by Lauren Wolk
Two drifters, off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end
waitin’ ’round the bend,
my Huckleberry friend,
Moon River
and me.
And when the song was over and Rachel had dried her eyes with her hands, Joe could not speak for minutes on end, could not look at them, at any of them, could not swallow or lift the mighty weight of his arms. For he had found himself, somewhere in the midst of that lovely old song, begging for a way to draw out this night. To keep his feet upon this undemanding floor. To stay inside the Last Resort until the rest of the world had found a way to match its matchless charm.
Chapter 15
Had Joe gone straight from the Last Resort to his bed that night, to sleep, to an awakening less magical, less potent than the undiluted night, his memories might have passed themselves off as dreams. He might have come to doubt what had taken place inside the Last Resort and inside his ringing skull. He might have deemed the whole thing a good time, nothing more.
But he did not go straight to his bed. He went with Rachel, and Angela, and Ian—singing still—down the street to rouse his patient Schooner, make for them a plate of sandwiches and a jug of sobering lemonade, explain to them the cryptic note taped to his kitchen cupboard, reveal with confused misgivings and uncomplicated trust the reasons for his arrival in their midst.
“I don’t regret what I did,” he said haltingly. “Just how I did it. I didn’t think things through. I was too impulsive. And now … I feel like I’m at my father’s mercy. I haven’t got enough money to last me for very long. And I’m not sure what’s going to happen next.”
For a minute or two no one said a word. Joe guessed, quite accurately, that they felt for him a hybrid sort of pity. Their sympathy was tempered with scorn, as if Joe were an adolescent brother: arrogant, selfish, charming, much loved. He had been thoughtless to them in small ways, but for his sister’s sake he had been brave, choosing her comfort over his own. When they pictured his merciless father, they planted their elbows on the Schooner’s Formica tabletop and felt their hackles rise. And when he finally lifted his eyes to theirs, they closed ranks, he among them.
“If I were you,” Ian said, “I’d go over to the Gas ’n’ Go right now and call the man. Get it over with.”
“I was planning to give him a few more days to cool off.”
“Uh-uh. He’s likely to be worrying his head off by now. And the more worried he gets, the angrier he’ll be when he finds out you were sitting here the whole time, safe and sound.”
“I don’t know,” Joe said. “I’m not sure he’d worry. He might, I suppose. I’m not sure I can rely on anything I thought I knew about the man.”
“I don’t envy you, Joe.” Angela sighed. She’d been thinking about her long-gone husband and her son. “What a time you’ve had the last few days. It’s hard to have so many things thrown at you at once.” She slid out of the booth and looked at her reflection in the dark window. It made a kind mirror. She looked less tired, much younger than she felt. “I can understand you wanting to lie low for a while and let the dust settle. But I also think Ian’s right. It might be better to go at this whole thing straight on, get it over with, thrash it out with him before things get worse.”
After a moment, Joe turned to Rachel, who was sitting alongside him in the little booth. “Well?”
“Well what?” she said, startled. “What do I think? I don’t know. I’ve just been trying to put myself in your shoes, but I can’t quite manage it. You really did all these things without a second thought?”
“Afraid so.” Joe leaned his head against the back of the booth and closed his eyes. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“And it’s turned out all right so far, hasn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, you’re alive and well and in good company. Nothing wrong with that. If you’d done nothing, stayed where you were, Holly would still be counting down the days, you’d be as good as dead, and your father …” Rachel shook her head. “I know he’s your flesh and blood, Joe, but he got what he deserved. And if there’s any decency in him, he’ll take it from here, get himself some help, and thank you in the end. If not, then it’s good you left.”
“Saved your life,” Ian said, nodding.
Joe rubbed his eyes. It was three o’clock in the morning. His father would be sleeping. Dreaming, perhaps, of an absent son. Unaware of the rioting stars—distant, hot, noisy suns that from earth looked like chips of ice and diamond. Unaware of the treasure his son had somehow struck, on this journey, in his own neglected bones. Unaware of the choices his son was contemplating, like a farmer whose crop is nearly ripe.
