Found Things

by Marilyn Hilton

  If our collages were supposed to tell a story, the story Daniel Bunch’s told was “What I Picked Up on My Way to School This Morning.” That rock looked no different from one you’d find balancing on a sewer grate after a storm. Nobody at our table told Daniel it was everyday cement from the curb, though that’s what everybody was thinking.

  When I saw all those ordinary things Daniel had on his collage, it made me think he wasn’t the wolf he wanted me to believe he was. He was more like a rat hiding from the wolf. A dirty stick with a string wrapped around it and a Twinkie wrapper, a tarnished nickel, and a rock from the street wouldn’t catch a wolf’s eye. Those were things a rat would stuff in its nest. Then he labeled everything with that rat-scratch scrawl of his that looked like it was written with a claw.

  “My grampa’s tough. He didn’t even use anestesia,” Daniel say.

  Anes-thee-sia, I thought, spreading the glue with my finger. Then, before I could stop myself, I asked him, “You mean, he pull that tooth out himself?”

  Daniel stopped talking. Everyone stopped talking. Stopped cutting, gluing, pressing, breathing.

  He stared at me. “You eavesdropping?” he say very normal so that Ms. Zucchero wouldn’t hear, but I felt his threat closing around my throat.

  I shook my head.

  “You better not. Not listening, not looking.”

  “Eavesdropping is rude,” Sonya say in that voice of hers as thin as plastic wrap, and she looked at Daniel like Now do you like me?

  Daniel say, “Now she’ll whine to big brother that I was mean to her,” and then bumped his head with his fist. “Forgot—big brother isn’t here. Because he couldn’t keep his car on the road.”

  That was the hardest part to hear about that night—that Theron was drunk when he drove into the river with Daniel in the car.

  “And if he ever comes back, they’ll electrocute him,” Sonya say.

  “Zzzap-Zap!” Daniel say, and clutched his hand over his heart, like he was shocked.

  Kevin laughed. He was afraid of Daniel. In fourth grade Daniel punched him every morning before school started, because Daniel didn’t like that Kevin got all As.

  My eyes stung, but I blinked back the tears and say, “My brother didn’t do anything wrong. He leave because—”

  “He’s a wimp,” Daniel say.

  “What kind of accent is that, anyway?” Sonya asked. “I can’t sleep trying to figure it out.”

  “It’s called fake,” Daniel say, and blew on his collage. His bacon-grease smell drifted across the table at me. “Don’t let her fool you.”

  “It’s funny she never used to talk like that. She used to talk like us,” Sonya say.

  My face felt so hot and my neck prickled. The clock above Ms. Zucchero’s desk say almost two-fifteen. Then the bell would ring, and school would be over, and I could leave. I dropped the yellow flower bead that Meadow Lark gave me into the glue on my collage. The bead was the last thing I wanted to put on it. Grains of sand had tucked deep among the flower petals, and when I stopped pressing, the petals left a pink-and-white imprint on my fingertip. In a few minutes the glue would be dry.

  “River reminds me of the way my grandfather from the low country talked,” Ms. Zucchero say. “I haven’t heard my granddaddy’s voice for a long, long time.”

  I blew on my collage to hide my smile. Ms. Zucchero had come as a replacement teacher in April, a few weeks after Theron left. I wondered—would she be as nice to me if she knew what Theron did? If she knew what they say he did—that he was drunk and drove Daniel into the river?

  The glue was almost clear now, making the collage almost done. No one at my table was talking anymore, because nobody wanted to tell a better story than the one about Daniel’s molar or the rock from a meteor. When I tapped the glue once more around the flower bead, it felt dry. So I hopped off the chair and started to pick my collage off the table, being careful that it didn’t touch anyone else’s, especially Daniel’s.

  “Wait,” Sonya say, and looked around the table. “What does everyone think of her collage? She worked so hard on it.”

  I thought Sonya was trying to be nice after what Ms. Zucchero say, so I held up my collage.

