The Glory Wind Page 4

  “Where is your old town?” I asked.

  “Far, far away,” she told me. “It took us more than half a day just to drive here. We weren’t driving the whole entire time, though. We had to stop to get gas and food and use the fast-ill-a-tease,”

  “What’s a fast-ill-a-tease?”

  “It’s another name for a bathroom. Every time we stopped somewhere my mom asked for the key so we could use the fast-ill-a-tease.”

  I nodded, like I’d just remembered exactly what that was. “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  “But that’s not the important part,” she said, giving me a stern look. “I was telling you about my friend Karly.”

  “Right,” I said. “Because you don’t know when you’ll see her again.”

  “Or if I’ll see her again,” Gracie corrected.

  “You might,” I offered uselessly.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She’d gotten very still, which somehow made her face look solemn and small.

  “When you get older you can get a job and buy your own car and drive to where she lives.”

  “Cars cost a lot of money.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” I scoffed. “My Pa showed me a picture of a car that cost more than two thousand dollars. But you don’t have to buy a new one.”

  “How much is one that isn’t new?”

  “Maybe a couple hundred dollars or something.”

  “That’s still an awful lot.” Gracie sank down onto a rock, looking defeated.

  “Or you can go on the train!” I said.

  “The train,” echoed Gracie.

  “Then you only need to buy a ticket and that’s all.”

  Gracie jumped back to her feet and threw her arms around me. I shrugged them off as quick as lightning, but that didn’t seem to bother her.

  “You saved my heart from breaking right in two—thinking about never seeing Karly again,” she said.

  “Your heart can’t break in two just because of not seeing somebody,” I said.

  I thought it was true.

  Chapter Seven

  We spent more time in the Circle of Truth than anywhere else that first summer. It was a safe place, on account of the rule about things being secret. We’d stretch out on our backs and look up at the wide open sky and just free all the thoughts and ideas that wanted to float out of our mouths.

  The circle is about fifteen feet across with a really big rock in the centre. That one was thanks to Carmella’s husband, Clarence Tait, who brought over his old workhorse one afternoon and hauled it from another field for us.

  “What’d you say this here thing is for?” he asked, surveying the stones we’d spread about in a circular formation.

  “It’s a Circle of Truth,” Gracie told him. “It has special powers.”

  “Izzat right?” he said, while a sprig of foxtail barley waved at us from the corner of his mouth. “And what exactly is it that gives it these powers?”

  “The circle part,” Gracie explained patiently. “Everyone knows that circles are powerful.”

  “Izzat right, now?” He shook his head like it was a bit too much for him. “Well, you youngsters enjoy it. I got to be gettin’ back home.”

  We thanked him and stood watching while he hoisted himself onto the horse and swung his wooden leg over its wide midsection. A low, grumbling sound came from his throat, which started the horse lumbering along.

  “I wonder why Carmella calls him Mr. Tait instead of his first name,” Gracie pondered as the horse and rider grew smaller in the distance.

  “I dunno.”

  “But don’t you wonder?”

  “Why would I wonder about that?”

  “It doesn’t seem that you wonder about anything,” Gracie sighed. She’d gotten in the habit of sighing whenever I said or did something puzzling or exasperating. She sighed a lot that first summer.

  “I guess I’m not a curious person,” I said.

  “Karly was curious,” Gracie said.

  “So?” I’d gotten tired of the regular comparisons to Karly. “She’s a girl. Like you.”

  “And just what do you mean by that, Luke Haliwell?”

  “Nuthin’.” As often happened with Gracie, my courage disappeared at the sight of her blazing eyes.

  But as the weeks went by, Karly was mentioned less and less. I can’t say I minded that, though I don’t think it had yet occurred to me that Gracie and I had become best friends. In fact, I might have socked you in the eye if you’d suggested such a thing to me. Best friends with a girl! The idea was ridiculous.

  So I was in for a bit of an eye-opener one day late in August. Gracie and I were walking down the road alongside the fence that runs the length of Guthrie’s farm. That’s across the road from the house where Gracie and her mom lived.

  We’d been ambling along, looking for un-scavenged blueberry bushes, when Keane Dempsey came riding up on his bike, kicking up a cloud of dust and pebbles behind him. He drove straight to where Gracie and I were standing, reversing on the pedal just in time to stop before he ran right into us.

  “Hey, Luke,” he said, “You can come over to my place if you want.”

  “I’m kinda busy,” I said.

  He looked surprised—and not exactly pleased. “I thought we could do some of the stuff in the Keds Handbook,” he said. “My mom said we could use her stamp pad to make fingerprints, like the book says.”

  “We were looking for blueberries,” I told him.

  “Blueberries!” he scoffed. “Big deal. We can…” Here, Keane paused and looked at Gracie like he’d just noticed her. “Hey, she can come too, and we can do some magic tricks for her.”

  “Okay,” Gracie said, and it was settled. It seemed that if Gracie decided something, that was it. (This was rarely true for things I decided.)

  As we walked to Keane’s place he told Gracie how amazed and impressed she was going to be when she saw the magic tricks he could do. He said she’d probably never seen a magician who could do those kinds of things, and he sternly warned her that he couldn’t reveal his secrets so there was no point in her even asking.

