“I had three of them,” I tell him. “But I’m starting to wonder if she really sees anything at all, or if she just wants someone to make cookies for.”
Charlie and Debbie look at each other but don’t say anything.
“Today we went to investigate footprints in her vegetable garden, and there weren’t any, were there?” I say to Tobin.
“Nothing,” Tobin says.
“Mr. Dickerson died almost ten years ago now,” Debbie says. “Isn’t that right, Charlie?”
“Sounds about right, yeah,” he answers, taking a cookie from the bag and dipping it in his black coffee.
“I imagine she gets real lonely in that house all by herself,” Debbie says.
“Mrs. Dickerson had a husband who died?” I ask.
“That’s right,” Debbie tells me. “Oliver was his name. He was the principal of the school for many years.”
Oliver Dickerson.
“Mommm,” Tobin bursts in. “What did you decide?”
“What, honey?”
“About the expedition,” he says. “What did you decide?”
“Oh, right…Charlie?” Debbie motions in his direction and helps herself to a cookie from the bag.
“We decided you may plan an expedition—” Charlie starts, and then sips.
“Yes!” Tobin jumps up and down.
“Let me finish,” Charlie says with one finger in the air. “We decided that you may plan an expedition; however, I will go with you.”
“Even better!” Tobin starts jumping again.
“I will close the store up next weekend, and we can plan to leave for Bluff Creek Friday afternoon and return on Sunday.”
“Sunday?” Tobin complains. “That’s only two and a half days.”
“Tobin,” Debbie warns. “Charlie is being very generous to take this time off from the store.”
“I know it, but Sunday?”
“Tobin.” She gives him a stern look.
“Thank you, Charlie,” Tobin says. “Actually, if we really get to go to Bluff Creek, two and a half days might be plenty of time to find something.”
“So, we will plan on it, then,” Charlie says.
“Isn’t this the greatest, Lemonade? We’re going to see a Bigfoot with our very own eyes!” Tobin exclaims. “Bluff Creek is where Patterson and Gimlin filmed their world-famous film. And where we will film ours.”
I want to tell them all that I’d rather spend the weekend with Mrs. Dickerson instead of parading around the woods in the dark looking for a monster. Sipping tea, eating cookies, and hearing more stories about Mama sounds like a way better weekend to me.
But I can’t say that. Tobin will tell me I’m just complaining again. The redheaded girl in the picture would go on an exciting expedition. Me too…before.
My lips used to want to smile, before.
They were happy.
I was happy.
Then everything changed.
I sit on the top step of the porch with my chin in my hand, watching Tobin and Charlie and Debbie chattering happily about the upcoming trip like nothing bad has ever happened. Like they don’t have to hold something heavy everywhere they go.
Like they’re carrying joy instead. Light, fluffy joy.
And even though I’m sitting right next to them, I feel all alone.
I try not to think of the day everything changed. The single worst day of my entire life. When Mama was in the hospital for the very last time. When she was too tired to open her eyes. And her fingers were too weak to curl around mine the way they always did. The day when I had to say good-bye…I don’t want to think about it because when I do, the sadness pulls me in so deep sometimes it feels like I’ll never find my way out.
“I’m going in to lie down,” I tell Charlie.
“Oh…all right, Lem,” he says. “You feeling okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, forcing my lips to give him at least a half-grin. “Just tired, I guess.”
I pull the screen door open and close it softly behind me. When I turn around, Charlie is still watching me through the screen.
“…and number nine.” Tobin sticks out his ninth finger. “The forest there is thick,” he explains. “We know it’s rich enough in resources to support a large omnivorous primate species. One that is rare and forages over a wide area…And finally, number ten, and this is the biggest reason Bluff Creek is the best place to find a Bigfoot…it’s the place where Patterson and Gimlin shot the original film.”
This is what I get when I make the mistake of asking Tobin a question about Bluff Creek. Yet another chapter of the Bigfoot Encyclopaedia Britannica spews from his lips.
