Sway

by Amber McRee Turner

  “See that broken bottle?” I explained. “Just to delay the trip a while, what if I—”

  “Syd Nordenhauer!” called Aunt Jo. “Come on in and do your homework, boy.”

  “Wrengthapalooza,” said Syd. “I gotta go.”

  “It’s okay,” I told him. “I’ve got to go too. You just be here right after school tomorrow.”

  I climbed out of the shelter behind Syd. Once we’d parted ways, I watched the tops of Dad’s and Uncle Clay’s heads through The Roast’s little side windows to make sure they weren’t looking out. I could see Uncle Clay wheeling around wearing a top hat and my dad laughing at him.

  When the coast was clear, I grabbed a stick and picked up the neck of the Yoo-hoo bottle with the tip of it. Then I crept up to The Roast and placed the broken neck ever so gently, jagged edge up, underneath the right front tire. I’d never felt so criminal as I did squatting there waiting for my chance to bolt unseen to the house. I could totally hear Dad and Uncle Clay talking loud and clear inside the RV.

  “This is really great stuff,” said Uncle Clay. “I wish we could have done this when we were kids.”

  “Yeah, she’s going to wig when she sees all this,” said Dad.

  “We Nordenhauers do have immeasurable power,” said Uncle Clay.

  “And immeasurable potential,” said Dad.

  Overwhelmed by a prickly mix of guilt and curiosity, I wriggled the stick back into the neck of the broken bottle and flung it far as I could out from under that tire.

  The dads silenced their talking when the bottle clanked against a rock, and I darted in a stooped position to my house, replaying their words and wondering who exactly it was that was going to wig when she saw what. I spent the rest of the night wishing that the immeasurable Nordenhauer power they’d spoken of included long-distance eavesdropping skills.

  Tuesday morning, I found a note attached to a sausage biscuit on the kitchen counter. It said: “Cass—Sorry so busy. Getting things shipshape for the big trip. Just 2 minutes in the microwave for the biscuit, and just 2 days till we hit the road!”

  The two-minute countdown was time enough to become thoroughly disgusted with Dad for thinking that this lousy trip could cover up all the heartache he’d caused, like some goop on a zeeyut. And not to mention, for making all these plans without even asking me. And, while we were at it, for using an exclamation point at a time like this.

  I accidentally cooked the note with the biscuit, setting the corners on fire a little, and had to blow on it all the way to the storm shelter. Syd arrived less than an hour later and totally busted me trying to open one of their jars to stuff the note in.

  “Okay. Forget the tetanus,” he said. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Syd, you scared me! Why aren’t you at summer school?”

  “Because I put a sign on the guidance counselor’s door that said ‘Guy-Dunce’ and got sent home,” he said. “But I did grab you this while I was there.”

  Syd unfolded a brochure with a little Snoopy dancing on the front. It said camp good grief in chunky red letters.

  “I think it’s mostly for when somebody dies,” said Syd, “but it says it’s for broken homes too. You could tell your dad you want to go there instead of on a trip.”

  Until that moment, I’d always thought of broken homes as the buildings Mom pulled people out of.

  “My home’s not broken, Syd,” I said. “It’s just a little bendy in the middle is all.”

  I used the corner of the brochure to scratch my ear, and then threw it on the ground.

  “All right, so tell me your plan, genius,” he said.

  I was sure that what I’d done would impress Syd. He didn’t have to know right away that I’d bailed on it.

  “Well, last night,” I told him, “I thought about my mom’s tire and how she couldn’t have gone with it flattened and…I kind of put that broken bottle underneath the front wheel of The Roast.”

  “You kind of put it, or you did put it?” he asked.

  “Did put it.”

  “Hmmm, sounds like some good sabo to me,” said Syd.

  “Sabo?”

  “As in sabotage. As in making the RV the one who can’t go on the trip,” he said. “You think it’ll really bust that big tire?”

  “Probably not,” I said, the truth wriggling free. “I took the bottle right back out.”

  “Buhgert!” Syd made his chicken noise.

  “I wasn’t chicken,” I said. “It’s just that I heard them talking about stuff, and, I don’t know, we just might want to wait a little before we do anything drastic.”

  “Buhgert again!” said Syd. “You don’t have time to wait if you want to get out of this trip, Cass. I think it’s time we approach things in a Fearless Fenwick kind of way. Like pour something sticky in the gas tank or something. As Aunt Toodi might say, The Roast is toast.”

  “Yikes, Syd. When you put it all that way, it sounds really mean.”

  “You’re the one who put a broken bottle under the tire!” he huffed.

  “Yeah, but I took it right back out!”

  “Well, what’s your big idea, then, genius?”

  “I don’t know. What if we just maybe spy on them a little and see what they’re up to,” I said. “Then we can decide what to do.”

  “Why don’t you just ask your dad what they’re up to?” Syd rolled his eyes.

  “I did ask,” I said. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. He just keeps saying ‘Trust me.’”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “That’s a dumb question, Syd.”

  “Well, do you?”

  Syd didn’t even wait for my answer, which was a good thing, because I wasn’t totally sure what it would have been. He was already lifting the cellar door with the top of his head to take a peek across the yard.

  “Check it out,” he said. “Good timing…it looks like the side door is opening.”

  Syd and I climbed out into the daylight and hid on the side porch while Dad rolled Uncle Clay down the ramp and into our backyard. He pushed Uncle Clay’s wheelchair with one hand and pulled my old red wagon with the other.

