Gator on the Loose! (5 page)

“I only have time for one small bowl.”

Mr. Sanders knew where everything was. He pulled the ladle from the jug on the counter and a bowl from the cupboard above the sink.

“I always time my breaks for your house, as you know,” he said, sipping his soup. “I’ve been here for twelve minutes, leaving me three more to eat this delicious soup.” Mr. Sanders focused on slurping while Keisha and her mother exchanged glances.

“Mom, are you looking out here?” Daddy’s voice was right outside the window.

Paulo’s banging got louder.

“I keep forgetting the yogurt,” Keisha said.

“I wish you could stay longer, Mr. Sanders, but I remember your motto: No rain or snow or soup can keep you from your appointed rounds.” Mama took the empty bowl of soup from Mr. Sanders’s hands and opened the back door.

“I see it! Right there. It’s an alligator tail,” Keisha heard Grandma say.

“That’s the garden hose, Mom.” Daddy had obviously reached the place where Grandma was standing.

“Actually, we don’t have an official motto at the post office.” Mr. Sanders was now leaning out the door, looking around the side of the house to see what
Grandma and Daddy were talking about. Keisha leaned outside for a look, too. “It was the Greek historian Herodotus who said: ‘Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.’ He said that about twenty-five hundred years ago. It’s on the New York City General Post Office, which was built in—”

“You have to admit it’s the same color.” Grandma was talking in her my-hearing-aid-isn’t-quite-working voice.

“But alligators don’t have spray nozzles on their tails.”

“Very funny. I wasn’t looking at that part. I was looking at the twisty part.”

Mama gave Mr. Sanders a serious look before she said, “Good day, Mr. Sanders. We don’t want to keep you from your appointed rounds, do we?”

With a little wave, Mr. Sanders was out the door, and Mama pushed it closed. Tight.

“Keisha, please give the baby his yogurt! And do not let anyone leave this room until we find that alligator!” Mama touched the tips of her long fingers to the place where her hair met her forehead. She always did this when she was thinking.

“We can’t find it inside. Your father thinks the little
alligator will sniff for water, so we are going to look across the street where water collects by the drain. Muddy places. That is where the little alligator would go. I’m leaving Grandma in charge. Oh goodness …”

Mama got a wide-eyed look that Keisha had never seen before. She didn’t say anything more before rushing back into the hall.

If Mama had given her just a minute, Keisha would have suggested taking Razi along. He was excellent at finding mud—messes of all kinds, really. But it was hard to think straight when the baby looked so unhappy. His bottom lip pushed out, Paulo was also tugging at his ear. If he started to rub his eyes, it would be too late. Paulo would have a meltdown. When Paulo had a meltdown, he cried for hours. Grandma said he could filibuster better than Senator Strom Thurmond. It had only happened three times in the history of the Carter family, but every baby had his limits. Keisha opened the refrigerator door again.

“Razi, can you please distract the baby while I get his yogurt?”

Razi jumped up. If there was one thing he was good at—besides finding mud—it was distracting. “Here, baby Paulo, listen to this.” Razi dangled the music player over the tray.

But baby Paulo had had enough. He made a little howl, and before you could say “Mexican yam bean,” he grabbed the music player and sidearmed it up and out the open window. It fell into the garden, still singing about sprinkling stardust sent from above over not one but two possums in love.

Mr. Sanders did like to share information, so Keisha wasn’t surprised at all when his twin boys, Zack and Zeke, appeared at the back door. Daddy had called them the Z-Team ever since they’d helped her out in first grade when her classmate Marcus knocked her down trying to steal the basketball at recess.

Zack and Zeke had rushed over. “We’re big,” Zeke said as he gave Keisha a hand up. “But we’re sensitive, too.”

Zack turned around and shook his fist at Marcus. “Try some of this if you can’t stop pushing.”

When Keisha told Daddy about what happened, he marched right over to the Sanderses’ house to compliment the boys on their fine behavior, which included
not
punching Marcus. It was right about this time that Mr. Sanders started dropping off little packages for Razi.

It was like Mama said: “The bird who remembers his flock mates never misses the way.”

Zeke and Zack looked exactly alike except that Zack had a chip in his front tooth from riding down Second Street shouting, “Ladies and gentlemen—no hands!”

Keisha opened the back door and pulled them into the kitchen.

Zack was the first to shout, “Where’s the gator? We want to wrestle it.”

Shouting wasn’t good for baby Paulo’s digestion.

Keisha
shhhhh
ed the boys and then whispered, “I think he’s outside.”

Zeke saw baby Paulo’s unhappy look and went over to him. “Hey there, buster,” he said, rubbing Paulo’s cheek.

“Well, let’s go, then.” Zack grabbed the doorknob. “I don’t want to be in here when all the action’s outside.”

Keisha had turned away from Paulo to talk to the boys, so her yogurt-filled spoon was heading in the wrong direction. Paulo started to yelp.

“Do you suppose my mama would let you hang around outside when there’s an alligator on the loose?”

Zack let go of the doorknob and shoved his hands in his pockets. Even the Z-Team was a little afraid of Mama.

“True, but your grandma’s out there. She keeps stepping on the garden hose.”

“I think we should call the police and have the alligator arrested,” Razi said. He’d taken the spoon from Keisha and was feeding the baby. Keisha let Razi
take over because Razi was also good at feeding babies.

The phone rang.

“It’s for me!” Razi dropped the spoon on the baby’s tray.

Correction. Razi was good at feeding babies when there wasn’t anything more interesting to do. Just like the mail, the phone was never for Razi, but he was always sure it was.

