PART I - 1959
NINE DAYS IN AUGUST
Chapter 1
August 1, 1959
Twilight sounds of the other children playing kick-the-can blended with the fading "kasik-kasiks" of a thousand locusts and the incessant droning of a monstrous air conditioner futilely battling the Vicksburg heat. Under the lace canopy of her four-poster bed, eleven-year-old Kelly McCain lay still, listening, waiting, her head heavy on the damp pillow. Sweat-matted blond ponytails chafed against her neck.
Kelly opened one eye as the maddening buzz of a lone mosquito circled too close. She followed its erratic path until it landed on her forearm. Without flinching, she waited for the sting. At that precise moment, she smashed it, then, satisfied, opened her hand to reveal a blood-splattered palm, bits of legs and a mangled body. Somewhere out back, a little girl squealed at getting caught and Kelly pictured herself winning the game. She wiped the mosquito-smeared hand on her shorts and headed for the front door. It was finally time to use her new hiding place.
The previous Monday, after Old Man Everett and his wife left on a ten-day vacation trip to Pensacola, Kelly had kicked over the big empty garbage can behind their garage and crumpled up a newspaper in it. All week it lay on its side untouched and so the neighborhood children had become accustomed to its new position as they rode down the alley on their bikes.
This morning before daylight, Kelly had sneaked out her window carrying a squeeze-bottle of dishwashing detergent, a scrub brush, towel, quilt, pillow and the society pages of the Vicksburg Daily Chronicle. Quickly and quietly, she hauled the big can around to the Everetts' garden hose and cleaned the inside so that not even a rat would be interested in snooping around it. She ran water until all the suds disappeared into the thirsty earth. Then she dried inside the can and put it back in its prone position behind the garage.
The August sky was beginning to color as Kelly stashed the quilt and pillow inside the can, crumpled the Chronicle just enough to cover them, and propped the lid against the container at about a forty-five degree angle so that anyone walking by would think he could clearly see a garbage can empty of everything but a forgotten newspaper. Satisfied and tingling with anticipation, Kelly hurried home for the long day of waiting.
As usual after dinner, the game began unannounced in the vacant lot next to the McCains' big white frame house. Kelly had forced herself to wait until the younger kids had been called home for baths, then casually walked out to the front porch and sat on the railing watching the game.
"Come on and play, Kelly. What's the matter with you?" came a voice from the yard.
"Nothing."
"Well, then, come on and play."
Kelly tried to sound noncommittal. "You guys can't catch me and you can't find me. It's no fun anymore. Besides, I'm already the Grand Champion of Vicksburg."
"Says who?" from a different voice.
"Yeah, says who?" echoed another.
"Says me, Kelly McCain, the Grand Champion of Vicksburg, that's who!"
"Get on down here!" More voices. "Yeah!" and "We'll see about that."
"No girl is ever gonna be the 'Grand Champion of Anything' in Vicksburg," this last from Lefty Owens, the biggest, meanest kid in the neighborhood, who always had the final say.
"Okay,… I'll… show… you…" Kelly bragged to Lefty as she jumped off the porch to join the game, "but I'm not coming in to save everybody more than once. And there's no time limit on finding me," she announced boldly. "Whoever's 'It' has to keep looking. I don't care if it takes all night. All other rules stay the same. Agreed?"
Lefty glared at her, but said nothing. Kelly looked around at the rest of the kids, who were nervously backing away.
"Agreed?" she repeated louder.
Some of the bolder ones mumbled, "Sure."… "Yeah."… "Okay."… "Guess so."
"And then," Kelly added, "then y'all have to admit in public that I'm the Grand Champion of Vicksburg."
"Fat chance," snarled Lefty himself.
"Why don't you be 'It,' Lefty? Then you can personally make sure I won't be the Grand Champion of Vicksburg."
"I never have to be 'It,'" Lefty menacingly reminded her.
"Chicken!" Kelly sneered at him from ten feet away.
"Who's a chicken?" the huge boy asked incredulously, taking a step toward her.
