Nekomah Creek

by Linda Crew

  I made for the porch. Thrilled, Lucy shrieked and danced in her pink boots. I bounded up the steps past Freddie, chased her down the porch, and flung my arms around her middle just as another of our works of art was about to bite the dust. Or maybe I should say bite the mud. Anyway, I hauled her back, getting a face full of her wispy, peanut butter-smelling hair.

  “No!” I scolded her. “Bad girl!”

  She yelled and kicked her heels against my shins.

  “For cryin’ out loud, don’t hurt her,” Dad said.

  She wriggled down free. I sighed and rubbed my legs. I can’t win. If I let the twins act naughty I’m in trouble. If I stop them, I’m in trouble too.

  I zipped up my jacket. The fog had finally burned off, but the big fir trees up behind the house kept all but a few sun rays from reaching our yard this time of year. Besides, dusk was coming on fast. I’d have to hurry to finish my worried-face pumpkin.

  “No, Freddie,” I said. “Sharp! Don’t grab my knife … Yeah, that’s it. You guys play over there.” I watched as he and Lucy squatted over a pile of seedy pumpkin goo and started squishing it through their fingers.

  Then I went back to my carving, thinking about the counselor today. Amber was absolutely right. Mrs. Van Gent was a snoop. It bugged me the way she talked, hinting there was something wrong with me, something wrong with my family.

  No way was I going to tell Mom and Dad about all that, though. Those concerned looks of theirs can turn a little worry into a giant one faster than you can say, “Hey, it’s no big deal.”

  “Oh, look, kids,” Dad said to the babies, his voice changing the way it does when he talks to them. He pointed to the old blue pickup crossing the plank bridge down at the creek. “Here comes Mommy.”

  They stood, faces lighting up.

  Then Dad added a joke for me. “Yup, good old Mommy, home from a hard day’s work in the salt mines.” Actually Mom worked at a print shop in Douglas Bay, drawing designs for stores and companies.

  The truck rumbled up the winding gravel drive. Mom slid down from the driver’s seat, but before she could even slam the door, Freddie and Lucy were wrapped around her legs, all tangled up and giggling in her long skirt.

  “Mom,” I said, “you should see what Lucy just did. Dad and I worked hard on these pumpkins and she was just shoving them off the railing.”

  Mom laser-eyed me. “Hi, Robby.” It bugs her no end when I launch into a bunch of gripes without at least saying hello first.

  “Uh, yeah, hi. But Mom, look what she—”

  “Don’t worry about it, Robby,” Dad said. “We’ll just make more.”

  Mom checked out all the jack-o’-lanterns on the porch and lining the drive. Each one had a different face … Fierce, happy, scared, surprised …

  “Just how many more do you think we need?” she said.

  “Come on, we’re just getting started.” Dad grinned at her. “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “There’s still a lot more pumpkins in the garden,” I pointed out.

  “That’s good to know,” she said. “I was worried.” She looked past Dad. “I gather you didn’t get to cleaning out the shed.”

  “Beth!” He pretended to be shocked and a little offended that she’d even mention this. “Where’s your sense of priorities?”

  He uses this word a lot. He says it means knowing which things are most important. On his list, fun is usually right at the top.

  Now I’m sorry to have to say this about my mother, but she’s not like that. Lots of times when Dad thinks up something neat to do, she just acts tired and says, “Oh, but it’ll be such a mess to clean up.”

  At the moment, she was trying to brush the pumpkin seeds from her skirt. “You haven’t forgotten about the potluck, have you?”

  “Nope,” Dad said. “Cake’s on the counter.”

  “Well, we’d better change diapers and wash faces here.”

  Dad wiped his knife on his jeans. “Why don’t you find the candles, Robby? We’ll get these pumpkins all ready to light and give the little guys a thrill when we come home after dark.”

  Every year Nekomah Creek School has a potluck and an auction to raise money for special activities. People donate things they’ve made or don’t want, or they promise to chop a cord of firewood or take somebody fishing in their boat. Some things are always the same. My friend Jason Corwin’s parents always auction off a weekend at an ocean-front rental condo their realty firm manages, Mrs. Downard offers to sew a dress, and my mom donates one of her miniature ink-and-watercolor paintings.

