My Cousin's Keeper

by Simon French

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  We’re brothers, we are.

  That’s what he had said. Suddenly, his arm was around my shoulder as we knelt together on my bedroom floor, surrounded by most of my toys. He had looked up at my mom as she held her camera to take the photo, and that’s exactly what came out of his mouth when the camera flash went off. In the photo, he was smiling, although his eyes didn’t seem to. In the photo, my mouth was open and I looked a little surprised.

  In truth, I remembered being angry. This boy, who I didn’t know, had snuck away from everybody else in our backyard and found my bedroom. He had found all my toys as well, and by the time I discovered him, nearly everything I liked and played with was spread across my bedroom.

  “This is my room,” I had told him. “Leave my things alone!” And I had knelt down to start gathering up my favorite things. Mom had appeared in the doorway at that moment and taken the photo, not realizing how annoyed I was.

  Afterward, I had shaken the boy’s arm away from my shoulder and said in amazement, “I’m not your brother. I don’t even know you.”

  “You should have asked Kieran first,” Mom told the boy gently. “This is Kieran’s room, and these are his things.” And to me, she added, “Is there something you don’t mind him playing with, Kieran?” Then she reminded me who this stranger was. It was Bon, my cousin. “He’s our guest, and I want you to look after him a little,” Mom instructed.

  But I didn’t want him in my room, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. He had said something completely strange and untrue. He had even hugged me. Bon was nearly the same age as me; I already knew that. For a moment I studied his face to see if there was any kind of resemblance. “I don’t want you in here. Go away,” I muttered.

  Bon looked at me blankly, as though I had spoken another language. Up close, he smelled a little of sweat and pee. His shirt was faded and coming apart at the edges, and his socks showed through the torn tips of his sneakers. His hair was longer than mine, and it was tied back into a blond ponytail. He wasn’t the sort of cousin I had expected, and I didn’t know why he and his mom had suddenly turned up at my dad’s birthday barbecue. And Mom was surprised to see her older sister after so many years.

  Later in the evening, after lots of people had left and it was mostly Dad’s soccer friends gathered around the last of the beer and food, Mom said to me, “Kieran, you know that was probably the most toys your cousin had ever laid eyes on in his life.”

  “I don’t care,” I grumbled. “He just came in and touched everything without asking. He wasn’t even invited in the first place.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” Mom answered. “None of us had any idea Bon and Renee would show up.”

  Dad’s birthday barbecue had begun in the usual way. Nan had been at our house and in the kitchen almost right after breakfast, helping Mom prepare party snacks and salads. Early afternoon, the neighbors strolled over from next door, and then our friends from around town, with their kids. A couple of Dad’s work friends from Rural Engineering arrived together, and as our backyard began to fill up, the talk and laughter grew louder and louder. A lot of us kids climbed through the wire strands of the back fence to play games on the strip of grass that ran along behind the houses in our street — except for some of the little girls who stayed in the backyard to play with my sister, Gina.

  When most of Dad’s soccer team arrived, the noise got even louder. The season wasn’t due to start for another two weeks, so a long afternoon and a late night wasn’t going to affect a weekend game. As cooking smells from the barbecue began to drift across to where we played in the back, the team sang Dad a funny and rude birthday song. Even Nan laughed.

  And then someone else arrived. I couldn’t remember Aunt Renee, but at first I wanted to like her. She was so unlike Mom, a different shape and size, with a louder way of speaking. She dressed differently from Mom, too: in a leather jacket, jeans, and black buckled boots. The man she had brought with her was dressed much the same. I didn’t take a lot of notice of Bon, because I was more interested in my aunt’s jacket and the tattoo I could see peeking out from under her sleeve. Mom and Nan walked over to say hello and give my aunt a kiss, but Mom’s voice sounded a bit awkward as she made some introductions to the people nearest.

  “We were just traveling through,” my aunt said. “If we’d known there was a birthday happening, we would have brought something.”

  “Good to see you again, Renee,” my nan said, not sounding as though she meant it. “It’s been a while.” Already I had seen her lean over to kiss Bon, and now she held him close, hugging him so that, for a few moments at least, he was unable to move.

  “God, this one’s grown,” my aunt remarked, pointing at me. “Kieran, isn’t it? Last time I saw him he was just about still in diapers.”

  “Bon’s grown up a lot, too,” Mom answered. “It’s been far too long since we’ve seen you both.” But my aunt was already busy showering attention on Gina and saying how pretty she looked. I knew it was the first time she had ever seen my little sister.

  I had heard Aunt Renee talked about, mostly when adults thought I hadn’t been listening. She was my mom’s older sister, quite a bit older, and I remembered that some of the Christmas cards Mom had mailed her had come back with a RETURN TO SENDER stamp on them. My aunt seemed to move a lot.

  I asked Mom quietly if the man my aunt had brought along to Dad’s birthday was my uncle. “No, definitely not!” she told me.

  Nan had a photo of Bon, just the one. It was a baby photo, kept on her fridge door, in a colorful magnetic frame. I’d often looked at that photo and wondered about the cousin I didn’t know.

