The water swept me around a bend, leaving me near shore. I longed to escape from the cold, grabby current. I wanted to climb to the safety of the shore. But I had to let myself be taken up by the river and carried along. Again I called T.R.’s name. This time there was an answer. “Lily? Over here.”
The answer came from the near bank. I struggled out of the water. The solid land felt firm and steady under my feet. I could see a dark shape silhouetted against the bank. I was afraid T.R. would be furious with me. Instead, he was laughing! I thought he was out of his head. “Are you all right?”
“Well, all things considered, I guess so. I’m rather wet, and I’m afraid I tore my pants on a log, but outside of that I’m fine.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you? It was those numbskulls who caused the accident. To tell you the truth, I’m grateful to them.”
“Grateful!” I dropped down beside him, still panting.
“I had to do something for myself, and I did it. I’ll tell you a secret, Lily. Ever since the accident I’ve felt life was pretty miserable, but when I was in the river and nearly drowning I knew the Lord wasn’t through with me. I realized how much I wanted to live. Life suddenly seemed sensational. I’ve always been a good swimmer. I couldn’t use my legs, but I could use my arms. So here I am.” He smiled at me — a full smile.
I still had a choking feeling in my throat. “I thought … I was afraid …”
“I know, Lily. But I’m all right.” T.R. put an arm around my shoulder. “Now how are we going to get home?”
“I know where we are. It’s only a quarter mile to the road. I’ll flag down a car.”
“What about your canoe?”
“It’ll be downriver, snagged along the shore someplace. Everybody on the river knows whose canoe it is.”
The first car to come along was Merton Smith’s. Merton sells real estate and has a cellular phone glued to his ear most of the time, like there were bunches of houses to sell in Rivertown instead of one or two a year. He called for an emergency medical unit with a wheelchair. In an hour’s time, T.R. was home and so was I.
When she saw me squish into the apartment, with my wet hair and clothes, Mom looked like she had seen a ghost. “Lily! What happened? You’re soaking wet!” She hung on to me like I was drowning right there in front of her. I knew she was thinking of Dad.
When she heard my story, she exploded. “Those Durwood twins are going to have to answer to me. And Lily, I want you to promise me never to be on that river after dark.”
I promised, planning to talk Mom out of it later.
That night I waited for the nightmares to return. Nightmares where I kept dreaming of my father’s drowning. But they didn’t come back — not that night or any night after that. I guess my saving T.R. took the nightmares away. It was like the eagle I once saw swoop down and snatch a duckling and fly off to make a meal of it. For a long time after that I hated eagles. But they’re so majestic and beautiful. Sometimes you see them soaring over the river like kings and queens. After a while I forgot about the duckling and started liking eagles again. Just as I had forgiven the eagle, I had forgiven the river.
8
Summer was almost over. Laura and I had already gone shopping for new jeans for school. (We got the same kind, only Laura always irons creases in hers and patches them with lace.) On our old property the bracken turned brown and the goldenrod yellow.
Most of the time T.R. stayed cheerful. He started calling friends downstate and getting phone calls back. He even started shopping right in town. Soon everyone recognized his van and his wheelchair. As he wheeled up and down the aisles of the supermarket, people waved or called out to him. He hung out in our hardware store, too. He said he came to buy stuff for his model planes, but I noticed he talked to Mom a lot.
He was in the store the day the Bad Hads came in. It was the first time any of us had seen them since that night on the river. I was standing next to T.R. I started to shout something angry at the Hads, but T.R. said, “Let me take care of this.”
He was in the household aisle, so he grabbed a mop, let out a blood-curdling war cry, and headed full speed for the Bad Hads.
One look at this wild-eyed avenger waving this weird weapon at them, and the Hads were out the door. We all laughed so hard we cried.
Later that week, when I saw a van I hadn’t seen before parked next to T.R.’s cabin, I thought a friend from downstate was visiting. As I got closer, I could hear an argument going on. A man in a wheelchair rolled out the open door, past T.R., and got into the van. “Just let me know when you’re ready,” he called out to T.R. “And stop being so mule stubborn!”
