The Secret of Loblolly Creek

Chapter Five

For once, Dylan was glad to see rain.  It gave him a good excuse not to go home.

When the boys had first set out there were only a few clouds in the sky, none of them dark or threatening.  There was still plenty of sunshine when they arrived at Scott’s trailer park.  But shortly after they had gone inside, the weather began to change.

Right now it was pouring.

Dylan and Scott were in the living room of the trailer:  Scott was flopped across the couch, watching television; Dylan was calling home.

 “Hey, Dad,” Dylan said into the receiver.  “It’s me.  Listen, could you tell Mom that I’m over at Scott’s house?  No, I managed to get here before the rain started, but it’s coming down pretty heavy right now.  I figured I would stay until it let up.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Just let her know for me, will you?  I don’t want her to try to file a Missing Persons Report or anything.”

From the sofa Scott called out, “I think you have to wait forty-eight hours or something before you can do that.”

Dylan dismissed his comment with an irritable wave.  “What?  No, Scott just said something.  Anyway, will you tell her?  Okay, thanks.  I’ll talk to you later.”

He hung up, sat down in the beaten-up recliner next to the couch.  The rain was coming down hard, and sometimes a powerful gust of wind would cause the trailer to sway.  Scott could tell Dylan was uncomfortable.  He said to Dylan, “You don’t like our trailer much, do you?”

“It’s fine.”

“You can be honest,” Scott said.  “I hate it.  I just wish my Mom had a better job.  Then we wouldn’t have to live in this sardine can.”

“It’s cozy.”

“Want to trade your house for it?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

No more was said.  Dylan was glad.  This conversation, though brief, had made him uncomfortable.  And it wasn’t the first time they’d had a discussion along such lines.

Dylan felt sorry for Scott.  His mother, Anne, worked as a cashier at an Exxon station near the Interstate, and barely made enough to support the two of them.  The child support payments from Scott’s father, to whom she had been married less than eighteen months, arrived only sporadically.  Anne was very young, Dylan noted, to have a thirteen-year-old son.

But what a good son she had.  He would have felt uncomfortable admitting it, but Dylan thought well of Scott, even looked up to him in some ways.  The boy worked hard.  Scott might spend his youth in a trailer park, but Dylan felt sure he would not finish up in one.  His grades were superb; if he continued to perform at the same level through high school there was a good chance that the best universities in the country would open their doors to him.  Dylan hoped that happened.  Scott, like his mother, deserved a break.