Middle of Nowhere (13 page)

“I didn't know that. I was only six.”

“What happened when he moved it?”

“My half got smaller. But if it ever reached the wall on my side of the room, I would cease to exist. That's what he said.
Cease to exist
. I believed him because he made my tooth fall out with his powers. He said he could make all my teeth fall out. Without teeth I wouldn't be able to eat.”

And I told her how, when we left the house in the morning, as soon as we were out of sight of Mrs. Pennypacker smiling and waving from the front window, Brandon would go through my lunch and take everything he wanted, leaving me just the carrot sticks. At supper, Mrs. Pennypacker would practically beg me to eat. She would ask me what I liked and make it for me. But whatever she cooked made me gag because I couldn't be sure Brandon hadn't spat in it. I got thinner and Brandon got fatter. She worried about me, but she worried more about Brandon because he was her kid.

“I'd blast him one!” Mrs. Burt cried. “Imagine somebody doing something like that to Artie?” There was nothing she liked more than to cook for us and to watch us eat her cooking.

“Exactly,” I said. It hurt, though, that she didn't seem to feel bad for me, the kid it had really happened to.

“You did the right thing coming with me.”

“I hope so,” I said.

She looked at me across the fire. “When you came to me that first time, Curtis? You were hungry.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “This is way better, Mrs. Burt.”

“BOYS, I AM
dispensing with this thingie. I am standing on my own two feet.” And she walked across the cabin without her walker, keeping one spotty hand held out in front of her, just in case. Artie and I clapped.

After that the walker became Artie's toy. He laid it on the ground and sat inside it. With a board end left over from the outhouse as paddle, he canoed for hours with Happy wired to a rail. Or he draped it with the tablecloth to make his own little cabin to live in with his china boy and girl. He used it when he burped Mrs. Burt while she washed the dishes, dragging the walker up behind her and standing on a rung.

She could burp all the way to the letter G now.

Artie's other favorite game was taxi. We would walk up to the Bel Air, and I would pretend to call from a secret taxi phone in a tree. Then Artie would drive me wherever I wanted to go. The fare was always the same. Four dollars plus tip. He would take me to the zoo, to the PNE, to the beach. But more and more I found it hard to think of going somewhere else. Because I was fine at the cabin — fishing, wood chopping, fishing, helping Mrs. Burt with her garden, fishing.

And swimming.

The first time we saw Mrs. Burt in what she called her “bathing costume,” Artie and I laughed. She always dressed like a man in a knitted cap. But in her bathing suit she was like an elephant stuffed into a tutu. The rubber flowers on her cap quivered. All her rolls quivered. Her feet seemed a hundred years old with their lumps and bumps and thick elephant nails.

Giggling, we watched her limp toward the lake, arms held out, wings of jiggly upper arm flesh hanging down. She waded in up to her huge thighs, then plunged, making tidal waves slosh out on either side.

But then she changed. Mrs. Burt was practically crippled on her feet, but she was graceful in the water. She was a young person when she swam.

On shore, Artie and I watched her arms dip in rhythm and the rubber flowers turn left then right as she took her breaths. The water seemed to move aside for her as she plowed through it. We didn't giggle then.

After she had her swim, we got in the water with her. Artie wore a life jacket at all times and mostly just pulled himself along the lake bottom kicking his feet behind him. Or he brought the walker in and leapt off it. She was trying to teach him to put his head in, but he was afraid of getting water up his nose.

I was a better student. She helped me improve my technique with little suggestions like cupping my hands tighter so the water wouldn't flow through my fingers.

I asked how long it would take to swim across the lake.

“You think you can?” she asked.

I knew I could. I'd done so many incredible deeds lately I couldn't stop.

“It'll take about a half hour,” she said. “You're going to have to practice every day.”

“I will,” I said.

Before we went to the cabin, I'd only ever swum in pools when they gave free lessons to inner-city kids. Lake swimming was different. There were no soggy Band-Aids floating around, nobody's hair getting tangled in your fingers. No stinky chlorine or screaming kids or shut-downs when a baby pooped.

You could open your eyes and see fish. See the long reaching arms of underwater trees. You could swim through whole forests. When you were tired, you could climb out and rest on a log. I liked to lie there in the sun and watch the dragonflies zip against the blue like they were sewing on the sky.

10

WEEKS MUST HAVE
passed because Mrs. Burt declared that we were as brown as mushrooms and at least three inches taller. I peeled back the band of my swimming trunks. From the waist up and the knee down I was the color of toast, but in between I was the same white as the homemade bread Mrs. Burt baked for us in the woodstove. For sure our hair was three inches longer.

“Time for haircuts,” she announced.

We brought a chair out of the cabin and Mrs. Burt went first, popping a bowl on her head and handing me the scissors. “This is how I kept the fellows looking spruce when I cooked in the logging camp.”

Spruce meant neat. She definitely did not look spruce when I was finished with her, but she didn't care. She just tucked what was left of her white hair up into her cap and told Artie to climb up on the barber chair. She pushed the bowl down on his wild head and snipped around it so fast he didn't have time to squirm.

Then it was my turn. When she was through with us, the ground was covered with brown curls mixed with her white wisps. I was glad that there weren't any mirrors around. Well, there were a couple up in the Bel Air and a little one in Mrs. Burt's purse. Artie looked pretty funny so chances were that I did, too.

