At night I will jump in that notebook and swim around for a while, or whatever the heck it is that I am supposed to do. (Harry tells me in his day you didn’t write your life story, you lived it.)
Once a week Mr. Peterson will stop by the donut shop and see how I am getting on. In the meantime, I will not look for my dog or talk about my dog or even think about my dog. Harry has had it up to here.
If I do not choose to come around to my grandpa’s way of thinking, I can fry donuts in the back of the shop until the cows come home. Even the walls sweat back there.
The train rumbles through town, and when it’s gone, there’s that emptying, that blank quiet you get before snow.
Cynthia grabs my arm.
I look up quickly as Swanson, her hunting hat pulled low, her gray eyes on me, walks through the door of the donut shop.
I gulp, wondering if she’s here to tell Harry how far I rode in the storm. I try and shake Cynthia off me but she won’t let go.
“She shoots squirrels, Rosie. She’s got a wolf nose—do you know what wolves do to kids?” Cynthia squeezes tighter. “They tear them apart.”
Coffee cups crash inside me, teapots fly. “Cynthia, I said go away!”
Swanson holds a wicker basket and points to the donuts without looking at me. I glance back for Harry, because he doesn’t believe in free handouts, and I know that is what she’s expecting.
The customers sitting at the counter stop talking because you don’t see Swanson every day. Avery Taylor hoots and climbs out of the back booth and strolls over, his friends snickering behind him.
When Swanson refuses to look at him, he whispers, “What’s wrong, you don’t like me?”
Harry is in the back room and doesn’t see this or else he would send Avery Taylor flying out the door. No one else says a word. No one ever says anything to Avery Taylor because of the hockey team. Other than donuts and coffee, the antidote to all the grit flying around here is a fast game on cold ice.
My papa would send Avery Taylor packing. “Leave.” I point to the door.
He turns, astonished that I am daring to talk to him. He steps forward, ready to pick a fight.
“Get out!” I roar this time, and Harry stomps out from the back. The chairs stand straighter.
“You got mush for brains?” Harry’s voice is a low growl. “My granddaughter said to get out.”
My heart swells the teeniest bit as I watch Harry. You can see Avery Taylor deciding if he wants to take on my grandpa, but he doesn’t, and when he storms out, the bells on the door clap that he is gone. Swanson reaches into the deep pocket of her coat, pulls something out, and puts it on the counter, covering it with her hand.
One thing about Swanson, she never pays with cash. It’s always a few turnips from her garden or a bunch of pie apples from her orchard or a dozen chicken eggs from her barn. Cynthia groans. “It’s a knife.”
When I finally shake Cynthia off me, Swanson lifts her hand. An old silver bracelet with a missing jewel sits on the counter.
“Wow, can I have it?” Cynthia asks, edging closer.
After I get Swanson’s donuts packed, she nods to me and pushes the bracelet toward Cynthia, who jumps and grabs it. “Oh boy, I always wanted one of those,” she says (plus a million other happy things like that). Then Swanson walks out and the bells on the door skip behind her. The milkman turns to his buddies. “She’s got a big bear of a dog out there, bites my wheels, an absolute pain in the neck—reminds me of Gillespie’s old dog.”
I drop my cleaning cloth, I can tell you that.
—
Five minutes later I am so busy stabbing my paper clips into the padlock on our toolshed that I don’t hear Philippe walk up behind me.
“Thank you,” he says, startling me, making me jump. “No one ever helps me like you did at that hardware store.”
I push the clips in the lock. After I poke for about a million years, Philippe comes up closer. The heat rolls off his coat.
“Do you want me to pick that?” he asks.
I scowl at the thin boy with the hair the color of Bavarian cream. I scoff: “What do you know about locks?”
Very quietly, in a voice soft as feathers, he whispers, “My mama taught me how.”
The dusk whines with mosquitoes by the time Philippe gets the lock open and I fix my wobbling wheel and fly past the American Legion, where Harry is playing cards. An old wooden sawhorse props the front door open to let out the cigar smoke.