  Daniel looked at it like he was inspecting a gold ring, and then he say, “It stinks.”

  I held my collage in both hands, and suddenly what I had found in the river wasn’t all that special anymore. It just looked like a bunch of junk dumped onto the shore. That collage for Mama stunk, Daniel say, but I didn’t have enough time to change it.

  I took some tacks from the Maxwell House coffee can on the bookshelf and pinned my collage to the wall. When Daniel Bunch come up beside me and tacked up his collage, the muscles in my back tightened up.

  “Something’s missing,” he muttered, “Something . . .”

  He must be talking about his sad collage, I thought, and went back to the table to clean up. I brushed the scraps of colored paper and tape into my hand. I wet a paper towel and rubbed off the glue where I’d sat at the table. And just as I threw the paper towel into the big trash bin, Meadow Lark come into the room carrying a vase with a grip of pink carnations in it.

  “The office sent me,” she say.

  “How pretty,” Ms. Zucchero say, and smiled. “Who are they from?” There was a rumor that she had a crush on Mr. Sievers, the music teacher, and maybe she hoped they were from him. I hoped they were.

  “There’s a card,” Meadow Lark told her.

  Maybe the rumor was true, because when she read the card, Ms. Zucchero say, “Oh, they’re from my brother,” in a voice plain as chewed gum.

  Meadow Lark’s face looked so solemn, as if she too had hoped the flowers were from Mr. Sievers, so I smiled at her to cheer her up. But just then someone whispered, “Frankenfemme,” and it grew—“Frankenfemme, Frankenfemme”—until the name filled the room like a hairy animal.

  Meadow Lark didn’t turn red or cry or even run out of the room. It was as if she didn’t hear them. Instead her hands started to shake, and her good eye opened wide across her solemn face, and she say, “River, look!”

  I turned around to see Daniel Bunch shaking a paintbrush at my collage, spattering black paint all over the things I’d saved, all over my gift for Mama.

  “Daniel!” shouted Ms. Zucchero, as I dashed to the wall. I grabbed the paintbrush from him, but he held it tight, still shaking it at my collage. He spattered paint all over the yellow flower bead and the baby and the stone like a face and the key, the bear tooth—all over everything.

  Daniel looked over his shoulder at Ms. Zucchero. “What—oh, this?” he say, with his eyebrows raised high, like he had no idea he was doing anything wrong. “It was an accident.” But I knew exactly what he meant—just like the accident with Theron.

  At that moment the final bell rang, and my feet began moving before I knew what they were doing or where they were taking me. They carried me out of the art room and out of the school, up the street to the library, and down the path to the river.

  Meanwhile, my mind carried me to that house. I was in the big dining room with the carved table and the desk with the adding machine and the square shelves, and the doorway that led back to the kitchen. The house was building itself in front of me, spreading its rooms in front of me. I saw a staircase in the space between the dining room and kitchen, but it turned halfway up, so I couldn’t see to the top.

  I put my foot on the first step, when I heard, “River! Come back!” It was Meadow Lark, standing on the shore. She waved, and the breeze lifted her hair around her face like she was flying.

  I was standing up to my calves in the river. “Meadow Lark!” I called, my legs paralyzed with fear and cold.

  “Wait there,” she called, and waded out to me and grabbed my hand. “Follow me,” she say, and led me step by step all the way back to the sandy beach.

  “W
hat were you doing out there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I was just . . . What was I doing out there?” I asked, and sank to the ground. I buried my head in my arms and breathed. The rain falling on the water sounded like a zither.

  “You were walking out into the middle of the river,” she say. “That current could have swept you away.”

  I raised my head and watched the river slide by. That was the farthest I’d ever gone in there. What if I had gone even farther? What if—

  “It’s a good thing you come along when you did,” I say.

  Meadow Lark was drawing in the sand with a twig. “You could have drowned—all because of Daniel Bunch.”

  She understood how I felt. “I wish Daniel Bunch was . . . I wish he would leave us alone.” But that wasn’t all I wanted to say.

