Rainy Season Read online

  “Charlie,” he shouts. “Over here!” I squint, something’s not right in Charlie’s face. He’s moving fast across the ground, eyes trained on Dad, and his face is twisted up.

  “My knees,” he hollers once he’s in earshot. “I skidded in the parking lot.”

  “Oh good grief.” Dad climbs to his feet, brushing the grass from his hands. “Lane, stay put, okay? As much as I love watching your hysterics at the sight of blood …” He heads off in a half trot across the field.

  “Charlie-horse is one reckless fellow.” Ted laughs. “Should I go help?”

  “No, Dad’s got it.” He’s crouched down now, examining Charlie’s knees.

  “What happened to Charlie?” Ted and I turn at the voice behind us.

  “Steph, take a seat.” Ted points to the space on the poncho where Dad had been lying.

  “Hi, Steph.” I flutter my fingers in a wave. “He scraped his knees or something. Are you here with your folks?”

  “My mom’s over there.” Steph points vaguely behind her and plops down, squeezing into the narrow space between Ted and me. She looks up at the sky. “My dad’s jumping today. He already went.”

  “Wow, Steph, guess you make a tasty feast.” Ted pokes his finger against one of Steph’s white legs, which are scattered with blooming pink mosquito bites.

  “No kidding. My blood must be gourmet.” Steph presses one of her fingers onto Ted’s leg. “All you ever get’s a tan, Zonie.”

  “Steph, remember you’re building the fort with us later on today,” Ted tells her.

  “No problemo. Coronado and Kobbe are getting so old. Besides, you should see the fort those winky kids from the other side have built. It’s got a chained door and everything. Rat and I sneaked over to see it the other night.”

  Rat Wagner is Steph’s twin brother. His real name is Ray. They’re both in my grade but they fight so much in school that for two years in a row they had to be assigned seats at opposite sides of the classroom. Out of school, Steph and Rat usually stick together like two sides of a coin, although I wouldn’t say they get along, exactly. But at least when they’re not in school one won’t put the other in a headlock over who can do fractions faster or exactly why General Lee lost the battle of Gettysburg.

  “Where is the Rat, anyway?” Ted asks.

  Steph runs her hand through her rusted-iron colored hair. “He killed a fruit bat,” she exhales all at once, like a confession. “I mean, it must have been sick or something anyway, since it was in plain sight, just lying in our carport this morning. Rat thought it was a rock because he didn’t have his glasses on when he went out to get the paper and he stepped on it and killed it—squished it to death.” Steph makes a noise that I guess is supposed to be the sound of a bat getting squished.

  “That’s so sad.” I chew at the skin around my fingernails. “Poor little bat.”

  “What’s worse is Rat was barefoot. He’s really upset about the whole thing.”

  Ted sort of chokes through his nose and it sounds a lot like a laugh. Steph lifts her eyebrows at him, then continues.

  “So he’s home making a coffin and digging a grave for Robin—that’s what he named the bat. I have to go back home soon for the funeral. You know how Rat gets so upset about that kind of stuff, like last summer when those little kids at Fort Hastings were squishing up butterflies to see if they had yellow blood, remember how Rat yelled at them and called all their parents on the phone?”

  I nod. “I’ll come back with you, if you want. To go to the funeral.” I feel sorry for the little dead fruit bat, but also sorry for poor old Rat. He acts tough around the edges, but he’s pretty soft in the middle, especially about animals. Softer than Steph, who probably would have put the blame on the bat if she’d been the one to step on it.

  “Great. Let me ask my mom if you can come for lunch. Ted, you wanna come too?”

  “Actually, I have to get stuff for the fort.” When Steph had mentioned how good the other side’s fort was, Ted got all clenched up. Suddenly he jumps to a stand and walks away from us over to Dad and Charlie.

  Steph pushes her lips out like a fish, watching him go. “I think the sky show’s almost over,” she says. “I’m gonna ask my mom about lunch. Be right back.” She darts away, less interested in hanging around since Ted isn’t with us. I stretch out flat on my back on the poncho and close my eyes, letting the sun lash down on me, the strength of its heat planting me into the ground, into sleep. Dr. Forrest used to say that calm moments were better times than crises for meditation, so in my head I start repeating my secret meditation word vi-ta, vi-ta, very slow, the way they taught me at the center.

