Free Verse (8 page)

I don't know her well, haven't done much to draw her attention besides turning in papers and refusing to raise my hand. This is the first time I've really noticed how tired she looks up close.

“Is my—are my poems okay? Do you want me to do them again?”

“They're just fine,” she says. “But if you do write more, I'd sure like to read them.”

•   •   •

I want to write haiku all the way home, but I can't. Jaina is next to me again and leaves no downtime for thought. She doesn't give me any clues as to why she's trusting me even though I hurt her. She talks about her favorite TV show and her new video game and her upcoming weekend trip to Tennessee. She tells me about the boy she has a crush on and the funny part in the book she's reading and her bad math grade. She tells me she's mad that she has to go straight home today because of makeup work and she can't stay for after-school activities. She barely ever stops for a breath.

“I'm sorry I hit you,” I blurt in the middle of her sermon about how unfair Mr. Samples is when he grades his social studies tests.

Jaina laughs this weird little laugh, like a dog barking. “You're a weird kid. You know that, right?”

“Then why'd you sit down next to me?”

“'Cause I'm a weird kid, too. I'm new. All new kids are weird, didn't you know? Least that's what Anthony says.” She grins. “I know you was aiming for Anthony, and who can blame you for that?”

•   •   •

“I would like to walk to Town Center.”

Phyllis smiles. “A walk sounds nice.”

“I would like to walk alone.”

Her smile disappears. “I see.”

Now I think maybe I hurt her feelings. So I say, “Never mind. Let's stay home.”

•   •   •

After Phyllis goes to sleep, I walk to Town Center. It's spooky in the dark. There are ribbons on the trees.

I mean to write. The rules and rhythms of haiku have been bouncing around in my brain since I left Miss Jacks alone at her desk. I have my notebook and my pen and a flashlight I took from the junk drawer in Phyllis's kitchen, and I have all these ideas floating around that are just the right length for haiku. I feel like if I'm going to do them right, I need to be somewhere in nature so I can write about it. I'm not brave enough for the woods at night, so I choose the park.

But in the center of the park, on the steps of the caboose, somebody has placed three hard hats with lamps. One of the hats is red. The ground in front of the caboose
is piled with flowers, mostly daisies and baby's breath, along with one carnation—not the evaporated milk but the flower—and a few red roses.

Now there are even more words, too many words for me to write down, bubbling up in my head and through my heart, and I can't make them stop. I hear patterns of syllables in my head, 5–7–5, and they are all about loss and death and sadness and men with grimy faces who leave for work and don't come home. It's like haiku has opened a door inside me that I'm trying with all my might to shove closed again. I feel an itch in my fingers, in my bones. I pull the weeds out of the spaces between the steps of the caboose. I sweep loose twigs off the park bench. I gather the garbage the druggies have left and cram it into the trash can. I try to find the “off” valve for the floodgate of words the sad memorial and my English assignment have opened up.

My fingers twitch toward flowers at the edge of the park. I pick a purple clover and place it on the pile. I do one more haiku in my head:

If this town were a

bird, it would not be able

to fly anymore.

Then I swear off poetry.

“I thought you might want to stay for poetry club on Thursdays.”

This was not what I expected when Miss Jacks asked me to stay after again. I was thinking maybe she'd had a second look at my poetry and decided it wasn't right after all. My nervousness must show on my face, because she starts trying to talk me into it. “It's Friday now, so you've got almost a week to think about it. Just mull it over, will you? We experiment with new poetry forms. We freewrite. We critique each other's work. A lot of the kids enter contests. There's one every quarter, and they give scholarships.”

Scholarships.
It's one of those escape words Michael was always pushing me toward, and I latch onto it like a sign from him. Maybe I was too quick to swear off poetry.

“What kinds of scholarships?”

“Well, for talented writers. Some are for specific programs of study, like journalism or English, but a lot of them are just general scholarships.”

“How late do you stay?” I ask, wondering how they could squeeze poetry club in before the buses run.

“We meet from three fifteen to four fifteen.”

“Oh.”

“You would need to arrange a ride home.”

“Oh.” I leave.

