Memory Boy (6 page)

“Or a sailor,” my father said.

“Mechanic, I think,” my mother added.

It was their way of thanking me, and under my dust mask I smiled.

“The wind is switching to the northwest,” my father said. “Cold front coming in.” My father knew his weather; that always impressed me.

“Which means?” my mother said. After stashing the vest, she was back to her regular slim shape.

“Just like sailing. Means we may have to hunker in for a while somewhere and wait it out,” he said.

“But not here,” Sarah answered, looking over her shoulder toward the McDonald's. “It's way too creepy.”

“Up the road a ways. The Mississippi should be just ahead,” I said.

We pedaled briskly past the exit ramp and didn't look back. My father tried to tack left and right against the wind, but the freeway was not wide enough to make the angling effective. Pedaling was harder and harder.

“It feels like we're going uphill,” Sarah panted.

“We are, slightly,” I said. “We're following the river, which flows south. In fact there's almost five hundred feet of elevation drop from the headwaters to Minneapolis.”

“Ask Mr. Science,” Sarah said.

“Hey, I've done my homework—what have you done?”

“Children, children,” my mother said.

“It's the syrup,” my father said to her. “The post-McDonald's sugar burst, remember?” He looked at her.

“All too well!” she said. I could tell that she was smiling underneath her dust mask.

A couple miles north of the interchange, where the highway angles northwest, the wind turned full against us.

“Let's pull in up ahead, by the river,” I called.

Nobody argued. When we stopped, I lowered her mast, and then we rolled the
Princess
off the road and carefully down by the bridge and the river. We lay on the dusty, grassy slope and got our breath. Above us, swallows fluttered and dipped through the bridge supports, annoyed at our presence. They had little mud nests tucked up under the massive concrete forms.

“So, here we are,” Sarah began.

“Good progress for day one,” I said.

Nobody said anything.

“How long we gonna be here?” Sarah said, looking up at the dark concrete roof.

“For a while. Until the wind shifts,” I said.

“So what do we do while we're here?” Sarah asked.

“Whatever,” I said.

My father lay fully back and closed his eyes. Soon my parents were dozing and Sarah was reading. I checked the map. We were way more than halfway: at least ninety miles away from home, and fifty or less miles to go.

Birch Bay, that was our name for it. A log cabin on Gull Lake. It had belonged to my grandparents, whom I never knew, and was surrounded by birch and pine trees. We went there every summer for several weeks when my father was a teacher. In the last few years, however, we had made it up there only a couple of weekends during the summer. Birch Bay was one of the reasons I had wanted to get my driver's license: so I could drive up to the cabin myself. There was an old garage with ancient tools—wood saws and planes and rasps and cutting chisels—and every summer I made a different little wooden boat. The cabin itself had a fieldstone fireplace and bunk beds in the loft. I loved it there. I even didn't mind taking naps—as long as I could sleep outside on the big screened porch. Birch Bay always felt like the safest place in the world.

Unlike this gloomy spot under the freeway bridge. It was damp and smelled odd. Even the Mississippi River was siltier than I expected—as if somebody not far upstream was rinsing a huge brush full of white latex paint. Still, there weren't so many dead fish drifting along now, not like in Minneapolis. Even as I thought that, I saw movement in the shallows. A carp nosed around the rocks, kissing them with his rubbery lips. He was sucking at algae of some kind. I stooped low and tried to get closer for a better look—but he saw me and made a bee line (a fish line?) toward deep water.

“Ha, ha,” Sarah said, watching me.

I sat down on a rock and flicked little pebbles into the water.

After a while Sarah said, “You know, it's weird.”

“What's weird?” I said without looking up.

“I'm reading this novel, but it's like our lives are suddenly way stranger than fiction.”

I looked up. I shrugged. We were silent.

“When we get to Birch Bay, we'll be fine,” I said.

She didn't reply.

“I think we've got plenty of money,” I said softly, glancing at my parents. “Even the way food costs, we'll be okay.”

“And if the money runs out?” she said. Her voice was suddenly not so tough.

“We'll eat fish,” I said, pointing. The big old carp had eased back to the shallows just upstream; his dorsal fin poked out of the water and sent out ripples as he nuzzled the mossy rocks. “I'm going to see if I can sneak up on him.”

“Don't hurt him!” Sarah said.

I let out an annoyed sound and took three or four steps closer. I was about to take another when the mortar round landed. A skipping, black-and-white mortar round that landed—
PASHOOM
—directly on the carp. Sarah shouted; I stumbled back, almost twisting my ankle; my parents jerked upright.

A huge eagle had snatched the carp.

“My God!” my mother cried.

Water sprayed as the eagle fanned its wings. It had come in low and hard, its yellow talons outstretched like spears. The carp twisted and flopped wildly in the eagle's clutches, but he was a goner. The eagle tilted sideways and flapped its wide wings low over the water, the carp skipping and slapping along the surface, as the eagle slowly gained altitude.

“Amazing!” my father said as the eagle receded.

“Poor fish,” my mother said as she watched him disappear.

I could see that we had a ways to go before we became a hunting-and-gathering family.

As everybody relaxed again, I couldn't. My mother turned on her little television, and I began to poke around the campsite. There was something about it I didn't like. Maybe it was the signs of previous campers: broken glass, some McDonald's wrappers, the remains of a campfire that had blackened the concrete overhead. One area smelled bad; in the rocks was a smudgy white flower of toilet paper. Gross. Camping here was too predictable. I didn't like being this close to the freeway, plus anyone moving on or along the river would spot the
Princess
right away.

