Seeing Orange (2 page)
The carpet at the front of the classroom is the color of a rotting Christmas orange. But up close, it's amazing. It is made of a million, zillion tiny thread loops. Each loop is a single color: rust, copper, gold, bright orange. I like to stick the point of my pencil into a loop and pull until one end comes out. Sometimes the nib of my pencil breaks.
Mr. Carling shoves a piece of chalk into his chalk holder. He writes:
October 25
. The backs of his fingers are hairy. His hands are hairy too, and his arms. I wonder if his wrist is hairy under his watch strap. Maybe the strap hides a seam where he's stitched together, like a monster. I wonder if any of the other kids wear watches to hide their seams. Sam has one. He could be aâ
“
Leland?
”
Mr. Carling looks at me hard. I look back at him, but it feels like there are miles between us. “Get your listening ears on,” he says. “Where are the salmon spawning?”
“I don't know,” I say.
“Goldstream River. We're going to see them on Thursday. There will be a permission form for your parents to sign⦔
My grade one class went to Goldstream last year. I watched a giant maple leaf whistled down from a tree onto the back of a dead salmon that seagulls had been pecking at. The red leaf landed right on top of the salmon's red wound.
Everyone is standing and moving quickly to their desks. I hurry to mine. “What are we supposed to do?” I whisper to Angela.
“Write a story about the ocean,” she says. “Duh!”
Angela's fire-orange hair is in a thick braid down her back. I asked her once if she was a Viking, but she didn't answer. Now, her hand scuttles across her page like a crab. I imagine streams of fire running through her, down her arm and out her hand. Her pencil marks are the ash.
“Let's see what you've done so far, Leland.”
Mr. Carling is at my desk. I look at my page. It's blank. White as a bandage over someone's mouth.
“Nothing,” Mr. Carling grunts. He shakes his head. “Nothing.”
My stomach hurts. I stare at the bare page. It starts to blur and fall away. It falls down to the bottom of an ocean. Mr. Carling squats beside my desk. I smell the lemon drop that clicks against his teeth.
“You will have to stay in for recess,” he says.
Delilah growls from the cubby. The bell rings. Everyone leaves except me and Mr. Carling.
I wipe tears from my eyes. The page floats up again. I write a title:
Raft
. I begin:
A Viking was
alone on a raft. His salty tears landed in the salty
ocean.
I trace over the
o
in
ocean
. I make the
o
bigger and bigger. I draw little waves inside it, and a raft. I work hard on drawing the ropes and swirling knots that hold the raft together.
Then I look out the window. Kids crawl all over the playground. Their footprints in the sand look like little waves.
Mr. Carling gets up from his desk and looks at my paper. “Well, at least you wrote
something
. You can go outside.”
I race to the jungle gym. But as soon as I make it to the top, the bell rings to go back inside. I get one big jump for the whole recess. I dig my heels in deep, all the way down to where the sand is dark brown.
On Tuesdays and Wednesdays after school, I pull the Red Flyer wagon, heavy with newspapers, down our street. Silas runs door to door delivering them. Our cat Pumpkin sometimes follows for a block, then turns back. Today, though, she stays longer. Silas waves his arms at her. “Shoo. Go home.”
There's a house on our paper route that Silas and I call Gloomy Rooms. The front steps sag. Moss bubbles up between the roof shingles. The grass is high, and the bushes are dark tangles. Silas rolls up the newspaper and throws it onto the crooked front porch from as far away as he can. For a while afterward, everything seems a little scary. Then Yellow House cheers me up.
The yard of Yellow House is filled with bird baths. The woman who lives there always calls out, “Thanks!” Today, she's in the yard, watering a small tree. She's wearing a big gray sweater, and her jeans are tucked into rubber boots. When she sees us, her face crinkles into a smile. She waves.
My mind goes
click
. She has one hand on the hose and her other hand is waving. It's as if she's pumping the air for the water that is running through the hose.
After supper, I ask Liza to pour paints from the big plastic jugs into the muffin tin. Then I paint a picture of the woman with her arms out, one waving, one watering. I like my painting. I look at it over and over.
At breakfast, Mom looks worried. “Pumpkin didn't come home last night,” she says.
“Maybe she got lost,” Silas says. “Or hurt.”
“I hope she's just on a walkabout,” Mom says.
“Yeah, cats do that,” Liza says. “They wander off for a few days.”
“Not Pumpkin,” I say.
I'm so worried about Pumpkin, I forget about Mr. Carling and walk right into the school without Delilah's help.
“Boys!” Our neighbor Mikel waves a shiny can at me and Silas. “Engine oil,” he pants. “Your wheels squeak. Puts my teeth on edge.”
He gets down on a knee and squeezes oil into the wagon's wheels. “There.” He stands. “Might as well take my paper now.” He reaches for a newspaper.
“Not that one!” I cry.
Silas laughs. “Why not
that
one, Leland?”
I put on a baby voice. “That one's special,” I say, and pout.
It works. Silas rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Here, Mikel, take this one.”
Outside Gloomy Rooms, while Silas delivers the newspaper, I feel like I'm sinking. The sky is the color of tin foil, and the clouds are like steel wool. The wind blows. Leaves scatter. They scratch along the sidewalk and street.
Hurry, Silas.
Finally, Silas is back. “I heard the old man,” he says. “Whistling in there. It sounded happy and lonely at the same time.”
Moments later, we're at Yellow House. “I want to deliver the paper today,” I say.
Silas raises his eyebrows. “That isn't our deal.”
“Just this house,” I say.
“I'm not paying you any more than usual,”
Silas says.
“I don't want more money!” I tell him.
I grab the newspaper that Mikel nearly took, unlatch the maroon gate and hurry up the walk. Birds chatter in the bushes. A water fountain gurgles and chimes. I smell sap, wet dirt and flowers. It feels like I'm in another world, where the air is thicker.
Hidden inside the newspaper is my drawing of the woman watering her tree and waving. I slide it out and tuck it into the woman's colorful mailbox. I leave the newspaper on her doormat, which says
Welcome!
I walk back through the chattering yard and step onto the gray sidewalk. The world goes plain again: houses, grass, brown telephone poles.
After supper on Thursday, Mom calls a family meeting.
