My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (25 page)

“Will, what are you talking about? We’ll find a good home for him later…after…if MayJune—”

He looked up at me, anger pinching his tiny face. “No. His home is in Alaska. I’m going to go see my land there, and bring him along.”

My heart clenched. “Will…I don’t think—”

A sudden keening noise stopped my lecture. There was a quiet moment—just the cicadas’ slow chirp from somewhere in the dark—and then the keening squeal again. Will and I stared at Trusty. The sound had come from deep within him. MayJune laughed away our disbelief.

“I don’t think he likes quarreling,” MayJune said. “Come on in with me, Donna. You’re shivering. Let me get you a sweater.”

I wanted to make sure Will understood that he was definitely not going to Alaska. I’d set him straight, I thought, on the drive home.

MayJune rose stiffly and then hobbled through her front door. Trusty jumped up to take her porch swing seat and Will put his arms around him. “You made a sound,” Will said, his own voice filled with wonder at the small miracle. “Just a little sound, but it was a sound.”

I suddenly realized that MayJune was right—I was shivering. I went into her house and didn’t see her anywhere. I sat down on the couch in the tidy front parlor. My eyes went right to the photo album that MayJune had left out, the album I’d carefully ignored because Will had been with me.

I picked up the album, opened it again, my hands quivering.

“Wasn’t she a beauty?” MayJune said.

She held a sweater out to me. I wondered how long she’d let me sit like that, alone with the photos. I’d started at the front, and was on the last page.

“Yes,” I said, as she settled next to me on the couch. “You said she grew up loving to sing, but there is so much I don’t know about her.”

“Like what, child?”

The words spilled out of me. “Miss Bettina has told me the truth—that Mama was unhappy, and ran away with a man who promised to help her make a record of her singing. But I don’t know anything about
why
she was so restless. Was she always like that?” My voice knotted up with emotion and my struggle to hold back my tears. MayJune pulled me to her.

“She was an only child. Her own mama was always sickly and unhappy. I don’t know why. And her daddy didn’t handle it well. There were a lot of quarrels in that household. So I think your mama sang to try to make herself happy, and it worked while she was singing. And she saw she could make other people happy.

“As for her running away…well, honey, the biggest turns in life come when you’re paying the least attention, making small choices you don’t yet know will change everything. That’s the way it was with your mama. She made what she thought were small choices—being nice to your daddy at the club, just to be sweet and maybe get a drink or tip. Same with going back to the club, just for old times’ sake, and then taking up with that producer man. Before she knew it, she was in over her head, her choices changing her life and the lives of people around her.”

I swallowed hard. I’d done that. Made small choices. Answering Mr. Cahill’s ad and thinking I could get away with keeping my modeling job with him secret in a town like Groverton. Skipping school with Babs and meeting Jimmy. Even making Mama’s clothes over, deep down knowing Daddy would eventually see what I’d done and be hurt by it.

I sat back up. “Thank you, MayJune.” I closed the photo album. “I guess I’d better get Will on home.” I stood up and stepped out onto the porch.

Will and Trusty were gone.

I found them a half hour later, walking on the dirt and gravel road along the Tangy River.

“Will Everett Lane!” I hollered from the car. “What are you doing?”

He ignored me and kept walking, his framed deed tucked under one arm, Trusty trotting along by his side.

“Come get in this car now! You scared the living daylights out of me!”

He kept on walking.

I slammed the car to a stop, turned off the ignition, jumped out of the car, and ran over to him, grabbing him by the shoulders. Trusty jumped on me, knocking me down, his body on top of mine, his teeth bared over my face. I could feel the growl deep in his body, his willingness to tear into me to—as he saw it—protect Will.

“Trusty, get off of her,” Will said. He grabbed Trusty by the scruff and gave a little yank.

Reluctantly, Trusty crawled off of me, but kept guarding
Will. I sat up slowly. My back was already hurting where I’d hit the ground. I rubbed the back of my head. “You didn’t sound too worried about Trusty ripping my face off.”

“Don’t be silly,” Will said. His voice was tired. “He wouldn’t really hurt you.”

“Uh-huh. What are you doing, running off like that?”