  “That’s what you want?” Meadow Lark asked. “You want him to go away?”

  “Sort of . . . don’t you?” I asked, remembering how her hand shook in the art room when they called her Frankenfemme.

  Without saying a word, she reached into her backpack and pulled out a pencil and a corner of lined paper. Then she started writing something.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “We’re making a wish. See?” she say, and handed the paper to me.

  We wish Daniel Bunch would drop dead.

  I took a sharp breath, because Meadow Lark had written what I hadn’t say. It was just like she could read my mind. But seeing my wish on the paper made me feel like throwing up. Wishing Daniel Bunch to be dead ran a chill from my toes to my scalp.

  I pushed the paper back to her. “You have to change it to say ‘disappear’ instead.”

  Meadow Lark squinted at me through her glasses, and then crossed out drop dead.

  “No,” I say, “you have to erase it, or it’ll still be in the wish.”

  “You’re being really persnickety,” she say, but she erased it and wrote: We wish Daniel Bunch would disappear.

  We looked at each other and nodded. Then I found a peel of birch bark on the beach, near where the woods began, and Meadow Lark laid the wish on it.

  “Now you need to take it far out, so it will float a long way,” I say.

  “One day you have to stop being afraid of the water.”

  “One day, I know,” I say, and shivered. “But not today.”

  Meadow Lark took the birch bark and stepped into the river, out to where the current ran free and the water reached her knees, and set that wish down. That made three wishes we’d floated down the river. And I believed not one of them would come true.

  The river took it swift. I fixed my eyes on that curl of bark until it turned into a speck and then a twinkle of broken sunlight. When I realized it was too late to take back the wish, that shiver went up my back again, and I rubbed my arms to stop shaking.

  It was just a piece of paper with some writing on it, I knew, and Meadow Lark had erased part of it. The wish we’d written about Daniel Bunch, which was probably falling apart in the water that very moment, wasn’t all that worried me. What worried me was the wish still in my heart, the one I didn’t say. If only I could erase that one.

  Meadow Lark stood in the river, looking downstream, for a few more minutes. Suddenly she pointed at something in the woods and called, “River, look over there—what is that?”

  Chapter 6

  I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw something white in the bushes. It seemed to wriggle. “It looks like a bunch of feathers,” I say.

  “Go over and take a look,” she say, and started plowing her way back to shore.

  I walked closer and saw that it was a bird, and it was caught in a bush. When he saw me coming, he raised his head and flapped at me, but only one wing opened all the way. The other stayed close to his body, as if it was broken. White feathers fluttered off his body and floated in the air. He was stuck in that bush.

  “It’s all right,” I say to the bird and cupped my hands around his body. He blinked and cooed, and let me untangle him. As soon as I held him firm in my hands, he settled down, as if he had been waiting for someone to come along and rescue him. I stroked his head, and he cooed again and blinked.

  Meadow Lark had returned to the beach by the time I come out of the woods.

  “It’s a pigeon or a dove,” she say, and patted him. Then she put her face up to his. “Hey, pidge, you’re cute.”

  He tilted his head, as if trying to figure her out.

  “Something’s wrong with his wing,” I say, touching it gently. “It looks broken.”

  “We can’t leave him here—there are wild animals in these woods. They could eat him in a split second.”

  “We have an old guinea-pig cage at home—we could put him in that.”

  “So you’ll take him home?”

  “Well, I don’t know . . . my mama doesn’t like birds. She say they’re dirty and sly.”

  “She’ll like this one. Who wouldn’t like him?” Meadow Lark say, putting her face close to his again.

  “My mama wouldn’t. Why don’t you take him?”

  “My dad’s allergic,” she say very quickly, keeping her eyes on the bird. “He needs a name. Mr. Tricks is a perfect name.”

  “It’s a funny name for a bird that doesn’t do any tricks.”

  “Well, I had another Mr. Tricks. He . . . flew out of his cage and never came back, and I always wished I could have used the name longer.”

