I hated the game, because I hated pawns in general. When we played chess, my pawns got knocked off right and left, and I considered them pretty useless. Gran told me that pawns were an important part of the game. True chess masters, she said, knew how to use their pawns. I wondered if Rew was in that category.
We hadn’t played Fox and Hounds in a long time, but I was so lonely for Rew, I’d have played anything. “Can I be the fox?” I asked him.
“You’re not playing,” he said. “I’m playing myself.”
“What?” I said. “That’s like playing tic-tac-toe against yourself. It won’t work. You always know the other side’s next move. You’ll stalemate.”
He didn’t answer that, just moved his fox out onto the first square.
Andrew Snow came out of the kitchen to watch.
“He won’t stalemate,” he told me. “The fox will win. At least at first.”
Rew snorted at that. “What would you know about it?” he said. “You don’t even know how to play.”
“Your gran taught me, a long time ago,” Andrew Snow said. Rew didn’t look at him, but I could see he meant to try to win with the pawns, just to show Andrew Snow.
He took a long time with it, but he couldn’t cheat, moving the pawns back when he made a mistake. We were watching. So the fox broke through.
He blew a bubble of air out in frustration, making his bangs jump. But he put the pieces back and tried again. The fox won that time, too.
“You’ll only win with the pawns if you learn how to make them move forward without breaking the line. You can’t open a space, or the fox wins,” Andrew Snow said.
“I’m not stupid,” Rew answered angrily. “I know that. And who asked you to watch, anyway?”
He gathered up his pieces and moved to the stairs then, settling himself on the landing at the bottom with his back to us. But even there, I could see him setting up the pieces again and again. Rew was nothing if not stubborn.
Andrew Snow had been at our house for more than two weeks when he began thinking long-term. I could see this because he started stocking our cabinets. On day eighteen, he sent me out not just for the regular groceries but for a few things I’d never heard of — like wheat germ.
“It’s good to have a supply of staples,” he said, explaining that he didn’t mean the kind that stuck paper together, but things that kept well in the kitchen. “Things you can add to dishes, or make soup out of, or use when you’re running low on groceries.”
Wheat germ didn’t appeal much to Rew.
“I thought germs were bad for you,” he said suspiciously when I showed him the list. “Sounds more like poison than food.”
“I think this is a different kind of germ,” I said. “Besides, I don’t think they sell poison at the grocery store.”
Rew looked like he wasn’t too sure. But I didn’t care, because at least he was talking to me again. He spent a lot of time with his chessboard, but he was back on the couch with it, and when I said something to him, he answered.
I was so worried about the strange things on the list that I took the bus an extra stop, all the way to the big grocery store on the other side of town. It was the place I’d lost Rew in, and I hated it, but at least Molly wouldn’t be asking questions about who thought to tell me about wheat germ.
The Super Mart was ice-cold inside and smelled like a hospital. Even the floors looked glossy, and I wondered what in the world someone was wasting all that shine on, when all it reflected was feet. But they had wheat germ, and everything else, and no one said a word to me there as I pushed my cart up and down the aisles.
At the checkout, I picked up the local newspaper, which was always on Andrew Snow’s list. On the front page, a big headline announced that the warden had been cleared of all responsibility for the riot and would keep his job, which showed that Molly knew what she was talking about. In the lower right-hand corner, they even had a story about the newly released hostage, who was in Switzerland, getting tested for something called “neurological problems.” I didn’t know what kind of problems those were, but they sounded serious. And the government was saying people shouldn’t get their hopes up that any other hostages would be out anytime soon. I figured that meant you had to be nearly dead before they let you go, over there in Iran.
I didn’t see anything more about Enderfield or about how many prisoners had been brought back. But I folded the paper in half and put it carefully in with the groceries. And then I bought some gum. I thought I might try cracking some on the way home.
When I brought the groceries in, Rew came to the kitchen to watch me unload the wheat germ, along with everything else. It had been almost more than I could carry.
