Red Kayak

by Priscilla Cummings

  “Come on, it’s for the best!” Digger had called after me. “Just do it, Brady! Then everyone will forget what happened.”

  That’s what stopped me. The bit about everyone forgetting because I knew no one would. Never in our lifetimes would anyone ever forget what had happened. I swung right around without missing a step and walked straight back to him. Must have looked pretty angry, too, because Digger stepped back and balled up his fists, lifting them up above his waist, like I was getting ready to take a punch at him.

  “Let me put it this way,” I’d said point-blank. “What if it was Hank, or LeeAnn, your little sister, in that kayak, Digger? Huh? What if Hank or LeeAnn froze to death in the river that day? You think you could just walk away and say everybody would forget about it?”

  A cruel thing to say because I knew how much Digger loved those kids. He was always looking out for them. Always. But I had to make him see.

  Digger was speechless. Slowly, he brought his hands down.

  Turning, I stomped away again, all the way across the field to the post office. But opening the door to Mom’s car, I glanced over the roof and saw that Digger was still standing there in the field.

  I stared out the window of the ambulance thinking back on this just as we came up on Digger’s house. Carl slowed down because there was a police car in the yard. Thoughts scrambled in my head. Did the truth get out? I sat up and a muscle tightened in my chest.

  “Big fight there early this morning,” Carl said, stopping.

  “Here? At Digger’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  My eyes widened; I wondered if Digger’s father had let him have it, if he found out the trouble Digger was in and flew off the handle.

  “Same old thing,” Carl said. “The old man beatin’ up on his wife.”

  Carl knew all this stuff bcause he listens to the police radio, plus a lot of those police and firemen hung out together. “I hear she took the kids over to her sister’s, in Denton,” he said.

  “Digger’s mom always does that,” I told him. “Every time they have a fight, she takes the kids and leaves. Then, two days later, she comes back.”

  We stared at the mess in Digger’s front yard: tires, rusted wheel rims, an old automobile frame up on cinder blocks, a large wooden spool from some wire Digger’s father had hauled once.

  I turned to Carl, hesitating a little before I asked, “Do you know what the fight was about?”

  Carl shook his head. “Nah. Probably wasn’t nothing to fight about! It’s just him—Old Man Griswald, drinkin’ and bein’ ornery.” He shook his head. “Digger’s mother ought to have that guy arrested.”

  I sighed with relief, then looked back at Digger’s house. Even if I was mad at Digger for what he’d done, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sorry for my old friend. “Digger’s mom is too afraid to do anything,” I said. “I remember once, Digger told me how his parents had such a big fight in the middle of the night that he took his little brother and sister and walked over to his grandfather’s house. I always thought that was so sad, Digger and those little kids padding down the road dead of night, in their slippers. And to get away from their own parents!”

  “A real shame,” Carl said. He shifted out of park and drove on. “I’m sure Digger won’t be in school today.”

  “No—I guess he won’t,” I agreed, realizing at the same time that Digger would miss the ceremony this afternoon, the one where we graduated from middle school.

  At 2 P.M., the entire school shuffled into the auditorium, where each of us eighth graders was awarded a certificate and a discount coupon to Kings Dominion, an amusement park down in Virginia. A few kids got some awards. Most Musical. Most Athletic. That kind of thing. I stood twice for recognition—once, with the kids who were on the honor roll all three years, and second, because I played on the Sea Hawks’ tournament-winning basketball team.

  Half a dozen parents came to watch, but most of our parents had to work, including my own. After the sixth and seventh graders went back to class, we stayed for refreshments. A couple mothers had a table spread out with plates and napkins and a big white bakery cake that had Congratulations written on it. It looked nice, but that type of cake is way too sweet for me. I didn’t even take a piece, just picked up a paper cup full of lukewarm green punch and sipped at it.

  Afterward, while I was kneeling down to clean out my locker, I was surprised to hear J.T.’s voice.

  “Brady,” he said.

  Despite everything, I was glad to see him. “Hey,” I said, standing up.

  “How’s it goin’?” J.T. asked.

