by Paul Griffin
You know how you can tell when somebody’s lying to you, except maybe even they don’t know they are? Like that.
35. MY HEART IS A DRUM
I saw from the driveway that Marty was waiting for me at the window. When I went into the house, Bell stayed back a little, tail between her legs. Marty crawled to me.
I pulled him into me, and then Bella too. “It’s okay, you two. Everything’s gonna be all right.”
Now I was the liar.
They followed me into the kitchen, Marty snuffling and oinking. The floor groaned underneath him. I filled their bowls with water and poured myself a glass. I opened the freezer door and stood in front of it and let the cold fall down my back while I watched them drink.
The letter.
The last one.
The one my mother never gave me.
I went upstairs to her room, to her closet. She kept few clothes but lots of boxes full of papers about Maple Clutch, going all the way back to the beginning. Receipts and handwritten sales reports, insurance stuff. It took me an hour to go through it all, and there was no letter.
Her bookcase.
It was two shelves, and they were mostly agriculture books. I saw thin folds of paper between them here and there, church pamphlets, a half-size magazine that advertised riding mowers.
Her student Bible.
There it was, tucked into the Psalms. It was written on the same light blue paper he’d used to write me. There was a CD in there too. The label said, AN HOUR WITH MARTY VENTURA, and the university station’s call sign, and the date going back fifteen years ago.
I read the letter. I don’t think I breathed once the whole time I read it.
I read it again.
Again.
It was bad. It was awful. It was worse than Mom had me thinking it could be.
I wanted never to have read it. I wanted to forget it. I had to.
I balled it up and squeezed it so tight, like doing that would crush the sadness in it, the horror, until it was a small pointy stone in my palm. My legs were shaky. I sat on Mom’s bed. I stared at the CD, at the Bible pages that hid the letter. My mother had underlined part of the 98th Psalm.
Let the sea resound, and everything in it,
the world, and all who live in it.
Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the mountains sing together for joy.
I took the CD with me. Marty and Bella were waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. They followed me into my room, to the shrine I’d built to my father. I took out the paint-spattered CD player and put in the disc. And then I lay back on my broken bed with Marty and Bella close to me, and I listened.
Very quickly two things came to me.
First, the rain wasn’t just in my father’s eyes. It was in his voice too. A gentle rain, a soft sadness. In that letter he wrote about music, the magic in it, how it was like surfing, he described his heart as broken, and here it was.
Second, my father was flat-out amazing. He had that thing Pal had. Like he would sing the same way if nobody was listening. Meanwhile, he was singing to the universe.
He sang songs I’d never heard, songs he must have written, except they didn’t sound written. They sounded like when you’re talking with your best friend on the way home from school, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she says something that’s so cool, you hope you’ll remember it until you get to the house so you can write it down in your journal. Everyday amazing things like, The wind has that poor bird flying sideways.
My father sang:
He wore secondhand boots
of necessity, sure,
But he didn’t mind sharing
broke-in soles, more
Or did he mean broken souls?
I’d never know.
Hearing his voice for the first time, it busted me up, because I’d never hear it again. I could listen to the CD over and over, and I would, but I’d never hear him for real. I’d never hear him say words meant only for me, like if we were at the kitchen table one night, the way he promised in his letters we would be, after dinner, just messing around with the guitar, him teaching me a new chord. He would’ve said, “There you go, Renz, just like that.” Or “Try it this way. Feels better now, doesn’t it?”
No, I’d never hear those words or any like them, only in my dreams, except I didn’t think I was brave enough to dream of him anymore.
The CD ended.
I climbed over Bell and Marty to get out of bed. They followed me to the corner behind the front door, where we kept the umbrellas, where I’d left my father’s guitar the day Pal went away for camp. The guitar had become dusty.
I brought it to the couch and looked over every bit of it, and it was new to me, after hearing my dad’s voice. I really saw him playing it now.
I felt weird, holding it, kind of like it was a sacred thing. I didn’t feel pure enough, knowing I could never play it as well as he did. Could never get my fingers quite the way he’d gotten his to tickle those notes out of that old Gibson’s neck, to strum that hum up from its belly.
His hands were here.
Hands that stopped bleeding, pushed air into lungs, kept hearts pumping.
Fingers that checked pulses at the wrist, the throat.
The index finger that pulled the trigger.
I wiped the dust from the back of the guitar with my T-shirt, and I church-whispered the inscription, “‘You can strum me, sure, You can pick me too. But when you drum me, pure, My heart comes through. My heart is a drum.’”
I laid my father’s guitar across my knees, and I tapped the belly with my fingers, and I felt nothing. I drummed it with my palms, and then drummed harder and harder and faster, and then a lot faster and the wood started heating up. The lacquer was almost hot and my hands were going numb, and I started to hear it, this very deep tone getting caught up in the strings. They were ringing now, and twinge-ing and twanging and then buzzing, a moan rising to a howl and then, just like he promised, there it was, the music, the true heart of it, the brokenness in it, except it wasn’t the guitar.
