Two days passed, and still Charlie hadn't recovered her customary high spirits. She was quieter than usual, and often seemed lost in her
own thoughts. Sometimes, Scott noticed, she bit at her lip nervously, without seeming to realize it, while in those far away thoughts.
He and Johnny were digging fence post holes one morning, and the California heat, even this early, had prompted Johnny to shed his
shirt. And, though Scott had not yet done the same, his own shirt had come untucked from his pants, and he could feel the sweat
running down his back.
It was Johnny's turn to hold the post, while Scott used the hand auger to deepen the hole.
Johnny, who had been talking for the last quarter of an hour about Charlie, and the change in her demeanor, was saying, "I just
think somebody ought to be findin' out what's troubling her, that's all."
"I asked her," Scott said. "She didn't want to talk about it."
"Well, don't you figure that you might ought to ask her again?" Johnny insisted.
Scott paused in his tooth-jarring duty to give his younger brother a telling glance. "What do you suggest that I do?" he asked. "Turn her
upside down and try to shake whatever it is, out of her?"
"Sabelotodo," Johnny muttered.
Scott, whose understanding of all words Spanish was rudimentary, knew enough to know that whatever Johnny had said, was not likely
to be complimentary.
Therefore, he felt confident enough to throw it back. "Same as you, then," he said.
A look between, and then they both grinned at one another.
"You don't even know what it means," Johnny said. "Here. Let's trade."
They switched spots, and as Johnny began to twist the hand auger, Scott said, "I've been intending to talk to her again about it."
"Or," he said, in sudden suggestion, "You could give it a whirl. Try talking to her."
Johnny paused, and wiped his arm over his forehead. "Alright. I will."
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After lunch, as they were scooting up their chairs to the table, Johnny caught Charlie, his hand looped thru the strap
of her overalls.
"How about you and me do some fishin'?" he asked her.
At first there was a sparkle in her eyes, and then it dulled. "I've never been," she said. "I wouldn't know how."
"Well, that's why I'll come along. To teach ya."
"Okay," Charlie said.
A short while later, they were walking to the creek, armed with fishing poles and a bucket for the worms.
Once on the creek bank, Johnny showed Charlie how to roll back the logs, and find the big worms underneath.
"Are there always that many?" she asked him.
"If it's been dry, then they like to be underneath there," he explained.
"Look at the size of this one, Johnny!" Charlie said, holding up one of impressive length.
"Uh huh," he said, and grinned at her. "If you get that excited about a big old worm, just wait until you catch a fish."
Once they'd found a number of worms, Johnny demonstrated how to put them on the hook.
"Want to try?" he asked. "Or do ya want me to do it for you?"
"I'll do it," Charlie said, with determination, and Johnny watched as she fumbled, and then finally succeeded in baiting her
own hook.
When they'd put their poles in the water, Johnny leaned back in the grass. "Now we sit. And we wait," he told her.
"Doesn't it get tiresome, though?" the child asked him. "Just sitting and waiting?"
"You're thinkin' of it the wrong way," Johnny told her. "Think of it more as, a chance to just sit in the quiet, and watch
nature goin' on all around you." He pointed across to the other side of the creek. "Look over there," he said.
Charlie looked across at the rabbits frolicking there, and then up at the squirrels in the tree overhead.
"You can listen to all the sounds the birds make," he went on. "People generally think of birds makin' just a chirping sound. But
different birds make all sorts of different sounds. You just have to listen."
After a few minutes of silence, Johnny said, "And, too, I've always found it to be a time to just be still, and get things
straight in my mind."
Charlie brought her knees up to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her knees. She gave Johnny a side-long glance.
"Sometimes that's hard," she said, sounding tentative. "Getting things straight in your mind."
"Sometimes it is," he agreed easily.
After a few more minutes of quiet, Charlie said, "What makes a person love another person?"
Johnny blew out a breath. "That's a complicated question, right there."
Charlie waited, watching him, and hugging her knees tighter to her chest.
"When a baby's born, it's just natural for the parents to love him. He's innocent, and he needs them. They get to watch him grow, and
their feelin's are all wrapped up with that."
"What if it's not a baby, though?" she asked.
"Well, sometimes when folks meet, they find out that they like things about one another. And then, the more time they spend together,
the liking can turn to love."
"So you have to like somebody first, in order to love them later?" she asked, looking at him earnestly.
Thinking that he was ill-equipped to answer properly, Johnny hesitated, hoping he said the right thing.
"Well, not always. Like, for instance, the baby we were talkin' about. The parents just naturally love him."
"What about besides the baby?" she asked.
"In my own experience, it's a lot easier to like somebody first. Before you love 'em."
"Like what?" Charlie asked.
"Like how Scott and I met. You know the story, right?"
