Clover Page 13

  I think of all the money Sara Kate might spend on school stuff. “I hope you won’t spend too much on new clothes,” I say. “Like Grandpa always used to say, ‘when push comes to shove you can always wash and wear the same clothes over and over again.’

  “You see, Sara Kate,” I blurt out, “if you really have the money for school clothes I’d rather you not buy so many and save some towards a purple ten-speed bicycle for me.”

  My wish, practically the only wish I’ve ever had in my whole life, just slid right out.

  Sara Kate looked surprised. She smiled, “Why, Clover, if it’s a ten-speed purple bicycle you want then that’s what you’ll get. But we’ll still have to get some new school clothes.”

  I smile. In my mind I can see myself racing up and down the road, cruising down every path in Round Hill. My wish has finally come true. I am going to get my purple bicycle.

  14

  When I look back and think about the way I treated Sara Kate that day at lunch, I can’t help thinking, what in the world would Gaten have thought? I know one thing, I really hate I acted the way I did. I ran screaming and crying to my aunt Everleen like a little wild fool.

  Maybe in the way things turned out, it all happened for the good. Because, you see, after that very day, Everleen and Sara Kate became closer. All because they were both siding with each other against me. I say that about them, but secretly I’m kind of glad that they both care enough about me to make me do the right thing. Maybe, when I am older, I will tell them that.

  Sometimes, Sara Kate will pop in and out at the peach shed. When she takes a break from her “art work” as Daniel calls it, she will bring Tastee Freeze ice cream. Sometimes she brings ice tea with fresh mint leaves. Aunt Everleen drinks it, but not me.

  If things had not changed between the two women, Sara Kate would have never been there, that hot August day. But there she was. Standing and chatting with Everleen in one of her skimpy halter tops, and the shortest shorts I’d ever seen. It was then that we heard a weak cry for help. It was coming from over in the Elberta peaches.

  “It’s Jim Ed,” Everleen screamed. She started to run, but stopped and started running around and around in circles. She was going to pieces. “Go find help, Everleen, we’ll find Jim Ed,” Sara Kate screamed, as the two of us raced in the direction of his weak cries.

  Poor Uncle Jim Ed lay under a peach tree with stinging yellow jackets swarming all over him. He had gotten his foot all tangled up in a trumpet vine and fell into the army of yellow jackets feeding on a pile of peaches someone had emptied out in the grass. There was doubtless a yellow jacket nest there on the ground also.

  I guess once the stinging things got hold of Jim Ed and started stinging him like crazy, he couldn’t help what he did. Like he didn’t have a grain of sense, instead of trying to free himself so he could try to get away, he started fighting and killing the jokers. He knew better. He’d known all his life, if you kill one yellow jacket, two or more will come in to sting you. It seemed every yellow jacket there multiplied. They were everywhere. Jim Ed is allergic to any bee sting. You could almost see him swelling up. His eyes were already swollen closed.

  Sara Kate didn’t seem to think twice about the stinging bees. She plunged right into them and pulled Jim Ed out. The yellow jackets were soon all over her. She was getting stung like crazy. Yet she did not cry out in pain.

  Jim Ed stopped gasping for breath. You could see he wasn’t breathing. Sara Kate started crying, “Oh, no, Jim Ed, we can’t lose you, too.” She dropped to her knees, and while I fanned away yellow jackets with peach branch leaves, she gave Jim Ed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

  A new red Ford pickup roared right through the peach orchard. In a split second, two men that I’d never seen before leaped out, put Jim Ed in the truck, and with Sara Kate at his side, sped away. I had to try and outrun the yellow jackets.

  At the hospital, the doctors said after Sara Kate had worked to revive him, they had gotten him there just in time. It was lucky she knew CPR.

  Sara Kate had big welts all over her. She didn’t swell up like Jim Ed, though. She is not as allergic to bee stings.

  I think the people in Round Hill will talk about what she did for the rest of their lives.

  Aunt Everleen has been having migraine headaches, one right after the other, ever since Uncle Jim Ed got stung. The big problem with her headache is, she forces you to have it along with her. My aunt does not like to suffer alone. So she tells you every pain she feels, everything she sees. I not only have to feel the throbbing pain that works its way up the back of her neck, pain that moves quickly across the top of her head to the eyes; I am also forced to see the flashing lights that dance a wild fire dance on her eyeballs. I do wish she wouldn’t tell me about the people and things that sway and shimmer before her eyes like heat waves. It seems to make my eyes play tricks on me.

