Frenchtown Summer Read online

  kept reading the newspaper.

  Sometimes I brought my father's lunch

  to the comb shop

  and the foreman, Mr. Leonard,

  allowed me to ascend the wooden stairs

  to the second floor,

  where my father worked

  at the shaking machine,

  which rained bristles down

  into celluloid shells

  that would later become hairbrushes.

  The smell of celluloid,

  sweet and acid at the same time,

  lanced my eyeballs

  and long before had penetrated

  my father's pores

  so that even after a bath

  he carried the smell of the shop with him

  like a disease

  for which there was no cure.

  He always frowned when he saw me there,

  and kept on working

  while I placed the brown bag

  with his two sandwiches,

  either baloney or spiced ham,

  and a piece of fruit,

  a pear maybe or an apple,

  on the windowstll.

  He never spoke

  (I would not have heard him, anyway,

  above the noise of the machines

  that trembled the floor

  beneath my feet)

  but nodded his thanks

  before his eyes showed me the way out.

  Sometimes my father worked

  at the bubbling vat,

  which spilled hot globs of cement

  onto the celluloid shells,

  splashing on his hands,

  blisters the size of dimes

  like evil puddles on his flesh.

  He never complained,

  sat in his kitchen chair after work

  sipping the cold beer

  my mother served him

  from the icebox,

  his shoulders sagging,

  a wan smile on his face

  as she handed him the Times

  before bustling off to the pantry

  to prepare supper.

  Somehow, the beer softened

  the harsh angles of his cheekbones

  and his eyelids often fluttered,

  almost closing,

  and he half-dozed in the smells

  of hamburg frying,

  or sometimes sausage,

  nodding,

  listening to her voice

  the way he listened to music sometimes

  on the radio,

  a half-smile on his lips,

  as if he enjoyed not only what she was saying

  but also the sound of her voice.

  I loved those moments

  just before supper,

  my father half-dozing in the chair

  basking in my mother's voice,

  and my mother

  humming sometimes

  as she peeled potatoes,

  glancing at me once in a while

  as if we shared a secret.

  I didn't know what the secret was,

  I only knew that we both loved

  my father,

  and I knew he loved my mother

  by the way he looked at her

  but I wondered if he loved

  me, too.

  Suddenly,

  my uncle Med

  did not occupy his third-row pew

  at St. Jude's nine o'clock Mass,

  did not punch the time clock

  at seven A.M. Monday at the comb shop,

  did not join the other men

  at the Happy Times after supper.

  My father and Uncle Philippe

  encountered only süenee

  when they knocked at the door

  of his tenement

  while I hung back near the stairway.

  Mr. LeBlanc, the landlord,

  let them in with his key.

  The smell oozing into the hallway

  was stronger than chocolate.

  “Don't light a match'

  Mr. LeBlanc yelled.

  “Go home,”

  my father commanded me

  over his shoulder.

  The sound of windows being thrown open

  followed me downstairs.

  Later, from the pantry,

  I heard the low voices

  from Pépèrc's kitchen.

  “No note!”

  Whispers and murmurs.

  Then Pépèrc's voice.

  If lightning had a tongue

  it would speak the way

  Pépèrc spoke

  at that moment.

  “He will not be buried

  in the Edges!”

  My uncle Med was buried

  beside young Cousin Theo

  in what my father called

  the family plot.

  “Room for ten more,”

  someone said.

  I did not cry.

  My eyes burned

  but tears would not come

  to melt the frozen wasteland

  in my chest.

  My mother and my aunts

  went to Uncle Med's tenement

  for his belongings.

  I walked behind them,

  silent as a shadow.

  In Uncle Med's bedroom,

  I took a small black box

  down from the closet shelf

  and opened it to a dazzle

  of silver and gold,

  a tangle of tie pins,

  some plain, some fancy,

  one shaped like a rifle,

  the ruby on another

  catching the afternoon sun.

  But he never

  wore a tie.

  That night,

  I dreamed about a black and yellow snake

  coiling itself around

  the old elm at St. fude's Cemetery,

  black tongue flickering

  at my feet as I climbed,

  slowly, slowly,

  away from the darting tongue

  while down below

  Uncle Med watched,

  unmoving,

  his eyes as blank

  as coins.

  My screams woke up the tenement,

  my father instantly beside me

  on the bed,

  and I cried at last

  but did not know

  for whom.

  In the wasteland

  of a dying August,

  the last days of vacation,

  as I delivered the Times

  in sun-struck streets,

  my thoughts went to the mysteries

  of the summer,

  wondering what had happened

  to Omer LeFerge

  and in what convent

  Sister Angela now taught the piano.

  On Seventh Street,

  I looked up at the piazza

  where Mrs. Cartin had stood

  like a bird about to take flight.

  Would she someday make that leap?

  I remembered what my mother said:

  “Life is sad sometimes.”

  I thought of the mysteries

  in my own family

  (Did Pépère's prayers

  perform a dark miracle

  for Uncle Jules?)

  and the things I did not want

  to think about,

  like the sins I didn't tell

  Father Balthazar

  in the confessional,

  but most of all,

  most of all,

  the spot in the backyard

  where I had buried

  Uncle Med's tie pins.

  But

  I

  did

  not

  want

  to

  think

  about

  him.

  So I delivered the newspapers,

  the heat coming off the pavement

  like steam from a kettle,

  no dogs barking,

  no car
s passing,

  piazzas shrouded

  in afternoon shadows.

  On Fifth Street,

  heading home,

  my heart as empty

  as my newspaper bag,

  I saw

  the airplane.

