THE COUSINS

Sissy stands in ankle-high grass, her back to the hill, her arms raised regally above her chestnut hair. Down-field, by the creek, her brother Wil and her cousin, Mat wait for her signal. They are poised at the starting line, heads and shoulders leaning toward Sissy. They have placed a piece of clothesline rope for the start. Sissy inhales deeply. She can't see their faces but she knows that her cousin's amber-flecked eyes are squinted in concentration and her brother's full lips are probably opened and rounded like a little guppy. She throws her arms down, holding her thighs and bending toward the boys. Wil, barefoot and light as a deer, keeps pace with his cousin who hammers every step against the ground. When they are about 15 yards away, she sees her cousin's angry concentration, the muscles bulging in his neck, the fear of defeat in his eyes. Wil's eyes are wide with hope, this could be his time to win. Shoulders almost touching, elbows close to brushing, they pace each other. Each lift of a thigh is met. Ten yards away from the finish, they sprawl to the ground. Wil bounces up unscathed. Her cousin pushes himself up slowly from the ground, one freckled arm skinned and bleeding. He presses his body into Wil. "What's the matter, afraid of losing again?" He whacks Wil's shoulder with his fist. Wil brings up his forearm and shoves Mat away. Cautiously, thinks Sissy, not hard enough to give Mat an opening for a punch. Wil hates fighting, but the forearm is touch-enough to save his pride.

"What! I didn't cause that. You crowded into me." says Wil, his green eyes with their feathery dark lashes, the eyes their grandma Olivia always says should belong to Sissy, flare in disbelief.

"I'm not afraid of losing. Do it again, right now. I'm ready," Wil glares at his cousin and moves toward Sissy so that she can start a new race.

"You wish, clumse!" says Mat. "I've got a busted ankle." He spits through the separation between his two front teeth, just inches from Wil's bare feet and walks away.

Wil's dog, Gabardine, is following Mat. Mat limps toward the creek that separates the field from their grandma Olivia's house, and kicks Gabardine with the side of his foot, sending her rolling toward the creek bank.

"Mangy mutt," Mat says, and tosses a defiant glance toward Wil.

Gabardine yelps, her spirit wounded.

Mat sits in the glider on Grandma Olivia's front porch. Sissy drops down beside him, rocking back and forth with one foot balanced on the wooden porch.

"You leaned into him, didn't you?" she asks Mat. "Were you afraid of losing?"

"Wil moved before the start, know-it-all. And, for your information, I did not lean into him. He shoved me with his razor blade shoulders," says Mat.

"Sure, Mat," Sissy says. "At the starting signal, he moved a split second before you, and was finally gaining on you." She slows to a patronizing drawl, "but you made up the distance, ready to leave him, slow-moting behind with his skinny brown arms and legs, when he threw his shoulder into you," she leans in closer, "sending you both to the ground."

She pauses, sarcasm in her eyes and voice, "is that how you saw it?"

"Funk you, Sissy," says Mat. "Why ask questions when you already have all the answers." He adds.

Grandma Olivia looks through the screen door. Sissy sees the apprehension in her face. All of the cousins adore Olivia, and they are always on best behavior when they are in her house. Sissy's mom often says that Olivia has the patience of a saint. Sissy wonders if even a saint's patience might not be tried with Mat.

Olivia told Sissy once that it takes a long, long time to heal from the loss of a mother. Olivia smiles but Sissy notices that her eyes are not smiling. Sissy wonders if any time at all can ever heal the loss of a daughter. Mat came to stay with Olivia during the final stages of his mother's leukemia. Mat's dad is manager for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, so Mat is living with Olivia during the Reds touring season. Sophie's death, two years ago, is still a poignant memory for the whole family.

Olivia seems so happy to have the cousins together in her home. Sissy and Wil's parents

are traveling out of town. Mat, though, probably remembers his mom every time he looks at Wil. There is a striking resemblance between Wil and Mat's mom.

"Don't come into the kitchen, Matthew," yells Olivia. She smiles a conspirator's smile at Sissy. Sissy can smell the hot, sweet spice of freshly baked blackberry jam cake, floating from the kitchen.

Mat raises his eyebrows, annoyed. Olivia hints at all her surprises lest someone think, even for a moment, they've been forgotten. She produces a brown papered package from behind her back and smugly holds it out to Mat.

"From your daddy", she says and Sissy thinks she sees relief behind the 'didn't I tell you so' nod from Olivia. He waits to open the package. Waiting, Sissy thinks, for Olivia to leave. But Olivia doesn't budge. She wants to see him open the gift.

He unwraps the package, more slowly even than Sissy, who presses and saves the paper of every gift she receives.

