I stayed outside next to Luke’s mother. We hadn’t been able to meet at the school yet, but we’d talked several times on the phone and I felt we knew each other a little better.
“Thank you for letting Luke come. We’ll take good care of him.”
“He’s so excited,” she whispered. “He didn’t hardly sleep all last night. Was up before dawn packing his suitcase all over again.” She shook her head. “I hope he’s got everything he needs.”
“I’m sure he does. Besides, there are extra sweaters and things at the house.” I handed her a slip of paper. “Here’s our phone number if you need us for anything, but don’t worry if we don’t answer right away. We may be outside, but we’ll be back by suppertime. Would you like Luke home by any special time tomorrow?”
Mrs. Brauer shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.” Worry lined her face, making her old again. “I hope he minds his manners and doesn’t be too much trouble.”
I put my arm around her shoulders for a second. “He’ll be fine. You try and catch up on a little rest now. Okay? We’ll see you after supper tomorrow night.”
I got in next to Luke and we both waved as Cal turned the car around. Mrs. Brauer waved back, calling to Luke, “You be good now, hear.” We waved until the project was out of sight.
Luke sat tense and tight between us, his back straight, hands squeezed together in his lap.
Cal talked to me about small, unimportant things and then casually pointed out the barges in the Hudson, as we crossed the bridge, then the ice-skating rink by the river, the license plate from Texas, small things that he thought might interest Luke. Gradually Luke’s body relaxed. He leaned back against the seat and even let his shoulder brush my arm. I smiled across Luke’s head at Cal.
Our house was two hours away. At the halfway mark stood the Red Rooster, a fast-food stand with picnic tables outside – hamburgers, hot dogs, milkshakes inside. It was more than a place to eat. It was a place to shake the city and surburbia off your feet and out of your mind. I had never known anyone to be unhappy at the Red Rooster, at least not driving up. Somehow we never stopped there on the way home.
Cal ordered a hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard,; Luke and I had ours with relish. Cal and I shared a black and white milkshake. Luke drank a whole one on his own, down to the last drop.
Back on the road we all felt full and comfortable, Luke leaned against me and I told him stories of trips I had taken when I was little, how my dad made a real bed for us in the back seat, a mattress on top of suitcases, sheets and pillows on top of the mattress. Cal told about going to the world’s fair in Chicago with his father. Luke loved every word.
We came to the covered bridge and Luke couldn’t believe a bridge made of wood could be strong enough to hold a car. He held his breath until we were across. Just beyond the bridge Cal pointed out the stone painted to look like a frog that had been there for fifty years.
No sign of the city now. Only winding country roads, a few houses, mountains in the distance. And trees. Luke couldn’t get over how many trees there were. Not just one mountain full of trees, like his outside of Falls City, but mile after mile of trees, thick and deep along the road. Most of the brilliant color was gone, only a few sturdy brown November leaves still clung to the branches, but the age-old trunks stood weathered and strong.
We turned into our dirt road and Cal said to Luke, “See if you can see the roof of our house. What color do you think it is?”
Luke leaned across me to see out my side window and I could feel quivers of excitement running through him.
“I see it!” he shouted. “No, I guess not.” His voice sank.
“What color?” Cal asked.
“Green. Light green,” Luke said softly. “But it couldn’t of been.”
“You’re exactly right. It’s a copper roof, and it’s fifty years old now and that’s the color copper gets when it’s old. Well, here we are.”
We parked in the turn-around one hundred feet from the house. All of a sudden, for no apparent reason, Luke began to run, down the path toward the house, back out to the dirt driveway, out to the dirt road, back in again, passing me on the path, not saying anything, just running. He ran with his arms straight out to the side, stretched wide, wheeling like a glider turning in the autumn sky. It almost seemed that in another second Luke would fly.
Cal and I carried in the suitcases and paper bags of food, doing ritual things, unlocking doors, turning on the water, putting things in the refrigerator, carrying in wood to pile beside the big stone fireplace at the end wall of the living room.
