Sway (10 page)

“It's okay for now,” I said. “I think I sealed them up good.”

Besides, I had bigger concerns than my nose for the moment.

“Dad, are you okay?”

“Will be,” he said, chewing so hard I could hear his jaw pop. “And you will be too.”

He nodded toward the big roll of paper on my floorboard.

“Careful not to squish that with your feet,” he said.

“Why? What is it?” I said.

He smiled. “We find a shoe, and you find out.”

I
t was a hypnotizing afternoon of scanning the road ahead of us for just one abandoned shoe. We were on a westbound highway, and just about anyone knows you can't get to Florida driving west, so I found myself counting the white dashes of the center line and imagining that each one represented a day that would pass before we'd ever find two shoes that matched each other. Three hundred and seventy-four dashes had gone by before Dad stirred me from my daze.

“What rhymes with
suds
?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “
Floods
?”

Dad looked at me like,
Now what did you have to go all weather on me for.

“Maybe
cruds
?” I said. “Or
duds
.”

“
Duds
. That's a good one,” he said. “What about
bubble
? What all rhymes with bubble?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Just humor me,” he said. “Is
flubble
a word?”

“I'm pretty sure not,” I said. “How about
stubble
? Or
rubble
? Or
trouble
?”

“That's it!
Trouble
it is.”

And trouble it was indeed. The way I saw it, not only had my mom gone away, but now my dad may very well have gone nutty. Fortunately, I remembered Aunt Jo telling Syd again and again to
Leave trouble well enough alone
. So that's exactly what I did. I excused myself back to my little room and immediately put Ken's address in my can it! box, alongside the Castanea dentata tree tag.

For the rest of the afternoon, Dad seemed to drive aimlessly, merging on and off exit ramps and swoopty-loops, passing up towns, small and big. Despite the back-andforth, I was able to balance pretty well on my knees to keep a steady watch of the sights out the back window. Houses strung with Christmas-in-June lights. Deer families bounding across the road. Shotgun pellet dents in the back of every sign. There were things I'd never seen before that passed across the window, like a mountain of junked-out cars and even a trailer home built into the side of a hill. Neat things. Things that would have even been more enjoyable alongside a mom in a Volkswagen convertible, where I might still notice them despite much wind-whipped hair and girly conversation.

Once my legs and the sunlight gave out, I lay down and thought about how Syd must be spending his day, and hoped that he hadn't busted that cloud piñata with a stick as soon as we'd left. I thought about how it would have been great to have even a fake Syd along for the ride, to tell him about beef jerky and old shoes and a dad talking nonsense like a Cheshire Cat. When The Roast climbed a big hill, a few loose colored pencils rolled under the curtain into my space. So with my hand dangling at the floor, I waited patiently for the next hill and the next delivery. I propped my feet on the wall below the Eiffel Tower poster and lifted the bottom corners of it with my big toes. It sure did look like a good blank canvas for some permanent wall noodling hidden under there. That is, for another kid who had something worth putting there. I figured I'd just have to be satisfied with noodling in my Book of In-Betweens.

Just after another handful of pencils arrived, The Roast took a swerve to the side of the road so sudden, there wasn't even time for a “Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!” to burst out of my dad. All ten encyclopedias came tumbling off the shelf in an avalanche of old information.

“Sorry about that,” Dad said. “You in one piece back there?”

Miffed that he'd already forced me to break a Rule of The Roast, I crawled around the floor, gathering as many books as I could into one armload. The Roast came to a stop, and when I got up, there was my dad standing in the weak glow of the ceiling light. He held a fishing pole that looked remarkably familiar.

“Cass, would you like to do the honors?” he said, extending the pole in my direction.

I dropped the books onto the desk and took hold of the handle. If it had been a surgeon's knife in my hand, I couldn't have been less sure of what to do next.

“Allow me to bestow upon you the honor of being the first to ever assume command of Ye Olde Sneaker Reacher,” he said.

The pole was only about as tall as my hip and looked like a piece of bamboo with a reel attached and some metal loops with fishing line strung through them. At the end of the line, there was a little silvery hook. I ran my fingers across the pole, feeling the knuckles along its length, and sure enough, it was bamboo. I could also see and feel some rough spots on it, spots in the shapes of little lightnings that someone had tried to sandpaper off.

“This is Mom's piñata whacker,” I said.

“It
was
her piñata whacker,” said Dad. “Now it's
our
sneaker reacher.

“Climb on up,” he added. “I saw some reflector strips flash in the headlights.” Dad stood on his knees on the couch and wiped some fog off the side window with his hand. I stepped up onto the cushion next to him, scraping the tip of the rod along the ceiling of The Roast. With a grunt, he slid the window to the side and motioned for me to have a look.

I leaned as much of me as I could out the open window and saw that we were parked well off to the side of a two-lane highway. It was that time of day when the sunset has just left some orangey-pink behind, and the air was still muggy. The only sign of life nearby was a building that had been a gas station, the whole thing rusted and covered in vines. Just a stone's throw up the road, I could already see the welcome to mississippi sign, with the loops of its four S's all holding on to each other. There were no headlights other than ours for as far as I could see in either direction.

