Come Fall

by A. C. E. Bauer

  13—Lu-Ellen Zimmer

  Whistles

  Lu wondered why Blos ran off as soon as they asked him about his camera. Even after all these years, she didn’t always understand why he did some things.

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No,” Salman said. “I don’t think so.”

  But she could see that Salman’s mind was someplace else. He stared out the windows at the beautiful fall day: crisp, a slight breeze, clear blue skies.

  “Would you like to do homework at my house this afternoon?” she asked.

  “Not today.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Thanks.”

  The lunch bell rang. Lu dumped her bag into the trash and Salman glided away. She leaned over to pick up her backpack when she noticed a small brown paper bag wedged in her strap.

  She checked over her shoulder. No one was watching her—at least, no one she could see. She opened the bag. Inside was a metal whistle and a folded sheet of paper. Letters, cut out from magazines, were pasted into a note.

  To call your birds.

  She crumpled the paper and reddened. The note had been unsigned, but she knew who had left her the whistle.

  As she headed toward the stairs, Rob Puckett and Sean surprised her.

  “Let’s hear it blow,” Sean called, and Rob let out a wolf whistle.

  Lu ran to class. A cold ball froze her gut that entire afternoon. What had she done to get on their hit list?

  She was so upset, she kept flubbing her part at band practice. Ruthie tried to help, but Ms. Cantor lost patience.

  “Lu, you need to spend more time practicing!”

  When Lu arrived home, she realized she had left the play they were reading for Language Arts in her locker. She didn’t worry, though. Her parents owned so many books, she was sure they must have a copy of it somewhere in the house. Finding it, however, was another story. Whatever system Dad had created to shelve the books never made sense to her.

  Lu found Mom in the kitchen, pouring juice for Ricky.

  “Do we have a copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” she asked.

  Mom handed Ricky the glass.

  “I think so. I’ll check the study. What do you need it for?”

  “Homework.”

  “So you can tell your boyfriend about it when you see him?” Ricky said.

  “No, twit. Go find someone else to bother.”

  “It bothers you that you have a boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend! Will you leave me alone?”

  “Jimmy Puckett’s brother says you hang around with two boys. Maybe you can’t make up your mind.”

  “Mom. Can you tell Ricky to shut up?”

  Mom’s eyes crinkled, as if she were smiling.

  “Ricky, leave your sister alone. You have homework to do.”

  Lu followed Mom into the study. Mom leaned behind the couch and pulled out a few books.

  “Here it is,” she said. She huffed as she straightened. Lu took The Riverside Shakespeare from her—a big, heavy volume.

  “Everything he wrote is there,” Mom said.

  Lu riffled the pages. She found the play—at the very beginning of the book. Jeez. She placed the open volume on the table. Mom stood beside her.

  “Are you okay, honey? You seem upset about something.”

  “Ricky drives me crazy.”

  Mom grinned. “Well, yes. That’s his job.”

  “No, it isn’t!”

  Mom laughed. “Every younger sibling drives the older siblings a bit crazy. Even you did.”

  “I never went on and on the way he does.”

  “Maybe,” Mom said.

  Mom didn’t move. Why didn’t she leave Lu alone?

  “Is something else bothering you?” Mom asked.

  Well, yes. School. This must have been one of the worst days of her life. Lu was used to not being on the most popular list. But being singled out by the likes of Rob Puckett and Bethany Addams was entirely new. She fingered the onionskin-thin pages of the book. She wondered what Mom’d say if she told her some kids were calling her Bird Tamer. Maybe she’d laugh about that, too. Lu glanced up. Mom was smiling—an inviting smile. No, Lu had to admit, she wouldn’t laugh.

  Mom placed a hand on her belly and winced. She seemed paler than usual.

  “Are you okay?” Lu asked.

  “The baby thinks my bladder makes a great trampoline.”

  Ouch, Lu thought.

  “But what about you?” Mom said. “You seem a bit sad to me.”

  “I’m okay,” Lu said. Mom had enough to worry about.

