Mostly the Honest Truth

by Jody J. Little

  She sighed, then leaned back in the chair, still holding my hand. “Okay,” she said softly, and she gave me her worried look. “Do you remember what happened yesterday?”

  “A bit.”

  Officer D recapped the softball game, how I helped Timmy earn his home run, and how happy all the Mighty Catchers were and how much they praised me, and then how I screamed in pain and how she carried me all the way to her truck and rushed me to the hospital.

  “Are you mad at me?” I asked.

  “Why would I be mad?” She touched my chin, that sort of parentish thing she does.

  “Because I lost the game for the Hitters, and you didn’t get the win-streak record.”

  Officer D leaned forward, and I think there was a little tear growing inside one of her eyeballs. I wasn’t real sure, though, because the pasty green walls were still making my vision fuzzy.

  “Jane, I may have been a little upset at that moment, but what you did was the greatest display of sportsmanship I have ever seen in my lifetime. You should be in the record books for that. I am nothing but proud of you.”

  She reached down and pulled out a red softball visor from a large gift bag. She stuck it on my head. “You’re a true Hitter now, Jane.” She smiled at me.

  “Red Norton was proud too. He sent something for you.” She leaned over the gift bag again and brought out a softball with the signatures of every person in Three Boulders and set it on my belly. I gazed at that ball with the fifty-six signatures.

  This was better than a gold medal or a shiny trophy.

  “And here is a thank-you card from Timmy.” Officer D held up the card so I could see the picture Timmy had drawn of me with his colored markers. I was a stick figure with a big blob on one arm that looked like a bowling ball. There was another stick figure on my back.

  Next she unwrapped a frosted pink doughnut with mounds of sprinkles that Chef Noreen had made special just for me. Then there was a get-well note from Loam with a drawing of a rainbow that Dandy had added. Preston Farmer sent a packet of cucumber seeds and the Stein family sent a bouquet of flowers from the front of their cabin. Officer D placed them in a glass on my hospital tray.

  “What about G?” I asked. “Is she upset? She wanted to win that game real bad.”

  “She just wants you to get better.” Officer D grabbed two last things from the bag, a red journal and a card. “These are from her. She wrote down all the details from the softball game in that journal. She thought you might like to read about it.”

  I asked Officer D to take out G’s card. There was a photo of the three boulders on the front, Redemption, Forgiveness, and Community. The rocks glowed like stony angel figures, like maybe God himself was hovering right on top of them, watching over every person in that family-like community. I wasn’t going to admit this out loud to Officer D or anyone else, but I realized that maybe Three Boulders wasn’t as crazy of a place as I first believed.

  But I still thought the boulders had stupid names.

  Officer D opened the card, and I silently read G’s words:

  I am so glad I met you. I know you want to get back to your pop, but I wish you could stay in Three Boulders. I wish I could stay too. I will never forget you, Jane Pengilly. You will be my friend forever. Get well soon. Love, G

  Those might have been the best words I’d ever read. I gazed at the picture of those rocks again, and then I hugged the card and picture tight against my chest.

  Day Ten

  Old Red’s Story

  I woke up when I felt that familiar squeezing around my arm. It was flying hippo man once again taking my blood pressure, but today he was ice cream cone man. Those cones on his shirt looked good enough to eat. I wondered if they were feeding me enough in this hospital because right now, I was hungry enough to eat his whole shirt. Ice cream would sure taste good now. Pop gave me ice cream for breakfast once. It was the morning after I took a big tumble off my longboard bombing Applegate Hill. Pop said that ice cream was almost like medicine because you always felt better when you ate it.

  The surprising thing was I didn’t even have to ask for ice cream because a voice said, “Perhaps a frothy chocolate milk shake would be good for the patient this morning.”

  The voice wasn’t hippo ice cream man and it wasn’t Pop. It was Old Red Norton. He was perched in the chair next to my bed, arms crossed over his button-down shirt and jacket, his crinkly red ears sticking out like usual.

