All the Lost Things

by Michelle Sacks

The man looked at me again and I looked back. I tried to make my face look EXTRA ADORABLE so he would help us.

  “Well,” he said, “you better come with me.”

  His name was Harlan D. Ingram, but he said no one called him that except on his birth certificate and we should just call him Hank. He told us to gather up our things from the car and then hop into his pickup, which was parked up ahead.

  I liked Hank right away because he was like a magical genie in a storybook who flies down and grants you your special wish. My wish was to not sleep in a broken car on the side of the road, and he was making sure we didn’t have to. Maybe because of his muscles he was more like Batman than a genie, but Batman doesn’t actually grant anybody their wishes, he just solves crimes.

  Anyhow, Hank said he lived nearby in a big old house with plenty of room to spare, and that the side of the road wasn’t a safe place to be at night.

  “There are some bad types around here,” he said. “Everywhere, really. But these boys ride around looking for trouble. And they sure don’t care for strangers.”

  He didn’t tell us what kind of trouble the boys look for, but I bet it was nowhere near as bad as lion trouble.

  Hank’s truck was enormous and all three of us could fit in the front without even touching legs. He had a hula girl on the dashboard who danced her hips around as the car moved.

  “You’re a very nice person to help strangers,” I said.

  Hank looked at me. “Well, it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I’m Joshua,” I said.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Joshua,” Hank said. “Where are you folks from?”

  “New York,” I said. “It’s very far away.”

  “You bet it is.” He turned to Dad. “You’re not from there, though, are you?”

  Dad shook his head.

  “I thought so,” Hank said. “Accent always creeps back. Soon as you cross state lines.”

  “We crossed a lot of state lines,” I sighed.

  We didn’t have to drive too far before Hank said, “Home sweet home.”

  It was very dark, but I could make out a house tucked away behind a lot of tall trees. The house was wooden and painted white. It didn’t have a lot of windows but at least the ones it had weren’t nailed shut. There was a porch light to help us find our way up the front steps.

  “Watch yourself,” Hank said, because the wood on one step was cracked in half.

  Inside, the house was messy, with a million things everywhere, like heaps of old newspapers at the front door and a brown armchair that looked broken and two TVs on the floor and a guitar and a hundred cardboard boxes and a pile of books spread open with different parts of the writing underlined in red pen even though writing in books is TREASON.

  A German shepherd ran into the room barking loudly. Hank said, “DOWN, BIRNEY,” and the dog immediately lay down and whimpered at his feet like a very obedient SIDEKICK HOUND.

  “He’s very excitable but he won’t harm a fly,” Hank said.

  “Can I pet him?”

  “Sure can,” he said. “Only he won’t leave you alone if you do.”

  I bent down and scratched behind Birney’s ears, which is exactly where dogs like to be scratched best. He licked my hand.

  “We will be excellent friends,” he said. “And by the way, Hank is a very nice man and he won’t chop you up and cook you into human soup.”

  Hank patted a wooden chair with a ratty green cushion.

  “Make yourself at home,” he said to Dad. “I’ll fix you a drink. Looks like you could use one.”

  I shot FIERY WARNING DAGGERS at Dad and he shook his head. “Better not, thank you.”

  “How about you?” Hank said. “I believe I make the finest hot chocolate this side of the Mississippi.”

  “Oh, yes, please,” I said, with my lovely manners.

  “Come on then,” he said. I followed him across the hall into the kitchen.

  There was a long table in the middle of the room, but only a small part of it wasn’t covered with more books and newspapers and dishes. There were old pots and pans hanging on the walls and two olden-day guns and three hats and a chopping ax. Probably Hank was a lumberjack or a hunter.

  He scratched through his cupboards and pulled down a small red saucepan.

  He wiped it with a kitchen towel and filled it with milk. Then he took a slab of chocolate and broke off a couple of pieces to stir in. He poured everything into a blue striped mug and held it out for me. His eyes were eating me up.

