This lasted for only a split second before a deep voice roared from behind them.
“CJ!”
They turned. Nick, dressed in one of his collared golf shirts, was rushing toward them, a look of anger and urgency on his face.
“Dad?” Peter said, and a whole different set of troubles emerged before Peter.
“Uh, oh,” CJ said under her breath.
The Return of Dad
Chipper remained on the ground while a woman held a bloody golf towel to his face. Many adults huddled around, offering their care. The greatest bully Peter had even known was now the victim.
Peter stood on the outskirts of the crowd next to CJ, who wouldn’t look up from the ground. Adults pointed and stared at her. Their dad was talking on his phone in the street, punctuating his words with hand gestures. CJ’s lasso was in his grip. Peter knew his mother was on the other end of that call.
The bloody towel and the circle of people prevented Chipper from looking over at Peter, which made Peter thankful. He knew he was officially dead now; there was no turning back. It was going to be a short school year.
Nick hung up and charged past Peter and CJ without saying a word. He kneeled in front of Chipper and put his hand on Chipper’s knee, talking softly to the boy. Peter looked away; he couldn’t bear to watch. It was hard enough to watch strangers treat Chipper like an innocent sparrow with an injured wing, but his own father? The looks from people in the crowd, as though CJ and Peter were the worst kids in the world, were enough to make Peter want to crawl into the nearest golf bag.
Nick stood and started walking toward them. The soft features on his face he used when talking with Chipper dissolved, and his face hardened. He grabbed CJ by the wrist without slowing.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Nick pulled CJ down Ranch Street, and she had to walk with a gallop to avoid from being dragged. Peter stayed one step behind, and even that took a lot of effort. He didn’t dare say a word, though he was curious when his father had returned home.
Nick let go of CJ’s wrist only upon kicking open the screen door to their home. He pulled CJ through, and she stumbled to regain her balance. Unconsciously, she straightened the tiara on her head. Peter entered behind his father.
Abby was sitting on the edge of the couch with Uncle Herb facing her. Both looked concerned.
Herb asked CJ if she was okay.
“Of course she’s okay, Herb. She was the whipper, not the whipped. She could’ve blinded that kid! Then we’d all be out in the street,” Nick said, tossing CJ’s lasso in the middle of the living room.
Herb didn’t respond. Nick’s presence instantly charged the air. He knew a family meeting was necessary, and Herb knew Nick wouldn’t want him present. He excused himself to his bedroom. No one said anything, but both Peter and CJ watched him go.
Abby asked, “Is the boy okay?”
“It looked worse than it was. She got him in the forehead, which bleeds a whole hell of a lot. He might need some stitches,” Nick said. He sat on the opposite side of the couch from Abby and rubbed his face with his hands. “We’ll definitely be hearing from Kenneth. Out of all the boys to hit—”
“That boy is not exactly a saint, Nick.”
“Who is?” Nick answered. “Knowing Kenneth, he’ll still probably sue us. That boy is his pride and joy, his chip off the old block. That’s why they call him Chipper, right? They’ll blackball us around here at the very least.”
These potential problems didn’t bother Abby as much as her daughter’s actions. She shook her head and looked over at her little girl. “What were you thinking, Cynthia Joy?”
CJ’s head dropped only slightly at the sound of her full name.
“Go to your room for a minute. You too, Peter. We’ll deal with this, but I want to talk to your father alone for a bit.”
Peter started to make his way down the hall, but CJ veered off to pick her lasso off the living room carpet.
“I don’t think so. Drop that right there. That thing is headed for the garbage, pronto,” Nick said.
CJ froze, but she didn’t let go of the lasso.
“You heard me,” Nick said, his voice deepening.
Peter’s knees weakened.
CJ didn’t budge. She stared at the lasso. It was like the lasso had power over her, spoke to her, and now was saying, don’t you drop me—you’ll regret it.
Nick said, “I’m counting to three, CJ. If you don’t hand me the lasso, there will be consequences. Serious consequences. Trust me on that.”
