Текст книги "Sweet Jiminy: A Novel"

Автор книги: Kristin Gore

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

It was a hot day and their ice cream was melting fast. Jiminy’s hand was already covered in sticky melted sugar.

“Hang on, I’m gonna grab some napkins,” she said as she jumped up and crossed the parking lot.

She’d just made it inside the Dairy Queen doorway when she ran into Suze Connors, who was wearing a midriff halter top and looking even more pregnant than before—something Jiminy wouldn’t have thought possible.

“Jiminy!” Suze yipped affectionately. “Ma, look who it is! I told you Jiminy was in town.”

Suze’s mother was a damp, solidly built woman who looked Jiminy up and down with a lazy flicker of her eyelids. These languid lids were the most active part of a round, clammy face. When she smiled, her teeth came out as slowly as a snail from its shell.

“Howya doin’?” she asked.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Jiminy said. “You’re about to get another grandbaby, I see.”

She’d never used the word “grandbaby” in her life, but it seemed to fit with this place and these circumstances. Mrs. Connors nodded.

“Any minute now,” she said. “And then it’ll just take another minute for Suze to get pregnant again.”

“Oh, Mama, it will not,” Suze replied, rolling her eyes at Jiminy.

Jiminy smiled sympathetically, unsure of whether she meant it for Suze or for Suze’s mother. Suze had always been perfectly nice to her, and she seemed to still be a kind woman. There was no reason she shouldn’t reproduce as much as she liked.

“I thought you would have had it by now,” Jiminy said lamely.

“Maybe a milkshake’ll jar it loose,” Suze answered good-naturedly. “Are you here alone?”

It was a reasonable question. Jiminy had shown up at the pool alone; perhaps she was moping all around Fayeville looking for company.

“No, I’m with someone, actually,” Jiminy answered. “He’s outside.”

She motioned toward the door.

“Oooh, a date?” Suze trilled.

Jiminy paused. She shrugged nonchalantly, but couldn’t help her smile, much as she knew she should. The rogue smile was all it took.

“It is!” Suze squealed. “Who is he? Someone from here?”

Jiminy mentally kicked herself. She stalled, weighing her options. Should she lie? Downplay? Flaunt? She didn’t feel ready for this.

“I don’t know if you know him,” she hedged.

“We’ll find you on our way out,” Suze exclaimed, winking and squeezing Jiminy’s arm before lumbering off to join her mom at the counter.

As Jiminy walked back, armed with napkins and a fresh uncertainty, she pondered her options. She wasn’t sure how Suze would react to her and Bo being together. Perhaps she’d be as mellow and accepting as Cole, but perhaps she wouldn’t. Jiminy wondered if she should warn Bo. He was staring at her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

It bothered her that she was so transparent.

“Nothing,” she replied, quickly bending her frown smileward as she brainstormed innocuous explanations. She’d act completely normal with him, no matter what came their way. “I was just thinking of my mom. She used to take me to Dairy Queen for breakfast.”

“Sounds like a fantasy mom,” Bo replied. “Are you guys close?”

Jiminy shook her head.

“Not really. She sort of checked out when I was still a kid.”

“I’m sorry,” Bo said sincerely. “Does it bother you to talk about it?”

Before Jiminy could answer, Suze and her mother ambled out into the parking lot. Suze spotted Jiminy and stopped abruptly, looking bewildered. Her mother looked unambiguously disapproving. There were no slug teeth in sight. Just grim, set lip lines.

“I guess that’s a yes,” Bo said.

Jiminy redirected her attention to him.

“What? No, I don’t mind,” Jiminy said, a little flustered. “Sorry, I just got distracted by some friends. Do you know Suze Connors?”

Jiminy gestured to where Suze and her mom had been standing, but they were already in their car, pulling out onto the road. Apparently, they didn’t always move so slowly.

“Huh,” Jiminy said.

“Guess they’ve got somewhere to be,” Bo said wryly.

Jiminy stayed silent, and pained.

“Don’t worry about it,” Bo continued. “I’m much more interested in you. So what happened with your mom?”

“More like what didn’t happen with her,” Jiminy replied, still staring at the road. “Not to be dramatic,” she continued, shifting her gaze back toward Bo. “It’s not a big deal. She had a car accident when I was six. Nothing serious, but she suffered whiplash, so she was given painkillers, and then she got a little too into those.”

