by Will Hobbs
“Good luck tomorrow,” I said to Tyler. “Have you made up your mind what you should do?”
“Yeah, I really think I should call my probation officer, like Jackie was talking about. It’s just too tense at home. I might have to stay somewhere for a while, but it should be better in the long run. It’s worth a try. If I just go home, my dad might do something stupid. It’s a no-win situation if ever there was one. I just wish I could figure a way to help my mom get out of there too.”
“Well, I’ll see you for breakfast, anyway. Try to get some sleep, Tyler.”
“You too, Shannon. Hey, you really did look good on TV.”
“No kidding?”
“Seriously.”
I went upstairs having no idea I’d see Tyler sooner than breakfast.
I was dead asleep when somebody woke me calling my name. It was Cody, standing by my bed. “Listen,” he said.
I was bleary. “What time is it, Cody? Good grief, it’s one in the morning.”
“I couldn’t go to sleep. I’m still too excited. We’re going home soon.”
“I know, I know. I’m excited too.”
“But listen. Tell me what you hear.”
Cr-r-ruck! Prruk! Kla-wock! Kla-wock!
“There, did you hear it?”
“A raven?”
“I know. It’s Kickstand.”
“So? Cody, it’s the middle of the night!”
“That’s what I mean! Ravens don’t talk at night.”
“How do you know that?”
“Jackie said so.”
I buried my head in my pillow. “Thanks for the information, Cody.”
He shook me. “Shannie, Shannie, he’s trying to warn me.”
“Of what?” I mumbled.
“I don’t know, but I have to find out.”
“No you don’t.”
Prruk! Prruk! Tok! Kla-wock!
“There he goes again, and this time he’s closer. Shan, he’s talking his head off. I have to go see. I just want to go out and see if everything’s okay. I’m wide awake anyway.”
“You aren’t the only one,” I said. “And here you’ve been so good at not being annoying.”
“So let’s go, Shannie.”
“I’m going to walk past Tyler in this nightshirt? I don’t think so….”
“Then get dressed and I will too, but hurry. Be real quiet so you don’t wake up Uncle Neal.”
“You’re pushing it,” I said, but Cody had already tiptoed down the hall.
A few minutes later we met at the end of the hall. We tiptoed down the stairs. I grabbed the big flashlight in the pantry. Sage was at the front door, waiting.
“Whazzup?” whispered Tyler from the couch as we approached the door. He’d gone to sleep in his clothes. The sleeping bag he’d used for a blanket had fallen off.
“Kickstand is talking,” Cody whispered back. “Something’s wrong.”
“Wait for me. Just gotta pull on my shoes.”
The door barely creaked as we let Sage and ourselves out. It was real dark, with only the sliver of a crescent moon hanging above us. The raven had suddenly fallen silent.
“So, what do you want to do?” I asked Cody. “I just hope this doesn’t turn out to be a skunk hunt.”
“Let’s just see if Sage thinks everything’s okay.”
Neal’s partner was testing the air. Then her ears went forward. She started walking around the back of the office. We followed, quiet as could be.
Sage was waiting at the service gate to the rehab pens, very much on alert. Suddenly she started barking.
Tyler threw open the gate and we ran inside. We could hear someone running, not real close, over toward the deer and the coyote pens, it sounded like. We were stopped in our tracks wondering what it meant, what to do, when the side of the clinic closest to the bears’ den lit up with reflected fire.
“Fire!” Tyler yelled at the top of his lungs. “Fire inside the bears’ den!”
Without another word, all three of us ran to the back door of the clinic. Inside, I threw on the lights, took three steps, and pulled the fire alarm. Tyler and Cody went straight to the door that led into the bears’ den and were back a second later. “Fire in the straw!” Cody yelled.
“I’ll get the hose going,” Tyler shouted. “You guys get the fire extinguishers!”
We found two extinguishers and raced back to the bears’ den. The fire alarm was still going off loud as can be. The noise was almost unbearable, but I was so glad to hear it.
The fire was racing through the straw. At the center of the blaze there was an intense white-hot light. Tyler was on the outside of the chain-link fence putting water on the fire as fast as he could, starting with the source and as far as he could reach. The flames were about to reach the panicked bear cubs in the middle of the three sections. Quick as I could, I pulled on the cord that opened the trap door for the farthest section. The cubs ran through and climbed up the tree, away from the smoke and the heat.
Cody had thrown open the first door, the one from the service path to the inside of the den, and Tyler ran inside hosing down on the fire as fast as he could.
It wasn’t going to be enough. Cody and I ran past him, each with a fire extinguisher. We sprayed ahead of us, back and forth, back and forth. And here was Uncle Neal with another fire extinguisher.
As the flames were starting on the wall of the clinic, the four of us mowed that fire down.
Suddenly it was dark. The fire was out. We stood there panting and coughing, the smell of burnt straw and bears strong all around us.
Floodlights came on, and there was Jackie at the clinic door. “Everybody okay?” she cried. “Is everybody okay?”
“Everybody’s fine,” I said. “Fire’s out, Jackie.”
“Thank goodness. What happened?”
“We heard somebody running,” Cody said.
