“Hidey-hole!” Grandpa blurted. Then he said, “Pete lost his job. Cutbacks at the paper mill. They’re moving away to live with their grown-up daughter over to Portland, so she can help in their declining years.”
“Why doesn’t she move over here and live with them?”
Grandpa set down another peanut. “Because they’re old farts.”
I thought about that.
“There comes a point, Josie,” Grandpa went on, “when old people get treated like children.” He cracked open a peanut. “At least Pete and Vera have each other to complain to.” He popped the peanuts in his mouth and stared at the FOR SALE sign, chewing and chewing. Thoughtful, like a cow.
I stared at the FOR SALE sign too. “Can I have a peanut?”
* * *
I said it again, to Winky this time. “I don’t know why anybody would want to leave Hamburg.” I handed him two of the four peanuts Grandpa had been willing to part with. We were in the backyard of Unexpected House, which was the front yard of our secret fort. “Hamburg has the longest single-span bridge in the United States.” I remembered this from the Get Local! unit in social studies.
“Longest in New England, and not anymore,” said Winky. He set aside his digging stick so he could crack the peanuts. We had an idea we’d plant a little patch of garden for our fort, and the first step to most goals is always the digging.
I also remembered another fact: at one time not so very long ago, Hamburg produced more broom handles and paper and shoes than any other town. So I said that, too.
Winky didn’t say anything, so I guess I was right about that.
The next-door neighbors’ was not the only house for sale in Hamburg. There were three others, not counting Unexpected House, which had been for sale since third grade, probably because it’s not regular. A regular house has four sides and a roof, for one thing. Unexpected House is a geodesic dome. It looks like an Eskimo igloo. It’s even painted icy blue. It’s three doors up from Winky’s house on Flint Street. We call Flint Street “Desirable Street” because that’s what it said on the real estate flyer:
Unexpected House on Desirable Street!
Every so often somebody would come and take out the old flyers from the box on the signpost and put in new ones that were nearly the same except for the price, which got smaller, and the description, which got bigger. Special Opportunity! was a new one that Saturday, for example. So was As-is! Could Be Charming! And Must-see—Looks Larger Inside!
The backyard was grown over with the kind of scrubby weeds that Grandpa would call a fire hazard. There is a weeping willow tree at the very back of the yard. The long hair of the tree reaches all the way to the ground, all around. And behind that curtain was our secret fort. From the outside, nobody even knew it was there. It was all ours for the trespassing. Wicked!
I was thinking about people moving, and about when Winky moved to Hamburg so his dad could work at Sebago-Look Shoe Mill. He blinked a lot and wore a baseball glove at all times, and Becky Schenck and them all said he was weird.
“You know what, Winky?” I said.
“What.”
“I never told you, but that first day, when you came to school in second grade? Mrs. Crosier made me sit with you because she said you had special promise and needed a caring helper.”
“Huh,” Winky said. “She said the same thing to me. About sitting next to you.”
“She did?” I said. “Special promise?”
“Yup.”
“Caring helper?”
“Yup.”
We both dug in the dirt a little while with our digging sticks.
Digging and wondering are what they call natural companions. I dug and I wondered… It’s true that Winky’s my best friend, and also he is pretty much my only friend. But was the reason we were friends because… nobody else would want us? Because… we were a couple of real losers?
I stabbed at my thoughts and the dirt with my digging stick. Stab-stab-stab. I nearly stabbed a little acorn with a tiny sprout.
“Look at this cute little guy,” I said to Winky.
While Winky studied the acorn with his magnifier, I had a thought that stunned me. It stunned me so much I thought it out loud, and loudly: “Winky!” I said. “The whole, entire tree is inside that nut.”
Winky said, “Huh.”
I sat back on my heels and hugged my knees. My acorn-thought was making me happy and smiley. I put my thought another way: “The nut is the little heart of the tree.”
“That’s neat,” Winky said, agreeable.
We planted the little acorn in the ground and spent some time surrounding it with a little fence of twigs. Maybe someday a big tree would grow.
