“We’re going to try. It’s going to be our quest. In the meantime, could you use the outhouse without the seat? Because I, for one, wouldn’t want to sit on any other.”
Artie was so excited that he said yes. They set off right away. An hour later they had to come back empty-handed so Sir Mrs. Burt could cook supper.
It gave me an hour to fish.
That night, after King Artie fell asleep, I sat by the fire with Mrs. Burt and we laughed together about the Knights of the Round Toilet Seat. She told me how brave King Artie had been, not even shrieking when they came face to face with wild pine cones. And Sir Mrs. Burt, who couldn’t maneuver her trusted steed, her contraption, her thingie, in the forest, left it behind. She found a walking stick instead. She felt pretty brave herself hobbling around with just that.
“Is there really a toilet seat?” I asked.
“There used to be. It’s got to be somewhere.”
Mrs. Burt drank her tea and I watched the fire. Even with the cabin cleaned and set up, we built a fire every night to keep the mosquitoes away. And for entertainment. Watching a fire is as good as TV. I don’t know why.
Then Mrs. Burt asked me the question I hated most.
“Where’s your father, Curtis?”
I shrugged and told her how he was just some guy my mom had known and that, except for me, she wished she’d never met him. Mrs. Burt shook her head.
“What?” I said. “We don’t need him. Plenty of kids I know have dads and wish they didn’t.” I could have used Artie’s father, Gerry, as an example. We sure didn’t need him. Or Mr. Pennypacker, who was away working most of the time, but whenever he was home would just pick on Brandon and tell him how fat he was.
“You have your mother,” Mrs. Burt said.
“That’s right. We do.” I felt myself turn red when I said it.
We hadn’t had her for a long time.
“You don’t have to get so defensive,” Mrs. Burt said. “I’m just asking out of concern.”
“You and Mr. Burt got divorced,” I pointed out. “Your daughter didn’t have a father around.”
Mrs. Burt sat up straight like I’d poked her with a stick, her tea mug held out so she wouldn’t get sloshed.
“We did not! I was married to Mr. Burt for twenty-four years! Married to him till he died! Where’d you get that idea from?”
“I thought that was why you wouldn’t come up here with him anymore.”
“That’s not why.”
“You seem to love the place so much.”
“I do!” she said. “Anyway. I was just curious about why you came away with me so easy when you hardly knew me. Why didn’t you go across the street and tell the police about your mom?”
“No way,” I said.
“Why not?”
So I told her about the Pennypackers and sharing a room with Brandon.
“He did this thing. He divided the room in half with a piece of string. I wasn’t allowed on his side, but he could cross into mine any time he wanted. The door was on my side, so he had to. But the dresser was on his. When I got dressed in the morning, I would try not to step over the string, just reach across and get my clothes out of the drawer. Then he changed the rules so that reaching counted, too. When he caught me, he would move the string over.”
Mrs. Burt said, “A string can’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t know that. I was only six.”
“What happened when he moved it?”
“My half got smaller. But if it ever reached the wall on my side of the room, I would cease to exist. That’s what he said. Cease to exist. I believed him because he made my tooth fall out with his powers. He said he could make all my teeth fall out. Without teeth I wouldn’t be able to eat.”
And I told her how, when we left the house in the morning, as soon as we were out of sight of Mrs. Pennypacker smiling and waving from the front window, Brandon would go through my lunch and take everything he wanted, leaving me just the carrot sticks. At supper, Mrs. Pennypacker would practically beg me to eat. She would ask me what I liked and make it for me. But whatever she cooked made me gag because I couldn’t be sure Brandon hadn’t spat in it. I got thinner and Brandon got fatter. She worried about me, but she worried more about Brandon because he was her kid.
“I’d blast him one!” Mrs. Burt cried. “Imagine somebody doing something like that to Artie?” There was nothing she liked more than to cook for us and to watch us eat her cooking.