•   •   •

Before the sun rises Saturday morning, I have already worked up a sweat pacing the porch. I've been pacing since Hubert raised one hand in a wave and then walked out to his truck on his first day back at work.

The accident at Dogwood wasn't big enough to close the mine. It was only a little thing, only a fluke. Human error on the part of one of the men who died. It could happen in any job. It's not going to happen again. Everyone is safe; that's what they've said. The mine's open again, barely over a week after the accident.

Still, I pace.

Once the sun is up and the birds are singing right at their loudest, Mikey comes out on his porch. He looks like he just tumbled out of bed: mussed-up hair and sleepy eyes. His glasses are crooked. His shoes are on the wrong feet.

I raise a hand to wave at Mikey like I do to his father.
He waves back. Then he begins pacing his porch and I go back to pacing mine. We haven't stared at each other through the window since we started actually talking, but today there isn't much to say. There's not one speck of humidity, and the porch is warm in the sun and cold in the shade. I stop pacing and sit on the warm part. I worry.

•   •   •

“Can we cook something?” Mikey appears at the porch railing. “I was thinking cake. It doesn't have to be finger-bone cake.”

“It's not even nine yet,” I tell him. “Phyllis won't let us do cake for breakfast.” He looks irritated. “But we can ask Phyllis if we can make more muffins,” I offer. “That sounds breakfasty. And then we can put lots of chocolate chips in them.”

Phyllis doesn't seem as disapproving of Mikey since he slept on her rug, hugging her dog.

“But we're out of chocolate chips,” she says. “If you want chocolate chip muffins, you'll have to go to the store first.” She is elbow-deep in a skein of yarn, her knitting needles barely visible. I know there's no chance she'll be going to the store with us. It'll just be me and my cousin. The unexpected freedom sounds like the perfect thing for a Saturday.

“Okay,” I say. “We'll go.”

“Take some money from the change jar. And ask Shirley first.”

We cross to the Harless house to ask Shirley, who's at the computer. Her hair is up under a blue scarf, and the earrings that dangle below it are a matching shade of blue. I think it's funny that she's got her hair put up and her earrings on but she's wearing green plaid pajama pants and flip-flops.

“Can we go to the store?” Mikey asks Shirley.

“I'm busy.”

“No, I mean
we
.” He points between himself and me.

Shirley turns in her chair, her full attention on us for the first time. She looks from me to Mikey and back to me.

“Can you handle him?” she asks me.

I have no idea, but I nod. “Sure.”

“Be back in an hour or I'll worry.” Her gaze has already strayed to the screen.

A lot can happen in an hour. But I only say, “All right.”

We leave the Harless house and walk through the spring morning with its clean-scrubbed air. Mikey's shoes are still on the wrong feet. I've covered my bare feet with a pair of Phyllis's gardening clogs. We walk up West Lane toward Town Center, Mikey walking slower than I'm used to. I shorten my stride. A few minutes later, I shorten it again. I busy my fidgety feet kicking gravel. It sloshes into puddles of dark yellow mud-water.

“So how come everybody says you're a handful?” I ask him as we pass the caboose and its flowers, which have scattered across the park in the wind.

He shrugs.

“Shirley asked if I can handle you. How come?”

He shrugs.

“I already know you stay up late at night.”

“So do you.”

“Do you get in trouble at school?”

He shrugs.

“Do you break stuff? Do you run away?” I list my own crimes.

He shrugs.

“You're a man of many words,” I comment.

“I want chocolate,” he says.

“Where do you think we're going?”

“I'm just saying.”

“You're just changing the subject, is what you're doing.”

He shrugs.

•   •   •

I point out my apartment as we pass.

“That was mine. Mine with the other Michael Harless.”

“The one that died,” Mikey says.

I shrug.

•   •   •

The chocolate chip muffins taste even better when we don't put anything but chocolate chips in them. We eat sitting on the porch rail with our feet dangling, watching cars occasionally glide up Route 10. Right in front of Phyllis's porch, there's a pothole. About half the cars swerve
and the other half lurch suddenly. When there are no cars, Chip fetches the stick we keep throwing for him. He's a low-slung dog with stubby legs and crooked ears, but he can catch that stick midair almost with his eyes closed.

