Small as an Elephant

by Jennifer Richard Jacobson

  That was the same month she had just shown up at school three different times and pulled him out for the day. The last time was during morning announcements.

  “I hope nothing’s wrong,” his teacher had said.

  “Doctor’s appointment,” his mother had replied.

  Jack had gathered up his stuff, asked his homeroom teacher (who was also his English teacher) for his homework assignment (knowing he was going to fall further behind), and followed his mother out the door. “But I’m not sick,” he had said.

  “I know, honey. It’s a regular checkup. All kids have regular checkups.”

  “They do? Why?”

  She’d begun talking about vaccinations and how sometimes a little dose of one thing could prevent something worse from happening and how visiting the doctor was like that — you got a little dose of doctoring so that you wouldn’t need a bigger dose of hospitalization later — but it was one of those times when he hadn’t felt smart enough to follow what she was saying, so he’d just buckled up and hoped it didn’t mean he was getting a shot, like the one he had to get when he stepped on a nail at the construction site near Nina’s high-rise. Her mother had insisted.

  They’d driven for a long time that day, and Jack had begun thinking that maybe he had some rare disease and had to see a special doctor in a special city, or maybe they were moving again. But no, Mom had pulled into the parking lot of Canobie Lake Park, which had (according to the sign) more than eighty-five rides, games, and attractions.

  “Which is going to keep you healthier?” she’d asked. “Someone poking at you with God knows what or a ride on the Corkscrew Coaster?”

  Jack still didn’t know if he’d had a doctor’s appointment that day or not. But he did know that the Corkscrew Coaster was undoubtedly the coolest ride he’d ever been on.

  After another twenty minutes of trudging through the rain, he arrived at the Lamoine General Store. Not only was his backpack soaked, but so was his sleeping bag inside. It was getting heavier by the minute.

  Confident in his new lie about homeschooling, he went inside to dry out. It didn’t occur to him that the store would be so little (only three open aisles, with a lunch counter in the front) and he would be so obvious. He slipped into one of the aisles and pretended to be studying the wide assortment of snack food. Every now and then, he glanced toward the front of the store. Two women in hairnets were working behind the counter. One was making cheesesteak sandwiches on the grill; the other was at the register, cashing out a man who was wearing a T-shirt that read, The way life should be. Two men sat at the counter, waiting for their lunch.

  “What is it you’re looking for, kid?” asked one of the guys at the counter. The man was about forty, Jack guessed, dressed in grungy, paint-splattered clothes. Even though both his face and his voice were ragged, his eyes were smiling.

  “Just looking,” said Jack. He involuntarily shivered as he said this.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school?” asked the second guy — a younger guy, maybe the first one’s son — whose clothes were also covered in paint but whose eyes were definitely less kind.

  “Homeschooled,” Jack said, trying to muster up some authority in his voice.

  The young one snickered and whispered, “Mama’s boy.”

  Jack’s face prickled. Yeah, I’m some mama’s boy. That’s why I’m stranded in Maine, standing here soaked to the bone. I haven’t eaten a full meal in days. I’ve slept on the ground, in a barn, and in a truck.

  “So, does being homeschooled make you smarter than the average Lamoine kid?” asked the older guy.

  “Ralph,” said one of the women as she flipped the sandwiches onto plates.

  “I’m not from Lamoine,” Jack blurted before he could catch himself.

  “You don’t say,” said the younger guy, laughing.

  “Hey,” said Ralph, reaching for a newspaper next to him on the counter, “are you that kid —?”

  Jack didn’t wait to hear what he was going to say. He bolted out of the Lamoine General Store and ran as fast as a kid drenched from head to toe and carrying a heavy backpack could run.

  Dang it! Now what was he going to do? He imagined the guys in the store being just interested enough that they’d call the police, tell them they’d seen the kid. Not only would the police know exactly where he was; they’d search harder. How was he going to walk south with the police looking for him?