  The auction is a big deal, because Nekomah Creek is kind of famous for having so many people who do really good arts and crafts. So lots of people come up from Douglas Bay on the other side of Tillicum Head. That’s the closest real town.

  I thought Dad would donate storm windows like he usually does—he makes those out in his shop and sells them to people. So I was really surprised when Mr. DeWeese, the principal, said that the next item for auction was a romantic gourmet dinner for two, prepared by Bill Hummer.

  “All right, Dad!” I turned to him.

  Freddie was standing on Dad’s legs, pushing his nose to make it beep.

  “Beep!” Dad whispered. I think beeping helped him pretend Mr. DeWeese wasn’t talking about him. When he feels shy he does that sometimes—gets real busy with the babies.

  “The dinner,” Mr. DeWeese was saying, “will feature the finest Northwest cuisine and will be served in the rustic elegance of the Hummers’ home, on the banks of Nekomah Creek.”

  “I didn’t write that,” Dad whispered to me out the corner of his mouth.

  It sounded nice, though, especially if you didn’t know that around here, being on the creekbank was no big deal. I mean, so are at least half the houses on Nekomah Creek Road.

  Mom and Dad first discovered this place when they were camping through Oregon one summer, back when Dad was a teacher and had summers off. They say their whole future changed the day they pulled their VW van into the gas station down on Highway 101. The ocean looked pretty there, the way the creek spilled into it by Promise Rock, and they decided to stop and grab a bite at the cafe. A guy there told them about a good campground up Nekomah Creek Road. On the way to it, they drove past the houses and small livestock farms strung up along the creek valley. Dad still likes to tell how he slammed on the brakes when they spotted this old dairy barn with five acres for sale. And up past the covered bridge, the gray-shingled school with its old-fashioned bell tower. Mom says it was as if a vision hit them. They sat by their campfire late into the night, talking about how the barn could be turned into a terrific house, how the kids they’d have could ride their bikes through that bridge to the school …

  Mom always says this shows that dreams can come true because here I was, their kid, going to school at Nekomah Creek just like they imagined.

  Dad looked pleased as the bidding for his dinner took off. He’s a great cook but Mom’s always trying to diet, I’m sort of picky, and the little kids throw more food than they eat. Dad would love a chance to show off his fancy recipes.

  So many people were waving their arms, I couldn’t even tell who finally gave the high bid. Sixty dollars!

  Everyone applauded, including Freddie and Lucy. Lucy looked around to make sure everyone was joining in. She loves any excuse to clap.

  After the auction, Mom and Dad started talking to their friends, Berk and Inge Feikart, but their son West and I just nodded at each other and turned away. West and I used to play together a lot. We even have a picture taken down on the beach, each of us nothing but a little round head poking out of our mother’s backpack. At their house, we used to have fun chasing under his mother’s weaving looms, in and out of his father’s pottery studio. But now West always wears camouflage clothes, and he never wants to play anything except G.I. Joe.

  So I was looking for some of my other friends when I saw Orin Downard heading my way.
I tensed up. Orin’s the kind of kid who makes you flinch just walking past. He might poke you or he might not. Either way, you can’t relax until he’s gone. My mother says he’s built like a little brick outhouse. I’ve never seen such a thing, but I can picture it. No sign saying “Men” or “Women” on it. Just “Orin Downard.”

  He planted himself square in front of me. “Your father cooks?” The way he said it sounded more like, “Your father eats worms?”

  “Yeah,” I said cautiously. “He cooks.”

  He studied me, chewing his gum. “Women cook. Not men.”

  “That’s not true. Lots of chefs are men.” I glanced over at my dad. He was wearing his blue baseball cap, the one with the Masterpiece Theatre patch on it. Suddenly I wished he’d gone with his usual stocking hat.

  Orin let out this big disgusted sigh. “I’m not talking about restaurants, dummy. I’m talking about people’s houses. Cripes, I’ll bet my dad could pound your dad.”

  I squinted, trying to look fierce. “Could not.” But it came out sounding puny. And why wouldn’t it? It was a lie.