Tyler was kneeling by the source of the fire. “It’s a flare—an emergency flare.”
By now we could hear the fire department sirens on the road. “They’re quick,” Jackie said. “Thank goodness we can send them home.”
Sage was sniffing the short red cylinder, partially burned. Cody was about to pick the flare up. “Don’t,” Neal said. “It might have fingerprints.”
“Guess whose,” Tyler said bitterly.
“He wouldn’t,” I said.
“We have flares just like that in our car, in the truck.”
“So do lots of other people,” Neal said. “Maybe it’s not him, Tyler. Let’s hope it’s not your dad.”
The fire department arrived with the police. As it turned out, the sheriff was on his way minutes before Jackie reported the fire. Tyler’s mother had called and said that his dad had left the house in a raging temper. She was worried that he was headed for Jackie’s to drag Tyler home.
By morning Tyler’s dad was in the news. An all-points bulletin had been issued for his arrest. The sheriff had found a piece of material snagged on the top of the chain-link fence in the deer pen. Tyler’s mother said it was from his dad’s jacket.
By noon Tyler’s father walked into a police station in Everett. He turned himself in and admitted he’d done it.
Tyler was back at home with his mother when his dad called from jail. “My mom answered the phone,” Tyler said as we sat together later that day on the talking stump. “I was so afraid of how she would handle it. She didn’t say much, she just listened. And when he was all done, she just said, ‘Tyler and I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go on being afraid all the time. I’m taking him back to North Carolina.’ And that was it. She hung up the phone. So it’s settled, we’re going, and soon. I guess I won’t get to see those two cubs hibernate this winter.”
“North Carolina?”
“That’s right. Asheville. It’s in the Blue Ridge Mountains. My grandparents live there, my mom’s folks.”
“That’s not too, too far from New Jersey,” I said. “At least it’s on the same side of the country. We
could stay in touch.”
“You want to?”
“Definitely. We’ve been through some interesting times together. Interesting times make for interesting people, my dad says. Do you think your mom and dad will ever work this out, ever get back together?”
“I seriously doubt it. She says she’s felt so suffocated, she just wants a second chance in life. She said it was hard to stand her ground, though, during that call he made from jail. He begged for her forgiveness, mine too. I’m so proud of her—she stayed strong. Forgiveness, sure, but it’ll take time before it means anything. He’s always real sorry after he blows up. I only hope he gets it together. I mean, he could’ve burned down the whole clinic, Shannon.”
“And every animal in it.”
“I never would’ve thought he could do something like that. I keep wondering if it’s partly my fault, like maybe I pushed him too far, made him flip out.”
“Don’t even start thinking like that,” I told him. “I’ve watched you all summer. Trying not to be like him. Trying to come up for air. Your mother isn’t the only one who was suffocating. You made it, Tyler. Like they say, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life.’”
26
SO FAR, SO GOOD
It was time for good-byes. Jackie threw a party at the center for all her volunteers, past and present, her friends and neighbors, too. It was a giant picnic that filled up the parking lot and the lawns. Everybody brought card tables and folding chairs and something to eat. There was a live band, kids running around, dogs running around, a raven flying in and out. Kickstand entertained himself barking at the dogs and stealing scraps on one good leg and a stump.
After Jackie cut the cakes, three large carrot cakes she and I had made with garden carrots, she presented us with baseball caps embroidered with big letters in a nice cursive script, Wild Shannon and Wild Cody. Of course she had one for Neal that said Wild Neal. Jackie held up Sage’s flak jacket, newly embroidered with Wild Sage written across it. Sage appeared from under a table, ready for action, and everybody cheered.
Jackie hugged Cody and me close, then made a little speech about us, about how she was going to miss us so bad she couldn’t stand it, how she thought our parents were the luckiest people in the world, how she’d never had a better summer in her whole life.
There was more. Jackie’s eyes went misty as she talked about how much she owed her red-tailed hawk catcher—she bowed to Uncle Neal—and how she wanted to thank everybody for all they’d done “for me and for all creatures great and small these many years.”
The next day, the twenty-third of August, it was off to the airport. Jackie said she wanted to say good-bye at the center, so that’s what we did. She made us promise to come back, and we told her that would be an easy promise to keep. Cody said, “No more cakes made out of carrots,” and Jackie laughed.
We knew, and Jackie knew, that Neal’s fateful doctor’s appointment was two days later. She said she’d e-mail us as soon as she heard anything, so we should keep checking.
We drove out the driveway of Jackie’s Wild Seattle in Neal’s old pickup, the three of us and Sage, just like old times.
No stops for hot or cold rescues, just straight to the airport with our new baseball caps on our heads.
Nobody said much along the way. There was too much deep feeling for words. I felt the miles rolling past us and the time ticking down, and I knew this could be our last ride with our Uncle Neal. I fought so hard trying not to cry. Neal was looking straight ahead kind of like down a tunnel. I just hoped he wouldn’t look over at me because I was about to lose it. I wondered if Neal was thinking about telling us the secret he’d been keeping, but I was pretty sure he wouldn’t, not now.