Every now and then, he lopes toward the road for a drink of water out of the puddle that has formed in the pothole. A group of girls, who walk past in shorts too short for May, look sideways at the dog, like he might bite them. I can catch bits and pieces of their conversation:
“I don't know, what do you think?” “It's your hair, Tania.” “But what do you
think
?”
Underneath, I can hear the wind gathering and releasing the treetops in the woods behind town. This is the busiest time of day in Caboose.

We throw more sticks for Chip and snack on chocolate chip muffins right down into the evening hours. We don't talk a whole lot. When Mikey talks, it's mostly about gruesome things: how creepy is it that human beings are just skeletons covered in guts covered in skin? And if zombies eat brains, how come they're so dumb? When I talk, Mikey tilts his head at me like he can't work out what language I'm speaking. We don't do well together talking-wise, but we bake three batches of muffins, and by the third, I know how to preheat the oven and grease the pan and even how to use a pot holder safely.

We sit on the porch rail till Hubert comes home from work. His truck grinds into the deeper gravel of the road's shoulder. His door squeaks open. I hurl myself off the
porch railing so quick I scratch my knees in the bushes. I dart across both yards to Hubert. I fling my arms around him. Even
I
have not expected me to do this. He almost falls backward and has to steady himself against the truck door. It squeaks again.

“What's that for?” he asks.

“I thought you might die.”

He makes a noise somewhere in his throat, like he's got to clear it, and then he tugs me back into a one-armed hug. He smells like dirt and rocks, and I know I'm going to be streaked black when he lets go.

“Jesus, kid,” he says, shaking his head, eyebrows disappearing under heavy curls of black hair. “Nah, I'm okay. We're okay.”

Mikey sidles up and slips under Hubert's other arm like it's the most natural thing in the world, and the three of us head for the Harless house. For a minute, I feel kinship the way the dictionary defines it, not just shared blood but an actual family. The way I did with Michael and Ben, and maybe even Judy once. Hubert and Mikey are my kin. I still have kin.

“We're okay,” I repeat, liking how it sounds.

On Sunday it is pouring down sun. The kind of sun you can't get away from even if you want to; it's so bright, like orange juice, and it splashes into everything.

Mikey and I lie on our stomachs on the porch boards with our chins hanging over the edge. He's drawing in the dirt with a stick. I'm trying to figure out how to multiply unlike fractions. Stella's chosen the small of my back as her perch. She's vibrating her happiness, and I am beginning to get sleepy, even though it isn't even nine a.m.

“We should do something.” I feel guilty wasting gallons of orange sunshine.

“What do you want to do?” Mikey asks.

I shrug half a shoulder. Stella murmurs her disapproval. “I'm supposed to help your dad clean out the storage shed.”

He snorts. I take this as a no.

“We could go to the pawnshop,” I suggest.

“Why? What's at the pawnshop?”

“Something I want.”

He twists his head to look over at me. “Something top secret, or you going to tell me?”

“Something top secret.”

“You going to tell me when we get there?”

“No.”

“Then forget it.”

We stay draped on the porch. The sun keeps moving.

•   •   •

“Sasha?”

Mikey's voice catches me off guard. I pull my face off my algebra book, and Stella murmurs another warning.

“I was sleeping,” I say.

“Sorry.”

“What?”

“I said I'm sorry,” he repeats.

“No, I mean, you said ‘Sasha.' So I'm saying ‘what.'”

“Oh. Let's clean the storage shed.”

•   •   •

There's a lot of junk in the storage shed. Some of it is boring stuff: extra extension cords and broken roof shingles and boxes of Christmas lights. Some of it is more interesting. There are stacks of papers arranged loosely on the tops of boxes, like somebody brought them in quickly
and stuck them in the first available space, like that person didn't really want to deal with them. They need to be gathered and put into some of the empty boxes along the back.

At first, Mikey stacks things quickly, but after a while, he notices me scanning the papers and separating them into piles to box. Mikey starts scanning, too, like he didn't realize he could do that before.

