Nekomah Creek

by Linda Crew

  But all I could think of was how much I hated shampoos, especially when the shampooing person is mad. Besides, a faucet full of water blasting over your head is pretty distracting …

  Dad hauled Lucy in, swung her up on the changing table and started wiping her head.

  “Poopy!” she cried.

  “Okay,” Dad said. “But one end at a time.”

  Freddie trailed in with his favorite stuffed animal, Buddy Wabbit.

  Mom started roughing up my head with a towel.

  “Hey, take it easy!”

  “Spaghetti all over your head.” She stopped toweling and looked at me. “What is the matter with you, anyway?”

  “I don’t know,” I said miserably. “Maybe you ought to ask the school counselor.”

  Dad dropped Lucy’s diaper in the toilet and looked at us. “What’s this?”

  A little warning sign popped up in my brain. Danger: Concern Ahead. “Oh, nothing.”

  “Robby,” Mom said, “what about the school counselor?”

  I was already kicking myself. Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut? Sure, that was neat for a second there, suddenly getting their attention in a real dramatic way. But now they’d want to follow up on it and this was not the greatest time.

  I sighed. “They’re making me talk to that new counselor at school. The one you guys thought we ought to have. They think I’ve got problems or something.”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other. They looked at me. I groaned to myself. When they act worried, I start thinking maybe there’s really something to be worried about.

  “Do you have problems?” Dad said.

  “Well, some. Like I hate that new jacket you bought me.”

  “Come on, get serious.”

  “I am serious. It’s too puffy.”

  “Well, if that’s your worst problem—”

  “It’s not, though! Um … Orin gave me a hard time when I brought a boot box instead of a shoe box for our diorama project. He goes, ‘You always have to be better than everybody, don’t you?’ ”

  “That’s nothing new,” Mom said. “Orin teasing you.”

  Okay, think. I didn’t want to upset Dad, telling how Orin kept talking about his dad beating him up. And I didn’t want to hurt his feelings about his pig costume. I had to come up with something safe.

  “I’m dreading fifth grade,” I announced. “Because they have this plastic model of the human body in the fifth grade and I can’t stand thinking about the insides of bodies. You know those wormy things? Intestines? Yuck!”

  Dad frowned. “And that’s what the counselor wanted to talk about?”

  Lucy had toppled the dirty clothes hamper. She stuck a pair of my underpants on her head and paraded around like a queen with a crown, cracking me up.

  “Robby?” Mom said. “How about an answer?”

  “Oh, sorry.” I was still giggling. “What was the question?”

  “Daddy fuss it down!” Freddie yelled.

  “All right, all right,” Dad said, wringing out the diaper.

  The big debate over whether I had problems or not had to wait while Freddie enjoyed his favorite spectator sport—toilet flushing. He held his rabbit up for a better view. Every good thing in life Freddie discovered, he wanted Buddy Wabbit to get in on it, too. Lucy joined them at the toilet bowl.

  “Watch go down!” Freddie ordered them.

  Dad sighed. “What were we saying?”

  Mom shook her head. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if just once we could have a decent discussion about something?”

  “Hey, Lucy,” I said. “What happened to your crown?”

  Lucy grinned at me.

  “Uh oh. Dad, I think she tried to flush my underpants down the—”

  Water. Water and worse. Over the sides of the toilet. All over the floor. The babies screaming and running in circles. Slipping in it. Mom grabbing the plunger from under the sink. Dad lunging for the toilet. Dad saying words he shouldn’t say …

  Thank goodness Mrs. Van Gent couldn’t see this!

  7

  Playground Showdown

  “Now remember our deal,” Dad said at the breakfast table a couple of days later. “What are you going to do today?”

  I pushed a chunk of French toast through the syrup and repeated my promise in a tired voice. “When I’m out on the playground I’ll play with the other kids.”

  “Good.”

  Mom and Dad had dragged it out of me why I’d been sent to the counselor, and the next day Dad put the babies in the wagon and hauled them up for a talk with Mrs. Perkins. He convinced her I shouldn’t have to talk to Mrs. Van Gent if I didn’t feel like it.