  Hippo ice cream man nodded. “Fantastic idea. I’ll go order that.” He set the clipboard in a slot at the end of my bed. “You’re doing well, Jane. Looks like you’ll be going home tomorrow.”

  No, I’d be going back to Three Boulders tomorrow. I’d be going to my real home in three days. My pop.

  Hippo ice cream man left the room, and I got a tiny tingle in my belly knowing that I was alone with Old Red for the very first time.

  “Where’s Officer D?” I asked.

  “She had a lot of work to do today so she asked me to come visit you. I’ll be checking out my new apartment later this afternoon too.”

  He had a black cane wedged between his legs.

  “Where’s your gun?”

  “I can’t bring a shotgun into a hospital, Jane.”

  That made sense, and I was glad about that too. “Officer D told me your gun isn’t loaded. Why do you carry it around?”

  Old Red settled into the back of his chair. “That’s a long story. One I suppose we should talk about.”

  “Did you shoot someone?”

  “Hmm . . .” he said.

  “You can tell me. I’m good at keeping secrets.”

  That was the honest truth.

  “All right. I’ll tell you the story, Jane.” He raised his cane and gently set it across his lap.

  Hippo ice cream man returned and held out my milk shake. I took a big slurp through the straw. It was sweet and creamy and made my insides chilly. I held the cup and shifted in the bed so I could listen to Old Red’s story.

  “My parents died of the influenza when I was a young man, just twenty years old,” he began. “I took it hard.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and I really was ’cause I knew that losing my own pop would hurt more than any pain I felt from my burned hand.

  “They owned a peach orchard down in California, and when they died, the orchard was left to my brother and me, but I didn’t like running the orchard. Didn’t like dealing with the pickers, the pests that ate our fruit, the money issues. It wasn’t the life I wanted. But also . . .” He paused. His voice got softer. “Also I was drinking a lot.”

  I let out a big exhale. I definitely knew about drinking a lot.

  “So I made a decision to start over. I left California with my wife, Eleanor.”

  “Pop says that moving to a new place builds character.”

  “Well, I certainly needed to build my character. You see, before I left, I packed up the load of cash that my father stored under the floorboards below his dresser. Half of that cash was my brother’s. I took it all.” Sadness sagged in his cheeks.

  “Oh,” I said. That was stealing.

  Even though I knew what he had done was a bad thing, I felt sorry for him. “I guess you left him the peaches.”

  “Yes. I left him the peaches and the land, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wondered what he did with it.”

  “You didn’t ask him?”

  Old Red shook his head. “I never saw him again.” He swallowed hard.

  I let him gulp on his sad memories a bit, but then I asked, “So then you found Three Boulders and decided to live there?”

  “Not exactly. Three Boulders seemed to find me.”

  “Rocks can’t find people.”

  Old Red laughed.

  I wasn’t trying to be funny, but I was glad some of his sadness lifted away.

  “Seeing those boulders the first time sparked something in me,” he said. “I knew that this was where I wanted to live. This was my refuge, and I wan
ted my children to run around the fir trees and climb on those boulders, and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren.” Old Red stopped talking for a bit. He eyed me while I slurped my milk shake.

  “Is that when you made up all the weird laws?” I asked him.

  “There was no need for laws right away. Eleanor and I were the only ones who lived there.”

  I set my milk shake cup on the rolling tray, wondering when the shooting part of this story was going to begin.

  Old Red rambled on. “One day a man by the name of Ellis Grigsby wandered into Three Boulders.”

  “Wandered in?” That seemed strange because there wasn’t even a road into Three Boulders.

  “He wandered in straight from the county jail.”

  “A convict!” This was getting more interesting.

  “He asked for a meal and he offered to build me a shed in exchange for more meals.” Old Red paused. “Eventually, he asked if he could build a house for himself, and I said yes. Eleanor liked having him around.”

  “But he was a criminal! What did he do?”

  “I never asked him. Honestly, it didn’t matter to me. He was a hard worker, and I could tell he had a good heart. Sometimes, you just know these things. Sometimes you know that a person needs space and time to sort through problems.”