I watched him drive away and then headed up the path to T.R., who was looking plenty upset. “Who was that?” I asked.
“He customizes planes.”
“What does that mean?”
“He builds planes that people like me and like him can fly. I sent him some ideas. He incorporated them into one of his planes, and now he wants me to test it.”
“Does that mean you’re going to fly again?”
T.R. shook his head. “I’m thinking about it, but I’m not all that anxious for the sky to get hold of me again.”
By the end of August, T.R. was getting restless. One afternoon when I stopped by in my canoe, he said he wanted to learn to fish. “I’ve got to get out of this cabin. It’s beginning to feel like a coffin.”
I had been afraid that after he nearly drowned in the river, he’d never want to get into my canoe again. But he did. “It’s like getting back on a horse after you fall off,” he said as he settled into the boat. I wanted to say something about getting back into a plane, but for once I shut up.
Some of the maple trees along the bank were beginning to turn. The red-winged blackbirds were strung along the power lines, ready for their trip South. Acorns were plopping off the oak trees.
I tied a hopper fly on the end of T.R.’s line and showed him how a lot of the action of casting was in the wrist. I could tell right away he wouldn’t make a real fisherman. He tried to look interested in the fishing, but his heart wasn’t in it. When the fly settled on the water, he didn’t hold his breath waiting for a trout to rise. He snagged his line in the overhead branches. He pulled his fly up before the trout could take it. When he finally did catch a trout, he just yanked the fish out of the water as if it was no big thing.
He seemed impatient. Like the canoe was too small for him. Finally he said, “I’m not like you, Lily. Land and water aren’t enough for me. Everywhere I go I bump into barriers. I can’t get my wheelchair through half the doors in this town. I need space in the sky where I can move around. I need to get up there in the sky where I belong. I think I’m going back to the city.”
I stopped paddling and looked at T.R. “What do you mean? Like for a visit?”
“Longer than that. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and the man you saw a few weeks ago has been keeping after me. The plane is all ready to be tested. I’m going down to take a look at it.”
It was like being kicked in the stomach. It had never occurred to me that T.R. would go away. I was just getting used to him. And he was over at our place for dinner all the time. And Mom liked him. “We have an airport near here,” I reminded him.
“It’s just for small planes. I’d need something with more facilities.”
I had trouble getting the question out. “When would you leave?”
“I’m not sure yet, but you’ll be the first to know.”
And I was. The evening before Labor Day, T.R. came over to see us. We heard him bumping up the stairs. Mom and I were resting up from the Chamber of Commerce’s Christmas-in-September sale. The three of us watched a rerun of “Murder, She Wrote” and ate Mom’s triple-chocolate-chip cookies, which T.R. said were the best he’d ever had. All of us sitting there together seemed just right. I didn’t want T.R. to go away.
When the T.V. was turned off, T.R.
looked at my mom and said, “I made up my mind today to go back to flying. It looks like I’m going to be gone for some time. I wonder if you and Lily would consider renting your old place?”
“Thanks, but we couldn’t afford it,” Mom said. There was disappointment in her voice.
“You can have it for whatever you’d get for renting out this apartment to someone, so it wouldn’t cost you a penny more.”
I couldn’t believe it. Mom was shaking her head No. “I appreciate the offer, but the cabin is worth a lot more than anything I’d get for this place. You wouldn’t have any trouble renting it to someone else.”
“Mom!” I was horrified, but I remembered how she had sold the property in the first place because she didn’t want to owe anyone anything.
T.R. tried again. “I don’t want to rent it to someone I don’t know. The thing is, you’d be doing me a favor by staying at the cabin. If I leave it empty, the Durwood twins will move right in.”
Mom wouldn’t budge. She only said, “The store’s doing better. If you decide to stay down-state, maybe I’ll be able to buy the property back at a fair price. In the meantime, we’ll be glad to keep an eye on it for you. Lily can check it every day.” T.R. could see that Mom meant what she said. After finishing the rest of the cookies, he left.
