Did you know that you can’t lick your own elbow?
A coyote can hear a mouse under a foot of snow. True or false?
The easiest way to catch a snake is with a forked stick that you make yourself.
He holds up the page to show me the illustration of a Y-shaped branch.
—
It is the most delicious way to fall asleep, hearing my papa reading, his voice soft but deep, strong yet gentle. My eyes close as I snuggle deeper in the blanket and Augustus sighs. And that is the last thing I hear.
“What do you do when I am sleeping?” I ask my papa one day.
He chuckles. “Well, I make sure the coffeepot is ready for the morning. Then I carry you home.”
I remember that. I remember the feeling of him rolling me tighter in the army blanket and then of him lifting me. My papa is a tall man, so I am not too big to carry, even last year when I was ten. I hear his key slide into the lock, hear the bolt snap in place, feel him pull the door to make sure the lock on the donut shop holds. And I remember the feeling of him walking home and of me swaying softly with each step. I have never been on a fishing boat, but I think being rocked on the waves must feel like this.
—
On that terrible night it is drizzling softly. One or two drops leave little wet prints on my nose. I tuck my face deeper in the blanket and smell the Old Spice and drift asleep to the rising and falling of the waves.
It all happens so fast, my papa groaning and slipping, and me landing on the sidewalk, and Augustus pushing on my nose as he checks if I am alive. I push him away and sit up and wipe the drizzle from my eyes. In the moonlight I can see my papa lying on his side. He is very still.
“Papa?”
My mum flies in from California wearing a gray suit and thin heels.
She smells like patchouli perfume, which I hate particularly. Her skin is pale as china and her hair is pulled back in a tight bun. Not a single curl bounces.
All I want is to hide under the army blanket and wrap myself around Augustus, but my mum says no, I have to go to school. Doctors tell her my papa could be in the hospital for a very long time—maybe he will never come home—and she sorts through his affairs and arranges everything and says after a few weeks that we have no choice but to sell the house, but who would want a donut shop? After hearing my mum complain all this time, Harry tells her to shut her trap. He will run it.
“But you have a job. That’s ridiculous.”
He scowls. “If I don’t, we’ll lose our shirts.” Then he shoves his fishing hat onto his head and stomps off to say a few words to my papa, which will soon become a habit, morning and evening, every day, rain or shine. My grandpa retires from his job at the sandpits the next week.
A few days after that, on a day that turns out to be the second most horrible of my life, I walk in from school and our house has sold and my mum has given my Augustus away. All that is left is the sweet smell of clumpy dog fur on the couch.
“You did what?” I scream, looking behind the bookcase and in all the closets and under my bed. “How could you?”
Harry glares at my mum. “Why on earth did you do that, Deborah?”
“Because she can’t bring a dog to California, that’s why. I can’t stay here forever and I’m too busy for a kid and a dog. I put an ad in the paper. Someone came and took it. That’s all.”
“But I love him!” I shriek, running through the house—from the living room to the kitchen and then up the steep steps to my bedroom with the peaked roof, over and over, believing that somehow, if I look hard enough, I will find my Gloaty Gus.
I dive into the pillow on the couch. I howl and my heart breaks. Harry puts his hand on my shoulder. I feel his calluses through my T-shirt. “You know nothing about children, Deborah,” my grandpa says in that rock-hard voice of his that makes even the rug straighten itself. Then he walks out and slams the door behind him.
“And you do?” she yells after him. She runs in the bathroom, turns on the shower, and sobs. Later I hear her on the phone: “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Robert.” Then she hangs up.
—
The next morning before I am out of bed, Harry is back and my mum is talking.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she tells my grandpa. “I simply cannot bring a child to California.”
“You’re her mother, for God’s sake, Deborah.”
“I gave that up a long time ago, didn’t I?” Her voice is taut, sharp, like fishing line.
Except for my mum’s crying, there is silence. I hide under my army blanket and wait for my very bad dog Augustus to jump up and steal my fattest pillow—which of course he never does.
