The Notations of Cooper Cameron

by Jane O'Reilly

Mr. Bell does not know Cooper’s secrets or his truths. He doesn’t know about That Boy. And he doesn’t know about the things that scare him. Like The Father. The Grinner. And fireworks. And fire. Mr. Bell knows only the good things. He knows about ice cream. And Grandpa.

  Cooper pictures his grandfather under water. Dead. Nothing you can do about it.

  But what if there is? What if there is something he can do about it?

  What if there is something you can do about everything?

  “I am afraid of some things,” Cooper says.

  “Like what?”

  All Cooper can think of is water. The lake. His grandfather. Cooper wants to wash. Wants to stomp his leg, but Mr. Bell would want him to go away and he doesn’t want to go away. He looks to the window. To Mr. Bell’s memory window, and writes this down against the palm of his hand:

  Memories can be illusions if the truth is too hard to bear.

  He wishes he had a memory window. He wants to remember something else. Something besides Grandpa’s desperate eyes. He wants a different picture in his mind. One that paints a thousand happy words.

  Mr. Bell is still watching him. Waiting for an answer.

  “Like water,” Cooper finally says.

  Mr. Bell nods again. “Me too. Anyone in his right mind should be afraid of water.”

  Cooper likes this room that looks over the treetops at the world. The room hisses with life. His own breath hisses too. His mind shuffles Mr. Bell’s pictures and Mr. Bell’s words and his own fear. That Boy is standing at the ready. Cooper points at the photograph of the raft. “Then how did you do that?”

  “Easy,” Mr. Bell says. “Logic, preparation, and caution. It’s how I ever did anything. Living and dying.” Mr. Bell laughs. Sucks on his teeth. “Except get married. Some things you just do without thinking.” He waves his spoon in the air. “And I’d give everything for a chance to do it all over again.”

  “Even the raft?”

  “Especially the raft.” Mr. Bell makes a funny face at the silver mixing bowl. “Look at that. I ate the whole damn thing.” He laughs. Stops. Looks out his window for many quiet seconds. “And if I were younger, I’d take you with me.”

  Cooper thinks of swimming and getting water up his nose. He remembers flippers and goggles. There was a time when he wasn’t afraid, but that was a very long time ago. He shakes his head. “I’m not a very good swimmer,” he says. “I might drown.”

  “Then you have to learn how to swim. That’s called preparation.” Mr. Bell clears his throat. “Here’s a question for you.” Mr. Bell coughs. Coughs and coughs. Coughs until Mary Ann appears. She fiddles with the tubes in Mr. Bell’s nose. He waves her away. “Exactly . . .” Mr. Bell clears his throat again. His voice is soft and whispery. “Exactly how many people do you know who have drowned?”

  Grandpa had a heart attack. He did not drown. Did not drown. Did not drown. Did not drown. “Exactly zero,” Cooper says.

  “See?” Mr. Bell pats the loon stool, slowly, as if his hand weighs a hundred pounds. “That’s where the logic comes in.” He stares out the big window.

  Cooper sits back down. Looks where Mr. Bell looks. Suddenly, a big bird with a white head and brown wings a mile wide swoops above the trees. “I think it’s an eagle,” Cooper says.

  “It is,” Mr. Bell says in a whisper as if the eagle might hear him. He takes a deep breath. “Mary Ann! Where’s Betsy?” And then he winks—a slow sticky wink. “Betsy’s my best gal.”

  Mr. Bell is quiet. The eagle soars from view.

  “Damn.”

  “What’s the best picture you ever took?” Cooper asks.

  Mr. Bell stares at Cooper. For a long, scary moment Cooper is certain Mr. Bell’s milky eyes have stopped working. “The best picture is right here.” Mr. Bell taps his temple with his long forefinger. His wrinkled lips lift upward into a smile. “The photographs just help me remember.” Mr. Bell sighs. Breathes. Coughs.

  Mary Ann reappears with Betsy in her hands. Betsy is not a gal. She is an old camera.

  “For a second there I thought we’d left her at the hospital,” Mary Ann says.

  Betsy is too heavy for Mr. Bell. His bony hands shake. “Stay right here, Mary Ann.” He rests his elbow on the arm of his chair. Points the long camera lens at the lake. Waits. Waits and waits. The eagle flies near the shore. Rises. Floats above the trees. Mr. Bell clicks the shutter. “Got ’im.” He adjusts the knobs. “Now you get one of us.” He hands the camera to Mary Ann. “And you stand right here by me, my boy.” Mr. Bell reaches for Cooper. Puts his hand on Cooper’s shoulder.

