The Notations of Cooper Cameron

by Jane O'Reilly

It’s not first thing in the morning. It’s three nineteen in the afternoon. “Caddie! Cooper!” We need to get going!”

  With careful hands, Cooper touches goodbye to his bed and the desk and its seven knobs and the lamp and the puppets and the truck and the empty hangers in his closet, one by one, and the big rock and all the things he knows he will leave behind.

  Caddie’s door is open. She is still packing. She packs two bathing suits, check. Ten pairs of socks, check. Eleven pairs of underwear, check. And then she turns around. “Get out of my room, Cooper.”

  Cooper lugs his backpack down the stairs to the kitchen. When he sets his backpack on the kitchen table next to the spices and cereal boxes and toilet paper, the thud is as loud as a hammer against cement.

  His mother moves the backpack to the floor. “Whoa! What have you got in this thing?” she asks. “Rocks?”

  Cooper nods quickly and then he shakes his head. He pulls his notebook from his pocket. Leans on the kitchen table.

  Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between secrets and truth.

  When he goes upstairs to get Amicus, he passes Caddie coming down the stairs with her suitcase. Bump, bump, bump . . .

  The aquarium is heavy. Cooper wraps his arms around the cool glass, carries it into the kitchen. “Don’t tell me you’re bringing that stupid frog to the cabin,” Caddie says. “There’s a million of them up there as it is.” She moves a stack of towels to make room on the counter.

  “Amicus depends on me,” he says, setting the aquarium next to the ketchup, mustard, and pickles.

  “But what if we get confused and think he’s a hamburger?” Caddie picks up the ketchup bottle, lifts a corner of the screen cover, and pretends to squirt ketchup all over the frog.

  “Oh, Caddie,” their mother says.

  “Nuh-uh,” Cooper says, pinching the screen tight at the corner. He knows Caddie would never do such a thing.

  When their mother says, “Bring me the ivy,” Caddie gets the miniature fishing boat made of glass and filled with dirt. A gift from the neighbors for Grandpa’s funeral. It will break if Caddie drops it. Break and shatter their mother’s heart into a million pieces. “Dad won’t bother with this while we’re gone.”

  “He won’t bother with anything,” Caddie says.

  “Oh, Caddie,” their mother says again, but Cooper believes what Caddie says.

  “You can be in charge of watering the plants at the cabin, Cooper.” His mother pats him on his shoulder. “Once a week.”

  “You mean plant,” he says.

  “Maybe we’ll get more,” she says.

  “Okay,” he says. He will water the ivy once a week. He knows it will not die because it is already dead. He turns the page of his notebook.

  Living things do not die twice.

  You only have one chance and then it is over and there is nothing you can do about it.

  Cooper knows the ivy is dead because he has examined it closely with his magnifying glass. There are no leaves dangling from the pot the way they did at Grandpa’s funeral. And sticky green tape wound around a piece of wire is not a living thing. But his mother has put all her hope in this little pot, so he will keep the very important dead ivy a secret too.

  “We need to load the van,” his mother says.

  Cooper carries groceries down the sidewalk. One trip, two trips, three trips. He carries Amicus to the van last.

  “Packing takes forever,” Caddie says, following him with an armload of pillows and blankets.

  Amicus will ride on top of Caddie’s suitcase next to Cooper. Next to the dead ivy. “Is that so he can see out?” his mother asks. No. Amicus rides high so Cooper can see into his aquarium. Make sure his three-chamber heart beats. Beats and beats, pushing his cold blood through his veins. Beat. Beat. Beat. The frog’s body throbs. Blood rushes away, rushes back. Travels in a circle. There is no stopping it. Unless you are dead.

  “Hey, Cooper,” Caddie says from the front seat. “You want to play ‘I Spy’?”

  Cooper shakes his head. “No. Thank you,” he says.

  “C’mon, Coop. It’ll be fun. Like old times.”

  But it won’t be like old times. Looking out the windows and finding colors of things they see flashing by won’t be fun. It will mean reading the signs and the billboards three times three and he won’t be able to keep up because they go by so quickly and he might be risking everyone’s lives if he can’t keep up.

