Seven Clues to Home

by Gae Polisner

  Not good for business, either.

  So if this guy lived within twenty miles of here, he’d have heard, he’d know the name, he’d remember, and then he’d get that look on this face that everyone gets when they don’t want to think about something.

  But he wouldn’t be able to help me. Nobody could.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  He is.

  Sometimes there is a will, and no way.

  And if the Rocket isn’t here…it isn’t here. There’s nothing anyone can do about that.

  Maybe it’s better this way.

  After all, it was a game; that’s all it was. One clue to another to another, the fun was in the riddles. Sure, we tried to outdo each other with our own cleverness. But the real point was to hang out together. It didn’t have any big meaning or conclusion.

  My birthday, then Lukas’s.

  There isn’t much else to do in Port Bennington over the summer, anyway. That’s all it was. That’s all this ever was, right?

  I’ll call Natalia and I’ll go home. Happy birthday to me.

  “I can order you one, if you want.”

  I shrug and say, “No thanks,” while my whelm is quickly fading into defeat and I almost welcome it. If I got to the last clue, it would all be over, anyway, and nothing would change.

  This way, I can hang on forever to not knowing.

  “What are you doing here?” The hand squeezes tighter.

  I don’t look up. I didn’t steal anything, but I did trespass, I guess. Acted like I had the right to go sticking clues under merchandise.

  “Lukas?” The deep voice sounds familiar. I bring myself to look up. “It’s nice to see you here. How’s your summer going?”

  It’s not the owner scolding me for anything at all. My heart does a smile. It’s Mr. Carter, from second grade.

  I mean, I think it is. His black, curly hair is grayish now, and shorter, right to his head, while his face looks younger than I remember, which makes those two things contradictory. But when I look a little longer, he has the same eye-crinkling smile, and I definitely know the voice, so I’m sure. He holds a tackle box in his free hand. A white bucket, with a rod sticking out, sits next to him on the ground. He must be heading down to the marina.

  A feeling of guilt washes over me. I always liked Mr. Carter and meant to go say hi to him but haven’t seen him in so long because he’s still in the elementary school, and Joy and me have been in the middle school for a whole year. And even before we moved to the middle school for sixth grade, the fourth and fifth grades were in a whole other wing from the lower grades. So unless he was on cafeteria duty or something, I didn’t really run into him.

  But here he is now, smiling, with his booming voice and big old hand on my shoulder. I look down, self-consciously for a second, then remember what he taught us and force myself to look back up at him again and hold my gaze there.

  He nods, proud-like, and says, “So, now, a proper greeting,” and holds his hand out to me to shake, and I nearly start laughing. Because now I remember this hilarious thing he used to do when we were in his class, when he was always teaching us things besides reading and math. Things he learned in the navy, he said, serving our country. Like always be polite, always walk with your head held up, and never ever look down like you’re afraid. And when you’re talking to someone, always look them sharp in the eyes. Speak clearly and slowly, with a purpose, and always, always, shake a new person’s hand.

  “Firm grip, like this, like you mean it.” He’d demonstrate, holding his hand straight in mid-air to shake an invisible person’s. Then he’d loosen his fingers and drop his wrist down, all floppy, and say, “None of this I’m-shaking-hands-with-a-dead-fish type of thing.”

  He was strict about it, too, and every once in a while, he would line us all up for a handshaking drill, and each of us would have to walk across the room to him, one at a time, head up, and say, “Hello, Mr. Carter, how are you?” looking him straight in the eye.

  I bet a lot of kids forgot how he taught us that stuff, but I remember because it seemed so important to him that I learned. And here’s the funny part: even though most of the time he was super-serious about it, sometimes, when you made it across the room and said, “Hello, Mr. Carter, how are you?” he would say, “I’m fine, Lukas, thanks for asking,” and then he’d hold out his hand for you to shake. And if you were the lucky kid that day, instead of a normal, firm, navy handshake, you would get the Milk Shake Handshake, with Mr. Carter gripping your hand and making it jiggle up and down, up and down, a million miles per hour, so fast your arm looked like a crazy, vibrating rubber band. And if you opened your mouth to talk while he was shaking, your words would jiggle and vibrate, too, like someone was putting them through a washing machine.