Bo nodded. It was understandable; he wasn’t judging. Jiminy appreciated this.

The accident had at first seemed relatively innocuous—the sort of thing that disrupted a morning but was mainly forgotten by evening, except for lingering insurance implications. But as the painkillers overstayed their welcome, a lot of things began slipping and fraying, sneaking their way toward a permanent shift. Jiminy noticed her mother’s dependency on the pills, and was forced to weather the mood swings and the ensuing marital discord. She knew that the day she was sent to the Paint-Your-Own-Pot store at the mall to make something nice for her grandmother was a day of reckoning. Knew when she returned and her father was gone that the day hadn’t gone well. Naturally shy to begin with, Jiminy retreated into the role of the awkward, self-absorbed child to avoid having to admit all that she knew to people who would feel obliged to counsel her through it. She learned to be quiet and small, to disappear into backgrounds, to suffocate her sentences before they could betray her. She learned to bottle herself up.

As she folded inward, Jiminy tried to hold fast to her mother. She convinced herself that what her father and everyone else failed to understand was that her mother was finally having fun. A life without pain was a life worth celebrating, with spontaneous dancing and all-night games and endless, shifting plans. It was childhood rediscovered. It was being young at heart. Jiminy understood this. Consistency was a virtue adults overrated so they didn’t have to focus on how utterly boring everyday existence was. To gulp all that away and embrace a new reality—how fresh! How rejuvenating! Jiminy opted to go along for the ride, so as not to be left behind.

Eventually, of course, it got even more bumpy and chaotic and unreasonable, and Jiminy was forced to become the adult in the relationship, at far too young an age.

Back in the present day, she wrenched herself away from these tumultuous memories to focus on the moments at hand.

“It wasn’t awful,” she concluded with a shrug. “My mom and I just kind of switched roles, so I felt like I was taking care of her.”

Bo nodded.

“And who was taking care of you?”

“I was taking care of me, too,” Jiminy replied. “And luckily, all of that turned me into the confident, take-charge person you see before you today.”

Bo laughed, but not unkindly. Jiminy looked directly into his eyes.

“Hey,” she said, touching his hand. “Can I ask you something? How big a problem are we going to be?”

Bo stared back at her a moment.

“Tough to tell just yet,” he answered slowly. “You game to find out?”

Jiminy nodded.

“You?”

In answer, Bo put his arms around her and pulled her close.

Jiminy remembered what it felt like when her mother had hugged her: like she was a life preserver being clobbered by a drowning woman. Her mom would clutch her tightly, turning her entire world into nothing but dark, fragrant hair. Jiminy and her mother had the same hair, actually, and as Jiminy would breathe in mouthfuls of it, she’d experience the strange sensation of the two of them being tangled up together—unsure of who was who. She’d always had to work to not feel panicked by this.

In contrast, being held by Bo made her feel calm and safe. And as Jiminy looked up at him—into his smooth, handsome face—she was surprised by the sudden instinctive realization that despite everything, this was the happiest she’d ever felt.

 

Lyn remembered the first time she’d laid eyes on Edward, in the fall of 1948, when they were all of sixteen years old. She was visiting relatives a few towns over from Fayeville, walking through an outdoor market, searching for something pretty and cheap for her sister’s birthday.

So far, she hadn’t found a thing. But rounding the corner of a table full of lucky buckeyes, Lyn stopped suddenly in front of a small booth that she had to lean over to inspect. There were only a few items, but they were gorgeous. Tiny, smooth, impeccable wooden figurines. A horse on its hind legs. A frog mid-leap. A bird taking flight. Little animals in motion, carved out of trees.

Lyn touched them gently with her fingertips. Something about miniatures had always attracted her, perhaps because they belonged to a world she was guaranteed to dominate.

Edward had appeared behind the booth. She hadn’t known it was Edward yet, she only knew that he was a tall, serene boy with a lake of a face. One look and she wanted to jump in and drink him up.

She wasn’t accustomed to such feelings. She’d never experienced them before. So they scared her, and she stepped back.

“Hello,” he’d said.

His voice was clear and friendly, which confused Lyn further. She was more familiar with grumbled asides and downcast eyes.

“You make these?” she’d asked.