  First,

  a wink of color,

  orange,

  in the corner of my eye,

  at the far end of an alley

  between two three-deckers.

  I tossed my paper bag

  to the sidewalk

  and followed the flash of orange

  to a backyard,

  where I saw,

  unbelievably,

  an airplane.

  Orange, yes,

  with lightning streaks

  of white

  on the fuselage,

  two wings,

  a biplane,

  the kind of airplane

  aviators flew during the World War

  over the trenches of France and Germany,

  like the airplanes I read about

  in magazines like Wings and Aces

  at Laurier's Drug Store.

  Aviator goggles dangled from the cockpit

  as if left there a moment before

  by the pilot.

  An airplane in a French town backyard?

  Impossible!

  No room to land or take off

  in the narrow backyards

  behind the tall three-deckers.

  Mesmerized,

  I stood there for a moment,

  then left in a frenzy,

  running through the alley,

  heard the gasps of my breathing

  as I searched the streets

  for someone to tell

  of my discovery.

  At home, Raymond

  and Alyre Tournier

  tossed a ball between them,

  the black-taped ball

  thudding into their gloveless palms.

  “There's an airplane in a backyard

  on Fifth Street,”

  I announced.

  They kept throwing the ball to each other.

  “It's real—I saw it.”

  Watching the ball trace

  a rainbow arc between them.

  Desperate, I cried:

  “It's really there.

  An orange airplane.”

  My voice on the still summer air

  echoed through the neighborhood

  and a few kids emerged

  from doorways and piazzas,

  Leon Montaigne and Paul Roget

  and Henri Latour,

  among others.

  “Come on and see,” I urged.

  “Okay, okay,” Raymond said,

  striding toward me with his athlete's walk,

  swinging his shoulders.

  He never got excited about anything

  except home runs, double plays

  and stretching a double into a three-bagger.

  I led the caravan down Mechanic Street,

  the focus of all eyes.

  I had never hit a home run

  but I had discovered an airplane

  in a Frenchtown backyard.

  We turned into Fifth Street

  and they followed me through the alley

  as I looked for the flash of orange

  that suddenly wasn't there.

  Arriving,

  I saw only the abandoned garden,

  and shriveled tomato plants.

  And

  no

  airplane.

  Raymond shook his head,

  looking at me with the kind of contempt

  —or was it pity?—

  he bestowed on players

  who struck out with the bases loaded.

  Leon and Alyre and Henri straggled away,

  glancing at me as they went.

  Somebody laughed,

  maybe Leon,

  and somebody muttered words

  I refused to interpret.

  Later, I walked home alone

  in disgrace.

  That evening,

  in the gentle twilight

  of late summer,

  the families gathered on the piazzas

  and the small patches of lawn

  and talked mildly and gossiped,

  while Raymond and the others

  played ball in the street.

  The men's cigarettes

  glowed like fireflies

  in the gathering dusk

  and the smell of home-brewed beer

  spiced the air.

  I sat alone on the steps,

  the light too dim for reading,

  glad to remain twilight-hidden,

  although Alyre Tournier,

  after catching a fly ball,

  muttered, “An airplane,”

  shaking his head

  with false pity

  as he walked away.

  When darkness obscured

  the flight of the ball,

  the game broke up

  and the players strayed

  toward the piazzas

  in lazy end-of-day strides.

  A sudden stillness fell

  as if fed

  by an evening breeze.

  My father flicked his cigarette butt

  into the air.

  We watched it spiral

  like a small comet

  to the sidewalk.

  Looking off into the deepening dusk,

  he said,

  his voice clear as struck crystal:

  “Funny thing.

  I saw an airplane this morning

  on the way to the shop,

  in the backyard of three-deckers

  on Fifth Street.”

  A match flared as he lit

  another cigarette.

  “But it was gone

  when I looked again

  on the way home.”

  Smoke circled his head

  like a halo.

  He motioned to me.

  “Eugene saw it, too.”

  Raymond looked at me,

  mouth agape with astonishment,

  and Alyre frowned,

  hitching his pants.

  Kids approached,

  as if coming out of hiding places.

  In the descending night,

  I told them again and again

  about the orange airplane,

  the goggles dangling

  from the cockpit.

  And the night was sweeter

  than a cherry soda

  at the Happy Times.

  The next day,

  I waited for my father as usual

  late in the afternoon,

  standing this time

  at the banister of the piazza.

  Seeing him at last,

  I ran to greet him,

  throwing my arms around him,

  losing myself in the aroma

  of celluloid and smoke

  and burned kitchen matches.

  I looked up at him.

  He passed his hand across my head,

  rumpling my hair,

  and said:

  “I know. I know.”

  And we walked home together

  in the tender sunlight

  of a Frenchtown summer.

  Look for the riverting new novel from

  ROBERT CORMIER

  A seven-year-old girl is brutally murdered. A twelve-year-old boy named Jason was the last person to see her alive—except, of course, for the killer. Unless Jason is the killer.

  Coming soon from Delacorte Press

  ISBN: 0-385-72962-6

  Published by

  Dell Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of

  Random House Children's Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway

  New York, New York 10036

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It
was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 1999 by Robert Cormier

  Interior art copyright © 1999 by Dan Krovatin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  The trademark Laurel-Leaf Library® is registered in the U.S. Patent and

  Trademark Office.

  The trademark Dell® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  Visit m on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, far a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  eISBN: 978-0-307-55628-8

  RL:7.4

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press

  June 2001

  v3.0