Harry deals, snap snap snap. He looks up for an instant. God’s bones.
I pedal faster. The flashlight bounces in the Blackbird’s wire basket and the kickstand is all peeved that we have to go anywhere at this time of night and it slips down and scrapes against the pavement and I have to knock some sense into it with my foot.
I turn my headlight on. My papa always told me it’s hard enough to ride during the day in our town because of all the grit on the road. I steer my tires through sand, feel the wind whip my face. I can hardly believe my mum would give my Augustus to someone like Swanson. I race onto the next road and soar down the next, pedaling furiously up the first hill for as long as I can before I have to stand. My back wheel slips. A car roars past and spits gravel at my goggles. Sharp bits chisel my face.
It’s chilly this time of night. My shoulders tell me I could surely use Philippe’s wool coat right about now and, by the way, why am I all alone and why didn’t I bring a friend and how come no one knows where I am?
By the time I get out to the east part of town, where Swanson lives, it is dark. There are no streetlights because no one else lives out here, and grit crackles under my wheels. Something scurries across the road up ahead. My headlight flickers and I shut it off. My brain hooks into all the things I shouldn’t be thinking about when I am pedaling along a dark road by myself. It’s like a movie in my head—Swanson shooting squirrels and skinning them, Swanson racing so fast she can catch you no matter how fast you run, and all the other things Cynthia and the kids at school say she does, like curdle milk just by looking at it. I yell at myself to stop, but my head keeps picturing that bone face and that wolf nose and it’s like trying not to look at a squashed turtle in the road. Already I have a headache.
No one knows where I am.
I turn onto the road leading to Swanson’s farm, wondering how I am going to get my Gloaty Gus away from there, kicking myself for forgetting to bring a rope to lead him home.
Three-quarters of the way up Swanson’s steep hill, I get off and push. I try the headlight again and it glows for a few seconds and then flicks off. A chilly gust pushes sand in my cheek.
No one knows where I am.
I climb back on my bike and start down the hill, dragging my sneakers, my heart hammering in my chest. The train rumbles along tracks that run through Swanson’s far fields, and it picks up speed as it goes, hurrying to towns without all the grit.
The Blackbird has the natural feeling it wants to give up the slow stuff and fly—who needs brakes anyway?—but I try and explain as we bump ahead in the dark how you need to be a little careful about rushing toward Swanson, even if the true-blue friend of your soul is waiting for you there.
I steer around the rocks in the road with big snaking swirls. My back wheel slides in the sand, and as I try to keep from slipping, Harry’s flashlight flies out of the basket and rolls into the gully on the side of the road.
I yell at myself for not holding tighter.
Harry will have a fit.
My plan is simple: I will take a few minutes to wrap my arms around my Gloaty Gus and sink my face in his warm clumpy dog fur and feel his heart beating, then we will rush off into the night together like they do in Harry’s old movies—something like that.
I hide the Blackbird in the pricker bushes at the bottom of Swanson’s driveway and step into the shadows.
Under the moon, the pitched roof of her little house points sharply to the stars. A jagged picket fence rushes across the front yard and a hanging bul
b casts a hazy light over her porch. Loud television voices scratch through the window screens. A barn stands off to the side, tall as a fire tower. Cynthia says it’s the place Swanson shoots squirrels. I told her that doesn’t make any sense—if she did shoot squirrels, she’d do it in the woods—but Cynthia said no, all the bad things happen in that barn, that’s what her mama says. It’s hard to believe anything Cynthia’s mother says about anything.
Swanson’s front door is open—only a wire screen stands between me and the inside. The wind picks up and I pull my shirt over my nose. A dozen bird feeders clack and spin like ghosts in the trees above me. My World Book says anytime you even think about ghosts, one of them is probably right beside you, nuzzling up to your ear.
I would do anything for my dog, even this.
