Lowen hoped that Coach would just assume that he was the surprise, and not Lowen, too.
Coach poured himself a cup of coffee and leaned over the counter where Mum was kneading piecrust.
“Lowen’s got some real potential,” he said.
She smiled at Lowen. “You must have worked up quite an appetite. Would you like a saffron bun? I’m adding them to the menu.”
“Yes, please.”
Mum placed two golden rolls on a plate — one for him and one for Coach.
“We don’t open for another hour,” Mum said, “but I’m happy to fix you a chicken pot pasty, Coach.”
Coach chuckled. “I’ve eaten so many of those you’re going to have to name one after me.”
Lowen laughed. He finished his bun and started for home, leaving Coach and his mother to discuss . . . Well, he never did learn what it was Coach wanted to talk to her about. But seeing his mum and Coach scheming about something made him miss his dad.
Dad hadn’t been able to come to Millville for the past three Saturdays. One of the doctors in his practice had a sick baby, and they asked his father to fill in. The good news was that his father was being paid overtime; the bad news was that he was working weekends. Lowen wondered if his dad had gone into the hospital yet and decided to Skype him as soon as he got home.
But the closer he got to 11 Beech, the slower he walked. Dad would ask lots of questions — questions that Lowen wasn’t sure he wanted to answer. He imagined his part of the conversation:
Yes, more of the kitchen ceiling has come down . . . and another kitchen cupboard door . . . and the doorknob on the upstairs bathroom.
I’m not sure how Clem did on his social studies test (even though he was fairly certain that Clem had not done well).
Yup, I got the graphic novel you sent. Yeah, I read it in fifth grade, but they’re fun to read again.
No, I haven’t had a chance to get back to my comics yet.
More importantly, he knew that he wouldn’t like Dad’s part of the conversation, the answer to Lowen’s most pressing question:
I don’t know when I can give up my job and move to Millville. I’m still looking for a medical doctor in the area who can supervise my work, and Mum’s shop isn’t ready to support all of us.
Lowen decided not to go home after all. Instead he walked aimlessly. Well, all right. If he ran into Luna, that wouldn’t have ruined his day.
He meandered past the First Baptist Church, whose marquee read A day stitched in prayer is unlikely to unravel.
Prayer. Before the store shoot-out, prayer seemed so easy. His prayers had all been the same: Dear God, please [insert request here]. Now prayer seemed all wrapped up in what he believed and what he didn’t believe. If he prayed for Abe to get into heaven, would that mean that he believed in the existence of hell?
Lowen strode past the now defunct filling station, past the cemetery with the enormous spire that read AVERY (a relation of Mr. Avery’s?), past the veterans’ memorial, and then turned onto a side road: one without sidewalks or even a yellow line down the middle. He walked until the road ended and the woods began.
He’d never come down to the forest before, but he knew Clem and his buds had gone four-wheeling there, and many of his classmates were already talking about snowmobiling in these woods when the snow arrived, which apparently might happen any day now.
Lowen felt kind of like an explorer as he hiked the wide path.
Above, bare branches inked across a steel-gray sky. He heard, and then saw, a flock of geese flying in the typical V formation.
Below, his feet crunched over partially frozen mounds of leaves, and he made a game of finding places where water had pooled and then crystallized. One jump burst the skim of ice each time.
He wandered off the path for a few yards to relieve himself, and felt all the more the outdoorsman for watering a wide evergreen in the brisk air.
And that’s when he heard a rustle from behind the tree.
His stomach tightened.
Something was on the other side. Maybe a wild turkey. Lowen had seen plenty of those since they’d moved. But it could also be a deer, a moose, or even a bobcat. From the way kids talked, these animals were as common as mosquitoes in the Millville woods.
More rustling. Lowen zipped his fly and backed up, hoping the tree would continue to hide him from whatever it was that was on the other side.
It didn’t.
A large man stood thirty yards away; a shotgun pulled up to his eye, the barrel pointed straight at Lowen.