  “He-he-he-hel-lo, Mi-ih-ih-ih-ih-ster Ca-ah-ah-ah-ahr-ter,” your words would go, and the best part would be you’d be laughing, but he’d act all serious and just keep shaking your hand, jiggling your arm all crazy fast, while saying, “Stop doing that, Lukas. Why are you doing that to me?” Only, of course, you weren’t doing it, he was the one doing it, and you were the one laughing, while the next kid in line was anxiously waiting for her turn.

  Now I’m grinning like a dope, staring at his hand like maybe he’ll remember and Milk Shake Handshake me, but all he does is squeeze my hand warmly, two times, firmly, and say, “That’s a nice strong grip you’ve got, Lukas.”

  He lets go. I feel a little disappointed.

  “I’m good, sir,” I say, not even sure he asked me.

  “Well, glad to hear it, son. Very glad. You’ve grown some. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  And I don’t know if it’s my disappointment, or the way he’s holding my stare like he really needs me to know how truly glad he is, or maybe because he called me son, but for a second I feel even worse about never going back to his classroom to visit.

  “Sorry, Mr. Carter,” I say when I’ve swallowed back the sad feeling and can look up again.

  “It’s okay, Lukas. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to see old friends.”

  I wonder if that’s true, and if an old teacher can actually become your real friend.

  “Where were you headed? Maybe got a few minutes to sit?” He nods toward the end of the marina. “I was just going to do a little fishing. Fishing and meditation.” He chuckles. “Half hour, tops. As you can see”—he taps his foot against the bucket—“it wasn’t in my original plan this morning, but I find myself with a canceled appointment, so I thought I’d dangle a line for a bit. Strictly catch and release. Never can bring myself to keep them, even to eat.” He chuckles again, and I nod in agreement.

  “Me neither. And, yeah, okay,” I say, forgetting about time running out to get the hunt set, and already starting to walk with him.

  Natalia will be here any minute, because somehow my fingers remembered her cell number and pressed the right buttons, and she answered her phone before I even heard it ringing on my end. She wasn’t exactly happy with me, but she wasn’t so mad, either. She promised she’d smooth things over with our parents, and that, no, they hadn’t contacted the police yet but, yes, I’d probably called just in the nick of time.

  I told my sister where I was, and oddly she didn’t ask why, which is probably because, since she got her driver’s license last month, she’ll take any excuse to borrow Dad’s pickup. When I told her I’d wait for her outside B&B Sport and Tackle, all she said was that she’d be there in five minutes.

  In Natalia Fonseca time, that could be twenty-five minutes to half an hour, but I don’t care. I don’t mind the wait.

  The tide is starting to come in.

  It swirls around the whole peninsula of Port Bennington, straight from the salty ocean and up onto every bay inlet and into the Sound and over the narrow strip of beach. It covers the black mud and creeps up to the w
atermarks on the pilings and the rocks. It swallows the green algae and laps gently at the sand.

  I sit and swing my legs off the end of the pier. I’ll be able to see Natalia when she pulls in. Meanwhile, I just need to be here for a minute more, with the sun on my face. There’s a heron on the opposite side, walking its graceful stick walk in and out of the surf, just like nobody’s business, and I know what it’s telling me.

  It’s over.

  No more clues.

  “Time to go home,” the heron would say, if it could talk.

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  I spin around. It’s not Natalia. It’s a man in a white T-shirt and big belly.

  “Yeah?”

  The man waits at the foot of the pier. He doesn’t come closer; instead he points back toward the tackle shop. “Patrick, my son. The boy you were talking to inside,” he calls to me. “He said you were looking for something…for the Revo Rocket?”

