Jesus Land. Julia Scheeres
bead of sweat runs down the back of my neck and I glance at my watch. It’s two o’clock, just about peak heat time, and we still have to do the squash, the beans, the carrots. An hour ago, the back door thermometer was already pushing ninety-three degrees, and that was under the eaves. The sky is covered with a low cloud quilt, the sun reduced to a white pinhole. It’s the usual, year-round Indiana sky, always a pearly glare. Sometimes the heat and humidity are so intense that the quarter-mile walk down the lane to check the mailbox seems like an epic journey through hot Jell-O.
“I need a drink,” I say, lurching up on legs bloodless and wobbly from being bent. I look at the upstairs window; the recliner’s still empty. She must be in the study, corresponding with her missionaries, scribbling churchy news onto onion paper in her loopy cursive. I peeked at some of her letters last week when she went into town for groceries; they were “I need a drink,” I say, lurching up on legs bloodless and wobbly from being bent. I look at the upstairs window; the recliner’s still empty. She must be in the study, corresponding with her missionaries, scribbling churchy news onto onion paper in her loopy cursive. I peeked at some of her letters last week when she went into town for groceries; they were tucked into unsealed envelopes destined to countries around the world.
We took a collection to renovate the narthex. Lord willing, we’ll have enough for new carpeting and new paint as well. The Grounds Committee hasn’t decided whether the best paint color would be pale blue or eggshell. . . . The Ladies Aide Society is holding a potluck next week before Vespers to welcome new church members. We will open our arms to receive them even as Jesus opens his arms to the sinners and the fallen. . . . Please join us in prayer for President Reagan as he leads the country toward The Light. We are blessed to have a Christian leader in the White House, and must support his efforts to reinstate school prayer and overturn abortion “rights.” . . . In HIS name, Mrs. Jacob W. Scheeres.
“Hey, space cadet!”
David rubs a glove over his gleaming forehead, leaving a chalky smear.
“What?”
“I said, what are you going to be in Florida?”
“I dunno,” I shrug, reaching over to the next row to pull a slender carrot from the dirt and toss it into my basket. It’s best to harvest vegetables while they’re young and sweet, Mother says. “Maybe I’ll make jewelry from shells and sell it on the beach. You?”
“Haven’t figured it out, yet. But it’d be way cool to work on one of those deep-sea fishing boats—I could put a pole in myself, and we’d eat fresh fish every night—grouper, snapper, maybe even shark!”
I scowl at him.
“You’d reek of fish guts. I’d have to hose you down with Lysol every night when you got home.”
As he contemplates this thought, frowning, I walk to the pipe jutting from the ground in the middle of the garden and twist open the faucet. After a couple of burps, the water flows into the attached green hose. I grip the end in my fist, letting the water gurgle over my hand like a fountain, and hold it up to my mouth. It’s well water, warm and weedy-tasting. It thuds into the dust at my bare feet, splattering my legs with muddy droplets.
“Want some?” I hold out my arm to David.
He stands and trudges over. When his face is a few inches from my hand, I slip my thumb over the hose tip and the water jets upward, bouncing off his nose and glasses. It’s an old trick.
“Hey!!”
He reels away and I drop the hose and hurdle rows of vegetables. Before I reach the garden’s edge, water pounds my back. I swerve to dodge the spray while David charges after me. He runs the length of the rubber hose and snaps backward like a yo-yo, falling onto the potatoes, hose still in hand. Water rains down on him, sparkling like shredded sunlight, and I flop belly-down in warm grass, laughing.
Our play is interrupted by a sharp rapping of knuckles on glass, and we look up at the house. A faint figure stands behind the upstairs window, hands on hips. Mother.
After the bone yard incident, David and I stay close to home; we’re not in a hurry to cross paths with the farmers again. We don’t discuss it, we just don’t turn right on County Road 50. We stay out of the deep country.
Jerome returned the Corolla one night while everyone was asleep—probably fearing our parents would report it stolen and sic the cops on him—and then took off again. Mother says we can’t use the car for “frivolous driving,” though, which, in her mind, is all the driving we want to do.
So we’ve spent most of these last few weeks before school playing H-O-R-S-E and P-I-G on the small basketball court next to the pole barn; hiking through the nearby woods and cornfields with Lecka, hoping to stir up pheasants or deer or box turtles; taking turns dangling a bamboo rod rigged with bologna over a fishing hole at the back of our property; playing foosball and ping-pong in the basement. Anything to relieve the boredom and unease that constantly gnaw at us.
But all we catch is junk fish in the fishing hole, slimy carp that are too small to eat. David yanks the hook from their bloody mouths to toss them back into the water as I scream at him not to hurt them. The only thing we’ve kicked up during our hikes was a dead raccoon. And it’s way too hot for sports.
Sometimes we lie on lawn chairs in the backyard in the late afternoon and watch thunderheads churn toward us. We’ll see a breeze riffle the Browns’ cornfield across the lane and lift our faces expectantly to the cool, metal-smelling air and we’ll know we’re in for a good squall. We’ll stay reclined in our chairs as the dark clouds seethe and flicker with lightning, until the cold hard raindrops pelt us, competing to see who can withstand the storm the longest before sprinting under the eaves.
But those are the exciting afternoons. Most times, it’s a devil wind riffling the Browns’ cornfield, and it blasts over us like a hair dryer, pelting us with the smell of dirt and onion grass and manure, and offering no refreshment at all. But we stubbornly remain in our lawn chairs as the overcast sky fades into deeper shades of gray and Mother finally rings the supper bell, because there’s nothing better to do.
As we watch the sky, we talk about things that would make country living easier. For David, that would be a BMX bike. He says he could build a ramp behind the garden and do all these tricks where you flip upside down and land perfectly centered on the fat rubber tires. Says he’s seen it done in magazines. Me, I’d get a horse. A golden palomino that I’d ride bareback through the fields, all the way back to town.
Sometimes we discuss Harrison.
“Do you think all the kids will be like those farm boys?” David will ask, his eyebrows creasing with worry.
“Nah, they can’t all be that ignorant,” I’ll respond. “Some of them have got to be normal.”
Usually he lets it go at that, sitting back in his lawn chair with a sigh, but sometimes he persists.
“But what if they are all like that?” David asks one afternoon as we watch the darkening sky. “Ronnie Wiersma told me they hate black people at Harrison and call them names, you know, like the ‘N’ word.”
Ronnie is a know-it-all at our church, Lafayette Christian Reformed. He went to Lafayette Christian School too, same as all the church kids do, and graduated two grades ahead of us.
“What does Ronnie know? He’s at West Side.”
“His older brother went to Harrison.”
“Yeah, but that was a long time ago, like three years.”
The subject of Harrison always puts me in a foul mood. School starts in a week, and we still don’t have any friends, or any answers to our question. What will it be like? I try to reassure David that everything will be okay.
“Those farmers were just being stupid that day,” I tell him. “We caught them off-guard is all. Now that they know who we are, they won’t bother us.”
All I can do is hope