Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby

Author:Ginny Rorby
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429909372
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER TEN

Every year, on the weekend in June closest to the summer solstice, the neighbors gathered at one house for a potluck. This year it was the Willises’ turn to host the party, which meant they provided the meat. Ray planned to smoke a turkey.

In preparation, Joey mowed the dry, brown weeds in their yard while Ray cleared a spot for the small bonfire at the edge of the gravel drive at a point farthest from any trees. He made a circle of plastic lawn chairs and two-foot-tall redwood rounds, then placed firewood nearby, though not the dry, clean, woodstove wood that he’d split himself. Instead, he collected and stacked cruddy wood, full of sow bugs, earwigs, and slugs. Luke helped by gathering twigs and small branches to use as kindling.

That afternoon, following the first greeting, no one made much effort to talk to Joey. She stood apart from the clutches of people chatting and watched Luke chase and be chased by the other neighborhood children. Once or twice, Joey saw him brush the back of his hand with his index finger, Sukari’s sign for CHASE ME. It meant nothing to the other children, but Joey had to blink back tears. She wanted to close her eyes, open them again, and see Sukari race past with Luke on her heels; see Charlie sitting in the late afternoon sun, throw back his head and laugh.

As soon as the sun dipped behind the trees, the air grew chilly. Someone lit the fire and people began to slide closer to its warmth, backing up to it with their hands held behind them, palms to the flames.

The tradition was that everyone who played an instrument brought it for the after-dinner sing-along. While the children roasted chocolate-and-marshmallow-stuffed banana boats, the musicians sat on the redwood rounds and everyone else settled into the lawn chairs.

It was dark by the time the band of a harmonica, a fiddle, two guitars, an accordion, and a flute struck up. The Nadeaus had brought cheese and crackers on a tray made from an old washboard. Ron Nadeau had since rinsed it clean with the garden hose. He kept a rhythm strumming it while Gregory Smith slapped out the beat on the cardboard box his parents had carried the salad bowl in. In the middle of one of the livelier tunes, Luke dragged Lyle Nadeau out to dance.

Joey laughed and drummed randomly on her thighs until she saw her mother shake her head. “You’re throwing off the beat.”

“Sorry.” Joey hunched her shoulders and jammed her hands between her knees.

Luke and Lyle went from dancing to chasing each other around the fire. When Ruth clapped her hands for them to stop, they began to dance again, doing something that resembled the twist, fists punching the space between them with each shift of their squat little bodies. The first time their fists bumped, they rolled into each other and fell to the ground, wrestling like bear cubs.

Ruth got up, pulled them apart, brushed

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