by Les Cohen
Episode 3:
One Good Deed And We’re Off To The Country
“Hey, Rollo.” There he was, sitting up on the bed in my room, in our house just on the edge of campus, pretending as always that he’d been up and hard at work all morning while I was in class. Not a chance. A quick look over at the bird feeder stuck to my sliding window, and I knew from the absence of all but one measly seed, even though I had filled it before I left, that Rollo had been less than intimidating to the birds who came and ate at will. “Have you been hard at work?” I asked him, grabbing his head and rubbing the sides of his cheeks with my folded fingers. He tried looking alert, but the huge yawn when I was done gave him away.
“Okay,” I announced, realizing long ago that having Rollo gave me an excuse to talk out loud to myself. I flipped up the lid to my laptop and sat down, grabbing the front edge of my chair, pulling it under me and me up to my desk. “I need a break. Let’s write something.” Rollo, fully awake now, sprung... “Sprung”? Is that really a word. Or is it “sprang” into action? I’ll check the dictionary later. (Probably much later.) Well, anyway, he leaped from the bed onto the back of my chair and neck so he could sit there, looking over my shoulder down at the screen. We were a real team, him and me. He’d certainly saved my you-know-what more times than I could count, and this wagon over the bridge situation we’d been writing about was no exception.
I started, as usual, by rubbing my palms together, and then polishing my fingers with my thumbs. Setting my fingers in place on the middle row of keys, I waited for them to start moving. Hm. “Just tell the story,” I could hear my mother reminding me. And that’s exactly what I did.
The wagon, still sliding down the muddy hill, had rolled over onto its side just as it pushed its way into reeds and water. Smoke? No, it must have been steam that was rising from where the cool creek had surprised the engine in my parents’ car. My seatbelt had saved me from flying forward into the front seat, but I had unbuckled it after we first hit the water and gravity had taken over from there, leaving me crumbled up between the back seat and the door that was now the floor of the car.
“Meoarkk! Meoarrkkk!!” Rollo, standing on my chest, was certainly doing his best to get my attention.
“What?!” I must have been stunned and forgot for the moment where we were, thinking for a second that he was waking me up in the middle of the night the way he does every time he hears anything he thinks is important. Then it came to me. Struggling to get up, I realized that one of the two men in the front seat was moaning, holding his head, I think. The other man, the driver with red hair, was either somewhere on the passenger side where I couldn’t see him, maybe under the glove compartment, or had somehow gotten out of the car.
Fortunately, the window my neck and the back of my head were pressed up against hadn’t broken. Bad news was, I could see water starting to seep into the car as we continued to drift into the river.
“Okay, Rollo,” I looked him right in the eye, coming to my senses, “let’s get this show on the road.” Our wagon was on its side. Grabbing on to the back of the console between the front seats, I pulled myself up, standing up to where I could roll down the window on the other side which was over my head. (Thank goodness my parents had decided to save a few bucks when they bought this old car and didn’t spring for a newer one with power windows.) Window open, I grabbed Rollo, reached up through the window and tossed him as far as I could onto the bottom of the hill. Sam had taught him never to be afraid of getting dirty, and I knew he’d be okay. My turn.
Papers first. Quickly, but as carefully as I could, I grabbed the binders with the papers from the safe. Clutching the three binders under my left arm – I’m right handed. – I reached through the open window above me, right arm first, walking up the back seat as best I could. “Whoops!” Hmmm, more slippery than I thought it would be. With the help of my left elbow, I just managed to pull myself out the window and pushed my rear end up far enough to sit for a moment on the edge of the roof to get my bearings. Judging from the sound of the men in the front seat, yelling at each other in a foreign language while they scrambled to open the driver’s side door next to me, I didn’t have much time. Unfortunately for them, my weight on the roof started to roll the car over onto its back, which is exactly what happened when I pulled my legs out onto the door, leaned forward and kicked off in the direction of the hill. When I did, I think my shoes caught the railing of our roof rack. Good for me, not so much for our wagon which rolled onto its roof, water gushing in the window I had opened.
“Rolllllooooohhhh!!” I called out, as I hit the hill just at the waters edge and began sliding back down, my legs and right arm moving frantically to gain some footing. No way was I letting go of those binders. There! I grabbed a scruffy piece of something in my right hand, still rooted on the hill since before the excavation. “Okay, okay.” Looking up, I could see Rollo had already made it to the top, looking down at me and then over his shoulder toward the road. “Stay there, Rollo. Get the police.” Hearing their siren coming to a stop, I figured they were only a few yards away from where Rollo was doing his best to get their attention.
