Driftwood

by Valerie Sherrard

  “Little Spear should have known he could never trust a coyote,” Makayla said suddenly. She sounded cross about it, which almost made me laugh.

  “The coyote was pretending to be his friend,” I reminded her. “Little Spear got tricked into believing it.”

  “Are there any coyotes around here?” Mackenzie asked Theo.

  “That kind of coyote is everywhere,” Theo told her. “But they don’t always look like coyotes. Sometimes they’re in disguise.”

  “As what?” I said.

  “Wolves in sheep’s clothing,” Theo said.

  “You’re talking about people, aren’t you?” Makayla asked. Theo nodded.

  “I know someone like that,” I said. The image of Billy’s traitorous face rose in my mind. “My friend was supposed to come here with me, but he backed out at the last minute.”

  “He turned on you, just like the coyote did to Little Spear!” Makayla said.

  “Yeah, but he won’t fool me again,” I told them. “Because we’re not friends anymore.”

  “He showed his true colours,” Mackenzie declared. “Right, Theo?”

  “A false friend always reveals himself in the end,” Theo said. At the same time, he pulled his wallet from his pocket. Opening it, he drew out a five dollar bill and held it toward us.

  “Goodness, no!” Mackenzie said.

  “Isn’t this a five?” Theo asked.

  “No. I mean, yes, it is a five. But we don’t want it,” Makayla said.

  “The story was so good!” Mackenzie said. “We don’t want money, too. Right, Adam?”

  “Right,” I agreed. I suddenly felt foolish for ever taking money from him.

  “Well, if you aren’t the best kids I ever heard tell of!” Theo said. He smiled and tucked the money back into his wallet. Then he asked, “Would any of you care for a snack? I have some frogs here.”

  “Yes, please!” the twins said.

  I said I’d have one but it worried me, not knowing if the frog Theo was going to serve us was a chocolate and coconut cookie like my mom makes, or if it might be something that involved an actual frog, since Theo’s snacks aren’t always what you’re expecting. It was a relief to see him return with a plate of the kind I was used to.

  “These are great; did you make them?” Makayla asked after she’d swallowed a bite and was about to take a second.

  “Oh, no. My daughter comes over a couple times a week,” he said. “She bakes and cooks and cleans. Does more than she should, but that will end soon.”

  “Why? Is she moving away?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Nope, but I won’t need her as much once I can see again,” he told her.

  “You’re going to be able to see again?” I said. Really, I nearly hollered it. I had no idea how Theo could sit there as calm as could be with news that exciting.

  “That’s right,” Theo said, looking oddly gloomy. “The doctor is going to operate and remove the cataracts.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Early in August,” Theo said. He didn’t look pleased, the way you’d expect from someone who was going to get his sight back.

  “Are you nervous?” Makayla asked.

  “Well, now, I feel foolish to admit it but the truth is, I’m scared silly. I have what they call a phobia about hospitals and operations and such. That’s one of the reasons I’ve held off so long.”

  Mackenzie moved closer and took hold of Theo’s bony old hand with both of hers. She looked up into his face.

  “Here,” she said, “I’m really brave, so I’m giving you some of my courage.” Theo’s lip trembled and for the first time since he’d started talking about it, he managed a smile.

  A bit later, on our way back to the cabins, Makayla suddenly stopped walking and turned to us. “Did you ever think about what it would be like to be blind?” she asked.

  Before Mackenzie or I could answer, she clapped her hands over her eyes. “Cover your eyes!” she commanded.

  “Can’t we just close them?” I asked. That made her take her hands away from hers and look at me like she couldn’t quite believe my nerve.

  “You might open them by mistake,” she said. “Blinking is automatic you know—like breathing.”

  “That’s true,” Mackenzie said. “Did you know that you blink your eyes about eleven thousand times a day?”

  Of course I didn’t know that. I never knew any of the things the twins knew. They went around blasting out bits of trivia like miniature game-show hosts.

  “Never mind that,” Makayla said impatiently. “Just do what I said.”

  I shut my eyes and obediently put my hands over them. We all stood very still for a few minutes, then Makayla spoke again.

  “It’s so dark,” she said.

  “Do you think that’s what it’s like for Theo?” Mackenzie asked. Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. I sensed movement from the girls so I peeked out through a couple of fingers. They’d both dropped their hands and opened their eyes, so I did the same. They were staring at me, waiting for me to explain.

  “It’s like the world is blurry and fuzzy. He sort of sees shapes but he can’t tell what anything is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me,” I said, enjoying the moment. It felt good to be the one who knew something they didn’t know. For a change. “He said he already had poor vision before, and when he got cataracts they made it worse and worse.”

  “I’m glad,” Mackenzie said. “I mean, I’m glad it’s not all dark for him all the time. Of course I’m not glad that he has cataracts.”

  I noticed there was a little dark smudge on her nose. Probably chocolate from the frog she ate at Theo’s place. I’m not sure why, but there was something really cute about it. Then she noticed me looking.

  “What are you staring at?”

  “Nothing.” I felt my neck and cheeks get hot, which somehow made me blurt, “Your face is dirty.”

