As soon as he was out of earshot, Mrs. Burt said, “Doesn’t he look old, boys? Ancient! How old would you say he is?”
“Twenty-nine,” Artie guessed.
“Come on! He looks about eighty to me. He’s not even seventy, I’m pretty sure of that, cause he’s younger than me.” She straightened her knitted cap and patted it with both hands. “Also, he can’t count. Marianne’s kids? Ha! If Marianne had kids they’d be all grown up!”
After I unloaded most of the Bel Air, which took about a hundred trips, I got my first wood-chopping lesson.
Mrs. Burt poked along the edge of the trees until she found a fallen log she liked. I dragged it up on two stones and cut it into same-size lengths with the saw. Mrs. Burt called this “bucking.” Then we found a nice flat rock for me to chop against. She demonstrated with the first couple of pieces, me standing close in case she lost her balance. Then I took over. I stood the log up on the rock, tapped the ax into the end of it until it stuck, lifted the log and ax together, and brought them down.
Crack! What a sweet sound. The log split in half.
We made a proper fire pit nearer to the cabin by collecting rocks and arranging them in a circle. Mrs. Burt got me to set up kindling in a tepee shape over some twigs and dried leaves. After the flames got going, I added larger and larger pieces of wood and, before I knew it, I’d built my first bonfire. For supper we roasted hotdogs over it, on sticks, just like they do in books.
Artie danced around waving his in the air.
“Is that your sword?” Mrs. Burt asked.
“It’s my magic wand.”
“If it was a sword, you could knight us.”
She explained that to become a knight the king laid his sword on you and pronounced you so. She used me as an example.
“I pronounce you Sir Curtis.”
“I pronounce you Sir Mrs. Burt,” Artie said, laying the greasy hotdog on her shoulder.
“Imagine that,” she said. “Knighted with a wiener.”
In their buns, even without the ketchup I forgot in the car, they tasted good. Better than microwaved.
After the fire had burned down to embers, Mrs. Burt put the kettle on for tea. She said the cabin was too dirty to sleep inside. We would spend the night under the stars. I went around cutting pine boughs to make mattresses. Then Artie and I unrolled our new sleeping bags.
“Bindlestiffs,” said Mrs. Burt by the fire.
“What?”
“That’s what we called bedrolls. Bindlestiffs. I don’t know why.”
We got comfy in our bindlestiffs. The boughs were lumpy, but every time I moved they gave off a woodsy smell, like air-freshener spray. Mrs. Burt slurped and burped. The fire made crinkling-paper sounds.
The night noises were new. The ones I was used to — sirens and traffic and people in the other apartments arguing or playing their stereos too loud — were far away.
Years ago, when I stayed with the Pennypackers, it had seemed like the wilderness because of all the trees, but there were still wide streets and two-car garages and telephone poles and strip malls.
There were none of those things here. We were in the wild.
Something rustled in the trees and Artie snuggled close to me.
“A squirrel! A squirrel is coming!”
“Probably a mouse,” said Mrs. Burt. “Squirrels go to bed the same time we do.”
Then we heard a really creepy sound, like the craziest, loneliest person in the world calling out for help. Artie sat up with a gasp.
“Loon,” said Mrs. Burt.
“Mom!” Artie cried.
“You bring that lotion down from the Chevy?” Mrs. Burt asked me.
I wriggled out of my bag and went and got it.
After Artie settled, I lay back and watched the light show of stars coming out. I’d never done that before. Somehow I had the idea that they switched on like streetlights. But as the pink faded from the sky, more and more stars crowded out the darkness. I fell asleep, and when I woke up in the middle of the night, there were even more of them. Stars sprayed out above me like frozen fireworks, a whole part of the sky so thick with them it looked white.
I didn’t get it. In the city, where did the stars go?
THE NEXT DAY the sun woke me up earlier than I’d ever been up in my whole life. I didn’t care because when I sat up and looked around, the lake was there. A whole lake with a sun and clouds floating in it, like the sky lying on the ground. It seemed like it was mine.
I made another fire and Mrs. Burt cooked us hash browns and sausages and eggs in a cast-iron pan, one of the few things we hadn’t burned, because we couldn’t. It was indestructible. The food tasted better than all her other breakfasts just because it was cooked over a real fire.
Then we got to work scrubbing out the cabin. I even had to get on the roof and be a chimney sweep, which meant I jammed a long stick down the stovepipe to clear out any bird or squirrel nests.
When we were done, Mrs. Burt said that it was going to be a very cozy place to live.
“You boys sure worked hard. I think you deserve a treat. I think you deserve a little fishing. What do you say?”
“Yeah!”
With the rods propped against the walker and Mrs. Burt settled on a rock, she prepared the tackle. We were after trout, she said. The lures she chose were silver with four orange beads. I thought they would make good earrings. If I ever got my ears pierced like Mr. Bryant, I’d wear lures.
Mrs. Burt handed us the rods. She used the walker to get up, but set it aside once she was standing where she wanted to be on the shore. She was much steadier on her feet now. I passed her my rod and she waved us to one side. We had to be very, very careful when we cast not to hook each other, or her. In fact, Artie wasn’t allowed to cast, only to reel in.