“Who’s got a dime?” Joe asked, and went out into the night while his friends sat and waited.
They waited for a long time.
“Think he got lost?” Ian finally yawned.
“Maybe he just chickened out.” Rachel sighed. “He’s probably wandering around like a goat, trying to figure out what to do next.”
“Nice.”
“Well, shoot me, Angela. I like the guy well enough—don’t ask me why—but we’ve known him all of a day. He’s already rubbed me the wrong way more than once.”
“He’s a stranger,” Ian said. “There’s no reason in the world we should be here waiting for him in the middle of the night, worried about him, looking for ways to help him. But I don’t need a reason to like the boy or give him a hand if he asks for it.” He paused and ran his finger around the rim of his empty glass. “Do you?”
“Well, no,” Rachel said, somewhat petulantly. “I already said I like him, didn’t I? I’m just a bit more skeptical than you, Ian.”
“Maybe we should go look for him,” Angela suggested.
At the sound of the doorknob turning, Rachel looked up, frowning. She was annoyed at herself for the softness of her heart. Her pleasure was scarred by indecision. Her instincts collided like the wakes of boats on separate courses, all foam and disturbance. She was prepared to meet his return with nonchalance, even disinterest. But she was not prepared for his sorrow.
He was weeping as he walked in the door. Rachel reached him first and did not think as she opened her arms and took him in. He was heavy and cold. His cheek against her neck was wet.
He was talking to himself, his voice so hoarse and exhausted, so clotted with tears that she could not understand what he was saying.
“It’s all right now,” Rachel murmured, helping him to his bed. When he lay down and turned his face to the wall, she covered him with a blanket and stood looking down at him.
She imagined that his father had lashed out at him, disowned him, torn at his heart, and she was right. But she also imagined that Joe had heard only what he’d feared, and in this she could not have been more wrong.
Book
Two
My crown is in my heart, not on my head.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, from King Henry VI, Part 3
Chapter 16
Joe let his hair grow all through the long, hot months of his first summer in Belle Haven. While most of the other men in town had theirs clipped down to let the air touch their sweating scalps, he let his go its own unruly way. He let his beard grow too, for a while, but it made him feel like a stranger, and since he’d had enough of that, he cut it off sometime before July.
He borrowed a shovel from Ian, turned over a few bits of ground around the Schooner, and carefully transplanted clusters of wild-flowers from the fields and woods.
He bagged groceries at the A&P, hauled ice in a worn-out truck, picked strawberries by the hundred-quart, and shelved books at the library. A few hours’ work here and there. He fed himself, mended his berry-stained trousers, went to bed as soon as it was dark.
“My son, Rusty, hates to read,” Angela said to Joe one day when he stopped in to buy a paper. “Which makes me sick at heart, Joe.” She wiped one glistening cheek
with the back of her hand. “I can’t afford to pay you, but I’ll feed you supper every day of the week. Anything on or off the menu, long as the fixin’s are in the fridge. Ice cream if you’re good.” She smiled tiredly. “Read to him. At least once a day. You choose the books. Or let him. Whatever you want. Read to him. Talk to him. Tell him stories. I don’t care what you do, just get him in love with books. Would you do that for me, Joe?”
He would have done it for nothing. He did it for her. For her cooking. He didn’t really know the boy yet. Had he known him, he would have done it for the boy, and for no other reason.
He started with books gathered by the town’s eager librarians, books that made Rusty wince when he saw them coming and made Angela shake her head in doubt. Big, heavy books with somber leather bindings and pages that creaked like long-locked doors. The Last of the Mohicans, The Yearling, Treasure Island, Kidnapped.
“I like comic books,” Rusty said, looking a bit like he’d stepped out of one. He was small for his age, crowned with a cowlick, his jeans cuffed up, his face freckled. He sat across from Joe in the Kitchen’s only booth, the books scattered across the table between them.
