Secrets in The Hole

This new house smells like mold and cigarette smoke and stuff that’s rotten. But it didn’t used to when we first moved here. The old house burnt up and made momma leave and when we moved here it smelled like bleach and something kinda dusty. That was better.

When we moved in, the trees didn’t have no leaves cause it was wintertime, nothing to hide us from the city folks who drive in on the weekends to shop in our “quaint” stores and take up all the booths at the Peaks & Pies. Now school’s out and they come all week long, but the leaves on the oaks and aspens make a nice little blanket tent, hiding them from us. A little bit.

I asked Big Jerry what “quaint” meant when I heard a city lady say, “Wait till you see all these quaint stores!” to another lady. I was waitin’ for the bus, watching them smear sunblock on their shoulders and necks. He said, “It’s something only rich folks can observe.”

So that’s how I know these city folks is also rich folks, though I kinda assumed so. I’m still not quite sure what “quaint” means but I think it has to do with mountain folks like us.

Me and Little Jerry spend most of our time outside, doesn’t matter the weather, though this time of year is the best. Not getting all blistered by the sun or frozen from the icy wind. Big Jerry doesn’t like us in the stinky house and that’s mostly ok with me. I don’t know about Little, but he always does what I say anyways.

Big Jerry is Little Jerry’s daddy, but not mine. I don’t know where my daddy is. Once I wanted to pretend Big Jerry was my daddy but he put a stop to that straight away. That was a smack I won’t forget anytime soon.

“I ain't your daddy and don’t you call me as such.” he said when I tried it on for size. I wished my momma was still home so I could call somebody something.

Little is my brother, I know that much, that we have the same momma. But Little doesn’t cry for her at night, least I don’t think so. Every time he cries he comes runnin’ to find me so I ‘spect I’m right.

Big Jerry might be a bad man, I don’t know. I’m only seven and he likes to remind me that I “won’t know anything till I’m older and prolly not even then.” So maybe I’m wrong, but it don’t change the fact I don’t like him so much.

He has dark, curly hair on his head like Little does, but only in a half-moon shape that runs between his ears on the back of his head. Little has dark curly hair that covers his whole head, straight down to his eyebrows, which are always lifted as if he’s about to ask a question. 

Big Jerry works all day at the factory. He comes home smelling of sweat and grease and plain old disappointment. When it’s cold out, the trees covered in nothin’, I try to stay inside where it’s warm and dry. Sometimes when he comes home, I hear the CRACK! of a beer can opening, and the nonsense rambling of grown-up talk on the TV. Other times I hear him bellowing that there’s no ice in the freezer and “Why don’t these goddamn kids think about a man slavin’ in a hot factory all day?” 

Some nights, I’m pulled from my top bunk by the ankles, to take from him all his anger from the day. Even on the nights he don’t, I have terrible dreams and I ask God to take my nightmares away but he’s too busy to rescue a little girl I ‘spose. Or at least an ungrateful one.

Sometimes Big Jerry is ok. Like when he’s happy, standin' in front of the grill with the radio playin’ the baseball game, fryin’ up his steak and some hotdogs for Little and me. He piles up the charcoal into a perfect pyramid, brick by brick like the Egypitans I learned about in school, squirts a liquid onto them and lights the whole thing up with a single match.

That’s my favorite part, though I do like hotdogs too.

I asked him once if I could help light the grill and he said, “Girl, if you’re anything like your momma, you ain’t coming near no matches.” I watched that blaze settle down, become a great, deep heat that makes the air above it all wobbly. And when I asked what he meant, his mouth smushed together so his lips was in a long, thin line. So tight you couldn’t wedge a toothpick between ‘em. 

This is why I think momma ran away after the old house burnt… she was afraid. But I decided not to ask any questions about her after that.

One night Little and I wanted to watch a show he heard about at school called Bloopers and Practical Jokes. Everyone at recess was talkin' about it. I had the channel set up and we waited and waited, bored to death with the grown-up news when Big Jerry came in and said to get out the way, Jeopardy was coming on. Little cried, but I wouldn’t.

So now we just sit outside till it’s near bedtime cause I can’t bare disappointing Little again. And I don’t know what to do when he looks at me with those tears running down his sorry face.

We spend our days poking around in the forest, pretending we are early settlers like from social studies, looking for land to call “home.” We make stew out of honeysuckle and milkweed and clover, stirring it up with water from The Hole and daring each other to eat it. 

The Hole is a spring of water comin' out of the mountain and gathering into a little pool that the city folks come to gather up in big plastic jugs. They’re always here on the weekends, saying silly things like, “Nothing like FRESH mountain spring water!” before looking at us and making us run off from our stew game. 

I have to laugh when I think of them rich peoples, drinking that “quaint” water I’ve seen dead critters floating in. One time I scraped my leg against a rock trying to gather some slippery tadpoles, my blood coming out like ribbons, curly-cueing into that “fresh mountain water” they lap up like dogs. Sucking up pieces of my insides. 

But school’s out now, and the leaves shielding these city folks from our home means there’s a lot more of them coming to eat our food and buy our trinkets and hike our forest trails in their bright orange backpacks. And gulp down our blood water. 

One bad thing about school being out is them city folks coming all week long, clucking their tongues at our yards and dogs and stinky homes. But one good thing is the bookmobile, which is a lot like the ice cream truck except that you don’t need money to taste what’s inside. You can actually go into the truck, which is filled with shelves and shelves of books instead of popsicles and Choco Tacos. As long as you return the book from the previous week, you can get out a new one. And when I hear that music playing I come runnin’ as fast as a mountain lion. 

The first time the bookmobile pulled into our lane, I told the lady driving it that Big Jerry wouldn’t like me taking books that ain’t mine. But she pressed a book called The Boxcar Children into my hands and said it was our secret.

“Big Jerry says lyin’s a sin.” I said, knowing what a good girl I was being. But she said, “It’s not a sin if you don’t say anything.” and pulled her wrinkly fingers across her mouth, like closing a zipper. “My lips are sealed.” and she winked. 

I thought about Big Jerry’s mouth smashed tight when I asked what he meant about momma and the matches, lips sealed against some secret. I wanted a secret too, so I took the book and read about a bunch of kids living alone, almost like me and Little, in the woods with no grown-ups in charge at all. No Big Jerry, no rich folks. I started looking for abandoned train cars in the forest but I didn’t tell Little so he didn't get his hopes up like he did with the Bloopers show.

At night I slept with The Boxcar Children under my mattress. First I put it under my pillow, but Big Jerry might find it when he yanks me from bed at night. I imagine the story floating up at night while I sleep, fighting through cotton and covers to reach my dreams where Little and I live in a train car and make all our own choices. 

And I wake one morning with a thought, a thought about secrets… secrets that ain’t a sin so long as my lips are sealed. 

I make Little get up early, ignoring his complaints about hunger and needing to use the bathroom, and we head down to The Hole.

“Piss in it.” I tell him.

“What? Why?” his eyebrows raised to a ridiculous height, smashing into those brown curls he got.

“Just. Do it.” and I wink so he knows it’s part of a game.

A slow, steady stream of yellow pee splashes into the clear water, making curly designs like cigarette smoke. Then we sit back and wait.

Shortly, the city folks in their orange backpacks come, after they’ve had their coffee and omelets at the Peaks & Pies. 

“Oh! Hello!” they say. And I wiggle my fingers in a friendly sort of way. “This is good drinking water, right?” Their eyebrows raised.

I look at Little with an expression he would never dare cross, and I nod at them, my mouth pressed together in a quaint little smile.

My lips are sealed.

We head off into the forest. We have a boxcar to look for.