  But he also agreed I shouldn’t be reading on the playground.

  “But why can’t I?” I said when he and Mom laid down the law. “I thought you’d be on my side.”

  “Honey, we are,” Mom said.

  “And Mrs. Perkins means well,” Dad said.

  “She’s actually kind of a nice lady,” Mom said. “Don’t you think?”

  I scowled. Why were Mom and Dad always so quick to point out the good side of everybody I had to get along with? Why couldn’t I just spout off at somebody I was mad at, like Mom does when she comes home upset about a crabby customer at the print shop? Do you think she’d appreciate me lecturing her on how the guy was probably just having a bad day and he’s really a wonderful person underneath it all? No way!

  “Besides,” Dad went on, “she’s probably right—you shouldn’t spend your whole life with your nose in a book. When you were little you loved to kick a ball around the yard.”

  “Well, I don’t now,” I said.

  “But why not?”

  I shrugged. Maybe in a weird way it had something to do with having all those scoops on my reading ice cream cone. If you’re the best at one thing, it bugs you to be the absolute worst at something else—like maybe people would just be waiting for a chance to make fun of you.

  “I think it’s stupid,” I said, “school people punishing a kid for reading.”

  “Going to the counselor isn’t a punishment,” Mom said.

  “Oh yes, it is.” Boy, Mom and Dad didn’t have a clue about all the personal stuff Mrs. Van Gent wanted to pry into.

  “Well,” Dad said, “we agreed you don’t have to talk to her at this point if you don’t want to, okay?”

  Okay, so I’d play on the playground. But they couldn’t expect me to be cheerful about it. In fact, it was making me feel crabby about all sorts of things.

  I frowned at Mom. “Did you fix the zipper on my backpack yet?”

  “Oh, Honey, I’m sorry, I forgot. By the time I finished the Halloween costumes I was just so tired …”

  “Mo-om! I’m sick of having to fasten it with those ducky diaper pins!”

  Mom sighed. “I never seem to have enough time …”

  “Orin saw those pins yesterday. You should’ve heard him. He made fun of me in front of everybody.”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll fix it tonight. Remind me, all right?”

  I glowered for a moment. “And I’m not going to wear that jacket, either.”

  “Yes you are,” Mom said. “Oh, Bill, look out, Lucy’s—”

  “Ding-dong it!” Dad pulled Lucy’s bowl away from her. “We don’t put French toast in our hair.”

  “I hate that jacket,” I said.

  Dad rolled his eyes. “Haven’t we been through this enough times already?”

  “Da-ad! It’s too puffy. I feel dumb in it. People’ll make fun of me. I won’t wear it at recess. I’d rather freeze.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Mom banged down her coffee cup. “I haven’t had a new coat in three years.”

  Somehow I sensed this was not the time to say so what? But I felt like it. Did Mom not getting a new coat make mine any less puffy?

  “That jacket cost plenty,” Dad said, “even on sale. We can’t afford to be buying things and then deciding we won’t use them. Besides, in the store you said you like
d it.”

  “But I was tricked by all those fancy pockets! I didn’t wear it long enough to know how it would feel.”

  “Too bad.”

  I drew myself up. “That jacket,” I said, “makes me feel like the girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The one who puffs up into a giant blueberry?”

  Mom and Dad laughed.

  “It’s not funny! You guys just don’t understand.”

  “Of course we do,” Dad said. “When I was your age it was flubby shoes. That’s what I called these horrible shoes my mom made me wear. Thick soles, leather. Hey, I wanted Red Ball Jets like everybody else.”

  I had to stop a moment to get that picture in focus—Dad at my age. “So what’d you do? Fight her?”

  “Of course.” He picked up a chunk of French toast from the floor and flung it toward the sink. “And then I wore the flubby shoes.”

  “Oh.”

  “And lived to tell about it. And now, as a matter of tradition, it’s my job to make you wear things you hate!”

  “Da-ad!”

  “And … being the dutiful son you are, you’re carrying out your part of the tradition by giving me a hard time about it. So, isn’t this nice?” He slapped his thighs and stood up. “Now. Get going or you’ll be late for school.”