How many hours had Lowen imagined what Abe had gone through, looking into the barrel of a gun? Imagined what he’d been thinking (or not thinking), imagined what he’d said.
When he’d first learned of Abe’s death, Lowen had shook uncontrollably. His mother gave him a Tylenol and put him to bed. He had slept for a while, but then he woke and remembered. He had tried not to think of Abe and instead concentrated on his own body. In his mind, his skin was melting away; his muscles were melting away. He imagined himself as a skeleton. He repositioned his arms and his legs and then pictured what the drawing of his skeleton-self would look like.
Later when his therapist suggested he draw what he’d felt when he heard the news of Abe’s death, he refused. She’d want to talk about the drawing, and he didn’t want to tell her that it was easier to picture himself as bones than to let the full knowledge of what he had done enter his mind. And later, when it did enter his mind — the fact that Abe was dead and it was because of him — he pictured himself breaking every one of his skeleton bones in half. Crack . . . crack . . . crack.
Now standing here, in front of this hunter, Lowen suddenly became bones again. Perfectly still bones held in place by tendons and muscles and skin. Bones that would, in a moment, fall to the ground. Later, his skin and his muscles and his tendons would really disappear. He’d decay. He’d be bones in the ground, like Abe.
Perhaps meeting this hunter was only right.
Raise your hands!
Abe’s voice.
Lowen raised his arms into the air. Only a second or two had passed.
“Jeesum!” the man said, lowering his gun. “Jeesum!” He paced in a circle. “What the —? Jeesum! What are you doing, kid?”
Lowen exhaled.
“Don’t you know it’s hunting season?” The man, dressed in dark green except for an orange cap and an orange vest, was clearly distressed. “Jeesum!”
Lowen tried to speak, but no words came out.
The man continued pacing. “You could have been killed. I could have killed you!”
“I’m sorry,” said Lowen at last, but he wasn’t, at that moment, thinking sorry. Instead, he was noticing that his body no longer felt like bones. Instead, a river of energy was surging through his veins. His tendons were tingling, his muscles were tingling, his skin was tingling.
He was alive.
“Get over here,” the hunter said to Lowen.
Fear returned. Lowen thought of turning and running. He was fairly confident that this hunter wouldn’t shoot now. But he was more used to obeying adults than disobeying. He did what he was told and approached the man.
The hunter put the safety on his shotgun and leaned it against a tree. Then he took his orange vest off. “Come here. Come here. Put this on, kid. You have got to wear orange if you’re going to be in these woods during hunting season.”
“I don’t want to take —”
“I’ve got plenty of orange,” the hunter said. “More than I need. Look, I’ve still got my hat, and I have lots of orange back home. We all do.”
Lowen let the man put the vest over his shoulders and zip him up, even though no one had zipped him into clothing for years.
“You’re tall for a kid your age, aren’t you?”
Lowen nodded.
Then the man hugged him. Hugged him like he was his grandfather or something. Held him for fear that time could move backward, that this moment could have been different.<
br />
“Who . . . What’s your name?” Lowen asked the hunter.
The man made eye contact, and Lowen could see fear dart into his eyes. Lowen realized then that almost killing a kid felt awfully close to actually doing it.
“So I can return your vest,” Lowen said quickly.
Lines across the man’s face softened, his eyes relaxed. “Carter. Carter Hobbs. But I don’t want to see you at my house with this vest until after deer hunting season. OK? It ends on Thanksgiving Day.”
“You got it,” said Lowen. “I’m going right home now.”
“Good idea.” Mr. Hobbs nodded. “Be careful.”
Lowen turned and walked out the way he came. His legs felt weak, wobbly. He whispered, Thank you, with each step down the path.
Thank you, around each bend of the winding country road.
Thank you, over small and large cracks in the sidewalks.
Thank you.
It was his most sincere prayer.
