If You Find This

by Matthew Baker

  I shook my head.

  “What did she say?” I (forte)shouted as Zeke trotted to the bench.

  Zeke shook his head.

  “NINE PACES INLAND, BOTTLED SHIPS, PAWPAW ISLAND, she can’t crack it,” Zeke (forte) said as we stood from the bench.

  Jordan shook his head.

  We cut through the graveyard, shuffling across graves overgrown with weeds, above coffins of bones, or the empty coffins buried there for people whose bodies were never found.

  There was one place we knew we should have tried looking. But going there was basically suicide. None of us had even dared to speak its name.

  My mom bought me a cheap backpack with money we didn’t have. Every morning she wandered the neighborhood, wrapped in a jacket, searching for some sign of Grandpa Rose. My brother drooped. The rain didn’t come. I watered his roots, brushed the leaves of other trees from his branches. Every night I sat scrawling PAWPAW ISLAND THERE BOTTLED SHIPS BONES FROM BOW NINE PACES INLAND = ? on a notepad, chewing the insides of my cheeks, switching my lamp, off on, off on, off on, off on, off on. The equation made me feel angryimprisoned. I hated the equation, for being difficult, for being impossible, for being everything. I hated myself, for being beaten by the equation. I threw my pen, left a hole in the wall.

  At school, in the cafeteria, the Gelusos recounted a story to a table of kids, interrupting each other, waving their arms.

  “Last night, this was,” The Unibrow (piano)said.

  “Cutting through the meadow,” Crooked Teeth(mezzo-piano) said.

  “Freaky things were happening in the ghosthouse,” The Unibrow (piano)said.

  “Lights floating around,” Crooked Teeth(mezzo-piano) said.

  “Singing. Laughing,” The Unibrow (piano)said.

  “Worse than laughing. We heard hooting,” Crooked Teeth(mezzo-piano) said.

  “The ghosts were hooting,” The Unibrow (piano)said.

  “Nothing’s as evil as a hoot,” Crooked Teeth(mezzo-piano) said.

  Then Mark Huff carried a tray to the table, dark turkey and green beans and mashed potatoes, and everyone made fun of Mark Huff for getting tripped out the attic window.

  Every evening, when we got to the ghosthouse, we found the grandfathers in a different room. The first night, Grandpa Rose and Grandpa Dykhouse had carved a chessboard in the floor of the entryway, were using tools from the shed as pieces. The second night, Grandpa Rose was(mezzo-forte) singing jazz numbers in the kitchen, Grandpa Dykhouse(mezzo-forte) coaxing him to remember the words. The third night, Grandpa Rose was dancing along the hallway with an imaginary partner while Grandpa Dykhouse bravoed and (fermata)encored. Afterward we built a fire in the fireplace, sat hunched under blankets, ate canned peas and hunks of bread. Embers (piano)snapped from log to log. Grandpa Rose was feeling talkative. While he taught me chess, we quizzed him about the ancestors of kids we knew.

  “Huff,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “Samuel Huff supervised the carton plant, hosted poker games there after hours,” Grandpa Rose(mezzo-forte) said.

  “Geluso,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “Busoni Geluso worked fishing salmon, had a fat face, tiny hands, skin as rough as a brick’s,” Grandpa Rose(mezzo-forte) said.

  “Dirge,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “Vern Dirge had the loudest sneeze in the state of Michigan,” Grandpa Rose(mezzo-forte) said.

  “Keen,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “Jan Keen was a sleepwalker, wandered the streets in pajamas,” Grandpa Rose(mezzo-forte) said.

  Jordan was dying (fortissimo) laughing.

  “How can he remember the names of people who have been dead for fifty years, but he can’t remember ours?” Zeke (piano)muttered.

  While Grandpa Dykhouse and Jordan played chess, Grandpa Dykhouse talked about sailboats. Even though he called us kids, he never talked to us like we were kids, but instead just people. I liked that he would tell us anything.

  “Every summer we would sail across Lake Michigan, under the bridge at Mackinac, through the locks to Lake Superior. Pitch a tent in the forest. Roast marshmallows over a fire,” Grandpa Dykhouse (forte)said. “Like Saint-Amour, I should have taken a vow to kill myself on my sixtieth birthday. Just when things seemed perfect—I had retired, Holly had retired, for the first time since high school we had all of this time to spend together—then we lost everything, and I lost Holly.” He scooped a spoonful of peas, the spoon (piano)rattling against the can. “We were happy when we were sixty. We should have left then, together, so we could have left happy.”