  “I guess that’s one trick this bird can’t do. Maybe he’s faking his broken wing so he can go home with me,” I say.

  Meadow Lark laughed. “There’s a good trick.”

  We left the river, taking turns carrying Mr. Tricks, and Meadow Lark walked with me as far as my house.

  “So, this is where you live?” she say. “It’s a good-looking house.”

  By then it was close to suppertime. “You want to stay for supper?” I asked.

  “That depends—what are you having?”

  “I don’t know, but my mama’s a good cook. She works at Shaw’s, and sometimes she brings home a whole cooked dinner.” I sniffed. “Maybe she brought home a roast chicken today.”

  Meadow Lark glanced at the house, then at Mr. Tricks. “Roast chicken? Maybe not this time.”

  We say good-bye and I went into the garage, holding Mr. Tricks in one hand while I rummaged around for the guinea-pig cage. I found it behind Mama’s big suitcase, and dusted it off. Then I tore up some newspapers and put them in the bottom of the cage. I put Mr. Tricks in and latched the door closed. The last thing I needed was for him to get lost in our house, or worse, try to fly away with his broken wing.

  I carried the cage to the porch. Mr. Tricks cooed the whole time. The front staircase was a few feet away on the other side of the screen door. I could see Mama, standing with her back to me in the kitchen at the end of the hallway. If I could just get in the house and up the stairs without her seeing me, we’d be safe for a while.

  “Shh,” I told Mr. Tricks, and slowly opened the screen door.

  “River?” Mama say.

  I kept quiet as I carried the cage to the staircase.

  “River, is that you?”

  “Yes, Mama,” I say, halfway up the stairs.

  “Where have you been?”

  At the top of the stairs I say, “I’ll be right down.”

  I tiptoed with the cage to my room and shut the door.

  “Don’t coo anymore,” I say to Mr. Tricks, and set him on my bureau. Then I filled a lid with water and put it in his cage. That would have to do until I could bring up some bread and salad from supper.

  I put my face up to the cage. “Hi, pidge,” I say. Mr. Tricks tilted his head at me and blinked. Meadow Lark was right—he was cute.

  Dusk was falling outside, and Mr. Tricks glowed like the moon in
fog. I covered his cage with a towel so he’d think it was night and go to sleep. “Good night for now,” I say.

  He cooed at me in reply.

  Then I washed up really well to get the river smell off me, and went downstairs, where I knew Mama would ask me all about where I’d been and what I’d been up to.

  Chapter 7

  It was raining again the next day when Meadow Lark showed up on our porch, her nose pressed flat against the screen door. Mama had just put Saturday-night supper on the table, and the smell of maple baked beans drifted out the open door.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked quickly—because all that good smell was leaking through the screen.

  “Can I come in?”

  Mama called from the kitchen, “Who’s at the door, River? It’s suppertime.”

  Mama had strict rules about when you should visit another person’s house, when you should call them on the phone—not before breakfast or after nine o’clock at night—and how to write a thank-you note.

  “A girl from school,” I called back. Mama didn’t have to know everything about Meadow Lark that very second.

  “What does she want? Is she fund-raising? I don’t have much to give for fund-raising right now.”

  “No, she’s not selling anything.” I turned back to Meadow Lark. “Are you?”

  “No,” she say, and I heard Mama open the refrigerator door.

  “Does your friend want to stay for supper?” Mama asked. “Bring her in before the food gets cold.”

  Through the blurry screen, Meadow Lark’s good eye widened. “Can I? It smells so good.”

  I opened the door for her. “So, why are you here?” I whispered. I wanted her reason to be a good one, because seeing her made me happy. She had to see me at school, she saw me at the river by accident, but she appeared to come to my house on purpose.

  “Well, because . . .” She looked behind her at the porch as if something out there waited for her. “Since you’re my only friend here, I have to ask you—can I stay here?”

  “Mama just invited you.”

  “No, I mean stay . . . like a sleepover, but for more than one night. My dad has to go out in the field for a while.”