  “Check out my knees!” I open my eyes to see Charlie’s standing right over me. “Especially the left one.” The puffy scab on his left knee from when he fell off his bike last week is split open in a thin crooked line, leaking a smear of fresh blood.

  I sit up and scoot away from him crabways. “Cut it out, it makes me sick.” Charlie touches some of the blood to his fingers, then flashes them in my face.

  “Doesn’t hurt at all.”

  I smack his hand away. “Looks disgusting.”

  “You can come!” Steph bounces up to me. She looks over at Dad, who’s standing a few feet away, talking to Ted, and cleaning his glasses with me corner of his T-shirt. “Ask,” she hisses. She grabs at my hand and pulls, yanking me up to my feet.

  “Dad, can I go to Steph’s for lunch?”

  “Her mother knows?”

  “Mom knows. Charlie and Ted can come too.” Steph grins doubtfully at Ted, preparing for failure again, but it’s her nature to press a point.

  “Charlie and I are going to pick up lumber. We’ll stop at the McDonald’s on the Zone.” He speaks to Dad as if double-checking. Ted must have already run the plan by him. “We’ll come by after lunch to pick you both up—I can go on base since Lord Beck just gave me this military vehicle day pass.” Ted opens his fist to display Dad’s blue guest pass card, then shoves it deep in his shorts’ pocket. Steph looks down and scuffs the grass with the toe of her sneaker; she’s disappointed and it makes me mad. I feel like the consolation prize lunch guest.

  “Dad, I forgot to tell you. Mom and Alexa are having a party at our house tonight.”

  “Well, I hope she didn’t forget about the change of command party we have to—Aha, Captain!” Dad smiles as Steph’s dad joins our circle, dragging his half-packed parachute in his rucksack. He’s outfitted in his camouflage fatigues and boots. Sloppy half-moons of sweat darken the armpits and chest of his olive green T-shirt. Captain Wagner crisply salutes Dad, who just taps the closed fingers of his hand against his temple. “You looked good out there, Wagner. Easy jump?”

  “Yes sir, good day for it.”

  “We’re having a get together tonight at my place if you and Sue want to stop by.”

  “Will do, sir. Affirmative.”

  Dad had spilled the invitation before I could tell him about not inviting army people. My eyes try to fire a warning signal to him, but he doesn’t get it. He just smiles at me.

  “So you’re borrowing and feeding my daughter?” Dad asks. “I guess I’ll see you later then, Lane. Have fun building your clubhouse. No worrying, that’s an order. See you too, Captain.” He snaps his fingers and looks at me. “Around what time did Mom say for tonight?”

  “I dunno,” I mumble.

  “I’m guessing nine-ish then, after the change of command ceremony.” Dad nods to everyone. “Take care.” As I watch him leave I wonder if I should stop him from doing more damage, but since he already told the Wagners, Dad basically opened the party to Army People, which I know is exactly what Mom didn’t want. Because if you invite one army couple, others come. I guess I’ll just have to tell her.

  “Come on, Lane. Everyone’s already in the parking lot.” Steph starts leaping across the field. I turn away from watching Dad and run to catch up.

  4

  WE SIT IN THE way back of the Wagners’ wood-s
ided station wagon, in the part with no seats, far away from Steph’s parents so that we can talk freely about the war fort and the kids from the other side.

  “You know Jason McCullough?” Steph lowers her voice and her eyes flit to the front seat, checking to make sure that her parents aren’t eavesdropping. She pulls her T-shirt over her knees and then wraps her arms tight around them, folding herself into a box with a head on top and sneakers poking out the bottom.

  I shake my head. Steph leans in closer to me.

  “He lives over on 6th Street and goes to Fort Bryan West, but he stayed back like three times, and I heard that when the kids from the other side built their war fort it was his idea to bury a machete and a BB-gun in a footlocker underneath the ground. But that could be a lie. But anyhow, you’d maybe remember him from soccer camp.”

  I think back to the sweaty herds of kids from soccer camp. “Is he, um, really really tall with brown hair in a bowl cut?” I ask.