  “Yes, okay, Mom and Dad hardly ever visited you, but, still, they were trying to take care of you. The rest home was just the best they could do,” Jordan (forte)said, squinting at the chessboard.

  “And if they ever find me, they’ll take me back there, and they’ll never let me die,” Grandpa Dykhouse (mezzo-forte)said, setting aside the can. “They’ll feed me pills, and hook me to machines that will keep me alive for another ten, twenty, thirty years, until all I can do is blink and breathe and get meals pumped into me through a tube.”

  “What’s wrong with the rest home?” Zeke(mezzo-piano) said. “My grandpa loved it there. When we would try to bring him home for holidays, he wouldn’t want to leave. The nurses called him Mr. Smiley.”

  “The fumes of gold cyanide,” Grandpa Dykhouse (piano)said. His eyes were > his normal eyes. Twice as big, maybe. He took a pawn with a pawn. “That’s what we should have done.”

  Jordan pointed at the pawn. His gap-tooth surfaced with his grin.

  “King Gunga, you’ve fallen straight into my trap!” Jordan (forte)cackled, doubling over himself, (forte)drumming his fists on the floor.

  Grandpa Rose (pianissimo)stirred the embers with a charred stick, (pianissimo)laughing. His tattoos were covered with stubble again already, thick gray and white hair. The rate that he grew a beard at was just freakish. This didn’t make sense, but for some reason seeing the tattoos starting to disappear like that worried me—made me feel like we had been given a chance to find the heirlooms, and that our chance was fading, and fading, and fading, and soon would vanish forever.

  Leaving the ghosthouse, we yanked on sweatshirts and (forte)argued with each other about the notes Grandpa Dykhouse had made of Grandpa Rose’s memories. Rippled clouds drifted over the moon. The weeds already were wet with dew. I had gotten desperate enough to consider going to the place we had never considered going before.

  “The smugglers’ tunnels?” Jordan(sforzando) said.

  In band class, everyone had learned new terms. Sforzando means “play this with sudden force.” Staccato means “play this sharp and choppy,” means “let none of these notes touch.”

  We stopped at the stone well, the empty bucket swaying (staccato)creaking in the wind.

  “He worked for the smugglers. Maybe there are clues in the tunnels. Papers, artifacts, something,” I (forte)said.

  Jordan waved his hands at me, stepping backward.

  “You’re out of your mind, thinking about going there,” Jordan (forte)said.

  Zeke hung his head, then nodded.

  “Tomorrow, after school, let’s try it,” Zeke (forte)said.

  Kids our age were strictly forbidden from going into those tunnels, on pain of death.

  I woke that night to the sound of thunder(mezzo-forte) rumbling in the sky, rain (forte)lashing at the window. My breath fogged the glass. I watched trees buckling, snapped limbs bouncing across the backyard. The rain had come, but way too much.

  I kicked into my high-tops and grabbed my raincoat and ran to the backyard, slipping across puddles, stumbling. Water (staccato)hammered the hood of the raincoat. Lightning flashed white across the woods. My brother was pitching from side to side, like someone about to collapse. I dropped to his roots, pressed my back into his bark, propped his trunk with my body. Wind slammed the trees. I dug my high-tops into the mud. I dug my fingers into the mud. Wind slammed the trees again. I would have let it break my backbone bef
ore my brother. Thunder (fortissimo)blasted. Snapped limbs somersaulted and cartwheeled through the woods. The rain’s tempo was breathless. I couldn’t speak without music, and my brother wasn’t speaking, was way too afraid. We just sat there together, quietly, through the storm.

  In the morning the trees were still (pianissimo)dripping rainwater. The deck was littered with branches, muddled leaves, small round berries. Birds pecked at the berries, flew away again. I was eating cinnamon oatmeal from a cracked bowl.

  “Did Grandpa Rose ever work?” I(mezzo-piano) said.

  My mom carried a plate of eggs to the table.

  “He never had normal jobs. He was never home. When he was, he would just follow around Grandma Rose,” my mom(mezzo-piano) said. “He wasn’t a deadbeat or anything. He would fold laundry for her, help her cook, move furniture around, this wall to that wall, that wall to this wall, wherever she pointed next. They were wild about each other. When she came into the room, he would break into this goofy smile, like seeing her face made him, just, overflow. But, of course, then a week later he would disappear.”