It was me.
I felt wetness on my cheek, and I opened eyes, and there was Marty, his big old runny snout in my face. He nudged the guitar away and rested his giant head on my knee. His tail wiggled fast to shake the couch.
“Marty,” I said. “What are we gonna do about you, boy?”
He looked up from where he’d buried his head in my lap. His big brown eyes were peering into me. And the thing about Marty’s eyes? There was never any rain in them.
36. ANIMAL CONTROL
The phone woke me up. I forgot where I was, except how could I with Marty and Bella wedging me into a corner of the couch? How had I slept through their snoring?
“Marty.” I nudged him.
He opened one eye, like a human, except his head was twice the size of mine. His tongue stuck out of his mouth.
“Let me up, boy.”
He went back to sleep, and I had to shove him off to get to the phone.
Mom said Double’s surgery went great. She was staying with him until it was time to tuck him in for the night. She figured she’d be back by eleven.
Eleven o’clock. I had until then to figure out a way to save Marty and be gone by the time Mom came home. The oak shadows were getting longer across the front yard.
I cursed Mom’s old laptop for its slowness. I had to figure out my map, which was tricky, since there weren’t any roads the way we were going.
Bella’s ears went up. She ran to the front door and barked, and I heard a car coming up the driveway.
I swung the door shut and locked it. I got to Marty before he could start oinking, and I covered his eyes. That always kept him quiet. “No talking, Marty,” I whispered. Blind, he still knew just where to lick my mouth with his stinky tongue.
; The car tires on the gravel became louder.
No, truck tires.
Bella howled. They were rapping on the door now. The screen door swung open.
Animal Control wouldn’t try to break into the house. It could only be the Taylor crew. They’d heard about Marty and Double, and now they were coming to snatch four hundred pounds of pork before Animal Control took Marty away.
I grabbed the baseball bat from the umbrella stand as the door swung open.
“Hope you don’t mind that I kept my key,” Pal said. “Train was packed, by the way. Had to stand until we got to Harrison. I’ll stop talking. Your turn.”
“Hi,” I said.
“You mind putting down the bat?” She hugged me tighter than ever.
“You’ll break my ribs,” I said.
“I ought to, the way you were so mean to me.”
Hugging her took me back to before she went away, before I learned the truth about my dad. For however long this hug lasted, I could pretend that everything really would be okay.
Mr. Lee watched us from the door. He tipped his cap and left.
37. THE PLAN, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS MY STUPIDEST IDEA YET
Pal helped me load the backpack. “Flashlight?” I said.
“Check,” she said, “plus batteries, Dr Pepper, a box of Milk-Bones so huge, they have to be for a six-foot-tall dog, enough pull-tab cans of ravioli for the Boy Scout convention.”
“That’s a start,” I said. Marty followed me around the kitchen as I raided the shelves. He knew he was coming with me, and we were headed for adventure. Bella was less enthusiastic. She eyed me from the couch like, You sure you want to do this?
“How are the kids up there anyway, at that camp?” I said.
“Just because they’re rich doesn’t make them idiots, not automatically,” she said. “How about we forget camp for a minute, and you clue me in on the plan here.”
I tapped up the website on her phone. “Heavenly Hills Animal Sanctuary,” I said. “Look at those pastures. See the swimming hole?”
“There’s a three-legged elephant in it!” Pal said. “It’s perfect. So why all this sneaking? Mom would be happy to see Marty end up there.”
“I’m sure you’re right, and I bet she even tried to get him into this very one—until she found out the petting zoo would give her fifteen hundred dollars.”
“Mom isn’t like that,” Pal said.
“I’m not taking any chances.”
“Makes me sad you think that way about her.”
It made me sad too.
“The bigger problem with Heavenly Hills is, it’s a full house.” I tapped to where the website said they weren’t accepting any more animals at this time.
“Then why you showing me this place?” Pal said.
“I figured out a way to convince them to take Marty. I was reading the stories behind the animals they took in. This cat was stuck in a testing lab with electrodes poked into his head all day. The lab assistant smuggled him out one midnight, but she got caught on the security camera, and she was arrested. The Heavenly Hills people heard about her and bailed her out, and now that cat is the sanctuary housecat, even though they have a no cat rule because there are so many cat rescue places around already.”
Pal was reading the story. “Aw, Mr. Pun’kins,” she said. “He looks so happy now.”
“I think the Heavenly Hills people will see that I’m making the same kind of effort for Marty.”
“And we’ll probably end up in jail too. Yes, Lorenzo Ventura, I’m coming with.”
“You are so not coming with,” I said.
“Renz, if you put up a fight over this, I’ll call Mom and rat you out, and right now too. Still, here’s the thing: We might need a little more than hoping Mr. Pun’kins there takes a liking to Marty enough to get the big boy through the pearly gates.”
“Course we will, and that’s why I’m bringing twelve hundred dollars.”
“You’re going to try to bribe your way in now?”
“It’s a donation,” I said.