She knew that if he said yes, she would have to marry him. She awaited her fate with one arm twisted behind her back, held in place by her other hand.

“I do,” he said.

By the time Lyn returned home to St. Louis two weeks later, she had a wooden bird for her sister and a fiancé for herself.

As happened whenever Lyn thought of Edward, the sharp sting of losing him was bound up with the guilt over not being good enough for him when he was alive. She thought of this now, punished herself with it, as she polished Willa’s silver, putting each utensil carefully away in the velvet-lined drawer.

Sometimes Lyn thought that Edward knew everything now. That his eternal perch had granted omniscience and he was able to peer around all the corners of their marriage, into all the cracks of their lives. In those moments, she could only hope that he was forgiving. She only hoped that he understood her love. These last many decades, she’d been doing penance to make sure he knew.

And what about their Jiminy? Could she see all, know all, too? Lyn didn’t let herself picture this, because her daughter had died too young to understand all the choices that had had to be made, and the necessity of labeling some mistakes “choices.”

Jiminy’s eyes had been silver-colored. Not the hue of silver that was ripped from the earth and sluiced and smelted and leached and hammered into cold objects that required regular polishing; rather, the tint that revealed itself more naturally: the silver of fish scales flashing, or of the edges of clouds between dusk and dark. Edward used to tell Jiminy that her eyes had dripped from the sky onto her face the night she was born, when the delighted moon had laughed so hard she’d cried. So Jiminy’s eyes were moon tears, Edward had declared, as precious and special as her.

Those silver eyes had shimmered with an enthusiasm for life that still made Lyn catch her breath. When she thought of her daughter, and of all the joy she’d embodied, Lyn felt her heart fill. She lost herself in that sensation now, as she wiped a cloth gently along the curve of a serving spoon like it was a tiny brow being soothed.

 

When Willa came home from poker with Jean, Lyn was still polishing, which surprised both of them.

“Lyn? Are you all right?” Willa called as soon as she walked in the door. “Lyn?”

Lyn rubbed harder on a stain as she realized how late it was. Too late to reasonably still be there. She’d been completely lost in memories of Edward and Jiminy, but now here was Willa, to force her back into the present moment.

“I’m in here,” Lyn replied.

She didn’t stop polishing when Willa entered the room.

“Just trying to get this silver all clean,” Lyn said, keeping her head bent over her task.

“It’s past ten o’clock,” Willa replied. “I was worried when I saw your car. I thought you might’ve fallen and hurt yourself.”

That had happened once, a long time ago, when Lyn had first become old. Carrying some sheets up the stairs, she’d turned her ankle, tumbled, and ended up unconscious at the bottom. Her ankle had recovered, but her back had never been the same.

But there’d been no such accidents this night. To the untrained eye, Lyn appeared to be in one piece.

“Sorry to make you worry,” she said.

“Well, no matter,” Willa replied. “But why don’t you leave this and pick up with it next time. It’ll still be here.”

Lyn paused but kept her gaze focused downward, on her old, worn-out hands.

“I don’t like leaving things unfinished,” she said simply.

Willa eyed her carefully, her forehead furrowed in concern.

“Are you all right, Lyn? What’s going on?”

Lyn sighed and resumed polishing.

“Just these water stains. But I’m getting ’em. I’m gonna get every last one of ’em.”

“I’ll get this soon, I swear,” Jiminy informed Bo as she struggled to shift the truck into gear.

“I have no doubt,” Bo replied. “And then you can drive us to pick up a new transmission.”

“Shut up,” Jiminy said, smiling. “You’re supposed to be helping me. Am I making any improvement?”

“You’re showing signs of potential competence,” Bo answered.

“I’ll try not to let that go to my head.”

Bo grinned.

“You’re getting better, definitely.”

It was true. She’d been able to stutter and glide a little in the high school parking lot. She just needed practice. For Bo’s part, he was happy to help her practice all night. Even in light of all the stop-and-start jerking, he couldn’t think of a single thing he’d rather be doing.

Which he knew was something his aunt Lyn considered a problem. She hadn’t actually said anything to him about his relationship with Jiminy, and Bo hadn’t offered an opening for commentary. But he could sense the warning in the way she mentioned the weather turning, or the gas price fluctuation, or his need for a haircut. “You’re going places,” she seemed to be saying to him beneath these other words. “Don’t mess that up.”

