Carry Me Home Page 23

  After the doctor’s car’s gone, Dad says, “Well, I’ll get you ladies home now. Jimmy? Earl? You want a lift?”

  “Nah,” Jimmy says. “I’m gonna hang around with Floyd for a while.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  “I’d appreciate that. I’m still a wreck.”

  Before Dad leaves, Floyd asks him to stop off at the farm and tell his dad that the baby comed. Dad says he sure can, and I tell Dad to watch out for them goats ’cause they’ll butt you in the ass if you ain’t watching. Dad laughs and Ma tells me to watch my language.

  Chapter 30

  After Dad’s car leaves, Floyd and Jimmy light cigarettes. “Whew! I sure could use a beer right about now,” Floyd says. Jimmy says he could too and that he’s got a couple bottles in his car, so we head back to our place.

  When we get home, Lucky starts in barking ’cause he wants to come out with me.

  “Maybe we should go for a little drive,” Jimmy says, “or this damn yapping dog is gonna have Ma up yapping.”

  Jimmy sneaks in the house and gets his car keys while I untie Lucky so he can go with us. “Where should we go?” Jimmy asks once we are in the car.

  Floyd shrugs first, then he says, “Ah, let’s go down to the millpond. It’ll be like old times.”

  We get almost to Millpond Road when Jimmy turns the car around. “Where you going, Jimmy?” I ask.

  “To roll Pissfinger’s ass out of bed. If we have to stay up all night and look like shit tomorrow, then Pissfinger has to too. Besides, he’s got a case of beer.”

  While we is banging on the door, John cusses and asks us what to hell we think we’re doing, waking him up in the middle of the night. “Come on,” Jimmy says. “We’re celebrating. Floyd here became a daddy tonight, and I’m getting married tomorrow. Get your dead ass out of bed and come have some beers with us.”

  John opens the door, and we gotta wait while he gets dressed. As we is walking through his porch, Jimmy picks up the case of beer John’s got sitting there and swings it up on his shoulder.

  “You asshole,” John says. “No wonder you came to get me.”

  We pass right by Louie’s house that’s all dark inside, the drapes pulled tight. I glance down the driveway, thinking for a minute that I’m gonna see Louie waiting there, his hair all lit up like fire, but Louie, he ain’t there, and neither is his car.

  “Hey, look,” I yell as we bounce down the road that goes to the millpond, “there’s a titty moon out tonight!”

  When we get to the millpond and get out of the car, John stretches and yawns and Floyd stands real still, looking at the water that is full of swirly sparkles. “Now, ain’t that a sight for sore eyes,” he says.

  Jimmy tosses me the car keys and tells me to get the beer. “You got your can opener on you?” he asks me.

  “I sure do, Jimmy,” I say, and I tap at my belt loop to show him. Jimmy grins, then him and John go off to find sticks for a fire.

  I open the trunk and yell over to Floyd, “Hey, we ain’t got no bucket to put the beers in.” Floyd, he just shrugs and says he guesses not.

  I carry the loose Schlitz bottles first, then I go get the case and bring it over to where Jimmy’s standing, dumping some little sticks he finded for kindling on the ground. “We ain’t got no bucket, and now our beers are gonna be warm as piss,” I say.

  Jimmy tells me not to worry about it, but still I worry. When John comes out of the woods carrying an armload of bigger wood, I tell him we ain’t got no bucket too. John says, “Hmm. I thought I saw an old bucket out there in that clump of elm. Just a few feet in.” He points off to where the woods are thick and dark. “Why don’t you go see if you can find it?

  “What’s the matter, Earwig?” John says when I don’t move. “You aren’t too scared to go into the woods by yourself, are you?”

  I shake my head. “I ain’t scared of the woods!” I say, and that’s the God’s honest truth. What I’m scared of is the goddamn bears.

  I call to Lucky, knowing damn well if a bear comes along, Lucky’s gonna chase that big bastard off. I call, but Lucky, he’s busy sniffing a dead fish over by the water, and he don’t come.