I added another twig to the tiny fence.
Or maybe, I thought, we weren’t that good at being gardeners, and the little tree would dry up and die. Maybe we weren’t going to be able to keep it safe from squirrels. Maybe we weren’t that good, period.
I poked Wink’s arm with my digger. “Are we real… lo—” I didn’t want to say loser out loud.
“Lucky?” Winky said. He grinned. “Yep. We sure are. Wicked lucky! If Mrs. Crosier hadn’t put us together, well, who knows what.”
I went back to digging. I felt better. Two friends planting a baby tree. What could have more special promise than that?
After a while Winky went into the fort to get us a drink from the fridge. The fridge was actually an old Coleman cooler, which we used for keeping cookies and soda when we can get it.
“Josie, come in here!” Winky hollered.
I walked over and parted the willow hair and went in. And there, in our secret fort, was a beautiful but alarming thing: the cooler was filled to the top with all kinds of good food: apples and oranges, a jar of peanut butter, saltine crackers, Li’l Smokies beef jerky sticks. There were beautiful chocolate bars with pictures of little German boys and girls in lederhosen and whatnot on the wrappers. There were tiny cans of pineapple juice “fresh from Hawaii.” There were gumdrops in all the colors. I love gumdrops. The fridge looked just like a Christmas display at the Pay ’n Takit.
I looked at Winky. Winky dropped his magnifying glass and looked at me. We both looked at all the food that had magically appeared in our secret fort, and we were both thinking the same thing:
Someone knows.
A Carnival
Once we got over the shock of our secret fort being not-secret, there was nothing to do but get over it. Why? Because we were hungry, and there was all that food.
“Unless—unless it’s poisoned,” I said. Boy those chocolate bars looked good. “Or there could be razor blades in those apples,” I added.
Winky raised his magnifier and studied everything that was in the cooler. Then he picked up one of the apples and bravely took a bite.
“Nope,” he said. “Good apple.”
That was all I needed to hear. “Well, this is my kind of mystery,” I said. I was right about the chocolate.
* * *
We ate till we were stuffed, and we didn’t even get to the bottom of the cooler. Everything was nice and peaceful. We went back to digging. Then Winky had to go and ruin it.
“What about a dunk tank?” said Winky.
“What about a dunk tank?”
“You know, to make money and pay the mortgage.”
Oh yeah, the mortgage. It had been so nice, forgetting all about the one hundred and three dollars and eighty-seven cents for two whole seconds. But Winky was right.
Days left to get the money: ten.
Ideas for getting the money: zero.
“It’s too chilly for a dunk tank,” I said. I found an old Popsicle stick from way last summer in my sweatshirt pocket, and I stuck it in the ground beside the other little twigs in a ring around the tiny sprout. Maybe a big tree would grow.
“Maybe we’ll find buried treasure, right here,” Winky said. “That really would be unexpected.”
“Also, it would be stealing,” I said.
&nb
sp; “Yeah. I guess.” Winky dragged his stick around and made an X in the dirt. “Hey, what about people pay us to put on their little kids’ birthday parties?” he said.
“We’d have to wait for somebody’s birthday. We need something we can do right now.”
“What about a carnival?”
A carnival was a great idea. I could just about feel the money in my pocket already. “Wicked.”
* * *
It wasn’t a carnival, so much as a single game. It turns out a carnival is really hard work for two people. We spent most of Saturday planning, and all we came up with was a ball-toss.
Sunday morning was mild and sunny, more than half-decent for March. I set a bunch of empty cut-off milk cartons all in a row in the parking lot of the House of Harmony Church and waited for Winky to come out the big doors. Grandpa never took me to church. He said Grandma used to drag him to Sunday service, and when she went to heaven, he never had to go to church anymore, and that was the one good thing about her passing. When he said this, he sounded wicked crabby. A get-out-of-church-free pass was a very poor prize, considering. Anyway, we planned on snaring the after-service, pre-coffee business of generous church-type folk.