I turned my attention to the road itself, and sure enough, there it sat, smack in the middle of all that near-nothingness: a shoe on the center line of the highway. One single running shoe, with steam rising all around, like someone had run so fast his foot had just burned right out of it.

Wriggling my upper half back into The Roast, I fumbled around with the bamboo rod. I had imagined many times what the world was like beyond Olyn, but I'd sure never pictured myself parked crooked in an RV on the shoulder of an Alabama highway holding a knobbly fishing pole. I could almost hear Syd doing that
Twilight Zone
theme he does when the electricity flashes on and off.

“Um, Dad, I don't know…”

“I see you're feeling uneasy, so I can try it first,” he said. “The Reacher, please.” He held his hand out, took the pole, and ever so gently, threaded it through the long, rectangular window above the couch. Then he made a slight jerking motion with his wrist.

“Rats,” he grumbled.

Then another jerk.

“Shoot.”

And another.

“Nuts. That's three strikes for me,” he said. “You want to give it a go?”

“Sure,” I said reluctantly.

I wrapped both my hands around the handle, dug my tiptoes into the couch, and leaned myself and the pole out the window. Fixing my eyes on the crisscross of the shoelaces, I gave the Reacher a hard fling, and before I could even see what I had done, my dad wigged out like I'd just won a gold medal.

“You've got it, Cass!” he shouted. “Now reel that sucker in quick, before any cars come!”

I turned and turned the reel until my arm cramped. We both watched the shoe dance backward across the road and then bob right on up the side of the RV. I felt a big
whew
when Dad volunteered to take it off the hook. He stuck his hand right down into that steamy sneaker and said, “You know, I don't think this is what your mom meant by putting yourself in someone else's shoes.”

“Yeah, I doubt it,” I said, having to bite the insides of my cheeks to make my smile flatten out. I couldn't believe I'd hooked the thing in one throw. I mostly couldn't believe I was actually proud of myself for catching a shoe.

“You know what this means, right?” Dad said, as he pulled open my curtain, unplugged the velvet pillow, and pushed the shoe into the hole in the side of my box-bed. “It means the very next town we see is our first stop.”

Dad flicked off the overhead light and fumbled his way back to the front, where he carefully laid Ye Olde Sneaker Reacher across the dashboard before starting the engine. While he coasted us to the first off-ramp in Mississippi, I arranged the encyclopedias back on the shelf as best I could by the glow coming through the domed moonroof.

“Nimble Creek, Exit A, here we come!” Dad called out as I unfolded my afghan, stuffed the little pillow back into its spot, and let loose my little poinsettia curtain, which had already shed so many glitters that the name Cass looked more like “Cuss.” We parked for the night in the lot of an abandoned minigolf place, where each hole was decorated to look like a different fairy tale. Crumbling and faded as the displays were, I could still make out Snow White, Rapunzel, and The Princess and the Pea.

After a supper of burritos that stayed cold in the middle despite spinning for thirty minutes in the little microwave, I got myself ready for bed in the tiny bathroom, where my elbow bumped the wall a hundred times during teeth-brushing, and I put both my legs through the same hole of my jammies twice before getting it right. Then I listened to my dad run through his own bedtime routine. There was some gargling and spitting, some rolltop desk top-rolling and page-turning, some general bumping about, a quiet, “Good night, Cass. Big things happening in Nimble Creek tomorrow.” And then, nothing but snore.

I balled up one end of the big afghan to use as my new pillow, thankful for my own smarts and to Mr. and Mrs. Winky Pizza that I was no longer the Princess and the P.U. The cushion between me and the world's largest shoe box was pleasantly squishy, but still I had a hard time snoozing under the weight of the weirdness around me. What on earth were we about to do in Nimble Creek? Sell invisible meat? It sure wouldn't make things much weirder, I thought.

It was far too dark to add anything to the Book of In-Betweens, so instead I ate a whole bag of Chex Mix, tugged at my eyebrows a bit, and then totally perfected the Knotty Ball of Failure with my finger string. When all of that failed to lull me to sleep, I tried to make it through my front-and-back-of-forever prayer for the first time in days. As I imagined myself sitting on the bare stump of a Castanea dentata tree, my ancestors and descendants marched by like always, but this time none of them would wave or even smile. Instead, they all just walked past carrying suitcases. Probably going to Florida without me.
Amen
.

I
woke up the next morning with my ear stuck in an afghan hole. There was so much rustling and commotion behind my curtain wall, I stood up, rubbed my eyes, and peeked around the edge.

If I hadn't seen his long dangly earlobes and the creases on his scruffy neck, I wouldn't have known it was my dad, but there he stood with his back to me, adjusting a yellow top hat in the rearview mirror. The mystery suit bag was crumpled behind him on the floor.

I squeaked out a little gasp that made Dad look back over his shoulder.

“Oh!” he said, turning all sorts of red. “Good morning, Cass.”