He said “one” through gritted teeth, his face flushed with anger. He didn’t like his authority challenged anywhere: at home, at work, on the golf course. But most of all, his ire was drawn highest when tested by his petulant daughter. His friends had the type of girls that Nick thought he would always have: fragile, nurturing things who liked dolls and Disney crap, and thought their daddies were the greatest guys in the entire world. He had CJ. She could have been the daughter of a pair of rams.
“Listen to your father, CJ,” Abby said.
“Two!”
CJ glanced at Peter, and their eyes locked for a second, right before she darted out of the living room with the lasso still in hand and down the hall toward her room, but she turned sharply into Uncle Herb’s room.
Uncle Herb was sitting in the middle of the room, listening to the situation escalate. He’d wanted CJ to drop the lasso but had a feeling she wouldn’t. CJ slammed the door shut behind her and locked it from the inside. She looked at Uncle Herb and hesitated, as though waiting for him to take the side of the other adults and demand her to unlock the door. When Uncle Herb remained quiet, she walked tentatively to the wall farthest from the door, not taking her gaze off him until she passed. He followed her with his eyes.
Uncle Herb stared at the locked door. All of a sudden, he was an accomplice. The sound of determined footsteps came and stopped in front of the door. The doorknob rattled.
“CJ, open this door right now,” Nick’s voice penetrated clearly through the door.
More footsteps. More knob rattling, then a heavy banging on the door. “CJ, right now, open this.”
Then Abby asked, “Herb, please tell CJ to unlock the door.”
Herb couldn’t see CJ, but he sensed her presence.
“This behavior is coming to an end right now,” Nick said, the anger still in his voice but not as loud this time. He must have said that facing Abby, not the door.
“Herb, if you can, unlock the door for us, please,” Abby pleaded.
Herb paused before steering to the door. He maneuvered his chair several times, spurts forward and reverse, until the side of the wheelchair butted up against the door.
“Ah can’t,” Herb said to the door, though he didn’t even try the knob. He was not surprised to hear Nick’s exasperated groan.
“Find the key,” Nick ordered. Footsteps fell away. More banging on the door. “CJ, OPEN THE DOOR!”
Herb strained his neck to see his niece, but she must have been huddled in the far corner. Between the bangs, grunts, and rattles, he was deliberating if what he was about to do was right.
“Where is that damn key, Abby?!” Nick shouted.
The damage was already done, Herb decided. He would be just another obstacle after the door. Nick could use some time to simmer down.
“Dad, can’t you calm down? CJ was just sticking up for me,” Peter said. His voice was small and timid, but Uncle Herb felt pride for his nephew anyway. That must have been very hard for Peter to say to his father.
Nick made an ugly sound, both dismissive and disgusted.
Footsteps approached accompanied by the clanging of keys. Then Abby: “Peter’s right, Nick. Calm down a little.”
Herb heard the click of the unlocking door and then a weighted push against his wheelchair.
“Herb, can you get out of the way, please?” said Nick, his voice fraying with each syllable.
“Can-t.”
Abby asked, �
�Are you stuck, Herb? Is the battery dead?”
There was a long pause before Herb answered.
“No.”
“Then get out of the way!” Nick roared, jarring the door so hard it crashed into Herb’s elbow and rocked the wheelchair.
Herb took a deep breath and braced himself the best he could.
“No.”
The wheelchair falling sounded like a tray of plates crashing to the ground. Herb landed on the side of his head, and the wheelchair rolled onto him, sandwiching him to the floor.
Next thing Herb knew, Abby was kneeling at his side and Peter was lifting the wheelchair off his body. Nick stepped over him and went to the window. The screen was lifted open.
CJ was gone.
Peter stared at the opening. There were benefits to living in a ranch after all.
Gray Sheep
Josh found CJ crouched behind the recycle container in the far corner of his garage. He didn’t ask questions. It was his idea to have her finish the painting. She jumped at his offer. It detached quickly from the ark with the help of the screw gun. Josh propped it against the back wall of the basement, and CJ got lost in the work, hidden from those looking for her. She had to stand on her tippy-toes to paint black streaks near the top of the door, where the sky was in her painting. Josh was in and out of the house—“spring cleaning,” he told her.