  She dipped toast in the yolk of the eggs. She blew some hair out of her eyes. She chewed a bite.

  “Once, at sunrise, before school, we took a walk in the woods,” my mom(mezzo-piano) said. “I still remember how, that morning, whenever we heard a songbird, he would say, ‘Finch,’ or ‘Cardinal,’ or ‘Whippoorwill.’ Then he would sing back. He knew all the birds’ songs. Note for note. Perfectly. I remember thinking, my father shouldn’t have been a crook! My father should have become a ranger, become a biologist, worked at a museum! I was outraged and amazed, simultaneously, by this secret talent. Maybe we took walks other mornings. I don’t remember. He tried to teach me the birds’ songs. I couldn’t sing them. But I still remember which sang which. He did teach me that.”

  She forked a bite of eggs. I had stopped chewing. I had never heard Grandpa Rose singing birds’ songs. He had probably forgotten.

  A bird landed on the deck, (glissando)twittering. I swallowed a mouthful of oatmeal. My mom pointed at the bird with her fork, still looking at her plate.

  “Sparrow,” my mom (piano)said.

  In math class, I was solving problems about the golden number. The golden number is a ratio that’s majorly powerful. If there is a blueprint to the universe, it’s the architect’s favorite number. It’s the shape of everything. It manifests in the order of trees’ branches, the curve of shells’ spirals, the scales of pinecones, the seeds of sunflowers, the dimensions of bones, the bodies of galaxies, the trajectory of falcons, the ancestry of honeybees. It’s been used in the design of books, of symphonies, of the tombs of pharaohs. Its first nine digits are 1.61803398, which is approximately equal to a ratio of 809/500, which you can’t simplify any further because 809 is a prime number.

  Jordan slid a note onto my desk.

  “From the homeschooler,” Jordan (pianissimo) muttered, pretending to fix his high-tops.

  I gaped at the note.

  “The black spot?” I(piano) whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Jordan muttered. (pianissimo)Then the math teacher spotted him and (forte)called him to the chalkboard to solve a problem for the class.

  I got a nervousuncertain feeling. If I had been given the black spot, that would mean death was coming for me. I shoved a lock of hair out of my eyes. I took a breath. I unfolded the note.

  It wasn’t the black spot. It was binary. It said,

  01100011011101010111010001100101

  I translated it. It meant “cute”? I didn’t understand. What was “cute”? Normally the fortunes were warnings. How was “cute” a warning?

  I met Zeke at our locker after school.

  “I need to stop for my knife before we head to the tunnels,” I (forte)said.

  “I have to round up my dogs. Won’t take long. I’ll meet you at your house,” Zeke (forte)said.

  Zeke was rooting through crumpled schoolwork on the floor of our locker. His dictionary was on the shelf. I had thought the dictionary had been burned in the garbage bin with our backpacks, but it was back again, like a ghost of itself, its cover as tattered and stained as always.

  “How did your dictionary survive the garbage bin?” I (forte)said.

  “It was never in it. When the Isaacs broke into our locker, the dictionary was at my house,” Zeke (forte)said. “Nothing could have been luckier. I need those words in it.”

  Zeke (forte) shut the locker, trotted off toward the door.

  “I’ve been thinking about what Grandpa Dykhouse said,” Zeke (forte)shouted, glancing backward. “Those holmgangs, those duels, that might be the only way to settle things with the Isaacs.”

  I imagined Zeke waving a pistol.

  “The only way?” I (piano)murmured.

  Leaving school, I saw the Geluso twins perched on tables in the cafeteria, reading a magazine with the Isaacs. A kid with dreadlocks walked past (piano)humming “The Ballad Of Dirge And Keen.” Emma Dirge and Leah Keen walked out of the bathroom. The kid pretended to be humming something else.

  When I got home, a black station wagon was parked in the driveway.

  There was another showing.

  I peeked through the kitchen window. A couple without children was sniffing our wallpaper. Both with black hair, both wearing grayish suits. The agent was opening and closing our cabinets, running through the usual ostinato.

  I dropped through the bathroom window. I crept to the door, listening.

  “Big big big backyard!” the agent(crescendo) said, standing at the window.

  The woman frowned at the glass.

