Four and Twenty Blackbirds (5 page)

I sat silent for another moment, growing calmer before looking at either of them. A lesson was coming together, and I sensed it was important. Behind me a pair of high heels clattered on the shiny floor, and phones rang at the check-in desk. Oh yes, it was a hotel now. I looked over my shoulder and out the front windows beside the doors. Across the road the sad, sagging ruins of other hotels and restaurants forlornly decayed to uniform shades of gray.

I raised my eyes. "Can I ask you something?"

They nodded, once again in full accord aligned against me.

"Why is this still here? I mean, people take care of it and keep it pretty. It's not like the rest of everything out here that looks like it's going to fall down any second. Didn't you guys see when we were driving here? The Choo Choo isn't like everything around it. It's different, but people protect it and love it, they don't abandon it or tear it down. This whole part of town looks like it got sick and died. Why does this place still look alive?"

After a few seconds of blank stares from them both, the reading teacher shrugged and softened a little. "I guess because, well, just because it was able to evolve. When it couldn't be one thing anymore, it became something else and kept on living that way . . . and it did it with style."

"But it's not the same."

"But it's still here," she restated my point without contributing anything new. "In the end it outlasted everything else."

So that was it—the lesson unintended.

Yes, it was important indeed. I learned more on that field trip than my school had ever expected, though it wasn't from the teachers. I learned volumes more than I might have gleaned from a blackboard, and I learned it from a big brick hotel that patiently wore a tacky neon sign like a plastic crown—not because it looked good but because it had become a necessity.

I closed my eyes again, wanting to remember the beauty of the place instead of my violence there. I listened for the churning engines of long-rusted trains, straining to hear them dragging themselves along the tracks and puffing to a laborious stop. I did not see them on that visit, but in the rear of the hotel, dozens of retired passenger cars were permanently parked on the remaining tracks. Gradually they were being renovated and restored, eventually to become luxury hotel rooms. All the ghosts in the old Pullman and Cincinnati cars cried out the rueful truth in voices like whistles, steam, and crackling lumps of burning coal.

Now you know, now you know. It is not enough to simply survive and to be victorious . . . it must be done with
grace.

4
Interregnum

I

The summer I turned thirteen, Lu and Dave sent me to Camp Lookout, on the next mountain over. I was none too pleased with the prospect, initially, but once I got there it was all right. It wasn't a full-fledged summer camp, anyway—it only ran for two weeks out of the year, and I was near enough to home that a phone call would probably have summoned my aunt and uncle faster than a pizza.

I tried not to feel too betrayed as they drove off and left me, and I tried to remember that it was only a couple of weeks. This was supposed to be fun. Dave said that I was there to taste some independence, and when he put it that way, it didn't sound so bad.

The camp itself was civilized enough, which is to say, at least there weren't any tents. I didn't like the thought of tents. I like having more between me and the elements than a thin sheet of canvas, and I've never seen the point of going out of your way to pretend you haven't got any plumbing. Therefore, I was greatly reassured by the sight of cabins and a couple of communal bathroom buildings. As long as I could flush, I'd be okay.

I twisted my hands up in the duffel bag straps and shifted the weight of my backpack on my shoulder. Some other kid a few feet away was crying and clinging to her mom. She was about my age, and I found myself uncomfortable on her behalf. I wasn't entirely thrilled about the situation either, but it wasn't something to make a scene over.

"Good grief," I muttered, just in time for a counselor to tap me on the shoulder and offer to show me to my bunk.

The counselor's name was Maggie, and she had a bone-deep tan that promised she'd look like a saddle in twenty years time. She had enormous teeth, as unnaturally white as her skin was unnaturally brown, and she was near enough to my age that I anticipated a difficult time taking her seriously. But she was wearing the official camp staff T-shirt and a name tag that identified her as a "Senior Assistant," so I let her tell me where to go.

She led me to a big A-frame structure that was supposed to look rough-hewn, and it succeeded enough to worry me about its potential bug population. But inside, the place was clean, and the four narrow beds appeared free of any obvious infestation.

Two of the beds had stacks of personal belongings staking them out as claimed, so I went to the far corner and dropped my stuff down on an empty mattress.

"Your bunkmates are already lined up for roll call and introduction. Let's get you out there with them, okay?"

"Okay."

"How about we get you introduced around, and then we can get you all unpacked and settled in?"

"That sounds fine," I agreed, happy to follow instructions since I wasn't sure what was expected of me.

"After Mr. Joe and Miss Candy finish with their opening welcome, we can get ready for lunch, okay?" I would come to learn that Maggie always talked that way, in questions. I don't think she was stupid, but she seemed as uncertain in her authority as I was—it was like she was asking my permission to tell me what to do. I found her discomfort almost endearing, but not exactly confidence inspiring.