Abruptly, Bo noticed he was going someplace with considerably fewer jerks and stutters. They were leaving the parking lot, pulling off into the night.

 

After Lyn finally left, Willa opened all the silverware drawers to take stock. Everything was gleaming. There wasn’t a water stain in sight.

Willa hadn’t brought any silver into her marriage or received any as wedding presents. She’d never been wealthy enough to afford such things. It had all come after Henry’s death, over time, and only because Willa had sifted through hundreds of antique malls over fifty-plus years to procure it. Jean would accompany her on her searches for that one affordable pitcher or ashtray or spoon engraved with someone else’s initials, that she’d scoop up and add to her collection.

Willa now owned drawers full of silver. And when it was polished, it didn’t matter that it was mismatched and marked by others. It shone, and it was hers.

The only obstacle to her enjoyment of her hard-won silver collection had been Lyn’s strong dislike of cleaning it. The polish Willa insisted she use had a powerful chemical stench and gave Lyn a red, painful rash that she’d complained about from the beginning. So for Lyn to voluntarily clean Willa’s entire silver collection meant that something was fundamentally wrong. Or, rather, it meant that the thing that was fundamentally wrong had surfaced and announced itself. Willa wondered what it could all lead to as she picked up a cake knife and studied her reflection. In the glare of the overhead light, the whites of her eyes burned back at her.

 

Just south of Fayeville, Interstate 34 sliced through fields and hills, crisscrossing the Allehany River dozens of times. The winding backroads that had existed before the interstate still shadowed it in a twisty, incompetent way, but from the moment it was built, Interstate 34 had been faster, smoother, and straighter.

As soon as I-34 was completed, new restaurants sprang up near its Fayeville junction. This development, in combination with the grand opening of the HushMart superstore along the access road that led to the interstate, had turned Fayeville’s previously bustling Main Street into a neutered, orphaned remnant of another era. It seemed to take no time at all for McDonald’s and HushMart to become much more popular than Lucy’s Snack Spot or Kurley’s Hardware. Even residents who lived within walking distance of the Main Street stores and restaurants no longer just strolled down the block for the things they needed or desired. They were now much more likely to get in their cars and drive toward the interstate instead.

Part of the access road that connected the interstate to Fayeville wasn’t as smooth as county officials would have liked. The construction company hired to do the job had failed to adequately take into account the eroding bluff that overhung the planned junction, and as a result, the motorists navigating it were confronted with the added challenge of looking out for falling rocks. Someone from Highway Maintenance was tasked with clearing the rocks out a couple times a week; more frequently when there were storms.

Bo knew about this danger and was prepping Jiminy for the challenge of potentially having to stop and start again, after she had been so happy flying along in fourth gear, slightly too fast for a curvy road.

She was preparing to downshift into third when she was suddenly and instantly blinded.

Bo was, too.

“What the . . . !” he said.

He was exclaiming at the strength and brightness of the light burning into their corneas, but he was also aware that Jiminy wasn’t slowing down as planned. He was worried that she might have taken her hands and feet off the controls completely, retracting like a frightened turtle. He couldn’t check to ensure this wasn’t the case, because he couldn’t see anything.

“Brake!” he shouted as they nearly rammed the pickup truck that was assaulting them.

It had come quickly around the curve, safe in the boulder-free lane, with its brights on high, trained on their windshield. It swerved now to avoid them, slowed, and came to a stop.

Bo listened to the sickly crunch of abused machinery as Jiminy brought their own vehicle to an abrupt halt, diagonally across the oncoming lane.

“Reverse!” he shouted, knowing that another car could come around the curve at any moment and slam into his passenger side door. But Jiminy was too shocked to comply.

“Reverse,” he said more softly and urgently.

She looked at him for a moment, then struggled with the gear shift. But it seemed that in her startled fright, she’d regressed to square one. She stared down with a look of complete bewilderment. The gear shift might as well have been a cucumber, for all she could remember of what she was supposed to do with it to make this big chunk of metal move for her.

Bo was a calm person, but he knew when he was in real danger. He had a flash of what the pain of impact would feel like, how a life of paralysis would change his plans. He opened his door.

“Scoot over,” he commanded.