He swiveled his whole self to face me.

“So what do—” His voice cracked the first time, so he had to start over. “So what do you think?” Dad made some nervous
Ta-da!
arms and pointed to himself.

The afghan fell into a lump at my feet. From head to toe, back to head again, I took in the whole scene. There stood my dad in the yellow top hat, big round green glasses with no glass in them, and a wide-striped, green-and-yellow suit jacket that was a bit snug and buttoned over a crispy white shirt. The jacket had tails in the back and two pockets in the front, one big and one tiny, with a piece of tarnished metal chain looping out of the tiny one. The pants flared at the bottom, and peeking out from the flares were some yellow snakeskin loafers with golden buckles on top. He looked just like the cover of a cheap comic book.

I was utterly flabberwobbled.

“Are you heebed out?” he said. “You're totally heebed out, aren't you?”

It was so quiet you could have heard a jaw drop.

“I realize it leaves a little to be desired in the fit, but check it out,” he said. “Two of your new favorite colors.”

It was indeed chartreuse and goldenrod, just like Mom's shimmery makeup.

“Did you get all that at the Then Again?” I asked.

“Honestly, Cass,” he said. “I know I'm no Toodi Bleu when it comes to fashion, but don't you think I would have picked something a bit more flattering for myself?

“In fact,” he added, “I think this is a good time for the brand-new, made-up-on-the-spot Rule of The Roast Number Four.
Don't hate the suit—it came with the loot
.”

Dad tried to bend over to get the old brown suitcase from under the driver's seat, but his pants wouldn't let him.

“Cass, would you mind giving me a hand sliding this thing out?”

I lifted the case with both hands and ran my fingers across the embossed MBM under the handle.

“What do you mean, loot?” I said.

“Gently, gently!” Dad said when I let it drop too hard onto the table. “Delicate stuff inside there.”

He wiped the dust off the lid with his cuff.

“This is the loot I speak of,” he said. “There's a big family secret inside this case here, Cass, and you and the people of Nimble Creek are about to find out.”

“But what kind of secret?” I said. “And who's MBM?”

“He's M. B. McClean,” Dad said. “And you're looking right at him.”

I thought to myself in my best Aunt Jo voice,
You don't mean it.

“I realize it's a big transformation,” Dad continued, tugging at his jacket sleeves. “But the thing is, Cass, you and I are in possession of something lots more thrilling than plain old Douglas Nordenhauer has the skills to introduce. It's going to take an all-out spokesperson to do this job right.

“Now, be honest,” he said, trying to see himself section by section in the rearview mirror. “Are the glasses too silly? No, it's the hat, isn't it? The hat's too much, right?”

Honestly, I figured we'd reached Too Much one green-and-yellow suit ago. My own dad stood before me in someone else's clothes, second-guessing himself and rambling on about a suitcase full of mystery. I wasn't sure if I should feel excited or worried. “I'll take your silence as a resounding yes,” Dad said, tossing the hat onto the couch. “I know the outfit is pretty outrageous. I felt the same way when I found it.”

“Found it where?”

“In the attic with the other things,” he said, nodding toward the suitcase.

I reached for the brown suitcase immediately and was met with a quick “uh-uh” from my dad.

“Not just yet,” he said, pulling a lint roller from his duffel bag.

“Cass, would you mind giving me a good once-over with this? I don't want to make my first appearance as M. B. McClean looking like a ferret herder or something.”

I made three passes over his back with the sticky roller and let out four sneezes before saying, “I just don't…I don't get it.”

“I know,” said Dad. “But just trust me on this. It's still me under here.”

He took the lint roller and ran it over his pants. By the time he was through, the roller itself could have been mistaken for some kind of critter.

“Bottom line is, you and I are in for some much-needed sparkle today, Cassiopeia,” he said. I knew by the nickname that there was indeed some semblance of dadness under all that getup.

“Now, could you get that big roll of paper from the floorboard in the front?” Dad wheeled the glittered wagon from under the rolltop desk with his foot. He loaded the wagon with both the suitcase and the paper.

“And there's just one more thing I need your help with before we start our day, partner,” he said. “A folding table that's stored under the couch. Would you mind getting it and carrying it outside with us?”

I scooted the plastic table away from the couch and laid flat on my tummy to reach under. While my hand patted from one dust clump to another, I could see Dad's yellow loafers wandering around The Roast in a circle as he mumbled, “Now, where in the world did I put that tambourine?”

“On the floor under the wagon,” I said, remembering that Aunt Jo had once told me to be nice to crazy people because you never know when you might be crazy someday too. And that Mom had mentioned something to me about people being so shocked by a traumatic event, they sometimes act a little weird and unpredictable for a while. Even Uncle Clay wasn't himself for a whole year or so after his stroke. But try as I might, I sure didn't remember Uncle Clay ever wearing a stripy costume.

“Come on out whenever you get ready,” Dad said, throwing open the door of The Roast so hard it bounced right back and smacked him in the nose. “The good Nimble Creekians await.”