We were passing the Fremont exit and I thought about Cody running up on top of the troll’s head. I turned around with a bittersweet smile on my face and saw the tears running down my brother’s cheeks. That did it. My own tears cut loose and a sob escaped me. I looked over at Neal, and he was all startled like the sky was falling.
“Shannon,” he said with a catch in his voice, and now I could see his eyes were brimful too. “Shannon, Cody, I’m going to miss you guys something awful.”
“Same here,” I said, wiping my eyes.
“We’re pitiful,” Cody said. “All three of us are crying.” He turned his face toward Sage and she actually took a lick at him.
After that it wasn’t so bad. We started talking about all the things we’d done, all the crazy things that had happened.
When we reached security inside the airport, that’s when it got bad again. But this time it was too serious for tears, and I think we were all trying not to spoil it. We mustered up our smiles and laughs and we hugged with “I love you’s” that might be last words. “It was hard enough,” I said to Neal, “just saying good-bye to Sage at the truck.”
“You’ll be back,” he told me.
“We better be,” Cody said, and then he fell apart again, just started bawling.
Uncle Neal looked at him curiously, knelt next to him, and gave him a hug.
“You’re the whole reason,” Cody sniffled.
“The whole reason what?” Neal asked.
“Just the whole reason…”
Neal said, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“When are you coming to Weehawken?” I asked.
“How about Christmas?”
“Really?” Cody asked, wiping his tears.
“Tell your mom and dad I’d love to. I’ve been too long gone. Call me as soon as you get home.”
“Promise,” we said.
Minutes before touchdown, we spotted Weehawken along the water, across the Hudson River from New York City. We actually spied our house on Liberty Place—half a block from the river on the north side of the street. We saw the shining skyline of lower Manhattan where the twin towers used to stand. I thought of the saying Time heals all wounds.
As we touched down at La Guardia my heart went out to Tyler, wherever he was this minute. The plane came to a stop. Cody and I were holding our breath. We came out of the jetway searching the faces.
Of course our parents weren’t there. They couldn’t get past security without airplane tickets.
We hustled down the concourse, my brother and I. I asked Cody if he was excited and he said, “Majorly.”
We funneled past security into a crowd, where we heard our parents shouting our names. Their voices were the sweetest music I’d heard in my life. There they were, neither one missing so much as a finger. As for holding my breath all summer, I finally let it out.
The day of Neal’s doctor visit I spent shopping for school clothes, but I felt like a zombie and came home with only a few things and nothing I really liked. My parents, especially my mother, were still in shock to learn from us that her brother had been sick all this while. They’d told Cody and me not to expect any news until the lab work was done, but I got up in the middle of dinner and checked for e-mails anyway. There was a new one from Jackie saying that the results would be back either right before or right after the Labor Day weekend. She’d let us know the moment she heard anything.
We didn’t hear a thing that Friday. We were going to have to wait for Tuesday, the last day before school started.
Ordinarily we would have gone somewhere Labor Day weekend. This year it was going to be the Berkshires.
We’d canceled those reservations. It didn’t feel right. We all wanted to stay close to home.
Tuesday morning found us trying to keep busy. My dad took Cody into the city to indulge his new interest, bumper stickers. They were going to check out novelty shops in Manhattan and maybe even a couple in Brooklyn.
My mom and I started out in Hoboken doing a little browsing. We had herbal tea and some kind of English biscuits at a quaint little shop. “You’ve done your school shopping and caught up with your friends,” my mother said. “I guess everything is over but the waiting. Would you like to go into the city?”
&nbs
p; “I thought I would,” I said. “But I just can’t stop thinking about Neal. I guess I’d rather be home than anywhere else.”
“Me too,” my mom said.
Back home, I read a chapter from a novel, or rather I ran my eyes over the words. Then I just waited. We got a few phone calls but none from Jackie. Every half hour I would check the computer.
Late that afternoon, word finally came, an e-mail. Surprisingly, it wasn’t from Jackie. It was from Uncle Neal himself. We’d never seen him anywhere near the computer. Here’s what he wrote:
The most amazing thing happened to me today. In all my years working with animals, I never expected this. Listen up, Cody, this is major. I just got a hug, a big hug, from an eagle. That’s right, from Liberty. I can’t tell you how much she’s been helping me this summer. I’m sorry I didn’t tell any of you that I’ve been sick, but Jackie tells me you figured it out. She said you understand why I didn’t tell you. She said my sister would too. I hope she’s right.
I can tell you this now. Remember all the times this summer I went walking with Liberty? Taking her with me in the woods? Well, she was talking to me the whole time, telling me I could get through this, that I’d be okay. She’d visit me in my dreams too, flying into my body and wiping out the cancer cells. She gave me so much of her strength. So of course she was the first one I went to today, even before Jackie. I took her out of her pen and headed up into the hills with her. I told her the good news—the tests found no sign of the cancer. It could come back, they warned me, but for now, I’m cancer-free.
When we stopped at the top of the ridge, Liberty turned to me, spread her wings, and wrapped them around both my shoulders. It was the first time I ever knew of an eagle doing anything like that. We stood together on that hilltop a long time, eye to eye. What I figure this means is, she thinks I’m going to be around for a long, long time.