  I knew Orin’s dad. Everybody did. Elvis Downard. Orin’s Grandma had been crazy for Elvis Presley, see, or so people said. Orin’s dad was a logger now, but everybody still talked about what a big football star he’d been at Douglas Bay High. Now he drove a pickup with gun racks and a bumper sticker that said, “Sierra Club—kiss my ax.”

  Orin sneered. “Your dad’s a wimp.”

  I swallowed. I knew I’d never hear the end of this. My dad, the cook.

  “Dad?” I said on the way home, raising my voice over the Raffi song that was playing on the tape deck. “Do you think it’s weird that you cook?”

  “It’s wonderful that he cooks,” Mom said firmly. Then she whispered, “Let’s not blow a good thing, Robby.”

  “If it wasn’t for my cooking,” Dad said, “you’d all be eating Rice-A-Roni for dinner every night.”

  Mom and I traded a secret look. We both loved Rice-A-Roni. Also blueberry muffins made from a mix and canned Chinese food. Dad wouldn’t touch this stuff though, so we only had it when he wasn’t around, like when he went to visit Grandma after her operation.

  “But Dad? Is it usually always the mom who cooks?” I know this sounds dumb, but up until now, I’d never thought about it, “Are we the only family where the dad cooks?”

  “No,” Mom said. “Lots of dads cook.”

  “Dads around Nekomah Creek?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Who?” I persisted.

  “Sam Logan cooks,” Dad said.

  “Yeah, but that’s because he’s divorced now. He has to. I mean dads who cook even though the mom is still there.”

  Lucy and Freddie were helping Raffi belt out “Ducks Like Rain.”

  “Quaaaa … qua qua qua quack! Quaaa … qua qua qua quack!”

  Finally Mom mumbled something.

  “What?” Quacking ducks can sure make it tough to hear.

  Mom raised her voice. “I said, there must be a few men who cook.”

  Dad laughed. “Look, Robby. In our family, I’m the cook. If it works for us, that’s all that matters.”

  “Quaaa qua qua qua quack! Quaa qua qua qua quack …”

  Well, if it was okay with him, I guess it should have been okay with me.

  But was it?

  3

  Alarming News

  Dad stopped the van at the two big fir trees that stood like gateposts at our driveway. He made the rest of us wait while he disappeared into the dark dip where our little bridge crossed the creek. One by one, starting from the house, he lit the jack-o’-lanterns.

  “Okay,” he said, finally climbing back in. “Are we all ready for a spooky ride?” He cut the headlights.

  “Bill!” Mom said.

  “Don’t worry, I can see.”

  In the dimness I watched Freddie’s eyes get big.

  Dad inched the van up the driveway through the drifting ground fog, past the glowing faces. He took it as slowly as he could, but still, it was over too soon.

  “Wa mo tine!” Lucy said. That’s Lucy-talk for “One more time!”

  “Hey, why not?” Dad said. He cranked the car around, drove out over the bridge, and headed back in.

  We repeated the little parade, everybody oohing and ahhing. I got in on it too, and at the top of the drive I said, “One more time!”

  “No, that’s enough,” Dad said, unbuckling his seat belt.

  Huh. Somehow the babies’ magic words never worked for me.

  Mom opened the front door and groaned. “I always forget when we’ve left it like this.”

  Toys covered the floor of our big main room. The babies had done a shredding job on the day’s newspapers and mail. Sofa cushions and extra blankets were strewn around—their morning fort. Over all this the ceiling fan turned slowly, trailing crepe paper and a glob of limp balloons from Freddie and Lucy’s birthday party last month.

  “Yup.” Mom picked up a sprouted potato somebody’d been playing with and tossed it toward the kitchen end of the house. “Looks like rustic elegance to me.”

  Dad laughed. “Like I said, I didn’t write that. Blame it on the auction committee.”

  “Hey Dad? Are you really going to serve this fancy romancey dinner here?”