  What if they have a car accident? What if they hit a raccoon trying to cross the road? Or a whole family of raccoons? What if something else happens? Something he hasn’t thought of? No, he won’t play ‘I Spy.’ He will read his good and famous book.

  “Cooper?”

  “I’m reading,” he says.

  At dusk, they stop for fast food. Cooper sets the aquarium in the center of the table where they eat outside and gives Amicus one food nugget. Don’t, don’t, don’t, he thinks to himself, but he can’t help it. It’s That Boy. That Boy follows him everywhere. Like a shadow. Cooper chews each bite of his hamburger three times on each side, turning his face so no one will notice. And then they get ice cream. His favorite.

  “How much longer?” Caddie says.

  “About another hundred miles,” their mother says.

  Cooper reaches for his book. His good and famous book. North is the direction they drive as Cooper reads. Reads and reads. On his left the red sun sits heavy in the sky, taunting, like a bomb. As if it will explode when it hits the horizon. Darkness waits its turn on his right.

  “We’ll have a lot of work to do,” his mother says as she drives. “I’ll need your help. We’ll have to clean and make the beds and wash the dishes . . .”

  Cooper lets his mother’s voice go free, like the wind. Like the buzzing of insects, and thinks how happy Amicus would be to catch one of her words in the air with his tongue. Except for that one word. Dad. That one word stops everything. “Dad will come up after work on Fridays and stay for the weekend.”

  Worries bounce through Cooper’s mind like hopping toads. His thoughts land on the dark, smooth rock he has left at home on his desk. The family of rocks is not together. When The Father comes to the cabin, the big rock will be at home. Alone.

  Cooper hears The Father’s voice booming, “Stop that before you embarrass yourself. I mean it. Right now.” He wishes he had a big rock for That Boy. Wishes he could have left That Boy at home on his desk. Alone.

  Boom. The sun has landed and it is dark.

  Now Cooper reads with his flashlight. Why. Why. Why. Do. Do. Do. You. You. You. Squander? Squander? Squander? Why do you squander . . .

  For ninety-seven miles Cooper reads. Reads and reads. Reads until the van slows and turns, driving deeper into the blackness beneath the giant pine trees. Branches crack under the tires. The engine sputters and stops. Caddie lifts her head from her pillow. Amicus lifts his head above the water toward the beam of the flashlight. Fireflies pop on and off in the tall grass like blinking cat eyes.

  They have arrived safe and sound. No one has burst into flames. Cooper wants to shout: My mother and sister are alive! Amicus is alive too! But he knows they won’t understand.

  He shuts off his flashlight and leans over the aquarium. “Listen,” he says. In the dark he writes this down:

  Sometimes you can hear everything when you can’t hear anything.

  The northern air is cool. The trees are silhouettes against the blue-black sky. Caddie pulls on the screen door of the cabin. It squeaks open. Cooper would know that squeak anywhere. It belongs only to this old door in the woods. His mother unlocks the heavy cabin door, pushes into the blackness. Whispers, “It still smells like his pipe.” Cooper knows she has tears in her eyes, but it is too dark to see them.

  Sometimes you cannot see things that are crystal clear.

  His mother pulls open the curtains. The bright moonbeam reaches across the lake and into the cabin with a long finger of white light.

  The cabin is like a museum. Al
l things are still and lifeless. The sofa and the chairs and the two kerosene lamps on the mantel and the mouse trap behind the broom and the pots and the pans and the salt and pepper shakers and Grandpa’s leaping-trout keyring, the one with his initials, PM, on the hook by the back door.

  Cooper feels a shiver. Then a tremble. He imagines himself as the lake with a rumbling motorboat moving through him.

  Nothing at the cabin has been touched in almost two whole years.

  That Boy must touch it all.

  He touches the doorknob and the four corners of the desk. He touches the big nails in Grandpa’s leather chair by the fireplace, one by one.

  Caddie turns on a light. The pine walls glow golden. Everything lurks in the shadows. Now That Boy must touch the lampshade and the old-fashioned phone and the curls in its cord. One, two, three . . . until Cooper feels his mother’s sad dark eyes. He hides the cord behind his back, touching and counting as fast as he can, parting his lips so she will think he is smiling. Happy and smiling, so she will forget how sad she is at the cabin knowing Grandpa is gone. Dead. Nothing you can do about it now.