The top layer of papers is boring. Water bills. Electric bills. Internet bills. Underneath, where the postmarks start getting older, things get more interesting.

•   •   •

After we find the box, Mikey freaks out and breaks a window. I yank him back by the shoulders before he can step on the glass in his flip-flops and get cut. I can't let Mikey step in the glass. He's not even ten. I'm supposed to watch out for him.

Mikey pulls himself from my grip and darts out of the shed. He runs across his yard, across the road, and between two houses on the other side. He disappears from view.

The cousin in me thinks I ought to run after him. But the employee in me thinks I ought to clean up the glass before Hubert sees it, or I might never get Phyllis a GUI-tar.

Actually, the
cousin
in me sort of thinks I ought to clean up the glass before Hubert sees it, too. I can tell Shirley and Mikey barely get along. I want to keep him out of trouble as much as possible.

I'm not exactly sure how to clean up glass. It's scattered all over the rough wood floor of the shed. I know not to pick it up with my hands, but it's going to be tough to clean it up without touching it.

I think I know where Phyllis keeps the broom. It takes some sneaking to get the broom and the dustpan and make it back without anybody asking questions about what I'm doing. Then it takes some figuring to work out how to get the dustpan to hold still while I sweep into it. Nobody ever taught me anything. I feel ashamed and mad all at once. I sweep up the glass, and it makes the softest
crunch-crunch-crunch
as it slides into the dustpan.

Now I've got a dustpan full of broken window and a hand full of broom and a shed that is still not clean and a cousin on the run. The day itself is still pretty, but the stuff inside it isn't.

I hide the broom behind some boxes. I put the dustpan and glass on a shelf. I put the thing away in its box. I close the box. I put it neatly on the shelf in front of the dustpan.

•   •   •

“Sasha?”

Phyllis appears in my doorway. I'm writing haiku. Not for English class but just because. It turns out swearing off poetry doesn't work the way swearing off lima beans does. I swore off lima beans in third grade and it worked. I swore off poetry less than a week ago and here I am.

“Hi, Phyllis.”

“Homework?” she asks.

“We learned how to write haiku at school.” This is true. It's just not an answer to her question.

“Wow, haiku. I never understood all those forms and patterns. A poem's like kudzu. It's going to grow in the direction it wants. Like a kid.”

“I have a poem about plants,” I say. I hand it to her.

She reads aloud:

“Someday I will plant

flowers from West Virginia

in other places.”

She smiles. “That's a good haiku.”

“I don't have any haiku about kids.”

“That's okay.”

“Do you know my English teacher?”

“No, I can't say I do.”

“She invited me to poetry club. But I would have to stay after until four fifteen, so I said no.”

She makes a mouth noise of disapproval. “Sasha, I can pick you up at four fifteen once in a while. What day is poetry club?”

“Thursday.”

“You should have asked me, sweetie.”

“I didn't want to interrupt your work.”

“Pssh.”

We get quiet a minute, but she doesn't leave and she doesn't hum, so I wait.

“Sasha,” Phyllis says, “I came up here to ask you a question.”

I wait some more.

“Did you break Hubert's shed window?”

I think of how I urged Mikey to help me clean the shed.

“It was an accident,” I tell her, which is not a lie.

“Oh, Sasha.” She slumps like the air has gone out of her. “Why? Why did you break Hubert's window?”

“There was something in a box,” I say.

Phyllis shakes her head. “What box? What do you mean?”

“I wish it didn't happen,” I tell her.

She looks so sad that I feel sadder myself. “Sasha, you'll have to pay Hubert for the window,” she says, her voice thick with guilt.

I hurt. In my head I hear the final clash of notes the guitar let loose when I threw it against the window.

I pull the suitcase out from under my bed. It doesn't look like a lot of money, the wadded-up bills dried stiff from being damp in my pockets. Phyllis looks from me to the money and back at me with a strange expression.

“Here,” I say. “If that's not enough, I'll get more.”

Now I'll have to start over. I'm so busy thinking about that, it takes me a minute to realize how much more sad Phyllis looks now that I've given her the money.