  For the next hour, there were woods on both sides of the road. Jack walked as close to the tree line as he could, ducking into the trees whenever a car approached. Because of the rain, cars had their headlights on, so he could see them approaching — hopefully before they caught sight of him.

  At one point he passed a sand pit with rusty metal sculptures lining the road. There were Jesus fish, flat angels with thin lips and triangle noses; cutouts of men and women holding hands, of Jesus touching the finger of a man; and signs that said LOVE, PEACE, and JUSTICE in giant letters. But there were also several hand-painted signs with runny letters that reminded Jack of blood, signs that read: NO TRESPASSING: VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED. He ran on that stretch of road until all the sculptures and all the words felt far behind him.

  Finally, this road merged with a busier road, one with fewer trees and more businesses. There were auto-parts stores, paint stores, and shoe stores. Maybe, Jack thought, it was better to be in a crowded place. He wouldn’t call attention to himself.

  By this time, his bare legs felt so cold from the constant rain, he could hardly feel them. Except, that is, for the places where his shorts were rubbing against them, making them red and irritated. He’d choose another place to go in and dry off. Someplace that would have lots of people, so that maybe he wouldn’t be noticed. Someplace that didn’t sell newspapers.

  Up ahead was a building that looked more like a camp lodge than a store. The sign below the green metal roof read L.L. BEAN OUTLET. Framing the door were kayaks that reminded Jack of Life Savers candies, especially the orange-and-yellow-striped ones. “No one goes to Maine without shopping at L.L. Bean,” his mother had said when they were making their list.

  Why would everyone want to go to an outdoor-sports store? he had wondered. Now here he was — only this one didn’t look like the store in the picture his mom had shown him. There was no giant boot out front, either. This must be a baby L.L. Bean.

  At the front of the store was a rack of bikes, and some sports accessories like compasses and water bottles, but the rest of the store was a field of clothes — clothes, and tourists carrying canvas shopping bags instead of pushing carts. It wasn’t until Jack had woven his way through the mob (keeping his head down and apologizing over and over for his bulky backpack) that he saw a smattering of camp furniture in the corner. He imagined himself stretching out on the futon and taking a nap. Yeah, right. How long would it take for someone to recognize him as the kid on the news?

  Jack had learned his lesson. He needed to rest and dry off, but he’d have to remain hidden this time. It didn’t take long to come up with a perfect plan.

  He went to a rack of boys’ clothes and grabbed a striped shirt and an L.L. Bean sweatshirt. He hunted for shorts or pants, but they didn’t seem to have any of those today — at least not any where he was standing — so he grabbed a bathing suit instead. Then he went into one of the men’s dressing rooms, where the walls, benches, and doors were pinewood. It was the last dressing room before the handicapped one. He locked the door and slipped out of his wet clothes and into the ones he’d gathered. The shirt was huge, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to take these clothes; he was just going to borrow them for a while. After setting the elephant on the bench, he hung his own clothes up on the metal hooks to dry. Finally, he stretched out on the wooden bench and pulled out his comic books, but the pages were stuck together and ripped at the slightest touch. Practically pulp.

  He pulled the big shirt over his still-cold legs. He ate a cereal bar. These bars that the man at the food pantry had pick
ed out were filling, but boy, was he getting sick of this one nutty, raisiny flavor.

  Every now and again, someone would knock and he’d say, “I’m in here,” and then they’d pop into another stall. For a long time, he just sat there, listening to the sounds of the voices nearby. Mostly, they were the voices of women telling their husband or their son if something looked right. He smiled as he thought of what his own mother would say about his new outfit. Didn’t matter. He was finally warm.

  He kept thinking: You should go now. It’s time to put on your own clothes and slip out of here, but he couldn’t force himself to move.

  He picked up his elephant and studied her again. She had these cute folds of skin on her breastbone — skin she was meant to grow into, he guessed. He thought he should name her. First, he thought of the obvious names: Ellie, Ella, Dumbo (whoever came up with that name didn’t really know elephants), Horton, Lydia (like the one here in Maine, the one who had started everything with him and his mom).

