Blue Hole Back Home: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

distance, the haze of more mountain ridges. From the trunk-skirts of those hemlocks, the earth drops three thousand feet to a ribbon of river called the French Broad. Emerson was a Red Sox fan, and rabid—I’ve learned now in Boston that all of them are—and he liked to think of that line of hemlocks as our own Fenway Green Monster. He’d once whacked a ball through it, during a high-tension ninth inning. Sometimes on rainy days in the porch hammock, Em and Jimbo and I would make up stories about just where that ball had floated by now.
    “The ball washed ashore,” I once suggested from deep in the hammock, “near Highlands, at the dock of a house on Lake Toxaway.” Highlands and Toxaway, we’d heard, catered to tourists from outside the South, served hash browns and unsweetened tea, and, unthinkably, sold no local newspaper but only the New York Times .
    Bo, sprawled full length on the wide white planks of the porch and popping peanuts into his Coke, lifted his head. “What then, Turtlest?” In the big wicker chair, Em paused in picking out “Dueling Banjos” on his guitar, and waited for me to decide.
    “Well … the lake house belonged to … let’s see … to Bucky Dent.”
    Em spit violently to the side.
    “Remind me,” Bo asked, too innocently, “who that was.”
    “The Yankees’ shortstop,” I told him, “who hit the three-run homer last year during a tiebreaker and won the game and the American League pennant for New York. Remember? And prolonged the Curse.”
    Emerson hurled a handful of peanuts at me. “C’mon, Turtle. Bo watched the game with us. He just enjoys seeing me suffer. So go on with your story.”
    “So Bucky Dent picked up the ball,” I continued, “just to see, and it was still so hot from Em’s hit that the ball burned the man’s hands.”
    Em considered this hopefully. “How badly?”
    “So badly he fell to his knees in unspeakable pain, and in his agony, begged forgiveness for his sins, especially his playing for New York, and pledged an everlasting oath of allegiance to the Red Sox.”
    Satisfied, Em sighed and Bo, grinning, popped more peanuts into his Coke.
    Jimbo lifted his Coke in a toast. “Revenge and repentance go real nice together.”
    But that particular afternoon at the ball field, I sat on the bleachers with L. J. and Welp while Jimbo and Em played ball. I was sucking in deep the scent of the mountains, like incense maybe for people who pray. I was basking, too, in the glory—if only reflected—of having a brother and a brother’s best friend star on the team. They were mine: my Emerson, my Jimbo, and I roused myself between snow cones to make that clear, their being mine, by clapping extra and calling their names that I shortened for show—because they were mine and I could: One more, Em, one more! ’Atta boy, Bo, ’atta boy!
    Above me in the bleachers, I noticed Jimbo’s daddy. He sat there sunk deep into rolls of dark suit, there in full sun. He was sweating into his necktie, a wide, faded yellow triangular flag hanging limply, wearily, from his neck as if it were begging to be relieved of its duty. Reverend Riggs, his round face made rounder still by a balding blond head, resembled his son in nothing but the dimples. And unlike his son’s impish green glint, Reverend Riggs’ pale blue eyes above round-apple cheeks always looked eager—even desperate—to please. He waved to me tentatively. Come to think of it, Reverend Riggs always waved tentatively, as if he were asking permission to say hello.
    When I turned back to the field, Jimbo was tipping his catcher’s mask to his daddy. I wondered if Bo saw in his daddy what everyone else did: the colorlessness that defined the man—his washed-out eyes, and worn-out yellow and off-white of his skin, his ties, his hair. The way neither his flesh nor his thoughts seemed to take on a firm substance, never seemed to push back against whatever happened to poke into him.
    But Jimbo adored his daddy,