She unlocked the reel, tipped the rod back over her shoulder, flung it straight. The lure winged out, then plopped into the water a long way away. Then she started reeling, slowly turning the handle, humming. As soon as we could see the lure in the water, she reeled faster.
“You don’t want to get it snagged on the bottom.” She cast a few more times, then passed the rod to me.
“Be careful you don’t cross lines with us,” she said. Then she and Artie and the thingie moved farther down the shore.
I unlocked the reel, drew back the rod, snapped it forward.
Wheee!!! The lure sailed out over the water and splashed down. I began to reel in, praying for a fish. I didn’t know what I’d do if I caught a fish, but I wanted one. The reel click-click-clicked. My hopes got even higher. When I saw the lure sparkling under the water, I reeled faster, not even disappointed, just ready to cast and hope all over again.
But it turned out a big part of fishing is waiting, which is something little kids don’t do well. Mrs. Burt had promised Artie a fish and now she had to get him to stay still for long enough that a fish would get interested in his hook. She started making up a story about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Her knights were more like lumberjacks. She was King Arthur’s mulligan mixer, the only woman around. As a prank one of the logger knights stole her measuring cup and hid it in the forest. These knights were always pulling pranks, she said, like cutting the buttons off each other’s Stanfields.
In the middle of the story, Artie’s line jerked and the rod almost pulled right out of his hands.
“Hold on, Artie!” Mrs. Burt cried.
Behind him, her hands over his, she helped him reel in. The tip of his rod bent over the water and suddenly the fish burst through the surface, flipping and twisting in the air.
Artie shrieked and ran back to the cabin.
“Give me a hand here, Curtis,” Mrs. Burt called, trying to grab the slippery body dancing on the line.
I started to ree
l in. Then I felt a pull, too.
For something only ten inches long, that trout was strong. We played tug-of-war for a minute, fish pulling me, me pulling fish, Mrs. Burt yelling instructions and still trying to grab hold of Artie’s fish. My heart thrashed as hard as the trout.
When it finally flipped into the air, I heard myself holler with joy.
“Grab it!” Mrs. Burt called. “Grab it, then come grab Artie’s!”
In my hand the live fish squirmed. I picked up my rod and ran to Mrs. Burt. It took me a minute to grab hers, too.
There I was, both hands full of living fish, both of us laughing so hard I couldn’t understand what Mrs. Burt wanted me to do, which was pass her fish to her while I held mine on the ground.
“Now grab that rock and give it a bash,” she said.
I took the rock and I bashed the fish. Then I stopped laughing.
It lay on the ground, still now, silver and spotted, the hook piercing its lip, blood oozing from its gills. The wet eye looked up at me.
Mrs. Burt handed me the other fish and I killed it, too, before I had to think about it.
That was the one part of fishing I didn’t like.
Afterward, Mrs. Burt showed me how to pull out the hooks with pliers and how to clean the fish and spill the guts into the lake. Fish guts were clean, she said. They were food for other fish. I cut the heads off, too, and wrapped the clean fish bodies in a damp cloth to keep them cool. Then I started fishing all over again.
As she headed with her contraption back up to the cabin where Artie was still hiding, Mrs. Burt said something really true.
“The hardest thing in the world, Curtis, is catching just one fish.”
That night she got the woodstove fired up to cook our fish. I caught a lot of fish over the next few weeks — so many I lost count — but none ever tasted as good as those first two. Because when we caught them, and when I ate them, I actually forgot my mom was gone.
9
IN THE CABIN there was a kitchen sink and a hand pump that brought water from the lake, but there wasn’t any real plumbing. The dirty dishwater just drained into a pipe that led to the trees instead of the lake. Mrs. Burt said we could pee wherever we wanted as long as it wasn’t near or in the water. That was one of the best things about the cabin — peeing outside.
One of the worst was doing that other thing.
The morning after we got there, Mrs. Burt set up a little area off the road, far from the cabin where there was an old fallen log a few steps into the trees. We had to squat on the log, do our business over the other side, then scatter leaves around so the next person wouldn’t have to see it.
It was horrible. Artie would say he didn’t have to go even though he’d be dancing around trailing farts. Finally, really desperate, he’d admit it. Then I’d have to take him to our “bathroom” and hold his hand the whole time, just like at home, even though he couldn’t possibly be flushed down. I had to be there in case any squirrels came around.
“They’ll bite my bum!”
“They won’t,” I said.
“They’ll bite my pee-pee!”
“Just finish, okay?”
On our third day at the cabin, we went back to town. We had a ton of errands, like the supermarket and the bank, where Mrs. Burt must have taken out a lot more money to pay for everything. This time we filled the Bel Air with flour and oats and food that was dried or canned or bottled, because we didn’t have a fridge. Seeds and tomato plants. At a sporting goods store we got air mattresses for the beds. Then we stopped at the hardware store for lumber and a hammer, tape measure and nails. And a level and some other things. Mrs. Burt said we were going to build a proper outhouse.
The man who strapped the lumber onto the roof of the Bel Air kept saying, “This is one beautiful car. Yep, she’s a beaut.”