  “It’s cold in here,” Caddie says. “Can we build a fire?”

  A fire? Terror shoots through Cooper. Alerts every nerve. Stops his breath.

  “No, I think it’s too late for that,” his mother says.

  Cooper breathes again.

  “Cooper,” his mother says, “I have just the job for you. Caddie and I will make the beds—”

  “Wait a minute,” Caddie says. “I’m not sharing a room with him anymore.”

  Cooper’s mother blinks in slow motion. Looks around the golden cabin. “I guess there’s Grandpa’s room,” she says.

  Grandpa’s room. Grandpa’s room. Grandpa’s room. Grandpa’s room is a safe place. Like a base camp. Cooper will be the sentry guard. “I’ll sleep in Grandpa’s room,” Cooper says. “I’m the man of the house.”

  “Okay,” his mother says, trying to smile. “Can the man of the house bring in the groceries?”

  The groceries are a big and important job. Food is sustenance. Food gives life. Cooper nods. Yes, he can bring in the groceries. He will bring in the groceries to make his mother happy.

  The cereal boxes and chips and cookies fit into place on the open shelves like puzzle pieces. Soup cans and salt and cinnamon and many other red-capped spices are stacked in perfect rows. The groceries are snug and safe, like ancient cliff dwellings packed into the mesa. Everything fits. And it is beautiful.

  “Cooper, what in the world . . .?” His mother says.

  “Geez, Cooper,” Caddie says.

  His mother squeezes Caddie’s hand to keep her quiet. Smiles at Cooper. He sees her think he doesn’t know. Sees her pretend everything is okay and he aches with this lie.

  “Thank you, Cooper. You’ve done a good job. Now it’s time for bed. Use the bathroom and brush your teeth.”

  “There is no bathroom,” Cooper says.

  “Don’t be difficult,” Caddie says. “You know what she means.”

  “Okay,” he says. He will be good. He will do everything he can to be good. He grabs his flashlight and runs to the outhouse at the edge of the woods. The ground is cold and the small door opens with a tiny squeak. The outhouse is good for the environment. The outhouse saves water.

  When Cooper runs back into the cabin, Caddie is in the kitchen in her polar bear pajamas. He pulls on the pump handle at the sink. The bolt screeches. The water trickles brown and thin and smells like rotten eggs. He holds his breath. Steps back.

  “Cooper, watch,” Caddie says. She pumps the pump with both hands, up and down, with all her might. The pump brays like a donkey. “Watch,” she says again and squirts toothpaste on her toothbrush, holds it under pale yellow water. She brushes her teeth, pumping the handle with one hand until the water turns clear. “You just have to get it going,” she says. Bubbling toothpaste spit rolls down her chin and she smiles at him and says, “See,” and something else he can’t understand because the toothbrush is still in her mouth.

  “What?”

  “Your turn,” she says, spitting one more time. “I’ll pump the water.”

  Caddie pumps and pumps. The donkey brays. Cooper copies Caddie, up and down, and turns away. Up and down, three times three, first the top teeth, and then the bottom teeth, and then the insides, breathing through his mouth, one, two, three . . .

  “Would you hurry up?” she says. “Please? I don’t have all day.”

  Caddie is already losing her mind at the cabin, so he hurries to spit in the kitchen sink. The white spit spirals down the drain and seeps into the earth with the worms and the water bugs and into the groundwater and travels all the way to Louisiana and on to Mexico where someone drinks his toothpaste spit and he is definitely sure brushing his teeth is not a good thing to do to the world.

  “Good night, Cooper, Caddie,” their mother says.

  “Good night,” Cooper says. Caddie has already closed her bedroom door.

  Cooper carries Amicus to Grandpa’s old bedroom. Puts the aquarium on the dresser Grandpa built from smooth pine boards as golden as the walls. He moves the old black-and-white photo of the lake at sunset so Amicus can see it and opens the food jar. Amicus gets one food nugget at bedtime. Plop. “You’re a good frog,” Cooper says.

  He puts his flashlight and his good and famous book under his pillow. Hangs his calendar from a hook on the wall. Places a checkmark on June first. Eighty-six days to go.