  “What did you say your name was?” he said. I took the mug and looked into the steam.

  “Joshua,” I said.

  LYING CUNT. That’s what dads call moms who tell them lies to their face. Lies make Mr. Angry Bear wake up. He gets so mad he explodes and turns to fire. The fire burns everything up and the whole world turns red, like the color of blood.

  “I’m glad you found us,” I told Hank.

  I carried the hot chocolate very carefully with two hands and sat on the living room floor with Birney. Everything in the house was dusty and it itched my eyes and tickled up my nose. I sneezed two times but number three wouldn’t come, so none of my wishes were going to happen.

  Hank went back into the kitchen and fetched a soda for Dad. He lit himself a tobacco pipe and sat in the broken chair.

  Dad sipped his soda. He looked very, very sleepy. He took off his pretend glasses and rubbed his eyes. The circles underneath were growing into two dark pools.

  Hank watched Dad very carefully. He took a puff of his pipe and kept his eyes on him until he had blown all the smoke out of his lungs. He set the pipe down and then he turned to me. “Why don’t you say good night to your daddy, and I’ll show you to your room.”

  Dad stood up. “I should probably go too, in case—”

  “You sit,” Hank said. “I believe we have a few things to discuss.”

  Dad swallowed. He raised his hands. “We can leave,” he told Hank. “We can leave right now.”

  Hank shook his head and shot Dad a sharp look. “See, I can’t let you do that, Joseph,” he said. He stared at Dad and Dad stared at him. It was like they were having a contest but no one was smiling.

  “Sit down,” Hank said, and finally Dad did. I didn’t know how Hank had guessed his real name but I was happy we didn’t have to leave. So was Birney. He licked my hand and said I tasted very kind and brave.

  “Come on,” Hank said. He led me down the hallway. I could see stairs at the end winding down to a basement. Inside, a light was shining.

  “Who’s down there?” I said.

  “Me, most of the time,” Hank said. “I’ll show you around tomorrow.”

  “Is it a den for playing Xbox? Savannah’s brother has a whole basement to himself for his games. We aren’t allowed down there.”

  “Nah,” Hank said. “No games down there.”

  He opened the door to a bedroom. Inside was a small wooden bed and a desk and a closet.

  “Whose room is this?”

  “Just anyone who needs it,” Hank said.

  “Where’s your room?”

  “Oh,” Hank said. “I’m not much of a sleeper. When I do, I stay down in the basement.”

  He took covers from the back of the closet and I helped him make up the bed with blue sheets.

  After Hank closed the door, I lay awake, staring up at the ceiling. I stroked Clemesta in the place where her mane used to be and felt the beige plastic poking through.

  “You’re still beautiful,” I said, “because of your kind and shining heart.”

  “Ditto,” she said. She nuzzled my neck. Her breath was warm. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth after the hot chocolate but I didn’t say anything about Gerry Germ.

  “We’re being very brave,” I said, “aren’t we?”

  “Yeah.” Clemesta sighed. “But I’m tired of it.”

  “Well, we don’t have much longer to go. We’ll be home very soon.”

  Clemesta made a f
ace. “Dad told Hank we were heading to Texas. Texas isn’t home.”

  My stomach rock went sinking and I pressed it with my hand.

  “Dolly, did you hear me?”

  I looked at the ceiling. It didn’t have any stars.

  In the night, I woke up to use the bathroom.

  I crept down the hallway. The toilet seat was made from wood and it wobbled loose when I sat down. I wiped but I didn’t flush because I thought it would make too much noise and wake everyone up. That would be inconsiderate and bad manners and I didn’t want Hank to regret helping us.

  I looked in the mirror above the washbasin. It had a big crack down the middle, which everyone knows is seven years’ bad luck. Poor Hank, I thought. Poor everyone who breaks mirrors and gets bad luck. Or gets bad luck without even breaking anything.

