“Not even one?”
“No. Not even one.”
Luckily, they were all white. If one went missing, it wouldn’t matter as much if he didn’t know it personally.
Mrs. Herkner’s letters still came every few days, but Fritz didn’t write back more than once a week. Sometimes he went longer than that and Mama would get a letter from Hedda. “Time to write a letter to your mother, Fritz.”
Hildemara envied Fritz his doting mother. She knew Mama would never miss her so much. She kept asking what Hildemara wanted to do with her life, as though she couldn’t wait for Hildie to grow up and leave home.
By the time school ended, Fritz had more than settled in. He’d started infecting Bernie with new ideas gleaned from the books he read. “Can we build a tree house, Papa? one like in
Mama didn’t think much of the idea. “Papa has enough to do. If anyone builds anything, it’s going to be you boys.”
Papa didn’t trust them with good lumber. “They’d just waste it.” He told Bernie and Fritz to draw up the plans. He’d do the measuring and marking; they could do the sawing. By the end of the first day of hard work, they came in with palms looking like raw meat and broad grins on their faces.
“We need a trapdoor to keep enemies out.”
Papa joined in the fun of building, adding a second smaller, higher platform as a watchtower with a ladder and trapdoor. He built a bench around the inside wall of the large platform ten feet above ground. “So you boys won’t fall asleep and roll off. We can’t have you breaking your necks.”
Tony Reboli, Wallie Engles, and Eddie Rinckel came out to help. Hildemara sat on the back steps watching them. They looked like a bunch of monkeys climbing around in the big bay tree. She wished she could be part of the fun, too, but Bernie told her, “No girls allowed.” Clotilde didn’t care. She was too busy cutting out a new dress and learning how to use Mama’s sewing machine. And Rikka liked to stay inside the house, sitting at the kitchen table drawing pictures and adding Crayola color. Hildemara wished Elizabeth could come over and play, but her one friend had gone to Merced to spend the summer with cousins.
“Abrecan Macy sold his place.” Mama told Papa over dinner. “Another bachelor, I guess. He’s from back east. Abrecan doesn’t know anything about him other than he had enough to take over the place. He didn’t say what the man plans to do with it.”
“It’s his business, isn’t it?”
“His land butts up against ours. We ought to know something about him. Seems odd, doesn’t it? Come all the way out here to buy a place and not have any plans for it. His name is Kimball. Abrecan couldn’t remember his first name.”
Mama took the new neighbor a loaf of fresh cinnamon raisin bread. “He’s not very friendly. He took the bread and closed the door in my face.”
“Maybe he wants to be left alone.”
“I didn’t like his eyes.”
July turned hot, melting the macadam. The boys dared one another to stand in the hot black tar to see how long they could bear boiling the bottoms of their feet. After a few weeks of running around barefoot, it wasn’t a challenge anymore, and Fritz invented a new game of daring: standing on a red ant hill, while someone stood by with a hose. Fritz barely lasted ten seconds and had ant bites up to his ankles. Eddie, Tony, and Wallie did better, but no one did as well as Bernie, determined to win every game he ever played. Gritting his teeth against the painful bites, he stood until the ants bit their way up his thigh before jumping off the mound and yelling for Eddie to blast him with the hose. A few tenacious survivors managed to crawl into his underpants. Bernie started screaming and hopping around. Mama came running out the front door. Bernie finally grabbed the hose from Eddie and took care of business himself while Mama stood on the porch, hands on her hips, laughing. “Serves you right for being such a fool!”
Hildemara followed the boys to the irrigation ditch, where they swam. Bernie had taught Fritz to swim. She wanted to learn, too. “Just get in!” Bernie yelled at her. “Move your arms and kick your feet and stay away from us. We don’t want any stupid girls around!” Hildemara slid into the water cautiously. It felt wonderfully cool in the heat of the day. When she touched the bottom, slime covered her feet and slithery weeds encircled her ankles like snakes in the slow current. She treaded carefully along the side, arms in the air. Something big and dark moved behind the bamboo stand on the other side of the ditch, startling her. When she called out and pointed, Bernie made fun of her again.
“Oooooh, Hildie see a bogeyman!” The other boys joined in. “Come on!” With his long legs, Bernie climbed easily out of the ditch. “Let’s go over to the Grand Junction. The water’s deeper there. This ditch is for babies!” Grand Junction was the big cement irrigation ditch that spilled water into the smaller ones running between the farms a quarter mile from theirs.
“Bernie! Wait!”
“No girls allowed!” Bernie yelled over his shoulder as he took off along the ditch, the others racing after him.
Hildemara kept wading carefully, trying to build her confidence. She saw movement behind the stalks of bamboo again, and she climbed quickly out of the water. Heart pounding, she looked across the irrigation ditch and tried to see what stood there. Nothing moved. The beads of water dried quickly on her skin. She could hear Bernie and the boys laughing and shouting at one another farther down the ditch. Their voices drifted as the distance widened. She wasn’t ready to try anything deeper than this ditch, and the boys wouldn’t welcome her anyway.
Still feeling uneasy, Hildemara sat on the edge of the ditch and put her feet in the water. Her skin prickled with the sensation of being watched, but nothing moved. Bernie and the others were across the road by now. She couldn’t hear the boys anymore. It was so quiet.
The sun baked her shoulders and back. Her clothes dried quickly. Her legs burned in the heat. She slipped carefully back into the water, cold after the heat, and lowered herself until it lapped up around her neck. She moved her arms back and forth just under the surface. Gathering her nerve, she lifted her feet and promptly slipped beneath the surface. She stood quickly, sputtering and wiping the water from her eyes.
“Careful there. You could drown.”
Heart lurching, she looked up at a man standing on the bank. He looked bigger than Papa above her, but didn’t wear coveralls. He looked like Mr. Hardesty, who worked behind the counter at the Murietta General Store.
“You shouldn’t swim by yourself. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m all right.”
The man shook his head slowly. His smile taunted her, as though catching her in a lie. “You don’t know how to swim.”
“I’m learning.”
“Those boys left you all alone. That wasn’t nice.”
He spoke quietly, his voice deep. Her skin crawled at the sound. He had an accent, not like Papa’s or the Greeks or Swedes or anyone she knew. He didn’t take his eyes from her. The water seemed to grow colder around her. Shivering, she hugged herself and took a step toward the side of the ditch.
“Careful! Snapping turtles can bite off your toes.”
“Snapping turtles?” She looked down at the murky water. She couldn’t see to the bottom.
“They stay on the bottom and open their mouths wide. They wiggle their tongue to attract fish. One swims close and
Hildie’s heart pounded. Bernie hadn’t said anything about snapping turtles or fish. Would he swim in this canal if he knew about them? The bank seemed so far away, closer on the man’s side. He hunkered, extending his hand.
