by A W Hartoin
The family, Grandpa Lorne, Grandma Susannah, Great-Uncle Vaughn, Aunt Calla, Mom and their brother, Forest, all gathered in front of the sofa. Axelrod started talking to them. His voice was soft and high, like he hadn’t quite made it through puberty yet. He told them to get to one side of the room. When they didn’t move, he held the gun out like a present and said he’d shoot them if they didn’t get going.
Axelrod tossed a roll of tape to Grandma Susannah, but she didn’t catch it. She didn’t move. She let the tape bounce off her chest and roll back to Axelrod. He cussed and told her to get the tape. She refused. He told her if she didn’t get the tape and tie everyone up, he would slit her throat. She said, “Go ahead and try it.”
When Axelrod heard that, he went crazy. He waved the gun around. He stomped and shouted, throwing a right little old fit. Grandma Susannah didn’t waver and they all stared at him. He shot another round into the ceiling and then, without warning, as he waved the gun around, Jim Axelrod blew off the top of his own head.
It was an accident, Grandpa Lorne told us, the sort of accident that happens when a person comes on Ernest’s land, uninvited with bad intentions. He showed me the newspaper clippings he saved. They confirmed his version of events and included a list of Axelrod’s crimes: kidnapping, manslaughter, and rape.
Mom wouldn’t say much about the incident. The one time I did get her to talk about it, I only asked one question. I asked her if she was scared. She didn’t pause, not for a second. She said, “No, I wasn’t scared.” I could tell from her eyes she wasn’t trying to protect me. She was telling the truth and I knew why she wasn’t scared. No matter what she said, what excuses she made, my mom believed in Ernest, too.
Chapter Eleven
I WOKE UP on my third Friday at Camp curled up under the odd collection of blankets, all ancient rejects from various generations in town. They had holes, rips, and stains, but together they kept me warm in the cool, moist night air and I considered them favorite friends.
I rolled over and found Sydney purring next to my face.
“How come you never slept with me before?”
Sydney yawned, his pink tongue curlicuing in his mouth. Then he repositioned himself into a tight ball of fur.
I slid my hand underneath him and soaked up his radiating heat. A freak cold front had rolled in during the night, bringing several inches of rain, but leaving a beautiful blue sky behind. I peeked out from under my covers to look at the sky and smiled. It’d be an awesome day. The air was warming already, and I figured the sun would be blazing by noon.
I reached out into the cool misty air and felt around the floor for clothes I’d cast off the night before. I found them in a dusty heap pushed under the bed with Slick curled up on top of them. He purred when I touched him, practically vibrating the floor. He didn’t stop purring when I pulled my clothes out from under him. He just found another pile. I picked some of the cat hair off and then dressed under the covers.
After a few minutes enjoying the warmth, I got up and shivered my way to the door. As soon as I opened it, a nasty odor wafted in. If the smell had a color, it would’ve been vomit green.
“Oh crap, she’s already at it,” said Caleb as he and Luke emerged from their room. Both wrinkled up their noses and fanned their faces.
“It’s too early. Can’t she wait until after we eat?” Luke made a sound like hawking up a loogie and marched down the hall towards the kitchen shouting, “Mom, Mom!”
He got no response. I knew he wouldn’t. Aunt Calla was working and a blast of dynamite wouldn’t break her concentration. She’d been mixing new dyes for most of the first two weeks and the house reeked of her efforts. Usually, she was at it for ten hours a day on her porch and we rarely saw her, so I was surprised to find her sitting in the kitchen with her bare feet propped up on the table.
“What’s your problem, boy?” she said when we entered the kitchen.
“It stinks. Aren’t you done yet?” Luke took a stool at the far end of the table. Aunt Calla was known to be short tempered when she was working, and a discouraging smack might be headed his way.
“Didn’t that glue you created to torture poor Miss Pritchett stink?”
“Poor Miss Pritchett? She deserved it,” said Caleb.
“Maybe, but it stank, didn’t it?”
“Yeah, it stank pretty bad.”
