When we ran out, we would have to go to town and buy some more.
What was I planning to do when we got to town? I wasn’t sure. Maybe a police officer would wander into the supermarket and I’d just take him aside and explain the situation. I’d say that we’d been at our neighbor’s cabin in the middle of nowhere but now I wanted to go home and find my missing mother so I could give her my brother’s tooth. Even if she didn’t want us back, it belonged to her. And if the officer asked me why, I’d say because it went with the other one she already had. Or used to have. The one that was taped inside a stranger’s bathroom cupboard now.
Actually, I tried not to think about what I would do in town, because in every case the police officer burst out laughing and walked away shaking his head.
The mistake I made was talking too often about going to town. I slapped my binder closed and said, “I already know all this stuff, Mrs. Burt. We need to go to town so that I can get some new books.”
Mrs. Burt took the binder from me and opened it at random.
“What’s the square root of sixty-four?”
“Square root? Is that like finding the area of a square?”
She slid it back to me and tapped her finger on the question I’d got wrong.
A few minutes later, she brought over cookies and milk for a snack. Our milk was powdered.
I said, “I’d do anything for a glass of real milk. Or ice cream. Can we go to town for ice cream?”
She squinted at me through her glasses. Then she belched.
13
THE CABIN SMELLED of fresh baking when I woke up. Artie got up first and came back to bed with a blueberry scone. Everything seemed normal except for how quiet it was in the cabin without Mrs. Burt’s humming filling it up.
I hoped she was in the outhouse, but then too much time passed and I knew she was gone. Still, I had to torture myself by getting Artie dressed and walking all the way up the road to see the four flat spots of yellow grass where the Bel Air had been parked for two months.
Artie thought we were going to play taxi. He was mad that I’d made him walk all that way for nothing. I sank down on the ground and put my head on my knees.
“Where’s the car?” he asked.
“Mrs. Burt went to town.”
“Why didn’t she take us?”
We could reach the highway by following the road, but then what? Hitchhike? I’d seen those movies at school. Getting into a car with a stranger was about the same as asking to be murdered. Maybe I would have taken a chance, but not with Artie. I sure couldn’t get him to walk all the way to town. But I couldn’t leave him behind, either.
I was scared of Mrs. Burt now.
“She’s thinks we’re going to run away,” I said.
“I’m not going to run away! I love Mrs. Burt!”
She had powers, too. She had cast a spell on Artie and turned him against our mom so he didn’t believe in her anymore. She had made him love her instead.
“Come on,” I said, getting to my feet. “Let’s go back.”
“I’m tired.”
“I’ll carry you.” I squatted so he could climb onto my back. Then I staggered down the overgrown road, my little brother on my back, his hands too tight around my neck, singing at the top of his voice, “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before . . . I know it well, that melody . . .”
When we got back to the cabin, I left him and went and sat in the outhouse on the comfortable seat. I didn’t think about my mom or anything. I just stared at the finger of smoke that pointed up from Mr. Munro’s cabin.
I remembered the afternoon he took me fishing. If only we had a canoe, I could paddle over there and ask him to help us. Maybe I could build a boat. No, a raft. I’d built an outhouse. Maybe I could secretly build a raft.
From the middle of the lake the loon let go its crazy, lonely cry. The first time we heard it, the hair lifted on my arms and the back of my neck, but I was used to it now.
Mrs. Burt was like that loon. When we met her, she’d been a little crazy with loneliness. That was why she didn’t want to go back to the city, I thought.
MRS. BURT HOBBLED into the cabin in the early afternoon with two things in her arms: another 3,000 tea bags and a carton of chocolate ice cream.
Artie ran to her. “Why didn’t you take us? Why?”
“You boys were sleeping so peacefully I thought I’d just slip out.”
When she handed me the ice cream, I pretended to be excited about it. I pretended not to mind that she’d gone to town without us.
“Ice cream!”
Then I did a stupid thing. I hugged her. I’d never done that before. She drew back with her eyes all narrow, and I realized that she had been expecting trouble from me.
“Thanks for remembering,” I said, turning very red.
“Of course I remembered. I remembered the milk, too,” she said with a sniff. “It’s in the car. All I want is for you boys to be happy, Curtis. That’s all I want in the whole world.”
Artie and I ate the entire carton of ice cream for lunch. We had to before it melted. Then I walked up to the Bel Air and unloaded it.
Food. So much food. Tubs of shortening, bags of powdered eggs, sacks of onions and potatoes. There was more fresh food, too, but it was the canned and dried stuff that worried me. Trip after trip, I lugged it down. Then, when I looked in the bags from the department store and saw winter coats and mitts, I almost died. In another bag there were boots.
She planned on staying in the cabin for the winter. How? There was only the woodstove to heat and cook with. I would never be able to chop enough wood. And what about water? The lake would be frozen. We’d have to drink melted snow.
I brought all the bags down to the cabin and acted like I hadn’t seen what was inside them. Mrs. Burt was busy organizing everything.
“Look what I got you boys! Look!” She rooted through a bag and pulled out a matching pair of long underwear. “Stanfields!” she cried.