Calming myself down, even while I heard the gurgling sound of our wagon rolling the rest of its way into the river, I began dragging myself up the ten, maybe fifteen feet to the top. (Too bad, I loved that old car. Lots of memories, but apparently not so many as to stop me from thinking about the new one Mom and Dad might get, until I slipped again, slid back a foot or two, and came to my senses. Focus, I know, but hey, I was less than a year away from getting my driver’s license.) Almost there, I could see two policemen, one holding onto what was left of the old guard railing, the other hand-in-hand with the first, reaching down to help me. Another couple of feet and he grabbed my wrist, pulling me the rest of the way to where I was safe, finally.
“Officer, there...” I started to warn him, gasping to catch my breath, almost slipping down the hill again as I turned around to point toward our car, now completely upside down, only two wheels and a piece of a third showing above the water. “There were two men in the front seat! I don’t think they got out!!”
“You wait up here, Miss.” It was the larger of the two policemen talking, the one who had anchored the two man rope that pulled me the last few feet up the hill. One after the other they stepped over the edge, slipping and sliding, their hands out to their sides for balance, down to the water and what was left of our car.
“Come here, Rollo.” I bent down to pick him up. He was shivering like me and, under the circumstances, I thought we could both use a hug. And a bath. We had mud all over us. The binders, too, but I was pretty sure none of the papers inside had gotten wet.
Two other police cars were there now, one with my parents in the back. One of the policemen, this time it was the shorter one, actually went in and under the water next to our car which had drifted a bit into the river, but not yet to where it was so deep you couldn’t stand up. A long twenty seconds later he was back up, shaking his head and wiping the water off his face with both hands as he shouted up to us.
“There’s no one in there.” That was all he said before the sirens of an arriving fire truck and ambulance sounded too loud for anyone to talk. His partner waved for him to come back. I found out that that police boats were already searching for the men up and down the river.
By the time we got home and cleaned up that Saturday, it was almost time for dinner, but my parents had some social thing they had to attend. They were worried, but I was okay and, anyway, I got them to spring for pizza for me, Eleanor, Bobby and MR. (“MR,” in case you were wondering, stood for “Middle Ralph,” but I’ll explain that later.) These guys were my friends, doing the friendly thing by coming over to keep me company and inhale some free pepperoni. They would be walking over, and should be here by seven. My parents would take Bobby and MR home when they got back, and Eleanor would spend the night in my room where we cou
ld talk about stuff until one of us passed out.
I had learned even then that, in your whole life, you’re only going to make a few good friends. Sure, I knew lots of people. Everyone does. And I was friendly with many of them, mostly other kids I knew from school. You know what I mean. But real friends, the kind you could count on in a pinch? No, there were only three of them, plus Rollo of course, and they were coming over tonight. I didn’t know then for sure, but I thought it would pretty much always be that way. Not necessarily the same few, because I would make new friends when I was older, but only a few friends at any given time and place, only a couple of which, if I was lucky, would last forever.
“Everybody going to be okay?” My father turned his head on his way out the door, pausing just long enough to look each one of the four us in the eyes, right in the eyes, his keys jingling in one hand as he slipped his arms through his sport coat.
“Com’on, honey. We’re going to be late.” My mother was already on her way down the path.
“Very collegiate look, Mr. Coleman.” Bobby was reserved around my parents. MR had trouble talking to adults, but Eleanor always said whatever was on her mind.
“Thank you, Eleanor. Should I take that as a ‘Yes’? Now he was looking right at me.
“We’ll be fine, Daddy. Have a good time.”
The pizza delivery car showed up just as my parents were pulling away.
“How much are you going to tip him?” MR really wanted to know.
Eleanor was busy staring out the glass panel next to our front door. Bobby was already in our family room, seeing what was on TV. Cash in hand, I was standing just inside the door waiting for the sound of our knocker.
“Heck. I was hoping for that new kid, Donny.” Eleanor was a sucker for any boy with blonde, wavy hair.
“A dollar?”
“Doesn’t seem like enough for two medium pizzas.” MR could make such simple stuff sound so serious.