My heart asks what am I waiting for; my brain says not so fast. No one knows where I am. I take a deep running breath and fly up the driveway, pounding the hard dirt, keeping to the shadows, my toes complaining the whole way about the stones drilling their way up through the holes in my sneakers. I stumble on a tree root, yelp, and plow into some thorny wild roses, falling, rolling, slicing my cheek. This is crazy—anyone would think this is crazy. If Harry knew, he would have a cow.
The television turns down—then footsteps and floor creaking. The screen door opens and Swanson steps out, standing only a few feet away from the spot where I am hiding. I am soaked with sweat, faint with heat, weak with the possibility of finding my dog. A small army of mosquitoes finds my ears as I hold my breath and try hard to think what to do next.
After a moment, the screen door slaps shut, the television turns up, and I crawl out from under the roses. I test the first porch step with my foot. When you are thin as an eel, you don’t make much noise. I climb up another step and the next until I reach the front door, then feel my way along the dim light, tiptoeing through the shadows.
A baseball game is on, seventh-inning stretch from the sound of it. Harry loves baseball and now I know all about batting averages and pitching speeds, which are the last things I ever wanted to know about.
I step around a metal milk box, scoot down beneath a window, and carefully pull myself up.
It is not easy to wake my very bad dog Augustus. When he would stretch out on my bed—with his head on my pillow, snuggled up next to me—you could put a hunk of roast beef (with gravy) in front of his nose and he wouldn’t stir. Sometimes a noise would get him to prick up an ear, but usually he slept through everything, except of course the smell of cat or the milkman roaring by. “That dog’s not a dog,” my papa would say. “He’s a bear. He’d sleep all winter if he could.”
This isn’t true. Still, if my Augustus is sleeping beside Swanson’s television, I am going to have a devil of a time waking him up.
Through the window, I can see Swanson sitting on the couch with a bowl of popcorn on her lap. There’s a fireplace with an old shotgun hanging on the mantel and an iron-black pail heaped with ashes, but there’s no dog. Could the milkman be so stupid he got it wrong? I swoop down, crawl to another window, and pop up to look in that one, then another and another.
Blood roars in my ears. Didn’t the milkman say just like Gillespie’s old dog? I pull myself back up for another look at Swanson.
This time she gasps. I jump back, knocking the milk box off the porch.
She can catch you no matter how fast you run.
I jump off the porch and mad-gallop across the grass, keeping to the shadows. Surely I can run fast enough to reach the Blackbird before Swanson catches me, but I plow into a bird feeder, sending it spinning, and have to throw myself on the ground as the beam from Swanson’s flashlight rolls over my back. I shiver from the smooth feel of it and try to cast off the parade of thoughts that marches through my mind—squirrels, curdled milk, dark creepy barns.
No one knows where I am.
I am up, off, crawling like a baby across the yard, half in the bushes, half out, my curls catching in the thorny roses. I try to give the barn a wide berth but Swanson is walking fast and there is protection in the deep shadows cast out by its bony frame.
When I get up close, I trip on a tree root branching across my path like a thick ropy vein and I knock my knee against it and cry out, howling like a dog before I catch myself.
And then—when I am not expecting anything but Swanson’s flashlight to sweep over me again—a loud booming bark rises from deep inside the barn: a glorious hallelujah that I would know anywhere.
My Gloaty Gus.
I freeze the way you do in statue tag. Swanson’s flashlight sweeps closer, waving back and forth over the dry stubble lawn, but I can’t seem to move my legs, I can’t move my legs, and my very bad dog Augustus barks again and again from inside the barn and my heart thumps out of my chest to go find him.
I roll into a spread of prickly juniper bushes, cuss at the new cuts on my cheeks. Swanson’s flashlight bounces over the grass, spreading light through the dark the way a lighthouse sends beams across the sea. My Gloaty Gus howls inside the barn.
I roll a little further and wedge against a rough tree trunk. Swanson’s footsteps crunch in the dry grass. A mosquito lands on my neck. I flick it away without making a sound. I hold my breath as Swanson comes closer, let it out slowly when I am near to fainting, then take in more air in tiny little puffs. Crickets sing. Swanson is so close I can hear her breathing. The beam from her flashlight bounces over my sneakers. I practice being dead.