  “Ah, Earwig, don’t be such a girl. We’re all right here.” Floyd laughs a bit, but Jimmy don’t, ’cause he’s bent over trying to blow them sparks into flames.

  I know goddamn well John is gonna start teasing me bad about being a girl if I don’t go, so I give another call to Lucky, trying to make it sound like I’m just asking him to go along to be polite, but that damn dog, he ain’t gonna come, so I head into the woods by myself.

  I don’t take more than a few steps before I can’t see where I’m going ’cause it’s so dark. I am bent over, my hands waving through the brush, feeling for metal, ’cause that would be the bucket.

  “A little farther in, Earwig!” John calls.

  “You sure?” I yell back. It’s helping me not be so scared if I can hear him yelling back.

  “Yep, I’m sure.”

  I’m feeling all over the place. I feel sticks, and damp leaves, and some fuzzy moss, but I don’t feel no bucket.

  “I guess it’s a little farther, Earwig. Go in a few more yards.”

  Just then I hear some rustling a ways back in the woods. “Hey, you guys,” I call. “That beer probably ain’t all that warm, huh?” But Floyd, he calls back that nobody wants piss-warm beer, so I should keep looking.

  I walk a few more yards in. I stop and tip my head back, looking for that moon. I don’t see it, though. I don’t see nothing but black trees, trees so tall they gotta be tickling God’s ass.

  “Farther, Earwig. Just a little farther and you should come right to it,” John shouts. I am crouched over when I lift my boot to take a step, then I stop. I’m hearing it again. That rustling, only this time it’s louder. I got the freezes. I can hear that bear good, snapping sticks as he comes closer.

  “I’m hearing a bear, Jimmy!” I yell, then I wait to hear Jimmy yell back that it ain’t nothing but the wind, but he don’t. Instead, it’s John who calls back, “Bear, Earwig. Run!”

  I pop up so fast that I whack my head on a branch thick as Pritchard’s thigh. “Where?! Where?!” I yell.

  “Behind you!” John yells. “Run!”

  “Holy shit!” I scream, and I start dancing around in circles on accounta I don’t know which way to run. I’m screaming like I’m gonna piss myself.

  Just when I think I’m a dead duck ’cause I can almost feel that bear breathing down my ass, I make another circle and see the orange flames of the campfire showing between the trees. I ball up my fists and run, the brush whacking me good.

  When I get close enough to the clearing, I dive right between two trees and roll outta the woods like a bowling ball. I jump to my feet, ready to make a beeline for Jimmy’s car, when I see that them guys ain’t running at all. They is just sitting there by the fire, slapping their legs and laughing. John is laughing so hard he’s tipped over.

  Just then, Lucky runs out of the woods behind me, leaping at the back of my legs. “There’s your bear, Earwig,” Floyd says.

  “You bastards!” I say. “I bet there weren’t no bucket either!”

  Them guys are laughing it up good. I sit down by the fire and rub the top of my head, where that egg is throbbing. “That weren’t even funny, Pissfinger. I almost died from the fright.”

  John stops laughing and makes his eyes get all big and buggy. He cocks his head to the side. “What did you just call me, Earwig?” Floyd and Jimmy are laughing so hard now that they is almost choking.

  “Pissfinger,” I say.

  “You called me what?”

  “Crissakes,” I say, “you go deaf or what? I called you Pissfinger.”

  Floyd lets out a long whistle.

  “You gutsy little asshole!” John says. “Get over here!” He jumps to his feet and hurdles right over the fire, not even minding that them flames are high enough to cook his balls.

  I get up fast, and I s
tart to running. I know I’m in a heap of trouble now, but I’m laughing anyway.

  “Get over here, you mouthy bastard!” John yells behind me. “When I’m through with you, you’re gonna wish a bear had gotten to you first!”

  “Pissfinger! Pissfinger! Pissfinger!” I yell. Lucky, he runs with us, yipping to high heaven, while Floyd and Jimmy crack up over by the fire.