  When we got there Keane told Gracie to sit and wait by the woodpile. “We need some stuff for the magic,” he said, grabbing my arm and pulling me along.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Gracie standing still and looking straight at me. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. I wanted to say, “I’ll be right back,” or “Watch out for hornets,” or something, but my mind was blank. So I turned around and followed Keane inside without a word.

  It took a good twenty minutes for Keane to gather up the things he needed to perform the tricks in the Keds Handbook, and when we went back outside Gracie was nowhere to be seen.

  “Now where’d that dumb old girl go to?” Keane grumbled, worried he’d been cheated out of an audience.

  “I’m not a dumb old girl and you take that back or I won’t watch your magic show!”

  We both turned at the sound of her voice and saw Gracie coming along the path from the outhouse.

  “Well?” she demanded, hands on her hips and arms folded out like wings. “Are you going to take it back?”

  “I thought you took off is all,” he muttered.

  “So do you take it back?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Looking at Keane’s face I almost laughed out loud. He was beat and he knew it, but strangely enough, he didn’t seem to mind all that much. Then it hit me that that was exactly what I’d felt so many times in the few weeks I’d known Gracie. You knew you weren’t going to win any arguments with her, not only because you couldn’t—but because deep inside you didn’t honestly want to.

  Keane did the tricks while I played the parts he’d given me when we were inside—announcing each of the acts and making comments like “Isn’t that amazing?” and “How does he do it, folks?” and such.

  “Keane will now perform the Marvellous Match-Mending trick!” I boomed as he produced one of his mother’s handkerchi
efs and waved it about dramatically.

  Gracie watched, as she had each of the preceding feats, with intent interest, her eyes following every move he made as he produced a match and tucked it into the handkerchief’s folds.

  “We’ll need a volunteer from our audience!” I declared.

  Gracie raised her hand obediently as she had done each time a volunteer had been required.

  “You! The young lady in the front row. Come on up and join us here on stage,” I instructed.

  Gracie crossed the few feet of ground separating us and waited for further instructions.

  Keane took over at that point, thrusting the hanky toward her and asking if she could feel the match in there. Gracie nodded as her fingers felt the small wooden stick through the thin fabric. Then Keane told her to break it in two and she obliged with a brisk snap.

  “You sure you busted it?” he asked.

  Gracie nodded, her eyes never leaving the handkerchief, over which Keane proceeded to mutter his own magic spell of za-wowie-powie. When he opened it and produced a fully intact match, Gracie’s eyes grew rounder and she smiled and clapped. It was all I could do not to blurt out that the match she’d broken was a different one, that Keane had hidden it in the hanky’s hem beforehand.

  After Keane had finished showing off with the tricks, he decided Gracie would probably like to see some of the feats of strength that were in the handbook.

  “I’m pretty strong,” he boasted.

  But just then I remembered Ma had mentioned that she’d like me and Gracie to take some quilting patches to Carmella one day this week. All of a sudden it felt like something that needed to be done right away. I told Keane we had to go.

  He suggested that it would be okay if Gracie wanted to hang around and watch him put on a strong man show, on account of he was even bored enough to let a girl hang around for a while.

  “Mrs. Haliwell is watching me while my mother is at work,” Gracie told him, “so I have to stay with Luke.”

  We left then. On one hand, I was happy that she wasn’t staying behind. On the other hand, I was out-of-sorts because the only reason she’d come along with me was that she thought she had no other choice.

  We were about halfway to my place when I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Why don’t you just go on back to Keane’s house if you want to.”

  “Back to Keane’s house?” Gracie echoed. Her voice and face were both surprised as can be. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “I just thought you might,” I said.

  Gracie shook her head. “Keane is okay and all, but he has an awfully big opinion of himself.”

  I think, if I had to pin it down, that would be the moment I realized Gracie had become the only person I really wanted to be around.

  Chapter Eight

  During the summer, I don’t see much of my pals from school. Most of them live on farms on the north side of town and that’s too far to walk both ways in a day. Sundays are about the only time I get to see some of the other kids. The Presbyterians, anyway, and sometimes the Mennonites, since their church is only a few minutes’ walk down the road.

  There’s Johnny Oak, whose father owns the biggest piece of land around here; Alex Filmon, the only boy in a family of nine; Teddy Tompkins, whose two older brothers went to war and never came back; and William Northcott, the loudest kid I ever met.

  Teddy was the only one besides me to have met Gracie before school let in for the fall. Seems he’d been dragged along when his mother went to call on Raedine, to welcome her to Junction.

  “All they did was sit and bawl for about an hour,” Teddy reported. “Good thing my Pa wasn’t there. He says talking doesn’t change anything, or bring anyone back.”

  “Was Gracie at home?” I asked.

  “Yeah. She’s pretty bossy,” he said. “I feel sorry for you, living next to them, with all that bawling and bossing going on full time.”

  “Well, she doesn’t boss me around,” I claimed, knowing that it was a lie and I was telling it right there in the churchyard.