  “Okay,” I replied, scratching the back of my neck. I wondered if he was going to ask about the drill, too. “How about you?”

  J.T. shrugged. “My dad’s still sick.”

  “That’s too bad,” I sympathized.

  “So I’ve been working a lot.”

  A long moment followed when neither one of us said anything. I reached into my locker and peeled off the class schedule taped inside the door.

  “I just wanted to thank you,” J.T. said. I frowned. “For what?”

  “You know.” He glanced around suspiciously then lowered his voice to a whisper. “For not saying anything.”

  What were we now? A bunch of criminals? I crumpled the schedule in my hand.

  J.T. seemed anxious. He kept licking his lips. “So—maybe—you want to come over tomorrow?”

  “I can’t. I’m going up to Rhode Island to see my cousins.” As I said that, I wondered if he’d think I was lying because of how he made up a story about seeing his cousins right after Ben died.

  J.T. hung his head. “Brady, I just wondered if we could…you know, like, be friends again.”

  We allowed our eyes to meet. Of course I wanted to be friends. More than anything else in the world I wanted us to be friends. I didn’t want anything to change in my life or his! But it didn’t mean I wasn’t angry at him for what he did with Digger.

  J.T. shrugged. “I just want us to be friends, that’s all.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I replied softly.

  “Is that a yes or a definite maybe?” J.T. asked, his voice lifting a little.

  A definite maybe was an oxymoron. The slightest glimmer in his eye caught mine before he raised his hand. “Have a good time in Rhode Island—call me when you get back,” he said, curling the fingers in his hand and cuffing me lightly on the shoulder.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The airfare to Providence, Rhode Island, was too expensive without reserving a seat way ahead of time, so my mom purchased an Amtrak ticket on-line and took me to the train station in Baltimore early the next morning.

  It was a two-hour drive to Baltimore from where we lived on the Eastern Shore. When we arrived, Mom bought us coffee lattes and a huge, gooey Cinnabon, which we shared with two plastic forks while we waited on a wooden bench.

  “This trip will be good for you. I just hope you’re careful,” Mom said.

  “I’ll be all right,” I promised. Honestly, I looked forward to the eight-hour trip by myself. I had a backpack full of stuff just for the train: my CD player, snacks, a book to read. Plus a lot to think about.

  “In New York City, just stay on the train. Even though it stops, don’t get off,” she reminded me.

  I regarded her coolly. “Mom, I know. I’ll be fine,” I insisted, lifting the cup of latte and blowing at the steam. When I looked at her again, she was gazing at something on the ground, and I noticed for the first time how tiny lines had clustered around her eyes. Had they always been there? Or was she worried? Had the past month been hard on her, too?

  Gently, I asked, “What will you and Dad do while I’m gone?”

  She looked up and started to smile. “Work in the garden probably. And your father needs shoes. We might take a ride over to the mall one day.”

  The mall was in Annapolis, over the Bay Bridge, ninety minutes from Bailey’s Wharf. I was a little sad they’d be going without me. I speared the la
st big bite of Cinnabon and started cutting it in half with the edge of the fork.

  “Brady,” Mom said, her voice changing, “I’m worried about you and your friends.”

  I stopped cutting. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She crinkled up her eyes. “You boys never see each other anymore.”

  I nodded, agreeing, and wondered if my mother had further suspicions.

  “Is it because of what happened with Ben?” she asked.

  I hesitated, but then I said, “Yeah.”

  Mom waited for me to say something more, but I didn’t.

  “Unfortunately,” she began, “sometimes people just don’t know what to say when there’s been a tragedy. Maybe J.T. and Digger feel like they need to give you some space for a while.”

  I studied her as she spoke and decided she didn’t suspect anything more.

  “You’re right,” I told her. “I think that’s all it is.”

  Just then my train was announced, and I practically jumped up, flustered, eager to escape, the Cinnabon container still in my hands.

  Mom stood with me and brushed some crumbs off my shirt. “Why don’t you have the boys over when you get home?”

  “Good idea,” I agreed quickly, handing her the pastry. “Here, Mom—you can have the rest.”

