Chapter 16: Eddie

Man, when we got home from North Carolina that night, I was plumb whipped! I slept some, on the bus, coming back, but you know how it is, sleeping on a bus. You wake up wishing you'd never fallen asleep in the first place. It's worse, I guess, for a grown-up, but even for a kid, it's murder!

It was after three in the morning when we finally got home.

Emily's car was outside, and we knew she was in Dave's bed, asleep. We tried hard not to wake her up with the noise of getting back into the house with our stuff, and getting ready for bed, and trying so hard to be quiet gave us both a giggling fit.

Man, being in my own bed felt good! The house wasn't very cool, but the sheets, at least at first, felt cool and good. And I was so tired, it could have been a sauna in there, and I'd have still been ready to catch me some Z's.

I kinda listened, though, to see whether Emily and Dave were going to make any noise, again tonight. I guess I was a little pervert, there, trying to listen in on my big brother's love life, but, hey, sex is -- y'know -- interesting. Anyway, I was kinda in love with Emily my own self. Oh, I didn't have any thoughts that anything would ever come of that. She was always going to just be more like a... like a big sister, kinda, to me.

But my "big sister" was probably in there right now, fucking my brother, that lucky so-and-so!

I knew Dave wouldn't want me to be thinking about Emily in those terms. I mean, I respected Emily, plenty, don't you worry about that! And I was really happy that her 'n Dave were getting along so good, and all. I knew that they weren't just "fucking" in there: That time -- that Saturday night -- when they'd first gotten together? They were making love. And I understood how there was a difference, kind of, between just, y'know, having sex together... and making love.

But whatever they were doing, boy, Emily sure was noisy!

This night, though, I guess they just were gonna sleep. Oh, I knew they'd make love, sometime later, probably while all of us were still in bed, and maybe I would be still sleeping, and miss hearing it. But I was a little bit surprised, anyway, that I didn't hear anything -- anything at all, from the next room.

Well, it was almost 4 o'clock in the morning. What did I expect?

I woke up about 7:30, still sleepy but needing to pee real bad, so I had to get up and go. And, quick as I got back into bed again after, I heard the noise through the wall. The springs were squeaking in there, real bad, and Emily was starting in again -- just like she had, on that first night, or, really, the second night, that she'd been here, before. I couldn't tell what she was saying, exactly. I don't think she was really saying anything you were supposed to be able to make out. It was just kind of a chant, y'know? Partly like a groaning noise, but with what kinda sounded like words, too -- all mixed up in there.

Well, I wasn't supposed to be hearing any of this at all, much less making out what she was saying. It was just a special language, I think. I imagined she was saying, "Man, this is some first-class fucking, here!" But she didn't say anything, of course, that really sounded anything like that.

Dave had told me, while we were still down in Winston-Salem, that maybe the three of us would drive up to Gettysburg, not too far away, up in Pennsylvania, to see the Civil War Battlefield there, on his Thursday off-day. After we got to bed so late last night, I wasn't sure we'd still do it. It wasn't far, but it would take at least a good part of the day to get up there, and have time to see very much, and get back again. I wasn't sure at all that Dave and Emily would be up early enough for that.

I mean, they were "up" already -- sort of -- but I wouldn't be surprised if they took another nap again, after what they were doing. It was still awful early, considering what time we'd gone to bed last night.

I laid around in bed for awhile myself, not because I still felt sleepy, but because it seemed better to be in bed, while they were in there Doing It, than having me walking around the house. So I waited them out, and, after a long while, I heard the shower going and knew that one of them, if not both of them, was up. It was about 9:30 in the morning by that time. Going to Gettysburg seemed like a pretty ambitious project, late as we were starting the day.

Dave also wanted to take me down to see Washington, D. C. some more. We had gone down there for a day trip, twice, while Dave had been playing last summer in Delmarva. I'd been to the Capitol Building and to the Supreme Court Building, and the Library of Congress. And we saw all the main monuments -- not only the Lincoln and the Jefferson, but the Viet Nam Memorial, and the park that honored President Roosevelt, and a really neat statue -- right across the street from the Viet Nam Memorial -- of Albert Einstein.

Washington, D.C. was a pretty interesting place, and Dave said we'd barely begun to see it all. It was hard, though, to spend much time down there, when Dave had a game to play, practically every day. I guess we could have gone down there today, with Emily, just as easy as going the other direction, to Gettysburg, but it felt funny, doubling back to Emily's regular stomping grounds on a day when she was going to be spending the night, that night, with us again.

When I got up and dressed, Dave told me to shake a leg, because we were still going to go to Gettysburg for the day. We'd go in Emily's car, which was small, but a lot newer and more comfortable to travel in than Dave's pickup. It didn't matter so much that it would be after lunch before we got up there, Dave said, because we could head back tonight after dark. There was no big rush.

Gettysburg was kind of neat, I guess. I am interested in history and in the Civil War and all, and I knew a little bit about how important the battles there had been. But it was kind of hard, really, to picture how things had been, even with all the visitor aids they had. It was really mostly a very large area of open fields and small hills and stuff, and figuring out what army had been where, and what had happened, was a little bit confusing.

I didn't care, though. I was having a great time, just being with Dave and Emily and feeling, kind of, like they were my family. When Mom and Dad used to take me places -- to Cleveland, once in awhile, for an Indians' game, or to Columbus on a shopping trip, we'd have a pretty good time, just being together. My folks weren't lovey-dovey, like Dave and Emily were, but they had got along good and they treated me good, and after Dave graduated from high school and went off to college, I was the big cheese, or, anyway, the only cheese they had.

So this reminded me of those times, only, in a way, this was better, because me and Dave were seeing the place together, and us having Emily there was special. Dave and Emily were a little moony, I guess, but they didn't forget about me being with them. Both of them went out of their way to include me in everything -- everything, anyway, except the smooching they'd do whenever we stopped a minute to take a breath!

And I even got some of that -- a little bit -- from Emily. She was a hugger, Emily, and I really liked it, when she'd reach out and grab me and hug me close. I guess it was a little bit of a sex thing -- to me, I mean, not to Emily -- but I knew she didn't mean it that way, and even if I knew it wasn't supposed to be sexy, it was still awful nice!

We'd skipped breakfast and had a quick lunch on the way into Gettysburg, but that night we stopped at a really nice restaurant in a bed-and-breakfast place we saw on the way back home, and had a great meal there. It was after dark already before we crossed the state line, back into Maryland. Man, I was pooped. The night before had been a short night, and that day, we'd done a lot of walking!

When we got back to the house, Emily and Dave stopped over at Ms. Washington's apartment and invited her to go with us out for a restaurant breakfast on Friday morning. She tried to talk them into another one of her home-made brunches, like last time Emily had been up to see us, and I was sure hoping Dave would see it her way, but eventually they agreed that we'd all just go out, and it would be Dave's and Emily's treat.