Lizzie!

by Maxine Kumin

  I had to wait for them to bring out a wheelchair to wheel me into the ER and then they took me into a cubicle with just curtains, no walls or doors, and helped me take off my grotty clothes, which was definitely okay with me. I never wanted to see those shorts and T-shirt again. A nurse helped me put on a johnny that tied behind my back. After that I had to lie on a bed there and just wait. I could see shapes of nurses and doctors going by outside the curtain and caught snatches of conversation, a lot of it about who was meeting who for lunch in the cafeteria. I worried and worried about Digger, who could be alive or dead, and maybe he was dead this minute and they weren’t telling me, and then a hand reached up and swished the curtain open and a voice said, “Lizzie?” It was Josh’s dad, Dr. William Blaine.

  “I know you’re worried about Chief Martinez, so let me tell you first that yes, he did have another heart attack, but it was a small one. He was lucky you were able to call 911 right away and we were able to medicate him promptly. We’ll keep him here under observation for a few days and then he should be good to go, as we say.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “Sure, just as soon as I check you out.”

  He listened to my heart, and then to my lungs while I took deep breaths and then looked in my mouth and down my throat and felt around behind my ears and down my neck. He looked at the scrapes on my legs from being hauled around and said they weren’t serious—what he recommended was a long hot soak in bubble bath. Exotically scented bubble bath is what he actually said, which just proves that people are full of surprises.

  Then my mom was there hugging me and crying, and then I cried too, and Dr. Will said, “I’ll just fill out the necessary paperwork for discharge and leave you two to finish up.” He said it in a nice sympathetic tone, as if it was okay to cry together, whereas he could have been sarcastic, which made me like him even better.

  I had to put the same dirty clothes back on because Mom was too rattled to think to bring me clean ones when she heard where I had been found, but that was okay. They let us go up to the ICU and just peek in at Digger. Teresa was sitting in a chair on the far side of the bed and Digger was hooked up to a whole bunch of buzzing monitors that I suddenly remembered from after my accident. But he lifted his free hand and blew me a kiss. Teresa came out in the hall to speak to us. Mom said how sorry she was and I said how scared I was that I had caused it. Teresa said that although it was terrible that Digger had a second heart attack, “Think how good it was that it happened while Lizzie was there with him and she called for help right away.”

  “But Teresa, I think it was all my fault from his lifting those boxes and coming down the ladder and then carrying me up it piggyback.”

  Teresa shook her head. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. We knew his arteries were clogged to begin with, and he kept sneaking jelly doughnuts and apple pie from the 7-Eleven. The cardiologist is going to do an angioplasty and we’re hoping he can put in two stents where the blockage is worst.”

  Angioplasty. Stents! My head was spinning from this new language.

  CHAPTER 17

  Well, in spite of everything that happened to me I didn’t get to miss a single day of school because the abduction—from ab, away, and dutere to lead—a much better word than kidnapping—took place on a Saturday night. I can’t believe I was home in my own house by noon on Sunday. Mom wanted me to take it easy the rest of the day so I propped myself up in bed and opened Pride and Prejudice again, thinking it would put me to sleep. It did. When I woke up the sun was going down and Jane Austen was lying on the floor open to chapter ten where Elizabeth refuses to dance with Darcy.

  I won’t even list the reporters for newspapers and TV stations who showed up that afternoon. Mom had a hard time getting rid of them, but she did sort of organize them so I wouldn’t have to tell the story over and over. I didn’t pose for a single picture but a swarm of photographers got me anyway. Brianna came to help control what she called the paparazzi, who are those sneaky photographers who hang around movie stars like pigeons, always moving just far enough away so you can’t catch them. But the story of my abduction and rescue wasn’t just local, it was national news! It made my flesh creep to see the replay of Mom and me being interviewed on every channel. And then a thousand pictures of Julio’s shack, but they couldn’t get inside it to snap the trapdoor because there was a cop there around the clock. You can be sure that if they could have opened it up to see the root cellar, they would have. Well, you can imagine, the emails back and forth with Trippy just flying through outer space. Now I had a real-life drama to tell her about. That’s how they say it on TV. She had already read about the abduction on the Clarion & Bugle’s web page. I told her it was weird being famous all of a sudden. I didn’t think I liked it much.

  “You poor goonie!!! I would have died down there in that root cellar!!! But the famous part ought to be fun. I wish I could be down there with you and your mom and all.”

  I promised to keep her up-to-date every day from now on. Trippy was lobbying for another trip to Florida for her graduation from eighth grade. Her mother said the weather was awful in Florida in the summer and no one in their right mind would want to go there but if that was what she wanted… . Did Lizzie think her mother would let her come again?

  “Of course she is welcome,” Mom said. “It’s important to hold on to old friends.”

  And speaking of old friends, a big surprise came in the snail mail. A letter from Tony! His dad had come home from the broadcast studio in Madison with the news right off the wire from the AP. That stands for the Associated Press. Tony said the story of my abduction was sick, really sick. He said it was boss, a hundred times bigger than the little kid stuff we had done like tying our sleds to his dad’s car bumper, bigger than trying to sniff homemade snuff. It made him feel way boss to be my old friend. And he hadn’t forgotten those two candy bars. He wrote to me snail mail, just addressed to Woodvale, FL, with its zip code, because he didn’t have my email but here was his. I emailed him a quick note saying more to come.