Unfortunately, the national holiday especially intended for thanks began with much despair at the Grover house. The first blizzard of the winter had blasted through Millville a day before, taking down power lines and covering everything in a foot of heavy, wet snow. (Clem and his buds had just begun to tear down the old porch when the storm picked up. Lowen had asked if he could help, and for once, Clem didn’t rebuff him. He was given the job of carrying the old rusted chairs and discarded nail-ridden boards to the side of the garage, which clearly wasn’t as much fun as demolition, and the swirling snow made the job pretty miserable, but it felt good to be making progress — any progress — on the home repairs.) Dad’s bus was canceled due to the lack of visibility and icy road conditions. Celebrating Thanksgiving without him seemed unthinkable to Lowen. He worried that if they could get through one holiday without Dad, it could happen again — and again — and each time with less concern.
Lowen, Anneth, and Clem woke not only to the news that their celebration wouldn’t include Dad, but to the quick-following announcement from Mum that there was no electricity in the Albatross and therefore no heat. Lowen wrapped himself in one of his quilts while the family huddled in the dimly lit kitchen and contemplated the rest of their losses.
“For the first time in thirteen years, I won’t get to see the Macy’s parade,” Anneth lamented.
“Forget the parade,” said Clem. “Without TV, there’s no football. It’s not Thanksgiving without football!”
“Are you guys serious?” said Lowen. “Without electricity, there will be no Thanksgiving dinner!”
“We might have power at the shop,” said Mum. “Maybe we’ll have to go into town, have Thanksgiving there.”
Just then, someone rapped on the door. It was Mr. Field inviting them for Thanksgiving dinner. The Fields had a generator and would therefore be able to use the ovens upstairs and down.
“The reason they have a generator,” Lowen whispered to Clem and Anneth as they stood in the background, waiting to hear how Mum would answer, “is so they can keep the bodies frozen.”
“The bodies aren’t frozen,” said Anneth, shooting him a Don’t be ridiculous look.
“They are if they can’t be buried until spring when the ground thaws,” said Lowen.
“Who told you that?” Clem asked.
“Dylan.” He wondered if his siblings knew that Dylan worked next door. Probably. They actually talked to Dylan, after all.
“Thank you, Mr. Field — um, Larry,” Mum said. “We’d love to have Thanksgiving with you.”
Clem stood behind Anneth and shook his head no. He had fear in his eyes. He would rather sacrifice football than eat dinner at Field’s Funeral Home.
Lowen couldn’t believe that when it came to Field’s, he was actually braver than his brother. Could it be that Clem might be more affected by Abe’s death than anyone realized? It wasn’t as though Clem had actually been friends with Abe, either. In fact, he usually dismissed him with some half-kidding put-down, calling him Ape instead of Abe — that sort of thing. Did this make Clem more afraid? Did he think the dead had the power to exact payback?
Lowen recalled the Christmas movie in which Clarence (who was dead but not an angel yet) showed the main character — what was his name? George. George Bailey. He showed George Bailey what life would be like if he were never born. Those were pretty strong powers for someone who wasn’t even a first-class angel. A cartoon popped into Lowen’s head:
Mum’s voice interrupted his thoughts: “Tell Lorrette I can contribute the stuffing and an apple pie — I made both yesterday.”
The Grovers weren’t the only guests invited to Thanksgiving at Field’s Funeral Home. The Doshis were there as well. And so was Coach. The crowd was too large to fit in the Fields’ upstairs apartment, so Mr. Field had removed the folding chairs from the chapel room and joined two long tables there instead. The tables were covered in lace linen cloths and had large bouquets of red, yellow, and orange flowers (left over, Mrs. Field said, from the funeral they held on Tuesday) for centerpieces.
Clem had brutally complained while getting ready to come to Field’s. He’d showed Lowen the group text he’d sent — Thanksgiving at a funeral home? You gotta be kidding me! — hoping that one of his buds would come to his rescue and invite him over, but it didn’t happen.
No sooner had the Grovers caught a glimpse of the table than Mr. Field herded the Grover and Doshi kids into the sitting room across the hall where the dearly departed were viewed one last time.
“The parade!” cried Anneth.
There, in the spot typically occupied by a coffin, was a large-screen TV. On-screen, a life-size Paddington Bear balloon was floating over the streets of New York.