  The truth was, I was facing a problem that was a lot bigger than Gracie’s bossiness. I’d been thinking about it quite a bit as September crept closer and closer, and it was worrying me a good deal.

  Brandon Jackson and Pete West are my best friends at school. We’ve chummed together through the years and, like all the other boys in our grade, we had little use for girls. Their row of desks sat facing ours across the classroom, but they might as well have been across the ocean for all the interest we had in them.

  We’d known them, right from the first grade, as bizarre and annoying creatures. They were quick to cry or accuse and the games they played were dull and silly. For the most part, we acted like they didn’t even exist.

  Girls, on the other hand, made it only too clear that they were aware of us. They did it with disgusted sounds like “Eww” or muffled whispers that came from hand-covered mouths. You could pretty much count on either of those things being followed by an outburst of giggles. Sometimes, they’d even run off, as though we were chasing them, which was never the case.

  I didn’t even want to think about the reaction I’d get from the other boys if they saw that I was friends with Gracie. It’s one thing to spend time with a girl if you’re forced to, but no one in my grade would go making a fool of himself by chumming with a girl (and one in grade six, at that) when there were boys around. I wasn’t about to be the first.

  The problem I couldn’t seem to settle in my mind was how I was going to talk about it to Gracie. Of course, I still wanted to be friends with her, just not at school. Somehow, I didn’t picture her taking that very well. As the days got closer and closer to the start of school, my nerves were near frazzled from the worry of it, and I still hadn’t found the courage to bring it up with her. Oh, I’d tried a couple of times, but the words wouldn’t come out and I kept putting it off.

  And then there were no more days to put it off to because school was starting the next day. Gracie was at our place as usual, while Raedine was at work, and we were sitting on the fence to the south of the barn. Gracie was chattering away but I wasn’t really paying attention, since I was straining my brain trying to think of a way to bring up the subject without making her madder than a swatted nest of hornets.

  I felt kind of the way I did the time our family went to Grand Beach for the day, and I swam out too far and went under. I was floundering around underwater, desperate for something to grab onto to save myself, and knowing full well there was nothing. The more I panicked, the worse it got, until I was upside down, with only my foot sticking out of the water. It was a stranger who saved me that day—taking hold of my flailing foot and pulling me up and out just before the bursting in my chest would have forced me to take in water.

  I didn’t figure anyone was going to come along and rescue me this time, but I was wrong. About mid-afternoon a truck came chugging along the road. As it got close I could see that it was Mr. Tait’s and, when it was near enough, that Carmella was seated beside him in the cab.

  It slowed down and pulled up to a stop about parallel with where Gracie and I were sitting. The door opened and Carmella swung herself sideways and made a little hop down. She turned and said something to her husband and closed the door.

  Mr. Tait raised his hand to us before pulling back onto the road and driving off.

  “Hi Carmella!” Gracie called. She was already down off the fence and running toward our visitor, her hair bouncing along like it was chasing her.

  Carmella’s throaty laugh floated to me as she reached down and met Gracie with a wide-armed hug. I took my time getting there. Once Carmella starts hugging people, there’s no stopping her.

  Sure enough, she grabbed me and squeezed me as soon as I was close enough. “Just look at you,” she said, though I don’t see how she could—what with me crushed against her bosom that way. “Off to school to start grade seven tomorrow. How the years have gone by.”

  Next thing, as if sh
e’d read my mind about not being able to see me, she thrust me away from her, her hands holding onto my shoulders while she looked me up and down.

  “My, my, but I think you’re taller every time I see you,” she said. “And handsome! I declare, you surely are turning into a fine-looking boy.”

  This set Gracie to giggling, which Carmella seemed to find a mite insulting. “Don’t you think Luke is handsome, Gracie?”

  Gracie rolled her eyes and laughed some more.

  “Well, now, you might want to be careful what you say, missy,” Carmella said with a shake of her head. “Could be that you’ll grow up and want to marry this very boy. I’ve seen it happen before.”

  “Well, if I ever wanted to marry him, then I would,” Gracie said, “but I don’t mean to get married at all.”

  “No?” Carmella seemed quite amazed by this. I, on the other hand, was feeling something peculiar, which I figure must have been relief.

  “No!” declared Gracie, and that, thankfully, seemed to end the discussion. We started toward the house as if someone had suggested it, though no one had.

  “I suppose you two are wondering what brings me here today,” Carmella said.

  “What?” Gracie and I asked together.

  “School!” Carmella said, like she was announcing that we’d won a prize. “And I have something for you.”

  Well! That got our attention all right. We took turns guessing what it might be until we reached the back door. Gracie guessed hair ribbons and clips; I thought it might be a super-sized eraser or an Indian rubber ball, but Carmella just shook her head and laughed.

  “Carmella!” my mother said as we trooped into her kitchen. “What a nice surprise. Come right on in.”

  “Afternoon, Alice,” Carmella said. “I just came by to give Luke and Gracie here a little something for the first day of school.”

  “Well, isn’t that kind of you!” Ma said. “You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you?”

  “I never say no to a cup of tea,” Carmella said, settling herself onto a chair at the table. “Now, I best give these children their presents before they climb right up on my lap.”