“Well, then, I’ll thank you to stop fussing about my dyes. I doubt they’re any worse.”
“But you didn’t have to smell our glue,” Luke said.
“And why was that?”
“Because we made it at the university.”
“Because?”
They looked at each other and sighed. “Because it was wrong and you would’ve caught us at home.”
“So there. Get some breakfast and go off and do whatever it is you do.” With that, Aunt Calla marched off in the direction of her porch and I looked at my cousins in wonder. Aunt Calla had won the argument, but I didn’t know why.
“She got us again. Can you believe that?” Luke pulled a large plastic tub out of a cabinet and put it on the table.
“She’s so crazy. The glue isn’t the same at all. We have to start thinking ahead and figure out what she’s going to say before she says it,” said Caleb.
“Good luck with that.” I shot them a sarcastic look and got out three bowls and spoons. We each scooped cereal out of the tub with our bowls, and poured the milk. We ate until our stomachs bowed out, which was no mean feat with our stomachs as flat and well-muscled as they were. I did my best to keep up with Luke and Caleb, but my stomach didn’t have the capacity.
“Oh man, I’m stuffed,” said Luke.
“Me, too. What should we have for lunch?” Caleb rubbed his stomach, leaned back in his chair and let out a belch.
“Let’s just have butter bread again. That’s easy,” I said.
“Yeah, good idea. We could make some ice cream to go with it,” said Luke.
He stood up, stretched, and began pulling out the ingredients for bread. He lined up flour, yeast, sugar, salt, butter and milk on the counter and quickly dumped the correct amounts into the two metal pans he’d pulled out of the bread makers. He didn’t need a recipe. He made bread by eyeballing the ingredients. Luke was the best bread maker, although everyone took turns. It was a Camp thing. The kids made the bread and the kids ate it. Mom and Aunt Calla lunched on whatever the garden produced.
“Are we making ice cream?” Ella walked into the kitchen with April close at her heels. They wore identical pajamas and their hair was French-braided with pink ribbons at the end of each plait.
“What do you care, Ella Smella? You don’t even like ice cream,” said Luke.
“Please. I didn’t like that nasty lemon you made yesterday. Nobody did.”
“Fine. You make it today.”
“Fine. I will,” said Ella.
“Gee, I wonder what you’ll pick…perhaps chocolate or maybe chocolate. You’re so predictable,” said Luke.
“That’s all you know. We’re making chocolate and strawberry.” Ella scooped herself a bowl of cereal.
“It’s still chocolate, dufus.”
“No, it’s chocolate and strawberry,” said Ella.
“Can’t you think of anything without chocolate?”
“What do you want me to make? Strawberry and dirt?”
Luke pretended to flick a booger at her.
“You’re an idiot!” she yelled.
“Zipperhead,” said Luke.
“My braids do not look like zippers.”
“Yes, they do. Zipperhead.”
“Idiot!”
“Zipperhead!”
“Juvenile delinquent,” said Ella.
April linked her arm through mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. We watched the yelling escalate to one decibel below hearing damage. April relaxed, putting more weight onto me and I felt her face curve into a smile. The morning arguments between Luke and Ella were part of the predicta
ble nature of summer at Camp. We’d seen that play a thousand times, but still found it amusing.
“All right. That’s enough, you two.” Mom appeared in the doorway. “It’s too early for this.”
She went to the coffeepot and poured a generous amount into her mug, a deformed lump I made for her in the fifth grade.
“Luke called me a zipperhead, Mom,” Ella said.
“So? Your head does kind of look like a zipper.”
“Mom!” Ella drew the word out until it was at least five syllables long.
“Ella!” Mom did the same and the rest of us laughed.
“She called me a juvenile delinquent,” said Luke.
“This from the boy who glued a teacher’s car to the parking lot. If the shoe fits, boy, you’re going to have to wear it. Now, Ella Smella.”
“Mom,” Ella protested.
“I’m sorry. Ella, you and April make the ice cream. The rest of you go weed the garden, gather eggs, and feed the animals. And keep it down. We’re trying to get some work done around here.” She made shooing gestures to us boys and we reluctantly stood up. Then she disappeared out the door headed back, I assumed, to her porch. Mom and Aunt Calla each occupied one of the screened-in porches where they did their work.
