Read Watermelon Summer for Free Online Page B

a
    hot meal.
     
    It turns out Arvil's home was one of the structures
I'd peered across the road at from Greensun's mailbox.  (I guess I
hadn't been as alone as I'd thought.)  We walked the whole distance
in fifteen minutes, and even though I was a bit light-headed, I didn't
lag behind because Arvil turned out to be a talented storyteller. 
"I love an audience," he explained, which turned out to be code for the
fact that Arvil was an actor who had played small speaking parts in big
Hollywood movies (and leads in smaller independent films)—he did,
indeed, live for an audience.
     
    His stories were light and humorous until he got me
safely ensconced at his dining room table, sipping chamomile tea while
he heated up a jar of last summer's vegetable soup on his stove. 
"Now, tell me what brings you to Greensun," he asked, and finally fell
silent.
     
    I'm not the kind of person who pours her heart out to
strangers (or even to well-known people, for that matter), but I was
speaking to Arvil's back as he stirred with a wooden spoon, the
chamomile tea reminded me of my mother, and my defenses were
particularly low in my weakened state.  Somehow, my experiences
over the last few days came gushing out in a sort of diarrhea of the
mouth—just as embarrassing as the previous night's episode, once I
caught my breath and heard what I'd been saying.  "I don't even
know why I'm here!" I emoted finally, and shut my mouth with a
snap. 
     
    "You're looking for Greensun, of course," Arvil
answered, turning to face me with a bowl of soup in his hand. 
"Here, eat up."
     
     
     

    "I'm looking for Greensun?" I parroted.  "What does that even mean?"
     
    "It means you're just like the rest of us," Arvil
answered.  He'd added some bread and cheese to the table and joined
me for the feast.  I slurped up a spoonful from my bowl to give
myself a minute to think and was momentarily side-tracked by the
extravagant flavor of the seemingly simple tomato-based soup.
     
    "This is amazing!" I exclaimed, without meaning to.  "It tastes like...summer!"
     
    Arvil was clearly pleased by my pleasure but wasn't
willing to be side-tracked.  His slow smile went all the way to his
eyes, but his words stuck to the point.  "Are you ready for one
more story?" he asked.  "Maybe it will help you understand
Greensun...and what you're looking for."
     
    At my nod, Arvil slipped right back into
storytelling mode, but I could tell this tale struck closer to home than
the amusing anecdotes he'd used to pass the time while we climbed
Greensun's hill.  "Your father has been my closest friend for
longer than you've been alive," Arvil started, "which is why I had to
leave Greensun.
     
    "What you've got to understand, is that folks around
here are clannish.  Most of our ancestors hailed from Scotland and
Ireland, where family was everything, and we took that culture with us
to the New World.  Outsiders today tell us our accents are strange,
but the Lord's own truth is that Appalachian English is closer to the
pure English of the 1700s—we just didn't see any reason to change
with the times.  Most of us still don't."
     
    As Arvil spoke, I noticed his vowels lengthening and
his consonants shifting until he sounded more like the people I'd met in
the airport.  Later, I would realize that Arvil's stories were
unconscious chameleons, blending into their linguistic
surroundings.  His previous tales were told in standard American
English because Arvil was speaking entirely to me, but now he was
talking as much to himself as to anyone else.
     
    "When I was a young'un," Arvil continued, "I had more
cousins than I could shake a stick at.  Every year, our family
held a reunion for the sake of the relatives who'd moved down the road a
piece, but the rest of the time, most of us lived in each other's
pockets.  It was comfortable and