  As I walked back to my bed, I heard voices. It was Dad, talking with Hank down the hall. I could see Dad’s legs and shoes, and Hank standing in the doorway.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” Dad was saying. “I was blinded with it. Blinded. She’s having an affair, planning on running off with my kid, taking her across the country. Something broke in me.” He rubbed his hands on his knees and then he leaned forward in the chair. “I just panicked and left,” he said. “Grabbed her and ran.”

  Hank walked across the room. I heard glasses clinking with ice. “Drink up,” he said. I saw Dad’s arm lift a glass of the golden stuff that comes in the glass bottle.

  LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE. Another broken promise.

  “I thought we could disappear,” he said. “Start over. Never come back. I have an old friend in Mexico, Diego. One of these people who knows people. He could help us out. Get the right papers, make sure we stay vanished.”

  Hank’s boots creaked against the wood as he went to sit back down. “Not much of a life, being on the run.”

  “I know,” Dad said. He took a long sip of his drink. “I know.”

  No one said anything for a while. Then Hank let out a long sigh. “Someone helped me once,” he said. “Got me out of a bad situation, a very poor decision I made. I almost certainly didn’t deserve help but I got it all the same. So I’m going to help you, Joseph. I’m going to help you on your way.”

  There was no more talking after that, just ice clinking against glass. I waited in the dark. I could hear my heart thumping inside me like someone trapped in a box banging to get out.

  Dad made a strange coughing noise.

  “I’m not a monster,” he said. “I’m not.”

  Birney barked twice, and I crept back to bed. I climbed under the covers and whispered everything I’d overheard to Clemesta.

  “I know,” she said. “I remember.”

  She nipped at my ear with her sharp horse-teeth.

  “And Dolly,” she said, “you’re remembering now too.”

  Friday

  Birney woke me in the morning. I felt his tongue licking my face and it tickled till I opened my eyes. Hank called, “Breakfast!” and I followed Birney down the hall to the kitchen. He told me he had guarded the door to my room all night long to keep me and Clemesta safe.

  “You’re a marvelous dog,” I said.

  “I don’t do it for everyone,” he said. “Only special and brave people who I like very much.”

  I circled my hand over his head. “Dogs don’t usually live for very long,” I told him, “but with this special blessing, you will live forever.”

  Birney was very pleased.

  In the kitchen, Hank was dressed in clothes like he was a soldier in the army, with heavy black boots on his feet. His sleeves were rolled up and he had a kitchen towel tucked in his back pocket.

  “Morning,” he said. “Sleep okay?”

  I nodded.

  He was standing at the stove flipping bacon in a pan. The whole kitchen smelled of breakfast and my stomach rumbled loudly. I hadn’t eaten real food for a long time.

  Hank looked over at the table covered with stuff and frowned. “I guess I’m not used to company,” he said. “Why don’t you move that over to the side so we can sit and eat together like civilized folks.”

  “Is Dad still sleeping?”

  Hank shook his head. “Your daddy’s out back, taking a look at the car.”

  “What car?”

  “My old Chevy,” Hank said. “It’s been sitting out in that garage gathering dust for years. I told your daddy he should take it.”

  “To get us home,” I said.

  “Right.”

  I slumped in a chair. “I think we’re still too far away.” The bacon was sizzling and Hank took the pan off the heat.

  I pushed everything on the table to the opposite side. It left behind marks in the dust and I rubbed them away with my finger.

  I watched Hank drop eight eggs into another pan. He broke them right in his hand, without cracking them on the side of the bowl first like Mom does. Probably because he was so strong. He had a tattoo on the bulgy part of his arm, but it wasn’t a picture. It was just numbers. 2.5.2011. Maybe that was somebody’s birthday and he put it there so he’d never forget.

  “Are you a for-real army soldier?” I said.

  “Used to be.”

  Hank threw Birney a piece of bacon and he caught it in the air and gobbled it down in one excited bite.

  “What are you now?”

  “I work as a trapper,” Hank said. “Bird removal, mostly.”

  “Why do you have to remove birds?”