Inside the package is a white nylon jacket with a Cincinnati Reds insignia. He shakes it out then examines each pocket for a letter. A ten dollar bill is clipped to a package of baseball cards. A note, scribbled in red ink on a scrap piece of paper reads, 'Happy 9th Birthday, Love, Dad.' Smoothing the jacket across his knees, he opens all five wrappers, and folds five slices of bubble gum into his mouth, placing the cards, one by one, on the porch.

He selects a hanger, a smooth wooden one, from the cedar-lined closet beneath the stairs and hangs the jacket, making a space for it free of the clothing on either side and slips upstairs to his room, one of the few rooms, other than the kitchen, that is bright and free of the musty smell of age.

Sissy knows that he has not entered the sitting room since his mother, Olivia's youngest daughter, lost her final battle with leukemia. Now the makeshift bedroom has been returned to a sitting room for everyone but Mat and, of course, Olivia.

Sissy runs up the stairs as though she is invited but he closes her out with the bedroom door and turns the key in the lock. She hears him lift the wooden trunk at the foot of his bed. He will file the new cards in his shoe box and press the wrappers between the pages of his copy of Treasure Island with the other notes penned on wrappers, envelopes and cards.

Sissy has tried all summer to fix in her mind, Sophie's face. Green eyes and dark skin like Wil, not the Donnelly freckles that she and Mat share or the Donnelly forehead that she alone, of all the cousins, has inherited. Sometimes she studies herself in the hall mirror, looking, but not finding, why her mother says with resignation, 'Sissy has the Donnelly forehead!.

Sophie's favorite fragrance was lavender. When Sissy sees lavender in bloom she can feel Sophie presence, almost see her face, not as it was downstairs, but as it was when she took Mat, Sissy and Wil to watch Mat's dad's team play against the Pittsburgh Pirates. One of the Reds hit a home-run and Sophie placed her arms around the three of them and pressed them to her, lowering her feathery lashes in pride.

Sissy has seen the wedding band, the scented letters and the cameo locket which Sophie had asked Olivia to give to Mat. He keeps them in his trunk inside the jewelry box that once sat on his mother's bureau.

Sissy scoots down the stairs and rests her forehead on her drawn up knees. She promises herself that tomorrow, a new day, a new week, she will chose Mat first for her team and just hope that the other side's first choice will not be Will.

Mat wears his Cincinnati Reds jacket to school the next day, parading at recess, his pockets bulging with baseball cards. Indian summer days force the jacket off his shoulders and around his waist.

He shuffles his baseball cards, spouting batting averages and pennant races, shunning the group games and robbing Sissy of her chance to be magnanimous.

The bell rings to end recess and Mat shoulders himself into Wil. Wil, always wary around

Mat, stumbles but avoids falling down on the gravelly playground.

"Clumse, you already busted my ankle, what do you want?" Mat says, probably for a snickering group of girls.

Sissy starts toward Wil, not sure whether she is more angry at Wil for his hangdog expression or at Mat for his nonstop shenanigans. By the time she reaches Mat she is more composed, but nonetheless, glad she has not had the opportunity to be magnanimous to Mat. Mat would probably decline her pick, making her look stupid in front of the whole school.

Shortly after recess, the sixth graders file into the library. Sissy is one of the first to arrive. It is a long corridor of a room smelling of oil and dust with high-shelved old books and yellowing reference books. The boys creep between the shelves shoving an occasional book into the face of an unsuspecting looker, or tagging each other beneath the great long shelves. The girls search for books and roll their eyes at male childishness, Sissy is always last checking out her books.

She hurries down the hallway only to pass Wil, looking indignant, and Mat, looking smug. The are walking in tow with the fourth grade teacher down the long hallway. The children are grouped and whispering. Sissy looks questioningly toward one of Wil's classmates.

"Mat's baseball cards are missing," the classmate says,"and Mat found them inside Wil's desk. They're going to the principal's office.

The teacher returns to her classroom, wearing a careful look of non-commitment. Sissy hates her for believing Mat enough to march Wil off to the Principal.

Sissy returns to the sixth grade classroom, scooting her chair at an angle so that she has a view off the hallway.

Olivia walks swiftly down the hall, headed for the principal's office. Sissy closes her eyes. This will be so hard for Wil, the humiliation of having Olivia called to the school.

Half an hour later they walk down the hall, Wil on one side of Olivia and Mat on the other. They will spend the rest of the afternoon at home in their rooms. Later that afternoon when school is out, Mat will look out his window, watching the kids play red rover in the field. Wil lies in his bed, his arms folded around his head to close out the light and the noise. Sissy is sure, that his association with the missing cards debacle has devastated him.

