Wyatt removed an invisible hat and bowed, which made Ernest laugh loudly.
“He can do impersonations,” Ernest told Sonja. “Do you want to hear him do a Frenchman?”
Sonja looked confused.
“Maybe later,” I told them. “Why don’t you two go in the other room and let me talk to Sonja.”
Wyatt bowed again and turned, heading into the living room, Ernest following him.
“He’s cute,” Sonja said.
“Very cute.”
“I’ve been texting Edgar,” she said, her voice low and serious.
“Is he coming?”
“I don’t know. He won’t reply.”
“Not at all?”
She set the mixing spoon down and leaned against the counter. She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. Something tells me he’ll show, though. I have other things to think about.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Nothing, it doesn’t matter.”
We were silent a moment, and I waited for her to open up, but she didn’t. She turned and went back to stirring the blackberries, so I went into my bedroom and gathered the laundry. I took it into the basement and started a load of laundry. When I returned to the kitchen, Sonja had left.
* * *
After lunch, Ernest and I watched a crime drama we had recorded on the VCR. Sonja had said many times that we were the only people on the planet who still watched videotapes on a VCR, but it was easy enough for us to operate, and we liked watching TV.
“Tomorrow is Wyatt’s hearing,” I told Ernest.
Ernest was eating peanuts from a small bowl on the TV tray. “Already?”
“He’s gone,” the TV said. “He’s dead.”
Ernest looked at me, waiting for a response.
“We’re a temporary placement, remember?” I said. On TV, two police officers sat in a squad car, talking. One of the police officers was shaking his head, disappointed.
“The timing of it all,” I said. “Think of the timing. Tomorrow is the hearing. It’s also the sixth, the day of our bonfire.”
“The timing,” Ernest said, setting his fork down on his plate. He leaned back in his chair and watched TV. We sat in silence for a few minutes, then I pointed the remote at the TV and turned it off. We were both still staring at the screen even though the TV was off.
“I want to put on my sneakers and go for a run,” Ernest said.
“A run? What are you talking about, a run?”
“What do you think? A run. A jog. To go out into the night and jog down to the lake and back, like I used to. I haven’t done that in a long time.”
“Nobody’s going for a run right now,” I said.
He looked at his hands and made a fist, cracked his knuckles. He rubbed at his knees. A moment later Wyatt entered the room quietly. It almost startled me.
“Do you want to watch home videotapes?” he asked. “Old home movies?”
Ernest and I both looked at him. I knew I should tell him about the hearing, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it just yet. “Well,” I said. “We don’t watch them often, but we could if you want to.”
“Play the one with Edgar following Ray-Ray in the parade,” Ernest said. “It’s the one with the bicycle.”
I didn’t want to watch home movies. Ernest could tell but he wouldn’t let it go.
“It’s just a videotape,” he said.
I dug through a cabinet where we kept all our old videotapes. I found one labeled KIDS PLAYING/BIRTHDAYS but didn’t know the year or what was on it. I put it in the VCR and pushed play, then left Wyatt and Ernest on the couch. I stepped into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. For a moment I stood at the window. I could see my reflection in the door of the microwave, my face unrecognizable, blurred. My hair was pinned up, but it looked strange in the reflection, as if some stranger was staring back at me. Some faceless presence watching me.
I knew what they were watching, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it. The tape was old, full of static. A tape of Ray-Ray at his birthday party. Edgar kicking a soccer ball in the backyard. Sonja riding her bicycle, ringing the bicycle bell. A vacation camping trip to the Southwest.
“I don’t recognize my voice,” I heard Ernest say from the living room. “Is that my voice?” I heard Wyatt laughing.
I sat at the dining room table for a while, thinking about Edgar. I imagined him packing a bag to come home, boarding a bus for Oklahoma. Tomorrow morning, maybe, he would call and ask me to pick him up at the bus station. Or he would show up at the house, without a knock on the front door, just letting himself in the way he used to, with a smile on his face, and asking me to make him something to eat. Yes, I wanted to cook for him again, bring him a plate of spaghetti or a bowl of soup and sit across from him and watch him eat. He would tell me about his friends, everything he did during his day at work. Maybe I would ask him about a girl he liked, or if he was going to tuck his shirt in. He was always easy to embarrass. I pictured him laughing into his glass as he took a drink the way he used to.