Turning to look right at him, with only seconds to spare as Pizza Delivery Boy took his first step onto our porch, I realized MR had something in mind. “What? How much would you give him?”
“Two dollars. A dollar a pizza. It only seems fair.”
“Done.”
Pizzas, napkins and everybody took a soda from the refrigerator, three Cokes and a Yoo-hoo. MR was a tad lactose intolerant, but liked chocolate milk (and pizza) way too much to walk past a Yoo-hoo without drinking it. We all just put up with the little noises he made now and then, because that’s another thing friends do.
Sprawled out on the floor and on the poofy couch we had in the family room, we started to wolf down our dinner, not bothering even to close the lids of the pizza boxes between slices. They weren’t going to be out there long enough to get cold. The pepperoni pizza was in front of the TV between Bobby and Eleanor. The one with green peppers and mushrooms that MR and I were sharing was on the coffee table. Rollo was sitting up on the floor, his head spinning to see who would be the first to offer him scraps.
“Nobody drips anything on the couch,” I garbled through the wad of crust in my mouth, and all three of them stopped chewing. Sometimes I can sound exactly like my mother.
MR moved toward the edge of the cushion where he was sitting, so that the piece of pizza he was poised to slide into his mouth was at least over the floor if he missed. “You talkin’ to me?” he said, doing his best Robert DeNiro. (It’s from the movie “Taxi Driver,” for those of you out there with no idea what I’m talking about. Hard to believe, but you can actually take courses in college that make you watch old movies for homework. I love this place.)
“So tell us more about these two ‘thugs’ who kidnaped you.” No doubt about it, Eleanor was wishing it had happened to her.
“You just like saying the word “thugs.” Bobby was right, unable to stop himself from giggling through the last swallow of Coke he’d just taken, burping slightly on his way to get the words out. He reached up with his hand to catch a drop of soda that gurgled out the corner of his mouth before it made it to his chin. I liked Bobby, and I was pretty sure he liked me back, although it wasn’t something we’d ever talked about. That’s the way it is with chemistry. I’d look at him. He’d look at me from across the classroom, and we’d both smile for no particular reason.
Wait a minute. I forgot to tell you about MR, about how he got that nickname. Not a big deal, but it deserves explaining. You see, MR’s father is Ralph Webster, Jr., sometimes called “JR” by his friends. MR was the Webster’s first son, Ralph Arnold Webster III (the third), but then they had another son and named him Ralph too. Don’t ask. They just did. Apparently the plan had been to have only one Ralph kid in the family, and that way, when someone called and just asked “May I please speak to Ralph?” Mrs. Webster could ask, “Big Ralph or little Ralph?” You see, Mr. Webster, Jr. had always been “Little Ralph” when he was growing up, and I guess he figured it was his time to be “Big.” See the problem coming? Sure you do.
Now there were two kids named Ralph, only two years apart at that. So, in order to do the “Big Ralph,” “Little Ralph” thing, they started calling MR by his middle name, Arnold, which no one liked, especially MR. The idea was to let his younger brother be “Little Ralph,” even though “Littlest Ralph” would have been proper English. In any case, realizing some years ago that MR was the Ralph in the middle and that his parents were calling him by his middle name, we, his friends, took up calling him “Middle Ralph” or just “MR” for short.
Wow. That took much longer to explain than I thought it would. “Back to the story, ay Rollo?” I said, turning my head slightly to glance at the “parrot cat” perched my shoulder. A lick of his raspy tongue on the side of my face, and I knew he was in full agreement. The less I write about him, the more antsy he gets. Sometimes I’d actually find him tapping one of his huge, rabbit feet when he became impatient with my rambling. “Where did he learn to do that?” I wondered out loud, tapping my foot while I waited for my fingers to resume typing.
“The thugs, Eleanor, were from someplace else, some other country.”
“How can you be sure?” Bobby was staring at me with those clear, milk chocolate eyes... Not that the color of his eyes was important or anything.
“Because they were speaking mostly in some foreign language, Russian maybe, or in English now and then with a Russian accent. It was so thick, it almost sounded phony. ..Stay here,” I told them, rising to my feet. “I want to show you something. MR.”
“What?”
“You eat the last piece of pepperoni while I’m gone. I know you want it,” I smiled at him. “It’s okay.” And off I went to my Dad’s study, bringing back one of the binders and an old metal cash box my father had taken from the safe at his office before I took up temporary residence inside. Pushing back the coffee table, I sat down on the floor, leaning against the couch. MR did the same, sliding down out of his seat to get a better view.