I would always associated summer with the smells and sounds that came off those porches. Mom’s porch emitted the scent of metal being heated into shapes with her blowtorch. The crackling of her arc welder sang me to sleep, while the sound of her cussing when she burned herself barely registered in my brain.
Whenever a sharp, stinging smell found my nose, I thought of Aunt Calla with her vats of dye and strange chemical concoctions on her porch. During past summers, I’d taken the occasional peek and found her stirring a cauldron of noxious liquid with a long, wooden spoon. If she’d been saying, “Double, double, toil, and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.” I wouldn’t have been surprised.
April left my shoulder and repeated Mom’s shooing gestures at us. “Go on. Get out.”
“Maybe we’ll stay and help. I don’t think you can handle the ice-cream makers on your own.” Luke gestured through the kitchen door to the great room in the center of the house. It combined living room and dining room, but also had a set of bunk beds in case we had spillover from the bedrooms.
The ice-cream makers sat on the dining room table. They were stainless steel monstrosities the size of laundry baskets and weighed forty pounds each. Like a lot of things at Camp, they were never put away, but on permanent display. Mom and Aunt Calla considered them works of industrial art meant to be appreciated. But every once in a while they rearranged them to change their viewing pleasure. Sometimes they set them together in the center of the table. Other times separating them, one at each end or both together at one end. Aunt Calla said it was all about change and aesthetics.
They were nuts to make so much over a couple of appliances, but I did like the way the steel curved into a smooth oval shape and the look of the black buttons against the gray. Sometimes I ran my fingers across the metal, feeling the tiny invisible grain and its cold perfection.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said to Luke and Caleb. “Let them do it by themselves if they want to. We still get to eat it.”
“Maybe you won’t,” said Ella.
“Don’t be mean, Ella. We’ll share,” said April as she cocked an eyebrow at us, subtle, but we knew what it meant. We’d aggravated Ella enough. It was time to give April some peace.
In a half hour the chores were finished. We slumped on the steps leading to the porch outside the kitchen.
“Hurry up!” shouted Luke through the door.
April and Ella were still inside puréeing strawberries and chopping chocolate.
“Go away, losers!” Ella shouted back.
“Losers? What a witch! What are we supposed to do while they’re cooking?” Luke propped his head in his hands and looked out over the sun-dappled trail to the creek. Being ordered out of the kitchen ruined our routine. Usually, we all hung out together while making the ice cream. It went faster that way, and then we did the chores. The rest of our mornings were spent playing whatever sport we could think of. The Pack’s sports went anywhere from log throwing to weird soccer games with complicated rules which only we could comprehend. With the girls occupied, there weren’t enough people for what we considered two teams.
“I’m going to email Jewel,” said Caleb.
“What for? You emailed her like six times yesterday,” said Luke.
“I want to remind her to bring her new Brazilian bikini tomorrow.”
“She has a Brazilian bikini?” Luke’s eyebrows shot up.
“What’s a Brazilian bikini?” I asked.
“It’s really tiny and the bottoms only have a string up the butt,” replied Caleb.
“Doesn’t that bother her butt?”
“I don’t know. Who cares?” said Caleb.
“Maybe Sophie can borrow it,” said Luke.
“What does she need it for? She’ll probably just go skinny-dipping again.”
“Oh, yeah.” Luke’s mouth spread into a wide grin.
That sleazy grin reminded me of the Grinch when he was planning to steal Christmas and I resented it. The skinny-dipping episode was the worst thing that happened the summer before. The whole Pack went skinny-dipping and I would’ve gone too, except I had a terrible cold and Mom wouldn’t let me out of the house. Until Caleb mentioned it, I’d forgotten all about it.
My damn mother! What the hell? I have one chance to see naked girls and she had to ruin it.