It’s Friday just after lunch, and we’re on the driveway loading Jake up for the trip.
“It’s not going to shut,” I tell Charlie, shading my eyes from the sun.
He’s been trying to close the back end of the station wagon for the past fifteen minutes. It’s packed with everything we’ll need for our expedition in Bluff Creek. And then some. Three fat sleeping bag rolls, two days of food, pots, pans, clothes, jackets, towels, backpacks, a first aid kit, and one roll of toilet paper.
“I think we need a little teamwork,” Charlie says. “On three?”
All three of us line our hands up along the back hatch.
“One, two, three,” we all say together.
That does it. The door slams and the lock latches.
“Everybody ready?” Charlie asks.
“Ready!” Tobin hollers, scrambling into the front seat. “Shotgun!”
“It’s all yours.” I open the back door like I couldn’t care less.
Which I couldn’t.
Then we have to listen to Tobin flap his gums the whole way there. I surf wind waves with my hand out the window and do my best to ignore him. I have more important things to worry about at the moment.
First and foremost, where I’m going to go to the bathroom. And the more I think about having to go outside in the woods, the more I feel like I have to go right this minute. Even though the late-afternoon air is hot, and my back feels sticky against the tan vinyl, and my tongue is drier than dirt, I don’t take even one sip of water from the canteen Charlie brought along.
“Hello? Earth to Lemonade,” Tobin is saying.
“Huh?” I ask.
“Charlie’s talking to you,” he says.
“Oh…What?” I ask Charlie.
“I said I made it up to the elementary school yesterday morning to get you registered for the fall,” Charlie says, looking at me in the rearview mirror.
I look away.
“Oh” is all I can think of to say to that.
Tobin turns around in the passenger seat to look at me.
“That mean you’re staying?” He cracks a smile from under his safari hat.
“What’s this?” Charlie asks.
“Nothing,” I say, glaring at Tobin.
“Lemonade says she isn’t staying,” Tobin tells Charlie.
Big fat blabbermouth.
“She says that’s the reason she can’t be my partner. Because she’s going home. What did you say? You’re blowing this newsstand?”
“Wrong!” I say. “You said I couldn’t be your partner. I didn’t say I wouldn’t be a partner. And it’s a Popsicle stand, not a newsstand. Who blows a newsstand?”
“Who blows a Popsicle stand?” he asks. “And what does that even mean, anyway?”
He’s got me there.
“And just so you know, I’m not making someone partner if they’re going to just up and leave at any time.”
Charlie’s eyes are on me again in the rearview mirror. They have a lot of questions in them.
Questions I don’t want to answer.
“Well, if your plans change,” Charlie tells me, like he’s talking about the weather, “I’ve got you enrolled in the same fifth-grade class as Tobin with Mrs. Santamaria starting in September.”
But the casual words that come out of his mouth don’t match the eyes
looking at me in the mirror.
“That’s so cool!” Tobin flashes another smile at me. “She’s the best teacher in fifth grade. She gives the least amount of homework and bakes cupcakes for the class when it’s your birthday.”
It’s getting harder to breathe, and I can feel the volcano bubbling low in my gut. I want to tell them both not to count on me staying. I want to tell them both that I don’t belong in this place. I want to tell them both that I’m going home.
But I don’t.
Instead, for the rest of the trip, I pretend to be sleeping in the back while Tobin and Charlie play the license plate game, then the alphabet game, and then sing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” about a zillion and one times.
First they just sing it regular, but then Tobin gets the idea to sing it in a round. Charlie couldn’t carry a tune if his life depended on it, and he keeps starting in all the wrong places and adding all kinds of silly words instead of singing the right ones. Each time Charlie joins in, it gives Tobin a fit of giggles, and then they have to start all over again.