Each contestant stood at a chalk line, and tossed a baseball, trying to land a ball in a carton. At first it was too easy and we had to give out a prize right off the bat. (We’d bought a bag of balloons, and when some little Sunday school kid got a ball in, Winky blew up a balloon and tied a length of string to it and handed it to her. She walked away dragging the balloon behind her bump… bump… bump and I have to say it looked pretty sad.)
After that we drew the line a lot farther away.
“What are you kids raising money for?” asked Reverend Smith. I did not want to talk about me paying the mortgage. Everybody knows it’s inappropriate to discuss family finances in public. Also, here came Mrs. Blyth-Barrow across the parking lot. After that weird meeting we’d had, I didn’t want her to pay me too much attention. Even though I had been washing my face every night hard enough to scrub all the freckles off, and even though I’d been trying to work out the knots in my hair, she still might “take steps.”
“Charity-college.” Winky and I spoke as one, but different words.
We looked at each other.
“Church,” I said, and Winky said, “Children.” I elbowed him.
“Blind children,” he said, putting on just the right pathetic touch, I thought.
Everything was going well, and we hadn’t had to give out any more sad balloons, when the game drew what I think they call in the carnival business, first blood.
Bubba Davis was at the line, and instead of tossing the baseball underhand, all reasonable, he let loose a slurve. Maybe it was a two-seamed fastball. Some kind of fast, hard throw, anyway, right when Becky Schenck happened to cross behind the cartons sing-songing at me, “He-ey, Bril—”
Whack!
Becky’s hands flew to her face and she started screaming.
Mrs. B-B thundered up. “Violence,” she said, shooting a look at me, “is never the answer.”
“She walked in front of the ball!” I said.
Mrs. B-B tut-tutted and tossed her head. Her yellow hair crested like a wave on a rough day at Pickerel Pond.
“Gaaha,” Becky groaned.
Mrs. B-B’s hair ebbed. “Becckkhkky,” she gargled, “let’s get you inside the parish hall at once and see to”—she curled her lip at the gooey blood beneath Becky’s nostrils and circled her hand before her face—“that business.”
Becky Schenck moaned again.
Winky stuck his face a little too close to Becky’s in order to eyeball the injury. Becky hissed “Tsssgitawayyy,” flapped her bloodied hands, and drew back her neck like a Canada goose.
Mrs. B-B put an arm around Becky Schenck’s shoulders and started to walk her away. “There, there, Becky,” she said, nice and soothing. “Your nose will never be the same. I once worked as a scout for a modeling agency, so I should know. Head up and away, dear,” she added, “this sweater is angora-blend. And you, Josephine Bloom!” She shot back over her shoulder, “I’ll be calling a meeting, you can count on that!” before turning back to Becky. “Angora-blend, Becky. Gahh! Angora-blend!”
After that, Winky and I packed up the game and counted our money. Seven dollars, minus the balloons, and we’d probably have to give it to Mrs. Blyth-Barrow to pay for her dry cleaning.
Yard Work
Then Winky had another idea. “What about we go door-to-door and do spring cleanups?” We got a wheelbarrow from the garage, and two rakes and a push broom, and it only took four doors till we got our first customer, Dr. Wilmer, DMD.
We worked hard for an hour. We raked every last rotten leaf on the ground, and pulled up every last green weed. When we were finished, you could see the nice neat lines of our rakes in the dirt, and there wasn’t a green thing left on the property. We even yanked up a whole big clump of tangled greenery under a birch tree. Dr. Wilmer came out to check our work. He looked all around, real slow. His mouth kind of gaped open, like when you are very impressed with everything you are seeing, you can hardly believe it! It took him a couple tries to get any words out, but when he did, he said, “Oh, my pachysandras terminalus!”
I looked around the yard proudly. “I’ll say!” I said.
Then Dr. Wilmer opened up his wallet. “Here’s four dollars never to clean up my yard again,” he said. Then he kind of staggered back into his house. His feet kicked up all the freshly turned dirt where we’d got rid of all the ugly weeds.