  I knew that real well, ’cause that’s exactly what Pop needed—space and time to sort through his problems, for twelve days.

  “So that’s when Three Boulders began to grow. We invited a few folks we had met down in Willis to live with us, folks we knew needed a little calmness in their lives. Our daughter, Florence, was born too. We all became a community, an extended family, sharing meals, working on the land together, pooling our resources. But most important, we accepted everyone’s strengths and weaknesses.”

  “But you still haven’t told me about your shotgun. Did you actually shoot someone?”

  Old Red’s stare dug into my brain. “Folks had been seeing some mountain lions in the area, so I began carrying that gun as a precaution.”

  I nodded, urging him to continue, happy to finally get to the good part.

  “But here’s the thing, young Jane. As much as I enjoyed being in Three Boulders and building this community, I was still drinking. I couldn’t seem to stop.”

  I understood that well.

  Too well.

  Old Red had an ogre like Pop.

  “Drinking and toting a gun around is just a bad thing to do,” he continued. “About thirty-some years ago, I was sitting on the porch of the dining hall. It was calm and dusky and I heard a noise. At first it sounded like a person, but then in my liquored-up state, I thought it was a hiss. I stood up, and there across the road, I saw glowing eyes, just about the height of a mountain lion,” he paused. “I propped that gun on my shoulder and I waited, watching those eyes, making sure. When I heard another hiss, I fired.”

  “Did you get the mountain lion?”

  “No,” he said. “After I fired, I heard a scream, and it wasn’t a wild animal’s scream. It was a little boy. I had shot a little boy.”

  I gasped. “Did he die?”

  He shook his head back and forth, and finally he said, “No. The shots hit his leg in several places, but he recovered from the wounds.” He huffed out a big tired sigh and said softly, “I’m not sure I’ve fully recovered though.”

  I looked at the wrinkles on the ancient dude’s cheeks. Nine days ago when I met him, those wrinkles seemed to squeeze out something frightening, something I thought I should be afraid of. But now I saw how they just carried the pain and worry of his past. I wondered if Pop would have wrinkles like that one day. Wrinkles that held all his mistakes. I might not have been able to say it out loud, but I understood Old Red at that moment, and I liked him too.

  “Jane, I haven’t had a drink of liquor since that day. That was my bottom. And I carry that unloaded gun to remind me to stay sober.”

  My eyeballs became watery, and I quivered under the stiff white hospital sheets.

  Old Red gently placed a spotted hand on my shoulder. “Young Jane, I know what you’re thinking. Your pop can beat this too. I know he can.”

  I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. I didn’t want Pop to shoot anyone to make him finally stop drinking. I never wanted it to get that bad. I grabbed a tissue and wiped at my eyeballs. It was silent in that hospital room for a long spell, silent until my nose stopped running and my eyes dried a bit.

  “I’m sorry about that little boy, Mr. Norton. Do you know what happened to him?”

  Old Red nodded. “I do now,” he said. “A few years back, I found out where he was living and that he wasn’t doing too well. I’ve been keeping tabs on him.”

  “Wait.” Something was beginning to make sense. Something about what Old Red mentioned at church a few days ago. “Is this boy the reason you are selling Three Boulders? Is he the person who’s in trouble? Are you trying to help him?”

  “You are smart as a whip, Jane Pengilly.” He had a crooked, contented smile on his face, but he didn’t say anything else. He closed his eyes.

  I had way more questions to ask about the boy and Three Boulders and how Old Red was going to help, but I figured it was important to stop. A dude as ancient as Old Red needed his rest. Especially after sharing those secrets of his past.

  By the time hippo ice cream man returned to take my temperature, Old Red was sawing some long raspy motor breaths. I just lay there and listened ’cause I liked the sound. It sounded an awful lot like Pop.