Suddenly I realized Luke was standing absolutely still in the middle of the living room. He looked so small, the high rough wood ceiling rising thirty feet above his head.
“You okay, Luke?” I asked, setting down the log, straightening.
Luke nodded and came over to where I was standing beside the fireplace. A rush of thoughts. Had Luke ever seen a fireplace before? Not at the project. At his father’s place in New York? His grandmother’s? Well, surely on television. Did it make him think of fires? The ones he’d set. Why he did it? We had never really talked about the fires. I sat down on the low bench in front of the fireplace and pulled Luke close. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Cal appeared suddenly with a last armful of logs. I had told Cal about Luke and the fires and the deer leg. Now he knelt before the fireplace and began to lay the fire and then stopped and turned to Luke.
“Would you like to light some matches before I get the fire going?”
Luke nodded solemnly, his eyes round. Cal handed Luke a box of wooden matches and showed him how to strike a match against the rough side of the box.
Luke lit a match and threw it in the fireplace, and then another and another and another.
I looked at Cal questioningly.
“Good.” Cal spoke to Luke, not me. “Light as many as you want. That’s the right place for fires.”
There were two hundred matches in the box. Luke lit every one, putting each match carefully in the fireplace.
There wasn’t any need for talk.
Nan, my daughter, arrived a little before three o’clock, driving down from college in Boston. She was a senior now herself. We were both special education majors and there were always a hundred things to talk about, compare. There was never enough time for all we had to say. Luke immediately recognized Nan as a friend and trotted beside her, helping carry things in from her car.
Within another half hour, Mark, Cal’s youngest son, arrived with two high school friends and they all went off together to the small store in the village to buy more food. They took Luke with them without question, and later, with the afternoon light almost gone, I looked out of the kitchen window to see Luke riding high on Mark’s shoulders as they came up the path to the house, the others carrying the bags of groceries.
Everybody helped with supper, spaghetti and salad and french bread. Everybody getting in everybody else’s way; there wasn’t enough room in our little kitchen. I ordered everybody out; nobody went. I gave in to bedlam, confusion, and laughter.
After dinner we went back to the living room and built the fire high again. Luke sat close beside the flames, adding small sticks from time to time. The rest of us talked about soccer and exams and the news from the rest of the family. Nan and I huddled for a while to compare education notes and commiserate over method courses, and count the days of school that were left. We would both graduate in June. I was only twenty-two years behind. Never mind. It’s almost done.
Somehow we got involved in a game of Fictionary – Nan and Luke and I on one team, Mark and his friends on another. Cal read out unknown words from the dictionary and we made up definitions.
Luke loved this game and whispered ideas to me, one after the other, while a small mouse ran up and down the stone wall above the fireplace.
At nine o’clock I took Luke’s hand and we went back to his room. We opened his suitcase and he took out his pajamas and toothbrush while
I turned down his bed. He undressed quickly, his back toward me, and I walked to the doorway to give him more privacy.
“Listen, Luke,” I said. “Go get washed and brushed and then I’ll read you a story before you go to sleep.”
While he was in the bathroom I thought about how strange this must all seem to him. Was it scary to sleep alone in a big bed in a strange house?
Luke reassured me when he came back. He stood on the bed and traced the carved birds and grapes that made up the wooden headboard that was twice as tall as he was. He bounced gently up and down while his fingers examined the wood and there was nothing frightened about him. I remembered the nights he had spent watching over his father on the mountain. He’d been a lot more alone than this.
Suddenly Luke stopped his gentle bouncing on the bed. “Oh, oh, Mary,” he said. “I forgot the present.”
He brought me the flowered box and I opened it as he watched.
“Whitman’s Sampler. My favorite, Luke. My father used to buy candy just like this on Valentine’s Day. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Luke answered seriously, remembering to “mind his manners.”
