Promise Not to Tell: A Novel by Jennifer McMahon Read Free Book Online

was still living at home, helping out with the farm. Her other brothers, Roger, Myron, and Earl, all had places of their own in or near New Canaan. Earl, the oldest, was married with two kids not much younger than Del.
    Stevie and Joe kept to themselves and showed no interest in Del. When they weren’t doing chores, they were working on a GTO that they planned to race at Thunder Road. They had girlfriends—pimply, overweight girls who loved to ride in that red GTO, fixing their hair and blowing cigarette smoke through their noses while greasy wrenches and car parts rattled at their feet. They’d drive through town too fast, gunning the engine and squealing the tires at each intersection. Sometimes I would see the four of them riding or back in Del’s yard—the ugly girls sprawled out and smoking on the brown lawn while Stevie and Joe banged around under the hood.
     
     
     
    D EL RODE TO SCHOOL in the morning on Ron’s bus, but took the afternoon kindergarten bus home right after lunch along with the three other kids in the Special Ed room. I guess the school figured half a day was about all these kids could handle.
    The other three Special Ed kids were boys. Tony LaPearl had Down syndrome. Artie Paris was twelve like Del—they’d both stayed back twice. He was a big hulking kid already growing a scraggly mustache. Mike Shane was twelve also, and the tallest, skinniest boy in our school. He could not speak. No one really knew why, but there were lots of rumors. The most believable was that he’d had some kind of illness as a baby that badly scarred his vocal cords. Mike went around with a pad of paper tied with a string around his neck, communicating by notes.
    The morning after our first meeting in the field, while we stood waiting for the bus, I noticed that Del wore the same soiled cowgirl shirt. She had on a clean pair of tan corduroy bellbottoms that hung loose and were cinched above her narrow hips with a thick brown leather belt. The pants looked like hand-me-downs from one of her brothers. Pinned to her shirt was a silver metal sheriff ’s star.
    Neither of us spoke. I waited and watched, leaving it up to her to make the rules. We scuffed the dirt with our shoes and stared down at the patterns we made. I thought of the crow, the letter M on Del’s chest, covered, now, not only by the shirt, but by the silver star. Just before the bus arrived, I looked up and caught Del smiling at me and knew I had not imagined our meeting. I also knew, as I caught a glimpse of that broken edge of tooth, that I would return to the crow after school to see what might happen next.
    When Ron stopped the bus, I got on before Del, just like always, and took the first empty seat in front. I half thought she might take the seat beside me and guiltily prayed she wouldn’t. I said thank you to God when she passed me and went to the back to take a seat alone.
    “I smell rotten potatoes,” whispered one boy to another when she passed.
    “Potato Girl, Potato Girl, smells so rotten it makes your nose curl,” sang the other boy.
    Ron Mackenzie, strict as he was about behavior on the bus, never once stopped the kids from teasing Del. He just gripped the wheel tighter, working his jaw extra hard, like he was embarrassed or something.
    “Hey Del, how do spell potatoes ?” asked the first boy, looking out at the misspelled sign in her yard.
    “Retards can’t spell. Retards just smell,” said the other.
    Del just stared out the window, grinning widely, like the joke was really on them.
     
     
     
    I SAW D EL ONLY TWICE that day at school, at the same two times I saw her every day: morning recess and lunch. During morning recess I was on the monkey bars when I saw Del go to the maple tree at the edge of the playground. She was alone, as usual. She said something to herself, something out loud that must have been funny, because then she laughed. I watched with curiosity as she picked a twig off one of the lower branches and pretended