The next morning the fourth grade teacher separates Wil and Mat. Wil, front row right and Mat, second row left. Sissy may not visit their class without special permission from both the sixth and fourth grade teachers. Olivia must have had a hand in the seating, thinks Sissy. The kids separate into loyal groups on the playground. Mat with his entourage. Wil and Sissy with a handful of friends.

After supper, Sissy and Wil sit on the platform built in the maple tree just beyond the field. Mat and the Larsen brothers ride their bikes to the caves near the Larsen's house at the head of the hollow.

Olivia sits on the front porch waiting for the sun to slide behind the hills before calling them in for baths.

Just before bedtime, Will calls Gabardine. She does not come at Wil's call. She strays often, limping in after a night's absence, cat-scratched or fur-scalded for scrounging in someone's garbage can. But she's never away for very long. Wil searches the Frigidaire for a left over pork chop which he puts in Gabardine's bowl beside the front porch. Olivia lets Sissy and Wil linger on the porch long after the neighborhood children have gone inside, knowing he has paid a dear price for what, in all probability, was Mat's shenanigan.

It is Tuesday morning. Wil wakes Sissy early. They check both porches, then search the field and the creek bank for Gabardine.

After school they make signs and nail them to the telephone poles along Route 75 and down on the corner of Main and Chestnut Street. Olivia drives along Route 75 and up the hollows around Chimney Rock.

On Wednesday, after school, Olivia takes them to the pound. Gabardine is not there. The dogs at the pound are so sad, they stare out of the wire fencing at Sissy and Wil. The plight of the penned-in dogs heightens their concern for Gabardine.

Later, on Wednesday evening, Sissy and Wil sit in the porch glider, mapping out the surrounding area to search for the Gabardine.

Mat and the Larsen kids sit on the steps, baseball cards spread around them and a radio stuck on the window sill for the upcoming Cincinnati Reds game.

Wil and a buddy will follow the creek bank all the way to the Big Sandy River and Sissy will walk the ridge of Chimney Rock to the point where it dips near the river. They meet near the Big Sandy on a muddy beach that the kids use for swimming. There is a rope tied to a large leaning tree that someone's dad must have strung there.

Disheartened, they walk back to Olivia's house. Olivia is not there. Mat says that Mrs. Larsen called, and Olivia has gone to see her.

Olivia returns, visibly upset. She looks as though she has been crying. She walks slowly across the creek bridge, a handkerchief wadded in her hand.

Wil crosses the fingers of his left hand and puts it behind his back. Sissy knows he probably has is eyes closed, as well.

Olivia sits on the glider and puts her arms around Sissy and Wil.

"I'm afraid I have something very sad to tell you, Wil, Olivia says. It seems that an animal has crawled beneath the Larsen's house to die.

"That does not necessarily mean its Gabardine," she says, holding a cautionary hand in the air.

Wil puts his head on his knees and rock back and forth. Sissy knows that he is crying.

Mat looks up from his cards, very slowly, as though it is staged, Sissy thinks. His cheeks are flushed and the Larsen boys are deathly silent.

"Maybe she followed us to the Larsen's house," says Mat. "Has anyone seen her since Monday?" he asks, looking pointedly first at Wil and then at Sissy. He glances cautiously at Olivia, probably to see her reaction to what he's saying. Olivia's face is unreadable.

"What are you trying to say, Mat?," Sissy asks, trying to control her temper.

Olivia looks hurt and unsure. She raises her hand to her forehead, momentarily covering her eyes.

Looking at Olivia's reaction, Sissy feels foolish and chides herself for her outburst. Gabardine is old, but so old that he would crawl off and die? She doesn't believe it. She hates Mat, really really hates him. She wishes she could tear up his stupid baseball cards and punch him in the face.

Finally, Olivia speaks to Wil, "It seems from what we've just heard, that Gabardine is probably the dog beneath the Larsen's house."

"When you were given Gabardine you promised to take complete care of her, assume full responsibility for her."

Wil lifts his hand, stopping Olivia, "I know, Olivia. She's mine. My responsibility. I'll get her out." He pauses a moment to get his voice under control.

"I'll get her out. I wouldn't want anybody else pulling on her, anyway. I'll bury her," he adds, looking at Sissy then to a corner of the field where they buried Sissy's kitten and a finch that had flown into the window last summer. They had placed stones around the patch of ground and laid bottles of honey suckle and ivy across the dirt.

Mat puts his baseball cards away and lays down on the porch, his face propped into his hands. Wil and Sissy move, as they so often do, at the same moment.

Will places a shovel and hoe over his shoulder and walks toward the field. Sissy searches the shallow water of the creek for a smooth stone. Wil places the collar that Gabardine has never worn beside the stone. And, they walk to the Larsen's house.

Olivia goes upstairs to lie down.

The Larsens have gone home.