  It was cold on the playground after lunch with no coat. I stood shivering in the foursquare line, wishing I had a nice, warm, broken-in jacket like Ben. Dad should have understood that. He’s the same way himself. He never likes new clothes. A new coat just looks so … clean. It sticks out. And then if it’s dumb and puffy …

  I saw Amber Hixon hunched up by the jungle gym. She looked cold too, even though she had on this fake fur vest.

  She saw me watching and stared back.

  I turned away, tried to shake off my bad thoughts. I wasn’t going to the counselor anymore and that was that.

  But a minute later I was watching her again. Kind of sick, I know, giving myself the shivers on purpose, but I couldn’t help it. Reminded me of coming across a scary movie ad in the newspaper and not being able to stop myself from turning back to look at it again and again.

  It was funny about Amber’s clothes. She had fancy things. Her jeans had the same label as Monica Sturdivant’s, and I knew Monica wouldn’t wear anything but the best. But sometimes Amber’s clothes were dirty. Or like today, she’d be wearing slip-on shoes with no socks when it was way too cold for that. This was the exact opposite of Rose, whose clothes never had any labels because they were all homemade. But they did the job. Her mom knit those sweaters with the idea of keeping her warm. I don’t know what Amber’s parents were thinking …

  I inched forward in line behind Ben and Jason, rubbing one shin with my heel, then switching and rubbing the other. I didn’t even watch the game. Mostly I stared at the pavement. Hmm—an interesting little rock. I put it in my pocket to use in my diorama.

  My diorama scene was going to be Nekomah Creek, with a tinfoil creek and our house in the background. I was using yellow tissue paper over the cutout windows to make it look like cozy lights were on inside.

  I studied the ridges circling us, the way the fog drifted in so that only the jagged line of firs at the top stood out sharp. I wanted to make it look like that in my diorama. I wouldn’t show the hacked-out part though, the part where they’d clear-cut the old-growth trees and never replanted. My scene would face west, where the V in the ridgeline showed the way the creek ran down to the ocean. For the foreground I was making little clay animals, peeking out from behind the two big firs that stood beside our driveway.

  Dad’s birthday was coming up and I thought it would make a great present.

  “Well, check it out,” Orin Downard said, getting in line behind me. “How come you’re here?”

  I shrugged. “Free country, isn’t it?” What a joke. The only freedom I had was the freedom to choose which game to get creamed in.

  All too soon it was my turn. I stepped in the square and rubbed my hands on my thighs. Jason served it up easy to me. I returned it. Actually I hit it three or four times before I went out. Not great, but not total embarrassment either. I got in back of the line, glad to see it was longer now.

  Rose came and got in line, then Jason took his place behind her after Orin put him out by slamming one across his corner.

  “So what’re you gonna be tonight?” Jason asked me. Everybody was excited about the school Halloween party.

  “It’s a surprise,” I said.

  Orin sneered. “The real question is, what’s your daddy going to be?”

  “That’s a secret too,” I said coldly.

  “Geesh. How come he always has to dress up, anyway? None of the other parents do.”

  “Is he really going to wear a costume?” Rose asked.

  I hunched my shoulders. “Yeah.”

  “But I think that’s neat.”

  “Yeah, Orin, so lay off,” Ben said. “What’s it to you, anyway?”

  But Orin wasn’t finished. He could play and talk at the same time. “Remember that stupid Star Wars birthday party they had?” This was back when Orin was invited to my parties because he was a neighbor, back before our parents started arguing with each other at county meetings. “His dad actually dug a hole in their yard for the Rancor pit and hid inside playing Rancor Monster. Geesh, that was dumb.”

  You weren’t too proud to stuff yourself with our cake, I thought, my face blazing hot.

  “I liked it,” Jason said. “And remember his Olympics party? That was even better.”

  Good old Jason. Nice of him to remember. My folks went all out for that one—a torch-lighting ceremony, track and field events around the yard, a flag-raising ceremony complete with chocolate medals for everyone. Only one problem—I lost every event. Maybe that was the day I decided I didn’t like sports. Still, it was a fun party.

  “So, Orin,” Jason said, “if you’re so cool, what are you going to be?”