“Take a look at these.” I opened the cash box first, holding it on my lap. Rollo had hopped up on the seat of the couch behind me, and was stretching his neck to look down over my shoulder. It didn’t creak much when I opened it, but there was no missing the stale odor of mildew.
“No money.” MR was right.
More importantly, Bobby had come over to get a closer look and was now sitting shoulder to shoulder next to me on my right. I remember Rollo looking at him after Bobby sat down, as if he should have asked for his (Rollo’s) permission.
“What we do have,” I announced quietly, not bothering to look up while I took inventory, “is an old document of some kind ..and a letter.”
“That’s it?” Eleanor was as disappointed as I was.
“That’s it.”
“Careful,” MR warned me, pushing the nosepiece of his glasses firmly onto his face with his left hand while reaching for the document with his right. (Did I mention that MR wore glasses? If I forgot, it’s bec
ause he wears contacts now.) “This looks old. We better unfold it carefully.”
Bobby grabbed the coffee table and slid it almost up against MR’s chest while Eleanor took charge of the empty pizza boxes and moved them onto the oval rug in front of the fireplace.
MR was right. Whatever it was, it was old, and folded in half and then half again. The paper was brown around the edges, as if it had been baked like my mother’s crispy chocolate chip cookies. In fact, the teeny tip of one of the corners cracked off just as he was starting to lay it out flat.
“Watch it.” Now I was the one who was worried.
“Don’t press out the creases.” Eleanor was pointing to a crack that had formed by one of the folds.
“I know, I know.” Serious stuff like this was what MR did best. His fingers were a bit pudgy, but he had a really fine touch.
Very carefully, without pressing on the folds, he extended the single legal size page as good as anyone could have, letting it just sit there, nearly flat. “I think you’ll need a professional document restorer to do any better. They’ve got a way of re-moisturizing the paper so that it....”
“Who cares? It’s a deed.” (Remember what I told you about Eleanor? How impatient she can be? Besides, we were all wiped, really tired. Rollo and me, because of my time locked up in the safe and our dip in the river. Bobby, Eleanor and MR, because they’re my friends and were experiencing “Sympathetic Wipedness Syndrome,” a medical condition I just invented. You know what I’m talking about. When you’re tired, you go through that impatient phase when even the most ordinary thing can be annoying, followed by “Phase 2” when everything seems funnier than it really is, followed by pass-out sleep. I’m no doctor, but I know this from personal experience, namely staying up really really late studying for exams.)
“To what?” I was curious. “A deed to what?” All five of us, Rollo included, were close enough to exchange ear wax, trying to read the faded fine print.
“It’s...” MR started and then stopped. “Bobby,” MR was giving instructions without bothering to turn around, his eyes busy squinting to read the fine print, “write this down.”
“Write it down on what?” Bobby made a scribbling motion with his finger in the air in front of him.
Earlier that day, the police had asked me to keep some paper handy in case there was anything else I remembered, but I had pretty much told them everything when they took my statement at the police station on the way home from the river. It had only taken a few minutes, and they were right about wanting me to go through it while my memory was fresh. Even so, the detective (the policeman wearing plain clothes) told me that sometimes you remember important things later, after the excitement of the moment has worn off. Later on, particularly when you’re not thinking about it consciously, something, anything, can trigger an important memory. We’ll see, but nothing had occurred to me yet. Just in case, I had my pad and pen, the ones I keep in my backpack, ready. “Here,” I offered them to Bobby. “You can use these,” and I held them up, but not out, a little trick to get him closer to me. (Is that creepy? ..Don’t answer that.)
“Sure.” Bobby agreed, holding onto the pad rather than taking it, waiting for me to let go. (“Sure”? The guy says one lousy word and I’m having trouble breathing.)
“It’s a deed.” MR thought he had our attention. “You getting this?”
“Fine. ‘DEED.’” Bobby held up the pad showing MR the one word he had printed at the top. “There. Now, keep reading.”
“‘Deed’ is a palindrome.”
MR looked up and annoyed. “Thank you, Eleanor,” and then continued reading. “August 14, 1947. Let’s see. ‘..property at the end of the unpaved road known locally as Johnston’s Trail, off Taylor Avenue, consisting of the land defined by the coordinates given herein... Blah, blah, blah. ‘..the southwestern portion of said property running along the water,’” and then he paused. “Hey, I actually know where that is.”