Andrew Snow looked with satisfaction at his staples, which included flour and sugar and cornmeal — things that made other things, instead of just canned goods and bread, which was more what I was used to buying.
“Wheat germ is good for muffins,” he told us, starting to pour ingredients into a big bowl. “It adds a lot of vitamins, and you don’t taste it a bit.”
He sprinkled some of the light-brown flakes into his muffin batter.
“I’m not eating those” was all Rew said.
He did, though, once I’d eaten one. And he stayed in the kitchen that afternoon, watching Andrew Snow bake. He wouldn’t say a word, but he didn’t leave, either.
This didn’t mean he had given up on his war with Andrew Snow. Later, I found Rew sitting in the front room, alone, staring at the door.
“He thinks I won’t go tell anymore, but I will,” he said angrily. “I’m just not doing it yet. I don’t want to upset Gran.”
I didn’t point out that Gran, who had not spoken for days, seemed pretty well past being more upset. Instead I said, “You should talk to him, you know. You wouldn’t believe it, but he can tell stories.”
“I don’t want to hear his old stories,” Rew said. “I don’t want to hear anything from someone who kills people.”
Rew was right, I knew. He had always been smarter than me, and he was now. But the problem was, I couldn’t see the angry man so much in Andrew Snow. I looked for him, plenty. I looked for him when Andrew Snow made muffins, or read books in the chair by the door, or told about his father, who taught him about moss in the woods. I looked for him, trying to put the pieces of Andrew Snow together. But no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t do it.
And so for a while, I pretended, like I’d always done out in the Zebra Forest. Only this time, Andrew Snow wasn’t a test pilot or a spy. He was a librarian. My father. And he was on vacation with us for a while, because it was summer and his library had closed.
Only Andrew Snow wasn’t very good at pretending. On day nineteen, he stood by the kitchen door, peering through its little square windows at the Zebra.
“I used to look at those trees all the time,” he said when he heard me come into the kitchen. “But I never saw all of them. The wall blocked them. I never realized how nice the trunks were, too.”
I looked out the back window to the side of the door, realizing with a start that he had washed it. I could see the Zebra Forest clearly, those white trunks and deep brown ones bright in the midday sun.
I tried to pretend he hadn’t mentioned the wall.
“The white ones peel,” I said to him. “The bark comes off in strips, and we write on them sometimes, Rew and me. We have a whole pile of bark messages buried out there.”
Andrew Snow nodded at that, but he didn’t stop looking at the forest. “I used to spend a lot of my free time looking at the tops of the trees,” he said. “Back in prison. I liked the fall, especially. The leaves turn orange and red then, and I liked to think how much my father would have loved this place.”
I sighed. The word prison didn’t fit in with my library pretending, so I gave it up.
“Is that why you came this way?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer for a while. He left the window and went to the sink, washed his hands, and took
out the vegetables, getting ready to start dinner. He was quiet so long, I thought he wouldn’t answer me. I thought maybe I’d stumbled onto one of his rules, found a question that silenced him. But after a while, when he was sitting at the kitchen table, he said, “I guess that’s it. I hadn’t really thought of it. A few weeks before the riot, some of the guys were talking about running. I didn’t pay that much attention. I didn’t think they’d ever do it. They all liked to talk, especially during meals. And they said if they ever got a chance to run, they’d head down the highway, get a car somewhere, and head straight for the city.”
“How come?” I asked.
He shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “You could lose yourself easier in a city, I guess.”
Lose yourself. I’d never heard anyone say that before. I didn’t like the idea of it at all. But I thought I might know what it meant.
“So that’s what they did?” I asked.
“I guess so. Once they’d gotten the gates open, that’s where they all ran to. Half the prison ran out down the highway. But I just turned around and went round the back, to the woods. No one else did. The guys had all said you’d lose your way in those woods and probably starve. But I didn’t think so. I’d been in woods once or twice. Besides, I wanted to see what those trees looked like up close. Maybe that was it.”
