“God’s honest truth, Dad. I don’t know where he is now.”
He says nothing more, and neither do I.
There is one piece of good news that night. It comes in the Evening News. Frankie brings it in to where us boys are gathered in Mr. Halleck’s study. Pete and me sit at the table playing checkers. Will lounges in a leather armchair with one of those fat, dusty books from the shelf open on his lap. Frankie drops the newspaper on the table beside me. In bold lettering I read the headline he wrote: Local Family Thwarts County Plan for Reservoir; Local Biker Gang Lends a Hand.
“They ran our story!”
Pete looks at the story over Frankie’s shoulder. “Not bad.”
“Yeah, and listen to this!” I read it out loud: “‘The unusual coalition between local families and the notorious hell-raising biker gang was orchestrated by Mr. and Mrs. Elliot and their sons, Peter, William, and John Thomas!’ That’s us!”
“Sure is.” Pete jumps my piece and lands one of his on my back row. “King me,” he says.
“You’re famous, Pete!”
“Hardly,” Will snorts.
I look at Frankie. We finally did it. We got Pete into the papers. But it’s too late. It doesn’t matter now. Pete’s already signed up. He leaves for training at Parris Island in three days.
Next night, Pastor Fenton and Anna May have us over for dinner at their house in town. It’s new and shaped like an L, with a sitting room that looks onto a little yard and another house across the street that looks just like it. I could whip a baseball from their front door to the other and then some.
We sit on couches all covered in crinkly plastic and eat cheese and crackers while Anna May serves iced tea in tall glasses from a tray. The crackers are dry as sawdust but the cheese is all right, and I’m reaching for my third piece when Anna May asks me to help her with dinner.
“I need a sous-chef,” she says as we make for the kitchen. She throws Will a sly wink.
“I don’t know how to make soup,” I answer, “but I’ll try.”
Frankie must be having trouble with the crackers too, because he coughs at that and reaches for his iced tea.
In the kitchen, Anna May puts me to work slicing a loaf of bread while she checks a roast in the oven.
“Your family’s been through a lot of change,” she says.
I nod. “And more coming.” Pete’s leaving in a few days. Frankie’s going back to his city not long after.
Anna May straightens up from the oven and fixes her pretty blue eyes on me. “I hear you know a thing or two about fishing, Jack.”
That puzzles me. “I guess so.”
“I was hoping maybe you might show me how . . . maybe after Pete leaves. I’ve never been, not really, where you go out early and are gone the whole day and everything. What do you think?”
The idea of Anna May with a fishing pole is a hard one to figure, but I shrug.
“Okay.”
She comes over next to me and starts laying the pieces of sliced bread into a bowl. I can smell her perfume along with the rosemary from the roast. “Will tells me fishing is peaceful, and I don’t know about you, but I’d like some peace for a change.”
I help her with the slices. “It can get boring sometimes, if you don’t catch anything. But as long as you know before you go, you can have a pretty good time.”
“I’m just fine with boring. But I won’t do worms. That’ll have to be you.”
That gets me to chuckling, because now I know if she ever catches anything, I’m the one who’ll have to take it off the hook for her. Oh well.
We finish with the bread, and a timer over the oven dings and she goes back for the roast. She has me dribble some broth over it and then carry it carefully to the dining room with a pair of oven mitts. We get the plates and knives and forks out, and I line them up the right way the first time. Anna May notices it and says how nice it looks and how there’s maybe two boys in town who would know how to set up a table how I did.
I know what she’s been doing, asking me to help with dinner and to go fishing, and I don’t mind. When you’re losing a brother, you don’t turn your nose up at the chance of getting a sister.
We sit down to dinner and say grace. Over the roast, Pastor Fenton tells us the church is raising money to help rebuild Stairways. He says how much, and Ma sets down her fork and starts to cry.
I don’t believe there’s a boy on earth can see his mother cry and not do the same.
Mr. Halleck has two television sets in his house. The one in the upstairs den is in color. The night after dinner with Pastor Fenton and Anna May, my family gathers around it for the evening news.