I press myself into the ground, pretending I am falling all the way to China. After a very long while, Swanson turns back for the house. I suck in deep gasping breaths, and when the dizziness fades, I crawl out from under the bush and run for the barn.
A heavy padlock hangs from the doors. I wiggle it, pick it up, and try to open it, but it is snapped tight. Why would she bolt my dog in like this? I heave the padlock against the doors. This makes my very bad dog Augustus bark like an insane nut: Why aren’t you rescuing me?
The porch door squeaks open again and I rush to the shadows on the side of the barn, trying to think of a plan, while my dog wails inside. I flatten myself to the rough boards and edge around the back. It is very dark. I wish I had the flashlight. Augustus roars.
There’s a small window, higher than I can reach. I look around for something to stand on—a log, a chair, a milk bucket. But already it’s too late. Swanson is walking her slow shuffle across the lawn. I press my cheek against the wood siding as my very bad dog Augustus scratches and whines against the inside wall and our hearts nearly touch.
The dumb thing to do now would be to get caught; the smart thing to do would be to rush into the woods and come back with help. I hear my papa telling me, You need patience in this life, Rosie.
I tap at the wall that separates us, whispering to my Gloaty Gus that I will be back, and it breaks my heart to leave him in the barn where Cynthia says all the bad things happen, but as Swanson pulls at the big barn doors out front, I decide I have no choice but to fly into the woods.
When I finally pull my bike out of the prickers, I can see Swanson still sweeping her flashlight closer, closer.
I jump on the Blackbird and begin pedaling, but the chain is clanking and I have to climb off and fix it.
The moon is high as I finally fly toward home.
My dog’s barking fills my heart.
God’s bones, it is a miracle.
Main Street is empty when I rush the Blackbird into town. The American Legion is shut up and the donut shop is closed. Harry’s truck is gone.
I push my bike into the toolshed and run up the steps of our apartment building and unlock our door.
Inside, everything is dark, except for the light over the kitchen sink. The toilet runs, the pipes clang. My grandpa’s bedspread is Marines-tight, and as I look in, the numbers on the clock on his dresser flip to 11:15.
There’s a note from Harry on my bed:
OUT LOOKING FOR YOUR SORRY BUTT.
He wrote with such a heavy hand he ripped
the paper. My chest burns, my head pounds.
I jump under the sheets and pull the army blanket up, not bothering to find the Old Spice smell. The little green clock that Harry gave me ticks on my dresser. Harry used it when he was a boy and it’s as dented as my bike. I roll one way and then the other. My nerves twist.
It is almost midnight when Harry stomps up the stairs. He flicks on the light in the hall and stops at my door. I make my breathing deep and regular like I am sleeping. I snore softly, trying not to overdo it.
My grandpa stands in my doorway, his breathing wheezy and old. After a very long time, he says, “I never asked for this, Jack. Not any of it.” Then he walks away.
My clock ticks for another half hour before my nerves untangle and I doze off, and just before I do, I hear my papa in my head: Your grandpa came looking for you, didn’t he? He came looking for you just like I would have done.
On the terrible night I lose my papa, my feet ache from standing and I shift my weight to give one foot and then the other a rest.
The palm of my right hand cramps from pumping strawberry jelly and Bavarian cream. I remember that, and also how my papa pulls the donuts from the sizzling oil and hangs them like life jackets on a line. Then he lifts our favorite book from the shelf.
You don’t have to tell me twice, and you don’t have to tell Augustus, either.
I yank off my donut apron and hop on the corduroy cushions and wrap myself in the army blanket. Before my papa even opens the book, my Gloaty Gus is circling round and round until he finds just the right spot, which of course is half on top of me. I sniff the warm smell of clumpy dog fur and the woodsy smell of Old Spice. My papa turns over an empty bucket of lemon filling and sits on top, his apron dragging on the floor. He clears his throat and opens the cover of The World Book of Unbelievable and Spectacular Things.
Chasing Augustus Page 5