On the first night I live with Harry, he cooks creamed cod on toast for supper.
He eats cornflakes for breakfast, spoons mackerel out of a can for lunch.
He takes the long walk to see my papa at St. Camillus before he opens the donut shop, and again at night after he closes.
My headaches last all day.
The train clacks on its tracks and shakes me in my thin little bed, where I lie wrapped in my army blanket, desperately trying to trap the Old Spice smell, watching my window rattle, wondering if you can die from loneliness.
I believe that you can.
The only person more pig-stubborn than me is Harry.
This is why on the morning after I ride out to Swanson’s and fly back to our skinny apartment without my dog, I look out my window and see the Blackbird sticking up out of the dumpster next to the Shop Value across the street.
The handlebars hang over the edge and a vegetable bag hooked to the metal basket flaps each time a truck roars by.
My belly twists. The floor tilts. I grab my bedpost.
Carp-face.
Then Cynthia is rushing across the road to have herself a look. She scrambles up the side of the dumpster and reaches in. My knuckles spark. I don’t bother to brush my teeth.
There’s a note on the kitchen table:
WORK FOR MRS. SALVATORE THIS MORNING. MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY FOR YOUR TEACHER AT THREE.
Pea-brained ox. I make up a trillion other cusswords about Harry as I race down our stairs and out onto the street so fast the milk truck swerves around me and I reach the dumpster just as Cynthia flicks the headlight on. Buzzards fly inside me.
“Look, it’s your bike!” There’s a happy-puppy sound in her voice.
Hornets whirl.
“I know it’s my bike,” I growl, making my voice as gruff as Harry’s. “So get off.”
While I scramble up the side, Cynthia pulls the Blackbird’s front wheel and a terrible smell soars out of the dumpster. Flies dance fireworks over my head.
Cynthia gags. “There’s something dead in there,” she whimpers, backing off.
I ignore the scratching-little-feet sounds at the bottom of the dumpster. “Get out of here, Cynthia. This is my bike.”
“But I saw your grandpa throw it away. I saw him march over here and dump it in. So it’s mine, that’s what my mama says—finders, keepers.”
The idea of the Blackbird being ridden by someone like Cynthia makes my blood boil. I have no choice but to push her off the dumpster. When I do, she rolls and cries out, hugging her knees. “Why are you so mean all the time, Rosie?”
“I said leave my bike alone, Cynthia.” I pull the handlebars, which makes the Blackbird’s back wheel poke through a package of sausages. Someone tossed a few gallons of milk into the dumpster and there are bags of rotting lettuce and sacks of wet spinach and many jumbo packs of hamburger rolls. The flies circle and land. Maggots crawl across a package of chicken wings. Even my toes gag, and they are used to bad smells.
—
I yank on my bike and one of the pedals rips open a package of pork chops. I tug my shirt up over my nose. Cynthia retches.
We are interrupted by Swanson, who nearly hits us as she pulls into the parking lot. A moment later, she sideswipes Avery Taylor’s red Camaro.
Cynthia stops gaggi
ng. The jeep jerks forward, scraping even more. The motor revs, then sits quiet. You can see Swanson through the window, pulling her hunting hat down over her bone face. A little boy walking beside a full grocery cart grabs his mother’s hand.
I jump down from the dumpster because maybe my Gloaty Gus is in the jeep, but I see pretty quickly there is only Swanson. She grinds the motor and tries to pull out again, and there’s more crunching until she finally stops and slumps into the seat.
Cynthia whimpers as Avery Taylor races out of the store, waving and screaming, his produce apron flapping behind him. She grabs my arm. Her chewed nails touch my skin. “She’s going to cripple him in his sleep—she does that to people, you know.”
“Where do you even come up with things like that?” I push her away from where she is trying to hide in my shirt.
“From my mama—she knows things.”