  “No. Well, maybe. He’s not that tall and I think he has a buzz cut now. Anyhow, he’s a psychopathical—no, wait—pathological liar and once he stole a bike and his dad put him out in the yard on a dog chain to punish him.”

  “Lie. That’s a lie.”

  Steph looks stricken. With her pinkie, she slices an X across her chest. “Cross my heart, I heard that. This kid is loco. Crazier than Charlie.”

  I ignore that last comment. “What’s a pathological liar?”

  “Someone who lies because they can’t help it; for them a lie is as good as the truth. It’s kind of like a disease.”

  I thought about my family and wondered if this is what had happened to us?

  “You girls want macaroni and cheese or peanut-butter-and-jelly?” Mrs. Wagner twists around from the front seat to look at us. She smiles wide, like she can’t wait to get started making lunch. Her excitement over things like this is partly why Mom has a problem getting along with her. “She burbles,” Mom says. Still, Mrs. Wagner’s always trying to get Mom over for lunch or a game of racquetball, and Mom always pretends that she has errands or a headache.

  “Peanut-butter-and-jelly,” Steph and I shout. “Grape jelly,” Steph says.

  “Please,” I add. Mrs. Wagner smiles even wider, dropping her mouth open.

  “Sweet girl,” she says to me. “I wish my Stephanie was so polite and sweet.”

  The Wagners live in Fort Bryan too, but on Fourth Street where all the captains live. I live on a different street because Dad’s a lieutenant colonel. The army organizes everything so nobody has any questions. If you know the rank of someone’s dad (or mom, but it usually doesn’t happen that way), then you pretty much know where the family lives, and the higher ranks get the bigger houses. It’s not so different from the regular world; it’s just that with the families and ranks divided up as square as a TV dinner, there’s less guessing about who has what.

  The thing is, I know that Mrs. Wagner wants Steph to be my friend just because of my dad’s rank. Even if I liked acid rock music and wore skimpy halter tops, like Major Franken’s daughter, Mrs. Wagner would want Steph to be friends with me. Steph and I think it’s funny, but then Steph also doesn’t seem to go out of her way to make any friends whose dads are lieutenants or privates or even captains like her own dad.

  Air conditioners blast night and day in the Wagners’ house. Their floors are a spongy blue ocean of carpeting and the house is decorated completely with furniture that they’ve collected from Captain Wagner’s military tours of duty. Most army homes are like that, where you can tell exactly where the officers and their families have been stationed by what they bought while they were there.

  At the Wagners’, the heavy wood trunk and matching dining room table came from Germany, the wooden screens were brought back from Seoul, Korea, and the oversized Mola pillows and the bamboo chair in the hall are already souvenirs of here. I like recognizing the overseas tours from the furniture. It’s like seeing a living history of a family.

  Steph and I kick off our shoes at the door and run to Rat’s room.

  “Your professional mourners are here for the funeral!” Steph yells, pouncing over to where Rat’s hunched at his desk. I trail behind and lean in his doorframe, feeling out of place, because I know that he doesn’t like people to enter his sacred domain—the Rat-trap, Steph calls it. “My brother’s a pack rat,” Steph told us when we all first met at the annual Army Hail and Farewell picnic. “Just call him Rat.” And so we do.

  Rat’s room is so jammed full of stuff that there’s almost no place to stand. The blue wall-to-wall peeks out in patches, but mostly it’s covered by boxes filled with strange rummage that Rat won’t throw out. His bookshelves spill over with papers and paperbacks and science fiction comic books, not to mention his rock collection, shell collection, and rare bottle collection.

  Lots of pictures of himself and Steph are hung or taped up like a pattern on the wall. A good one is of the two of them standing together, wearing their Little League softball uniforms. Steph’s arm is roped around Rat’s neck and it looks almost like she’s choking him, but they’re both smiling at something and you can even see a little silver dot of filling in the back of Rat’s mouth.

  “Ever hear of knocking?” Rat growls at us now. “Get out. Steph. Lane. Out.” He’s holding what looks like a cross made from two sticks, held at the center with a twist of puke-green yarn. “I’m busy.”

  “We want to help. That’s why we’re here,” Steph wheedles. “You said you needed me to come back.”