  Bon hadn’t followed us kids back out to the grassy strip after we’d come in to raid the food. He poked around our backyard and seemed a bit lost at first, but then went and stood with Gina and her little friends. When I saw him next, he was over at the food table, busily eating handfuls of chips, crackers, and dips. He spent quite a bit of time doing this, and I wondered if he was being greedy or was just really hungry.

  Then I heard my aunt’s voice. “Are you listening to me?” It was unexpectedly loud and angry, and I looked over in time to see her with one hand clenched around Bon’s face. Her fingers pressed tightly into his cheeks so that his mouth opened a little.

  Aunt Renee looked furious. “I told you to behave,” she said through clenched teeth. All our guests stopped talking for a moment, and some of them looked a bit shocked. But Bon looked away from his mother as though nothing had happened. I expected him to rub his sore face, or even to cry. Instead, he gazed into space, as his shoulders and arms flopped around a little, before his mother let go of him. He said nothing.

  Nan walked over and did say something, but my aunt replied, “No, don’t tell me what to do. He’s my kid.”

  Nan looked anxiously at Bon, then reached over and ran her hand gently across his shoulder. My aunt glared. Gradually, uncomfortably, people began to talk again, until the party found its noise and laughter once more. When I looked next, I could see Bon walking through the back door and into our house, not knowing at that moment he had been on his way to my bedroom and my toys.

  We’re brothers, we are.

  “He said that weird th
ing, too,” I reminded Mom.

  “He’s probably quite lonely,” she replied. “And, quite likely, he was excited about finally meeting his cousins.” Mom paused. “Thank you for letting him play with some of your things.”

  “I didn’t want him to,” I said. “It wasn’t like he asked first.” I paused and frowned. “Will they visit us again?”

  Mom answered quietly. “I hope so, for Bon’s sake. As for Renee . . .”

  Another uncomfortable thought came back to me. “She hurt him.” I had never seen an adult do that before. Sometimes in stores I had heard other parents yell at their kids or smack them on the hand, especially some of the teenagers who pushed strollers or led little processions of toddlers. “She was hurting him,” I said again, trying to make sense of it. “His face —”

  “I’m sorry you saw that,” Mom said. “He wasn’t being naughty; he was probably just plain hungry.”

  My aunt had not stayed long at our party, either. I remembered that.

  “Time for us to get back on the road,” the boyfriend said after Dad had blown the candles out on his chocolate mud cake. The good-byes were brief, and the three of them left almost as unexpectedly as they had arrived. I had walked with Nan and my parents to the driveway gate to see them off, to watch the boyfriend’s big black pickup take them to the end of our street and then away out of town. They had sat in the single front seat together, but my cousin, jammed in the middle, was the only one who turned and looked back. He didn’t wave; he simply stared at us through the window, all the way to the corner. It was as though he had wanted to stay behind. I was glad he hadn’t. Then I happened to look at Nan waving, her face looking as sad as I thought I’d ever seen it. “That poor child,” she had said, her voice soft and defeated.

  Later, when I began to straighten up my room, I noticed that my medieval castle had been moved. Its army of horses and knights was set out in formation across the carpet, the royal family and their wizard on the castle parapets, standing close, as though talking to one another. The castle had been a birthday gift only months before, and I was furious that it had been touched and rearranged. And then, as I frowned and muttered to myself, I discovered that two things were missing — a white horse and an armored knight, the one who carried a sword in one hand and a blue crested flag in the other. And I knew right away who had stolen them and how far away they must be by now.

  This was mostly how I remembered my dad’s birthday party, the year he had turned thirty-five, and the year I turned nine.

  It would be two years before I saw my cousin, Bon, again.

  “Come on!” Dad called back to me. He was already halfway up the steep short hill that was Guthrie Street, his regular challenge. The way he called it back to me it sounded more like “C’marrnn!” — his voice heaving with the effort of his running, but also the effort of trying not to wake up everyone on the street. It was early, sometime between six thirty and seven, and this was the only thing he had said to me since we’d left home. I wanted to tell myself that it was friendly encouragement, but really I sensed he was a bit irritated at how I struggled to keep up.

  C’marrnn! I could hear those two words, stretched and slurred into one, by kids and grown-ups alike, called from the sidelines of my dad’s weekend games. Saturday after Saturday, we cheered and yelled as the Locomotives fought and won match points, as Dad showed his speed and skill at striking the ball into the goal. He was a fast runner, a good aimer and kicker. I was not.

  But I wanted to be. I wanted to show Dad — and his noisy teammates and the kids at school — that I could do these things well. I wasn’t sure what else I was particularly good at doing.

  It was early in the soccer season. The day was light and the sun was already peeking above the mountains at the eastern edge of town. By midseason, it would still be dark at this time of the morning and all the streetlights would still be glowing white or orange above the stores, houses, and the park.