They sound like they’re having fun, and it makes part of me wish I hadn’t pretended to be sleeping the whole time. But I don’t know how to invite myself in after I spewed my lava all over everything.
At just after six o’clock in the evening, we finally pull into the spot where we’ll set up camp. Now I really have to go to the bathroom, and there isn’t a single stall or outhouse or gas station in sight. I don’t know how to ask Charlie about it, so I just hold it and shift my legs.
That works for a while, and then my gut starts hurting so bad, and the whole leg-shifting thing doesn’t work anymore, and I think my bladder might explode. It makes me wonder if anyone has ever died from Explosive Bladder Syndrome.
Charlie and Tobin are still pounding stakes into the ground and setting up the tent while I’m unpacking the supplies. The last thing I pull out of a brown paper grocery bag is the roll of toilet paper. Which makes my bladder hurt even worse, and I decide I can’t wait another second.
I tap Charlie on the arm.
“I…um…where do we…um—” I shift my legs and cross them under me.
“Ahhhh,” Charlie says before I get any more words out. “Follow me. Tobin, we’ll be right back.”
I feel my cheeks burning. Tobin isn’t even paying attention. He’s too busy hammering at a stake.
Charlie grabs the roll of toilet paper and says, “Follow me. Bring the bag too. In the woods, we generally find a place and designate it the restroom area. Let’s find one together where we can all have some privacy when we need it.”
“You mean I really have to go in the middle of the woods?” I ask.
“That’s right.”
“What if a bear decides to make me his dinner while I’m out here going? Or a rattlesnake falls out of the trees and lands on my head and bites me in the nose? Or—”
“I promise you, it’ll be fine. And I can stay with you, if you need me to.”
“I’d rather be eaten,” I mumble under my breath.
He chuckles.
I follow him through the woods until he finds a spot not real far from where Tobin’s still hammering on the tent. It’s a small clearing next to a fallen tree.
“Would you like me to stand over that way and wait for you?” Charlie asks me.
“Not even a little bit,” I say, grabbing the toilet paper.
I want to tell him Mama buys double-ply. But I don’t because my bladder isn’t going to last till I get the words out.
“Okay, just right back up that same path we came down. Call out if you need me to come and get you. I’ll hear you. You can just leave the roll of toilet paper there for everyone to use as they need.”
“Okay, okay,” I say, shifting from leg to leg.
I watch his dark blue Windbreaker through the trees and bushes until I can’t see it anymore.
As if this day, this year, this life couldn’t get any worse, now I’m unbuttoning my shorts, pulling down my Sears brand cotton underwear, and peeing in the woods.
At Mrs. Dickerson’s, I’d be eating all the cookies I wanted and peeing in her flowery-smelling bathroom filled with lilac-colored rugs and towels that smell like Downy fabric softener. I bet she even has Mr. Bubble and a pink sponge, instead of just a stupid bar of Irish Spring and a plain blue washcloth.
After the sun falls behind the trees and the woods grow dark and cool and even scarier, Charlie makes a roaring campfire. It lights our campsite with a warm, fiery glow that makes it feel like a safe, cozy living room out in the middle of nowhere.
On a griddle, he cooks up juicy hamburgers with slices of American cheese on top. Then he peels the label off the can of baked beans and places the can right near the flames to heat up. After I bite into my smoky, cheesy burger, I decide that Charlie can cook hamburgers in the woods way better than he can cook Oscar Mayers on the stove.
After supper, we roast marshmallows on long sticks we find in the woods. When the marshmallows are brown and crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside, we take them off the tip of the stick and smoosh them between graham crackers with half of a Hershey’s chocolate bar to make s’mores.
I eat three of them and only lose two marshmallows in the fire. Tobin loses three but eats five.
Charlie tells silly ghost stories that are more funny than scary, and it makes me forget that we’re deep in the woods just waiting to be eaten by something ferocious or poisoned by something venomous.
Tobin is the first to fall asleep, still curled up in his lawn chair next to the fire.