  She set the box down and gave me a hug good-bye.

  I was lucky when I climbed aboard and found a window seat because the train was pretty full. A real mix, it seemed, of people with loud, noisy kids on vacation, and quiet, well-dressed business types. Quickly, I stashed my duffel bag in the overhead compartment. The man I would sit beside had his laptop open and his New York Times folded up and stuffed into the side of his seat. He had to pick everything up and turn sideways for me to get by, but he was nice about it.

  When the train started moving, he went back to work, tapping away on his laptop. I pushed my backpack up against the seat in front of me and got comfortable, then watched all the dumpy backyards and trash-filled alleys slide by as we pulled out of Baltimore.

  For a long time, I stared out the window until I realized that the city had slipped away. I leaned forward to unzip my backpack and rifled around inside until I found my CD player. I knew I needed to make a decision on this trip about what to do with that drill, but I didn’t want to start thinking about it yet, so I put some music on, adjusted the earphones, and settled in for the ride.

  Up ahead, the train, like a snake, was making a gradual right turn, granting me a clear view of the engine and the cars in front of mine. It reminded me of the steam train ride my parents took me on years ago. The trip was a birthday present when I turned nine, and J.T. and Digger had come along. The train ran out in western Maryland, which is pretty far away, so we drove out late one afternoon and spent the night at a Holiday Inn. The next day, we boarded the train in Cumberland and rode up a mountain to Frost-burg and back.

  We all got cinders in our eyes—but we had a blast on that train ride. Just thinking of it again made me realize how, growing up, we three were together all the time: camping out, exploring the woods, shooting baskets, fishing. We loved playing pirates, too, and talked all the time about how we’d grow up to be Navy SEALs. My dad even helped us make our own boat once.

  Boy, we loved that little dinghy we made. We’d row it all the way down the Corsica River to Pioneer Point, where the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C., has a summer place. The Russians had buoys out in the river for their boats and we’d row up, quiet as we could, beside them, then suddenly sing the national anthem—REAL LOUD—because everybody said those buoys were bugged.

  We sure did have us a time, I was thinking, and it was pretty neat, sharing a dream with J.T. and Digger. But there’s no way I’ll ever end up a Navy SEAL. This’ll sound crazy, I know—a kid like me from the boonies on the Eastern Shore—but what I want to do someday is design buildings—maybe even parks and stuff. At home, on the shelf next to my basketball trophies, I have a whole city of cardboard buildings that I carved out with my X-Acto knife.

  J.T. (his real name is Jeremy Tyler) is not likely to become a Navy SEAL either. His father probably wants him to take over the family business one day. It’s only the biggest chicken farm in the county with flocks of fifty thousand birds at a time. But the thing is, J.T.’s a total computer geek—or genius, depending on the way you want to look at it. I remember how one Friday, J.T., Dad, and I took a shopping list over to Computer Renaissance in Annapolis, bought the parts, and J.T. put together a computer for us that weekend. DVD driver, CD burner, the works. J.T.’s future is definitely cyber, not chicken.

  Just then the train crossed a wide body of water, which I figured to be the Susquehanna River. We’d be crossing into Delaware next, I figured.

  But Digger? Would Digger become a SEAL? I thought about that. Maybe. Maybe one day he would. Either that or a Marine. He loves everything about the Marines—right down to the food they eat. J.T. and I—we’ll pig out on Bagel Bites and frozen cheese pizza—and we can put away a whole bag of spicy nacho chips between us. But Digger would turn all that good food down in a heartbeat for a pack of MRE rations. MRE, as in Meals Ready to Eat. Military food that comes in slick, brown plastic bags. His mother picks them up for him every once in a while at the army surplus store when she’s in Annapolis. Digger made me try one once. We sat in the cab of his dad’s dump truck and tore open the bags: beef stew, applesauce, shrink-wrapped crackers, little packets of strawberry jam, iced-tea mix, and hot chocolate. There were matches, too—for cigarettes? Plus two pieces of Chiclets chewing gum and one of those moist towelette things for wiping your hands off.