  Day Eleven

  A Hero’s Welcome

  There was an awesome policy in the hospital that all patients had to be escorted out in a wheelchair when they were released. I liked being pushed by hippo ice cream man. Today he was dolphin man, though, and he spun my chair in circles and even popped a few wheelies. I almost asked dolphin man to give me a ride to the third floor to the New Paradise Clinic, but I knew he couldn’t do that. It was okay, though. Pop was going to get his story straight, and I was going to be back with him in just two days. I think knowing that Pop was so close to me in the hospital helped me heal faster.

  My burned hand was doing so much better. The shooting red streaks were gone and so were the icky green goobers. It didn’t hurt so much anymore either. Officer D came by in the morning and said that I had to take my antibiotics for five more days to keep fighting the infection.

  I was happy to see G and Mrs. Biggs in the hospital lobby when dolphin man wheeled me out of the elevator. G had her arms around a stuffed raccoon and she skipped forward when she saw me and shoved the raccoon into my lap.

  “Mom said I should buy you some flowers,” G said, “but I saw this fuzzy guy in the gift shop and I thought you would like him more.”

  “Thanks, G.” I gave the raccoon a squeeze. “I’ll call him Boulder. That way when I see him, I’ll always think about you and my twelve days in your weird little community.”

  G smiled, but it was a sad smile. Hippo ice cream dolphin man gave me a high five and told me to take care of my hand because as much as he liked me, he didn’t want to see me back in the hospital.

  We walked through the parking lot and loaded ourselves into Mrs. Biggs’s sedan. G said that no one could stop talking about me in Three Boulders and what I had done for Timmy Spencer at the softball game.

  I told G that Old Red had visited me yesterday, but I didn’t say anything about him shooting the little boy. I had promised Old Red I could keep a secret, after all.

  “Jane,” G said softly, “Mr. Norton told us all at dinner last night that he found a buyer for his land.” Her face was turned away from me, staring out the car window.

  I wanted to tell her that everything was okay. She may have to leave Three Boulders, but she still had her mom and dad. I wanted to tell her that she would stay my friend. But I asked, “What about the money we’re collecting? Once we add that all up, I’m sure we can make another offer to Mr. Norton.”

  Mrs. Biggs let out a whistle. “Y
es, Gertie told us about your idea, Jane, to pool our money and buy the land.” She scratched the super frizz on her head. “Folks in Three Boulders just don’t have that kind of money.”

  Their pale faces were filled with sadness. But I knew how important it was for Old Red to have money so he could help that boy, who I realized was a grown man by now. I wanted to tell G and her mom that, but I wasn’t the one who needed to explain. Only Old Red could do that.

  We didn’t say much more the rest of the trip. We rolled into the weedy Three Boulders parking lot, and G led the way up the path though all the fir trees and poky bushes. I followed her, holding on to my new raccoon, Boulder. When we reached the clearing to the gravel road, I heard a squeaking voice. It was Timmy Spencer.

  “She’s here!”

  As I passed the last tree on the path, my eyeballs saw almost every human in Three Boulders gathered in a crowd. Loam Moonbeam and Mitchell Landau held up a long banner that read “The Mighty Catchers Thank You, Jane Pengilly.” And everyone there was clapping with their hands high over their heads.

  It was a hero’s welcome, and I, Jane Pengilly, was the hero.

  It made me think about a time when I was eight and Pop let me come with him to one of his meetings. He was getting a special coin for not drinking a single drop of alcohol for five hundred days straight. I was real proud of him, and I think Pop was proud too. Those folks at the meeting stood and clapped and cheered, and I even stood on one of the folding chairs and waved my hands above my head for him. Pop beamed his happy grin, and he walked to the front of the room for his shiny coin.

  Right then, with the Three Boulders crowd cheering, I was feeling just the way Pop felt on his five hundred day.

  But the thing was, I had just done what seemed right.

  Timmy limped toward me. His ankle was taped up tight. He hugged me around my belly and asked if he could hold my raccoon. Then all those Three Boulders folks moved forward: Chef Noreen, Alan Stein, Mr. Biggs, Mama Amelia, the blondies, Preston Farmer, and every other Three Boulderite.