“Phuc,” I whisper. He pauses, midsentence. I didn’t mean to interrupt him but I didn’t realize he was talking. The pencils have met and stopped, not in the middle but at some random spot that Phuc knows how to calculate. “Do you think my dad killed himself?”
Phuc swallows. “I don’t know.”
“Me neither. But I need to find out.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I asked Murphy to help me, but he won’t. And I can’t ask my mom, so…” I look away.
Phuc resets the pencils at point A and point B. “Why don’t you go read the police report?”
“Holy crap!”
“Justin,” Mr. Lindberg says. “Language.”
“Sorry! I never even thought of that,” I tell Phuc. “You’re a genius!”
He shrugs. “My neighbor’s a cop.”
I want to hug Phuc, but that’s not what we do, so I say, “Okay. Show me again.”
He smiles, and the pencils start to move.
* * *
At the top of the STATE OF MINNESOTA DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY TRAFFIC ACCIDENT REPORT, there’s a box labeled KILLED. It’s in between VEHICLES and INJURED. And on this report, in the KILLED box there is one tiny little mark. What do they call those? Tally marks. Just one vertical line. One man. “That’s him,” I whisper to no one. “That’s my dad.” His whole life came down to this. One teeny mark, the length of a ladybug, on a single sheet of paper.
The report keeps blurring like my brain is refusing to focus on it, trying to protect me. Murphy told me something like that from his psychology class. Sometimes our bodies and brains just shut down, he said, to keep out the pain. When it’s too much. But I keep blinking and forcing my eyes to adjust. I move my finger along the letters and numbers to keep them sharp, across Dad’s name and address and birthday. He was born on Thanksgiving, and every year after we said grace, Grandma would stand up and say, “Larry, I’m so thankful for you! You are my Thanksgiving blessing!” even though Thanksgiving changes every year and was hardly ever on his birthday. And Dad would look shy but with shiny eyes. The way Murphy looked when Phuc’s mom took us to KFC last week and Phuc and I made a big deal about waving to him at the fryer. (Sorry, Mom.)
There’s not much here, really. Not much to protect me from. Just the approximate speed and driver response. I’ve imagined so much worse that I feel let down. I thought there’d be some kind of answer. Like the way Dad looked or maybe that he called something out. It seems stupid now. I read the report again. Nothing. Not even the stuff I told the police at the hospital about how much Dad drank, so I don’t know why they asked me.
I stand up to leave, but then I see the list of witnesses. The first two I don’t know. Most people in Wicapi have ridden the Christmas trolley a billion times and don’t bother with it, but people come all the way from Minneapolis to ride it and drink crappy hot chocolate out of Styrofoam cups. They think it’s quaint. But not that day, I think, and laugh. (What would Murphy’s psychology teacher think about that?) But the third witness is Mrs. Florence Meyer. My third-grade teacher.
* * *
I don’t go home when Rodney lets me off the bus. Instead I walk down Water Street with the lake and train tracks behind me. Past the pet shop and hardware store and library and bakery and comic shop and all the places in between. Past the Wicapi Welcome store that sells postcards with loons and lady slippers and Babe the blue ox on them. Past the empty space where they put up the Christmas tree, to the very beginning of Water Street, where you can take a right to Prince of Peace Lutheran Church (nope) or take a left to Wicapi Elementary. I go left.
Mrs. Meyer is at her desk grading papers, and the four o’clock sun shines across her in glittery stripes like golden guitar strings, and for a second I just want to leave her there, but I can’t. I step into the room and the air is soft and the clock is ticking on the wall and it smells like pencils. The art project about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb is on the wall, and there are more lions than lambs. I chose a lion too, and I was super proud of how jagged I made his mane, but I might choose a lamb now. It’s crazy that the last time I was here, Dad was alive, waiting for me to come home off the bus. But maybe he still is, tucked in one of Phuc’s dimensions.
“Justin!” Mrs. Meyer says. “What a sweet surprise.” She gets up and comes around the desk and hugs me. She looks smaller and older, with her white hair and button-up sweater. But it’s only been a few years, so probably that’s not possible. “How are you?” she asks.
“I’m good.”
“Just here for a visit?”
“I, um, I came to talk to you, actually.” I think I see panic pass across her eyes, like a random black wave between a bunch of gray ones on the lake, but it’s so fast I could be wrong.
“Well, come on and sit. Can you still fit into these little desks?” She smiles, and we slide into two desks next to each other. She folds her hands on top of hers. I trace the pencil drawing on the top of mine with one finger. It’s a Ninja Turtle. Pretty good one too. “That’s Dylan’s desk,” Mrs. Meyer says. “He’s a lot like you. Quiet, and smart.” I’m silent. I know I have to ask, but I can’t find any words. Mrs. Meyer tips her head toward me. “What did you want to talk about?”
I take a deep breath. “I read the police report,” I tell her. “I saw your name, as a witness. The night my dad…” I’m looking down, talking to the Ninja Turtle. “And I’ve just been wondering. I just…need to know. What happened.”
