agents protecting the president in one impenetrable line. We weren’t allowed on the lawn, Gloria’s mother was particular and Jerry, her gardener, would take the blame if we rutted the grass. We went slowly, Jenny still limping hard on that right leg, across the flagstones to the edge of the trees and through. Gloria strode ahead, kept telling us to hurry.
The Roost and Fort weren’t our only spots. A wall encircled Gloria’s property way back into the trees. There was a break in the brick from when a beech dropped a branch two winters past. Too expensive to repair, thank you very much Gloria’s father. It was our exit. Doorway to our secret.
One step outside that wall and Rudy was Rudy again. A stopper pulled out of his back and the poison air hissed out.
‘Come on, Jenny,’ he said softly and helped her over the broken wall.
Rudy settled Jenny on the ground then held out his hand for Gloria, as if asking the lady to dance.
We sat with our backs to the outside of the wall, dried-out leaves beneath us, bright green life above us. No matter the steaming summer day, beneath the canopy our skin prickled and cooled, natural air conditioning.
‘So I’ve been thinking,’ Gloria started but Rudy held up his hand and shushed her.
‘No serious talk before a smoke. You know the rules.’
Gloria huffed but didn’t argue. Rules were rules.
Rudy took a crumpled pack of Camels from his back pocket and a matchbook from his front. He tapped out a joe and lit it up. Only one between us. They were precious, worth far more than money.
‘Took these off my old man,’ he said, took a drag and passed it to me. ‘He won’t notice. If he does, he’ll blame Perry. Big bro is always swiping off the bastard.’
I breathed in the smoke, let it fill me up and heat me from the inside. Then out, in one long delicious breath. I didn’t smoke much and Jenny never touched it. Both of us too scared Momma would smell it and show us Pa’s belt. But when I did partake, it was old man Buchanan’s Camels, lit with a proper match, not one of those gas lighters. Rudy was particular about that, which meant we were too.
I passed the butt to Gloria who took a short puff, followed by a cough. She never quite got the hang of it. We didn’t bother offering it to Jenny, she always said no.
But today, Jenny snatched the joe right out of Gloria’s hand. Took a drag. Too long, too deep. Blasts of grey smoke, one, two, cough up your lungs, then she spat. Rudy’s eyes bugged. Gloria cough-giggled. And I just stared.
‘Momma will smell it on you,’ I said.
In response, Jenny took another pull. The orange tip blazed.
‘Don’t care,’ she said, coughed some more.
The buzz was back in her bones. She shifted, tried to get comfortable on the ground. Raised her cut leg, rested it on a flat rock, then decided not and drew her knees to her chest. Rudy plucked the joe from her fingers and showed her how to hold it, how to breathe it in.
If anyone should be showing my sister how to pull on a joe, it was me but I didn’t move to take over. I was still wary of Jenny, still confused by her behaviour, felt like for the first time in our whole lives, I didn’t know my own sister.
Gloria refused another drag, tapping her foot with impatience.
Rudy noticed and, with a smile, kept the conversation away from her.
‘Heard you’re seeing the pastor tomorrow,’ he said to me.
‘Heard right.’
‘What are you going to talk about?’ he asked, ground the butt out on a rock and tucked the end in his shirt pocket. Rudy didn’t litter. He said it made the world ugly.
‘The body I guess,’ I said.
Rudy laughed. ‘Watch he don’t quote Bible at you. Did that to me once, some Sunday. He took me outside after, asked me where my old man was. I said he was working but you know that’s a lie.’
Nobody quite knew what Rudy’s dad did, one job one winter, another through the summer, selling, buying, this and that. Can’t quite put your finger on it. Ask around Larson what Bung-Eye Buchanan was up to and they’d walk the other way. One of those Town Truths everybody knew, like the secret of the Three Points.
‘Pastor Jacobs took me round the side of the church, away from people, then squatted down beside me like he was readying a shit. He asked me if I knew where my dad was this Sunday. When I said no, Jacobs, he said,’ Rudy shuffled, raised up his hands, took on the pastor’s mannerisms, ‘he said, “Rudy, one day you’ll tell me the truth. The more you lie, the longer the devil’s roots grow inside you. Proverbs teaches us that a false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish.”’
Rudy laughed, Jenny said the pastor was a creep. I bit my tongue.
‘I won’t forget that,’ Rudy said, ‘long as I live. Every time he sees me he asks about my old man, he’s got some kind of obsession with him,’ another laugh. An almost beautiful sound but for its sour edge, a strawberry picked too early.
‘He asks after your dad too,’ he said to Gloria and she sighed, arms crossed over her chest.
‘Maybe he’s got a thing for old Wakefield,’ I teased, ‘wants to hold hands and kiss him.’
Rudy made smooching sounds and Gloria punched him in the arm, called us both gross.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, ‘must be Mrs Wakefield. That red dress she had on at the parade raised a few eyebrows.’
Jenny laughed; it sounded hot and strained from first-time smoke. ‘Not just eyebrows. Gloria’s mom walking down Main Street in those dresses of hers raises a whole lot else, especially with Mayor Wills.’ She wolf-whistled and grinned wide.
‘That’s the least of it going round town about dear Mother,’ Gloria said with another sigh.
‘Your mom’s got more lipsticks than a New York tranny, and the jugs to match.’ Rudy slapped his knee and filled the forest with laughter. Birds fled their perches and I waited for Gloria to skin the boy alive.
‘You’re a jerk, Rudy Buchanan, you know that?’ she said.
‘But you love me still.’ He puckered up and planted a fat kiss on her cheek. A red blush spread over them both.
‘I hereby declare it, Gloria’s got half my heart,’ then he jumped up and grabbed Jenny’s hand, kissed it. ‘Jenny has the other half and Johnny has my whole butt!’
Then he pulled his shorts down, showed off his backside. We all screamed and fell about laughing.
Rudy the charmer. Rudy the handsome prince. Rudy had more hearts carved into trees around Larson than anyone, at least that’s what he said. But it was never a brag. He could say, I’m the best-looking guy in three counties, and you’d nod along.
There weren’t any girls in Larson carving a heart around my name.
‘Enough bullshit, you guys.