The campers were all gathered outside in a small amphitheater, shuffling bottoms on the split-log seats. Some were chatting with cronies of previous years, and others were new, like me. The latter group played laser-tag games of eye contact, wondering who would be worth chatting up and whom to avoid.

I took a seat on the outer edge of the seating's crescent, making a point of keeping plenty of personal space between me and the next kid in line, a boy a couple of years my junior. I crossed my arms over my knees and leaned forward, waiting for the action to start.

Mr. Joe kicked things off with a knobby-kneed bang, doing a little hop as he came forward to begin the official greetings. "Hello, boys and girls, and welcome to Camp Lookout!" he announced, speaking with inflections that expect a cheer to follow.

He was rewarded with a discordant buzz of leg-slaps and whistled hoots, and Miss Candy stepped down front to join him. Miss Candy had bangs that had been teased with a curling iron and sprayed into place before the rest of her hair was pushed under a Camp Lookout baseball cap, and I figured that was pretty much all I needed to know about
her
.

Neither one of them impressed me much as people I should get to know, and I don't remember much of what they said. Mostly they gushed excited promises of games, swimming, and crafts—none of which spelled "summer fun" to me, exactly, but at least I was surrounded by new people. Everyone at school knew who I was, knew all about the court case and—almost as notoriously—the time I broke April's nose in the Choo Choo; but there at the camp, so far as anyone knew I was just one more awkward kid. The more I thought about it, the more I found the prospect of anonymity intensely appealing.

I met my roommates back at the bunks after opening remarks. We introduced ourselves and made idle chitchat while we unpacked, and then Maggie came bounding in behind us to perform a redundant round of roll call for our benefit.

"This is Anne," Maggie began, making a sweeping gesture at the crybaby I'd seen earlier in the parking lot. Anne was no longer sobbing, but the waterworks hadn't cleared up completely. She nodded to acknowledge her name and lifted her hand in a little wave.

"And Lisa." Lisa didn't look up from her methodical unpacking, but she also lifted her hand in a small wave to the room in general.

"And Eden." I followed suit, unwilling to break the routine.

"And this is Cora," she finished. Cora mumbled a syllable that might have been "Hi," but spared us the beauty queen hand twist. Maggie decided that her work with us was done, at least for the time being, so she left us all to "get acquainted, okay?"

Within five minutes I realized with a passive displeasure that I had been stashed in the oddball cabin. I never did decide if they put me there because my cover was blown and they thought I was one of the oddballs, or if I was just lucky.

Cora was the easiest to get to know, since she didn't tear up at the drop of a hat or freak out if you bumped the side of her bed and caused her socks to fall out of alignment, so I chose her as my first potential camp buddy. We had a number of things in common, and it was easy to talk. She was also tall for her age, and like me, she was the sort of girl who got asked a lot where her parents were from, since that's more polite than wondering aloud about somebody's racial makeup. Cora had never been to camp before, and she didn't know anyone else either.

"I've got a grandfather who's dying," she informed me over supper.

"I'm sorry," I said, just being polite, and she called me on it.

"No, you're not, but that's okay. It's kind of sad, but I don't know him real well. I'm just telling you so in case I go home in the middle of things, you'll know why. Mom didn't want me to come at all, since Grandpa's sick and we might have to leave for his funeral, but my stepdad said they could always bring me home if it came to that. Are your grandparents still alive?"

I had to think about it a minute. "My grandmother is, I think. I don't know. For some reason, we don't have much to do with her. I'm not even sure what she looks like."

"Why don't you have much to do with her?" Cora asked between a couple bites of cornbread.

"Not sure, exactly. Had something to do with my mom, maybe. It's a long story though, I bet." I tried to summon some memory of Lu's mother. I knew we'd lived with her until Lu met Dave, and I was a couple of years old then. I thought I might remember some half-heard voice that may have been hers, but then again, it might have been somebody else. I couldn't remember seeing her at Malachi's trial, and even my rarely seen aunt Michelle had come out for that one. "I think my grandmother's still alive, but I'm not sure we'd go to her funeral if she had one. I don't think she takes much interest in us, anyway, and I guess it's mutual."

"Oh."

Anne, who was sitting beside Cora on the other side of the table, began to sniffle. "I miss my grandma. I go to her place after school twice a week while my mom's at work."

We didn't pretend not to stare as she started crying again, but at least we didn't laugh, and Cora handed her a napkin. "That's sweet that you're so close," she said while Anne blew her nose. "But I bet she hopes you're having a good time. You're only going to be here two weeks, and then you can go home."

