Fic : Summertime
two. fishes are jumping and the cotton is high
“So,” says Charlie at the breakfast table, trying to sound enthusiastic, “I thought that this weekend, we could go fishing with some of my friends, the Blacks.”
“… Okay?” says Bella. She’s eating Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and reading at the same time, her novel propped up against the back of the cereal box.
(He sneaks a look at the book later, realizes that it’s three hundred pages long, and feels vaguely ashamed that the most he reads these days is the Sports section of the paper.)
“So,” he says, bravely. He is a police officer, after all. He’s trained to face down hardened criminals. He can deal with one little girl. “Good book?”
She stops eating, and gives him a level look. “In the second chapter, a man goes to pick up a little boy that he’s supposed to be adopting, except he accidentally gets a little girl instead.”
“Oh,” he says. Tries not to cower. Fails. “Well.”
She keeps eating.
~
They get up bright (not) and early the next morning.
Once Charlie hears the sound of the old engine of Billy’s tomato red pick up, they head out, Charlie with his rod slung over his shoulder. Bella has offered to carry the tackle box, though she flat out refuses to go anywhere near the (live, wriggling) bait.
As soon as they get out the door, Bella is shivering : she’s in denim shorts and a blue t-shirt, Velcro sandals.
“Why is it so c-cold?” she asks.
“It’s, ah, Forks?”
“It’s Ju-July!”
He ends up loaning her one of his knitted navy blue fisherman’s sweaters, which is so big on her that its hem falls somewhere above her knees, and he has to clumsily roll back the sleeves at least three or four times. When he’s not looking, she undoes them and rolls them back up herself, so that the folds are less knobby and the sleeves are at least of an even length.
Charlie slides himself into the cab in the front, while Bella goes in the back of the truck with the Black kids : the nine-year-old twins, Rachel and Rebecca, and little six-year-old Jacob, who is snuggled between his sisters, three quarters asleep. Charlie hopes that they’re friendly to Bella; children are good at making friends right away and playing with each other, right?
Rebecca takes in Bella’s sandals (her and her siblings are all in runners), Charlie’s huge sweater, Bella’s short boyish hair, her paler-than-pale skin, and the faded pink copy of Anne of Green Gables that Bella clutches to her chest as she cautiously seats herself opposite to them, knees tucked neatly together and curled beneath her. (Rachel and Rebecca both have their legs comfortably stretched out as far as they can go.)
“Why do you look so stupid?” Rebecca asks, completely and frankly curious.
Oh, yes. They are off to a grand start.
~
Charlie and Billy get themselves settled nice and comfy by the Sol Duc riverside. The Black kids are restless almost as soon as they get out of the truck.
“Dad,” Rachel calls, “we’re going exploring.”
Billy doesn’t even watch them go. “Take Jake with you.”
Rebecca rolls her eyes, and grabs one of her brother’s hands. He wriggles like a puppy, grinning fit to split his face. Rachel grumbles and grabs his other hand. “Come on, brat.”
“Uh, girls?”
They turn. “Yeah, Charlie?”
“… Take Bella with you?”
Bella, who has been seated beside Charlie, quietly reading her book and trying as hard as possible not to be noticed, shoots him a look of horror that he completely misses.
~
They spend the next few hours by the riverside and down in the dry creek bed, the twins forging ahead, obviously comfortable where they are, dragging Jacob with them, Bella trailing (and sometimes stumbling) after them uncertainly.
There’s a quiet part of the river where the twins crouch down. Jacob tries to crouch down too, and almost falls over, but Rebecca’s hand shoots out to keep him from doing so.
“Stupid,” she says reprovingly, and all three of them concentrate their dark heads on a single point in the water.
Bella, almost against her will, comes up behind them, curious. “What are you looking at?”
“There’s a big crayfish there,” Rachel (always the more merciful of the two) explains. “Just beneath that rock.”
“Almost as big as a lobster,” Rebecca says, oddly satisfied. “And definitely big enough to eat YOU!” (She then tackles Jacob, pretending to “pin” him with her “pincers”.)
Bella neatly sidesteps them as the mock-crayfish attack evolves into a tickling match, and she squats down beside Rachel. “Where is it?” she asks.
(“She’s killing me, she’s killing me!” Jacob yells, and both Bella and Rachel ignore him.)
“Right there, just hiding, see?”
Bella sees.
And quietly freaks out.
~
“What happened?” Charlie asks, horrified.
“She fell in the river,” Rebecca fairly sings. Jacob giggles.
Bella sneezes. Her sleeves drip grey-green river water and Jacob has kindly deigned to hold her copy of Anne of Green Gables for her. She’s too wet and miserable to notice that he’s trying to walk and balance it on his head at the same time. (And failing. Muscle coordination only goes so far when you’re six years old.)
“What a big baby,” Rebecca says. “As if she never seen a crayfish before.”
“We don’t have crayfish in Phoenix,” Bella says, defensively, as she sheds Charlie’s sodden old sweater and dumps it on the ground. “Not even in Riverside. We have proper animals there.”
“Proper animals?” says Rachel. “Like what?”
“Rabbits. Squirrels,” Bella says, now wet and shivering and clutching her arms. “Sparrows. Woodpeckers.”
Rebecca starts howling with laughter. “Sparrows!” she gasps.
“We have scorpions too!” Bella flares. “And black widow spiders, and rattlesnakes, and lizards, and bobcats, and sometimes wolves - ”
“We have wolves,” Rachel says, unimpressed. Rebecca’s still laughing like a hyena. “We have HUGE wolves. Bears too.”