CJ was rinsing her paintbrush in a cup of muddied water when she heard her father’s voice from outside the garage. She stopped what she was doing.
“Have you seen CJ?”
Though it was impossible to see her unless you were standing at the foot of the garage, CJ slowly backpedaled and crouched at the side of her painting.
It seemed to take a long time for Josh to respond. “Who are you?” he eventually said, in a tone that lacked warmth.
“Don’t get smart,” Nick said.
Josh then said, “I found you can learn a lot about your neighbors in the summer. You see everyone outside, or when they’re inside you hear everything through the open windows—”
Nick cut him off. “Did you see which way she went or not?”
“Haven’t seen a thing, sir,” Josh said.
CJ heard her father mutter something then listened as his footsteps walked further away. After determining enough time had passed quietly, she returned to rinsing her paintbrush.
* * *
Josh’s whistle sounded like a bird call. It started at a low pitch, then went high. CJ had heard it before; Josh used it to get the attention of the cats or Mr. Terry’s dogs, but she paid it no mind this time. She was almost done with her painting. She only turned when she saw shadows approaching on the driveway.
Peter appeared in front of the garage. He stepped in quickly. He didn’t want his parents to see him after they returned from their search up the block. In hindsight, Peter believed CJ jumping out the window was a brilliant maneuver. She was in big trouble anyway; maybe this would give everyone time to calm down. Peter wanted to sneak CJ back in the house before her parents returned and realized she’d been in Josh’s garage the entire time. Josh was in enough trouble already, but he never seemed overly concerned with what other people were thinking.
“CJ, we better go home. Dad’s not too mad anymore. Everyone is really worried,” Peter said, hoping she wouldn’t put up a fight.
“I’m almost done.”
“CJ, please. Uncle Herb is really worried,” Peter said.
“Not yet.”
Peter looked over to Josh for some help, but Josh was busy digging through his pockets to find a lighter for the cigarette dangling from his lips. He lit the cigarette, leaned against the garage’s frame, and inhaled as he studied the sky. He acted surprised when he noticed Peter staring at him, and he pointed the cigarette at him. Peter knew where this was leading.
“I promise I’ll never start to smoke.”
Josh exhaled and smoke streamed out and up into the air like steam from a freight train.
“Good boy.”
“There!” CJ said. “I’m done.”
CJ stepped away from the painting, and Peter drew near. It was unlike anything she had created before, and she had made a point to show Peter everything she’d drawn since she was two. Usually her work consisted of a rainbow of bright colors splashed across the page in a fireworks display. This painting had only dark colors; it had a caveman, story-like quality. Peter wasn’t quite sure what he was looking at.
“It’s really good, CJ,” Peter said. He’d learned a long time ago never to ask what is it?
CJ beamed beneath streaks of black paint on her face. “What do you think, Josh?”
Josh flicked his cigarette into the driveway and walked over. He studied the painting, nodding his head and smiling. “Awesome,” he said, and if he didn’t mean the compliment, it was impossible to tell.
CJ nodded in agreement. “You know what it is, right?”
“Of course,” Josh said.
“Peter?”
“It’s—it’s sheep, right? Gray sheep,” Peter said.
CJ smiled, eager to explain. “When I first started painting, I was going to make the rain storm, like the one Josh thought was coming.”
Peter cringed.
“You see, here are all the dark clouds,” she said, pointing to what Peter thought were sheep. “But then it didn’t rain, so I said to myself, what should I paint? What’s fluffy like clouds? Sheep! Then we went for that hike in the woods, and Mr. Terry said it was like a parade, and I thought, I’m going to draw the sheep on a parade, and I made them like us. There’s me, Peter, you Josh, Uncle Herb, Mr. Terry, and Mr. James.”