“It’s not Thanksgiving without the parade and football, now, is it?” Mr. Field leaned in to Clem and said, “I used to play, you know.”
Clem couldn’t hide his incredulousness.
“Yup,” said Mr. Field, smiling. “I was a Mount Ida Mustang. Not that great a linebacker, mind you — my real game was basketball. Was MVP my senior year. Would you like some dip?” He and Clem left the room talking about some player Lowen had never heard of.
Anneth squeezed onto a love seat with Meera and Hema.
Lowen was about to join them, but Sami said she had to put an eggplant casserole in the oven.
“Eggplant on Thanksgiving?” asked Lowen, following her.
“Vegetarian, remember?” replied Sami. “What did you guys bring?”
“A pie and stuffing to go with the turkey.”
“There isn’t going to be a turkey,” said Sami.
“No turkey?”
Sami rolled her eyes. “Not everyone eats turkey on Thanksgiving, you know. It’s bizarro. Thanksgiving is an immigrant celebration, but here in this nation of immigrants, everyone is expected to eat the same thing.”
“Never thought about it that way,” said Lowen.
“You carnivores are having venison and partridge.”
“Venison?”
“Deer meat,” said Sami, pouting. “Mr. Field says it’s a hunter’s Thanksgiving.”
A hunter’s Thanksgiving. Lowen made sure they were alone, then he told Sami about his encounter with the hunter in the woods. It was the first time he’d spoken of the event; he hadn’t even told his mum about it.
“Scary,” Sami acknowledged. “Why won’t you tell your mother?”
“I don’t want her to freak out. She’s . . . very sensitive about guns.”
Sami looked at him strangely, probably sensing there was more to the story than that, but she didn’t pry, which he appreciated. “Well, at least now you know better than to hang out in the woods, without orange, during hunting season.”
For a moment, Lowen thought of defending himself. He was a city kid — what had he known about hunting season or wearing orange? But the relief of having shared the story overtook his need to convince Sami that his actions were defensible.
As he shrugged in a good-natured way, it occurred
to him that maybe, without his consent or even trying, he and Sami were becoming friends. For a moment he imagined himself telling her the story of Abe, of what it might feel like to have the truth out in the open, to share his burden with someone. But he knew instantly and without a doubt that he couldn’t. Unlike the hunting story, there was no defending his actions that day.
They headed back into the chapel, where Mrs. Field was gingerly placing a sweet-potato-and-marshmallow casserole on the table. “I hope you don’t mind that we’re eating early,” she said. She was wearing jeans and a silver-and-blue Lions jersey. “This way we get to see all three games.” Lowen realized two things: 1) Mrs. Field was nothing like he imagined; and 2) he didn’t really know most of his neighbors yet.
“We don’t mind in the least,” Mum said to Mrs. Field. She glanced around the table and smiled. “Who would’ve thought we’d spend our first Millville Thanksgiving in a funeral home!”
“You should have seen Clem when I brought him over here to take a shower!” Mr. Field said to everyone. “He bolted upstairs as fast as his legs could carry him, leaving poor Lowen downstairs.”
“Can you blame me?” said Clem, laughing. “I mean, I was taking a shower in the same house where dead people were lying around!”
That was one of the things that Lowen had always admired about his big brother: not only was he good at making other people laugh, he could laugh at himself.
“But people don’t die in funeral homes,” said Sami. “Most people die in hospitals. But no one thinks, Wow, this place is full of dead people. Or I wonder if the spirits of the dead are hanging around here? But say ‘funeral home’ and everyone gets freaked out.”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Field, leaning back in his chair. “My high-school friends, especially the kids on the football team, couldn’t believe that I was going to mortuary college.”
“Sounds to me like a smart move,” said Rena.
For some reason, Coach couldn’t stop smiling at Rena. He nodded in agreement.
“It was!” said Mrs. Field. “Businesses come and go, but a town is always in need of a funeral director.”
The Dollar Kids Page 14