“Why don’t you take it out to the living room to offer everyone a piece? Yourself too, except then you’ll have to brush again.”
I watched Luke from the hall, feeling a wave of love for my family as they praised him and patted him and kissed him good night without conscious thought, barely interrupting their conversation.
When we’d finished reading, I tucked the covers around Luke and kissed him myself.
“Do you think we’ll see the deer tomorrow?” Luke asked. “We looked all over this afternoon, but we didn’t see ’em.”
“Maybe. Early in the morning is best. When you first wake up, look out this front window. That’s where I usually see them, down under the apple tree in the middle of the meadow.
“Good night, Luke. Sleep well. I’ll leave your door open. Cal and I will be coming to bed in a few minutes. Call if you want anything.”
But we slept soundly all night long and the sun was shining on the tops of the mountains when I woke and turned and saw Luke standing in our doorway.
“Hey, Luke. Good morning.” Then remembering the deer, I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Did you see the deer?” I asked.
Luke shook his head. “Not one.”
“Well, come get into bed here. Your feet will freeze on those stone floors.”
Luke climbed up over the footboard and I tucked him in between us, snug and warm.
Pancakes for breakfast, then Nan and Luke went out to look for deer. They saw a raccoon with only three feet, two spiders, one with a perfect web, and a snake, but no deer.
In the afternoon we went down to the lake and took turns playing tennis and fishing off the end of the dock. Nobody caught anything and most of the bounce had died in our summer tennis balls; but nobody minded. We weren’t down there to win prizes.
Every once in a while I would realize Luke was gone and then suddenly he would come running down the road or up from the beach, in what I had come to think of as Luke’s happiness run, wheeling, turning, happiness almost lifting him off the ground.
The hours ran out too soon. Everybody packing up, heading back to school and college, remembering suddenly all the undone homework, reports not written, books not read, the real world of Monday coming close. We hugged each other, kissing quickly, promising to call, to write, to see each other soon. Luke stood by the fireplace watching us.
After Nan and Mark left, we packed our own things, checked the fire, turned off the water. I looked for Luke and found him out on the stone wall in front of the house, alone.
“I think maybe I saw one, Mary. Look. See that deer?”
I peered into the dusky meadow, looking hard, wishing a deer into existence, but nothing moved.
“Time to go, Luke,” I said as gently as I could. “Are you all packed?”
We rode silently for the first hour and a half, Luke sound asleep against my shoulder. Then a traffic jam and honking horns woke him. He rubbed his eyes and looked at me in the half light of the other headlights.
“I was dreaming about the deer. Like the one I saw in the meadow. Remember that one?”
“I remember the tracks we saw,” I said, knowing how badly he had wanted to see it – how much I had wanted it, too. Now he was putting the deer there the only way he knew. “So anyway, we know the deer are there, and I remember you saw a mouse and a snake and a raccoon –”
“With only three feet, but he could still walk okay, and a spiderweb.”
“Yes,” I said, “and a fish. You saw a lot.”
“At least six things. I’m gonna tell Frank tomorrow. Maybe tonight even.”
Luke’s voice faded and he was back asleep. Was he dreaming once again of the deer he hadn’t seen? Or perhaps he had. Who could know for sure?
Well, my plan hadn’t worked out. My hopes of having Luke see deer in another light, to understand that they were meant for more than killing, had flopped. I sighed, adjusted Luke’s body so that I could lean against the window and then I, too, slept and dreamed of deer and boys and birds against the sky.
“We’re here.” Cal’s voice woke me and I felt Luke squirm awake.
“Hey, sleepyheads, wake up. We’re back in Falls City.”
Luke stretched and sat up and I blinked my eyes to get them open. The light went on over Luke’s front door and then his mother stepped into the light, peering out toward the car.
I rolled down the window.
“Hello. We’re back,” I called redundantly. “Luke was terrific.”
Luke said, “I’m gonna tell Frank I saw a spiderweb and a raccoon with three feet and a mouse and a snake and deer tracks – and a deer. Right, Mary?”
