Summer's End Read online

  “Happy birthday to me.”

  I had not yet forgiven Collin for ruining my birthday, but I had begun to realize that if I were facing something I really didn’t want to do, I would rather have Mom arguing for me than Daddy.

  “Collin still has a chance,” Mom said. “Boys who come home unable to dress themselves or walk the dog don’t have another chance. Their parents can be feeding a grown man like a baby and taking him to the bathroom, and wondering who will do that for him when they’re too old, or have died. Is that what you want for us?”

  Daddy held up a piece of mail. “This conversation isn’t about what we want. He’s supposed to show up for duty.”

  Mom looked shaken. “His draft notice?”

  “It’s time for Collin to grow up and be a man,” Daddy said, standing up to leave the table.

  “I want him to live long enough to be one,” Mom said, dropping her fork on the plate.

  I was the only one left at the table after that.

  The candles had not been lit.

  Happy birthday to me.

  OTHER BOOKS BY AUDREY COULOUMBIS

  Getting Near to Baby

  Say Yes

  Summer’s

  End

  AUDREY COULOUMBIS

  Speak

  An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Speak

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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  (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005

  Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Copyright © Audrey Couloumbis, 2005

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Couloumbis, Audrey. Summer’s end / Audrey Couloumbis.

  p. cm. Summary: Three teenaged cousins worry about their uncle who is missing in

  Vietnam, their brothers—the one who was drafted and the two

  who are dodging the draft, and the effects of their absence on the four

  generations gathered at the family farm in the summer of 1965.

  1. Vietnamese Conflict, 1961–1975—Juvenile fiction. [1. Vietnamese Conflict,

  1961–1975—Fiction. 2. Draft resisters—Fiction. 3. Farm life—Fiction.

  4. Family life—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C8305 Su 2005 [Fic]—dc22 2004058655

  ISBN: 978-1-101-56346-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that

  it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise

  circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover

  other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any

  responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  We each owe one life,

  but there are many who pay a higher price.

  To mothers and fathers everywhere

  in the hope that history will not forever repeat itself.

  Contents

  1 Some Old Busybody

  2 With No Warning

  3 All a Matter of Opinion

  4 Split Down the Middle

  5 Sorry Won’t Help

  6 Supper Table Blues

  7 Small Mysteries

  8 Family Secrets

  9 A Bitter Taste

  10 From Bad to Worse

  11 Get Me a Suitcase

  12 Not Talking to You

  13 On the Run

  14 Reaching the Border

  15 Just Us Chickens

  16 Our Brothers’ Shadows

  17 Truce

  18 You Can Run

  19 But You Can’t Hide

  20 A Little Road Trip

  21 The Truth about Bobby Buford

  22 Baby Powder

  23 Hopes and Dreams

  24 Take It Back

  25 Your Turn

  26 In the Blink of an Eye

  27 Outcasts

  28 Love Apples

  29 Into the Light of Day

  30 A Reminder

  31 Heart to Heart

  32 Head to Head

  33 Forever Falling

  34 Family Reunion

  35 A Broken Heart

  36 Early Morning Chill

  37 The Right Feeling

  38 Happy Birthday to Me

  1 SOME OLD BUSYBODY

  The day before my thirteenth birthday, my big brother, Collin, went to one of those hippie sit-ins. Where he and some likewise stupid boys torched their draft cards.

  That draft card was pretty much Collin’s invitation to join the army. He wasn’t supposed to turn the invitation down, much less burn it. The way we found out, some old busybody called to tell Daddy he ought to truck on over there to the junior college and skin Collin’s sorry tail.

  Told Daddy Collin was going to get himself arrested in a hot minute. Yelled so loud, Daddy couldn’t hold the phone to his ear. Everything she said carried real well.

  Daddy slammed down the phone. “I’ve got to see for myself what’s going on out there,” he said.

  “I’ll go with you, Daddy.” I peeled my sweaty self off the couch and brushed away fuzzy bits of tweed that were stuck to my legs.

  “No, Grace,” he said, already on his way out of the house. “You stay here.”

  The screen door swung back with a squeal of the spring. I caught it and stepped out onto the porch, feeling left out. It used to be Daddy took me with him everywhere. Lately, he was always mad about something.

  Collin’s dog, a big white Lab, was hot on Daddy’s heels as he crossed the yard, trying to lick his hand. Daddy didn’t want to play. He yelled, “Call this dog back to you.”

  I made a halfhearted effort. “Caboose.”

  Daddy aimed a kick at the bright spot of lime green on the truck’s rear gate, where Mom once stuck a peace sign. Daddy had scratched off as much of it as he could. He turned around and pointed his finger at me. “Call off your party too.”