They were a gray wool that itched your eyes just to look at them, one-piece with buttons up the front and a “trap door” in the back. Mrs. Burt showed us how the trap opened and closed, fixed at the corners with buttons. Artie put his on right away, as happy as a logger.
I’d get in Mrs. Burt’s tutu before I got in those Stanfields. That’s what I told myself.
I CAUGHT A bad cold. It was as though the ice cream had given it to me. I must have had a fever, too, because I thrashed around so much in my sleeping bag.
Sometime in the night I woke and saw Mrs. Burt snooping through the dresser. She took out Mom’s wallet and emptied the change compartment into her hand.
“No!” I shouted.
Too late. She’d found Artie’s tooth. She held it up and smiled. Then she swallowed it.
But it was just a bad dream. When I really woke up, I got out of bed and checked the wallet. The tooth was there.
I stayed in bed the next day. The day after that Mrs. Burt fed me a huge logger-style breakfast with the fresh eggs that she’d brought from town. I could tell she was worried. She watched me closely as I ate and felt my forehead several times. Worried about me, I thought. But after I finished eating and stood to take the dishes to the sink, she excused me.
“I’ll do that, Curtis. You get started on the wood.”
Dressed in my new wool socks and my new jeans and my trusty steel-toed boots, I left the cabin with my headache and my stuffed nose. I felt tired, but managed to scuff around in the woods until I found a good log. Dead, but not so dead that it was rotten. That was the kind of tree that made the best firewood. I started to saw it into choppable lengths but never finished the job because I suddenly felt dizzy. I had to go back in the cabin and lie down.
“You just rest up,” Mrs. Burt said. “Don’t push yoursel
f.”
Later, I heard her outside trying to chop the wood herself.
“Blast it, blast it, blast it,” she kept muttering, before she gave up.
After lunch, she and Artie set out to gather sticks and branches.
“This will be our new quest,” I heard her say to him.
Over the next few days, I’d wake feeling okay, eat a good breakfast, saw a couple of logs, carry them down and split them. Then I’d feel too tired to go on. All I wanted to do was lie by the stove. I took the air mattress off the bed and carried it out of our room and flopped down for the rest of the day. Mrs. Burt encouraged me to get up, to get moving. She’d bought me all kinds of books in town — science books that explained the stars, books about nature, adventure novels by Jack London that she said I’d love.
“Here,” she said. “I got you one about the King Arthur legend.”
I took it from her and put it under my head. The cover felt so cool under my hot cheek.
I wasn’t faking it. I felt so tired it didn’t even occur to me to pretend. But one morning Mrs. Burt stood over me with her hands on her thick waist and her glasses sliding down her nose.
“You’re not on strike, are you, Curtis?”
I blinked up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Are you really sick or are you doing this on purpose?”
I was sick with hopelessness. I’d been lying by the stove because it seemed there was nothing else I could do. I couldn’t change her mind about going back and I couldn’t get us out except by leaving alone and risking that Mrs. Burt would abscond with Artie. Now she had told me exactly what I had to do to escape. I was already doing it.
Nothing.
“MAYBE I SHOULD take you to the doctor.”
I sat up too fast on the air mattress. I coughed when I hadn’t been coughing before.
“Now?” I asked.
Mrs. Burt shuffled over to a chair and sank down on it.
“Fine.” Her voice was icy.
“Fine what?” I asked.
“We’ll go back.”
“Really?”
“Artie!” Mrs. Burt called, and he came out of the bedroom where he’d been playing. “Get your stuff together. I’m taking you back.”
“Back where?” Artie asked.
“Home. Except you don’t have a home, do you? I’ll take you back to my place and we’ll call Social Services. They’ll find you somewhere to live.”
Artie ran over and clung to her. “I want to stay with you, Mrs. Burt.”
“I want to stay with you, too, believe me. But your brother won’t let you.”
“Mrs. Burt,” I said, getting off the floor. “That’s not true.”
“It is.” Her voice cracked and tears filled her glasses. “They won’t ever let you stay with me.”
“Will they send me to the Pennypackers?” Artie asked.
“They won’t, Artie,” I said. “I won’t let them.”
Mrs. Burt said, “They’re not going to listen to a boy.”
“We’re going to find Mom,” I told Artie.
Mrs. Burt snorted and Artie wailed that he didn’t want to. It made me so mad that I started shouting at Mrs. Burt.
“You don’t know anything about our mother! You never even met her! She made a mistake. Maybe she’s in the middle of another one, I don’t know. I was too scared to stay and find out. But she was trying to make a better life for us. She was back at school so she wouldn’t be a dropout anymore. So she could get a good job. She wants to be a nursing assistant.”
Mrs. Burt stared at me.
“And anyway,” I went on, “she’s our mother. She loves us and we love her!”
“I love Mrs. Burt!” cried Artie.
“You can love Mrs. Burt, too,” I said. “You can love as many people as you want.”
Mrs. Burt got up off her chair and stumped to her room.
“Pack your stuff,” she said, just before she slammed the door.