  “We would have to remove those trees to build the pool,” the woman (forte)whined.

  “Don’t forget the lake is practically next door, Ms. York,” the agent (forte)said.

  “Dead fish rot in that water,” the woman (forte)said.

  “Ms. York, a pool sounds heavenly,” the agent (forte)said.

  It was a new worst. If this couple made an offer—if this couple made a closing—we wouldn’t just be leaving my brother. After we had gone, this couple would chop him down, would hack him apart.

  Zeke stood at the bottom of the driveway clutching an unlit lantern. Today’s high-tops were a shiny black, with black straps. Zeke (forte) barked at the wolfdogs. They galloped into the road from where they had treed a squirrel.

  “If you had something that could save Jordan, would you save him?” Zeke (piano)said.

  “What do you mean save him?” I (forte)said.

  “I mean nobody would hate him anymore,” Zeke (piano)said.

  “Yes, I would save him,” I (forte)said.

  I belted my knife to my leg.

  “Wouldn’t you?” I (forte)said.

  We walked to Jordan’s house, past the ghosthouse, to the wharf almost. Jordan’s house had gray shutters and a gray van in the driveway. Music(mezzo-forte) throbbed, muffled through a second-story window. Zeke(forte) knocked on the door.

  Jordan’s mom answered, with dark pits at her eyes, plus maroon stains on her sweatshirt.

  “Genevieve!” Jordan’s mom (fortissimo)shouted.

  “We want Jordan,” Zeke (forte)said.

  “Oh. Sorry. You didn’t look his type,” Jordan’s mom (forte)said.

  A girl wearing neon elbow pads and neon knee pads ran to the door. She was younger than us—probably some sort of elementary schooler. She had twice the number of Jordan’s freckles, but her hair was only half red, was half gold too.

  “Will you fetch Jordan?” Jordan’s mom(mezzo-forte) said.

  Genevieve bolted upstairs.

  “You kids wait here,” Jordan’s mom muttered,(mezzo-piano) shutting the door.

  A window(mezzo-forte) scraped open. Jordan peeked out. He wasn’t wearing a shirt.

  “What?” Jordan (forte)said.

  “We’re going to the smugglers’ tunnels,” I (forte)said.

  “Enjoy,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “You’re not coming?” I (forte)sa
id.

  “I’m grounded,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “Again?” I (forte)said.

  “Somehow my sister’s dollhouse got sawed in half,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “Somehow?” I (forte)said.

  Jordan scratched his shoulders.

  “Anyway, I wouldn’t come along even if I weren’t grounded. The smugglers’ tunnels are my brother’s territory. Save me some heirlooms, if you find the treasure,” Jordan (forte)said.

  “You don’t get your share of them unless you’re there when we find them,” Zeke (forte)said.

  Jordan frowned. Jordan (piano)sighed. Jordan (piano)sworeunwritable.

  “Let me get a sweatshirt,” Jordan (piano)muttered.

  Jordan tossed out a sweatshirt, which fluttered past the kitchen window and onto the wood chips. He snaked backward, hung from his bedroom window—his high-tops kicking above the kitchen window—then dropped.

  Jordan’s mom was bent in the refrigerator, rummaging. Jordan wriggled into his sweatshirt as we ran into the trees, headed toward the wharf. A molehill caved under my high-tops, making me stumble. At the farm where the Gelusos lived, their lone cow was (fermata)mooing, and their lambs were (staccato)bleating, and their turkeys were (pianissimo)ticking at acorns in the grass.

  “Ty, my brother, is just like Grandpa Dykhouse, although they haven’t spoken to each other for three years,” Jordan(mezzo-forte) said. “They’re both obsessed with history, especially the history of the lake. I try to care, I try and I try, but I can’t. I hate memorizing things that already happened.”

  “Grandpa Dykhouse seems happier, now that he has the memory project,” I(mezzo-forte) said.

  “Maybe, but that’s temporary,” Jordan(mezzo-forte) said. “Your grandpa’s memories won’t stay long. When the memories vanish, the project’s finished, and King Gunga’s sad again. No, what he needs is a boat.”

  Running past the wharf, we saw the Isaacs and Mark Huff perched on a sailboat, their arms hanging over the railing, their legs dangling between the bars. The Isaacs were sipping from ceramic mugs, pretending they didn’t see us. Mark Huff was tossing cubes of sugar to gulls bobbing on the lake below.