  “Who cares, weirdo?” she said. “Let’s go.”

  When we got back to the field across from our cabins, my mother was there, standing motionless behind her easel. Even her hand, holding a paintbrush, was paused in the air. It looked like she’d been frozen in place—like her battery had run out.

  The twins hurried over to her, which seemed to break the spell. Mom’s hand dropped to her side and she burst into a huge smile.

  “Hello, girls!” she said.

  “I’m here too, Mom,” I grumbled.

  “I know you are, sweetie,” she said.

  “Come see this, sweetie,” Makayla said. She and Mackenzie giggled like that was hilarious.

  I tried not to react because I knew that would only encourage them. That was easy to do because when I reached the painting, I found myself gaping at the canvas in front of me.

  Mom had been painting the bay that stretched out from where we were standing, and it was like nothing she’d ever done before. I could feel the warmth of the sun glinting on the water’s surface, the cold of its depths below. It almost seemed as if it was breathing—swollen with a life pulse I’d never seen in her paintings of our famous bridge over the Saint John River.

  When I glanced at the girls, I could see that they were as mesmerized as I was. That didn’t stop Makayla from turning to me with a big grin and saying, “Pretty amazing isn’t it, sweetie?”

  “It’s awesome, Mom,” I said, ignoring Makayla. “Can we keep it?”

  I’d never have opened my mouth if I’d known saying that was going to make Mom burst into tears and start mauling me right out in an open field, that’s for sure. She hugged me and cried and kept saying I’d never asked anything like that before and I had no idea what it meant to her. Even the girls, who think Mom is great, looked a bit embarrassed at how she was going on.

  Once she got herself under control, Mom said she thought she’d wrap it up for the day. She said other things too, about the world being fresh and new and her heart singing and st
uff like that. I pretty much tuned it out.

  “We can help you take your stuff back,” Mackenzie said when Mom had finally finished her speech.

  “Maybe the easel,” Mom said. “I’ll carry the painting, and that nice young man is coming to help me with the supply box. He carried it here for me earlier.”

  “What nice young man?” I asked.

  “That one,” Mom said, nodding toward a figure heading our way from the campground.

  I blinked and stared but I still didn’t quite believe what I was seeing.

  It was Nevin.

  The twins seemed just as surprised as I was when Nevin showed up to carry Mom’s supply box back to our cabin. Even stranger was the way he stood there and studied the painting we’d all been admiring. I watched his eyes move over it, taking in every detail.

  He didn’t say anything when he was finished, he just looked at Mom and nodded. She smiled and said, “I have some canvases with me that I won’t be needing. If you’re interested, you can come along tomorrow and use one.”

  “Maybe,” he said. He didn’t sound too interested.

  It wasn’t until I was eating supper later that I thought about Theo again.

  “Hey,” I said, “Guess what I found out from Theo today! He’s having an operation to fix his eyes in a few weeks. He’ll be able to see again.”

  “Boy, oh boy, that’s just wonderful!” Dad said.

  Mom got wet-eyed and clasped her hands in front of her. “It’s the summer for miracles,” she said.

  ...

  There were no miracles the next day, that’s for sure. I woke up feeling sick to my stomach and hardly made it to the bathroom in time. Any hope that it was a one-time thing disappeared with a repeat performance about fifteen minutes later, which was when Mom sent me back to bed.

  “It’s a bug—probably one of those twenty-four hour viruses,” she said. “Best thing to do is rest and wait it out.”

  Mom is pretty practical when any of us are sick. She doesn’t believe in fussing over a person just because their nose is running or they’re barfing or whatever. I didn’t even know that some mothers did things differently until one time when Billy stayed at our place for a weekend. His folks were away, so he had no choice but to stay put when he came down with some sort of flu. First thing he did was start complaining.

  “Your mom is mean,” he moaned.

  I didn’t like him saying that—she is my mom after all—but I’d heard her tell my father he had an airborne virus and I didn’t want to get too close to his air to defend her. “What do you mean by that?” I asked from across the room.

  “Here I am, sick as a dog, and what’s your mom doing? Nothing!” The outrage of it made tears start up in his eyes as his head sank back onto the pillow. His mutt, Bailey, lay beside him, face flat on the floor, looking mournfully at the ceiling and thumping his tail in a slow rhythm against the side of the bed. It was hard to say which one of them looked sadder.

  “What’s my mom supposed to do?” I asked.

  “Sit by me and wipe my face with a cool facecloth, for starters,” he said. “I could have a fever for all she knows. She never even checked my temperature or nothing.”

  “She put her hand on your forehead,” I reminded him. “That’s how my mom checks for a fever.”

  “That’s not very scientific,” Billy said. “My mom uses a thermometer. And she brings me ice chips and soup and ginger ale with the fizz stirred out of it.”

  “My mom will get you an extra blanket if you need it,” I said.

  “Does she warm it up in the dryer first?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, does she know how to fluff a pillow?”

  “I’m not real sure,” I said.

  Billy moaned again. “This is awful,” he said. “Here I am, sicker than two dogs, and I have to make do with someone else’s mother who doesn’t even know how to fluff a pillow.”