"Two whole weeks," Anne echoed mournfully, and then it was my turn to hand her a napkin.

"Geez, honey. Suck it up."

"That's not very nice," Lisa said without looking at me. She was too busy making sure her peas were lined up in tidy rows to raise her eyes and scold me in earnest, which was fine. It had been four hours, and I'd already figured out that it didn't matter how rude or gentle you were with Anne, she was going to cry anyway and there wasn't much you could do to improve or worsen the situation.

"It's okay," Anne said behind her improvised tissue.

"What about you?" Cora asked Lisa, who was deeply engrossed in her vegetable arrangement. "Why do you always do that thing where you have to make everything look just right?"

"Yeah, that's way weirder than Anne's crying," I agreed, and I peered over Lisa's shoulder, as if getting a closer look at her edible artwork would cause it to make more sense.

She elbowed me away without any real malice. "I like it this way."

I accepted the explanation, but I couldn't withhold judgment. "Bizarre," I concluded, and even Anne managed to nod through the snot to agree.

"I don't care," Lisa replied. Something about the way she said it made me believe her. That only made it stranger, so far as I was concerned, but at the same time it made it more tolerable too. At least I didn't have to feel sorry for her.

Across the table, Cora shrugged at me and I shrugged back.

Cora was easily the most normal of the bunch, and she probably thought the same thing about me, which only begged the question of what was really wrong with her. Before the week was out, I'd have my answer.

Thursday night we had a bonfire. There were marshmallows to be turned to dripping torches and dropped into the dirt; and two of the male counselors broke out guitars to compel a sing-along. I'm a fairly good singer so I joined in on the songs I knew even though I felt a little silly and didn't understand who Michael was, or why he needed to row the boat ashore.

Later, they wanted to tell ghost stories. Mr. Joe told the first two or three, but they sounded more like jokes than real events. Cora thought so too. She leaned over on the splintery log and said as much in my ear, but she wasn't any good at whispering and Mr. Joe overheard just enough to feign offense. "Cora." He found her on the far side of the fire and made sure everyone else saw her, too. "What do you mean they're not
real
ghost stories?"

She shifted on the log and tried to make herself look smaller. It didn't work, and all eyes were on her, so she had to answer. "I mean they're not, that's all. Real ghost stories don't have punch lines, Mr. Joe."

"They don't? Well, how should they go, then? Why don't you tell us, since you're the expert."

I was thankful for the dimly bright fire, because it camouflaged the flush that was creeping up my neck. I knew everyone was looking at Cora, but she was sitting next to me, and there was a chance someone would later remember me when presented with the mental prompt of "ghosts." I held my breath and waited for my new friend's answer.

"Real ghost stories . . . they're not whole stories," she said slowly. "You can't tell them like a joke, because you never know the whole thing. There's too much left out, and if you know the whole thing, it would take you longer than a couple of minutes to tell."

I found myself nodding along to her words, then I stopped myself, lest I be singled out as a fellow "expert" and asked to testify. But she was right, and I knew that better than anybody. It made me wonder how she knew it so well.

"Would you like to tell us a
real
ghost story, then?" Mr. Joe went on, and all at once I deeply hated him for forcing the subject. He didn't understand at all; if you had a real ghost story, you probably didn't want to tell it to a whole bunch of people who were only going to laugh at you if you believed it.

Cora opened her mouth and then closed it. She looked over at me, then, for general support or maybe something more specific. I didn't know how to help her, though, so she glared back into the fire. "I don't have any real ghost stories to tell, Mr. Joe. Yours are fine. You should tell us some more of them."

Her flat tone was utterly lost on our counselor, who needed only the barest hint of permission to make a further spectacle of himself. He happily began a new tale, and as he talked he stuffed another unfortunate marshmallow onto the end of his unbent coat hanger.

Cora let out a sigh of relief and uncrossed her legs.

"He's stupid," I whispered—and I'm good at whispering, so he didn't hear me. "Don't worry about it." Then, because I wanted to establish to her that I 'got it,' and that she could tell me if she wanted to, I added, "If you've got a real ghost story and you want to tell it later on, I promise I wouldn't laugh at it."

Cora rubbed her toes into the dirt and stared into the flames. "Yeah," she said, but I wasn't sure what she meant by it, so I just said, "Okay" in response, and we didn't talk about it anymore for a while.

That same night, I heard her humming to herself. I want to say that she was doing it in her sleep, but I don't think that was the case. I think she was afraid, and she was singing to herself all quiet, the way people do sometimes. Some people pray, and I imagine it has about the same effect. It gives you something else to think about, something else to dwell on besides what you're afraid of—but not something so complicated that you can't spit it out by heart if you get too scared to think on it. Having a strand of words to string together helps.