  My boy.

  Mr. Bell said, “My boy,” just like Grandpa.

  Up close, Mr. Bell smells like Swiss cheese. Cooper wants to plug his nose. Wants to duck under Mr. Bell’s arm and run. Knows running would be mean. Cooper breathes through his mouth. Feels his shoulder grow warm. A hundred years’ worth of warm. He takes a deep breath. Forgets to breathe through his mouth. Smells Swiss cheese again. And soap. And something else.

  Cooper inhales through his nose. Thinks. Shuffles the memories. Remembers.

  He smells old age.

  And maybe his grandfather’s boat.

  No, not just the boat. He smells his grandfather. My boy. He inhales again. Thinks he might burst. Burst with memories. He puts his arm on the back of Mr. Bell’s chair. Moves it to his bony shoulder. Feels Mr. Bell’s clavicle. He smiles for the camera. Hears the shutter click. The camera is old and the picture is an illusion.

  But Cooper’s smile is not.

  Surprises

  Cooper walks home, facing traffic, a small particle of alien life on the road. He follows the line between the tar and the grass. Mary Ann washed and dried the big steel mixing bowl. Empty and warm, it makes a good helmet. He is a Tezornaut.

  He wonders about this strange place, Earth. He can walk here without his thermomatic protection. His arms and legs have not turned to liquid in the singular solar heat.

  Perhaps Earth contains a knowledge he will take home to his people. If he can rebuild his spaceship, he will transport cool air to Tezorene. Winds and breezes and also the odd liquid that mostly flows south, but does occasionally flow north, and sometimes accumulates in large, subterranean vessels. The invisible liquid is called water. It sucks humans to death. No, no, no. Not just death. It gives life too. Humans also use it for what they call “recreation.”

  A distant motor.

  A car.

  Cooper makes perfect, careful steps, one behind the other at the edge of the road. The car passes him. Another car goes by. And then a white Jeep. A white Jeep with leaping fish painted on its door. The Jeep slows. Stops. Backs up. The window slides down. “Hey, Cooper! Is that you?”

  Cooper looks inside the Jeep. Spies the Earthling known as Mike. When he nods, the steel bowl slips over his eyes.

  “Why do you have a mixing bowl on your head?”

  “Meep,” Cooper says in Tezorinian. He cups his hand in greeting—the way the Tezornauts do. “Nice to observe your sudden appearance. Surprises are quite typical of life on this planet.”

  “Meep,” Mike says. “Can I give you a lift to your space station?”

  “Meep,” Cooper says and gets into the Jeep.

  “I haven’t seen you in ages. Not since you quit working for me.”

  Cooper pictures Jack’s big fish as it lay dying. Sees its glistening eye. “Meep,” he says in a very low voice.

  “Did you finish Tom Sawyer?”

  “Meep,” Cooper says in an even lower tone that means no.

  “Cooper, this humanoid requests to speak in the language of its own people. Communication will be a lot easier.”

  “Meep, meep,” Cooper says. “Request granted.” He removes his Tezornaut helmet.

  “How’s your summer going?” Mike asks. “I can’t believe it’s almost over.”

  “We will be here exactly twelve more days.”

  “I know I promised to take you fishing. But we’ve been so busy
at the shop.” Mike looks in his rearview mirror. Cooper looks too. Nothing is behind them. “How’s Caddie?” Mike asks.

  Caddie is mad because Cooper used all the sugar to make ice cream for Mr. Bell. And she’s mad because there is nothing to do at the cabin except play games and lie in the sun. “She is bored silly,” Cooper says.

  Mike frowns. “There’s a new mini-golf course that finally opened up on the highway. Blackbeard’s Bounty. That could be fun.”

  Blackbeard was a pirate. Like Tom Sawyer. Cooper would like to be a pirate and play miniature golf with Mike and never have to go fishing or get on a raft. “Okay,” Cooper says. “Let’s go.”

  “What?” Mike says. “You and me?” Mike looks at his watch. “Uh . . .” Mike is making a big decision. “I . . . uh . . .” They pass the red mailbox. “Shoot. That was your driveway, wasn’t it?”