  I think I’m real smart when I ditch for Jimmy’s car, thinking that if I reach it, I can run circles around it and keep John away from me, but I ain’t so smart, ’cause I don’t figure out that all a smart guy’s gotta do then is spring over the hood of the car and he’s got me. That’s just what John does.

  He grabs me around the head and starts rubbing his knuckles over the top of my head so fast and hard it feels like my head’s on fire. Still, I’m laughing. “Take it back, Earwig!” he says, but all’s I say back is “Pissfinger! Pissfinger!”

  John lets go of my head just long enough for me to wiggle out of his hold. I don’t get more than a foot away, though, when John grabs my belt in the back and starts tugging me by my ass to the water. I’m laughing so hard I ain’t got the strength to fight him off.

  John, he gives me a twirl and then a shove, and I ain’t nothing but a shooting star going into the water.

  John is pissed, but not so pissed he wants me dead, ’cause he only throwed me in the shallow part. Still, that water’s cold as shit even at this time of year, and my breath gets sucked right outta me.

  “I hope your balls freeze off!”

  I spit water out of my mouth and lie, “The water ain’t even cold. Not for a real man, anyway, but for pissfingers like you, it might be cold enough to make you scream like a girl!”

  John, he growls like a bear, then that nutty bastard, he starts hopping around trying to get his shoes off. He pulls his pants down and turns while he’s hopping and shakes his bare ass at me. “Take this, Earwig!” he says, and I tell him no, sirree, I wouldn’t want to take that ugly ass with me anywhere. We is all laughing up a storm now.

  John gets his clothes off and jumps into the deeper part of the water, then splashes over to me and dunks me under.

  “A little cold, boys?” I hear Jimmy call, once I’m back up and got the water drained outta my ears. John’s got water dripping down his head. He gives me a wink and says to Jimmy, “Nah, Earwig was right. It ain’t even cold. You girls gonna come in?”

  Jimmy strips off his clothes, then whoops as he jumps in. A big-ass splash swallows him, then spits him back up. Jimmy’s screaming up a storm. “Jesus! You lying bastards!” He splashes at me and John, then yells to Floyd to come on in.

  It takes Floyd awhile to get his britches off with only one hand to work with, but he does it. He pauses a bit when his hand reaches his shirt buttons, like maybe he don’t want us to see that lopped-off arm of his, but then he strips his shirt off anyway. He lifts his good arm and his stub into the air, then whoops as he jumps in.

  My shoes, they is feeling all slippy-sloppy on my feet, so I climb out and take ’em off, then jump in butt-naked too.

  We play like we is little kids. Splashing and dunking and calling each other names like fart-sniffer and ass-sucker. We tease each other about whose pecker is shrunked up the littlest from the cold water.

  We stay in the water ’til our teeth are clinking, then we pull ourselves out and hurry to our clothes. Mine is sopping wet, so it don’t feel no warmer once I got ’em on. Jimmy says he’s got a dirty work shirt in his car, so he runs to fetch it for me.

  “Hey, Earwig, open us a beer, will you?” John says once we’re all sitting around the fire.

  I crack open the first Schlitz, but I don’t know who I’m suppose to give it to.

  “Give it to the new daddy,” Jimmy says.

  Floyd, he looks at the beer I’m holding, like he wants to snatch it right out of my hand, but instead he takes a breath and looks away. “Nah, give it to your brother. It’s his last night as a single man, so he’s gonna need all the beers he can get.” John laughs, and Jimmy shakes his head.

  “I say Earwig gets the first beer tonight,” John says. “Any earwig who’s got the balls to call me Pissfinger is the number-one guy in my book.” Jimmy and Floyd say that’s true and tell me I get the first one.

  “What to hell you doing there, Earwig?” Floyd says, when I set the first beer down on the empty spot next to me.

  John laughs. “Hell, he’s so proud of earning that first beer that he’s gonna set it there for a while just so he can admire it. Ain’t that right, Earwig?”