“What does ‘pachysandras terminalus’ mean?” Winky asked me.
“Beats me!” I said.
At the end of the day we had twenty dollars even, counting the carnival money plus Dr. Wilmer’s four dollars, two dollars each from Mrs. Moody-Cote from the diner and Mr. Grigg, the postman. Mr. Miller at the Pay ’n Takit had paid us five dollars to wash the store’s plate glass windows, inside and out. I gave Winky half the money, but he gave it back because he said on a scale of one to ten, a kid saving up to pay the mortgage is a ten, and a blind kid saving up for a Boston Believers’ game his parents won’t even let him go to is only about a one. I didn’t want to agree with him, but I kept all the money just the same.
The Shape of Longing
On Monday, Mrs. Blyth-Barrow and Mr. Mee team-taught a poetry unit in the library. A lot of kids groaned like this: “Not poe-eh-treeeeeeee!” as if what they meant was “Not death by poe-eh-treeeee!”
It was Bubba Davis’s turn to read aloud. “IthinkthatIshallneversee, apoemaslovelyasatree.”
Mrs. B-B frowned. “Slowly, Bubba, please. Enjoy the words. Enjoy!” She made a wheel-motion with her hand that meant “Once more, from the top.”
Bubba sighed. “I… think… that… I… shall… never… see… a… poem… as… lovely… as… a… tree.”
I woke up when my chin hit my chest.
Mr. Mee cleared his throat. “Thank you, Bubba, for that recitation of Mr. Frost’s poem. I think we can all agree, poetry excites the imagination!”
It was quiet. I guess nobody agreed.
“Now it’s time to write our own poems,” said Mr. Mee. He was standing beside an easel with a big pad on it. He picked up a Sharpie and uncapped it with a flourish. “Observe!” he said.
He turned to the easel and wrote:
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters—lone and dead—
Their still waters—still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
The poem was going pretty well before the lolling lily part, in my opinion. But the neat thing was how Mr. Mee wrote out the poem on the pad. He stacked the words so they made the shape of a mountain. For the part about the lone waters, he made the words spread out from the base of the mountain
on either side, so that the words made up the surface of the sea. When he was done writing the mountain in the sea, we all clapped.
“Thank you, thank you, and thanks ad infinitum, wouldn’t you agree, to Edgar Allan Poe.”
Crickets.
“Of course I’ve taken liberties with Mr. Poe’s poem,” Mr. Mee said, “excerpting certain lines, writing the words into a shape…” His voice drifted away, one might say, like ripples in lone waters.
Mr. Mee tapped the Sharpie on the easel. “To take the exercise further, I could write a new poem, my own poem, about something large and abstract. An idea or a condition. Let’s say the idea or the condition is ‘longing.’ I could write my poem, as I did this one,” he said, tapping the easel again, “in the shape of a mountain. Let’s say my poem doesn’t have the word ‘mountain’ in it at all, and yet the shape of the poem illustrates, amplifies, the very subject of the poem. One’s longing might be said to be as large, as solid, as profound, as a mountain.” Mr. Mee looked at us.
We looked up, down, left, and right.
“Do you understand?” said Mr. Mee.
Someone had to throw our librarian a life preserver, and it was me. “Yes,” I said. Oh, I understood, all right. My longing was in the shape of a mountain too. A mountain of money.
You know how sometimes your brain jumps from one thought to another thought, and you’re not sure how it got there? I mention this because right then my brain went from the word profound to: Heck, I have a dad that is probably not dead, and if he’s not exactly waiting to be found, still, he must be out there for the finding, right? There was a character on The Sands of Time who didn’t know he had a kid, and when he found out, he cried and cried—he was so happy to give away his vast fortune.
Anyone who’s ever read a single chapter from Ripley’s knows for a fact that truth is even stranger than fiction. If I had a dad out there… wouldn’t he have to give me money?
Josie Bloom and the Emergency of Life Page 3