Middle of Nowhere (14 page)

I don't know how long we'd been out there when he finally did say something. I was so surprised that I jumped in my seat.

“How's your mother?” he asked.

Before we absconded with Mrs. Burt, I hadn't really understood what a day was, even though I'd learned it in school. A day is the earth making a complete rotation, turning to face the sun, then turning away again. When you have electricity and streetlights, when you live mostly inside, it's easy to forget. You don't ever see the sky getting light at dawn, or the way shadows sneak around you through the day, or how slowly the sun sinks below the trees in the evening, pulling all its colors down with it. You forget that so much happens in a day. You forget that a day is a very long time.

One June morning my mom didn't come home. From then on, I began to count the days, just like they keep track of days you're away at school. But since coming to the cabin, I'd been so busy that I'd stopped. I'd completely lost track of how long she'd been gone.

When Mr. Munro asked about her, I felt terrible — worse when I realized how many complete rotations of the earth had happened without me even thinking about her.

But that wasn't what Mr. Munro meant. He was talking about Mrs. Burt's daughter, the Big Shot lawyer Marianne.

“She's fine,” I said.

“I'm glad to hear it. She was a good girl. Your grandma was way too hard on her in my opinion, but I see they made up.”

“I guess so,” I said, just as my rod lurched.

Mr. Munro didn't speak again, not even when I reeled in my fish. He just leaned over and peered at the gasping, thrashing trout I'd landed in the bottom of the canoe. Then he showed me all the rotten teeth that made up his smile.

Mrs. Burt was hollering and waving her arms on shore as we paddled in.

“I caught one!” I told her when I stepped out. “I finally caught one again!”

“Did you see what Mr. Munro brought? Two grouse. We are going to have a feast tonight. You get out of that canoe, Spar. You're eating with us. Come on.”

While they argued about it, I went and got the knife so I could clean the fish and take it into the cabin for Mrs. Burt to cook.

Mr. Munro agreed to stay, so Artie and I hung around inside the cabin even though it was hot with the stove roaring. Artie sat in the middle of the floor in his walker canoe. He couldn't stop staring at Mr. Munro with his big beard and the little flask he pulled out of his shirt pocket when Mrs. Burt plunked down the teapot.

“What's that?” he asked as Mr. Munro added a splash from the flask to his mug.

“Medicine,” Mrs. Burt answered. “I was telling the boys that Joseph — that's Mr. Burt — was a high rigger. Right, Spar?”

“What's that?” Artie asked.

“The fella who scampers up the tree and tops and delimbs it. You know, chops off all the branches,” she said.

Mr. Munro nodded.

“Mr. Munro worked with Mr. Burt back in the days I cooked in the camp. Tell them about my cooking, Spar.”

“Not bad.”

Mrs. Burt threw a tea towel at him, but it didn't get anywhere close.

“We're sure going to have a good supper tonight. These boys haven't ever had grouse.”

“What's grouse?” Artie asked.

“Those birds Mr. Munro snared for us. Tell them about when the grizzly came into camp.”

Mr. Munro said nothing.

“Spar. Tell them.”

“Me?” He thought a moment, trying to recall. A drink straight from his flask helped. “When he got us all up the tree?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Burt, taking the lid off a pot and poking inside it.

“A bear came along and Joe got us all up a tree.”

Mrs. Burt sighed. “This big old grizzly wanders into camp. Nowhere to go but up. Half the fellas were terrified of heights. That's something you probably wouldn't guess about loggers. Most of them are happier on the ground.

“In a matter of minutes, there's a big logger sitting up on every branch, swinging his boots, thumbing his nose at the biggest grizzly you ever seen.”

“I remember now,” said Mr. Munro.

“Tell them, then.”

“Conk rot.”

“The tree looked fine from the outside,” Mrs. Burt explained, “but it was all rotten inside. With the weight of those boys sitting in it, the thing just keeled. Crash! Oh, the screaming. I tell you, that bear took off and it never came back.”

“What if a grizzler comes here?” Artie asked with a wail.

Mr. Munro put together a few more words than usual.

“Don't worry, son. It's mostly blackies around here.”

When supper was ready, we sat around the table in the cabin and Mrs. Burt said grace, which she normally didn't do with us. I think she was trying to make a good impression on Mr. Munro, who took a big swig out of his flask after the “Amen.”

Grouse is like chicken, but better. The meat is browner and tastier. Mrs. Burt roasted them and made gravy and potatoes and steamed greens from the garden, which were the only thing she made that I didn't like. We had to eat it or we would get rickets, she said. For dessert there were baked apples swimming in custard.

“How'd you like that, Spar?” she asked afterward.

His beard was decorated like a Christmas tree with half of his dinner.

“Not bad,” he said.

I made a fire for us to sit around outside. Mrs. Burt kept burping into her fist. Artie came over, but she didn't want to burp the alphabet with Mr. Munro there so she got him singing instead. “I've Heard That Song Before.” “It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary.” “I Don't Get Around Much Anymore.” Those were the old songs they sang while they wandered the forest on their quest for the round toilet seat.

Artie stood by the fire, hands clasped, warbling at the evening sky. Each time he finished a song, Mrs. Burt clapped and asked Mr. Munro if he wasn't the cutest kid he ever saw while Mr. Munro shook his little flask hard over his tea mug, like he shook the salt shaker at supper, trying to get the last drops out.

Then I took Artie off to bed. While I lay there waiting for him to fall asleep, I could hear Mrs. Burt talking at Mr. Munro. I didn't really listen until Mr. Munro said something.

“You always pick favorites, Mavis.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You didn't even cook his fish.”