  No, he wouldn’t name her Lydia. He tried to think of other elephant names from real life, from circuses or elephant sanctuaries. He’d only seen one elephant, and he didn’t remember her name. Maybe he’d never known it. Twice, his class had taken a field trip to the zoo, but neither the Stone Zoo nor the Franklin Park Zoo had elephants. For years, he’d begged and begged his mother to take him to the circus whenever it came to Boston, but the one time she bought tickets, she forgot and didn’t come home that night. After that, she began talking about how cruel circuses were to elephants and how she wasn’t going to support them, and how could he, a kid who loved elephants, even think of supporting that sort of thing?

  He couldn’t explain it. He could never explain to other kids why elephants mattered so much to him; nor could he explain to his mother how much he just wanted to see one again — to reach out and feel its skin, touch its trunk, look into its big, lonely elephant eyes.

  Lots of sites on the Internet — like the ones for elephant orphanages — had live cams of elephants or provided videos. He’d watched two elephants who hadn’t seen each other for years go nuts after meeting again. He’d seen a video of an elephant whose best friend was a stray dog. (“Like you and me,” Nina had said, laughing.) And he’d heard an elephant keeper say that if you blow softly into the trunk of an elephant, it will never forget you.

  This was the last thought he had before dozing.

  He woke to shouting. Not frantic or angry shouting, but the kind of yelling people do when they’re talking across a distance. It took him a moment to remember where he was, but it didn’t take him long to realize that the shouting was coming from the people who worked at the store and that they were calling out to one another. Closing time.

  Dang! Should he change? Maybe he should just grab his own clothes and run — take off before they had a chance to wonder why a kid was hanging out in a dressing room by himself. Or maybe . . .

  He gathered his damp clothes in his arms and quietly opened the door, just a crack — just far enough that the stall would appear unoccupied. Then he huddled on the bench in the corner that was blocked by the door.

  He could hear footsteps nearby and held his breath: a girl humming, the opening of another dressing-room door.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he heard her shout, “All clear!”

  The lights went out.

  Jack was going to spend the night in the store.

  Eventually, Jack’s eyes adjusted to the dark; still, he reached into his backpack and pulled out his flashlight. Would it work? He knew that wet batteries corroded, but it hadn’t been wet that long. His thumb pushed on the switch —

  Light!

  As he moved out of the dressing room and into the main part of the store, he realized how foolish he was being. People outside could probably see the flashlight beam through the large windows. They would think the store was being robbed!

  Flashlight off!

  The store was even cooler when it was empty. There was the futon to stretch out on, and plenty of warm, dry sleeping bags to borrow for the night hanging on the back wall.

  The first thing Jack did was head to the main doors to make sure he’d be able to let himself out come morning. To his relief, he noted that just above the handle was one of those half-circle locks you simply have to turn and a bolt moves side to side. Now he just had to hope opening the doors from the inside wouldn’t trigger an alarm. But he’d deal with that tomorrow.

  Next he explored the camping accessories on the shelf near the front of the store. He found a box labeled First-Aid Kit for Sporting Dogs and wondered if it would have dry gauze for his cold and achy finger. Sure enough, it was on the list of enclosed items, but something prevented Jack from just tearing into the package. Except for when he took the elephant, Jack had never deliberately stolen from a store. He decided he’d rewrap his finger using the old gauze once it had dried out.

  But what about food? He only had one cereal bar left. Wasn’t taking food — something you absolutely needed — different from taking something just because you could? He was pretty sure that if the owner of L.L. Bean knew about his situation, he’d want him to eat.

  Jack looked around to see if there was anything edible. Maybe they would have that freeze-dried stuff hikers ate. Once, Nina had gotten a bag of freeze-dried beef stew from her uncle for Christmas. They’d mixed it up together, and at the time, it had tasted pretty awful, but he bet he’d like it now.

