Marco

by Lee Sowder

“Polo,” Mae shouts, spitting out the river water she’s just tasted as she treads to keep her head above the surface. Billy Stevens is IT, and nobody wants to get tagged today. Billy Stevens doesn’t just tag, he holds your head down in the water so long you think your eyes will pop. Mae swears he will someday go to prison, but her mother has told her that Billy is just a troubled child.

“Marco,” Billy hollers again, and just as quick as they can all say ‘Polo’, Henry Fitzpatrick and Martha Bowen and Mae Givens hop across the rocky bottom of the Roanoke River, crunching soggy tennis shoes into the river muck, dodging the low hanging branches that sag across the water’s edge.

“Polo,” Mae hears to her left, barely a whisper- that’s Ginny Gene waiting too long to say ‘Polo’ again; almost cheating, she thinks. You’re supposed to say ‘Polo’ right after the person who’s IT says ‘Marco’, but Mae’s not gonna tell on her, nobody wants Ginny Gene to be IT. Ginny Gene never tags anybody when she’s IT, and after everybody has quit trying and started floating on their backs down the current, Ginny Gene usually starts crying and Mae ends up letting her tag her.

“You can’t just stand there with your eyes shut, Ginny Gene,” Mae told her one day after Ginny Gene had been IT so long everybody else had gone home. “When you say ‘Marco’, and you hear ‘Polo’, you gotta grab for somebody, you gotta tag em!”

“But what if I fall, Mae, what if I fall and drown!” Ginny Gene whispered, like the thought was too terrible to say out loud.

“So – You can swim.” Mae had said, shaking her blonde pixie haircut back and forth, then handing her a towel to dry off with. Mae and Ginny Gene shared the same summer birthday month, and went to each other’s parties at the Claremont Heights Pool. “C’mon, let’s go to the fire station and buy some tootsie rolls. I gotta quarter.”

Ginny Gene lived down the hill from Mae and became Mae’s best friend by default when Sally Gearhart moved to North Carolina. Sally and Mae and Mary Gene had all started first grade walking to school together, and because their last names began with a G, all sat together in the G row each year. Then Sally Gearhart moved to North Carolina when they finished third and this year Mae will have to start fifth without Ginny Gene. Ginny Gene has to repeat fourth grade. She didn’t tell Mae why, but Mae heard from Billy Stevens who heard from his mother that she flunked spelling and math. Mae’s mother told her she should nice to Ginny Gene because her home was not a happy home.

“So,” Mae had said, “We’re not happy all the time.”

Smiling, her mother had brushed her bangs out of her eyes and said, “Yes, but we all know we love each other.”

Mae remembered the times Ginny Gene would call and ask if she could spend the night. Ginny Gene would speak barely above a whisper, and her words would catch in her throat like they were having a hard time getting out. “My daddy’s yelling again, and my mama’s locked herself in the bathroom, and she’s crying and I’m afraid she’s never gonna stop. Can I sleep over?”

Mae would ask her mother if Ginny Gene could sleep over, and her mother would always say yes, even if her father wasn’t home. Anything else Mae asked for, a B B gun, a go-cart, or camp, her mother always said, “Wait till your father gets home.”

Today, the hot August sun is bleaching the banks of the Roanoke River into baked red clay, and the fish have swum down to their deep pockets of cool and the birds have landed safely on the branches of the low hanging willow trees.

“Marco,” Billy Stevens yells, splashing the water just a few feet away from Mary Gene.

“Polo!” yells Henry Fitzpatrick, flapping his arms as he leaps across the distance between Billy Stevens and Mary Gene. “Polo, polo, polo,” he adds, before diving under the surface and away.

“Polo!” shouts Martha Givens, giggling as she climbs behind the boulder dividing the right side of the river from the left.

Mae looks over at Ginny Gene. Her mouth is forming a perfect O and she is standing in the middle of the river, neck deep, a few feet away from Billy Stevens. Mae waves to get her attention, but Ginny Gene won’t turn her gaze. She is standing perfectly still, silent.

“Polo!” Mae yells, slapping her hands across the water, moving closer to Billy Stevens, shouting “Polo” again and again.

Billy is grinning, walking slowly towards Ginny Gene. Just before he grabs her, Ginny Gene whispers, “Polo,” but the river swallows the sounds and leaves only the swish of her head being dunked, and the hard laughter of victory.