“Exactly,” I said. It hurt, though, that she didn’t seem to feel bad for me, the kid it had really happened to.
“You did the right thing coming with me.”
“I hope so,” I said.
She looked at me across the fire. “When you came to me that first time, Curtis? You were hungry.”
“Yes,” I admitted. “This is way better, Mrs. Burt.”
“BOYS, I AM dispensing with this thingie. I am standing on my own two feet.” And she walked across the cabin without her walker, keeping one spotty hand held out in front of her, just in case. Artie and I clapped.
After that the walker became Artie’s toy. He laid it on the ground and sat inside it. With a board end left over from the outhouse as paddle, he canoed for hours with Happy wired to a rail. Or he draped it with the tablecloth to make his own little cabin to live in with his china boy and girl. He used it when he burped Mrs. Burt while she washed the dishes, dragging the walker up behind her and standing on a rung.
She could burp all the way to the letter G now.
Artie’s other favorite game was taxi. We would walk up to the Bel Air, and I would pretend to call from a secret taxi phone in a tree. Then Artie would drive me wherever I wanted to go. The fare was always the same. Four dollars plus tip. He would take me to the zoo, to the PNE, to the beach. But more and more I found it hard to think of going somewhere else. Because I was fine at the cabin — fishing, wood chopping, fishing, helping Mrs. Burt with her garden, fishing.
And swimming.
The first time we saw Mrs. Burt in what she called her “bathing costume,” Artie and I laughed. She always dressed like a man in a knitted cap. But in her bathing suit she was like an elephant stuffed into a tutu. The rubber flowers on her cap quivered. All her rolls quivered. Her feet seemed a hundred years old with their lumps and bumps and thick elephant nails.
Giggling, we watched her limp toward the lake, arms held out, wings of jiggly upper arm flesh hanging down. She waded in up to her huge thighs, then plunged, making tidal waves slosh out on either side.
But then she changed. Mrs. Burt was practically crippled on her feet, but she was graceful in the water. She was a young person when she swam.
On shore, Artie and I watched her arms dip in rhythm and the rubber flowers turn left then right as she took her breaths. The water seemed to move aside for her as she plowed through it. We didn’t giggle then.
After she had her swim, we got in the water with her. Artie wore a life jacket at all times and mostly just pulled himself along the lake bottom kicking his feet behind him. Or he brought the walker in and leapt off it. She was trying to teach him to put his head in, but he was afraid of getting water up his nose.
I was a better student. She helped me improve my technique with little suggestions like cupping my hands tighter so the water wouldn’t flow through my fingers.
I asked how long it would take to swim across the lake.
“You think you can?” she asked.
I knew I could. I’d done so many incredible deeds lately I couldn’t stop.
“It’ll take about a half hour,” she said. “You’re going to have to practice every day.”
“I will,” I said.
Before we went to the cabin, I’d only ever swum in pools when they gave free lessons to inner-city kids. Lake swimming was different
. There were no soggy Band-Aids floating around, nobody’s hair getting tangled in your fingers. No stinky chlorine or screaming kids or shut-downs when a baby pooped.
You could open your eyes and see fish. See the long reaching arms of underwater trees. You could swim through whole forests. When you were tired, you could climb out and rest on a log. I liked to lie there in the sun and watch the dragonflies zip against the blue like they were sewing on the sky.
10
WEEKS MUST HAVE passed because Mrs. Burt declared that we were as brown as mushrooms and at least three inches taller. I peeled back the band of my swimming trunks. From the waist up and the knee down I was the color of toast, but in between I was the same white as the homemade bread Mrs. Burt baked for us in the woodstove. For sure our hair was three inches longer.
“Time for haircuts,” she announced.
We brought a chair out of the cabin and Mrs. Burt went first, popping a bowl on her head and handing me the scissors. “This is how I kept the fellows looking spruce when I cooked in the logging camp.”