A heavy stench hangs in the warm, moist air around the Larsen house. Wil involuntarily gags, placing his hands over his mouth and nose, he searches the brick foundation for the tiny break that can permit entry. He finds the opening and retches again, bending into the tall grass, his stomach convulsing until nothing is left but bile. He wipes his lips with his shirt sleeve and bends toward the opening. HIs skin pales and goosebumps rise on his bare arms. Sissy looks into his face, his jaw is set, but his eyes are haunted. Sissy places her arm in front of the opening in the brick foundation.

"Wait," she says softly, almost under her breath, and adds, "you dig the hole," she says, "Dig it deep."

Wil walks back to the field and Sissy runs back to Olivia's. Mat is no longer on the porch. Sissy goes into Olivia's bedroom and finds the Evening in Paris perfume her cousin gave Olivia for Christmas. It is a deep blue, almost cobalt, heart shaped bottle with a tiny glass stopper. She pulls a scarf and jacket from the cedar closet beneath the stairs. She will wrap

the scarf around her nose and mouth and tie the jacket, inside out, around her waist.

She does not hesitate at the dark cool opening, but plunges in on her hands and knees. She has to crawl. It is coal black beneath the house. She cannot see her hand on the ground in front of her as she presses against the cold, moist earth. She closes her eyes, hoping to adjust to the cavernous black space. She moves forward, feeling with her hands the stones in front of her, moving the bigger stones but scraping her knees on the smaller ones. She holds her breath until she can hold it no longer, then breathes into the Evening in Paris perfume. Near the center of the house, her eyes can make out shapes and she sees the furnace box protruding beneath the floor in its dark pit. She thinks of the dimes and pennies she and Wil vacuumed out of their furnace box, lying flat on the hall floor and raking the steel tubes of the vacuum hose across the bottom of the box. She sees a formless bulk beneath the kitchen and moves toward it, stretching beneath the low hanging pipes and crawling on her stomach. She cries in her throat, it is like a whimper. She approaches the lifeless form, wishing with all her heart that it is not Gabardine. It is a dog!. It is Gabardine!

Tears fall down her face and she turns her back to the dog and holds the Evening in Paris to her face and prompts herself silently,'move.' She unwraps the scarf, pushes the jacket off her waist and wraps the scarf around her hands. She touches the dog, feeling the slab of its body through the layered scarf around her hands, pulls back and screams involuntarily. She turns her back again and draws in the perfume. And, holding her teeth tightly together, she pushes both hands against its flesh, rolls its carcass onto the jacket and crawls backwards, pulling the dog toward her, mindless of the stones, looking over her shoulder to the tiny patch of light in the brick, not stopping to breathe the perfume, moving one knee mechanically after the other across the cold clay.

Wil is walking toward the opening as she pulls out Gabardine. He stands at a distance, nodding his head slowly, a nod of acceptance.

"Gabardine," Sissy whispers.

"Gabardine," Wil repeats, and gathers her up in his arms, unmindful of the odor. He carries her across the field without words. They reach the dark, moist pile of dirt and he places Gabardine gently into the hole.

Sissy spreads the jacket around Gabardine. Wil stares at the hole, stunned. He looks at Sissy and back again at the hole shaking his head.

"The shroud," she says without a flicker of expression and grabs the shovel and pushes the dirt toward the hole. Wil mechanically picks up the hoe and smoothes and packs the dirt into the cavern. They place the stone over the grave and sit quietly beside the new mound of earth.

Mat walks across the field, a grin on his face.

"Don't tell me,' he says. "It was Gabardine!" He is grinning but not smiling, thinks Sissy, because his lips are not turning up, but down. Sort of an inverted smile.

"It was Gabardine," says Sissy.

"Well," Mat says, "Did you give 'ol Gabardine a proper burial?"

"Yes, we did," Sissy shoots back without a pause. "We even gave her a shroud."

"Yeah," Wil repeats, still a little dazed by it all, "We gave her a shroud."

Mat grins at Wil, "you don't even know what a shroud is."

"He knows that it has a Cincinnati Reds insignia on it," Sissy shoots back at him and looks at Wil in triumph.

Wil's eyes are fastened on Mat. The smile fades from Wil's face. He looks toward the ground and his lips form their little guppy mouth.

Mat looks at Sissy. His eyes look tired, look red. They are watering. Wil looks at her, too. Tears are openly flowing down his cheeks.

Mat turns and walks slowly toward the house. Wil follows him. Sissy turns away from them to the fresh mound of earth.

A tearful Wil sits halfway up the bedroom stairs and Mat is probably sitting in front of his wooden trunk. Protectively, thinks Sissy.

Sissy stands in the shower rubbing the soap into her legs, her arms and stomach, mechanically, over and over again. The hot water turns icy and still she stays with her eyes closed, her face turned toward the water.