"Yes. You didn't meet until you were all grown up. You didn't know about each other," Charlie said.
"Right." Johnny pulled a blade of grass, tearing it into strips as he talked. "So we didn't care too much for each other at first. Then,
we spent time together, and helped each other out, and that grew to liking."
"And then that grew to love. Right?" she asked.
"Yeah. That's right."
"And now, you're really glad you have each other, aren't you?" she asked, sounding forlorn.
"Really glad," he agreed, wondering what was going on inside Charlie's mind.
There was a tug on her fishing line, and Johnny coached her thru holding the pole, but not jerking it, until she'd pulled out
a fish.
"He's a nice sized one," Johnny encouraged her.
"Big enough to keep?" she asked, watching as he took the fish off the hook, and put it back into the edge of the water,
on another string.
"Sure, big enough to keep. We'll have him for supper tonight," he assured her.
When her hook was baited with another worm, and back in the water, they were silent for a few minutes.
"I don't love Katherine," Charlie said, eventually. "I don't even like her much. Does that make me a bad person?"
Johnny hesitated, searching for the right words. "No. I don't think it does."
"I know she doesn't like me, or love me either," Charlie went on.
"Well, sometimes folks don't take to one another, I reckon," he said. "Love's not somethin' that can be forced. It has to come
on its own."
"I love you, though," Charlie said, sounding thoughtful, and looking at him. "I do."
Johnny felt his heart swell in feeling. "I love you, too, pequeno. An awful lot."
"And I love Scott. And Murdoch, and Teresa, and Maria. And I sort of love Jelly, too. A little bit. I guess Jelly and I are still in that 'liking' part
of it right now."
"Nothin' wrong with that," Johnny said.
"So what can make a person stop loving another person?" she asked then.
"Generally, I don't think people stop lovin' each other."
"But sometimes? They do?" she persisted.
"Sometimes, I guess they do."
"But like why? What's bad enough to make somebody stop loving you?" she asked, earnestly.
Johnny felt a change in the direction of the conversation. Something seemed off. He took his instinct that she was talking
about herself, and went with it.
"With adults, that might happen. If they find out that they don't care much for each other any longer. But, with a kid, well,
that wouldn't happen."
"Really?" Charlie asked him, and he heard the hope in her tone.
"Really."
He gave her a long look and said, "I'm one hundred percent positive."
"Oh," Charlie said, and looked back out towards the creek, hugging her knees to her chest again.
Johnny laid back on the creek bank a little, and pulled at another blade of grass.
"You're talkin' about yourself, aren't you?" he asked.
Charlie looked at him, in surprise at his correct guess, and then away again. She shrugged in answer.
"Let's just say that you are. Talkin' about yourself, I mean," he said. "There's nothin', not anything at all, that would
make any one of us stop caring about you."
"I think maybe so," she said softly, so softly that Johnny could barely catch the words.
"No, Charlie," he said firmly.
Charlie turned to face him, resting her cheek on her knee. "But I know how Scott feels about things. He does things right, and
he expects other people to do the same."
"He does," Johnny agreed.
"And, if I was to do something wrong, really wrong, against him, well, he might not love me anymore."
Johnny reached out and gathered the little girl to his chest. "That's the biggest load of nonsense I've ever heard," he said,
against the top of her head.
"You think so?" she asked, looking up at him.
"I know so. Don't even think it again."
Charlie leaned back a little, out of the crook of his arm, and reached into the pocket of her overalls, handing Johnny a smudged
envelope.
Johnny took it, looking at the back of it first. It might have started out white, but it was smudged, and bent from being folded. It hadn't been
opened. He turned it over, and saw the front, addressed to his brother. He smoothed the ridges on it, and looked at Charlie, a brow raised in question.
"I'm listening," he said, trying to sound calm.
So Charlie told him, in halting stops and starts, how she'd come to have the letter in her possession, and why.
"How can you be so certain it's from your aunt?" he asked.
"I know it is. She writes with her left hand, and her letters are all loopy like that."
"You don't know that's what it says," he pointed out. "That it's about you goin' back to Stockton. It might not be."
"What else would it be?" she asked him, looking hopeful again.
Johnny realized his mistake. "I don't know. It could be any number of things. But even if it is about you goin' back, that
doesn't make this right. You keeping it this way. It's wrong, Charlie. You know that already, don't you?"
Charlie hung her head, and nodded.
"You need to give it to Scott, right away," he said, and held it back out to her.
Charlie looked at the envelope in his hand, and then at his face, and didn't reach out to take it from him.
"Will you tell him?" she asked, though he could tell that she already knew what his answer would be.
"No. It's your responsibility."
At the anguish on her little face, Johnny, even though he knew that she'd done serious wrong, felt a pang of sympathy for
the kid.
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