I scoff. How can anyone even listen to a mother who doesn’t make her kid brush her hair, and what about all the scratching? Harry won’t even talk to Cynthia’s mother when she brings him tuna noodle casseroles because of what she said after my papa went to St. Camillus, about how sometimes you don’t recover from a stroke that bad. Harry believes in holding a grudge.
Folks pour out of the store, the bank, and Eddie’s Barbershop across the street, then the police come and the grit blows down from the sandpits and we have a storm on our hands. An officer makes Swanson get out of her jeep. She tries to pull her wool hat lower.
While everyone is watching Swanson, I pull the Blackbird the rest of the way out of the dumpster and race it across Main Street. Its front wheel squeaks louder than Mrs. Salvatore’s clothesline and the chain is hanging off.
I push my bike into the toolshed and run upstairs to take a bath.
I am surprised my grandpa is home.
God’s bones.
Harry has stretched the phone wire into his bedroom, and the door is shut. He doesn’t believe in cordless phones.
I tiptoe past just as his gravelly voice says, “If that’s what you really want, Deborah. I’m too old to fight you anymore.”
The earth tilts. I have to grab a chair.
—
Harry looks like he swallowed a camel when I barge in.
This time fire is falling from my fingers. He still has the phone in his hand.
Hornets whirl. “You want to get rid of me!”
“Where in the name of Pete did you come up with that?”
“I just heard you talking.”
“Well, you shouldn’t be sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong.” He slams the phone down.
I stamp my foot. “It is my business. And where’s my bike, anyway?”
I wait for the guilty look to come in his eyes, but only a mad bull is sitting there. He doesn’t explain himself. Instead, he sends me to work at Mrs. Salvatore’s or else.
I am between a rock and a hard place. If I make Harry too mad, he will move me to California before I can get my dog.
“But take a bath first,” my grandpa says. “You smell like a vulture.”
Barf-beetle.
I take one look at Mrs. Salvatore’s table with the mountain of peas that she wants me to shell, and believe me, I turn around and head out the way I came.
“You get back here, Rosalita, if you know what’s good for you.”
“It’s Rosie!” My eyes pop.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you any manners, young lady?” She pulls a chair out for me.
Lions gnash my bones.
“I promised your grandfather a full report of how much work you do.”
I think about that rock and that hard place and plop down beside Philippe, who is not shelling peas. He is drawing a map.
If my very bad dog Augustus was here, he’d jump on the table and try and eat all the peas and I’d have to fill my voice with spikes and say a million bad dogs to make him stay on the floor and then he’d look at me with his gooseberry eyes and I’d get to feeling sorry about yelling at him awful bad and I’d scratch him between the ears the way he likes and give him half the peas.
My head pounds. I could use an ice cube.
Philippe’s coat is buttoned to his chin, and his ears are very red. I’m going to need his help picking the padlock on Swanson’s barn, and I consider the coat. My toes are doubtful. Can you even ride a bike in a coat that big?
“My mum’s flying out,” I tell him. “She wants to get involved in my future.”
Philippe draws a wavy line for a river somewhere. “That sounds bad.”
“Tell me about it.”
I shell a few peas, then try and make my voice casual before I ask, “Do you have a bike?”
He shakes his head. I pick up a pea pod, slit it down the middle with my thumbnail, scrape four fat peas into my mouth, and try to come up with a plan.
Mrs. Salvatore carries a basket of towels into the kitchen, and I pause a moment between peas. “You know, Philippe’s legs are skinny as straws. He needs a bike. It would help him build muscle.”
I lift Philippe’s coat so his legs stick out. “See?” He whips it back over his bony knees. Some people don’t like to have their insides exposed, but I myself am used to it. Miss Holloway told so many people about my terrible year that I lost count. Even the lunch ladies know.
“We don’t have any bikes here. You think I have money for luxuries like that, Rosalita Gillespie?” Mrs. Salvatore folds a big bath towel in seconds—first the two long edges, then flip flip flip. In less than a minute she has a pile a dozen towels high.