“Come with me, boys,” she said then. “Let's find the growing tree.”

We didn't know what she meant. All the trees were growing. The plants in her garden were growing. Everything was growing.

It took a while to find the tree she was searching for. When she found it, she showed us some thick, inch-long scars in the bark starting from about the level of my thigh. Every time Mrs. Burt and her family came to the cabin, they cut a notch at the height of Marianne.

“How tall is Marianne now?” Artie asked.

Mrs. Burt thought about it. “I have no idea.”

“I want a notch,” said Artie.

“And you shall have one, King Arthur,” Mrs. Burt told him. She sent me to get the ax. Artie leaned up against the tree and I carefully scratched a line in the bark above his head. He stepped aside and I chopped out the notch.

“You, too, Curtis,” Artie said.

I went around the tree. On the other side was another set of notches — a set that stopped around the same level Artie's notch had.

As soon as I saw that little ladder of scars, I understood everything. Why Mrs. Burt never came back here. Why she cried when she saw the place again. Why she was so in love with Artie, but me, not so much.

She had brought us to the tree on purpose, so she could tell us what had happened. She was ready now.

She led Artie around the tree so the three of us could see the notches that ended too soon.

“These are Clyde's,” she said.

“Clyde who?” Artie asked.

“Clyde, my little boy . . .” She took a breath. “He died. It was a long time ago.”

“How?”

“He drowned.”

“Where?”

“In the lake.”

“Our lake?”

“Yes. I wasn't watching carefully enough. But it won't happen to you because I'm always watching. Also, he was not as sensible a little boy like you are. He didn't have any fear. He would jump right in the water without making sure that his sister was there. You would never do something like that.”

“No,” said Artie. “I don't have a sister.”

“You'll be fine.”

“Did you cry?” Artie asked.

Mrs. Burt's eyes started blinking fast behind her glasses.

“I did. Quite a lot.”

“Where is he now?” Artie asked.

“Clyde? He's in heaven for sure.”

“Where is heaven?”

“Where is heaven? My goodness, the stuff you boys don't know! It's the most beautiful place. A place safe from all the trials of this world. There isn't any pain or unhappiness. There isn't any hunger. You eat anything you want whenever you want. You play all day long.”

“Are we in heaven, Mrs. Burt?” Artie asked and Mrs. Burt, who had been struggling to hold back tears, laughed. Artie and I laughed, too, but only to keep her company. Inside, I felt so sad for her.

She took off her glasses and wiped them. “It does seem like heaven here, doesn't it?” Then, probably to stop him from asking more questions, she got me to fetch the Coca-Cola crate out of her bedroom and pry the lid off.

Inside were toys. Matchbox cars and books and an old stuffed bear that reeked and probably should have been burned but I wasn't going to suggest it.

Artie really was in heaven then.

A FEW DAYS
later Mr. Munro came back across the lake. I was fishing when he paddled up. Artie and Mrs. Burt were off being Knights of the Round Toilet Seat. I didn't tell him that. I said they were out looking for something. After a couple of minutes of him just sitting there sucking his teeth behind his yellow moustache, I got nervous and reeled my line in.

“Any luck?” he asked.

I actually hadn't caught a fish in a while. In the beginning I'd caught one or two a day, but that seemed like a long time ago.

When I told him that, Mr. Munro said, “Lake's warmed up. Try deeper. It's colder.” He had to bump the canoe right up next to me before I realized he was inviting me to get in.

Lying in the bottom were two huge dead, brown-and-black birds. I passed him my rod and he passed me the birds, which I had to hold by their scaly black ankles. Happy's plastic feet with their wires sticking out suddenly seemed cute.

“Leave them. So she knows who you absconded with.”

I smiled. Mr. Munro and Mrs. Burt had the same funny way of talking. Mr. Munro probably knew what a bindlestiff was and a mulligan mixer, too.

I dumped the birds in front of the cabin and got in the canoe with Mr. Munro. There was a pretty strong smell coming off him, though it wasn't all bad. He smelled mostly like woodsmoke. I remembered to bring the life jacket. I always kept it nearby — not because I was worried about drowning, but because I knew it made Mrs. Burt happy to see how careful I was. Mr. Munro just threw it in the bottom of the canoe and handed me the second paddle.

Once we left the shore, I saw why the cabin was where it was. Almost everywhere else along the lake the trees grew right up to the water. I also realized why we often saw Mr. Munro's smoke from Mrs. Burt's cabin, but we couldn't actually see his place. It was tucked into a bay, looking like a bunch of little cabins jumbled together.

And I saw that the lake was in a place I'd always heard about. The middle of nowhere. Mr. Munro was steering us right into the middle of it. The middle of the lake in the middle of nowhere. It was the most beautiful place I'd ever been.

When we got there, he motioned for me to cast my line and let the lure go deep. Then he started paddling again, very slowly, while my line trailed out behind. The peaceful wait started. Mr. Munro waited, too, sucking on his teeth. He probably wasn't used to talking, living all by himself. Or maybe he lived in the middle of nowhere because he hated to talk. The only sound was that crazy loon calling out and the water dripping off the paddle and the papery whir of dragonfly wings.