Cap slowed the johnboat and then idled in front of the dock. “You spot a gator?”
“No,” I said.
The flag was the standard-issue, gray-poled, eagle-topped kind you could find anyplace. Anywhere. Common. But seeing the red, white, and blue colors against the relentless green landscape refreshed my eyes the same way a cold glass of water refreshes the body.
“You gents all right? You look downright transfixed!” Cap said.
“We’re fine,” I said.
“It’s just a flag. Retired army man named Broman lives up in that place. Meaner than a gator, that one. Got a pristine old car up in his shed he won’t let you even whistle at to save your life.”
Grandpa and I shared a look. “I knew a Broman in the army. Wouldn’t be Eldon Broman?”
“Well, yes,” Cap answered.
Before you could wink, Grandpa, Cap, and I were climbing onto the dock. Knocking on Eldon Broman’s door and shaking hands.
“Sergeant Truman Dalton, the man who trained me,” Broman said. “Do you know how brilliant this man is? Man, they are still talking about you! What brings you to Caddo Lake?” Broman was a younger version of Grandpa. He didn’t seem meaner than a gator to me.
True story.
Grandpa rattled off the short but sad history of Uncle Reed’s flag, including his “grandson’s wild but intelligent theory” that the flag might be hiding among the cypress trees.
“Yeah, I heard about that crash,” Broman said. “Really incredible.”
“Well, we thought we’d come and have a look,” Grandpa said.
“Seen anything?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Well, I bet anything could hide in these woods in the spring,” Broman offered. “Maybe in the fall, the flag would reveal itself. You could come back then. I’ll help.”
“Yes, maybe the fall would be a good season,” Grandpa said. “We’d sure appreciate it if you could keep a lookout for it in the meantime.”
“Sounds like my kind of mission,” Broman said. “Hey, before you leave, come have a look at this.”
Broman took us to his garage, lifted the gate, and unveiled—what else—a perfect car. It could have been a cousin of the Car. A shiny blue Dodge Charger.
Grandpa’s eyes sparkled. “Would you look at that? It’s the most beautiful Charger I’ve ever seen.”
“What’s the big deal about these old cars, anyway?” I asked.
Grandpa and Broman simultaneously shot me daggered looks. “Son, these are the cars we dreamed of in our youth. So when we got the chance to finally get them, we did,” Broman explained.
“Speak for yourself, Broman. I got mine to impress a girl,” Grandpa said, winking at me.
We said good-bye to Broman, and Cap took us back to his dock.
More than anything, I wanted to see Mom’s face when I put the flag in her hands. More than anything. I hated that I didn’t have it. That I didn’t get it.
“I wanted to see your mom’s face with that flag,” Grandpa said. I don’t know how he kept doing that. “Know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think it will be found in another season. Just like Broman said.”
I swallowed hard. In another season, things might be different.
“And if it isn’t found, well—” Grandpa broke off and stared up at the trees.
We walked silently back to the cabin, showered, and decided to drive into town for something to eat. And nobody said it out loud, but we were going to see the crash site, too.
“Are you up for doing all this in one day?” I asked him.
“I’m hot, is all. Hot as a stolen tamale.”
So we got back to the truck, cranked up the air-conditioning, and drove out to Route 69 and all the way to the crash site. To see it was like seeing some famous place. The field was charred and black. The tops of the pine trees were sheared off at different, exact points. It was like a perfect tree graph against the sky. And there wasn’t a single house or barn for a mile in all directions. I wondered if the pilot had steered the plane to clear land to avoid crashing into anything but ground and trees. Or if by some unexplainable luck, the plane went down in an uninhabited place. It was a mystery for sure.
How Mom and I survived in the rush of the crash was a mystery, too. Standing there on the field, I just remember being stuck in the mud and seeing red emergency lights through the smoke.
The thought of all of it made me feel sad and lucky.
“You’ll see things like this when you go into the army, Wayne,” Grandpa said. “Things you can’t explain.”
“When I go into the army?”
“Yes.”
“I wish people would stop saying that.” I said it louder, angrier than I meant to. But I was annoyed. If you’ve ever gotten a bruise on your arm one day and then someone hits you on the exact same spot the next day, you will have an idea of what I felt like.
“Calm down.”
I got out of the truck and leaned against the door. Grandpa got out, too, and came around the side of the truck. The sun was starting to go down.
Going into the army? Did you know that, to me, the idea of enlisting always felt like someone telling me to go hike a rocky mountain without any shoes on my feet? The idea seemed impossible. It looked painful. Failure likely. I wanted to scream, Don’t you see? I’m not prepared. I have no shoes.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Grandpa asked.
“Not really.”
“I think we should talk about it.”
I waited. I wanted to talk. And I didn’t want to talk.
“It’s like everyone I know has this expectation of me. Wayne, you should be a runner. Be a swimmer. Be a soldier! When do I get a vote? What about letting me decide? What if I want to be a rock star?”
“You can sing?” he asked.
“That’s not the point!”
“Okay, what’s the point?”