Mrs. Meyer breathes in slow like she’s trying not to disturb the air around us. “Well, you read the report, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, I know what happened, basically, but the report doesn’t say…It doesn’t really say if it was an accident…or if he…like…stepped out…on the tracks.” I look up at her now and she stares back at me. She taps her folded hands on the desk. Once, twice.
“You know, Justin, I can’t say anything for sure.”
“Okay.”
“But it looked to me like your dad, well, he was just…lost in thought.”
“Lost in thought?”
“I’m sorry. I know this is terrible for you.”
“No, it’s okay. I asked, so.”
She nods. “He must have seen the trolley, of course, but his eyes were on the lake. Or on something…else. It happened so fast, really. I thought he would make it right across, and then he just…didn’t. Almost like he…”
“Froze,” I say.
She whispers, “Right.”
* * *
Jenni runs up behind me in the hall and punches my backpack. I flinch, thinking it’s Mitchell, and she laughs. “Jumpy much?” she asks.
I smile and shrug. “Yeah. I guess.”
“Thanks for the drawing.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t that good.”
She squishes up her face, which somehow makes her even cuter. “Are you kidding? It’s perfect. I hung it up in my room.”
“Really?” My heart is pounding in my throat, and please, God, don’t let her see it pulsing in my neck like in an alien movie. “Kyle helped.”
She tips her head. “Interesting. Soooo a bunch of us are gonna hang out at the beach on Saturday. You wanna come?”
“Isn’t it kind of cold for the beach?”
She smiles in a way that makes me feel like a second grader. “Not to swim. Just to hang out.”
“Oh. Like who?”
“I don’t know, just people. Whoever. I’ll be there!” She bats her eyelashes at me, then punches me in the shoulder.
What I say is: “Okay. Cool. I’ll try to come by.” What I mean is: No way. Just the thought of that makes me want to jump in a deep hole and pull all the dirt over my head or move permanently to Mexico City. Possibly both. And I don’t even speak Spanish.
Jenni shrugs. “Okay. Well, maybe I’
ll see you there.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
* * *
“Yes! Why did you get these?” There’s an entire plate of pizza rolls, just for me.
Mom’s sitting at the table with a beer, which she sips. “I have no idea. Moment of weakness.”
I bite into the first one. It’s been sitting for the perfect amount of time and doesn’t even burn my mouth. “Pepperoni. You’re the best mom ever.”
“Mmm.” She turns the beer can around and around, like she’s trying to see all sides of it at the same time. “Sergeant Swanson called me at work.”
I stop chewing. Then start again, so I don’t seem suspicious. “Oh yeah?” I say with my mouth full.
“I read him the riot act.”
I sit back in my chair. “Are you serious? But he was so cool.”
“Yeah. That’s the problem. Who lets a twelve-year-old read a police report without parental permission? I have to sign a form for you to walk in the Halloween parade, for Pete’s sake.”
“So what’d he say?” I ask.
“A bunch of nonsense about how you had a right to know. Are practically a man, fathers and sons, blah, blah, blah.”
I pop another pizza roll into my mouth, and the chemical pepperoni bursts on my tongue. I love pizza rolls. Even if Phuc says there’s rat hair in them. I don’t care. “I knew I liked that guy.”
“Yeah, well. He likes you too.”
“So why’d he call you, then?”
“The chief found out about it and made him.”
“Oh. He’s not in trouble, is he?”
Mom shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Good. Want one?” I hold out a pizza roll on a fork, and Mom looks at me like, Are you serious? I shrug. “More for me.” I stab another one and eat two at a time.
“Justin.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Ask you what?”
“About Dad. And the trolley.”
“How would you know anything? You weren’t there.”
“I know Dad.”
“Mom. Did anyone really know Dad?”
Mom stands up and tips her beer up to get the last sip. For a second I think she might crush the empty can on her forehead, like in Murphy’s favorite movie, Animal House, which came out the year I was born, so Murphy always says I’m the second-best thing about 1978.
“I did,” she says. “And you did too.” She kisses the top of my head.
* * *
My brilliant plan to pretend I thought it was the other Tuesday of the every-other-Tuesday—the one where I don’t see the social worker—has failed. I was sitting perfectly happy in geography (or as happy as you can be in a class where you still use colored pencils) when the intercom buzzed and the secretary said, “Justin Olson to the main office, please.” So instead of just being mysteriously missing from class, everybody watched me pack up my stuff and stare at my shoes until the door shut behind me.
At the office, the secretary’s on the phone and nods toward one of the chairs outside the social worker’s door. I sit down, and a few seconds later the social worker sticks her head out and says, “Do you mind waiting a few minutes today, Justin?” and disappears before I can remind her that she called me! She was holding one of the thirty-seven tissue boxes she keeps all over her office, which every other Tuesday I pretend are enemy soldiers. My only goal in that office is to not have to use one of those boxes, and so far so good.
The secretary gives me a butterscotch, and I watch the main office be the main office. A girl comes in to call her mom because she forgot her science poster for the second day in a row. She listens to her mom yell on the other end of the phone and twists the cord so tight around her finger that it turns purple. A skinny kid who used to ride my bus before they changed the routes comes in and stands at the counter without saying a word. “Forget your lunch money?” the secretary asks, and he nods, but they both know he didn’t have it to begin with. She hands him a dollar.