“And,” Rebecca says, “we catch crayfish all the time. Even Jake can pick one up with his bare hands, and he’s just a baby.”
Jacob throws Anne of Green Gables at his sister. Bella whimpers a little, and Jacob sneaks back and fetches it from the ground, looking contrite. She snatches it from him and clutches it to her chest again, not even caring that she’s wet. Charlie (his timing perfect, for once) comes back from the pick up with an old faded red blanket and wraps Bella in it.
The look on her pinched, pale face suddenly reminds him vividly of his mother. It is a look that says in no uncertain terms, Charles Aaron Swan, this is completely and entirely your fault.
He cringes. Wonders if groveling will be enough for her to forgive him.
~
Bella plants herself beside Charlie and does not. Budge. She plants her nose in her book and refuses to look up. The Black kids wander over to the tackle box and container of live bait.
“Huh,” says Billy. “I think the twins are daring Jake to eat a worm.”
“Shouldn’t you stop them?”
Billy shrugs a little. “Learning experience.”
~
During an energetic game of tag, Jacob somehow is pushed falls into the river. Rebecca looks very innocent and swears that she was at least ten feet away from him when it happened. Rachel rolls her eyes and doesn’t say anything.
Jacob climbs out of the river, laughing delightedly. He’s a happy kid, nothing short of the Second Coming could wipe the grin off his face.
“Look, Bella!” he sings, going up to her, where she’s still wrapped up with the red blanket and Anne Shirley for company. “We’re matching now!”
He shakes himself like a dog, water droplets flying everywhere.
Bella whimpers again, shrugs deeper into her blanket, wishes she had a pair of ruby slippers. Just click her heels together and wham, wake up in Phoenix with Renee telling her that this whole “fishing trip” thing was just a horrible, horrible nightmare.
"Hey," says Charlie, thoughtful for once, wheels in his head starting to turn, "maybe we can just marry Jacob off to Bella, so that we can keep doing this until we're old men."
"... I think that only happens in movies, Charlie," Billy says evenly.
"Oh," says Charlie, disappointed.
~
three. and your mama is good-looking
They decide to head over to the Black home, to dump the kids into a hot bath (Bella’s sneezing is starting to worry Charlie). Bella finally emerges sometime later in some of Rachel or Rebecca’s old clothes. She can hear the sound of cartoons from the living room, but fearing more crayfish-oriented conversation, she backs away, into the kitchen.
And promptly falls in love.
Sarah Black smells like vanilla and oranges and her smile is very kind and her hands are floury and she is almost as pretty as Renee.
“You must be Bella,” Sarah says. “Your daddy talks about you.” An awful lot, she thinks wryly.
“Mrs. Black?” Bella says, shyly.
She’s a pretty little thing, Sarah thinks. Not like the twins, who are all spitfire and shiny black hair, wild as ponies (especially Rebecca), but she’ll break plenty of hearts when she’s older.
“Call me Sarah, honey.”
Bella sidles a step or two closer to Sarah. “What are you making?” she asks.
“Snickerdoodles. Would you like to help?”
Her head bobs up and down up and down, Yesyes.
Sarah laughs a little. “Good! Rachel and Rebecca have no patience for baking, and Jake just likes to eat everything, cooked or not. It’s good to have a helper.”
Bella beams. (Sweet kid. Charlie shouldn’t have a hard time with her, she seems too much like him.)
“Your hands are already clean cos you took a bath, right, honey? Good. Just set your book down over there and we’ll get started. Oh - Anne of Green Gables? I remember reading that book when I was little. Always getting into scrapes, that Anne-girl!”
Yup. It’s official. Bella is completely and totally in love.
~
four. one of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing
Sarah gently pushes Bella into the living room with a plate of fresh snickerdoodles. The twins’ face light up when they see her and they sit up from the loveseat, their attention completely turned away from the singing animals in The Fox and the Hound. They shove Jacob off the seat - “Make room for Bella, brat!” - but, embarrassed, she sits down on the floor beside Jacob, and passes Rachel the plate.
“These aren’t bad,” Rebecca admits, grudgingly, stuffing one cookie whole into her mouth.
Bella feels her face prickling with heat, and looks down at her lap. “Thanks.”
She’s startled by Jacob snuggling up beside her. She’s noticed that all the Black kids are like this, so physically affectionate : lying sprawled comfortably on the loveseat like a litter of puppies, always tickling or teasing or grabbing or hugging or piggybacking each other. It’s… strange? But kind of nice, to have Jacob half-draping himself over her. He is very warm, and he smells like soap, and the moss in the forest, and also a little like the sea.
Jacob grins at her, one half-eaten snickerdoodle in each of his hands. “I like you!” he declares. “Your hair is really soft, and you smell nice. Like cookies.”
The heat in her face gets worse, and she ducks her head again.
(Maybe Washington isn’t so bad after all.)
“That’s cause she was just baking,” Rachel says. “Duh.”
“Yeah, doofus.” Rebecca nudges him none too gently in the ribs with her foot as she says this.
“And she doesn’t give me noogies!” Jacob adds.
“Your head’s so thick it doesn’t even matter,” Rebecca says snidely.
“And she doesn’t have a BIG, BIIIIIIIIIG BUTT!”
It doesn’t really matter who he directed this to. As one, the twins say, “OH NO YOU DIDN’T.”
A little while later, Billy and Charlie walk into the living room to find a plate of squashed snickerdoodles, a broken TV set, Jacob struggling to get out of a double headlock, and Bella sitting in a corner, looking a little shell shocked as she stares at it all.
Billy claps Charlie on his back and says, with utter gravity, “Welcome to the joys of fatherhood.”
~ end.
There’s no place like home