I balled up my fists and crossed my arms, glaring out at the field alive with bees buzzing around the wildflowers. After a bit, Caleb went inside to email Jewel and Luke followed him saying he was going to search the Internet for a bikini for Sophie. I stayed on the step, resenting the hell out of Mom and bored out of my mind.
I know. I’ll go check the perimeter. Mom’ll hate that.
I grabbed a walking stick, took a quick look around, and headed down the path towards the pond. Mom kept warning me not to stray too far since my adventure with Beatrice. I told her I stayed on the property, but I don’t think she believed me. She kept reminding me how important it was to stay within our borders. I think she enlisted my sisters’ help to keep an eye on me, but, for once, they were occupied.
During the last two weeks, I’d convinced myself the man in the woods was a figment of my imagination. I’d stopped thinking about him, like I had Miss Pritchett. After two weeks of peace, they both seemed like a bad dream and nothing to do with me at all.
There was no reason I shouldn’t check the property line. Maybe I wanted to reassure myself that the man wasn’t real. Maybe I just wanted to rebel a little. But I had clothes on and that was a step in the right direction. I’d promised Mom I wouldn’t go off the property and I wouldn’t. I planned on going right to the edge, but not over.
Chapter Twelve
THE MORNING HEATED up fast and the mist had disappeared by the time I set out. The sun warmed and soothed the back of my neck, but the cold dew still clung to the grass, wetting my feet and the bottom of my jeans. I walked out of the yard towards the pond, careful to skirt Beatrice’s new pen beside the path.
After Beatrice chased me through the woods, Mom made a decision, one I couldn’t comprehend. We’d keep Beatrice, but build her a pen. It would’ve been easier to send her back to the Klaas farm. We worked on the pen for three days, digging postholes, attaching stout chicken wire, and fashioning a gate with a large metal lock.
Not only did Mom insist on keeping Beatrice, she got another llama, Emily, to keep her company. The situation was a worst-case scenario, more work and more llamas. But Emily turned out to be a normal llama. She liked humans and made little purr-like humming noises whenever we were around. Now Mom thought we should get a third one. I argued hard against the idea. I’d gotten lucky with Emily, but I had no faith my luck would hold.
Beatrice watched me from the new pen. Mo
m let her out at night and put her in the pen first thing in the morning like she was some kind of watch llama. If anything, Beatrice hated me more. I think she blamed me for her incarceration which, of course, was true. As I got closer, her ears swooped back from their forward friendly position into her just-for-Puppy malevolent ears-back position. She clicked her teeth and shuffled her feet. Her hooves clinked against the wire and her long tongue snaked out and slobbered up the lock. I blew a loud raspberry at her, sending my spit into the sunshine where it shone for a moment in a variety of colors.
I walked toward the silent woods when a horrible giant loogie sound erupted behind me. I jumped forward and to the right into a blackberry bramble. Thorns scratched up my arms pretty good, but thank goodness my clothes protected the rest of me. My stomach and legs had only just healed.
I backed out of the bramble and found a big splat of goo, oozing down long blades of grass near me. Beatrice had expanded her radius. The goo flew at least three feet farther than usual. If I hadn’t jumped I would’ve gotten hit with some overspray.
Beatrice stared at me with her mouth hanging open. Green slobber hung in strings from her loose lips. Emily moved to the other side of the pen and eyed her nervously from under a tuft of soft brown hair that flopped over her forehead. Emily’s big, worried eyes made me feel better. If she thought Beatrice was a weirdo, I wasn’t alone in my opinion. Even if my only companion was another llama, I’d take it.
I blew another raspberry at Beatrice, picked up my walking stick and went down the path. Under the trees, the sun all but disappeared, leaving only polka dots of light on the forest floor. Crabapples grew in groups of ten or twenty and lent the woods a magical look. It wasn’t hard to imagine fairies peeking out from under the crabapples’ long, green leaves. Grandpa Lorne claimed all sorts of things inhabited Ernest’s land and I’d spent my youngest summers searching for fairies, trolls, and unicorns only to find slugs and beetles instead. I liked them pretty well, so it wasn’t a total loss and I built up a huge collection in my underwear drawer. Mom wasn’t happy.