“You do?” Eleanor always sounded surprised whenever MR knew anything, not wanting to admit how really bright he could be sometimes.
“Of course. I mean, I don’t know this lot specifically, but look at the drawing...”
“It’s called a ‘plat.’” I said. “I remember my father showing me the one that came with the deed to our house.”
“It’s south of town,” MR told us. “You guys know where Taylor Avenue is. We’ve gone down there before, on the way to South River to go waterskiing.”
“Sure.” Bobby was talking, but we were all beginning to remember. “It’s got to be Harness Creek. We’ve been there, on Eleanor’s uncle’s boat. It’s just inside the mouth of the river, on the right coming in from the bay.”
“Sure, it’s the creek with the island in the middle,” I started the sentence, but we all finished it together, “which must be why they call it ‘Harness Creek.’”
“Of course.” It was like a light bulb had gone off over Eleanor’s head. “The creek has two openings, one on each side of the island. From the river, the water in the creek looks like a harness.” We all took a moment to look at her as if we’d been born with that information, and she was the last person on the planet to have figured it out.
“Bobby,” I shoved my arm, my bare, short sleeved arm just in front of his face, pointing to the largest of the books lying flat in a pile on the lower shelf of the bookcase behind him. “Hand me that book on the bottom. ...There,” I said, tapping on the air with my finger for emphasis, his head turning toward the shelf, then back to look at my arm, and all the way back to look at me.
“Right.” He smiled slightly, mostly with his eyes, glancing for just a second at my arm, still suspended out there. I pulled it back slowly, unable to look away, even while he began to stand up and do what I’d asked.
Having the feeling I was being stared at, because I was, I turned in time to catch a glimpse of Eleanor looking at me, rolling her eyes. “What?” I mouthed in her direction, to which she widened her eyes and tilted her head slightly, as in “How pathetic. Why don’t you just ask him out?” (Eleanor and I had been friends for a long time and we were really good at reading each other’s expressions.)
Going right to the index, “Harness. Harness Creek. Page 47.” The book was a big, hard-to-hold-in-your-lap history of the county which was more than three hundred years old. The county, not the book. (Our state was one of the original thirteen colonies.) “There it is, see, just inside the river off the bay. Let’s see...” and I began reading the text on the opposite page out loud. Turns out, it was named for an old hermit craftsman who used to live alone on the island, making harnesses, saddles and other horse and farm stuff out of leather. “Well,” not wanting Eleanor to feel bad, “it certainly looks like a harness.”
“Probably why the old man moved there.” Bobby was trying to sound serious, but even Eleanor thought it was funny. (It wasn’t all that hysterical. Of course not. It’s just that we all had a case of the gigglies and you know how that goes.) “I mean,” Bobby wasn’t done yet, “if I made harnesses, that’s where I’d live.” I was laughing too, but mostly trying not to pass out watching Bobby smile. Maybe it was the stress of that day’s events, but Robert Jacob Harrison was looking unusually cute that evening. No doubt about it, I would need all my considerable powers of concentration to focus on the matters at hand. Only Rollo, upside down now on his back, knew what I was really worried about. “Mmooo.” The little sarcastic cooing sound he made was ridicule enough to get me back on track.
“Who’s the deed for?” Eleanor asked. “I mean, who owns the property?”
MR kept reading. “...in the name of Joseph and Manuel Zuretsky, jointly.”
“Who are they?” MR was turning to me for answers.
“Uh, I’m not sure about the first names, but ‘Zuretsky’ was the last name of my grandfather’s partner. I heard my father telling one of the police officers. One of these me
n must have been his partner. Sure, ‘Manuel’ was probably his real first name, but everyone must have called him ‘Manny.’”
“So why would a deed belonging to his partner be in your grandfather’s safe?”
“I don’t know, Bobby.”
“Sounds Polish to me.” Eleanor’s grandparents, on her mother’s side I think, were from Poland. “Maybe the men who kidnaped you were speaking Polish?”
“Maybe, but it sounded more like that bad guy, Boris, on ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle.’”
“Cartoon reruns,” MR said sarcastically, “an excellent basis for a linguistic evaluation of foreign dialects.” The three of us didn’t know whether to be impressed whenever MR said something like that, or just ignore him.
