The older one stepped down the berm a few feet toward the Becker brothers and launched a white rock that flew wild. Then another. She scurried back up and ran away.
The younger one followed her sister’s footsteps almost exactly. She had a faded blue dress and a red ribbon in her hair and a pair of scuffed brown cowboy boots. An orange in each hand. The SunBlesst girl’s baby sister, thought Nick. Looked about five.
“I am Janelle Vonn and those are my brothers,” she said.
She dropped the oranges and scrambled back up the gravel and out of sight.
3
THAT NIGHT MAX and Monika Becker loaded their four sons into the Studebaker and drove across town to the Vonns’ house. The Studebaker was a green fifty-one Champion with the big conical nose for a front end and an oddly sloping rear. They called it the Submarine. They cruised along Holt Avenue through the groves, Max erect behind the wheel and Monika’s straight yellow hair lifting in the window breeze.
Nick sat on the scratchy backseat, felt his knuckles throbbing all the way up into his ears. Still seeing double sometimes, his neck thick with pain and a big lump risen on the back of his head. Didn’t say anything to his parents about the vision trouble because he hated doctors.
David sat up front beside his mom, thinking he’d be glad to get to State, out of this stupid small-town stuff, into something more than oranges and fistfights.
Clay sat in the back, pummeling Casey Vonn again between thoughts of this Dorothy girl in his homeroom. Wished he could smoke like his dad was doing. The Vonns were shitheels.
Between Clay and Nick, young Andy sat with the pride of the new warrior, his heart beating hard and true. He had fought alongside Nick, and they had won. The world outside the windows of the Studebaker now seemed not only larger but more attainable.