When I heard the tape end, I returned to the living room. Ernest and Wyatt seemed somehow more approachable, at least in this instance, maybe because they seemed so happy. I didn’t want to disrupt their contentment, but I had to bring up the hearing, and this was as good a time as any. So I told him. “Wyatt,” I said, “earlier today Bernice mentioned you would likely go stay with your grandparents.”
I didn’t understand the impact of what I said at first. His entire demeanor fell as he looked down, nodding. It was the saddest I had seen him.
“Do you want to go live with them?” I asked.
“I guess so,” he said.
“We wish you could stay here.”
He looked at me, and I felt as though his eyes reflected the pain of my words.
“I have a story to tell you,” I said to him. “Once there was a girl named Maria who met a Cherokee boy. The boy was very poor, and he was also embarrassed of his speech because he stuttered, but the girl still thought he was quite handsome. Her mother and stepfather were afraid he wouldn’t provide a good life for her, so he set out to prove them wrong.”
“Ernest had a speech impediment?” he asked.
“I stuttered like a goddamn fool,” Ernest said.
I said, “And my life was hard when I was little. I had a stepfather who wasn’t very nice. My father had passed and my mother remarried an older man when I was a teenager. My sisters and I didn’t like him. He wasn’t nice to us, and he certainly wasn’t nice to my mother. But what I want to tell you is that I met Ernest when I thought things would never get better. I met Ernest and saw that boys could be nice, and the more I got to know him, the more I saw how caring he was.”
“Things can always get better,” Ernest said.
Wyatt smiled and thanked me for the story. “I better go to my room and pack up the records,” he said.
While he was in his room, I tried to talk to Ernest about the hearing, but he fell silent. His manner had changed, too. “Ernest,” I said, “you have to remember, this was a temporary foster placement.”
His hands were trembling. Something was wrong with him, which frightened me. I could see it in his face. The day had turned. He went into the kitchen, and I heard the water come on. A moment later the back door opened, and he walked out alone to the deck. I knew he didn’t want to talk about it. This wonderful boy, so much like Ray-Ray, had come into our lives. And tomorrow he would be leaving as unexpectedly as Ray-Ray had left us. No more impersonations. No more jokes or singing or talk of happy music from the Golden Age. Funny how quickly things change, I thought, then felt guilty for trying to let go so easily. He was still a boy. He was still a boy without a home. Maybe I should try to fight for him to stay with us, I thought.
BEFORE DINNER, Wyatt came into the living room with one final request: to give the shelter kids one last, special storytelling time. “I may never see some of them again,” he told me. “We’ll lie down in the grass behi
nd the shelter and stare at the stars tonight. We’ll gaze up at the sky like it’s our last night alive. Sound good? One last story time?”
I could see how important it was to him, so I called Bernice, who called the shelter, and they all decided that as long as I accompanied them as chaperone, it would be fine. Wyatt was pleased to hear it. When I asked Ernest if he would like to go along, he shook his head.
“It’s Wyatt’s last night with us,” I said. “It might mean a lot to him for you to go.”
But he wouldn’t budge. He was stubborn like that. I could tell him to be more considerate of others’ feelings, but that would lead to worse things, like him losing his temper and walking out of the house, which had happened before. So I let him sit there by himself on the deck.
“Fine,” I said. “You can stay, but we’re going to the shelter for Wyatt’s story time. It’s important to him, and I want his last night with us to be special. If we stop for ice cream, I’ll bring you back a scoop of chocolate in a cone.”
“Rocky Road,” he said.
“Rocky Road.”
Wyatt was fine with Ernest staying there. In the car, on the drive to the shelter, I told him he was a wonderful storyteller and that all the shelter kids would miss him.
“It’s about fulfilling my purpose,” he said.