  Orin put a spin on his serve. “Nothing, probably. Anyway, Halloween’s nothing but devil worship.”

  We all gave each other what’s-he-talking-about looks.

  Then Rose laughed. “That’s funny. My mom says it’s nothing but candy worship.”

  “Yeah?” Orin chomped his gum. “Well, that’s ’cause you’re just a bunch of hippies who don’t know any better. You probably do weird, sicko things yourself.”

  “Oh, shut up, Orin,” I said. “She does not.”

  Orin dropped the ball and bellied up to me. “What’d you say?”

  I swallowed, wanting to step back but not wanting to look scared. I was, though. I didn’t want to punch it out with Orin. He’d pounded West Feikart down behind the alder trees just last month and West was a lot bigger than me. Still, he shouldn’t talk to Rose that way …

  “Repeat what you said, wimp!”

  I glanced around at the others and took a deep breath. “I said, shut up. If you don’t want to dress up, that’s your business. But I’m sick of you picking on Rose.”

  Orin fell back. “Oh …” He made his voice all sweetsy. “Robby’s got a girlfriend.” Then he started singing it. “Robby’s got a girlfriend! Robby’s got a girlfriend!”

  My face burned. Rose is a girl and she’s a friend. But he made it sound like something to be ashamed of. But if I went “Do not!” I’d hurt her feelings.

  So what I did was … nothing. I just pretended I was suddenly interested in foursquare after all. This worked, in a way. At least I wasn’t getting pounded.

  Orin kept it up. “Robby’s got a girlfriend!” He looked around, trying to get the others to join him, but nobody did. Finally he gave up and went off after Cody Riddle and Nathan Steckler, these two fifth-grade guys he always tags behind.

  “Bunch of babies!” he yelled back over his shoulder.

  8

  Hard Hats and Ducky Diaper Pins

  Two o’clock that afternoon—every pair of eyes rested on Elvis Downard, sitting up there in front of the class for
Job Day like a visiting famous person.

  “Logging,” he said, “is the most dangerous occupation there is. They got fancy studies now that say so. Big surprise. More guys get killed out in the woods than in any other job. ’Course anybody who’s worked on a logging show could tell ’em that. They don’t call those dangling snags widow-makers for nothing.” He turned his hard hat over in his big, scarred-up hands. “Y’see, a hard hat’s one thing. A big old Doug fir coming at you’s another.”

  You could have heard a pin drop. No smart remarks to Elvis Downard. No way. Everybody had been completely respectful the whole time he told about his job. He was a faller, the guy with the chain saw, the one standing by the tree when it started to go.

  I stole a peek at Orin. He saw me and returned a look of calm satisfaction. Top this, his smirk said.

  I went back to the tree I was doodling on the back of an old math ditto. It was chopped and falling over. TIMBBBEEERR! I lettered. I glanced at the back of Orin’s buzz-shaved head. I’d fix him. I drew him into the picture as a little groundhog, running away from the tree, looking back over his shoulder, eyes bugged out and scared.

  “Besides trusting the guy working beside you, the next thing us loggers count on is our equipment.” Mr. Downard held up his cork boots with the hob nails for walking in the woods, He explained how his pants were cut off with no hem that could catch in the brush. And of course he showed off his chain saw.

  Back when I was little, I heard West’s dad, Berk, calling someone a logger like it was a nasty name. For a while, I even thought it was some sort of swear word. But my folks finally set me straight. They said Berk just got carried away sometimes. They worried about too many trees being cut down too, they said, but it wasn’t fair to blame the loggers themselves. Dad said loggers were just trying to do their jobs like everyone else.

  Now, while Elvis Downard was talking, I tried drawing him. I’d never seen him up close before. His skin was tanned to leather and crinkly around his eyes—all that squinting up at the treetops. His chest was broad behind his red suspenders, and his arms—well, he looked like he could wrestle an elk to the ground by its antlers.

  Of course I’d seen him lots from a distance. I had to pass their place if I rode my bike down into Nekomah Creek. Sometimes on the weekends I’d see him taking a chain saw to a pile of firewood logs in his turnaround.