  Hank wiped his hands. “If they’re stuck in a mall, or nesting in a grocery store, I go get them and take them away.”

  My eyes went wide. “You kill them?”

  “Oh, no,” Hank said. “I set them free. That’s the idea.”

  He laid the food on the table and pulled up a chair next to mine.

  I wanted to ask him about the things Dad had said last night, but I didn’t want him to know that I was an EAVESDROPPER who listened in on other people’s private conversations. Eavesdropping is a bad habit and it causes a lot of trouble because probably you don’t always get everything one hundred percent FACTUALLY CORRECT and then people say, “That’s not true,” but other people say, “Bullshit,” and it’s all a great big confusing mess.

  I looked at Hank’s enormous arms that could definitely break you in two without even trying very hard. “Did you know that killer whales are really dolphins?”

  He shook his head. “That’s an interesting thing to know.”

  “I know a lot of interesting things. I’m like a knowledge collector. It’s all in my brain.”

  Hank smiled.

  “I missed a whole entire week of school. That’s a lot of knowledge I didn’t get to collect and it’s Dad’s fault.” I pinched my skin with my fingernail. “He took me away,” I said. “I think it’s called abduction.”

  Dad came through the door and Hank nodded at him.

  “Morning,” Dad said. He washed his hands at the sink and sat down with us.

  I watched him from the corner of my eye like a good detective. He’d shaved his stubbly beard and he was wearing fresh, clean clothes. He must have borrowed them from Hank. He didn’t smell of the golden stuff from the night before but maybe he only had a little this time.

  He piled a plate with eggs and bacon, and reached over to grab a fork.

  Hank drank his coffee. “How’s that engine?”

  “Got it working fine,” Dad said. “I siphoned the gas from the truck like you said. Tank’s half full, and that’s plenty to get us on our way.”

  “Good,” Hank said. “That’s good.”

  He threw more bacon for Birney to catch in his teeth. His gums were black and pink, so probably that meant they were half-rotten.

  Dad poured himself more coffee and Hank held out his mug for more too.

  “You aren’t eating any breakfast,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Me and Birney mostly eat out of a can.”

  “Why?”

  “You get into habits, I suppose.”

>   “Well, it’s nice to have a healthy breakfast FINALLY.” I scowled at Dad but he was busy looking out the window.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” he said.

  It looked like an ordinary and regular day to me, with the sun waking up and the fog moving out of the way and the birds flying around getting worms for their breakfast, but I guess Dad saw something else.

  “Life sure is strange,” Hank said, “isn’t it?”

  I let Birney lick my fingers under the table with his long, wet tongue.

  After breakfast, I followed Hank down to the basement. It looked like a hardware store down there, with a workbench and ONE MILLION tools and a chainsaw and a welder and a huge pile of wooden planks and metal wire fencing all rolled up and three big tubs of paint sitting on the floor.

  “What do you do here?” I said.

  “This and that,” Hank said.

  “Like craft projects?”

  “Well,” he said. “Come see.”

  He walked over to the wall. It had an American flag pinned to it, and below that a photograph of two army soldiers with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They both wore sunglasses and red bandannas on their heads.

  “Is that you?”

  “A long time ago.”

  Hank pressed down against a lever and suddenly the wall became a big metal door and it opened up to a whole entire SECRET HOUSE hiding away on the other side. Inside, there were two armchairs and a bed and a shelf filled with rows and rows of canned food and hot sauce and toilet paper and bottled water and soda and batteries and flashlights and candles and a huge enormous TV and a wall with HUNDREDS of guns and another shelf of books and a chessboard on a table and an exercise rowing machine and a bunch of dumbbells on a rack. My eyes were darting around trying to see everything but there was too much to catch it all up.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “It’s called a bunker,” Hank said.

  “Like a secret hiding place?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Like a hurricane storm shelter,” I said. “For staying safe.” I looked at Hank in his army clothes with his giant muscles and his stomping boots that could kick you to Mars. “But who could ever hurt you?”