  Lukas once told me that there is an infinite number of moments in every second, that every second you can halve, and then halve again and again and again. There is still time left. It might be too small for our brains to comprehend, but it exists simply because of the math of it. And it is in one of those fractions of a moment of a second that I let myself get my hopes up.

  Again.

  “We are all sold out of those,” the man tells me. “But maybe you were looking for someone, then?” He continues, “Maybe I know what you were looking for. That boy who used to come here all the time…I feel terrible about it now.”

  On the opposite side of the water, the heron lifts into the air.

  “That Brunetti kid. He came in here that day…right before—” He stops, like he can’t say the words. I get that.

  “He went right for that same reel you were asking about, the Rocket. He had it in his hands. The one you were looking for…He came in so fast and dashed back out like he was up to no good. Like his brother, I figured. I figured he stole something. I was about to chase after him.”

  The heron hunches its shoulders, then spreads out its wings across the sky, past the sun, and lets its skinny legs dangle below.

  “But then I saw him right outside, so I guess he wasn’t running away or anything. I always felt bad about that, you know. Considering what happened. I just wanted to let you know. I always felt bad about it.”

  Higher and higher.

  I just stare at the guy. He doesn’t walk away.

  “Anyways, then like a month or whatever later,” he tells me, “I go to sell that same Revo Rocket to some guy from Manhasset, and I see this little note underneath. And it’s got a name on it.”

  “What name?”

  The heron is almost out of sight.

  “Look, I didn’t think anything of it. I didn’t even put two and two together till just now. Till you came along, asking for that same reel. It must be you, right?…Look, I didn’t know, okay?”

  It’s a tiny dot against the blue.

  The man shrugs, like he is casting off a heavy coat, one he’s been wearing for too long. “I didn’t know, I don’t remember, so I threw it out. I’m sorry, okay? I really hope it wasn’t anything important.”

  Smaller and smaller.

  And it’s gone.

  I stand when I spot Natalia driving up in our dad’s truck. She’s got the windows down, her hair blowing behind her, and the music blasting. The man is already heading back into his shop. He looks helpless, or maybe it’s me. Maybe I feel helpless.

  At least my sister is here. I can tell her everything now. Now that it’s over.

  I start to head down the pier. It’s okay, I tell myself. After the last whole year I’ve been through, this really isn’t so bad. Nothing could be that bad. This is nothing compared to that.

  Natalia shifts into park and waves at me. Then, just before I walk over to the passenger side and get in, the man in the white T-shirt calls out to me again.

  He’s standing in the doorway of his shop. “Hey, I don’t know if this helps or anything. But I did see your friend talking with that black dude that always comes in here. I think he’s a teacher from the elementary school.”

  “Mr. Carter?” I ask.

  “Yeah, that’s him. I saw him and that Brunetti kid talking, like, for a long time. Yeah, and they were fishing. Right outside. Right where you were just sitting.”

  I raise my hand to wave at him. “Thanks,” I say back. Like I’m forgiving him.

  And me.

  The sun is doing that sparkle-popcorn thing off the water today, and maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s being with Mr. Carter that fills me with this feeling that everything is calm and good. I’m happy to be taking a break, sitting on the edge of the pier with him. Even if I’m also worried about slowing down and not getting the scavenger hunt finished. But I have plenty of time, and no one is at home to worry about me.

  It must be heading toward low tide, because with our legs over the side, our feet dangling down, there’s still a four- or five-foot drop to the water. Mr. Carter opens the tackle box, baits the line, and casts out. He hums for a minute, some song I don’t know, then pulls back on the line and reels it in, slack and empty. Shaking his head, he casts out again.

  “You have to be more patient than that,” I say, and he laughs. “Give the fish a bit of time.”

  “Apparently, I’m a little rusty,” he says. “I used to fish with my dad as a boy all the time, and now and again, as we both got older. He passed on a few years ago, and I haven’t been out since…I find myself thinking a lot about him lately.”