“Thank you very much,” Mrs. Burt replied, patting her cap, like he was complimenting her.
Next stop was the mall, where Mrs. Burt bought clothes for us. She even got me special boots for wood chopping — leather with laces halfway up my shins. While I was admiring my feet in the store mirror, she purposely slammed her contraption right down on my toe. It didn’t hurt at all.
The last thing we did in town — the last thing I did — was try phoning Mom again. I had in mind all the things I wanted to tell her if she answered. Things I was dying to say even before I asked, “Where have you been?” or “Why did you leave me again?” I wanted to tell her that I could chop wood and build a fire. That I’d been swimming in a lake that was so clean we were drinking out of it. (Mrs. Burt boiled the water first, but it was still really clean.) That I’d caught a fish with my own fishing rod and eaten it.
After two rings she answered and, without even thinking, I opened my mouth to spill out all my news.
But it wasn’t her. It was some other woman’s voice.
“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please hang up and try your call again.”
Mrs. Burt and Artie were waiting in the car. She asked me what was the matter.
“The phone’s disconnected,” I told her.
All she said was, “I guess we don’t have much reason to come back to town.”
WE FINALLY FOUND where the old outhouse had been but it was too overgrown to use. The new spot had to be away from the cabin, too, but not too far. And it had to have a view.
“Sometimes you’ll want to just sit out there and think,” Mrs. Burt told us. “For times like that, it’s nice to have something to look at.”
The three of us searched, Mrs. Burt whacking her thingie around, until we finally settled on a place that was higher than the cabin and on flat enough ground that the outhouse would sit straight.
Then I had to chop down some trees to clear the area and open up the view, which faced the lake. It took a long time but was fun, too, especially in steel-toed boots. I dragged the trees I’d cut down closer to the cabin so that later I could saw them into logs for firewood.
The hole came next. Digging, digging, digging. There were so many rocks and roots, I felt like I was digging all the way to the other side of the earth.
Finally, after a whole digging day, the pit came up to my chest. Mrs. Burt said it was deep enough, which was good news because my hands were all blistered and my back was so sore I could hardly straighten.
The next day at breakfast, Mrs. Burt showed me a little sketch she’d made of the outhouse with the measurements marked on it. It looked like a ticket booth without a door.
“Better get started,” she said.
“Me? I’m going to build it?”
I’d never built anything in my life. But I’d also never done most of the things I was doing now, so I thought, Okay. I can.
Mrs. Burt and Artie were putting in a garden. She got Artie to dig the plot by telling him there was buried treasure, which was the coins she kept tossing down when he wasn’t looking. While they were busy with that, I worked on the outhouse. Now and then Mrs. Burt barked instructions to me.
I measured and cut the lumber and nailed together the frames for the floor and the three walls, wasting hardly any nails once I got the hang of it. A frame is really just a rectangle of two-by-fours with a little triangle at each corner to make it stronger.
One at a time I carried the frames out to the hole. I laid the floor frame and nailed the plywood on, leaving an opening above the hole. I put up the wall frames and nailed them to the floor, then to each other. The bench was just some two-by-fours covered with plywood, except for the open rectangle in the middle where you sat. On the plywood roof I nailed some thick black stuff called tarpaper, then piled tree branches on.
It took two days to build and after I finished, the first thing I did was test the view. I sat there looking out, feeling tired and sore but also happy. I’d never really tho
ught about the bathroom before because it was always there. Now I had made one with my own hands. And Mrs. Burt was right. It was much nicer to look out at a lake full of fish than at your own goofy reflection staring back at you in the mirror.
I went and got Artie and Mrs. Burt. She took a turn testing the view.
“This is a fine outhouse, Curtis,” she said. “Solid. I look forward to using it for real. Climb up, Artie.”
“No,” Artie said. “There’s no seat.”
“We’ll sandpaper her all smooth so you won’t get any slivers in you,” Mrs. Burt told him.
“He’s afraid of falling down the hole,” I explained. When I said this, Artie turned red, like it only just occurred to him that this was impossible.
“I’m not! I want a seat so I don’t get slivers!”
I looked at Mrs. Burt, wondering if she was prepared to drive all the way back to town just to buy a toilet seat that Artie would probably still be afraid of sitting on. So far she’d done everything Artie wanted. But if she did that, she would have to do something about all his fears, which was impossible. He was afraid of so much. She’d have to chase every squirrel out of the forest. She’d have to sweep away all the spider webs and pine cones. Artie said pine cones looked like spiky poo.
Mrs. Burt didn’t offer to get a toilet seat. She smiled at me, tricky, tricky, showing all her brown teeth. She was smart. Really smart.
She said, “Artie? Remember how I told you about the quest for the holy measuring cup?”
He thought she was about to launch into another story.
“There was another thing they were looking for. Something even more important and more precious than that old cup.”
“What?” Artie asked.
“A long, long time ago, in this very place, there was an outhouse, but nobody was around to use it so it fell apart and all the boards rotted away. But the toilet seat didn’t rot. It’s still around here somewhere, probably half sunk into the ground and overgrown with plants.”
“Can we find it?” Artie asked.
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