested.” I laughed, whispering like there were people around who could hear us.

“No, we're not.” Gary told me. “There's nobody here.”

“But somebody could see your truck.” I said. “And they could come back here and find us.”

“Nobody's coming back here.” He said, kissing my chin and then my neck. “Look around. We're all alone.”

He felt too good for me to argue with him anymore. When we finally got out of there, I scratched skinny dipping and public sex off of my mental checklist of life experiences. Even though our clothes were still gross, we put them back on and Gary drove me home. Instead of just kissing me real quick before I got out of the truck, he pulled me in for a big one, shoving his tongue halfway down my throat like he couldn't get enough of me.

“Do you wanna' come in?” I asked him, out of breath.

“I better not.” He shook his head. “Wouldn't want you to get in trouble.”

He lifted a strand of my soaking wet hair, telling me without saying anything that if Mama saw that we were both drenched to the bone, she'd definitely wanna' know why and she wouldn't exactly come to any innocent conclusions.

“Okay.” I told him, sliding out of the truck.

He grinned at me when he drove off, waving before turning his attention back to the road. Mama was sitting on the couch, watching the five o'clock news, and the house smelled like garlic.

“Spaghetti sauce is on the stove.” She said, eyeballing me. “What happened to you?”

I decided to go with a half-truth. “Me and Gary hosed down the trailer.”

“Mm-hmm.” She mumbled, jerking her head toward my room. “You better get cleaned up, then. And don't drip on my carpet.”

I tip-toed across the living room and into my bedroom, then I got straight into the tub. After I'd showered and washed all the real spring water out of my hair with fake spring water scented shampoo, I wrapped it all up in a towel and put on clean pajamas. Heather was on the love seat in the living room now, filing her nails. She looked up at me when I closed my door and tilted her head to the side like a puppy did when it was hearing a funny sound.

“You look different.” She told me. “I can't put my finger on it.”

“I'm clean.” I shrugged my shoulders up and down and sat on the other end of the couch from Mama.

“That's not it.” She shook her head, gnawing on her bottom lip like she was trying to take her SATs or something. “Maybe you're just happy.”

“Maybe.” I said, trying to pretend I was focused on the television screen.

I didn't want to tell her that I wasn't sure if I knew what happy felt like. I felt good when I was with Gary and sometimes even when I wasn't. I used to feel good when I was hanging out with Sam or her mom or sisters, but I didn't know if I'd be seeing them much anymore. And I didn't know if feeling good and being happy were the same thing, but the more I thought about it, the less good I felt, so I just listened to the weatherman talking about how the rain we'd gotten hadn't put a dent in the drought we were having and how we were going under a burn ban, just in case.

“Alright, ladies.” Mama got up in a huff and turned off the TV. “The pasta's just about done. Y'all can set the table.”

We got up and dragged ourselves into the kitchen like it was some big chore.

“I can't believe you're getting married.” Heather said all dreamy while she folded paper napkins into triangles. “I'm kinda' jealous.”

“It's not like it's happening right away.” I told her, grabbing forks out of the drawer and following her around the table, putting one on each napkin. “Like a year. Maybe two. I don't know.”

“You haven't even thought about it?” Heather asked me, her eyes all big and bugging out of her head.

“I mean, yeah.” I shrugged my shoulders. “A lot.”

“Why wait?” Mama asked from the stove. “I'd do it right after your next birthday.”

“Why not wait?” I argued.

“He might dump you if you make him wait too long.” Heather was grabbing plates out of the cabinet now. She handed me half of the stack while I stood there looking at her like she'd run over my dog or something.

“He wouldn't dump you if somebody paid him a million dollars.” Mama told me, shaking her head.

I was pretty sure she was right, but it didn't keep me from thinking about it and getting that sick, icy feeling in my belly. I'd kind of been starving since I hadn't eaten since that ice cream cone, but now I wasn't sure if I wanted to eat anything at all.