Filed to story: Love on the Sidelines (Natalie & Karl)
Mama lowered herself weakly into the chair across from me. “I think you better tell me the whole thing. From the beginning.”
I have an excellent memory. I repeated the conversation verbatim. Mama took it pretty good, except for the parts about Liz Swanner, then she did some sputtering that put Aunt Darla to shame. When I finished the tale, her lips thinned to a straight line.
“I want to see that book.”
“Okay.” I’d already read it, anyway.
As I was leaving the room to get it, I heard Mama tell Aunt Darla, “At least Karl behaved like a gentleman. That child is too curious for her own good sometimes.” I wanted to stop and listen to the rest of what they said, but I suspected Aunt Jane would be checking to see if I were doing just that. Instead, I trudged upstairs, got the book, and trudged back down. I’d always thought being curious was a good thing. How else was I going to learn if I couldn’t ask questions? At least Mama didn’t seem to be blaming Karl.
She took the book from me and thumbed through it, reading a passage here and there before looking up at me, a puzzled frown wrinkling her forehead. “Natalie, did you understand this story?”
“Sure. It was really good. Especially the parts about the giant sandworms.” Mama shook her head and rubbed a hand over her cheek. “Maybe I should have listened to Mr. Viders and let them move you up a grade,” she murmured.
This was news to me. Mr. Viders was the school principal and I hadn’t known he’d talked to Mama, much less wanted to move me up a grade. The thought didn’t thrill me. Leave Jenna and all my friends? Not if I could help it.
“I don’t want to move up, Mama. I like my grade. Mrs. Wade is my best teacher yet.
She’s real nice and smart, too. She always answers my questions and never tells me to be quiet.”
Mama’s gaze sharpened. “Have your other teachers told you that?”
“Sometimes.”
Her chest lifted in a sigh. “Okay, you can stay in Mrs. Wade’s class. But from now on, Natalie, I want to see your books before you read them, and if you have any questions about what you read, come ask me.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“And as for marrying Karl…” She hesitated. “You’re only eight. You’ll change your mind a dozen times before you’re old enough to get married. It wouldn’t do to get Karl’s hopes up and then have to hurt his feelings, would it?”
“No, Ma’am.”
Mama could be tricky when she wanted to, but her tactics failed this time. I knew I would never change my mind about marrying Karl. But from now on I was going to take his advice and keep that tidbit to myself.
Things settled into a routine that first year. Karl would stay in his room on the weekends, with occasional weeknights thrown in when Frank went on a binge. At first, he refused to go anywhere near the house, but eventually I coaxed him into joining us for meals. My mother and aunts fussed over him until it got downright embarrassing, and I knew he was uncomfortable with the attention. Karl was not a herd animal.
Whether by choice or by the hard lessons forced on him though life, he was a lone wolf determined to make his own way in the world.
I finally had a long talk with my mother, and the next time Karl ate with us he was treated as any other family member would be. Karl and I were both relieved.
Once, I asked him about his room in the trailer that sat at the back of the salvage yard.
“I don’t have a room.” He was concentrating on the cards in his hand. I had taught him to play gin rummy the night before, and he was determined to beat me this time.
“Where do you sleep?” I surveyed my cards, then discarded a seven. I was trying to form a picture of what he did when he wasn’t with me, but I’d never been in a trailer before.
Karl pounced on the seven, then spread his cards triumphantly on the blanket. “I sleep on the couch. Gin!” He counted both our totals and added it to the neat line of figures on the notepad beside him. One thing I’d discovered was that he was a whiz with math. You could ask him to multiply long strings of numbers and he’d pop the 30 answer right back like he’d pulled it out of thin air. And he didn’t even need paper to do it. I was more than a bit envious of this talent. My grades came easy to me, always high without much effort on my part, but math was one subject I had to work at.
“Aren’t you afraid to stay in the trailer when it storms?” We have terrible storms here. It’s not unusual to get two or three tornadoes touching down every spring, and sometimes more than that. Nearly everyone has a storm cellar, and those who don’t feel no qualms about running to a neighbor’s when things start to get hairy. One memorable year a twister took out the huge sycamore tree that grew behind our shed, and sucked the chickens right out of the chicken house without damaging a single board. There were feathers scattered over a two-mile area, but we never found a chicken, naked or otherwise.
“You get used to it.” Karl shuffled the cards and dealt the next hand.
“I don’t think I would.”
“If it gets really bad we go over to the Swanner’s. They’ve got a root cellar, but it’s only a dirt hole in the ground. I’d rather stay outside.” The thought of Frank Hayes huddling in a hole with the Swanner’s brought another image to my mind. “Does your father pay Liz Swanner to let him ‘do it’ to her?”
Karl’s head shot up and he glared at me. “Where did you hear that?”
“From kids at school.” I wasn’t about to implicate Jenna yet again. If nothing else, I was loyal.
“People should mind their own business. Besides, you don’t even know what it means.”
“What does it mean?” I asked, ever hopeful.
“Nothing. And I’m not talking about this with you.” He looked back down at his cards.
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”