"You're a chicken!" she repeated louder. "Lefty Owens is a chicken! Lef-ty O-wens is a chi-cken!"
Lefty took another step toward her and clenched his famous left fist.
"Wanna hit a girl, Lefty? Go ahead, hit me!" Kelly taunted. "I'll still be the Grand Champion and you'll still be a chicken. Besides, you cheat at every game."
Kelly was afraid she had pushed too far. Although she was two inches taller than Lefty, he outweighed her by eighty pounds. And, he was really mean. But everyone was watching her and she couldn't back down. Neither could Lefty.
"I don't cheat and I'll give you to two hundred," Lefty challenged, striding toward her, still clenching his fist.
"Forget it. I'll take fifty. I don't think you can count to two hundred."
The last insult, well directed to Lefty's lack of mathematical ability, had the desired effect. Lefty took a swing at Kelly. She sidestepped him and ran for the coffee can in the middle of the yard. In the darkness and excitement, she and another kid collided, but someone else had already kicked the can, and kids were scattering as fast as they could, hollering, "Lefty's 'It!'…Lefty's 'It!'"
Kelly had calculated that she could make it to the garbage can hide-out in less than thirty seconds, but she'd have to take the long way if anybody followed her. She looked over her shoulder and saw Lefty put the coffee can back in place, then start after her, without even counting to fifty. She ducked behind the gardenia bush and realized that wouldn't help. This was going to be a race pure and simple, so she sprinted toward the alley with Lefty about fifteen steps behind.
She turned east toward the Everetts' and noted that the garbage can was still waiting, but Lefty was keeping pace. She neared the end of the alley running as fast as she could and cut sharply to the right, being careful not to go into the street because that was against the rules. Kelly gained a step or two on Lefty at that turn and when she reached the corner, she gained another advantage by jumping the low hedge along the McCafferty's sidewalk. Then it was all-out speed as she headed up the slight incline on the westward leg of the long block. She could hear Lefty pounding his heavy tennis shoes on the sidewalk, but his short legs had to take more steps than Kelly's to cover the same distance, and it was making him madder as he went.
"When I catch you, you are gonna be sorry!" he panted. "You… are… gonna… be… sorry!"
By the second lap around the block, Lefty was getting winded and Kelly was just hitting her stride. At the next corner, she was far enough ahead in the growing darkness to cut between the houses without Lefty seeing where she went. She breathed noiselessly through her open mouth as Lefty huffed by on the sidewalk twenty-five feet away, with no idea where she was. Kelly padded quietly around the corner of the garage, her heart pounding more from the excitement than from the exercise. She listened for a few seconds to be sure no one was in the alley, then crawled into the waiting garbage can, replacing the newspaper and lid as she had planned.
Less than a minute later, Lefty hollered, "Ready or not, here I come," the official announcement that the hunt was on. All the kids realized, though, that the game was out of hand and that Lefty was going to lay into Kelly when he found her. One by one, they let Lefty find and catch them, so that before long there was a loose knot of a dozen and a half boys and girls huddled in the darkness hoping to be "saved" by the champion who would come to kick the can. When Lefty set off down the alley on another search after Kelly, she slipped out of the garbage can, ran as softly as she could in the dry grass and managed to get within a few feet of the group before being spotted.
"Move back. Gimme a clear shot at that can!" Kelly ordered. Automatically, everyone obeyed. Kelly gave the coffee can a terrific wallop just as Lefty was coming back into sight. Somehow the can flew straight and low, hitting Lefty in the shin. He fell to the ground and screamed from the pain of knowing he was being beaten by a girl.
After that, no one wanted to stay around and all Lefty heard was "gotta go" and "I think my mom's calling me." Kelly was already safe in her private cave when Lefty got up to renew the search. She knew he would take it seriously now and she knew she should have been scared, but as she heard Lefty's futile yard-by-yard search, Kelly almost laughed. Lefty would never find her. A girl like Kelly McCain wouldn't hide in a filthy stinking garbage can. No girl would.