  This was what being famous felt like and except for hearing from Tony, I hated it. The whole next week I cringed every time some kid at school would tell me she read the whole story in the South Florida Gazette or something. I just wanted to be normal again, or as normal as an eleven-and-a-half-year-old girl in a wheelchair who is graduating from eighth grade in couple of months can be.

  Josh was the only one who didn’t badger me with questions. In fact he didn’t ask a single one. But I asked him to ask his dad when Digger would get out of the hospital and he wheeled up to me the next day and said, “Good news.”

  We were just on our way to the cafeteria for lunch. “The angioplasty was a piece of cake according to the cardio.” (That’s med-speak for cardiologist.) “They put in two stents—you know, those little mesh things that hold the arteries open—and got him up that afternoon. He only has to stay overnight and then they’ll discharge him.”

  “So then he won’t just have another heart attack?”

  “Nope. He should be good to go, but he has to show up three times a week for six weeks for cardio rehab.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like a class for people who’ve had heart attacks and are now recovered but they have to work out on exercise bikes to get their heart rate up and learn how to eat right and stuff like that.”

  “Poor Digger! No more jelly doughnuts.”

  “No, but he got his life back.”

  Speaking of hearts, mine was just about broken by Josh’s big news. He’s been accepted by Phillips Andover Academy, which is a fancy prep school way up in Massachusetts. Josh claims it isn’t fancy at all and that they have a very diverse student body which Graver doesn’t have—though we do have two Indians from India in our school and one of them, Vijay in the class below us, is so smart it’s scary. “If you do well at a prep school like Andover your chances of getting into a really first-rate college are very good,” Josh said.

&nbs
p; “Because you want to be a doctor, like your dad?”

  “Well, that’s a long way off. But when I get there I want to specialize in CP and other things like it. You can specialize in neurology and study what shuts down in the brain and try to figure out why.”

  I didn’t say anything but I was thinking how much I’d miss him.

  “But we have the whole summer to hang out,” he said as we rolled through the cafeteria line, choosing chicken fingers and chili.

  “I’m going to stay at Graver right through high school because I need to stay in a warm climate.”

  Josh found the right thing to say. “There’re lots of top-notch colleges in the South.”

  “Trippy is coming down for two weeks and right after we graduate. Mom is going to drive us all the way to the Georgia primate refuge where the tamarins are. She said we could spend a day there to watch how they’re being rehabilitated. I wish you could come, Josh.”

  “I bet I could talk Mom into it.” He reached his plate out for a chicken finger. “You want one of these? They’re full of trans fat.”

  “Oh, sweet. I mean about coming to Georgia. And yuck, no. I’ll take the chili.”

  “And what about the bear cubs? Do you know what happened to them?” I hadn’t thought about Buddy and Blossom since the abduction what with everything else that was going on.

  “Brianna is coming over for supper tonight and I’m sure she’ll have some news.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Brianna, who says she is half German and half Polish, was at our stove making something she rolled up in cabbage leaves for supper. Tonight, she said, was her treat. I was sure I would hate it because just thinking about cabbage makes me want to throw up. You notice I didn’t say puke because Mom says it is an offensive term. And barf is no better. But actually the gefüllter krautkopf—that’s what Brianna calls it and I got her to write it down for me—was pretty good. It had hamburger and onions and a lot of chopped-up tomatoes in it so you could hardly taste the cabbage. I love the sound of krautkopf, though. It’s German for cabbagehead and Brianna says it’s an insult if you call somebody that. I figured it might come in handy.

  Then I asked Brianna about Buddy and Blossom. We hadn’t talked about them for so long that I was afraid they had been taken away and “disposed of,” the way the police disposed of the dead body. After all, they couldn’t just leave it around to rot. Digger said it was in a morgue, which is like a big walk-in freezer, until someone could identify it. Maybe that was what had happened to the cubs.

  But Brianna said that the authorities had decided the cubs were too dependent on human contact to be good choices for getting reintroduced into the wild. “So,” Brianna said, “they’re going to this zoo in Virginia. It isn’t a zoo with cages. The bears live in an artificial forest with a moat dug around to keep them in.”

  Mom said, “Well, that sounds like a good compromise. Because you know they could have starved to death out alone in the woods. They probably couldn’t have fought off other bears for food. They’ve never hibernated, so they might not have known what to do in a northern winter.”

  I had to agree. Still, I felt very sad the rest of the evening.

  But the next morning Digger came bursting in, full of good cheer. I was just beginning on my usual cornflakes and banana slices, so I asked him had he had any breakfast.

  “No, mi amor, not yet but yes, I will join you.”

  Then Mom appeared. She had already put on the coffee. Digger pulled up a chair and accepted a mug full. “No, no cream thank you. And no sugar. I am a new man. But I will help myself to a little of Lizzie’s milk, yes?”

  And then he started telling us that he had interviewed Julio last evening and the things Julio had told him would make your hair stand up on end.