“Hello? Aaliyah? We can’t talk right now because we have to call the police to get the alligator arrested.”

“Razi!” Keisha was still whispering, though she knew there wasn’t much point. “We’re not supposed to
tell.”

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Grandma let him out of the bathroom.”

“Give me that.” Keisha tried to grab the phone.

“Wait, we got cut off….” Razi was punching buttons.

“Ouch!” Aaliyah was saying on the other end of the line. “You’re making me deaf, Razi.”

Zack quick picked Razi up and dangled him upside down. Zeke started to tickle him.

“Stop!” Razi was giggling. “Don’t stop. No … stop!”

Razi dropped the phone, and Keisha almost lost her balance catching it. When she put the phone to her ear,
she could hear Aaliyah laughing. “Sounds like you’re playing hip-hopscotch. I better come over.”

Aaliyah loved hip-hopscotch, which you played just like regular hopscotch, but you had to do a different dance move when you landed in each square.

“But I stop at alligators. You know I do not hopscotch with alligators,” Aaliyah said. “Key, do you really have one over there?”

Keisha wasn’t sure what to say. “We did,” she finally said. “We do. We just can’t put our finger on him at the moment.”

“So it’s escaped. As in ‘running wild in the neighborhood.’”

“Well, he
might
still be in the house.”

“If it’s true there’s an alligator loose in Alger Heights, you know Moms is not going to let me outside this house.
Ever
. And it’s almost summer vacation! How are we going to practice?”

Aaliyah spent the summer days at the house of her granny—whom everyone called Moms—while her parents were working. Even though it wasn’t summer vacation yet, Aaliyah was spending the holiday weekend with Moms so her parents could attend their college reunion. Moms lived right around the corner from the Carters. Aaliyah’s granny did not like dust, trouble or any animal
whose stomach touched the ground when it moved. Mostly, that meant snakes, but now that Keisha thought about it, she decided that alligators would also qualify.

“Keisha, how are we going to win the Grand River Steppers Competition under-twelve category if you can’t keep track of your alligators? And by the way, how can an alligator run around Michigan? It’s way too cold here for alligators.”

Aaliyah knew more about alligators than the average person because Keisha had asked her to read her alligator report for errors. Aaliyah did not forget the things she read. Aaliyah also thought too far ahead. They had not yet reached summer vacation, a time when Keisha, Aaliyah and their other best friend, Wen, had promised to spend time each day practicing their freestyle double Dutch. Winning the under-ten category last winter was easy, but now they had to compete against eleven-and-a-half-year-olds.

Keisha looked around her. Baby Paulo had put the yogurt bowl on his head, Zack was twirling Razi like an airplane and Razi was squealing with delight. Zeke was pouring Cheerios from the box into his mouth.

“Before I can think about alligators, I have to clean up this baby and find something for Razi to do.”

“Until you catch that alligator, the rest of us can’t go outside to play. I’ll get my binoculars and go up to the third floor. If I see anything long and suspicious, I’ll call you.”

“Sounds like a plan. And don’t worry, Aaliyah. Mama and Daddy will find the alligator.”

“Okay, I’ll tell Moms that your mama’s on it. She thinks your mama can do anything.”

Keisha hung up the phone. First thing done. But what next? Whenever her mind was spinning from all the things that had to be done, Daddy would say to her, “What do you do if you’re lost in the woods?”

What do you do if you’re lost in the woods?

Stand still. The birds are not lost. The trees are not lost
.

So Keisha stood still inside all the shouting and the movement and let the gears in her brain turn slowly. After one full minute, she whistled through her teeth the way Grandpa Wally Pops had taught her. Grandpa Wally Pops had been dead since Keisha was five, but Mama said his whistle was part of his memory line, the line that stretches from generation to generation and can never be broken.

A Grandpa Wally Pops whistle was short and sharp and shrill and it called everyone to attention.

“Since they already searched the house, I think it would be all right with Mama,” Keisha said, looking at Zeke and Zack, “if you two take Razi upstairs and set up the train track.”

“The train? Can I have my conductor’s whistle?”

For obvious reasons, the Carters kept Razi’s conductor’s whistle in a secret place and only brought it out once in a while.

“Yes.” Keisha told Zeke and Zack the current hiding
place. “If you boost Razi up, he can reach the top of the bookcase in Mama and Daddy’s room.”

“I can climb it myself like a monkey,” Razi offered.

“The Z-Team is on it,” Zeke said, very serious. He took Razi’s top half.

Zack grabbed Razi’s bottom half. “Chugga, chugga, chugga,” Zack said.

“Woo-woo,” Zeke answered back as they disappeared up the stairs. Keisha knew that even though Zack and Zeke were big kids now, they still liked to play with the toy train.

“Better keep the door closed,” she said to their backs. Keisha thought of something else. “If you see any alligators,” she called to them as they climbed the stairs, “no wrestling. Just tell me.”

Keisha turned around and surveyed the kitchen. A chair was overturned. There were Cheerios on the floor, and baby Paulo had fallen asleep, his little legs dangling. One foot was missing a sock.

At least it was quiet. Keisha got down on her hands and knees and started to sweep the Cheerios into a pile. She put the cereal from the floor into the animals’ dry-food container.

Paulo had licked the bowl clean before he put it on his head, so Keisha just got the counter sponge and
slicked down his hair. She unlatched the tray, lifted Paulo out of the high chair and put him in his car seat. What was it about sleeping babies that made them three times heavier? Buckling him into his car seat on the counter, Keisha made sure Paulo’s arms and legs were comfy.