“And what purpose is that?” I asked.
“The purpose to be a storyteller. To help people.”
“You’ve got it all figured out, kiddo. How did you figure out so much so young?”
“I learned to trust my instinct,” he said calmly.
When we arrived at the shelter, by the time I checked in with the staff and signed everyone out on the chart, Wyatt had gathered an entire troop of residents to join him outside on this warm night, under the trees in the backyard of the shelter. They lay on their backs with their hands behind their heads, sprawled across the dark grass, yawning under the blue glow of the moonlight. There were few clouds in the sky. Once everyone fell quiet, we could all hear crickets and cicadas all around us.
I watched from nearby, texting Bernice: They’re like a pack of little wolves. It’s a quiet, starry night, perfect for storytelling.
“What are our chances of survival?” a boy named Lewis asked.
“I’d say it’s ninety-eight, ninety-nine percent,” Wyatt said.
“Not a hundred?”
“It’s never a hundred for anyone. But think about it. We’re on the outskirts of town, away from businesses, right next to the woods. There’s critters out here. The area’s open and clear, with a big sky full of stars. Look at that open sky up there, all that space and expansive darkness.”
“Those sound like decent odds,” another one spoke up. “Will it be on the ten o’clock news?”
“Who knows? Just close your eyes.”
The night lingered on. The wind picked up, rustling the trees all around us. After a moment all the kids stood and gathered around the monkey bars, sat on the swing set and the merry-go-round. Wyatt began his story:
There was an orphan boy from far away, and he was very afraid. They brought him and put him in our room, where he slept for a long time. He was younger than the rest of us, and much sadder. When he awoke, night had fallen and we were in darkness. The room was cold. The only light we had was a small lamp. Every night it was turned on when they brought us dinner. The light flickered and threw our shadows against the wall, which looked like images of the crucifixion. Most nights the older boys whispered prayers in a language we didn’t know. Upon waking, almost immediately the young boy began to cry.
The older boys grew angry. “Stop it,” one of them said. “They’ll kill you!”
“They’ll cut out your tongue,” another told him. “Do you want to die?”
But he wouldn’t be quiet. He kept moaning and crying until they came downstairs and opened the door and looked at him. They looked around the room at the rest of us, rubbing their fat bellies like devils.
They were all silent, waiting for Wyatt to continue.
“It’s weird,” a girl said.
I watched him speaking, a half-grin on his face. I watched his mannerisms, the way he gestured as he talked. I saw Wyatt looking at me, then, and I knew this look was it. This look, so familiar.
He put a finger to his lips for everyone to be quiet. He cocked his head to one side, as if he were trying to listen to something from far away, but everyone looked confused. Then he jogged over to me and asked, “Can I please take the others into the woods for a minute? I need to check on something. We’ll be right back, I promise. Just wait here.”
I hesitated, but something in his voice made me agree. “Be careful and come right back,” I called out as he motioned for the other kids to follow him. “All of you.”
What was happening now? The boy had something planned. I took out my phone from my purse and saw a text from my sister, Irene: Ray-Ray’s spirit is strong today, sister. Earlier I saw a vision of the mountains and remembered how much he loved the stories of the Tunwi Tsunsdi.
I texted back: You sense his spirit today?
I sense it right now, she wrote. It’s as if he’s near me.
Before I realized it, I looked up from my phone to see smoke rising in the distance—a fire had started somewhere in the woods. Smoke was streaming from the trees, visible even in the darkness, and I began to panic. I rushed toward the woods, yelling Wyatt’s name. They must have walked directly into the fire, which scared me so badly I felt my chest ache. Frantic, I called out to them but heard no response—they had disappeared into the woods. And now guilt came over me suddenly: What had I done, letting them walk into the woods alone? I pulled out my phone to dial 911, my heart racing. Flames jumped, burning fiercely now, the smoke billowing larger. Ashes were falling from the sky. I heard voices crying out in the distance.