Peter watched CJ’s finger as she pointed to each cloud, or sheep, which represented one person on the hike. As he looked closer, he saw the attention to detail. There were wheels on Uncle Herb’s sheep, Mr. James’ sheep was skinny, and Mr. Terry’s was certainly not. Josh’s sheep had longer hair than the others, and CJ’s sheep wore a tiara on its head and lasso around the neck. Peter’s sheep was big and strong and seemed to tower over the rest. Though he disagreed wholeheartedly with the depiction, he appreciated the artist’s vision.
* * *
They slipped into the house unnoticed, and when their parents returned, CJ got into trouble, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Somehow, the lasso didn’t even come up, so CJ didn’t even have to go through the trouble of hiding it under her bed. The dinner table was very quiet; Uncle Herb barely looked up as Peter fed him. Nick mostly watched everyone as though he’d forgotten what his own home life was like. Curfew was strictly enforced, and Peter found himself lying in bed earlier than he had in weeks. The summer light faded around his room. Far from sleep, he tilted his head when he heard voices from outside. He went to the windowsill and saw people slowly gathering in the street, including Josh, Mr. Terry, and Mr. James. It was a strange sight to see them with a group of golfins, but they were on the outskirts keeping mostly to themselves. Even the old smoking lady hobbled down the street to the group. They were all looking down Ranch Street in the direction of the pavilion—maybe there was a community event that Peter wasn’t aware of. He heard his front screen door open and saw his parents join the group, walking past their neighbors silently to some golfin friends of Nick. Peter put his ear to the screen and tried to separate the voices, but all the conversations came to him in one jumbled ball. An elderly, hunchbacked neighbor shuffled to the group leaving his slower-paced wife behind to talk to another elderly woman. The old man talked to some members of the group, then shouted back to his wife, “See, Liza. I told you. It’s smoke. That’s all smoke. It’s coming from the forest.”
That’s when Peter realized the Pine Barrens were on fire.
Day 70
Uncle Herb sat in front of the television, watching video of the Pine Barrens burning on the local news network. All you could see were smoke and flames reaching for the sky.
“Some crazy old coots on the links this morning were talking about the evacuation plans of the
Creek. Gimme a break—it’s miles away,” Nick said, laughing. He was lying on the couch behind Herb, staring at the laptop on his knees.
Uncle Herb often struggled in conversation with Nick—always had. When Nick said something, Herb was unsure if he was looking for a reply or just speaking aloud. In the early years of his sister’s marriage, Herb would always answer Nick out of politeness but found that Nick rarely tried to engage Herb in an extended conversation. So now he didn’t answer unless spoken to directly. Herb was no expert on forest fires, but he knew the fury of Mother Nature was not a laughing matter. She was unpredictable and unsympathetic. The weeks of draught provided great fuel, and all it would take is a change in wind direction right now and those old coots might be right. The newscaster reported that firefighters from the bordering county and as far as New York City were on call to relieve the local firefighters who had been trying to suppress the blaze through the night and the entire morning. That was a little disconcerting.
Uncle Herb wondered if there would be any trouble returning to his group home tomorrow. He was ready now, mainly because of the man sitting behind him. Nick changed the dynamics of the house and the overall mood. Abby, Peter, and even CJ (to an extent) walked on eggshells around the house, while Herb rolled over the shells trying to stay out of the way. Maybe things would settle down in a couple of days, once Nick got comfortable again and felt like he’d re-established his role as ruler. Herb found the whole thing sadly telling. No one was particularly eager to spend time in the house. Peter took CJ to a hill on the golf course where many of the residents were gathering to watch the smoke bloom on the horizon. Abby was all too willing to let them go, as she had a very interested buyer, in her words, come out of the blue for Josh’s house. She said he was a recently divorced and, surprisingly, still wealthy guy, who wanted to ease the grief of his failed marriage by becoming a scratch golfer. His enthusiasm for the gated golf community had led to a hastily and unusually scheduled Sunday morning appointment. Abby obliged immediately, completely forgetting about her idea of everyone going to church together before Herb returned home.
The Underdog Parade Page 21