Blue Hole Back Home: A Novel by Joy Jordan-Lake Read Free Book Online Page B

because I believed it, I whispered to L. J. beside me as we watched the boys swing from the rope, “We’re a good generation past … you know. Stuff. Right?” Farsanna had already approached the water, dipping her toes in, taking her time.
    “Technically, more than one generation,” he corrected, “depending on your denotation of ‘stuff.’ Assuming you’re referring to fatalities on the Ridge. On the other hand, if you’re alluding merely to life- threatening violence or legislation significant to racial discrimination—”
    “Right. But fatalities, not so much. Lately. So, there’s no problem. Right?”
    He cut his eyes at me. “Oh sure , Turtle. Right.”
    But I wasn’t letting go of my comfort so quickly. “Times have changed, L. J. Right? Even here.” I said this with confidence I had to concoct right there on the spot.
    He grunted. “Sure, times have changed. Who’s there to lynch on the Ridge nowadays? Only a Yankee or two.”
    I knew that was a jab at my father, of course, and at Mollybird Pittman, who spent twenty years in New York, then came home—but never was quite right after that. We knew all about her not being right, with all the trouble she gave us on a regular basis as we landscaped her yard. Seemed she brought back to the Ridge the kind of attitude New Yorkers were feared for, which she delivered now from under a straw hat encircled by phony red roses. She’d inherited the hat, as well as her house and acres of gardens, from an aunt who, like Mollybird, lived out her days alone on the Ridge.
    “I’m just saying,” I said.
    L. J. turned that sneer on me. “Okay, Turtle.” It was the voice he used for his baby brother, Luke. “I’m entirely certain you’re entirely correct.”
    “Shut up, L. J.,” I told him. Because I agreed with him.
    Determined to shake off my conversation with L. J., I hit the water at a dead run and, climbing out of the water, shifted my attention to the new girl.
    “You can’t just wade in,” I said to her as I surfaced. “Even in this heat, the water’s too cold.”
    But she had already begun edging in beside our hand-shaped boulder. She nodded toward the chicken fights, which happened regularly near the north beach of the hole. “I would drown, I believe.”
    “What? Oh, them. That’s nothing—just a kind of … mating ritual here.”
    She studied them. “If you wish to join them, please, I have no—”
    “Me? Shoot, I’m not—” I could have put her mind at ease by admitting I’d never once been asked to join in. But I left it only at this: “Don’t worry about it.”
    Farsanna toe-stepped her way into the water, so cold it sometimes felt like it filleted the flesh clean off your bones. I sat on the rock, watching her closely. She never complained, or gasped even—and I had to give her credit for that. She edged in more and more, and as she submerged, I saw red bubbled up to her ribs.
    For several seconds, I thought she’d been shot. Then I realized it was only the red cotton skirt. But it shook me a little that my mind had slipped there so fast.
    And apparently, I wasn’t the only one to notice her floating red skirt: The rubble of boys at the base of the sweetgum erupted. In the sweetgum that held up the rope swing, Mort Beckwith and Buddy Buncombe stopped trying to shoulder each other off their precarious perch. They both hung to a limb with one arm and stared.
    “Hey, Turtle,” Mort thundered. He must’ve dropped down the trail just after us. He stood there, his shirt off now, his gut-flesh gleaming white, not as heavily muscled as his arms or chest, and rounded out from his waist. There was no rifle holstered from his swim trunks or crooked under his arm, but I reckon I checked anyhow. I flipped on my back, floating, examining the blue circle of heaven above my head. Maybe if I ignored Mort, he’d go away. The sun impaled itself on a hemlock above my head.
    “Hey, Turtle!” This time he had my attention—and