She doesn’t answer me while she carries them into the bathroom, but when she comes back, she says, “You’re right, though. I was just telling Philippe that he needs to stop playing Monopoly all the time and get his skinny self outside. See how pale he is?”
She pinches his cheek and leaves a red print. I point out that they sell bikes at the thrift store—and they are cheap.
Mrs. Salvatore notices how few peas I have shelled. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—you eat them all, Rosie, you’ll be here till kingdom come.”
She is interrupted by Paulie, who flies in the kitchen, wailing, “Francesca threw my turtle in the toilet, and now he’s drowned.”
We all rush into the bathroom and Mrs. Salvatore pulls a spotted turtle from the toilet.
“Is he drowned?” Paulie wails.
Mrs. Salvatore rubs the turtle’s shell with her apron, looks deep into the space where its head is hiding, and after a moment puts it back into the little boy’s hands. “He’s fine.”
The girl watches from the door and says in a muffled voice, “He just wanted to swim.”
“Ralph doesn’t need to swim, Francesca. Ralph isn’t a pond turtle, he’s a house turtle.” Francesca covers her face with her hands and begins to sob. Mrs. Salvatore pulls her close. “Oh my goodness, what did I ever do to God to get so many naughty children?”
If I wasn’t in such a hurry to get Philippe to the thrift store to look for a bike, I might point out that maybe she shouldn’t take in every child who knocks on her door. We watch Paulie whisper softly to the turtle. Then Mrs. Salvatore goes to the kitchen and dumps another bag of peas on the table.
“Rosie, after you finish these peas, maybe—just maybe—I’ll let you take Philippe to the thrift store and see what they have for bikes.”
“But this will take forever.” I let a little whine fall out of my mouth.
“All right, then, no bike.”
I am frustrated like I used to be when my papa took me to church and the listening part took forever and I swung my legs back and forth and thumped the pew in front of me. “Stop being a bear,” he would say.
I take a deep breath. “I really hate shelling peas, Mrs. Salvatore.”
She looks from me to the pile on the table—so high there must be a million in there—and snorts. Then she reaches in an old salt container and pulls out twenty dollars. “What did I ever do to get a girl like you, Rosie? Now hurry, before I change my mind.”
<
br /> The bike outside the Church of Our Risen Lord thrift shop is red and shines brighter than the Blackbird ever did. I count twelve gears.
Philippe stands back, but I run my hands all over the glistening paint and test the brakes (they work) and switch the gears (they click like they get oiled with love twice a day). I push on the seat (no squeaking) and check the price tag.
I hoped Philippe would find a bike that looked like mine. I look around for a worse bike, but this is the only one.
It’s not fair that this weird boy could get a bike with brakes that work with just a touch of his hands, while I have to drag my feet for miles just to start slowing down. I breathe many times to get the bitter taste out of my mouth.
“Why would someone want to get rid of this bike?” I ask, walking around and around. “There’s got to be something wrong with it.”
I look the frame over, though, and it is solid and straight. The bike has a racing seat and black handgrips. The kickstand is solid as a fence post.
“Well, what do you think?”
Philippe shrugs and rolls his eyes.
“If you’re going to ride a bike this good, you should at least be a little excited about it.” I scoot down and examine the way the front wheel sits arrow-straight. This bike is good enough to go under a Christmas tree.
I am green.
I decide I better see how it rides. I climb on without asking and pedal out through the parking lot and onto Main Street, feeling the perfect ease of the gears, the lovely way it spins and turns, hearing the gravel spit and spray under the tires.
When I get back, Philippe has filled his pockets with cans. I get off the bike and hand it to him. “Try it.”
He slips a little further into his coat. He doesn’t take the bike. “Well?” I say, pushing it to him. “You should at least act a teeny bit grateful. Otherwise, you don’t deserve it.”
Philippe watches me for a moment, then takes the handlebars and climbs on. His lumpy coat gets caught on the seat; a can falls out of his pocket.
Chasing Augustus Page 6