Until he said it, I hadn’t realized that I’d been hoping something. Sometimes you don’t know you want something until you don’t get it. But when Andrew Snow said that, I realized I’d been wishing he’d been lying that night when he acted like he didn’t know we were there. I’d been hoping he had come looking for us. It was only when he told me about the trees that I knew it wasn’t true.
By the end of July, when Andrew Snow had been with us almost three weeks, the first of the summer thunderstorms came rolling in. The windows darkened, and the sky turned yellow, the way it does when the last of the sun squeezes its way past the gathering clouds. I was looking at it out the front windows when the rain started. It hit the windows like a handful of pebbles.
“Summer storm,” I said to Andrew Snow, who’d been straightening Gran’s magazines. “We get a lot of those. Especially when it’s hot like this.”
Then I felt stupid, because I realized that he’d been right on the other side of the Zebra all along. He knew about our summer storms. He didn’t say so, though.
“Electricity builds up in the air,” he said instead. “It’s got to go somewhere.”
Rew came down then. He sat on the steps and stared out the front window. Rew and I loved storms, because Gran loved them. We looked at each other, but neither of us said anything.
It wasn’t dark yet when we heard Gran’s door open. I thought she was just going to the bathroom, then back to bed, but then Rew said, “Annie,” soft, like a warning.
I looked up and there was Gran, at the top of the stairs. She was wearing a robe and slippers, and her hair went every which way, but she smiled a little when she saw us, and started coming down.
Andrew Snow was in his place by the door, reading one of the books I’d given him. He looked up when Gran came down, but I blocked him, standing so Gran couldn’t see his face.
She smiled at me again, and her eyes weren’t dull, the way they’d been so often lately. She went on into the kitchen. I followed her.
Behind me, I heard Rew whisper to Andrew Snow.
“Don’t ask her questions,” he said. “Don’t bother her.”
Gran was moving toward the cupboard, looking for the mugs. Andrew Snow had moved everything, of course, in his cleanup. I wondered if Gran would notice.
“Can I make you some hot cocoa, Gran?” I asked her. “It’s raining.”
Gran nodded. “I would love that, Annie B.,” she said. It was one of the first things she’d said in weeks, and I grinned. But behind her, Andrew Snow came in.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
For a minute, I froze, wondering what Gran would do, if she would run back upstairs and go away from us again. But after a minute, she gave a little half smile and nodded. So I sat down next to her, at the table, and she took my hand.
It’s hard to know with Gran, I thought. Hard to know what makes her happy and what makes her sad.
Gran watched Andrew Snow make the hot cocoa, and I watched Gran. So did Rew, who had come just inside the kitchen. When the good smell of the cocoa filled the room, Andrew Snow set a cup down in front of Gran. Then, without asking, he set down three more.
I liked the look of those four cups. I sneaked a glance at Rew, in the doorway, but he just shook his head. He turned and went upstairs, and from the kitchen, I heard his door snap shut.
Neither Gran nor Andrew Snow seemed to notice. Andrew Snow cleared his throat and sat down.
Gran took a sip of her cocoa and smiled that faint smile. “It’s good, Andrew,” she said. She still held my hand.
“Thanks,” he answered. Then he reached over and touched her hand, the one that held mine, on the table. “And I want to say thank you too for keeping . . . for all this time, for Annie and Rew.”
Gran didn’t answer. She squeezed my hand, and didn’t let go to take his, and after a minute he pulled his hand back, and put it in his lap.
I shifted a little in my seat. “We don’t have to talk,” I said to Andrew Snow, hoping he’d take the hint. “Let Gran drink her cocoa.”
For a little while, we just sat there, listening to the clatter of rain on the windows and to the boom of the occasional thunderbolt. The windows would light up around us, and Gran would give my hand an extra squeeze. All the time, she watched Andrew Snow, but Andrew Snow didn’t look at anyone.