“So do I,” Joe said. “I also like these.”
Rusty picked up The Yearling with both hands. Pasted on the front cover was a large illustration of a boy and a deer. He turned it over suspiciously.
“What’s this one about?”
“What do you think?”
Rusty looked at the picture again. “A boy and a deer.”
“And?”
“And what?” Rusty gave Joe a sour look. He glanced over toward his mother, who was polishing the chrome on an enormous blender, but she ignored them both. When Joe did not answer, Rusty sighed and said, “How am I supposed to know? You’re the one that read the book. You tell me.”
Joe picked up the book, weighed it in his hands. “I could tell you this story, in a hundred words or less, and you’d forget it by bedtime.” He leaned toward Rusty and lowered his voice, as if he had secrets to share. “Or you could read a couple hundred thousand words instead and never forget the story as long as you live.”
Rusty snorted, crossed his arms over his chest. “Hundred thousand? You gotta be kidding me.”
“Hey, look, kid. I couldn’t care less if you read comic books and cereal boxes the rest of your life. But I do care what I read, and I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to spend my summer reading trash.” He stopped. Rusty looked at him across the table as if it were a continent. “All right, let’s start again,” Joe said, running a hand through his willful hair. He thought for a minute or two while Rusty waited. He seemed to be good at waiting.
“All right,” Joe said again, taking the book up against his chest and closing his eyes. He held it there for a moment while Rusty wondered whether he was supposed to do something to get them both past this bad beginning.
Then Joe opened his eyes and smiled.
“What would you do,” he said, “if you were out in the woods, deer hunting with your father—”
“I don’t have a father,” Rusty said. He said it simply but as if he wanted to get that one thing straight right up front. “And I don’t like it when people try to act like they’re my father either.”
Joe had never had a conversation like this before. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken even a single word to a child, let alone discussed great literature and the unfortunate lack of fathers.
“I don’t blame you,” Joe said. “And if it matters, I don’t really have a father either. Not anymore.”
Rusty looked as if he wanted to ask a question, but he had enough sense to keep it to himself. “So I’m deer hunting with my father, and?”
“And you’ve wandered pretty far from home. There’s no one else out in these woods. No phone. No car. Just the two of you and your guns. And all of a sudden, your father gets bitten on the leg by a rattlesnake. He’s going to die if he doesn’t get help quick, but he knows that the faster he moves, the more the poison will spread. And then, even though he’s dying of this snakebite, your father picks up his rifle and shoots a doe. Kills it. And starts limping toward its body.” Joe stopped short and waited. He, too, was learning how to give people room.
Rusty was not too proud to meet him in the middle. “Why would he shoot a deer when he’s dying of snakebite?”
Joe held the book out toward Rusty, who looked at it with a little less loathing than before. “How many thousands of words do I have to read before I find out?” the boy asked.
“They’ll fly by,” Joe said.
Within the month, Rusty had taken to waiting for Joe on the steps of the Kitchen, light pouring out of his eyes. He now carried his own library card with him everywhere he went and had begun, unbidden, to read. Books from the school library that smelled like french fries, with sticky, ragged pages. James and the Giant Peach, Island of the Blue Dolphins, The Call of the Wild.
As long as they stayed within the boundaries of stories, in the company of characters like King Arthur and Daniel Boone, Joe and Rusty got along like bread and jam. But on occasion, when Joe forgot the rules and was heavy-handed, acted too much like a father, or when Rusty asked Joe about his boyhood, forgetting for a moment that Joe would not answer … when either of them trespassed on such forbidden ground, a wall went up between them, leaving them stranded.
“Hey, Rusty, this book is a week overdue.” It was a blazing August day, and neither of them was in the mood for anything but Raccoon Creek and a rope swing. But as much as they could, they stuck to their habit of meeting at the Kitchen for an hour every other day, usually to read together in easy partnership, sometimes to talk about what they’d witnessed between the covers of their books.