“I’m going to Alaska. With Trusty,” he said.

I stood up, felt my back. The lace on my dress was ripped. I hoped I could fix it—a trivial thought, I know, in that moment, but somehow it
mattered
to me.

“By walking?”

Will stuck out his chin. “I was going back to our house, on the other bridge, ’cause I figured you wouldn’t think to come this way, and then get my money. I could buy a bus ticket.”

“All the way to Alaska?”

“Well, part of the way. And then we could hitchhike. Or walk. Trusty would protect me.”

“You know the bus driver wouldn’t let a dog on the bus. Not a scary one like Trusty.”

“Well, then we’ll just hitchhike and walk all the way.” Even with the tiredness, Will’s voice was defiant.

“Will,” I said. “You got the deed. Trusty is safe at MayJune’s. Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he said. “I want to. I want to see my land. I want to get Trusty back home.”

“You’re tired, and so am I. Let’s get Trusty back to MayJune’s, and go home. We’ll talk about this in the morning—”

“No! You’ll just try to talk me out of going to Alaska!”

I didn’t say anything. Will knew me well. He was right.

“Donna, I need to ask you something, and you have to swear to tell the truth.”

I gave him a little smile, thinking I knew him well—that he was going to ask me how I found him, and that I would say that after searching around MayJune’s house, I knew him well enough after all to realize he’d take this route home. “Sure,” I said.

“Do you swear?”

“I swear.”

“Cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die swear?”

I winced at his use of that phrase, but said, “Cross my heart and hope to die, I swear I’ll answer your question with the truth.”

And then Will asked his question, proving that I didn’t entirely know him as well as I thought.

“Donna, am I gonna die soon?”

When I could breathe again, each word came out painfully, like I was spitting up shards of glass. “Dr. Marshall says it’s hard to know how your blood disease—how the leukemia—will progress, that sometimes miracles can happen, and—”

“I want to know! I want someone to tell me the truth! Am I gonna die soon?”

I stared past him and noticed, for the first time since I’d frantically started driving around to find Will, the harvest moon hanging full and orange over the river and trees, so big that it looked like we could just reach over the river and pluck it down.

Like a ripe persimmon.

I pressed my eyes shut.

The truth.

All our lives, we hadn’t heard the truth.

We’d heard what people wanted us to hear. That Mama had died, when she hadn’t. She’d simply chafed, like a trapped animal, at the life she’d thought she should want, until she couldn’t bear it and ran away.

That she was to blame for Daddy’s drinking problem and fall from power and status at the paper mill and in town, when she wasn’t. He’d chosen how to react, to tend and nurture his hurt instead of really taking care of us, or noticing how much Miss Bettina loved him, or putting his life back together.

That people like Mr. Cahill were dangerous and wrong in their opinions and how they lived their lives and who they loved. And people like Mr. and Mrs. Denton were perfect and admirable.

That cereal companies and TV shows would tell the truth in their promotions and not just prey on the dreams of little boys.

That workers didn’t have the right to expect safety measures.

I knew what I was supposed to say—that it was hard to say what would happen, that maybe the clinical trials Dr. Marshall talked about would turn up a treatment for Will’s type of cancer sooner rather than later, that maybe if we prayed hard enough and long enough and purely enough, then God in his heaven would see fit to bestow us with a miracle.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t be one more person telling Will what he was supposed to hear. So I opened my eyes and looked at him. As always, his big blue eyes got me. And I spoke the truth.

“Yes, Will, you are dying. I don’t know how long you
have. A while, before you become weak and feel really ill, and then Dr. Marshall will add to the medicines you have to keep you comfortable—”

“I don’t want to be comfortable, Donna. I don’t want to win something just ’cause I’m sick, and I don’t want to go to Hollywood. I don’t want to stay here and have people moon over me and stare at me like they did tonight. I don’t want that to be the last thing I do, Donna,” Will said. “The last thing I’ll be thinking about—all these people staring at me like I’m an exhibit from
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
for kicking the bucket as a kid. But there is something I
do
want.”

I knew what he was going to say. He grinned at me. “I want for you, me, and Trusty to go visit my land!”

He wanted us to trek across the entire country, part of Canada, and into the Alaska Territory, to see one…square…inch…of…land.