  “Nah,” I say. “That beer there is for Louie. He’s the number-one guy tonight.” John looks away, but Floyd and Jimmy, they look right at me and nod. We is all quiet as I open four more beers and pass ’em out. When we all got our beers, Jimmy holds his up and says, “To Louie,” and we all lift our beers to the sky too and say, “To Louie.”

  We quiet down and stretch out on the ground.

  “I used to dream of this place when I was at O’Donnell,” Floyd says, and nobody says nothing. I guess they, like me, is thinking about all the things that happened since we was here last. It seems like forever ago, yet it seems like yesterday too. “I never thought I’d see this place again, but here I am. Married, and a dad to boot. And tomorrow Jimmy gets married, and Earwig here moves in to his own place. And Pissfinger . . . well, he’ll still just be a pissfinger.” Floyd laughs and John throws a stick at him.

  Floyd sighs then. “God, I hope I don’t fuck up.”

  And Jimmy says, “I hope I don’t fuck up either.”

  I look over at Floyd, and then at John, who’s laying next to him. Then I look at Jimmy. Ain’t a one of ’em that’s all better yet. I can tell by the way they get skittery when they hear a loud noise or see something move fast out of the corner of their eye. I can tell by the faraway look they get sometimes when they is suppose to be listening, and by how quick they get pissed when some itty-bitty thing goes wrong.

  Dad said that he thinks the goddamn shame of war is having to forget you’re fighting people just like you, so you can hate ’em enough to kill ’em. I think, though, that another shame of war is that when it’s over, a soldier don’t get to leave it behind where he fought it. He’s gotta carry it right back home with him, in his head, and in his heart. I don’t know for sure how long Jimmy and Floyd and John gotta carry that war around, but I hope to hell it ain’t forever.

  I curl my arm under my head and look back at the sky. Louie is up there. I can feel him looking right down on us. And feeling him there makes it seem like we is all together again, just like the old days.

  It’s the best night ever, with that titty moon shining over us as we warm our feet by the fire and drink beers until morning. And simpleminded or not, I know that even if these good days don’t last, a guy don’t have to give his right nut to get ’em back. All he’s gotta do is put one foot in front of the other and keep going. And I shit you not, he’ll walk right into some more good days again.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Mr. C., for helping me discover the magic in books; to Jim L., who taught me the power of storytelling; and to Shirley L., who helped me realize the power of my own story.

  My love and thanks to my family, who supported me in one way or another as I learned to write. To Kerry, who made it possible for me to do the work I love. To my daughter Shannon, who proved my words true even before I believed them myself—that we can realize our dreams if we work hard and believe even harder. To my son, Neil, who shared the computer with me with little complaint. To my daughter Natalie, who is the best editor a writer could have and diligently plucks commas from my manuscripts and fearlessly gives me her honest opinion. And to my brothers, who understand more than anyone what a challenge this climb was for me.

  And thank you to my cherished friends. To Lynn, who taught me to stay resolute, and especially to Gerta and Vikas, who held on to my dream for me during periods in my life when I could not.

  To Sop
hey, my littlest angel, whose name the wind will whisper to me until we meet again.

  And last, but by no means least, thank you to my dear, supportive agent, Catherine Fowler, the gentle soul who lovingly took Earwig by the hand and led him to the warm heart of Jackie Cantor, an incredible editor in every respect. Many thanks to Jackie, to my publisher, Nita Taublib, and to all those at Bantam Dell who took Earwig and caringly tucked him between covers.

  My heartfelt appreciation to all of you for helping me make my dream come true.

  About the Author

  SANDRA KRING lives in the north woods of Wisconsin. She has run support groups and workshops for adult survivors of trauma. Carry Me Home is her first novel.

  CARRY ME HOME

  A Delta Trade Paperback / January 2005

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2005 by Sandra Kring

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Delta is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Kring, Sandra.

  Carry me home / Sandra Kring.

  p. cm.

  I: Teenage boys—Fiction. II: World War, 1939–1945—Veterans—Fiction. III: Brothers—Fiction. IV: Wisconsin—Fiction. V: Genre/Form: Historical fiction. VI: Humorous fiction. VII: Domestic fiction.