“The point is I should get a vote. I mean, the Flee tells me I’m dumb if I’m not in a sport. That I need to be in track. And you and Mom. You assume I’ll go join the army. What if I’m not cut out for it? What if it’s just not me, you know? What if I want to decide myself?”
Grandpa squared his shoulders, fixed me with a look, and smiled.
“What? You think I’m funny?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. You’re always laughing at me.”
“I don’t always laugh about anything.”
“Never mind.”
“But I am happy. Happy you found your voice. You’re finding out how to take a stand for yourself. And I’m smiling because I’m glad I was here to see it.”
“Whatever.”
“You’re going to be all right, Kovok. You know, even if you do rat-trap birds in your backyard.”
It was the way he looked at me. With a genuine smile on his face.
“It was an accident,” I said, trying to swallow a laugh. But it was no use. We were both about to crack up.
“Bird killer,” he said.
“Old fart.”
I took a deep breath.
I couldn’t help but hug him. I couldn’t help it.
“I wish things were different.” My voice cracked.
“So do I.” His voice cracked, too. He hugged me back.
Then we leaned against the truck and stared at the field where the plane had crashed. When the sun set, it looked peaceful.
“Know what I want?” Grandpa asked.
“A cheeseburger, sir.” I might have wiped a tear from my face.
“Affirmative, Kovok.”
“But you can’t have a cheeseburger.”
“I can watch someone enjoy a cheeseburger. Next best thing to eating one. My research tells me there is a restaurant in town called the Hamburger Store.”
Grandpa ordered for me. He told me that ordering the burger and the anticipation of the burger was the next-best thing. Because I’d been forbidden to eat delicious food for a few month
s, I had to disagree with him. But what could I say?
He punched my arm and told me to describe the cheeseburger. Leave no detail unreported. I described the toasted, buttered bun in a way that would earn applause. I described the crunch of cold pickles and noted their contrast with the salty, juicy meat. I began a short poem on my love of the tomato but was interrupted by a scream.
More of a shout. A female shout.
“Oh. My. Gosh!”
Liz Delaney of KTSB-3 News was loud and bouncy and bright-lipsticked, even in person.
“You! I know you. Who are you?”
Liz Delaney? Asking me a question? I couldn’t believe my ears.
“I’m the person who sent you more than ten e-mails. Wayne Kovok.”
“What?”
“I sent you e-mails about plane debris from Flight Fifty-Six. You never responded.”
“Did you spell my name with two z’s? If not, I bet your e-mail bounced. Happens to a lot of people who don’t spell my name correctly.”
I checked my e-mail from my phone, scanning my spam folder, and sure enough, it was clogged with bounced e-mails.
“But Liz with two z’s?”
“I know, right,” she said. “Ask my mother. You have a lot of choices in life, but you can’t choose the name you’re born with.”
“I guess you could have changed it by now,” I said.
“Yeah, but now I’m original and I like it.”
Lizz Delaney dragged a chair from another table and plopped herself down with us. “And who is this handsome guy?”
“Sergeant Truman Dalton, US Army, retired,” Grandpa said.
“Lizz Delaney, sir.” She pulled out her phone and began scrolling. “Okay, I know I’ve got it somewhere.”
She put her phone in front of my face and shouted, “That’s you, right? It’s you! I’ve been looking for you.”
I studied the picture.
It was the field on the day of the crash.
A downed plane. Everything wet. A fireball and smoke in the upper left corner. The hazy outline of people. Emergency workers.
And me.
Wayne Howard Kovok, running away from a giant airplane fireball, Mom in my arms.
Grandpa took the phone and studied it.
“I’ll be darned, son,” Grandpa said. “You must have run faster than double-struck lightning. You remember any of that?”
I wished I had a clear memory, but I could only remember being scared and stuck and unable to speak and Mom needing help.
“No, sir. Not really.”
“We’ll be needing a copy of that photo, Ms. Delaney,” Grandpa said. “Say, let’s shoot out the lights and get you a cheeseburger!”
“Excuse me?” she said.
“My grandfather is asking if you’d like to celebrate,” I offered. “He has a way with words.”
“Of course, then! Now, Wayne, please, please let me interview you. Can you come back next week?”
I looked at Grandpa. “I have to get back to school.”
“Okay then, wait a few minutes.” She dashed away.
Before you knew it, there were bright, hot lights set up outside the Hamburger Store and Lizz Delaney was holding a microphone, making a short speech about the facts of the crash, summing it all up in about two minutes before turning to me and asking questions.
“You said you didn’t remember getting to safety?”
“That’s right. It was all so fast.”
“And now we know you carried your mother to safety. That’s pretty brave.”
“I don’t know. I reacted. I ran away from danger. Isn’t that what anyone would do?”
I was getting nervous with her questions and wanted it to be over. The fact-spitting part of me was pushing its way up.
Don’t say Frankenbuckettia! Don’t say Frankenbuckettia!
“It’s been months since the accident. How are you doing now? Are you okay, Wayne?”
I would like to tell you that I was the best interviewee that ever existed. That my first and only TV interview somehow rose to the top of the YouTube charts and made me famous and renowned.
I would like to tell you that I didn’t freeze when Lizz Delaney asked that question. Her eyes and the bright camera lights, asking me to tell them everything was okay.