Spruce meant neat. She definitely did not look spruce when I was finished with her, but she didn’t care. She just tucked what was left of her white hair up into her cap and told Artie to climb up on the barber chair. She pushed the bowl down on his wild head and snipped around it so fast he didn’t have time to squirm.
Then it was my turn. When she was through with us, the ground was covered with brown curls mixed with her white wisps. I was glad that there weren’t any mirrors around. Well, there were a couple up in the Bel Air and a little one in Mrs. Burt’s purse. Artie looked pretty funny so chances were that I did, too.
“Come with me, boys,” she said then. “Let’s find the growing tree.”
We didn’t know what she meant. All the trees were growing. The plants in her garden were growing. Everything was growing.
It took a while to find the tree she was searching for. When she found it, she showed us some thick, inch-long scars in the bark starting from about the level of my thigh. Every time Mrs. Burt and her family came to the cabin, they cut a notch at the height of Marianne.
“How tall is Marianne now?” Artie asked.
Mrs. Burt thought about it. “I have no idea.”
“I want a notch,” said Artie.
“And you shall have one, King Arthur,” Mrs. Burt told him. She sent me to get the ax. Artie leaned up against the tree and I carefully scratched a line in the bark above his head. He stepped aside and I chopped out the notch.
“You, too, Curtis,” Artie said.
I went around the tree. On the other side was another set of notches — a set that stopped around the same level Artie’s notch had.
As soon as I saw that little ladder of scars, I understood everything. Why Mrs. Burt never came back here. Why she cried when she saw the place again. Why she was so in love with Artie, but me, not so much.
She had brought us to the tree on purpose, so she could tell us what had happened. She was ready now.
She led Artie around the tree so the three of us could see the notches that ended too soon.
“These are Clyde’s,” she said.
“Clyde who?” Artie asked.
“Clyde, my little boy . . .” She took a breath. “He died. It was a long time ago.”
“How?”
“He drowned.”
“Where?”
“In the lake.”
“Our lake?”
“Yes. I wasn’t watching carefully enough. But it won’t happen to you because I’m always watching. Also, he was not as sensible a little boy like you are. He didn’t have any fear. He would jump right in the water without making sure that his sister was there. You would never do something like that.”
“No,” said Artie. “I don’t have a sister.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“Did you cry?” Artie asked.
Mrs. Burt’s eyes started blinking fast behind her glasses.
“I did. Quite a lot.”
“Where is he now?” Artie asked.
“Clyde? He’s in heaven for sure.”
“Where is heaven?”
“Where is heaven? My goodness, the stuff you boys don’t know! It’s the most beautiful place. A place safe from all the trials of this world. There isn’t any pain or unhappiness. There isn’t any hunger. You eat anything you want whenever you want. You play all day long.”
“Are we in heaven, Mrs. Burt?” Artie asked and Mrs. Burt, who had been struggling to hold back tears, laughed. Artie and I laughed, too, but only to keep her company. Inside, I felt so sad for her.
She took off her glasses and wiped them. “It does seem like heaven here, doesn’t it?” Then, probably to stop him from asking more questions, she got me to fetch the Coca-Cola crate out of her bedroom and pry the lid off.
Inside were toys. Matchbox cars and books and an old stuffed bear that reeked and probably should have been burned but I wasn’t going to suggest it.
Artie really was in heaven then.
A FEW DAYS later Mr. Munro came back across the lake. I was fishing when he paddled up. Artie and Mrs. Burt were off being Knights of the Round Toilet Seat. I didn’t tell him that. I said they were out looking for something. After a couple of minutes of him just sitting there sucking his teeth behind his yellow moustache, I got nervous and reeled my line in.
“Any luck?” he asked.
I actually hadn’t caught a fish in a while. In the beginning I’d caught one or two a day, but that seemed like a long time ago.
When I told him that, Mr. Munro said, “Lake’s warmed up. Try deeper. It’s colder.” He had to bump the canoe right up next to me before I realized he was inviting me to get in.