  Digger might as well become a Marine. He already looks like one with his buzz haircut. And you ought to see him in his hunting clothes grunting away, doing pull-ups on that rusted swing set in his backyard. My mother used to say if he applied himself, he could get into the naval academy. But I doubt it with the kind of grades he makes.

  His real name is Michael. Michael Griswald. But when he was little, he loved the backhoe so much they called him Digger, and it stuck. Funny, how we all had nicknames. Even my dog, Tilly, which is short for Tighlman Island, where she came from.

  My mind sure was drifting. Looking back, I could see there were things we three did that I would never forget. Boy, like the day we were playing ice hockey and I went through the ice on that cow pond. It was Digger who saved my life. I can still see him sprawled toward me, his chin bleeding, his tooth chipped forever, reaching both of his bare, cold hands out to me while I thrashed around in that freezing water and couldn’t get a grip because the edges of the ice kept breaking. “Grab on, Brady! Grab on!” And J.T. in the background, holding Digger’s ankles so he wouldn’t go down with me.

  Suddenly Ben’s little face broke into my mind, scattering all those memories like ice chips. His little face with the blueberry eyes and the big dimples. My hands curled up into fists and my chest got tight remembering something Carl once told me: Hypothermia makes you shiver real bad, then your muscles get rigid and you kind of go into a stupor and pass out….

  I turned toward the window and bit my lip. God, I hoped Ben didn’t suffer. I hoped that however it happened, it was quick. Real quick. So quick he didn’t feel anything or even have time to get scared.

  Just then, the train’s air-conditioning or something must’ve kicked into overdrive because I felt a chill blow right through me. I shifted position in that train seat and rubbed my arms hard, but for a long time I couldn’t get warm and finally had to get up and pull a sweatshirt out of my duffel bag.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Brady!” my cousin called at the top of his lungs.

  I set my bag down and whirled around to see my cousin Kevin, waving on the train platform in North Kingston, Rhode Island. My other cousin Emily jumped up and down beside him, and my aunt stood smiling.

  We hadn’t seen one another since last summer when we vacationed together at Stone Harbor, New Jersey, and it struck me right away h
ow much taller Kevin was. We were the same age. Did I seem bigger to him? And Emily, who was only seven, had grown, too. Her hair, short and blond at the beach just months ago, was darker—and long enough for a ponytail, which swung behind her head as she ran up to me.

  “What did ya bring me?” Kevin asked like a little kid, taking my duffel and grinning. He had a terrific smile—a million freckles on his face—and new wire-rimmed glasses that made him look smart.

  “I brought you a piece of gum,” I joked. I knew we had packed something for him, but I couldn’t remember what.

  My aunt, who looks a lot like my mom only thinner, gave me a hug.

  “How was the trip?” she asked.

  “Good,” I replied.

  “Were you scared?” Emily asked.

  I shook my head and chuckled. “No, it was fun.”

  “Ahhhhh. I want to do that, Mom,” she whined. “Can I someday? Can I take the train to Maryland by myself?”

  “We’ll see,” Auntie Janet said, using a phrase that was very familiar to me.

  It had already been a long day, but it was only five o’clock when we pulled into their driveway in Jamestown. Kevin had to leave right away for a clarinet lesson, so I put my things on the cot set up in his room and let Emily pull me into the basement playroom to see her Barbies.

  “Do you want to play?” she asked eagerly.

  I sat on a hassock and wrinkled my nose. “I’ll just watch, okay?”

  It was sort of fun watching Emily. She made me think of my sister, though, because Amanda would have been the same age, only one month younger. I had a hunch my sister would have been a tomboy—like J.T.’s sister Kate. She would have learned how to bait trotlines, pitch a tent, and play basketball. But even so, I thought, sitting there, I wouldn’t have minded a bunch of Barbie dolls and stupid girl stuff like that if she could have lived.

  When Emily finished dressing one of her Barbies, she held it up.

  “Pretty cool,” I said, taking the doll in my hands. “What’s this in her hand? A pocketbook?”