A girl comes out of the nurse’s office wearing sweatpants three sizes too big, with her head down so her hair hides her face. The secretary offers her a butterscotch and she takes it. “Thank you,” she whispers, and walks miserably back into the halls.
“Justin?” the social worker says, and I jump. “Sorry about that. You ready?” The boy who needed the tissue box and extra minutes walks past. He’s a hockey player, one of Brandon’s friends who saved me from Mitchell and the wall.
“Hey,” he says to me.
“Hey,” I say back, and follow the social worker into her office. Before the door closes, the secretary winks at me, and for some reason, it makes my heart burst like a firework.
* * *
I have so much stuff on the Dakota I needed one of those triple poster boards for my project instead of the regular kind! It cost $4.23, and that’s after Mom’s work discount. When I lay the board down on Benny H.’s table in the nonfiction section and unfold it, it hangs off the edges. “Wow,” he says. “Lot of space to fill.”
“Yeah. But I got tons of stuff.” I start pulling papers and pictures out of my folder and laying them down and moving them around and trimming them with my scissors. Benny H. watches.
“What do you think?” I ask when the board is full. I pull out my glue.
“Good, good. Maybe switch those two.” He points. “For the flow of the story.” I switch them. Then I start gluing and it takes forever, but Benny H. stays. He doesn’t say a word, but every time I glue something down, he pushes on the board to keep it still, which is a very simple thing to do, but every time he does it I want to cry, I’m so grateful.
When I finish, I’m just going to say it: it looks totally amazing. “What’s the title?” Benny H. asks.
“Oh. I don’t know. How ’bout ‘The History of Wicapi by Justin Olson’?”
Benny H. shrugs. “What about ‘Mni Sota Makoce’?”
“What’s that mean?”
“ ‘Land where the water is so clear it reflects the sky.’ ”
“Really?”
“Truly. Truth.”
“Why did they take off the ‘Makoce’ part? That’s the best part, about reflecting the sky.”
“Because they didn’t know any better. Or weren’t paying attention.” He looks out the window, where it’s starting to snow in tiny specks. “And people like simple things,” he adds.
“How do you spell it?” I ask. Benny H. doesn’t know, but the librarian calls some librarian friend somewhere and gets the spelling, which makes me picture the map of the United States crisscrossed not by a bunch of highways but by a network of librarians, all calling each other on the phone during critical moments like this one.
I write the title across the top, and at the very bottom right corner I add: Benny H. Wicapi, MN. 1991.
“What’s that?” Benny H. asks.
“I’m listing you. As a source.”
He tugs on the bottom of his beard. “A source. Yes. I like that.”
“I mean, you’re the one who told me about the Dakota in the first place, and you sat with me all this time.”
“Ha! Time.” Benny H. waves his hand like he’s swatting away time the way you swat mosquitoes. “I don’t live in time. Slave to time. Trapped in time. No. I live outside of time.”
* * *
“Wow. Nice,” Murphy says, looking at my poster, which is standing up in the kitchen like it’s a member of the family. “How are you getting it to school?”
I set my juice down. “Um. The bus?”
“Are you sure it won’t get wrecked?”
“Sorry. You’re Murphy, right?” I point at him. “ ’Cause you kind of sound like Mom.” Murphy rolls his eyes. “It won’t get wrecked. Rodney will let me keep it up front if I want.”
> “Who’s Rodney?”
“The bus driver? Duh.”
“Yeah, no. I’m driving you.”
“Sweet.”
Murphy carries my poster down to the car, walking slow like an old person. He tucks it into the backseat then shuts the car door slow too, like it’s a sleeping baby. “You sure you don’t want to put a seat belt on it?” I ask, but Murphy just smiles and shakes his head. He starts the engine.
We stop at the bakery even though we just had breakfast, and when I can’t decide between sugar and glazed, Murphy lets me get both, which Mom would never do. “That’s why brothers are the best,” I tell him, and shove him for fun, but he doesn’t shove me back.
We get to school and I tell Murphy to just let me out behind the buses, but he waits instead, his little beater car sputtering in between all the big yellow buses, until he can pull up right across from the front doors. I get out and get my poster out, gently, and lean back in before I shut the door. “Thanks for the ride. And the doughnuts.”
Murphy gives me a smile that says: I should be doing more for you.
But what else is there to do? He already taught himself how to change the oil in the car and make spaghetti sauce, and last week he even fixed the leak in the kitchen sink. And I can’t even get my circuit to work in science class. You would not believe how much I want that tiny little bulb to light up.
* * *
I know the class has to clap for everyone, but it sounds so good anyway. I told them everything. About the seven tribes of the Dakota shooting to Earth as seven stars from Orion’s belt and being born at the meeting of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. I told about the black bear ceremony and the feast for the first wild rice, and all the things they did in season: hunting, trading, spearing pike, maple sugar, trapping muskrats, blueberries, turnips, medicine plants, and back to wild rice.
Like Nothing Amazing Ever Happened Page 9