His one square inch of Alaska.

Impossible. Completely, fully, totally impossible.

And yet I knew that no matter what I said, Will would keep trying, would keep running away, just like he always did to get to his favorite place at the river, only this time, my ridiculous, stubborn, ill little brother would try, and try, and try again to get to Alaska to see his land, no matter that it wasn’t much bigger than a postage stamp.

Because he didn’t see it as ridiculous. Or illogical. He saw it as adventurous.

Even as all this turned over in my mind, he said, “We have a car! And we can borrow MayJune’s camper—you know she’ll let us. And we can take some food from Daddy’s fallout shelter—he’ll never miss it. And I have Jimmy’s old atlas.
I’ve already figured out two routes to get there. Both look pretty good.”

The way Will put it, it seemed so easy. I thought about the money I’d pulled from tips at Grandma’s, the money I’d saved from work for Mr. Cahill, from working for Miss Bettina, from making clothes from Mama’s old things instead of buying new…. Instead of using that money for a bus ticket to New York to be a seamstress, I could use it for gasoline to go to Alaska….

I shook my head. No. No. This was beyond impossible. It was insane. “Will…I don’t think…in your condition—”

He put his hand over my mouth, thrust his face in mine. “My condition isn’t ever going to get better. And I want to see my land in Alaska before I die.”

Then he moved to stand beside me and pointed at the harvest moon…the persimmon moon. “There’s still time,” he said. “The
Farmer’s Almanac
says it’s supposed to be a mild fall and winter. By the time another full moon comes around, it will be too late to drive in Alaska.”

Maybe, I thought, just trying would take Will’s mind off his illness. We had more than a month’s worth of his medicine, and we could probably get to the Alaska Territory in ten days if things went our way, if the weather held, if the car didn’t break down. And Will’s condition wasn’t going to worsen if he rode in a car. In fact, I told myself, being made into a local oh-poor-dying-boy celebrity would run him down far more quickly.

We’d have to sneak off, without anyone knowing our plans—except MayJune, of course. Could we really leave…that night?

Suddenly, Trusty was looking up at us intently, his jaws open, miming barking. Male voices quickly approached. Maybe the voices belonged to the kind of men Babs had hoped would come along when I’d changed that flat tire. But Trusty wanted us off that road. Still, I knew Will wouldn’t budge until I gave him an answer.

“We’ll do it,” I said. “We’ll go to Alaska. You, me, Trusty. Now, get in the car!”

B
y the time we got back to MayJune’s, Will was fast asleep in the front seat. Trusty stood in the back of Mama’s car, his head thrust between me and Will. I could hear his breathing, smell his doggy breath, feel his warm, moist exhalations on my cheek on the entire drive back to MayJune’s, as he guarded Will and kept a wary watch on me.

As uneasily aware as I was of Trusty’s sharp teeth, ready to snap at any second if he decided I wasn’t Will’s ally, I was even more nervous about what I’d just promised Will.

A trip to see his one square inch of Alaska.

Already the what-ifs were flooding my mind.

But then, how could I look at Will and take back my promise, especially after I’d told him the truth about his dying?

If Mama’s car broke down, I’d fix it or find someone who could. After all, I’d changed a tire easily. If Will started getting sick, we’d find help. Or turn around and come back. In any case, I’d rather be with him if he needed help. I knew he’d just keep running away, no matter what I did or said, and that I couldn’t stay awake and watch him every hour of every day.

At MayJune’s, I tried to rouse Will, but he was deeply asleep. Trusty bared his teeth at me when I tried to shake Will awake.

I looked at the dog. “Fine,” I said. “You stay here and watch Will.”

Then I walked up the small slope of front yard to MayJune’s house. This time, I wasn’t the least bit surprised when she opened the door before I could knock and had two fresh mugs of steaming tea waiting for us.

She took her time settling in her chair and then picked up her cup and took a sip. “Mmm-mmm. Ginger root, willow bark, chamomile. Good for my stiff old hips, at least until bedtime. I’ll be stiffer than a wet sheet left on the line in winter when I wake up, though.”

I smiled and picked up my cup, sniffing the aromatic steam.