Finally, Gran said, “They’re both smart, Andrew. And good. Always good.”
I thought Gran might be getting ready to tell one of her excellent lies, but Andrew Snow looked up at her, quick, and I could see by the way he narrowed his eyes that he just couldn’t help himself. He was going to have his say.
“Couldn’t you have let me know?” he asked her. “I’m still alive back there, Mom. We didn’t both die.”
The color that had been starting to show in Gran’s face drained away. She turned from him and stared at the gray window, at the storm.
“No one’s coming this afternoon,” she said. “No one would go out in such a storm. That’s good.”
I didn’t have any idea what she meant, but Andrew Snow seemed to. And it made him angrier. He stood up.
“Is that what you think?” he asked her. “Is that what worries you? Why would they come? Why would they? How would they even know?”
Gran let go of my hand. She put her hand to her ear again.
“Don’t!” I said to Andrew Snow, my voice rising. “Don’t talk to her!”
He stopped then, but it took a lot for him to do it. I could see his jaw jut out on either side, he was holding his mouth so tight. And the grim look had come back to his face. With an effort, he sat back down.
It was too late. Gran stood up, so fast the chair fell back behind her. I couldn’t tell what her expression meant, whether she was frightened or sad. Before I could puzzle it out, she was at the landing, and then I heard her door swing shut upstairs.
Andrew Snow had not moved from his chair. I felt like Rew just then. I wanted to tell Andrew Snow how much I hated him. How much I wished he would just go away. Instead, I said something almost as mean.
“How come Gran never visited you?” I asked him, trying to make my voice as cold as Rew’s. “Can’t you get visitors in prison?”
I could tell I’d hurt him, because he looked down at his hands when I said it, as though his knuckles were the most interesting thing in the world. He tilted his head, in the way I’d seen Rew do so many times, when Adele Parks came and asked him questions he didn’t like answering, like whether he had many friends.
But he answered me anyway, and he didn’t sound angry, either.
“She came once,” he said, and I guess he saw that I didn’t believe him, because
he added, “It was years ago, right at the start. She came with my dad. He was alive then. But it killed the two of them, coming there. Her especially. She just touched the glass and didn’t say a word. And then, after he died — she didn’t come anymore. I think maybe it was just too hard.”
If I’d thought hurting Andrew Snow would do me good, I was wrong. I could picture him too well, sitting there in that prison, with nothing to look at but the trees. But I knew Gran. And I knew she’d never go to a place like that. Not for anyone. Not even for her son.
Everyone had gone silent. Gran, Rew, Andrew Snow. For a full day after Gran went back upstairs, Andrew Snow barely said a word, and Rew didn’t come down, either. But I was sick to death of silence, sick to death of slamming doors and people who ran and hid. So on day twenty-two, I decided I wasn’t going to be afraid of them anymore. Not Gran, not Rew, and not Andrew Snow.
That morning, my father made oatmeal with wheat germ sprinkled into it.
He spooned it out for me. When I didn’t reach for it, he said, “Eat. It’s good, really.”
I ignored that, both him and the oatmeal. Instead, I said, “Why are you so mad at Gran? What did she ever do to you?”
Andrew Snow looked at me in surprise. “I’m not mad at her,” he said. “I’m grateful she’s taken care of you all this time.”
I snorted, sounding like Rew. “You’re a liar,” I said. And I didn’t care if it hurt him. “Every time you talk to her, you end up yelling.”
Andrew Snow sighed. He turned from me, took a rag, and started on the kitchen window, where pink still lingered in the sky over the Zebra. I could smell the Windex on it, a sharp, chemical smell. I thought he meant to ignore me, but he didn’t. After a while, he said, “That’s true. I’m angry and grateful at the same time, I guess. I can’t decide which. Don’t you ever feel two ways about something?”
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