That question that I didn’t know how to answer.
I guess I wanted to say that okay had nothing to do with it. I was different. Was different the same as okay?
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I said finally.
“We’re so happy to hear that, Wayne, and we wish you and your family all the best.”
“Oh, one more thing,” I said.
“Of course,” Lizz Delaney replied.
I waved into the camera. “Hi, Denny!”
That last night in the cabin, we got to bed early. The trip hadn’t been anything like what I’d imagined. It didn’t matter that we didn’t have the flag. No, that’s a lie. It did matter. I wanted to be the one to find it. Part of me still wanted to walk every inch of East Texas until it was found. And maybe someday I’d do that. The mystery would always make me think about what it was like BEFORE and then AFTER.
CHAPTER 33
Six weeks later on Cedar Drive, two big guys delivered a special hospital bed on a Saturday and set it up in our living room. We moved the flowery couch into the garage to make space. A home health nurse pulled up behind the delivery truck and started up the walk.
“No waterworks,” Grandpa said.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s just a bed.”
“Did you know the first mattresses were stuffed with pea pods as their filling?”
“Nope, can’t say that I knew that.” What Grandpa had said was that he’d had a good life and he wanted a good death. And that meant being around the people he cared about and not a bunch of nurses and strangers. That was what he said, so we all agreed.
I tried to look at the bed as just a bed. I tried to look at the home health nurse as just a friendly visitor.
But I couldn’t.
I read somewhere that the heart and the brain are only eighteen inches apart inside the body. Well, it was hard for my head to send down the message to my racing heart that the arrival of a bed meant time was running out.
So I called Denny. Mrs. Rosenblatt pulled up to the curb an hour later with Denny and a giant soup pot.
Mrs. Rosenblatt shouted from her car, “For your family! Bubbie’s recipe. Take it inside, Denny.”
Denny shoved the giant soup pot into my hands.
“Bubbie’s recipe? So it probably has a lot of fiber, right?”
“It’ll drop on you like a stomach bomb,” Denny sang.
“Great.”
We got into Mrs. Rosenblatt’s van and headed away from Cedar Drive, where no one had to see a big, comfy hospital bed in the middle of the living room. We were going to hang out at the mall.
Denny whispered to me, “Wayne, did you know that one of the world’s largest matzo balls weighed four hundred and twenty-six pounds, was made with more than seventeen hundred eggs, and was created in 2010 for a Jewish food festival? Although, technically, it was not the world’s largest ball, because it was not recorded by Guinness World Records. Guinness lists the largest matzo ball at only two hundred sixty-seven pounds and made with about a thousand eggs.”
I glared at him.
“W-w-what? You like facts when you’re nervous. So I gave you facts.”
At the mall, we went to Denny’s latest hangout. Lady Foot Locker.
“Does your mother know you’re like this?”
“She thinks I’m an angel.”
I punched him solid, but he just laughed.
We got back to Elegant Engravings, and Mrs. Rosenblatt asked us to “man the store” so that she could go grab a sandwich. I sat down on the floor of the kiosk and opened my laptop. Denny kicked me.
“What?”
And there she was. Monica. The pretty, dark-eyed girl from Denny’s bar mitzvah.
I could see her through the glass cases of the kiosk.
Denny looked at me, helpless.
“Hi, Denny,” Monica said. “I really like that song you sang. Are you a Beatles fan?”
Denny looked down at me again. Quickly, I wrote a small note and held it up for him to read.
“Monica, did you know that the first lyrics to the Beatles’ hit song ‘Yesterday’ were ‘Scrambled eggs’?” he sang.
“Really? That’s cool,” Monica said. I gave Denny a thumbs-up.
Mrs. Rosenblatt came back, so we decided to walk around the mall because Denny was so pumped up about Monica.
“She’s really pretty, isn’t she?” Denny asked. “And she likes the Beatles. Perfect.”
That was when I spotted another pretty girl.
Sandy Showalter, leaning against the giant panda in front of Panda Palace. Her long blond hair? Gone. All cut off in some short style. She was surrounded by ordinary girls with ordinary hair. But she was the most beautiful. Still.
“Hola, Señor Kovok.” Sandy ran over.
“Cómo estás?”
“Call me, Wayne? We can hang out.”
Did you know that when you lose your voice and can’t talk, your hearing gets sharper and the way you pay attention to sounds is different? Some words sound harsh and mean. Some, worried and sad. And some just sound so beautiful.
Call me, Wayne? We can hang out.
Those were really beautiful words.
True story.
“Sure. I’ll call you. We’ll hang out.”
Denny and I walked around for a while and ended up in Macy’s, where he went through the cologne gauntlet. Again. But the cologne ladies with their white jackets reminded me of nurses. And nurses reminded me of hospital beds. So much for going to the mall and distracting myself.
I didn’t know I’d gone outside the Macy’s exit doors until the rain hit me in the face like a slap. The rain had come out of nowhere. It wasn’t even in the day’s weather forecast.
Sort of like the way I was feeling. It came out of nowhere, too.
“W-W-Wayne, w-wait up!”
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