“Between you and me,” I decided to come to Eleanor’s defense by changing the subject, “I’ve got the hots for Dudley.”
“Do-Right?!” Bobby just wanted to be clear, but I fantasied that he was jealous.
“‘Do-Right,’ ‘Do-Wrong,’ what do I care? I think he’s cute.”
“Must be his double chin,” Eleanor was smiling now, using the fingers on her left hand to pull the sides of her face together to make a crease in her chin straight up under her lips. Dudley’s was much more dramatic, of course, but hers was close enough to make me laugh every time she did it. In fact, I remember thinking later, it wasn’t that she was actually funny, so much as it was funny watching her try. “It’ll be our secret.” Eleanor and I loved talking to each other like that, like there was no one else in the room but the two of us.
“Elizabeth Sarah Do-Right,” I sighed for effect. “You can hardly blame me for dreaming about him,” I said in my almost southern accent, waving the vapors away from my face like some overly emotional beauty queen. And then it became obvious that neither Bobby nor MR were paying any attention.
“What about this picture?” Bobby was pointing to the really old photograph I had been holding all this time, the only thing, other than the deed, we’d found in the cash box. There were two men standing next to each other, in what must have been a black and white picture that had faded to brown. “That one,” I told them, pointing to the one in the suit, “could my grandfather, ‘Grand Daddy Coleman.’ I’m not sure. His name was ‘Joe,’ but he’s so much younger there than when I knew him.”
“Maybe he changed it from ‘Zuretsky.’?”
“Maybe so, Bobby. Lot’s of immigrants did that, but I don’t know. He died maybe 10 years ago in some boating accident. I was just a little kid. ...I remember the funeral, I think. People coming over to the house...” I kept staring at the photograph, but it didn’t bring anything to mind.
“Are there any pictures of him around the house?” MR had gotten up and walked over to the wall were we had some family photographs.
“Not that I’ve seen. Maybe my father has some. I’ll ask him again, but he told me once that Grand Daddy never liked having his picture taken. His wife, my grandmother died when my father was young. I’ve seen a picture of her, just one. She was pretty. Had eyes sort of like my Dad.”
“What about the guy in the work clothes standing next to him?” Bobby had the picture now.
Shaking my head, “I don’t know.”
“Look at where they’re standing?” Eleanor was pointing to the dirt around where the picture was taken in front of some kind of wooden office or shed. “It’s outdoors, but there’s no grass.”
“Are you kidding?” MR had something to say, but fell off the arm of the couch before he had a chance to get it out, almost flattening Rollo in the process, his muffled “Merrrrk.” barely audible, but he’d be alright. Rollo liked MR and my friends, and enjoyed being treated like one of the guys. “There’s no pavement,” he explained, scrambling to get up and regaining his composure as if nothing had happened. “That wood decking they’re standing on is a sidewalk, the kind they used to put down when there were dirt streets so they wouldn’t have to walk through the mud when it rained.”
“You figure your father’s what, maybe forty?” Bobby was guessing, but not that far off.
“About that. He was forty-two on his last birthday.”
“And so his father might have been somewhere in his sixties if he were still alive.”
“Yeah, but my father told me Grand Daddy was sixty-two when he died. He’d been more like seventy-two now. ...These guys look to be, what?”
“In their late twenties, thirty at most?” Eleanor was already ahead of us. “Which makes this picture at least forty years old.”
“Clever, Sherlock...” MR was lying flat on his back, holding Rollo under his (Rollo’s) armpits, at the end of his (MR’s) outstretched arms. Rollo hated being held like that, but was too polite to say anything except that little choking noise he kept making. “...but so what? So it’s forty years old. We knew it was an old photo just looking at it.”
“It tells us something about where they were.” Eleanor had a point, but it really didn’t help all that much.
“Yeah, someplace desolate, without sidewalks,” Bobby wasn’t impressed, “which could have been anywhere. So what?”
“Maybe it wasn’t a city, not a proper one anyway. Could have been a construction site, maybe one of those little towns they built for the workers when they struck oil or, even better, gold?!” We all just cocked our heads slightly, told him, “Fat chance,” with our faces and sat there for a moment without saying anything. (By the way, if you don’t have your own “Fat chance.” expression, maybe you should stop reading for a moment and try one. It’ll come in handy. Trust me. I practice expressions sometimes in front of a mirror. ..It’s not as weird as it sounds.)