  “I un-need you. I want to do it all myself. You’ll just take over the whole thing if I let you in on it.”

  “I will not! And Lane came specially. It’s better for a funeral if a lot of people show up, so it looks like Robin had a lot of friends.”

  “Shut up, Steph. You’re making fun of me.”

  “Shut up, Rat. I am not.”

  “Both of you.” I clear my throat. “Come on.”

  Rat surveys his sister through his army-issue black-rimmed glasses. The awful twist in Steph and Rat’s twinship, is that, no matter how you look at it, Rat seems made from whatever was left over after Steph came out. When she told me that she’s eighteen minutes and twenty-three seconds older, it only reinforced my secret theory.

  Steph got all the appetite; for running and talking and fighting—Rat’s quiet, more of a hibernator. Steph’s reddish-brown hair and greenish-brown eyes drained into regular old brown on Rat, and his eyes have the double insult of not even working very well. And although he’s the one who looks like a perfect candidate for nerd-of-the-month club, he and Steph get almost exactly the same grades, not counting gym, where Steph has all the physical advantages.

  I decided a long time ago that Rat’s general grouchiness is because he has to live with this everyday unfairness. In a weird way, though, he clings to Steph, as if he suspects that some of the best bits of himself might be trapped in her.

  “I’m gonna bury Robin near the carport, close to his family,” Rat informs us. “Either of you guys know any Bible prayers or poems?”

  “I’ll sing the National Anthem,” Steph volunteers.

  “I know a poem,” I offer. “But it’s not about a funeral or anything.”

  “Good enough so long as it rhymes.” Rat examines the cross. “I think this’ll hold.”

  “Dummy, should have used duct tape.” Steph snatches the cross from him. “Yarn will e-rode in the rain.”

  “Not necessarily,” I say quickly. “And the green color looks interesting.”

  Rat lifts his glasses and pinches his thumb and forefinger over the bridge of his nose. “Should’ve used the tape,” he agrees. He’s quiet for a second. I wonder if he’s wondering why stuff that’s always so obvious to Steph is so muddy to him.

  Then I notice the open shoebox on his desk and the little gristle-gray lump inside it, resting on a bed of pink flowered toilet paper. Next to the lump and almost three times its size sits a large unripe mango. I move closer and bend down to get
a better look. I thought the bat would be bigger somehow. His tiny closed face gives me goose pimples. Steph looks, too.

  “Why are you burying Robin with that mango?” she asks.

  “Custom,” Rat answers confidently. “Down here, all the native people bury each other with food and valuables and stuff they might want to take to the other side.”

  “The other side what?” Steph picks up the fruit. Rat frowns.

  “The other side of life, obviously. El otro lado de la vida. Put that back.” Steph pretends that she’s going to bite into the mango, but then she replaces it.

  “We’re building the war fort today, remember,” I tell Rat. “Are you helping?”

  “I don’t know that much about building.” Rat stands up from his desk chair and stretches his knobby arms. “But I’ll go with you. Dan says some kids from the other side are planning a surprise attack on our side.” He picks up the lid of the shoebox from off the floor and closes Robin’s casket. Steph starts jumping up and down on her tiptoes, squawking, “Jason McCullough? Is it a surprise attack from Jason McCullough?”

  “What? Who’s Jason McCullough?” Rat picks up the shoebox and hands me the cross. “Let’s go.”

  The grave site is the corner of the Wagners’ carport. I kneel with Steph and Rat at the tunnel-shaped opening he already dug in the shaded earth.

  “But this is too narrow,” Steph exclaims. “You’d have to push the shoebox in lengthways. I never saw a coffin go in like that.”

  “Neither have I,” I admit.

  “Well, excuse me, but how many funerals have either of you two seen?”

  I stare at Robin’s coffin and say nothing. Steph frowns, but sticks to her point.

  “Robin and the mango will be all mushed down on the bottom if you put it in lengthways.” Steph talks to him in a fake-nice, mostly annoyed voice, like a mean teacher. “And that’s not how to respect the dead, Raymond, even if it’s only a dead bat. Go get the shovel.” Rat locks eyes with her, then jumps up and scurries back into the house. “Loco Rat,” she sighs. “Can’t see through a problem.”