  It’s a good thing Sara Kate is helping her out until Uncle Jim Ed gets back. He doesn’t seem in a rush to get better. I think he enjoys going over to the Bells and watching all the baseball games on cable TV. The Bells have a satellite dish in their front yard that’s bigger than their house.

  “If you can drive a stick shift, you can drive a tractor, Miss Sara Kate,” said Gideon. He reached her a tractor key and showed her the gears. Sara Kate made only one mistake. She took the tractor out of gear when she stopped. Gideon stopped it from rolling into a gully.

  I could have shown Sara Kate how to drive the tractor. Daniel could have, too. Nobody asked us, though.

  Gideon has really put a fooling on Sara Kate. He has fooled her into paying him some money every day he’s worked. “I just need a little piece of money to tide me over until tomorrow, Miss Sara Kate,” he’d beg. Every day for a while, Gideon would complain that he didn’t have a lick of bread, lard, fatback, or something in his house. When Sara Kate gave him money, the next day he couldn’t come to work. Or, if he did, he couldn’t pick peaches.

  I knew there was trouble the morning he staggered up, tipped his cap to a stack of peach baskets, and said, “Good morning. How are you feeling this fine morning?” Gideon was hitting the bottle too hard to pick peaches.

  Jim Ed knew better than to let him have money every day. He would just let him push his mouth into that ugly, juicy spout he always made, and get as mad as he wanted to. Sara Kate didn’t know to do that.

  Poor, poor Gideon. I guess he can’t help himself. I will never forget when he was in that detox place, and Daniel and I didn’t see Trixie, his little dog, anywhere. We knew Gideon would die if he came home and found out his dog was gone. So we went everywhere, calling “here Trixie, here Trixie.” We searched even in the dark. Trixie was nowhere to be found.

  “We looked everywhere for Trixie,” we told Gideon when he came home, “but we couldn’t find her. She must have run away.” “Dogs will run off sometimes,” was all Gideon said.

  Later we found out that Gideon had sold Trixie for twenty dollars. He never said a word to us about what happened to his dog. One thing is for sure, he will never fool me again.

  The swelling around Jim Ed’s eyes is going down. You can finally see a little of his eyes peeping out through slits, like half-opened pea pods. One good thing, he can still see. Aunt Everleen took down the “Pick Your Own” sign. She is still burning up mad that it was some customer picking in the orchard who dumped the peaches on the ground where Jim Ed got stung. It was an awful thing for a person to do just because they happened upon a tree with bigger peaches. They had no right to pour out the ones they had. It made the act even worse when they happened to pick a tree that had yellow jacket nests under it.

  I believe Everleen and Sara Kate are going to become friends. Everleen has started bragging about her a little bit. My sister-in-law did such and such, she’ll say. Sara Kate takes up for her. Like with the golf thing. One day, Everleen sort of over-talked herself and led a fine lawyer to think she knew golf inside and out. Trapped, she was ashamed to admit she didn’t play. She
doesn’t even know which end of a golf club to hit the ball with. So when the handsome lawyer asked her what her handicap was, she had no idea what he was talking about. She sort of crossed her eyes and cast her what-on-earth-are-you-talking-about look. She looked down, and said real soft like, “I guess my handicap is my old arthritic left knee.” Everybody except Everleen started to laugh, but when Sara Kate hurriedly said, “Everleen has a great sense of humor, and such a sharp, keen wit,” then Everleen laughed, too.

  After Jim Ed came back to the peach shed, Gideon straightened up and has been in the peach orchard every morning. Even things at home are going good. People are starting to drop by. People other than Jim Ed and Everleen. After the yellow jacket thing, they walk over almost every evening after we close the peach shed. They sit out under the big oaks in the front yard and talk until dark.

  Gaten’s hammock is still stretched between two of the trees. Sometimes Jim Ed will rest there until it’s time to go home. It’s almost like old times.

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 1990 by Dori Sanders. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-56512-716-6