  “Robby, under all this stuff is a perfectly charming house.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom shrugged out of her jacket. “When was the last time we looked?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like our house …” I said. It was pretty nice, really, especially when you thought about it starting out as a barn. Now it looked like most of the other houses along here—weathered shingles blending into the woods. The inside was fixed up with all sorts of recycled stuff—leaded windows from a church in Astoria, maple floors from the old Coos Bay High School gym, and antique brass light fixtures from every place in between.

  I picked up a stray rubber band and shot it toward the second-floor balcony. “It is kind of messy, though.”

  “Just looks like we live here,” Dad said.

  Mom made a face. “Wallow here’s more like it.”

  “Relax, Beth,” Dad said. “We’ll clean it all up and light some kerosene lamps. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”

  “It better be,” she said. “For sixty dollars.”

  Dad and I looked at each other. Maybe Mom was sore because her painting only went for fifty.

  Mom pulled Lucy away from her studio door. “Don’t even think about it, kiddo.”

  Lucy flashed her wicked grin. She was coming dangerously close to mastering doorknobs, and you could tell she was dying to get busy on the only tidy room in the entire house.

  Mom’s studio had to be neat. Her pictures were small and delicate. One fingerprint could ruin an original worth a hundred dollars or more. So it wasn’t like an artist’s studio you might imagine, with messy oil paints and my mom in a splattered smock. More like a nice, organized office. Sometimes when she got sick of trying to keep up with the mess in the rest of the house, Mom would yell, “I can’t take any more of this!” Then she’d go in there and shut the door.

  I watched Lucy climb up to join Freddie in leaping from the sofa arms into the remains of their fort.

  “When you have this dinner,” I said, “what are you going to do with these guys?”

  Dad dragged Freddie from the pillow pile and unzipped his jacket. “They’ll be the waiters, of course.”

  “Da-ad.”

  “Don’t you think Lucy would look cute in a little white apron?”

  “Mom, he’s kidding, isn’t he?” With Dad, you never knew.

  “Freddie could wear a bow tie …”

  “You can all go over to Mrs. Lukes’s,” Mom said. “Why do you think I bid so high on those babysitting coupons?”

  “Oh.” They’d have to clear me out, too. Sometimes I forgot that I was one of the kids instead of a grown-up.

  I guess that comes from having been an only child for so
long. I mean, I’d been here for seven years before these little guys showed up.

  And believe me, I’d been wanting a brother or a sister. My mom says being an only child was okay for her, but Dad had four brothers and that sounded a lot better to me. Their house was wild. Dad used to fake nightmares where he’d fall off the upper bunk onto Uncle Fred and pound him, going “Oh, help! Monsters! I’m fighting monsters!”

  I wanted a brother to try that on.

  Mom and Dad kept telling me they were doing everything they could to get me one. Mom took special pills. When that didn’t work, Dad had to give her shots of some super powerful medicine they got in Portland.

  Still no luck.

  Then one day when I’d practically given up, I climbed down the ladder from my sleeping loft and found them hugging in the kitchen. I was just heading for the stash of leftover Christmas candy, minding my own business, when they kind of gathered me into the hug with them, their faces all glowy.

  “Guess what?” Mom had tears in her eyes. “You’re going to have a baby brother or sister.”

  And then it turned out to be one of each! Boy, did we ever hit the jackpot! Five in our family. That was more like it.

  I climbed into my loft now. I had a picture I’d drawn at school taped to the wall up there—me with the two of them. We were all three different. Freddie had Dad’s dark curly hair and brown eyes, Lucy had Mom’s green eyes, and so far her hair was nothing but crazy tufts of yellow fuzz. And me … well, drawing me was the hardest because I’m just kind of average. Average brown hair, average gray eyes. Average height. A little on the skinny side. In the picture we’re playing one of our favorite games—Mountain Climbers—where we crawl up the stairs and go avalanching down in a pile of blankets and pillows. I had our eyes all bugging out and surprised as we tumbled to the bottom. “Forevermore!” Mrs. Perkins had said when she saw my drawing. “Your folks let you do this?”

  Now, in the loft, I flopped into the pile of stuff I sleep with—a zipped-open sleeping bag, a wool blanket, my old baby quilt, and a wadded-up sheet that had probably stayed tucked around the mattress for about two hours when Mom first put it on. I pulled a book out from under my pillow.