  “We can talk if you want,” Mom said.

  Lu nodded and looked back down at the book.

  “I’m okay.”

  As Lu lugged the volume upstairs, Ron almost slammed into her on his way down.

  “I’m late,” he said.

  He crashed his way to the kitchen, yelling, “Mom! Can you give me a ride?”

  Ricky had turned on the TV, despite Mom’s instructions about homework. Jack had music blaring from his room. With all the noise, Lu didn’t hear the phone ring.

  “Lu!” Ron yelled from downstairs.

  Lu stuck her head over the stairwell.

  “Call for you!” he yelled.

  She dumped the book onto her desk and grabbed the receiver. She waited for the telltale click that the phone downstairs had been hung up before talking.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Lu. It’s Frances. I have great news!”

  Frances. Yes! Someone to talk to. Lu felt a moment of elation.

  “Tell me,” Lu said.

  “I’ve made the cheerleading squad. Josie and Martha helped me practice all summer. All three of us are in!”

  Cheerleading squad. Had Frances told her she had signed up for it?

  “That’s great,” Lu said. “I didn’t know you were trying out.”

  “I didn’t tell you? I guess I must have forgotten. But I wanted to share the news.”

  Cheerleading squad. Frances had mentioned something vaguely at dinner last week—something along the lines of, “It’d be fun to be a cheerleader.” But they hadn’t stayed on that subject—Frances never told her how much she was into it.

  “It’s great news,” Lu said. “Do you know the other girls?”

  “Most,” Frances said, “and some of the boys—the ones I met at the pool club, anyway.”

  Lu’s head whirled with the news.

  “I’m really happy for you,” she said.

  “You know those dresses we saw the other day?”

  Lu remembered. “With all the bows?”

  Frances giggled. “Yeah! We can use them to decorate the pom-poms.”

  Lu laughed. “I’ll try to snag them for you.”

  They paused. Lu almost heard Frances’s smile through the line.

  “Listen, I only have a minute. Martha’s mom just showed up. She’s taking us to the mall to celebrate. I’ll e-mail later, okay?”

  “Okay,” Lu said.

  Frances hung up. Lu placed the receiver back in its cradle. Frances wouldn’t e-mail—not today, anyway. Lu knew that already.

  She stared at the book on her desk. The thought of finding the play again in that oversized tome daunted her. Science, World History, Math, all were crammed into her backpack, waiting for her attention. Jack’s music had only gotten louder to drown out the TV. She needed a break—a real break.

  She slipped on a sweatshirt and headed downstairs. Mom and Ron were leaving.

  “I’m taking a walk,” she told them.

  “Be back for dinner,” Mom replied.

  14—Lu-Ellen Zimmer

  Into the woods

  Lu decided to head into the woods behind their yard. There she’d find some quiet.

  The forest belonged to a trucking company that had once operated a terminal in the northeast corner of its large property. Lu’s street was the forest’s southern boundary. During long summer days, Lu and Frances used to hike about tw
enty minutes into the property to reach a gentle stream. They’d spend hours exploring up and down its course. They always ended up at the same spot: an eddy that pooled at the foot of a large boulder. They called the place Frog Hollow. They invented long, complicated games where they were brave explorers dealing with unusual, sometimes magical creatures that all looked like frogs.

  After so many summers of back-and-forth, they had trampled down a narrow path from her backyard to their secret playground. The path was still visible, if overgrown.

  Lu lost her way twice, but this part of the forest had been her old stomping grounds, so she wasn’t worried. When she finally reached the stream, she realized that she had veered off because she was at least a bend downstream from the Hollow. She followed the bank upstream, soothed by the bubbling water. When she heard the chirrup of a frog answered by another, she knew she was close. The boulder loomed behind the next tree.

  As she rounded the tree, she stopped. Next to the boulder, crouched very still, pointing a camera right at the water’s edge, was Blos Pease, his wiry orange hair catching reflections of sunlight through the trees.