Lying in the bottom were two huge dead, brown-and-black birds. I passed him my rod and he passed me the birds, which I had to hold by their scaly black ankles. Happy’s plastic feet with their wires sticking out suddenly seemed cute.
“Leave them. So she knows who you absconded with.”
I smiled. Mr. Munro and Mrs. Burt had the same funny way of talking. Mr. Munro probably knew what a bindlestiff was and a mulligan mixer, too.
I dumped the birds in front of the cabin and got in the canoe with Mr. Munro. There was a pretty strong smell coming off him, though it wasn’t all bad. He smelled mostly like woodsmoke. I remembered to bring the life jacket. I always kept it nearby — not because I was worried about drowning, but because I knew it made Mrs. Burt happy to see how careful I was. Mr. Munro just threw it in the bottom of the canoe and handed me the second paddle.
Once we left the shore, I saw why the cabin was where it was. Almost everywhere else along the lake the trees grew right up to the water. I also realized why we often saw Mr. Munro’s smoke from Mrs. Burt’s cabin, but we couldn’t actually see his place. It was tucked into a bay, looking like a bunch of little cabins jumbled together.
And I saw that the lake was in a place I’d always heard about. The middle of nowhere. Mr. Munro was steering us right into the middle of it. The middle of the lake in the middle of nowhere. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever been.
When we got there, he motioned for me to cast my line and let the lure go deep. Then he started paddling again, very slowly, while my line trailed out behind. The peaceful wait started. Mr. Munro waited, too, sucking on his teeth. He probably wasn’t used to talking, living all by himself. Or maybe he lived in the middle of nowhere because he hated to talk. The only sound was that crazy loon calling out and the water dripping off the paddle and the papery whir of dragonfly wings.
I don’t know how long we’d been out there when he finally did say something. I was so surprised that I jumped in my seat.
“How’s your mother?” he asked.
Before we absconded with Mrs. Burt, I hadn’t really u
nderstood what a day was, even though I’d learned it in school. A day is the earth making a complete rotation, turning to face the sun, then turning away again. When you have electricity and streetlights, when you live mostly inside, it’s easy to forget. You don’t ever see the sky getting light at dawn, or the way shadows sneak around you through the day, or how slowly the sun sinks below the trees in the evening, pulling all its colors down with it. You forget that so much happens in a day. You forget that a day is a very long time.
One June morning my mom didn’t come home. From then on, I began to count the days, just like they keep track of days you’re away at school. But since coming to the cabin, I’d been so busy that I’d stopped. I’d completely lost track of how long she’d been gone.
When Mr. Munro asked about her, I felt terrible — worse when I realized how many complete rotations of the earth had happened without me even thinking about her.
But that wasn’t what Mr. Munro meant. He was talking about Mrs. Burt’s daughter, the Big Shot lawyer Marianne.
“She’s fine,” I said.
“I’m glad to hear it. She was a good girl. Your grandma was way too hard on her in my opinion, but I see they made up.”
“I guess so,” I said, just as my rod lurched.
Mr. Munro didn’t speak again, not even when I reeled in my fish. He just leaned over and peered at the gasping, thrashing trout I’d landed in the bottom of the canoe. Then he showed me all the rotten teeth that made up his smile.
Mrs. Burt was hollering and waving her arms on shore as we paddled in.
“I caught one!” I told her when I stepped out. “I finally caught one again!”
“Did you see what Mr. Munro brought? Two grouse. We are going to have a feast tonight. You get out of that canoe, Spar. You’re eating with us. Come on.”
While they argued about it, I went and got the knife so I could clean the fish and take it into the cabin for Mrs. Burt to cook.
Mr. Munro agreed to stay, so Artie and I hung around inside the cabin even though it was hot with the stove roaring. Artie sat in the middle of the floor in his walker canoe. He couldn’t stop staring at Mr. Munro with his big beard and the little flask he pulled out of his shirt pocket when Mrs. Burt plunked down the teapot.
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