Suddenly they emerged, each of them, like ghosts in the night, running out of the trees together, holding something white above their heads. A white owl with glowing eyes in the night. I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing—was the owl attacking them? But then I heard their laughter. They were having fun. And what of this owl? It perched high in all the kids’ hands, this owl rescued from the flames, which was exactly what the kids were calling out for me to hear: We rescued the owl! The baby owl! See it? It’s alive!
They ran in a cluster, with Wyatt leading the group, in the dark night, under the moonlight. I heard the fire engine sirens in the distance now, the smoke billowing heavier from the woods. The kids stumbled to a halt, turning back to look at the flames, yelling and talking over one another excitedly. A small girl was holding the owl now, and I saw the owl begin to rustle, eyes glowing. Then the owl outstretched its wings and flew away, soaring away from the woods, the kids cheering.
“Rescuers!” they chanted to each other. “Long live the owl! We saved the owl!”
They were elated as they walked back to the shelter, checking their hands for scratches from the talons. I followed behind them, trying to catch my breath, my heart still racing. Firefighters were swarming to the woods, the flames slowly subsiding. Smoke was everywhere. We made our way back inside the shelter, where the kids were still reeling from all the excitement. They talked excitedly about the owl and the fire, all of them still breathing heavily.
We gathered in the commons room, and the staff was able to settle everyone down. A counselor served cookies and lemonade. Soon the fire chief told us that the fire had been started by someone burning trash and had gotten out of control from the wind. Firefighters were able to put it out quickly before it spread. A few of the kids were bleeding a little on their hands and needed Neosporin and bandages, but they all claimed they didn’t feel any pain. One boy, Nicholas, had a deep scratch on his right thumb, which he said didn’t even sting.
“It’s all adrenaline,” one of the shelter volunteers said. “The rush, the endorphins.”
“Speak English,” one of the boys said.
“Calm down.”
&
nbsp; Another boy: “Don’t you understand something majestic has happened here? We saved a baby owl. We found its nest in the woods, and the baby owl wasn’t moving! It was too scared, and we rescued it.”
“Everyone take it easy. Everything is fine.”
“Nobody is hurt! The owl would’ve died if we hadn’t rescued it. The fire was pushing it out. It was magic. It was all thanks to our leader, Wyatt.”
Wyatt didn’t look nearly as excited as the others. I sensed something was wrong, so I took a seat next to him on the couch and put my arm around him. “Are you okay?” I asked. “What a night. What made you want to rescue the owl?”
But he didn’t respond. His silence was an answer I came to understand. He was leaving the next day after the hearing, and everything would be different.
Sonja
SEPTEMBER 5
I SHUT MYSELF IN my bedroom all morning. This was not so much out of fear as out of a desire to remove myself from the noises, at least for a while. I took off my clothes and lay in bed, trying to read Colette. I was too nervous to sleep. When I was thirsty, I stepped into the kitchen for water. I sliced a lemon with a knife, then put the wedges into the glass of water. I chopped carrots and broccoli and put them on a plate. Vin must’ve heard my footsteps, because he started yelling again while I was in the kitchen. I took the knife with me back to the bedroom. I checked my phone for any messages.
Outside it started to lightly rain. I turned my phone off. I tried not to think about anything, but I found myself thinking about the bonfire, and whether Edgar would come home. I imagined us sitting around the fire with Edgar. I looked forward to telling him how much I missed his sense of humor, hearing him laugh, even how he would knock on the door at three in the morning, wanting to talk about nothing in particular. In bed, my body felt cool under the sheets. I imagined walking downstairs to see Vin and giving in to the pleasures of cruelty, watching him weep and huddle in the corner. It was merely a thought, nothing more, and I allowed myself to enjoy it.
A heavy silence fell throughout the house. Would he start shouting again? Breaking and throwing things? I looked out my front window at his car. Farther away, I could see the yellow sky and rain clouds, past Indian Hill Road and beyond the bridge, where chimney smoke from houses drifted in the wind like ghosts. I could see the bait and tackle shop in the distance, and how abandoned and empty it looked. The day was very calm, like looking at the face of a sleeping lover.
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