“Right. You tell him what you saw.”
“And I’m gonna tell about the fireplace and how you can light a hundred matches there, more’n a hundred and not hurt nuthin’. Right, Mary?”
“Right, Luke.”
And then without thinking, Luke gave me and Cal too, a quick hug, casually, easily, as he had seen the other older children do.
Cal carried Luke’s suitcase to the door while Luke ran ahead and I sat thinking how maybe Luke had learned even more than I had planned.
Chapter 25
Mrs. Brauer had her uniform on under her coat. A black blouse, a short black skirt and a white frilly apron. She glanced nervously at the clock on the wall above the counter of the diner.
“I gotta be there by five sharp,” she said, “or Joe has a fit. But I had to talk to you. Thanks for meeting me. I didn’t want to come to school like this.” She glanced down.
I nodded. “This is fine.” I would have met her anywhere she suggested. I was so glad she’d called.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with Joe’s place. I don’t mean that. I wouldn’t work there if there was any funny stuff going on, know what I mean, but still, you know how those teachers talk. I didn’t want them gettin’ wrong ideas.”
Again I nodded, waiting. I had lots to say myself, but I wanted to hear her first.
Her coffee sat untouched in front of her and now she pushed it to one side.
“Luke liked being at your place last weekend. It’s all he talks about now. Anyway, I figure that you had a real good chance to look at him and the thing I gotta know is, is Luke gonna be all right?
“See, Chuck, he’s a friend of the family like a cousin sort of, stays at the house some. Chuck says Luke’s like his father. Bad blood. Sick. Maybe even sick in the head. Chuck says maybe Luke’d be better off living with his father.”
“I thought Luke’s father was in the hospital,” I said, trying to keep my voice even, friendly, not wanting to frighten her away.
“Well, in and out. Who knows? But he’s got an apartment in the city and a wife with three kids. Seems to have plenty to spend on them, so Chuck says why not send Luke in there. That way he, Luke’s father, will have to spend on Luk
e, too. Only way any of us will ever see a cent.”
“Do you want Luke to go?”
This was what I had to know. I could understand the bitterness. I could even understand Chuck’s wanting to get rid of Luke, there must be some jealousy and also it would be easier economically. But what about Luke? How would he fare with a stepmother who had sent him back to his grandmother’s when his father went in the hospital this past summer? It didn’t sound as if she’d been too eager to have him around then. There was no reason to think she’d changed. But how did Luke’s mother feel? Did she love him? That was what I had to know.
I looked at her carefully. Tears were clinging to the black beads of mascara on her lower lashes.
She shook her head. “I just want him to stay with us. He was the first, you know. The first baby. He was so fat and cute, you wouldn’t believe. And good too. Even Grandma said he was the best baby she’d ever seen. Never cried. Always did just what we said.”
Mrs. Brauer touched her lower lashes with a paper napkin, blotting up the tears, careful not to smear the mascara. “I don’t know what went wrong. Everything fell apart all at the same time. Frank and Alice came too fast, I guess, and I got sick and then Luke’s father had some habits like – well, they got worse, and we split up and then the next thing I know the school is calling me about Luke – then the police are calling. I don’t know. I don’t understand it.” Mrs. Brauer’s voice quavered and she stopped to clear her throat. “You know what the police said? They said he was the rottenest kid in the neighborhood.”
“Forget that,” I said. “Luke isn’t rotten. He’s good and he’s smart. He was just scared and angry and he didn’t know how to tell anybody so he set some fires instead. But he needs you, Mrs. Brauer, Luke needs you more than anything in this world.”
“Me?” She glanced down at herself again. “Why would anybody need me?”
I smiled at her. “Easy. Because you’re his mother. You know more about him than anybody else. You’ve known him for, what – eight years?” I stopped, shocked, realizing I didn’t know exactly how old Luke was. “See, I don’t even know when his birthday is. But you do.”
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