“You brought grouse. I'll cook it tomorrow.”

“You didn't say nothing to him about it.”

“He catches fish all the time.”

Then she did something surprising. She started bragging about me and my outhouse and my wood chopping and swimming and how well I looked after my little brother.

“He's sharp,” she said.

After Artie fell asleep, I went outside again. Mr. Munro looked up as I approached the fire.

“I hear you're going to swim across the lake.”

“I might,” I said, “if I get good enough.”

Mr. Munro sank into his beard. Then he noticed something in it and ate it.

11

AN OUTHOUSE SHOULD
be a good place to think. That's what Mrs. Burt said and, ever since Mr. Munro's visit, I started using it for that.

It actually didn't smell. We cleared the ashes out of the fire pit every day and left them in the outhouse in a box. Instead of flushing, you took a big scoop of ash with the tomato can and sprinkled it down the hole. Also, there was always a breeze off the lake.

I went there because of what Mr. Munro asked me in the canoe. I went to think about my mom. Usually I went when the Knights of the Round Toilet Seat were on their quest. Or, if I happened to be there anyway, I just sat a little longer. If I added up all the hours, I must have sat about a week.

What did I think about?

Where she was. What she was doing. If she was okay.

And I worried. What if she'd met another guy with the sleeves ripped off his T-shirt, like Gerry? What if that was what had happened?

Gerry had cast some kind of spell on her. She told me so herself. He had powers, like Brandon. Brandon had controlled me with his powers and Gerry had controlled Mom. He played songs for her on his guitar — songs about her, that he would write himself. She was flattered. It was hard looking after a little kid all on your own, especially when you were only twenty-one, and everybody else was out having fun. When Gerry drank, she felt she had to keep him company. If she didn't, he might stop playing songs for her. Then where would she be? Alone again in a crummy apartment, bored and poor.

She told me all this in the Pennypacker living-room after Social Services started letting her visit me for an hour every Saturday.

“You weren't alone,” I told her. “You had me.”

“I know, I know.” She put her face in her hands. “I'm so sorry. I made a terrible mistake. I want you back so badly.”

Those were my outhouse thoughts. I usually went back to the cabin feeling pretty rotten.

Around that same time Artie started getting up in the night and going into Mrs. Burt's room to sleep with her. When I woke up in the morning, his sleeping bag would be crumpled beside mine, empty and cold.

“Why did you go to Mrs. Burt last night?” I asked him.

“I got scared.”

“Of what?”

“A spider.”

“Where's this spider? Show me.” We searched the room but never found it. “Anyway,” I said, “spiders are good. They can't hurt you.”

Artie said, “I wouldn't be afraid of them if they didn't have so many legs!”

“So if they had six legs instead of eight they wouldn't bother you?”

“No.”

“But you're scared of bugs, too. They only have six legs.”

“I wouldn't be scared of them if they had four legs.”

“Squirrels have four legs.”

“If squirrels had two legs, I'd like them better.”

“So you're not afraid of people?”

“No. Except for that man at the motel. And Brandon Pennypacker.”

ABOUT A WEEK
after Mr. Munro's visit, Sir Mrs. Burt and King Arthur came back to the cabin very excited. The blueberries were ripe.

“Boys, I'm going to make you the best jam you ever tasted,” Mrs. Burt said. Artie cheered because he'd long ago licked clean the little jam packets that Mrs. Burt had loaded in her purse on our road trip. “And the best pie you ever tasted,” she went on. “The best flapjacks you ever tasted.”

She took three old cans and got me to punch two holes in each of them. Then she threaded a string through the holes to make a sort of necklace. With the cans bumping around our necks, and a bucket in Mrs. Burt's hand, we headed out.

We were supposed to drop the berries into the can around our necks until it was full, then empty it into the bucket and start picking all over again. But the wild blueberries were so good. They were smaller than the ones you get in the store and twice as sweet. Artie picked them straight into his mouth. Once in a while I'd hear the
ping
of one landing in his can, probably by accident.

Mrs. Burt had both hands going so fast that she emptied her can twice into the bucket and moved on to the next bush before I emptied mine once.

Now that I was spending all that time in the outhouse thinking about Mom, I wanted to talk about her to Artie, but not in front of Mrs. Burt. It had been ages since Artie had even mentioned Mom. We hadn't used the Economizer Extra-Strength Hand and Body Lotion since our first night at the cabin. So when Mrs. Burt got a little farther up the path, out of earshot, I asked him what he missed most about Mom now.

He looked at me, his face purple with berry juice. “Nothing.”

I remembered exactly how I felt when I was his age and separated from my mother. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

“You do miss her, Artie. I know you do.”

“I don't!” He stamped his foot on the ground. I was shocked, but also afraid of starting a fit so I didn't push it.

And then I realized what I'd been doing wrong. Because I worried about making Artie cry, I didn't talk to him about Mom.

Now I said, “Well,
I
miss Mom. I miss how she smells. I miss when she phones from school to say goodnight. I miss spinning around while she's on the phone and falling on the floor and her getting all worried when she hears the thump. I miss doing homework with her. The way she holds her pencil in her teeth.”

I snuck a look at him. He was pretending not to hear.

“What about you?” I asked.

“I don't remember.”

“I think you do. I think you remember sucking her hair to get to sleep. I think you remember peeking under her eye mask and growling.”

Artie swung around with a horrible cannibal face.

“Mom's no good!” he screeched.

I froze. The berry I'd just picked fell to the ground. From the corner of my eye, I saw my hand lift high in the air. I wondered what it was going to do.

Hit him? Yes. I was about to hit my brother for what he'd just said about our mother.