  “But where is he?” I asked. “You said he was in protective custody.”

  “He is staying with Alton Hammersmith,” Digger said firmly.

  “Mr. Hammersmith? The Hammer? Our algebra teacher?”

  “That is correct. ‘The Hammer,’ as you call him, is a friend of mine from our Thursday night poker game. When I asked him if he could accommodate a houseguest for a while, he said he’d be happy to.”

  “I didn’t know you played poker!”

  Digger went on. “Julio saw us all on television and he knew at once who the murdered man was.”

  Mom said, “Does this mean he will testify?

  “He will. But first we must settle the probation issue. I will ask that he be permitted to stay with Alton and his wife Martha until his eighteenth birthday. He will be state’s witness and even though there are no charges against him, I think it would be useful to have a good lawyer by his side.”

  The Scarecrow! I thought.

  “My friend Rob,” Mom said. “This is exactly his kind of case.” And she took out her cell phone and pressed a number.

  I thought, Wow! He’s at the top of her list.

  Mom took the phone into the other room. In a couple of minutes she came back with it and handed it to Digger. “I think you two better work out a plan.”

  Digger said, “I hate these little bitty things, that’s why I never use mine. Where do I put my mouth?”

  And Mom said, “Just speak normally. He’ll hear you.”

  So it was a wrap, as they say on TV. The Scarecrow would drive up from Miami to Woodvale tonight and he and Digger would accompany their charge to the police station together.

  “Where is the Scarecrow going to stay?” I asked.

  “Right here,” Mom said. “And that’s enough conversation out of you, young lady. Hurry up or you’re going to be late to school.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The next day Digger said I could come with him after school to see Julio. “I want you to hear what he has to say about the time he spent as his uncle’s slave to see if there is any information you can corroborate.”

  Mom came too. We had to wait about half an hour for Mr. Hammersmith because he never left Graver until the last student had departed. That was protocol, a word I understood even better now.

  This gave us time to play with some of the foster dogs Alton Hammersmith and his wife Martha were caring for. Mr. Hammersmith is tall and thin. Mrs. Hammersmith is short and plump with a face so perfect it reminded me of my special doll from when I was a child. She explained that they always had four dogs at a time, dogs that were sent to them by the SPCA to care for and socialize so they could be adopted. You can imagine that my view of The Hammer was changing.

  One of the dogs was all white with a big bushy tail. She was very friendly and rolled over on her back to have her stomach scratched. Another was big and gawky and very sweet. One little mutt looked like she had been put together from other animals. She had an anteater nose and bat ears and she begged to come sit in my lap. The fourth one went and hid under the table as soon as we came in. I thought maybe it was my wheelchair that freaked him out but Mrs. Hammersmith said no.

  “He’s still very fearful. He was a street dog and had to survive eating scraps out of people’s garbage until the volunteers caught him. Then he had to be neutered and have all his shots. So it’s going to take a while for him to accept us.”

  She said this very cheerfully, as if this had happened lots of times and the dogs all got over their fears and turned into the kind you would want to take home.

  Which of course I did. But Mom said firmly that we were not yet ready for a dog. Even Digger, who said he was not much of a dog person, said he thought maybe he and Teresa should begin to consider taking in a needy one.

  Julio was different from the sort of withdrawn guy he had been when Digger and I found him at the warehouse. He said hello and smiled and soon he was lying on the floor letting two dogs lick his face at once. I could hardly take it all in. First The Hammer turns out to be a dog lover and next the fearful Julio, who made us promise we’d never seen him before the day Trippy and I first met him, turns into a … a normal. I sort of realized how scared he must have b
een on our drive back to Woodvale, not knowing where Digger was taking him, not knowing if this protective custody arrangement was for real or if it was a setup and the gang would find him there. He was so relaxed and happy that it was hard to put together this Julio with the one we’d met before.

  Back then, he mostly spoke only Spanish. In fact, he didn’t speak English at all during the whole year he was Jeb Blanco’s slave—Blanco and his accomplices only spoke Spanish to him. But The Hammer and his wife didn’t speak a word of Spanish, so living with them was life being in a permanent English class.

  Mrs. Hammersmith said, “Julio’s been an enormous help with the dogs. He’s taken over the feeding and much of the walking. He’s ready for more as soon as this batch is ready to go.”

  “Isn’t it hard, letting them go when you’ve gotten … like really attached to them?”

  “Yes, in a way it is. But we know they’re going to good permanent homes. And there are so many others that need foster care. Not just in Florida, all across the country.”

  “It’s worse here in the South,” Julio said. “People don’t spay and neuter their dogs, so they breed more and more and they end up roaming in a pack on the street.” I thought of Henry drowning his cat’s kittens until we took her to be spayed. And how Julio had lived on the street too.

  Just then, Mr. Hammersmith arrived. After he kissed Martha and tousled a couple of the dogs, he said, “I think we need some refreshments.”

  You would think the wife would disappear into the kitchen and come back with milk and cookies, but oh no. The Hammer himself did the honors and it was kumquats and oatmeal cookies he had baked from a special recipe.