  Cooper looks over his shoulder, watches the red mailbox disappear behind a tree. “It’s the red one that says ‘Mills.’ ”

  Mike pulls into the next driveway. Stops. Pine trees block his view. He looks in the rearview mirror. Backs out. Slams on the brakes. Cooper lunges forward. The metal bowl falls to the floor. The Jake’s Plumbing truck has come out of nowhere. Jake honks its horn.

  “Sorry,” Mike says as if Jake can hear him. He turns the Jeep around. Finds the red mailbox.

  “Do you think it is truly possible?” Cooper asks.

  “What?” Mike says.

  “To play mini-golf.”

  “Now?”

  Cooper knows Mike does not want to play mini-golf right now. Would like to say “meep” in the lowest possible tone. “I can’t, Cooper. I have to get to work. Maybe some other time.”

  “Meep,” Cooper says.

  When they roll down the driveway, Cooper’s mother is tying a string around the stalks of her tomato plants. Caddie comes out the door in her bathing suit and a towel wrapped around her waist. She looks like a hula dancer. Her nose is bright red with sunburn.

  Caddie and his mother stare at the Jeep like confused Earthlings. As if the Jeep is from outer space. Cooper waves through the windshield, grabs his Tezornaut helmet, and jumps to the ground. Mike gets out too.

  “I was beginning to worry about you,” his mother says.

  “No need to worry when I’m with Mike,” Cooper says. He hands his mother the big mixing bowl. “Mr. Bell ate almost all the ice cream by himself.”

  “Yeah, right,” Caddie says.

  Cooper’s mother smiles a smile as big as an eagle’s wingspan. Not that big really, but Cooper thinks of something really big because he has not seen her smile in a really long time.

  Mike says hi.

  Caddie says hi. And then she says, “How’s life at the bait shop?”

  Mike rocks from foot to foot. “Good,” he says. His face turns as red as the strawberries in Mr. Bell’s ice cream and his pimples disappear. “The fish are biting like crazy.”

  “Cool,” Caddie says.

  “Yeah,” Mike says.

  Cooper wishes he were a real Tezornaut. He would like to abduct Mike and take him to his planet. Save Mike from this embarrassing Earthling moment he has read about in Caddie’s magazines. “Come in my room, Mike. I want to show you something.”

  “Can’t. I really have to get going.”

  “It will only take a second,” Cooper says, but he knows it will take longer. “I mean two minutes.”

  Caddie smiles.

  “Okay,” Mike says.

  Mike follows Cooper to his room. Cooper points at the aquarium. “That’s my frog. His name is Amicus the Great.” Cooper is glad to show Mike his frog. Glad to have a real friend at the cabin. “You can feed him if you want.”

  “Amicus, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Cooper says. “Amicus means ‘friend’ in Latin.”

  Mike bends down, eye-to-eye with Amicus. “He’s a green frog,” Mike says. “You know what that means.” Mike pops a food nugget into his palm. “He’d rather be in a lake and eat real flies.”

  “He’s not ready yet,” Cooper says.

  Mike drops the food nugget into the water. Amicus snaps it up. “Just imagine if you were cooped up in there with people staring at you all the time,” Mike says.

  “Just imagine if you had to do something for the first time. And you had to do it all alone. And you had no idea how to do it.”

  “You have a point there,” Mike says.

  “Besides, he’s my best friend,” Cooper says. “Except for you.”

  “What? Oh. Sure. That’s different then.” And then Mike says, “I have to go. I’ll be late for work.”

  Cooper walks outside with Mike. The screen door squeaks and snaps shut. Caddie is sitting on the step. “Mike says there’s a new mini-golf course called Blackbeard’s Bounty. Maybe we could go there sometime.”

  “I’ve been by it,” his mother says. “It’s up on the highway.”

  “Sounds fun,” Caddie says.

  “Really?” Mike says. “Maybe you’d like to go with me.” His face turns splotchy red again.

  “Now?” Caddie says.

  “Uh . . . sure,” Mike says. “I guess. I mean . . . yeah. That would be great.”

  “I thought you had to work,” Cooper says.

  Mike shrugs. “I can go in later,” he says. “My dad won’t mind.”

  “Oh,” Cooper says. “Oh,” he says again as he feels a tremble in his legs. In his arms. A tremble that makes him want to touch. Want to count. He does not understand Mike. He does not understand friends. “I will read Tom Sawyer while you are gone,” Cooper says. “The good and famous book you gave me.” He puts his hand on the doorknob. The screen door squeaks open.