  If I woke early enough and got my clothes and sneakers on quickly, I’d catch up with Dad at the front gate, or perhaps a little way along our street, as he began his training run. Just as often, though, he’d go without me. It always surprised me that a week’s hard work in the big workshop at Rural Engineering was never enough for Dad to reward himself with a weekend of sleeping in. Early each evening, he’d leave his bicycle under the carport and walk inside, hands and clothes grimy with steel dust and oil stains. And he’d be out the next morning, jogging the streets around town, no matter how dark or cold, windy, and wet it might be. Even when soccer season finished, he would still be out running two or three times a week. But I’d get lazy, and today, after a long, burning summer and the beginnings of autumn, I was paying for missing weeks of morning runs.

  Three steep streets in a row turned off Sheridan Street, just near the point where the houses stopped and the shops more or less began. More or less, because our town had once been a bigger, busier place, and there were buildings that used to be stores but that now stood empty. Sometimes I felt curious to know what might still be inside, behind the boarded-over windows, or behind old blinds and shutters.

  “Come on!” Dad called once more, his voice clear and encouraging against the early-morning quiet. He was nearly at the top of the hill and I had barely begun. Guthrie was the steepest of the three streets. Fraser and Raymond were a little easier, but only just.

  Today, the air was milky with fog. I could feel my face wet and cold with vapor. With all the effort and concentration I could muster, I launched myself at Guthrie Street’s asphalt surface and heaved my way to the top, taking short jogging steps and keeping my eyes on my feet. I knew if I stopped halfway that the second part of the climb would feel a lot worse. Dad waited at the top, hands on his hips. Perspiration spotted his forehead and streaked down his cheeks into his beard whiskers. “Now, wasn’t that fun?” He grinned. “Let’s do it again!”

  I dropped my mouth open to say something, but was too out of breath.

  “Actually, a good place to stop for a moment,” he murmured beside me, and it was true. This was the highest point in town, and you could see nearly every house and backyard. The streets straggled down to the main street and then the riverbed, the dividing line between shops and houses, between fields and the highway to the west. I could see the silver-and-red roof of Rural Engineering, where Dad worked. After a shower and a change of clothes, he would be cycling away for a day of cutting, welding, repairing, and restoring.

  The sun had climbed a tiny bit higher above the mountain range, and I let its warmth settle on my face.

  “Beautiful view,” he said. “I never get tired of it.”

  I’d heard him say this many times as we’d stood in this very spot, and sometimes I thought I could see a look in his eyes that meant he was thinking of somewhere else altogether. Because this wasn’t Dad’s hometown; he had come here from a bigger country town for a job he’d wanted. “Then I met your mom,” he’d often say with a smile, “and the rest is history.”

  The view reminded me of a few things that I had learned about living here — how in the summer, the heat turned the school playground to dust; that the winters could be numbingly cold; and that whenever it rained heavily, the street gutters quickly overflowed and had the roar of waterfalls.

  Dad squished and rubbed a handful of my hair. He wasn’t gentle. “You sound winded. Thought I was out of shape . . .”

  “This street’s got the toughest hill,” I reminded him. “We should have started with Raymond Street and worked our way up.”

  “Well, I started with Raymond Street last week.” He smiled. “One of the days you slept in, kiddo. You want to play on a team, then you’ve got to put in the training time. Hmm? No use being a bed zombie or a couch potato.”

  He’d used that phrase on me before, and now he ignored my shrugged shoulders, my wondering if sports were something I might only ever be average at.

  “Come on,” Dad said at last. “We’ve done the tough uphill part. Let
’s go downhill.”

  After the hill peak, Guthrie Street curved away and down to the old railroad station. No trains had run to our town for years, and there was only a museum of photos and models inside to show what a busy and important place it had once been. A couple of old restored train cars sat in the siding beside the empty platform, but at a short distance from the station, the rail lines disappeared under dirt and grass. I could keep up with Dad on the flat ground and it was a little easier now, knowing as well that we were past the halfway mark and more or less heading for home again.

  We came to the very eastern end of the main street, the point where the railroad line had once led onto the old bridge and away to other towns and, eventually, the city. The bridge was wooden and had grown wobbly with age, too unsafe to walk on these days. A fence ran across at the sidewalk where the bridge began. Sometimes this was another of Dad’s stopping places, but not today. As my stomach and legs began to hurt even more with the effort, he gradually got farther and farther ahead of me. Once or twice he turned to check that I was still somewhere behind him. He raised one hand in a wave, and so did I as I slowed to a walk. We would meet up at home.

  The very first time we had ever run together, I had been so excited about being allowed along that I’d spent the first ten minutes telling him everything I knew about everywhere and everybody in town.

  “That’s the house where Lucas lives. And that’s Mason’s place. His brother owns that really cool car parked in the front yard. And the Imperial Hotel is where Liam’s mom does the cooking. And that blue house is where Ms. Tabor, the librarian at school, lives. And —”

  “Kieran!” Dad had exclaimed, his breath puffing. “This is training. You have to focus!”

  Now, I stopped outside the thrift shop, where Nan volunteered several times each week. Here, she was not Nan, but Erica, the lady with the unruly dyed hair and interesting earrings. She chose the things that were displayed in the front window. She listened to local gossip and told the customers jokes. This is my grandson Kieran and my granddaughter, Gina, she’d tell everybody and anybody if Gina and I stopped at the shop on our walk home from school.