“Course it is. Minor question here: Where we gonna get twelve hundred dollars?”
“I already got it, thanks to running my butt off for Mrs. B all summer.” I patted the bulges in my pockets. “Twelve hundred and four, actually.” I’d tried to get Mom to let me pay to fix the tractor, but she said—
“You are so not spending your college money on this,” Pal said too. “Not after last time where she practically had a conniption after we gambled it in the dog race. I think she would have been all right losing the fifteen hundred from the petting zoo, but losing twelve hundred college dollars on top of that? We might as well save ourselves the trouble and check into the morgue now.” She clicked up the website directions. “Looks like it’s about thirty miles away. I can’t call my dad for a ride. He’ll never go behind Mom’s back like that.”
“We’re not going by road,” I said. “We’re cutting directly across, all farmland, into the nature preserve, state land straight to the river, and then the sanctuary is just a mile east of the Kishux. Twelve miles total.”
“A twelve-mile hike,” Pal said, “most of it in the pitch-dark woods tonight? We’ll break our ankles inside of the first mile.”
“We’re not hiking either.”
“Pogo sticks?” Pal said.
“Buck,” I said.
“Buck? No sir. Buckaroo’ll throw us the first ditch we hit. Renz, Buck can barely cut a flat lawn without breaking down.”
“And that was before his axle was messed up,” I said.
“This is the stupidest idea you’ve had yet, and that’s really saying something.”
“Exactly,” I said, “and that’s why you should stay here.”
“And face the wrath of Mom on my own?” she said. “Let’s quit gabbing and get out of here before the sun sets.”
“Miss Paloma Lee? Thanks for coming with.”
38. BUCK
The first part of the trip was easy, because it was all Maple Clutch land, and I knew every rut and sand slide in those hills. The nature preserve wasn’t bad either. The trails were wide and tamped smooth in most places, even if they were a little hard to see. The sky was clear and dry with a strong breeze, but there was no moon yet, and Buck’s headlights were weak. Pal rode shotgun and aimed the flashlight ahead.
Marty thought this night ride was awesome. He grunted and groinked the whole time and leaned forward from the trailer to lick the back of my neck.
“It’s sad how he and Bella didn’t even get to say a proper good-bye,” Pal said.
“It’s better that way,” I said.
“She’ll be wondering where he is by tomorrow morning, and then she’ll keep wondering and wondering. And Marty, he’ll be wondering too, and wondering and wondering—”
“I get it, Pal.”
“About you, I was going to say.”
“I know what you meant,” I said. “I don’t want to think about it until I have to.”
“Hey, you’ll be able to see him from time to time,” she said.
“That’s the biggest reason I’m bringing him here.”
“The trees are puffing up like hair blow-dried in slow motion,” Pal said. “That’s some wind.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Could you shine the light in front of us, so I can see where I’m driving?”
She swung the flashlight beam off the trees and put it where I needed it. “I bet they take him,” she said. “The Heavenly Hills people.”
“Oh, they will,” I said.
“For sure.”
“Yup.”
“Hey, Renz? It’s gonna be all right.”
“I wish people would stop saying that.”
“I know,” she said.
“How do you do that?” I said. “How do you think up things li
ke, ‘The trees are puffing up like hair blow-dried in slow motion’?”
“Because they are,” she said.
“You’re sort of spectacular.”
“Aw. I miss you guys.”
“Yeah,” I said. “You want to tell me about that part in the finale?”
“The one I got or the one I didn’t?” she said.
“I feel bad, saying your problems weren’t real, that mine were bigger than yours.”
“Renz, your problems are bigger than mine. There’s something else too. Something you’re not telling me. Don’t lie.”
“I won’t.”
“Then cough it up,” she said.
“I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet. I don’t understand it myself. You mind if we just ride quiet for a little?”
She locked her mouth with an invisible key, and then opened her mouth to swallow it.
I didn’t even want to think about my dad, not then.
Marty rested his chin on my shoulder.
I wondered if I could still be me without him there every day. The new me, the one Marty made me into. Taking care of him, protecting him, being his whole world sometimes—I needed that. He made me feel like I had a purpose in this life.
Double’s words hit me hard when he said he felt bad my dad never got to watch me grow up. I’d gotten to do that with Marty. I’d watched him go from pup to steady racer to cow chaser to workhorse, the way he got a kick out of lugging whatever you hung on his jaw.
The way he played catch with himself with that disgusting, slobbery tennis ball.
I’d miss scratching the fur on the side of his neck, his chest. I’d feel his heart in my fingertips, in my arms, rising into my spirit. That kind of humming and buzzing is too good and true to let it pass you by without stealing a little for yourself, because what do you know, you’re not sad anymore, or nervous, or mad. You’re just you the way you’re meant to be, feeling lucky to be here.
But I’d see him again. I would, a lot. I’d visit him every day I could get a ride out there. I bet Double would take me at least twice a week anyway. It wouldn’t wear off either, wanting to spend time with him. It would stay strong in me for as long as he lived.