  Blos. Here. In Frog Hollow. The picture jarred.

  She wanted to back up before he noticed her. But her foot caught a twig, and the wood snapped. Blos jerked his head up and around.

  “Lu Zimmer.”

  He sounded frightened. He hadn’t expected her, either.

  “It’s okay, Blos. You can go back to what you were doing. I’m just passing through.”

  “I’m taking photographs,” Blos said.

  “Yes, I know. Sorry I interrupted.”

  “I walked down the stream. You know it flows near our house before it heads up to the town line.”

  She did not know. She didn’t really care. She took another step back.

  “Ms. R said I should take pictures for the paper.”

  It crossed Lu’s mind that pictures for the paper were supposed to be about school activities, not frogs in a stream. But she didn’t correct him. She wanted to be by herself. She needed to shake him off.

  “Go ahead. I’ll leave you alone.”

  He didn’t take the hint. He never took hints. He stood up and stepped toward her.

  “I can show you what I’ve taken so far.”

  “Don’t you want to print them first?”

  “The camera is digital. It has a view screen.”

  She couldn’t slow him down. He was right next to her, shoving the screen under her nose.

  “I can replay them.”

  She felt trapped.

  “Okay. Show me.”

  He did. A series of stills flashed on the small screen, shots filled with greens, yellows, rusts, and small patches of blue as they chronicled Blos’s walk from his house through the woods along the stream. One was of Frog Hollow. The last one showed a circular ripple.

  “I just missed him,” Blos said. “I was waiting for him to come up so I could try again.”

  But Lu wasn’t thinking about frogs.

  “Can you back up the pictures? Like two or three?”

  “Sure,” Blos said.

  He pressed a button. She saw a picture of the boulder, a picture of trees, a picture of a bend in the stream from afar, another picture of a bend in the stream from afar.

  “Stop,” she said. “Can I see that?”

  “It is just a gap in the trees,” Blos said.

  “Yeah, but what’s in that gap?”

  Blos squinted. He pressed a few more buttons, and the picture zoomed in.

  “That is a trailer,” he said, “and some people working in a garden.”

  The trailer was on the other side of the stream, off the trucking property. And the garden looked huge. Lu wondered why she and Frances had never noticed it. The figures in the picture were indistinct.

  “Where’s this picture from?” she asked.

  “I will show you,” Blos said.

  Before she had time to think, Blos started walking upstream. Lu ran to catch up.

  “It was past that bend, over there,” he said.

  They passed the bend, and sure enough, a large gap opened on the other side of the stream. Lu stopped in the shade of a tree and held Blos back before he went any farther. When he turned to look at her, she covered her lips with a finger. She couldn’t read his expression, but he reacted by crouching low, as if to hide from something.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Just, let’s not be heard.”

  Across the stream was an enormous garden—more of a field, she thought—surrounded by tall bushes, the stream, and a fence that ended just at the gap in the woods. She had never seen so many plants rise so tall and thick, almost wild with their huge and varied leaves and fruits, yet lined up in civilized rows. It bore no resemblance to the neat vegetable patch Mom kept in a corner of their yard.

  Perched above the garden was a weathered chicken coop and a trailer on cement blocks.

  Lu immediately recognized Salman. He stood in the middle of the field, in a spot where plants had been cut down, scooping shovelfuls of black earth from a wheelbarrow. A large, blond-haired woman in even larger overalls walked away from him with another shovel in her hand.

  “When you’re done with the row, hon,” the woman said, “you can call it a day.”

  Salman nodded but did not reply. He kept shoveling. The breeze shifted, and Lu smelled the pungent odor of manure.

  Eew …

  When the woman disappeared behind the trailer, Salman stopped shoveling and gazed across the stream. Lu stood still, holding her breath. But Salman didn’t see her or Blos: he was looking up, into the treetops. He grinned before he returned to his shoveling.

  From above, a huge bird swooped down. And Lu had that fleeting sensation again, of alighting and folding her wings, as if she were the crow, landing at the edge of the field.