“Tired?” Charlie asks me. He’s using his pocketknife to whittle a lump of wood he found on the ground.
“No,” I say. “Not really.”
I stare into the crackling fire.
The logs are turning white and black as the bright orange flames dance over the embers, moving to the pop-and-crackle beat. Even though the air is cold now, the fire fills the small space around us. When a patch of cool air slips through and wraps around my shoulders, I shiver. Charlie looks up then, takes off his blue Windbreaker, and hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say.
I pull it on. It smells like him. Like Irish Spring and the bottle of Old Spice he keeps on the bathroom counter. The lump of wood in his hand looks like it could either end up being a bear or maybe…Mount Rushmore.
Still too soon to tell.
It’s quiet except for the crackling and popping of the flittering flames. It seems like it takes forever for anyone to say anything while I watch the logs and Charlie carves.
“I don’t know what your mother’s told you about us,” he starts, not looking at me.
“Nothing,” I say.
Then it’s quiet again for a real long time. His eyebrows are low as he concentrates on his carving.
“We didn’t get along after her mother died,” he tells me, and then clears his throat.
I look up at him.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Well…,” he starts. “I suppose it was because we were both just…sad…you know. We didn’t know what to do with all our sadness about losing someone who meant so much, someone we shouldn’t have had to lose. Someone we weren’t expecting to lose. Everything changed. I know you know what I mean by that.”
I do, and I tell him so.
“Yes,” I say.
“So we let all our sad and mad feelings take over, and instead of loving and supporting each other, we hurt each other with our words.”
I think about the volcano inside me and all the spewing lava that comes out when I don’t even mean it to. It makes me wonder if Mama had a volcano inside her too.
Elizabeth Lilly Witt.
I swallow hard.
“I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to lose her the way you did,” Charlie says, clearing his throat a bunch of times. “To be all alone, watch her get so sick and not be able to do anything to help her. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t wish I could have done something to help
her. If I had known, maybe I could have…well, anyway, I should have been there to take care of her…and you.”
“I took care of her just fine.” I point to myself. “I did it. I didn’t need anyone to do it.”
I swallow again, but the lump just keeps getting bigger, and now my eyes are watering up too.
I wipe at them with my forearm.
“I’m sure you did a great job of taking care of her, Lem.” Charlie’s voice sounds shaky on the last word, and he clears his throat again. “I just wish I could have been there too. I miss your mom more than I can tell you. Losing her now is like losing her twice for me. I had always hoped we could repair our relationship and become a family again…but now I know that will never happen.”
I sniff and wipe at my eyes again. A log crumbles and breaks in two, making a loud popping sound that sends sparks leaping toward the sky. I watch the fire, trying to swallow away the lump that just won’t go down.
“Her name was Rebecca.”
“Yes,” he says after another long pause. “Rebecca Genevieve Witt.” He says it slowly, in a way that makes it sound like a real important name that he wants the universe to remember.
Rebecca Genevieve Witt.
“Is that your wedding ring?” I point to the bright silver ring on his hand.
“Yep,” he says. “And I keep hers on a chain around my neck too.” He pulls out a thin chain from under his collar and shows me.
It’s a smaller bright silver ring with a diamond on it.
“Makes me feel closer to her.”
I wish I had a ring of Mama’s to carry around my neck too.
“How…,” I start, but my voice comes out all squeaky and high.
I clear my throat now too.
“How do you learn to breathe again?” I ask.
I wonder if he knows what I mean. About the sadness inside me. Sometimes I feel so sad inside, I don’t think I’ll ever feel good again.
Not ever.
And it scares me. Like I’m drowning in sadness quicksand, and if I don’t get out, no one will ever find me. And what’s worse…
It feels like no one is even looking.
Charlie stops his carving when I ask my question and looks straight at me. I can see that his eyes are as watery as mine are.
Lemons Page 6