  “Wait a minute, Coop,” Caddie says. “If you’re not going, I’m not going.”

  The screen door snaps shut.

  “Really?” Cooper says.

  Caddie nods. “Just let me get changed.”

  In an instant, Cooper’s mother goes into the house and comes out with her purse. She hands Cooper a twenty-dollar bill. The twenty is crisp and new. He folds it into a perfect square. When Caddie comes outside in her pink T-shirt and white shorts, Cooper whispers to her, “I promise I will not embarrass you.” And then he opens the car door for her. “My lady,” he says.

  “Cooper,” she says with mad inching into her voice.

  Mike keeps his eyes on the road. No one talks the whole way. A police car passes them on the highway. Mike looks at his speedometer. Slows down. In the silence, Cooper hears a helicopter thup-thup-thup above them. He puts his face to the window. Watches the helicopter tilt forward and lift into the sky.

  “Look,” Cooper says. “A helicopter.”

  Mike leans close to his windshield. Looks up. “Huh,” he says. “They must be giving rides today.”

  Cooper shudders. He thinks of Mr. Bell in a helicopter, taking a picture of Mount Rushmore. Of Mr. Bell’s other picture, the helicopter burning in the jungle. He cannot see the point of riding in a helicopter for fun.

  Finally, they arrive at Blackbeard’s Bounty—a mountain of a golf course with waterfalls and wrecks of pirate ships glued to the mountainside. Pirate flags mark every hole. “If I were an alien being,” Cooper says, “I would take pictures of this great landmark and beam them home to my people.”

  “Meep, meep,” Mike says with a really high voice.

  Caddie laughs.

  Suddenly, another laugh. An unexpected laugh. Cooper’s own laugh. He has landed on an alien planet and the people understand what he is trying to say. Smiling, Cooper gets out of the Jeep.

  They pick out putters and different colored golf balls at Blackbeard’s Souvenir and Snack Shack. “Girls first,” Mike says at the first green.

  Caddie tees off first. She is the only girl. With a hard smack, her yellow ball ricochets from wall to wall. Rolls through a slit in the ship’s wheel—straight for the hole. The ball bounces in and then out of the hole and rolls. Rolls and rolls, down the hill, rolling and rolling unt
il it rolls into a corner and stops. “Wow,” Mike says. “Amazing shot.”

  Mike is making a joke. A joke just for Caddie.

  At the waterfall, Cooper lies down on the green. Lays his golf club in front of him like an arrow. Lines up his shot like a pro. He measures the distance with his footsteps. Eyes the angle. Moves the club four millimeters. No. Five millimeters is better. Cooper gets a hole in one.

  “Wow,” Mike says, and Cooper knows this time Mike really means it.

  They take turns teeing off and putting, up and down the pirate mountainside. Caddie laughs every time she hits the ball. She really is having fun. Cooper can see this truth.

  The treasure chest on the eighteenth hole opens and closes every six seconds. Caddie looks at her ball. At the treasure chest. Watches the treasure chest open and close. Looks at her ball. She swings and smacks the ball. It bounces off the top of the closed chest, misses a tree, bounces past a little girl standing nearby with a million braids in her hair for a hole in one on green 15—three holes away. The little girl watches the ball and laughs. Caddie laughs so hard she snorts. Cooper laughs too. Mike laughs so hard he has to sit down on a bench. “I can’t breathe,” he says.

  Cooper stops laughing. What was he thinking? He cannot forget his responsibilities. He watches Mike closely. Mike is breathing. Mike is not dying. Mike is exaggerating.

  Cooper adds up the scores. Caddie has ninety-two points. Cooper has seventy-nine points. Mike has sixty-eight points. “You win, Mike.”

  “I’ve played it before,” Mike says. Then he slaps Cooper on the back like a good friend. “You played a good game.”

  “What about me?” Caddie says. She starts laughing all over again.

  Cooper has just figured something out. He pulls his notebook from his pocket.

  Making stupid jokes and laughing a lot means you might be falling in love.

  “You?” Mike says. “I’m going to have to give you lessons.”

  Caddie giggles.

  “Private lessons?” Cooper says.

  “Cooper,” Caddie says. “What have I told you?” Her face turns red again. “You have to mind your own business.”

  Cooper turns around. Writes this down:

  If everyone minded their own business, the world would be a very lonely place.