  Salman glanced up at the trailer, then put the shovel down and reached into a pocket. He pulled out something shiny.

  Lu watched the shiny thing, fascinated by the way it twinkled in the sunlight. She didn’t move, yet she sensed wings stretch out, a hop, a flap, and the snap of a beak grabbing the metal object. She watched the bird fly up to the treetops and out of sight. When she looked down again, Salman had emptied the wheelbarrow and was raking the manure flat.

  “Salman Page!” Blos yelled.

  What was Blos doing? Hadn’t she asked him to keep quiet? She wanted to yank Blos back.

  Salman straightened. He shaded his eyes with a hand. Blos stepped out into the sunlight and waved. Salman’s jaw dropped at first, then morphed into a smile. In a voice no louder than conversation, Salman answered, “Wait there. I won’t be long.”

  Lu wanted to vanish. She’d been caught snooping.

  Within a few minutes, Salman finished raking and returned the wheelbarrow, rake, and shovel behind the trailer. Lu heard the snap of a screen door opening and shutting, followed by a second snap a minute later.

  Salman reappeared. He had changed his pants. He crossed the stream over a series of stones that jutted out from the water. His eyebrows were crinkled up in puzzlement.

  “I told them I’m going for a walk,” he said when he reached Blos. “How’d you get here?”

  “Lu and I walked along the stream,” Blos said.

  “Lu?” Salman said.

  Lu knew she needed to appear, right away. She should have stepped forward when Blos did. But instead she retreated farther into the shade. It was ridiculous, really. She had followed Blos into the woods and they had stumbled upon Salman’s place. No harm in that. Yet she felt as though she had been spying on him. She was too embarrassed to be seen now.

  Blos—who, of course, didn’t get it—pointed at her.

  “She is back there.”

  Salman didn’t seem angry.

  “Let’s go there, too,” he said.

  15—Salman Page

  Salman smiled. Lu smiled, too.

  Blos’s appearance was exactly what he needed, Salman thoug
ht.

  “I have been taking pictures,” Blos said.

  “For the paper?” Salman asked.

  Blos nodded, obviously pleased about the correct guess. He was a breath of fresh air, Salman thought.

  “Do you want to see them?” Blos asked.

  They stood next to the tree where Lu had been hiding. She was obviously embarrassed at having been discovered. Salman wished that she wasn’t. It was okay that she’d come. He was glad to see her. Glad to have an excuse to avoid the trailer.

  Ozzy had been in a dark mood for days. He hardly spoke, rooted in front of the TV, not showering nor shaving nor even changing his clothes, guzzling one beer after another. If this had been a cartoon, black clouds arcing lightning would have been roiling around him.

  Tina worried.

  “He’s been low a long time,” she said.

  Salman feared an explosion. Ozzy had never hit him, but in the man’s current state, Salman wasn’t sure what he might do if Salman crossed him. He drank more and more, becoming less and less coherent. Tina had scheduled an appointment for him that afternoon at the outpatient clinic at the veterans’ hospital.

  Salman heard the pickup’s engine roar. Lu jumped. Blos didn’t seem to notice.

  “It is a digital camera,” Blos said. “I can show you every picture even before they are printed.”

  “That sounds cool,” Salman said.

  The thin layer of gravel crunched under the truck’s wheels. Ozzy and Tina were gone. Salman breathed easier. Blos pointed to the screen and explained how each button worked.

  “This is the picture of your garden. Lu wanted to see it.”

  Lu turned away, as if she was getting ready to run. A small part of Salman twinged inside.

  “But I still need a few more good shots for tomorrow’s meeting,” Blos continued.

  Blos meant the meeting Ms. R had called for the kids working on the paper. Salman had been invited, too.

  “Hey, I can take a picture of the two of you. You know, a new student and his d.b.”

  Before either Salman or Lu had time to protest, Blos began snapping pictures of each of them.

  “Wait,” Lu said.

  Blos stopped.

  Lu sighed. “How about you just take one of us, together?”