  “Noooo,” I said. I stamped my foot. If this wasn’t just typical. Collin got his party, and then he goes and ruins mine. He couldn’t pick a better time for this? It’s not like anybody had ever made a secret of the fact that boys get drafted.

  Daddy got in the truck and pointed his finger at me again. The Finger of Doom, my friend Judy called it. She could afford to make jokes. It never got pointed at her
. She never got punished for something Collin did.

  Daddy drove off with a squeal of tires, the dog running hard behind the truck. Like the dog, I was not giving up that easily. I let the screen door bang shut behind me and went through the house to tell Mom.

  It took me three weeks of begging to get her okay for this party. She kept telling me I was too old for a birthday party. What was she trying to say? Just because this was my only birthday party since I was six years old did not mean I had outgrown them.

  Practically the whole twelfth grade came to our house for Collin’s graduation party. I only got to invite half my class, but my birthday party could be just as good. If I got any cooperation at all.

  It was a good thing a party with boys didn’t need silly party favors, only a dance floor and plenty of soda pop. We still had the dance floor Daddy built, standing on its edge in the garage. But I needed music. I had to get permission to use my own money.

  “Could we talk about my party?” I would ask at suppertime.

  “I’d like to buy some new records.”

  “I thought you bought new records last week,” Daddy said.

  “I need to have the latest ones for my party.”

  “You made up your own mind how much money you wanted to set aside for saving, didn’t you?” Daddy said. He was right, but in the first rush of enthusiasm, I had been too strict with myself.

  “Maybe you could ask some of your friends what they have,” Mom said, knowing I didn’t have any more spending money. She’d told me I had to get Daddy’s okay to use my savings. “Borrow some records for one day,” she said. “That’s what Collin did.”

  “Collin’s girlfriend has every record the minute it comes out,” I said. “He didn’t have to borrow—Kerrie simply put herself in charge of the music.”

  “The boys aren’t going to dance at this party anyway,” Daddy said then. If his voice could write on stone, that line would have been added to the Ten Commandments. “Boys your age are too shy of girls.”

  “Daddy.”

  He pointed that finger at me. “You are way too young to be giving that kind of party.”

  That was how the birthday talks went. First Mom told me I was too old for a birthday party, then Daddy told me I was too young to dance with boy. There was not one person in the world who cared if I ever had a fun time.

  “Could I be excused?” I’d say. “I have to see if anybody else has some new records.” Pardon me while I humiliated myself, calling around and borrowing things.

  That was the begging. There was a bargain too. Mom said I had to vacuum the whole house the day before and the day after the party. I’d do the vacuuming and she’d make me a cake.

  Collin did not have to beg or bargain or borrow for his party. He didn’t have to do anything but mow the lawn, which was his job anyway. He didn’t have to help with cleanup either. I know, because I did.

  But we made a deal, Mom and me. I had already done the before. I had vacuumed the entire house, plus cleaned the bathroom. She threw the bathroom in at the last minute. That birthday party was all set—I couldn’t call it off.

  I found Mom in the little shed where she worked, painting roses on this old buffet. She was leaning in close, getting paint in her hair as she concentrated on some small detail. Right up till then I’d hoped she’d see my side of things. But the minute I saw her, I knew it wouldn’t happen that way at all. This thing with Collin was too big.

  “Grace, where did your daddy go?” she asked me.

  “Somebody called. They said Collin burned his draft card.”

  “Oh, no.” Mom sat back. She threw her paintbrush down on her worktable, saying, “I hope your daddy can bring him on home.”

  I asked, “Do you think Collin will get arrested?” Because burning draft cards is against the law. I knew this because Daddy and Collin had completely destroyed a Sunday afternoon arguing about it being a form of free speech.

  “Don’t say it,” Mom said, pushing her hair away from her face. “Don’t even think about it.”

  I did think about it. Things had not been right around here since Collin started acting up. He let his hair grow to his shoulders. Painted peace signs on his jeans. He wanted to go to sit-ins and such over at the junior college with our cousin Thatcher.

  “Not on your life,” Daddy had said the first time Collin asked.

  “My life,” Collin said. “Exactly.”

  That was how they’d been talking to each other lately, in very few words.

  “It was just a sit-in,” Mom said in a bewildered way.

  I knew what she meant. Collin went to a sit-in last week and nothing like this happened.

  She asked, “Do you know who it was that called?”

  “I think it was Mrs. Miller from the drugstore.”

