Fly Away
Page 4
We laugh.
“I’ll build you new steps when the water is gone,” says Louis.
“No,” says Frankie loudly. “I’ll build them myself.”
Louis sighs.
“Frankie,” he says softly. “Remember arithmetic? Remember measuring? Remember the bench you made? Arithmetic?”
He says “arithmetic” slowly: a-rith-me-tic.
“Oh,” says Frankie.
She is very quiet.
Teddy walks up close to Louis.
“Louis,” he says.
“Teddy,” says Louis.
“A-rith-me-tic,” says Teddy.
I watch Mama and she doesn’t care that Teddy said “Louis” or “arithmetic.” Teddy said “Mama” today. Mama looks different somehow. The edges of her face are softer. There is a sort of quiet about her.
“What about the bench?” I ask.
“Nothing,” says Louis. He smiles. “Only that one end was much higher than the other.”
Even Frankie laughs.
Louis looks around the kitchen where everyone sits.
“What did you all do today? What happened to your cheek, Boots?”
We tell Louis about Teddy walking away.
“Where was he?”
“He was at Little River,” says Frankie. “In the middle of the water. Sitting on a rock.”
Teddy pulls up his jeans and shows Louis his bandage.
“He knows what we’re talking about,” says Gracie.
“Of course he does,” says Mama. “He may be the smartest little boy in the universe.”
Louis holds out his hand to Teddy. Teddy takes it.
“How did you find him?” asks Louis.
“Lucy sang,” says Gracie.
“Sang?”
“Teddy sings to Lucy. He loves to sing to Lucy,” says Gracie.
“So you thought Teddy might answer Lucy.”
“And he did,” says Boots.
“He wandered away from me,” says Mama to Louis, as if confessing something terrible.
Louis smiles.
“My little sister Janie disappeared one day for seven hours. We found her in the barn, sleeping in the hay. It took a long time for my mother to forgive herself. It was her secret guilt.”
“Secrets,” says Boots.
He holds up my notebook paper with the poem written there.
“Is this another of your secrets, Lucy?”
I take a deep breath.
“Where did you find that?” I ask.
“Blowing down the upstairs hallway, from your room to my room,” says Boots. “Almost as if it was saying to me, ‘Pick me up and read me.’ ”
Boots says “Pick me up and read me” in a funny high voice I’ve never heard before. It makes me smile.
“Did you read it?” I ask.
Boots shakes his head.
I sigh. “I wanted to write you a poem to make you happy. I wanted to write a cow poem. You said cows were poetry. That you couldn’t write a poem better than a cow.”
“I remember saying that.”
“And you were right,” I say. “No one can write a poem better than a cow.”
I look at the paper in his hand.
“I meant to throw that away,” I say.
Boots nods.
“I know about that, believe me,” he says. “May I read it before you do it?”
I shrug my shoulders.
Boots reads my poem to himself. It seems to me to take a very long time. But that is because no one speaks. The room is filled with silence.
Boots stares at the page for a long time. Finally, I realize he doesn’t know what to say. I reach out for the paper, but he holds the page against his chest.
“This is a beautiful, intelligent poem, Lucy,” Boots says.
“It is?”
“Yes, it is. And, Lucy?”
“What?”
“I was wrong. You have written a poem as beautiful as a cow.”
I don’t want to cry in front of everyone.
“I never wrote about her eyes,” I whisper.
“You will write another poem,” says Boots.
“Maybe we could hear the poem,” says Louis shyly.
I have forgotten about everybody else in the room. I don’t care if anyone else hears the poem. I only care what Boots thinks of it.
Boots sits at the kitchen table and reads.
“Ring-Around Cow
What artist
Sketched
Sculpted
Your
Big black sky body
Wrapped in the moon
So you carry both
Darkness
And Day,
Shadow
And Light.”
It is very quiet when Boots finishes reading. He puts the paper on the table.
Finally Frankie stands up.
“Another of your secrets is revealed,” she says to me.
Boots nods.
“You’re a poet, Lucy.”
Everyone has gone to bed after raucous and embarrassing dancing to Langhorne Slim because Frankie wanted us to dance.
“We are fools!” says Mama, laughing and laughing as she dances. And we are.
I am not sure I can sleep tonight. I keep thinking about Teddy, lost and in danger. I keep thinking about Mama, scared and guilty because Teddy wandered off when she wasn’t watching. Mostly I think I won’t sleep because I’m a poet. I have heard poets don’t sleep very much and are miserable a good part of the time.
It is nighttime and Teddy has not come to my bedroom. Maybe, since our secret is out, he won’t come here anymore. Maybe he’ll go to Mama’s room. Maybe he will sleep all night because of his long, long day. I miss him and I’m sad. Maybe this is part of being a miserable poet.
I go to sleep, hearing the soft midnight chime of the hall clock.
“See?”
My eyes pop open.
“Teddy.”
There is a moon and I can see his eyes. He finds my hand and begins to sing.
“The birdies fly away, and they come back home.
The birdies fly away, and they come back home.”
I don’t hear at first, but Teddy does. He pulls my hand and I get out of bed. We walk out into the hallway. Teddy sings. From all the bedrooms come the sounds of singing, too.
“Fly away, fly away,
All the birdies fly away.
The birdies fly away, and they come back home.”
The voices sound peaceful and sweet and quiet, the way a hymn sometimes sounds in an old church with wood floors.
I lead Teddy back to his bed. I cover him up to his chin.
“See?”
“Teddy.”
I kiss him good night and smooth his hair. He is asleep before I leave the room.
I climb back into my own bed. I will sleep now, I know. Teddy sang to me. I am no longer a miserable poet.
I am just a poet.
Patricia MacLachlan is the author of many well-loved novels and picture books, including Sarah, Plain and Tall, winner of the Newbery Medal; its sequels, Skylark and Caleb’s Story; Waiting for the Magic; Edward’s Eyes; The True Gift; and White Fur Flying. She is a board member of the National Children’s Book and Literacy Alliance. She lives in western Massachusetts.
MARGARET K. MCELDERRY BOOKS
Simon & Schuster
New York
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Also from Patricia MacLachlan
Edward’s Eyes
The True Gift
Waiting for the Magic
White Fur Flying
MARGARET K. McELDERRY BOOKS
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Text copyright © 2014 by Patricia MacLachlan
Jacket illustration copyright © 2014 by Amy June Bates
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Book design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover
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Jacket illustration by Amy June Bates
Author photograph by John MacLachlan
The text for this book is set in Baskerville MT.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacLachlan, Patricia.
Fly away / Patricia MacLachlan.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: While in North Dakota helping her Aunt Frankie prepare for a possible flood, Lucy finds her voice as a poet with the help of her two-year-old brother, Teddy, the rest of their family, and a few cows.
ISBN 978-1-4424-6008-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-6010-2 (eBook)
[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Floods—Fiction. 4. Poets—Fiction. 5. Cows—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M2225Fly 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2012040995