“Let’s face it.” Bobby was the first one of us to admit it, rubbing the tiredness off his face. “We got nothin’.”
“So what do we do now?” I shrugged. Of the four of us, I was usually the least patient, with Eleanor a close second.
“You’ve got that part-time job at the paper,” MR thought he had something.
He was right, I did.
“Maybe you could do some research there, go through their archives, forty years ago, try to find some record of your grandfather when he moved back here, something that says where he was from. Maybe some mention of his partner?”
“You know,” Eleanor thought he MR was making sense, “he’s right. ‘Zuretsky’ can’t be that common a name.”
“Are you guys kidding?” I complained. “The paper’s a daily. Their archives aren’t computerized. I may have go through hundreds of copies and maybe still not find anything. Besides,” I was waiting for them to volunteer to help me, but no one did, “I’ll have newsprint all over my hands.” I did my best to sound dejected, but no one reacted.
“Tonight,” to my pleasant surprise, normally quiet Bobby was taking charge, although he seemed to be looking at me for permission. “Tonight,” he said again a bit more assertively, “we look through these other papers and tomorrow, we go there.”
“Where?” Eleanor was up on her knees, obviously excited at the prospect of a field trip. Investigating stuff was, after all, what the four of us loved to do most.
But wait...
“Murrrk.” Rollo had moved from my shoulder to sitting on his tush, front arms straight down, next to my laptop where he could watch the screen and me at the same time.
“What? I’m on a roll here. What’s your problem?”
“Murr, meeork ..ork.” It was a sentence, a cat sentence, but a sentence nonetheless, usually indicating that I had forgotten something.
“Hm. Oh yeah. You’re right. That weekend there was an arts, crafts and food fair at the dock.” I stopped to reach up to the shelf next to my desk to grab one of the mmm, mm delicious chocolate chip cookies my mother had sent me. “You’re making me hungry. I used to love those fairs.”
“Meek.”
“You’re right. It wasn’t the fairs so much as it was a chance to hangout with the guy
s.”
“Murrrk.”
“Right, and flirt with Bobby. We didn’t go to Harness Creek the next day, did we? ..REWRITE!”
Back to the living room…
“Where?” MR thought it was obvious. “We’ve got to go to…”
“Are you kidding?” I interrupted. “This weekend’s the fair at the dock. Cool stuff to buy. Little crab cakes?” I was trying to get MR on board. “Those fudge coated brownies that one bakery shop always sells. I mean, aren’t we going? We always go to the fairs.”
“Absolutely!” Eleanor got the point, even if Bobby and MR didn’t.
“What do you think, Bobby?” MR was leaving it up to him. “Maybe we could meet up there, around lunchtime maybe?”
“Yeah, uh...” Bobby didn’t look over at me, not immediately, mostly because he could feel me looking at him. “Sure. …Sure. You two will probably get their early to shop for stuff. MR and me, we’ll leave our bikes at the rack outside,” now he turned to face me, smiling a bit when he did, “outside your father’s office and walk down Main Street to meet you. How’s that?”
“What about our field trip?” Eleanor really wanted to go.
“Maybe Monday?” MR suggested. “We can make plans when we meet up tomorrow.”
“Hey, guys.” It was my mother, and my father right behind her coming through the front door. “We’re back. Sorry we’re late.”
Bobby and MR started to get up, anticipating a ride home. “Whoa. Where are we going?”
Eleanor was asking about our field trip, but it wasn’t necessarily something I wanted my parents to know about. I don’t know, maybe, I wasn’t sure yet, but I wanted time to think about it. “We’re going to hang out at the fair tomorrow, at the dock. Maybe meet there for lunch.”
“Good,” my mother answered for the two of them, “It’s just the break you need,” she told me while Bobby and MR walked around our couch on their way to the front door, and Eleanor and I stood up waiving a simple goodbye with the flat of our hands.
On his way, behind my father and Bobby, MR turned back, my mother having walked out of the way into the kitchen and whispered, to Eleanor no less, “Call me tonight,” raising his eyebrows as he did.
Eleanor was as surprised as I was, but responded with a soft, “Okay,” and then looked at me as if to ask, “What’s that about?”
To be continued…
“There,” I turned to look at Rollo, my speech impaired by a second cookie I hadn’t swallowed yet. “Happy?”
“Mrrr.”
* * *