  One by one, he lays out his smooth rocks next to Amicus’s aquarium. One big one, two medium ones, and the little one, the size of a nickel. He changes into his warm pajamas and sits on the edge of his bed. On Grandpa’s red wool blanket with the big black stripe. He runs his finger between each of his toes. Lets the sand fall to the floor. Then he turns off the light and crawls under the blanket. Lies back on his lumpy pillow. He breathes the air his grandfather breathed. Watches the moon his grandfather watched. Wishes he could make this room whole again. He slides Inferno and his flashlight from under his pillow.

  Fire in his hands.

  Breaths quiver deep inside him, shaking their way up and out of his ribcage. We. We. We. In. In. In. Our. Our. Our . . . We in our turn stepped forward toward the city and through the gate . . .

  Between the words, in the midst of quick breaths, a sudden noise. The noise comes from Amicus. Just like Cooper read in Grandpa’s book on North American wildlife, Amicus sounds like someone gulping and gulping. Amicus is croaking with gulping breaths. Amicus is happy to be at the cabin in the dark woods.

  Not Cooper. The cabin is sad without Grandpa, and the dark lake is scary, and there is a lot to keep track of.

  He gets out of bed. Shines the flashlight on the aquarium and stands eye-to-eye with Amicus. “Does it smell like home?” he whispers. The croaking stops, so he gets back into bed. He has six hundred and ninety-three words, ninety-nine lines, and three more pages to go so the Earth and Amicus and his sister and his mother and The Father and even That Boy will not burst into flames.

  Sandcastles

  Cooper pours the cinnamon into a small bowl and keeps the jar. He grabs two soup cans from the garbage and the red cleaning bucket from under the sink. He carries his building supplies to the beach.

  If you dig deep enough, you can find wet sand. Wet sand is cold and solid and stays where you put it. Tomato soup cans make the best molds for towers, but empty spice jars make good turrets. When the castle is done, it will sparkle like the great city of Oz in the distance beyond the poppy field.

  Cooper, the mighty warrior, digs his fingers into the sand like a backhoe. A deep moat will protect his people and avert fires that might crop up out of nowhere.

  A loon howls across the lake. The waves lap at the shore. In between, Cooper hears the click of flip-flops.

  An enemy is approaching.

  He must stay low.

  The sound stops above him at the top of the hill. “Have you been here the whole time?”


  Cooper stands up. Caddie’s blond hair glows in the sunlight. Caddie is not the enemy. She is a fellow warrior. With worry in her voice. He nods.

  “Didn’t you hear us calling? You know you’re not supposed to come down to the beach by yourself.” Now she has mad in her voice.

  “I’d never go swimming by myself,” Cooper says. He looks at the dark boathouse sitting at the edge of the lake. The house for Grandpa’s boat. Its gray shadow cast across the sand. He hears the water lapping at the dead reeds. Dead. Just like Grandpa.

  Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Cooper knows he would never go beyond that edge. He is a rule follower. The best rule follower there is. “I am a rule follower,” he says.

  “Yeah, right,” Caddie says. “Until you do whatever you feel like.”

  But Cooper knows he would never go beyond the shore into the deep water. Not the deep, black water where he jumped from the dock and splashed and examined minnows through his goggles. Where he held his breath and floated like a dead man. And he did not think about that word. Dead. He wishes with all his might he could play like that again. But now he is a warrior. A warrior with a code of conduct.

  He touches his empty pocket. Pictures his notebook on his pillow. He must remember to write this down:

  Sometimes it looks like you are breaking the rules when you are following an ancient code of conduct.

  “I’ve been very busy,” Cooper says. He picks up the red bucket and hurries to the edge of the lake. Stands ankle deep in the safe yellow foam and rotting weeds and fills the bucket to its brim. He walks slowly, so he won’t spill, and pours the lake water into the moat. As fast as he pours it, the water seeps into the darkened sand and disappears. He gets another bucket of water. Splashes his feet as he hurries. Pours the water into the moat. The water disappears again.

  The Earth has a big hole in it.

  “Cooper,” Caddie says, coming down the hill.

  “What?”

  “Give me the bucket.” Caddie sighs a sigh as deep as a hole dug to China. “And find me some leaves to line the moat, so the water stays put. I’ll get the water. You hurry.”