He slammed his door shut, put a hand on the hood of the truck and launched himself over the front of it, half-sliding, half-scrambling to the other side. His feet landed on the asphalt and he wrenched open the driver’s side door to see Jiminy still sitting there, confused.

“Move!” he shouted, helping her roughly along.

“You! Stop right there, boy!” a voice shouted from behind him.

But Bo had seen the glare of headlights on the trees and knew an oncoming car was moments away from their spot, probably driving as fast as they’d been. And now that he’d forced Jiminy into the seat that would receive the impact, he’d be as good as murdering her if he didn’t ignore whoever was yelling at him and act quickly.

He slid into the driver’s seat, threw the truck into reverse, and jerked them backwards just as an ’86 VW Cabriolet veered obliviously around the corner.

It was a car Bo and Jiminy both knew well. As they panted to regain their breath, they watched the Cabriolet screech to a halt to avoid hitting the truck that had caused all the trouble in the first place.

 

“Sweet Jesus,” Lyn exclaimed, as she looked back to make sure it was Bo and Jiminy she thought she’d seen.

It was. And here, too, was Roy Tomlins and his grandson Randy, standing outside yelling while their truck blocked up the road. Lyn couldn’t sort these various pieces into an arrangement that helped her understand the scenario she’d stumbled across.

She took a deep breath and opened her door.

“I’m warning you for the last time to get outta that car, boy!” Roy was growling.

He was as old as Lyn, filled with a timeless rage.

“What seems to be the problem?” she asked.

Get out of the car, Bo, she mentally beamed down the road. Though she wasn’t positive that this was the best psychic command. If he got out and moved toward them, he’d just be voluntarily coming into range. Perhaps it was better for him to stay in the car, next to the girl. Except for the fact that Roy Tomlins had shouted a direct order that would go unheeded at all of their peril.

“This ain’t none a yer bizness,” Roy’s grandson Randy snarled at Lyn.

Lyn addressed her words to Roy.

“That’s my great-nephew, Mr. Tomlins. And Willa Hunt’s granddaughter.”

Lyn kept her voice submissive. Roy stared hard at her. Something in her tone, or her look, or the sound of the crickets resuming their night song, made him pause in his fury. He stared another beat, then turned and walked toward Bo and Jiminy’s car. Lyn hurried after him, struggling to keep up, careful to avoid getting too close.

 

Inside the car, Jiminy was shaking.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating.

She was mortified that she’d frozen up. She knew how close they’d come to serious injury, all because of her incompetence. And now these men were yelling at them, and Lyn was there looking worried and beaten down, and Bo had a grimness to his face that Jiminy hadn’t seen before. It scared her. He seemed resigned to some kind of disaster.

“I need to get out of the car,” Bo said quietly. “But you stay put.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she replied, wishing her voice wasn’t such a whimper.

“Just stay here,” Bo replied. “Just stay here.”

She didn’t know why they were being shouted at when they were the ones who’d been blinded. She couldn’t comprehend how a barely avoided accident seemed to be spiraling toward a worse one. She was bewildered by the unfolding events, whereas Bo seemed to understand exactly what was going on.

Jiminy had an urge to kiss him like she would if he were going off to war. She leaned over to do it, but he gripped her shoulder hard.

“Why are you trying so hard to get us killed?” he said harshly.

He opened his door and got out, leaving Jiminy stunned.

 

Thank you, Lyn thought to herself. On the walk over, she’d realized that Roy and Randy thought Bo might speed off to escape their wrath, and that they were determined to make sure this didn’t occur. Bo wouldn’t do that with Lyn there, but she wondered what his reaction would have been otherwise. Lyn knew it was a very good thing she’d come along, and this was a feeling she was unaccustomed to having.

She met Bo’s eyes as he stood up straight beside the car, closing the driver’s door behind him.

“I toldja stop, boy,” Roy said.

“Yes, sir, but I knew another car was coming and we needed to get outta the way in a hurry,” Bo replied.

Roy didn’t like logic that disagreed with him.

“I toldja stop.”

“Sorry, Mr. Tomlins,” Bo said. “Hello, Randy.”

Bo and Randy had gone to high school together. They’d played on the same football team.

“I’d stay quiet if I was you, Bo,” Randy said and scowled.