  By the end of that weekend, the list of things Billy said his mom did for him when he was sick was so long it would have taken a team of moms working around the clock to keep up with it all.

  Like I already said, my mom isn’t like that, so I was pretty much left on my own that day. Not that she ignored me completely. She popped her head into my room a few times while I lay there feeling wretched.

  “How you doing, sport?” she asked. “You’ll be right as rain in no time.” After lunch she told me she’d be in the field, painting.

  “Your dad is here if you need anything.”

  It’s true that Dad was around most of the day but he was concentrating on his work, as usual. Any time I emerged from my room he’d look startled—like he hadn’t realized I was home—and then make a weird face that I think was supposed to be sympathetic.

  The afternoon was a misery of nausea, sweating—more from the sweltering room than anything else—and damp, tangled sheets. I slept through suppertime, which was fine with me, and woke up later in the evening feeling a little better.

  I moved around a bit, looking for a cooler spot in the bed, and saw that my iPod was next to me on the nightstand. When I powered it on there was a new message from Billy, which was kind of funny since I’d been thinking about him earlier. I figured he was trying to patch things up again but when I read it I got a bit of a shock.

  Stop being such a jerk.

  That sure made me mad. I made up my mind that I was definitely sticking to what I’d said the day he backed out on the trip. Most times when we fight and I say I’m not being friends anymore, I end up changing my mind after a few days, or sometimes even weeks. Longest was almost a month. Not this time. There are plenty of other guys I could hang around with.

  I dozed off again a bit later and when I woke up the next morning I felt a lot better. It’s amazing, how awful you can feel one day, and the next thing you know it’s like there was never a thing wrong with you.

  I made my way to the twins’ cabin, glad to be outside and looking forward to a day doing something fun.

  “Looking for the girls, are you?” their dad asked when he opened the door to my knock. His face was pale and it hit me that this was the first time I’d seen him without a smile. “I’m afraid they won’t be out today, Adam. We’re all sick—have been all night.”

  I said I’d had the same thing the day before and tried to cheer him with the news that it shouldn’t last long, but I could see he wasn’t in the mood to stand around chatting. I left and ambled down to the shore but after I’d kicked around a bit I was bored. I went back to our cabin.

  Mom was washing dishes, singing to herself, while dad tapped away at his laptop. He glanced up when he heard the screen door clatter behind me.

  “Something wrong?”

  “The twins are sick.”

  “You’ve really taken to them, haven’t you?” he said with a big grin.

  “There’s no one else to hang around with.” My face felt flushed all of a sudden. I hoped I wasn’t getting sick again.

  “You still collecting driftwood for Theo?” Dad asked. When I said I was, he closed his laptop, stood up, stretched, and picked up the car keys.

  “What say we head into town, grab lunch somewhere, and then check out a stretch of shore you haven’t already searched?”

  “Sure!”

  “June? Are you in?”

  Mom tilted her head to the side and scrunched her mouth like she was thinking it over. She does that so you can see she’s trying to make up her mind, but I’m pretty sure it’s an act because she ends up saying, “no,” every time she does that.

  “You know what—I think I’ll pass this time,” she said. “You boys go ahead.”

  Just as I thought.

  “It’s great to see your mom happy with her work again, isn’t it?” Dad said on the drive into town.

  “Sure.”

  “Artists are sensitive in different ways from regular folk,” he said. “Not in a bad way, mind you. It’s just part of who they are.”

&nbs
p; “Was there a famous artist who cut off his ear once?” I asked, remembering something the twins had told me.

  “That was van Gogh,” Dad said. He glanced at me and gave my knee a quick slap. “But don’t worry, your mother is too fond of her earrings to ever do that.”

  “Why did van Gogh do it?”

  “He went off his head, I imagine,” Dad said.

  “Because he was sensitive?”

  “No, no—that’s not what I meant. With van Gogh,

  it might have been from lead in the paint or something. I don’t seem to know much about it really, but it’s nothing to worry about. With your mother, I mean.”

  A couple of minutes passed before he spoke again. Then, he said, “We probably shouldn’t mention this talk to your mom. She might not take it the right way.”

  In case you’re wondering, I didn’t think my mom was going to cut off her ear or anything that crazy, but she sure gets into strange moods at times. When that happens, she cries or hollers or goes to her room and slams the door shut for hardly any reason at all. I guess it’s all part of being an artist, like my dad said.

  We had burgers and milkshakes for lunch and then we made a quick stop at a Dollarama because Mom had asked Dad to pick up citronella candles to help keep the bugs away. After that we found a place to park near the river and walked along the shore looking for driftwood. Dad found a piece that looked pretty good, and then we backtracked to where the car was parked.

  Back at Schooner Point, I saw that Mom was in the field with her easel set up again. I headed there to get another look at the painting she was working on and to tell her she missed out on a milkshake. Mom is a big fan of chocolate shakes.

  The painting was almost finished and it was even better than I remembered. She was dabbing some grey into clouds and I stood there quietly in case she was concentrating.

  “How’d you boys make out?” she asked as soon as she’d finished touching up the clouds. Her voice was happy and light.