  Unfortunately, the only food items he could find in the store were maple syrup, different flavored jams, and gummy worms in a fake tackle box. All of it sounded really unappealing (what he wouldn’t give for a Big Mac), but he broke into and ate a package of gummy worms anyway. For some reason, they tasted worse than he expected.

  He grabbed his water bottle and filled it up in the single restroom. When he came out, he noticed two large swinging doors with small windows at the top. He stood on his tiptoes and peered into a large room filled with boxes of inventory. There seemed to be as much merchandise in the back room as there was in the store. He started to back away from the doors, knowing they were for employees only, and then realized it didn’t matter. Tonight he could go anywhere he wanted to — he could see it all. He pushed cautiously on the right-hand door; he was entering a forbidden world.

  Shelves were lined with boxes of sunglasses, fishing rods, and wading boots. It must be fun to work here, he thought, especially if you got to be the one to open the boxes, to see what you’d be selling that week. But the storage room wasn’t the only section off-limits to customers. On the far side of the room was another door. It also had a window, but a curtain blocked the view of what was inside. This time he didn’t hesitate. He went over and turned the knob.

  It was a small room with a large table, a couch, and a tiny kitchen area, but to Jack it looked luxurious. He went directly to the refrigerator and found leftover lunches: partially eaten sandwiches, mysterious Tupperware containers, an apple, a can of Diet Coke. In the freezer were Lean Cuisine meals. He looked around and spotted a microwave. He was going to have a feast!

  Right after he finished investigating.

  Off the little room were two doors. Jack tried the first, but it was locked. He tried the second and thought it might be locked also, but it was simply stuck. With a little extra push, the door swung open to reveal a small office — an office with a computer, a computer that was no doubt hooked up to the Internet.

  For the first time in days, Jack did a happy dance, whooping and hollering and jumping in place. He wasn’t sure what to do first — go make dinner or check the Internet for reports about the missing boy and his mom. He made himself calm down. You have all night, he told himself.

  So he ate. He ate half a turkey sub and the apple. Then he zapped some lasagna and a frozen panini. He felt like he should keep eating, but his stomach must have shrunk over the past five days. One more bite and he would barf for sure. He stretched out on the couch for a while to give his stomach a break. And that’
s when he saw it: a small TV hanging from the wall above him. He located the remote control between two cushions on the couch and turned it on. For a few moments, he was content to watch reruns of The Simpsons, and then he realized the news was probably on. Maybe he’d catch the story about the missing boy. He switched channels, but stories about fighting in countries he’d hardly heard of made him impatient. Jack turned off the TV and went into the office to use the computer instead.

  Fortunately, the computer was not password protected. In no time at all, he was checking both his YouPage (No messages from Nina — weird) and his mom’s. Still no cyber signs of her. So he held his breath and searched for missing boy maine. He was dying to know if the reports were about him and, if so, who had gone to the police.

  His picture came up immediately on a Bangor news website. Not only was it his picture staring back at him, but it had the word Play written across his chest. He clicked on it to watch a video of the actual broadcast.

  He watched it three times in a freaky kind of amazement. His grandmother (his grandmother?) had gotten a call from a man en route to the Bahamas, and although she couldn’t understand much from the call, she’d figured out that his mother was headed there and he was not. So she called the only other person she could think of: Nina. Nina had told Gram that he and his mother had been vacationing in Maine and that Jack hadn’t returned for school. Nina. The only person on this planet other than his mom who knew him from the inside out. Who knew that the last thing he’d want was for anyone, especially his grandmother, to know where he was and what had happened.

  His grandmother had called the Maine State Police, who reported having found a tent and an air mattress in the woods. After the news story aired yesterday, Mrs. Olson reported seeing Jack at her farm. The food-pantry guy, the woman from Sherman’s (who mentioned his broken finger to the reporter), the Island Explorer bus driver, and one of the women from the Lamoine General Store had also come forward.