He was staring past Bo at Jiminy, still seated in the car. He started toward her but was stopped by Bo, who wouldn’t step aside. Lyn silently cursed and with her eyes urged her great-nephew to move. The girl was not the one who needed protecting.

“Outta my way, boy,” Randy ordered.

Bo hesitated for a moment and locked eyes with his old teammate, grappling with a desire to smash his fist into Randy’s face. But feeling his great-aunt’s agitation, Bo reluctantly moved aside instead. Randy pushed roughly past him, rapped his knuckles on the car window, and opened the driver’s side door.

“You okay?” he asked gruffly.

Jiminy nodded stiffly.

“I’m fine.”

“You can speak freely, I won’t let anything happen to you,” Randy said.

“I’m fine.”

“You with this boy willingly?” Roy called.

Lyn sucked air into her lungs. Surely Roy Tomlins didn’t think he’d stumbled across a kidnapping. He just didn’t like what he saw, and wanted to dress it up in a costume that would offend others, too.

Jiminy looked confused.

“With Bo?” Jiminy said. “Yeah, of course.”

This answer didn’t bring Lyn any relief, because she observed its impact on Roy and Randy, who were now looking even angrier.

Lyn cut in. “Mr. Tomlins, Bo’s been working for Miz Hunt over the summer, and that sometimes involves driving Jiminy places.”

As soon as Lyn had started speaking, Roy had put his hand up to block her words, but they’d wended their way through the cracks between his fingers, and now Roy seemed to consider them. Lyn hoped that he would. She recognized that he needed an excuse to back off and leave them alone. She wanted to fashion one for them all.

“That so?” Roy said, turning to Bo. “You working for Miz Hunt?”

Bo nodded. Technically, this was true, though it pained him to play the role his great-aunt was asking him to.

“But she was the one driving,” Randy said.

They’d seen them clearly. That was the point of having the brights on in the first place, to reveal what was going on with folks when they thought it was just them. The white girl had been driving, and the black boy had been sitting too close.

“She wanted to learn how to drive stick shift,” Bo answered. “Sir.”

Lyn’s wrinkled nose had told him to add the “sir.” She was enlisting different parts of her face to ensure that Bo acted the way he should, each twitch and furrow sending a clear signal, working overtime to keep him out of harm’s way.

“And you were teaching her?” Roy queried.

Jiminy sat up straighter in the car, looking as though she was just waking from a hazy dream.

“Bo doesn’t work for me,” she said righteously. “He’s my boyfr—”

“He’s Miz Hunt’s employee,” Lyn interrupted.

She was frustrated that her invisible strings didn’t reach to this troublemaking girl. Furious that the girl didn’t automatically better understand the ways of this place, or what was at stake.

“And our families go way back, as I think you know,” Lyn continued. “Miss Jiminy I’ve known since she was born.”

Jiminy gaped at her. Roy looked from one to the other, and then at Bo, who was staring at the ground. In the silence that followed, the crickets grew louder. Roy shifted his weight and rubbed the back of his hand roughly across his nose.

“Just needed to make sure no one was in any kinda trouble,” he said finally.

Lyn’s insides unclenched. They were going to be okay.

“We weren’t till you blinded us,” Jiminy retorted. “Your head beams nearly killed us.”

Lyn groaned inwardly as Roy’s gaze snapped back to the girl. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Here he’d started out concerned for her, and what did he get in return? Attitude, not gratitude. Though maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised, considering she was Willa and Henry’s granddaughter. He’d seen her around, he realized now. At Grady’s Grill, asking too many questions. She was trouble, that much was for sure.

Roy felt a throbbing in his right temple as he tightened his free hand into a fist. He wanted to teach her a lesson. But what could he do, really? Randy would spring to action with a word, but it was already so late, and Roy was tired. He was ready to move on to the ice cream he was going to eat when he got back home.

“Well, thank goodness no one got hurt,” Lyn said cautiously.

Roy squinted at his captive audience, each in turn.

“Y’all watch yourselves,” he said, his voice thick with implications for disobedience. “I know plenty of folks who wouldn’t be as understandin’ as us.”

Jiminy, Bo, and Lyn remained silent and motionless as Roy and Randy turned and walked back to their truck. But as their taillights disappeared around the far curve a few moments later, Jiminy burst into tears.