Nobody knew where I lived, not even that game warden. I used a different trail every time. In winter sometimes I wore my snowshoes backward. You can't trust anybody these days
.

“Turn down that stupid TV, will you?” I said to my mother.

She looked surprised, but obeyed.

I thought of the carp. The lesson here was not to splash around with your fin out of the water.

“SO WHAT DO YOU WANT
from me, anyway?” Mr. Kurz growled.

“I have this assignment to do for ninth-grade social studies,” I began.

“Speak up,” he said. “You're mumbling.”

I cleared my throat. “It's called an oral-history project?”

He looked at me blankly.

“Basically it means we're supposed to talk.”

He was silent.

“Then I write down any stories you'd care to tell.”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Stories?”

“Yes. Anything about your life.”

He drew back; his big white eyebrows rose and fell. “You don't work for the government?”

I stared. “I'm in ninth grade.”

“That don't matter. The government's got spies of every kind. Every age. You can't trust anyone.”

“Okay then,” I said softly.

He hoisted himself out of bed. He was fully dressed in a red plaid shirt, wool pants, and boots—high, well-oiled leather lace-ups that had seen some miles. It was like he was going hunting or hiking. He tottered over to an armchair by the window. The view was of the gray concrete wall of another wing of the rest home. Buena Vista … right.

“What direction is the wind today?” he asked suddenly.

“The wind? Ah … I don't know.”

“A man should always know which way the wind blows,” he said. He tried to peer around the concrete corner of the building. “You can never tell here, 'cause you can't see the leaves move.”

Mr. Kurz sank into his armchair, its back turned to me, and pulled a blanket over his legs. He picked up a paperback from a tall pile beside his chair and began reading. I looked closer at the books; they were all outdoor adventure and cowboy novels, many by Louis L'Amour. Mr. Kurz's lips moved as he read.

Thought number one: Go see Litzke and get assigned a different geezer. But that would be humiliating. Thought number two: Hang out here, work on my own stuff, and make up the oral-history report. I was creative. I could patch something together for Litzke. Why not?

“So I'll just sit for a while, if you don't mind,” I said.

Mr. Kurz had no reply.

From my backpack I took out skateboard trucks and wheel assemblies that I'd just bought, on the cheap, from Ethan Farrell and Dante Billings, who were always getting new gear. I loved used skate stuff. I built excellent boards out of totally trashed equipment. There was nothing wrong with these particular wheel assemblies except for their bearings. One wheel turned hard, and the other had a rattle in it—but no big deal. Replace two sets of bearings at three bucks each, bolt on the tracks, and I had myself a totally rehabbed board.

From the bottom of my pack I fished out my little socket set, plus an adjustable wrench, and went to work.

In the middle of things a wheel slipped from my hand;
tacka, tacka-tacka
it went across the shiny hard floor—right toward Mr. Kurz's chair. He dropped his book, snaked down his arm, and snared the wheel before it stopped rolling. He held it up to the light close to his eyes.

“What's this?”

“Ah, it's a wheel.”

“I can see it's a wheel.”

“Off my skateboard,” I said.

He turned. His eyes squinted at the chair, where I'd spread out my tools, the bearings, the races. He raised one big white squirrel eyebrow at me. “What's a skateboard?”

I stared.

Mr. Kurz continued to wait for my answer.

“It's, well, this little board with four wheels.”

Mr. Kurz shrugged. “Go on,” he said.

I tried. Strangely, it was hard to describe.

“Draw me a picture,” Mr. Kurz said. He pointed to his bedstand, where there was paper and pencil.

I drew and he leaned in to look. He smelled kind of like leaves or wood, but it was not a bad smell.

“What do you use it for?” he asked.

“A lot of kids use it for getting around,” I answered. I explained how to roll and kick, roll and kick.

“That's a good invention,” Mr. Kurz said, nodding at my drawing. “It doesn't need gas or electricity. And anybody could fix one.”

I laughed. “Well, not anybody,” I said. I explained to him that I did most of the work on my friends' boards.

“What'd I tell you?” Mr. Kurz said, narrowing his eyes again. “Nobody knows how to do anything anymore.”

He fell silent. I went back to work.

“Wrong way—you'll strip the threads,” he said. I looked up quickly; I'd thought he was dozing.

He reached out and held the truck steady while I cranked counterclockwise this time. The bearings came out; I showed them to him. He seemed to approve, and we worked on in silence.

I wished I had known my grandparents. Sometimes up at Birch Bay I could feel their presence. I vaguely remember their smells from when I was very young. But that was about all.

“When the ice broke that day, I went through up to my armpits,” Mr. Kurz said.

I blinked. I looked up from my work.

Mr. Kurz nodded for me to keep working.

“You see, my mistake was trapping beaver too close to their house. From all their swimming around, the ice was thin. There's all kinds of ways to die, and I thought I was a goner.”

“So what'd you do?” I asked.

“Sometimes even a little bit of preparation will save your life. In my pockets I had a couple of stabbers.”

“Stabbers?” I asked.

“Like ice picks, only smaller. Take a good-sized nail, sixteen penny or better, and drive it into a short stub of wood. A hand's length of oak branch is best. Then sharpen the head end of the nail to a fine point. Bingo—you got an ice pick. You should always carry a couple in winter,” he said.