  There was nothing going on that that woman didn’t make it her business to know about. If we held an election to throw somebody out of town, Mrs. Miller would win hands down.

  2 WITH NO WARNING

  I’d seen sit-ins on TV lots of times. Definition of a sit-in: lots of kids my brother’s age, sitting around on lawns like they were at a picnic. Standing around holding signs they’d made themselves. Smiling into the camera and holding up two fingers in a V that meant “peace.”

  It looked like somebody got a bunch of kids together to do a play but forgot to give them any lines. They had to make up their own. They made their costumes out of old clothes with patches, like Halloween tramps.

  Then some college kids in Ohio got shot for having a sit-in. I didn’t know such a thing could happen. We were all four of us sitting in the living room during the news report, the smell of lilacs coming in the open windows. I waited for a clue—how were we supposed to act? But no one said anything.

  I said, “I thought sit-ins were commercials for higher education.” I had used those words, higher education, the way my teachers used them.

  Mom and Daddy went on staring at the TV. Collin looked at me the way he had been looking at me just lately—like I’d said something stupid.

  Because of that look, I felt stupid. My face burned with embarrassment.

  He said, “Those people are protesting the war in Vietnam.”

  “Being a big brother goes to your head sometimes, doesn’t it?” I said. “You get to believing you always knew things like that.”

  “It must be nice,” he said, “when you know people are dying and it doesn’t have to matter.”

  Which was pure meanness. I felt that remark right in my heart.

  Daddy got up and turned off the TV. He said, “We’re just one big happy family around here.”

  “You can’t mean to ignore what happened to those kids at Kent State,” Collin had said to Daddy then. Collin looked at Mom and said, “Don’t you see how wrong this is?”

  Mom was still staring at the dark TV. Mom stared this way whenever she had to make up her mind about something. I had never gotten the feeling this meant she was thinking, so much as she was waiting. We’d all been doing a lot of waiting.

  The month before this, Uncle Sawyer, who was in Vietnam, had gone down in a helicopter in enemy territory. The army called this “missing in action.” Their lingo for lost, just plain lost and nobody knew where.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, my cousin Dolly’s brother, Willie, had been shipped over there back when there was snow on the ground. Now we had lilacs in bloom, and no one had even heard of the place he’d been sent.

  “What’s wrong with college kids going to war?” Daddy said when Mom didn’t answer Collin. “If there’s no draft, only poor kids and farm boys will ever go.”

  “What’s wrong is people are dying,” Collin said. “Kids are getting shot right here at home.”

  “They aren’t kids anymore,” Daddy said.

  “Then why can’t they vote?” Collin asked. “They never even had a say in this. If they aren’t kids anymore, then why should they have to act like they’re being told it’s bedtime, go to their rooms?”
r />   Daddy told Collin to go to his room.

  Collin left the house and didn’t come back till after the late news. But before he left, I could see it all over him that he wanted to protest the war too. Only Daddy wouldn’t let him.

  After that day, it was Kent State this and Kent State that. People talked about it everyplace we went—to school, to church, to the post office.

  Then it happened again in Mississippi. College kids got shot at a sit-in.

  There was another big blowup at our house. When the smoke cleared, Mom had made up her mind. She said Collin’s own daddy had died in the Korean War, she thought he had the right to say whatever he wanted to about this one.

  She told Collin he could go over to the junior college to hold up a sign.

  I was amazed. She didn’t want him to go to war in case he got killed, but she would let him go to a sit-in? Hadn’t she just seen how kids got shot for doing that?

  Which was pretty much what Daddy had to say about the matter. “It’s too dangerous now. Don’t rock the boat—that’s the lesson we ought to be learning here,” he said.

  Mom’s face flushed, the way it did when she was mad. But she looked away from Daddy. Instead of loud and angry, her voice sounded small, helpless. “I don’t like the idea any better than you do,” she told him, “but I can’t say no to him over this.”

  “I’ll say no to him,” Daddy said.

  “No, you won’t,” Mom said, and her voice didn’t sound helpless anymore.

  So you could say that even before Collin’s little bonfire, we pretty much had a fight in every room. There was no time when everybody agreed about one thing except maybe what was on our dinner plates.

  Mom and I waited on the front porch swing. When Daddy got back from the junior college, he pulled into the driveway with a scratch of gravel. I saw right away he’d come home alone. The tops of the trees swayed as if slow music played there, and the tiny hairs on my forearms lifted to the same rhythm.

  “Wick?” Mom said in a high-pitched voice, one that I knew very well. When I was nine, I got my fingers caught in the mixer. I had to get stitches. Mom talked to me in that voice all the way to the hospital.