  I nod, not sure what to say. Besides, I think I know what he’s doing, because it’s something else people do all the time: find ways to ask about my dad without really asking. Or maybe he knows about Rand. That now he’s gone, too. Anyway, losing his dad is probably harder for him than it is for me, since he knew his father his whole lifetime, a whole lot longer than I knew mine. But I don’t say that in case it sounds mean.

  “I was doing a scavenger hunt just before,” I blurt instead. “Setting one up, I mean. For Joy Fonseca. It’s her birthday tomorrow. She was in your class, too, remember? She’s my best friend now.”

  “Of course I remember Joy!” Mr. Carter says. He turns and looks at me, amused. “Go figure. Lukas Brunetti and Joy Fonseca. I wouldn’t have pegged the two of you as lifelong friends.” He winks at that, so I’m not sure what he’s trying to tell me, but it doesn’t matter because my brain is sticking on the word lifelong.

  Here it goes, then. I wish we could always be friends.

  “Well, we are,” I say. “Lifelong best.” And then I get that same squeeze in the pit of my stomach as I did when we were little and Joy’s sister Natalia and her parents would watch me so, so closely every time I came over and hung out there. Like they were waiting for me to do something bad, take something that didn’t belong to me. “Her and me,” I add, to make a point, “have spent practically every day friends, ever since the last day of your class in second grade.”

  “She and I,” Mr. Carter says, fixing my grammar, which makes my ears burn bright red. For a split second, I almost get mad, but then he says, “And however it happened, I’m glad to hear it. She was a smart girl. Good work ethic. She could almost keep up in math with the likes of you.”

  He yanks on the line, which is slack, so when he reels it in, of course the lure dangles, shiny, in the sun. He casts back out with a sigh. “So tell me about this scavenger-hunt thing.”

  I explain how we’ve been doing them since that summer right after his class, and how it kind of started with the cupcakes and both of us having cruddy summer birthdays. How, when we were little, we’d keep the hunts small and in one spot, but this year I wanted it to be special.

  “I even got her this super-special necklace to find at the end—”

  I stop there, my ears burning aga
in, because even though I didn’t say that it’s a heart, or anything about the letter, or about me feeling stuff for Joy that maybe I’m not supposed to feel, whatever I did say makes Mr. Carter turn.

  “You know,” he says, his eyes twinkling, “if you still need a good hiding spot, I know the best one.” He hands me the rod and stands, stretching his legs before cupping his hand to his eyes to stare off toward the park and the gazebo. “Look there.” He points. “That tree in the center…It must be thirty years old now, because it was already big when we discovered it….You see it there?”

  I nod, not sure if I do.

  “The heart-shaped tree, with the whale’s eye…Even from here, you can see the top of it….”

  “The whale’s eye?” I ask, not going near that heart part he’s talking about.

  “Yes, third from the gazebo, you see?” He points again, across the length of the marina, and down the long stretch of lawn toward where the big white gazebo sits in the center. In the summer, they have small concerts there. Mostly barbershop quartets, or even harpists sometimes. The area around the gazebo is circled with trees. “It’s easier to see how it’s heart-shaped in the fall, because now, in summer, its leaves are fuller. You see what I mean? You might have to stand up and squint.”

  I don’t stand because I’ve got the line cast out and it feels like something might be biting, but while Mr. Carter keeps talking, I do count silently to try to see if I can tell which tree it is from here.

  “So, back when the missus and I were still dating—now, granted, this was in high school, so I was still pretty smitten, though she will tell you I continue to be a hopeless romantic to this day—we used to do something similar. Not a hunt, exactly—” He pauses thoughtfully, because that’s how he is about his words. “And not that I’m insinuating anything about you and Ms. Fonseca, to be clear. But we would leave each other love notes, tucked in the hole made by a rather large knot in that very tree. If you stand, you will see the tree’s trunk splits and its limbs bow out, making this shape….” He demonstrates with his hands. “And especially in the fall, when the leaves turn red and orange and pink—well, my oh my, Lukas, if that dang tree doesn’t look just like an enormous leafy heart.”