“Big deal. A nickel a day. My mom’ll pay for it.”
Joe thought about Angela, hard at work long before dawn every day of the week.
“You ever take a good look at your mom’s hands?” he said. “I don’t think she should have to do even thirty-five cents’ worth of work just because you’re too goddamned lazy to return a book on time. You were my kid, I’d make you pay the fine yourself out of money you earned.”
Rusty picked up the library book. Got out of his chair. “My mother and me are none of your business,” he said. And walked out the door.
Joe sat in the Kitchen for another ten minutes, thinking about his own mother. And about his father. Then he got up and went looking for Rusty.
He found him coming out of the library. When Rusty walked past him, Joe took his place by the boy’s side and they walked up Maple Street without a word. When they got to the bridge over Raccoon Creek, Rusty shimmied down the steep bank and straight to the water’s edge. He took off his shirt and shoes, wedged them in the fork of a tree, and stepped into the cool creek water.
Joe stood on the bridge and watched Rusty from above. He was afraid to make matters worse between them, worried that what had started over a library book might end in a place they wouldn’t easily get beyond. Not unless he chose his words carefully.
“I’m sorry, Rusty,” he said, leaning on the rail of the bridge just over the boy’s head. “I like your mother a lot, but I’ll never love her one millionth as much as you do.” Rusty had found a stick and was stirring up the water along the bank of the creek, hoping to spook crayfish. He didn’t look up, give any sign he was listening. An old man, walking along Maple Street, glanced twice at Joe as he passed, wary of someone who made speeches from a bridge.
“I never earned a nickel in my life, until I came to Belle Haven,” Joe said. “Which makes me something of an idiot to be preaching at you.” He had seen Rusty working in the Kitchen and had never heard him complain about it, not once. When he thought about it, Joe realized that it was not only understandable but entirely reasonable, even desirable, for Rusty to misbehave now and then, especially with someone who could be counted upon to let him.
“I will mind my own business,” he said. “From now on. I promise.”
&nb
sp; Rusty finally looked up.
“It’s okay,” he said after a moment. “I don’t much mind.”
“Good,” Joe said. “And while we’re at it, it’s ‘My mother and I are none of your business,’ not ‘My mother and me.’ ”
At which Rusty picked up a clod of creek mud and lobbed it at Joe, who ran down the bank hollering and into the creek, shoes and all.
In September Angela asked Joe to tutor Rusty in other subjects. “He’s a smart kid, and he does pretty well in school. But it’s not enough to be smart and I don’t give a good goddamn about grades. He loves to read now. I want him to love to learn.”
So Joe and Rusty continued to meet at the Kitchen, on the ball diamond, on the banks of Raccoon Creek. Joe made the town’s meadows into classrooms, teaching Rusty about the migration of hummingbirds, the stunning unlikelihood of metamorphosis, the indispensable gift of bees. He made baseball a matter of math and physics as well as of pure, immeasurable joy. Together they catalogued the clouds and the leaves of the trees, sought the burrows of earth dwellers, studied the kingfisher taking its plunge.
“I used to know a lot about frogs,” Joe said as they waded along the bank of the creek one day in late September. Rusty had caught a fat frog and held it cupped between his hands. Its legs dangled between his fingers, and its head popped through the collar Rusty had made with his thumbs. He held the frog’s face up close to his own and studied the speckles on its cheeks, the twin globes of its frightened eyes. “We dissected them in biology class when I was in eighth grade,” Joe said, the remembered tang of formaldehyde stinging his nose.
“Cool.” Rusty looked at Joe with envy. “I’ll bet the girls screamed a lot.”
“I went to an all-boys school,” Joe said.
“All boys?” Rusty looked as if he were weighing the pros and cons of such a place. “No girls at all?”
“The lunchroom ladies.”