All that night I kept thinking that T.R. wouldn’t be here to fly chase on me anymore. I had lost my Dad. Now T.R. was leaving. I knew I had to do something. Naturally, when the idea came to me, I didn’t think twice. The next morning I didn’t even wait for breakfast. I just rushed off to T.R.’s place.
He was packing his model planes. “Morning, Lily. How about giving me a hand with these? If you like you can pick one out for yourself.”
“I have a solution to everything,” I said. “I know a way to get Mom to move into the cabin. And you won’t have to leave.”
“You don’t understand, Lily. I want to leave.”
As usual, I wasn’t listening. “You can marry my mom. You said she was a great cook and her cookies were the best you ever tasted. And you like each other — I know you do. You could manage the hardware store. Mom hates it, and it would give you something to do. Then we could all live here together.”
T.R. just stared at me. After what seemed like an hour he said, “Lily, has your mother indicated an overwhelming desire to be my wife?”
“No, but …”
“Lily, I wish I could be a father to you, but I can’t. You had a father, and it isn’t me. Even if your mom and I loved each other — and we hardly know one another — I’m not ready to get married. I haven’t even figured out my own life and where it’s going.”
“I’ll never see you again,” I said. I wanted to smash all the model planes. Planes were taking T.R. away from me.
He must have guessed what I was feeling because he said, “I promise I’ll still fly chase on you, Lily. The city is only an hour away by plane.”
“What about Fleabit?”
“I talked to Charlie,” T.R. said. “He’s got a big yard, and I’m throwing in the doghouse with the dog. Fleabit’s a hunting dog, and Charlie’s a hunter. But Charlie said he’d only take Fleabit if you agreed to keep an eye on him.”
I nodded. I couldn’t get any words out because I knew if I tried I’d start crying. Fleabit caught a chipmunk just then. It was hanging out of his mouth, wriggling at both ends. I had to get Fleabit to let it go. Fleabit has a soft mouth, and the chipmunk ran off. Luckily I could hide my tears behind my laughing.
Before I left, T.R. and I sat by the river. The tamaracks had turned gold, and a few yellow birch leaves were riding the current. “You ought to take down your fence,” I told T.R.
“And let those those sneaky twins tramp around this land? No way.”
“It’s not just the Bad Hads. Lots of people around here have hunted and fished on the property.” I was weaving a wreath of asters and goldenrod to send down the river.
T.R. watched me for a while. “Lily, I’ll make a bargain with you. You stop sending those mournful, melancholy wreaths down the river, and I’ll take down the fence.”
I laid my last wreath on the river. A week later the fence came down.
Mom and I went to see T.R. off We watched his van disappear around the bend of the road. I wondered as I licked them away why tears were salty. And why do you have to keep losing people like the tops off toothpaste tubes or your sunglasses? People ought to come with strings on them to hold on to. But I guess it’s like the birds and flowers that come and go. You can’t hang on to them. They have their seasons.
I write T.R. to tell him about everything that’s happening on the river and how Fleabit’s doing. There’s snow on the riverbanks now. The ducks and most of the birds have left. The beavers are snug in their lodges, but the otters have made a slide in the snow and take turns slithering down the bank into the river. The river is never covered with ice. In science class we learned that it stays open because of the current. I don’t think it’s that at all. If something has a heart, it never freezes over.
About the Author
Gloria Whelan is a poet, short story writer, and novelist best known for her children’s and young adult fiction. Whelan has been writing since childhood and was the editor ofher high school newspaper. Many of her books are set in Michigan, but she also writes about faraway places based on her travels abroad. In 2000 she won the National Book Award for her young adult novel Homeless Bird. Her other works have earned places among theAmerican Library Association’s Best Books for Young Adults, the International Reading Association’s Teachers’ Choices and Children’s Choices, Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People, and Los Angeles’ 100 Best Books. Whelan has also received the Mark Twain Award and the O. Henry Award.She lives in Detroit, Michigan.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Gloria Whelan
Cover design by Mimi Bark
ISBN: 978-1-4976-7389-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Forgive the River, Forgive the Sky Page 5