I dragged Artie to the bedroom and took the pillowcases off the pillows. I stuffed some clothes for him in one and handed it to him to put his toys in. He made his fierce face, sucking in his lips.
“Artie, don’t even think about a fit. We don’t have time. Look.”
I opened Mom’s wallet and showed him her I.D.
As soon as he saw her picture, he began to wail.
“Mo-o-o-m! I want my mo-o-om! Where’s my mo-o-om!”
I wished I’d thought of doing it before.
I let him hold the wallet and kiss her picture while I finished packing. Then I went and knocked on Mrs. Burt’s door.
She didn’t answer. I called through it that we were ready to go. When she didn’t answer a second time, I opened it.
She was lying on the bed holding her chest. Her cap had fallen off. She looked so old on the white pillow with her white hair and her white, white face.
“Mrs. Burt?”
“He’s crying for his mother,” she gasped.
“Is something the matter?”
“He wants his mother,” she said.
“Of course he does,” I said. “Half the time he doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s just a little kid.”
“I lost my little boy.” She started panting so that it was hard to make out what she said next. “Bad mother,” I heard.
“She’s not!” I said.
“Me,” Mrs. Burt moaned.
I knew then that something awful was happening to her. I called to Artie, who peeked in the door, clutching the wallet.
“I think Mrs. Burt is sick.”
Artie ran over. “Do you need me to pat your back, Mrs. Burt?”
“Oh, you dear child,” she whimpered. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”
“Artie is staying, Mrs. Burt. I’m going to get help.”
WALKING TO TOWN would take too long if Mrs. Burt was having a heart attack. Even if her heart was only breaking, it would take too long. Standing by the highway and waiting for a murderer to drive by would probably take too long as well. So would building a raft.
I put on the Stanfields. Mrs. Burt had explained why they were such good underwear, because wool stays warm even when it’s wet. I was probably going to get wet.
We actually hadn’t swum in the lake since we swam across it. We didn’t even wash in it anymore because it was too cold. Mrs. Burt heated water on the stove for us instead.
I grabbed my life jacket and the air mattress by the stove. Dressed only in socks and long underwear, I went down to the shore and put my hand in.
The lake bit me. The cold crunched right down on my bones and hurt so much I had to pull my hand back.
As I put on the life jacket, I looked across to where Mr. Munro’s smoke was curling up. The trees on the far shore looked like they were all on fire. While I’d been lying by the stove in the cabin, they’d changed color. The earth had turned and turned all the way to autumn.
I slid the air mattress into the water and I threw myself on top of it, trying not to get wet. Pushing off, one foot dipped in the icy water. Then I had to paddle, plunge my arms in right up to my elbows. Pretty soon they were numb. I was moving forward so slowly it would be winter by the time I reached Mr. Munro’s place, if I reached it alive.
I had no choice. I had to swim. Holding my breath, I slid off the side of the mattress into the cold. There was only one way to beat it. By moving.
I can, I told myself.
For a few minutes I swam without looking around. When I popped up, it seemed that I hadn’t moved at all, that the smoke wasn’t any closer.
“Blast it!” I said. “Blast it, blast it!”
Then I looked back and saw the air mattress floating far behind me.
But
there was still a long way to go. When I swam with Mrs. Burt, it took twenty-four minutes to get across and thirty-three minutes to come back. Mr. Munro’s place was closer than the far shore, but the water was so much colder, and the life jacket held me back.
I kept on muttering, “Blast it! Blast it!” I probably sounded crazy, thrashing and swearing.
Next time I looked up, I’d almost reached the bay where Mr. Munro’s cabin was.
I made for the rocks and when I crawled up on them, I saw the four or five tumbledown cabins leaning into each other. I was shivering so badly I hardly had the strength to pull myself out of the water. I tried yelling, but my voice sounded so weak and old. There was no way Mr. Munro would hear me from inside.
Then I remembered the whole reason I was there. Because of Mrs. Burt. Mrs. Burt who was probably dying.
Because my hands wouldn’t open or close, I pulled myself up with my forearms. Once I was standing, I couldn’t take a single step. I just stood there, swaying and helpless.
Like Mrs. Burt. I felt like Mrs. Burt.
14
“YOU’RE A VERY brave young man,” Marianne said.
“Not really,” I said. “I was scared.”
We were in her hotel room close to the hospital, waiting for Mom and Artie to get back from our old apartment. Marianne asked me to stay and tell her the whole story, and when I was finished, she offered to order me something from room service. I was hungry from all that talking.
She pushed the menu across to me. Like Mrs. Burt, feeding people seemed to make her happy. Other than that, she was so different. She wore makeup and nice clothes and her teeth were white and straight. You would never guess they were even related, let alone mother and daughter.
I asked for a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, and Marianne went over to the phone and ordered it. She came back and sat across from me again at the little table with the same sad expression she’d been wearing the whole time I was talking. Well, I’m not sure it was the whole time because, at different points in the story, she walked around the room, or stood with her back to me, staring out the window. Some of the things I said must have really hurt her feelings, especially the part where Mrs. Burt called her a Big Shot. I didn’t want to repeat that, but Marianne asked me to tell her everything and be truthful.
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