  As the two of them made their way slowly up our street, Syd and I zigzagged from tree trunk to tree trunk a safe distance behind them. We did this until the big trees ran out, two blocks from my house. That’s when the dads disappeared around the corner, headed toward the shopping part of town.

  While we waited for them to come back our way, Syd and I hid behind a garbage can, speculating about what in the world the two of them might be doing.

  “I’ve barely seen my dad for two days,” said Syd. “I don’t even think he came in to bed last night.”

  “Same here,” I said. “All I know is, Dad’s been leaving me these weird little notes that don’t explain any of it. And get this: last night I smelled some spray paint fumes coming in my window. And not just that, but I thought I heard something jangle, like an instrument, maybe.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Syd. “Now you’re imagining things.”

  “Then Dad woke me up with his banging around in the attic this morning,” I went on. “He must have been getting that old red wagon. Maybe they’re using it to load the meat or something.”

  “Speaking of meat,” said Syd. “I’ve been meaning to ask you…if your dad has access to all those steaks, then how come you guys eat Beefaroni and church potpies all the time?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess steaks are for people with stuff to celebrate.”

  Syd reached up to shield his face from the afternoon sun, looking in the direction of our missing dads. When he did, I caught sight of an empty cicada shell clinging to the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Looks like you’ve picked up a hitchhiker there,” I said, expecting Syd to tweeze the little carcass off with his fingers and flick it at me. Instead, he was fast overcome by a major case of the heebie-jeebies.

  “Ugh! Get it off!” he yelped, dancing all over the sidewalk and flailing so fast it l
ooked like he had twenty arms and legs. He shook so wildly, and I laughed so uncontrollably, we didn’t even notice when Dad and Uncle Clay rounded the corner and wheeled up on us.

  “You gonna be all right, son?” said Uncle Clay. Dad just smiled and gave me a wink. Syd turned ten shades of embarrassed.

  “Um, yeah,” he said, regaining his composure enough to say, “We were just taking a little walk.”

  “Yeah, us too,” said my dad. I noticed that they looked just as tense about running into us as we were them. My dad tried to stand between us and our view of the wagon while Uncle Clay tied all their Then Again Thrift Store bags shut. After that, the four of us headed home, no one mentioning cicadas or garbage cans or wagonfuls of whoknows-what, which made for the longest walk back down the street ever.

  When we reached the driveway, Dad said, “There’s still some work to be done, kiddos. You guys check in with Aunt Jo if you need snacks.”

  Syd and I stood and watched as Dad and Uncle Clay rolled their pile of things into The Roast and shut the door behind them.

  “I suppose they’ll be in there the rest of the day, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” said Syd. “They had an awful lot of stuff on that wagon. Maybe they got everything they—”

  “Wait! Listen!” I interrupted Syd with a shush. “There goes that jangly noise again. The one I was telling you about.”

  Syd heard it, too. “What in the world? Have our dads gone loopy or what?”

  “I’m going to watch and listen out the window in my room for a while,” I said. “See you tomorrow?”

  “See you tomorrow,” he said.

  That night, the curtains remained shut in The Roast, but when its lights came on, I watched my dad’s shadow move back and forth across the length of the RV. I went to sleep trying to remember the only secrets I’d ever known Dad to keep from me before this week. Little stuff, like surprise birthday cupcakes and Easter candy. All I knew was it sure did seem like a lousy time for him to graduate to the big secrets now.

  On Wednesday morning, I found my frozen biscuit on top of the Scrabble board, with the words big fun soon spelled out next to it, as if little wooden letters could make everything right.

  The microwave stunk of smoke from my minifire the day before, so I took my frosty sausage biscuit and made my way back to the cellar, to find Syd already there waiting for me.

  “Syd, did you skip school?”

  He had a sheepish look. “I told my mom you’ve been acting kind of screwy and needed some help,” he said, doing his hands on the sides of his face like cuckoo clock doors. “But never mind that. Can I have half your biscuit?”

  “You don’t want it,” I said. “It’s still hard in the middle.”

  Syd gave my breakfast a poke like he didn’t believe me. “You come up with a good plan for staying yet?”

  “Nope,” I said, because, truth be told, the reasons for going were starting to pile up, mainly in the form of little bits of mystery. So, together, my confusion and Syd’s lack of inspiration settled around us in a haze of awkwardness that lasted most of the morning. To pass the time, I spun my half-thawed sausage patty like a coin across the floor. Then suddenly its wobbly twirl gave me a little spark of an idea.

  “Hey,” I said. “The other day, my dad said something about borrowing a freezer to keep all that meat in, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So that means he’s probably already put a freezer in the RV, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And maybe it’s full of meat by now, right?”

  “So?”

  “So, I say we…”

  “Snip the cord!” Syd cut at the air with his fingers.

  “No, Syd, we just unplug the thing. Then it will all be thawed by the time we’re ready to leave. And if the meat is unfrozen, we got nothing to sell, right?”

  “Whoa, that beats the Fearless Fenwick approach by a mile,” said Syd, biscuit crumbles flying off his lips. “Plus, then we’ll have some good eats around here for days!”

  I didn’t find it necessary to mention that I’d also thought of the reverse plan of plugging the freezer right back in, if necessary. And how I planned to have a good look around The Roast before I made a final decision.

  “That settles it, then,” said Syd. “You and me, midnight tonight, we break in to The Roast!”

  “Break in?” I said.

  “What? You scared or something?” said Syd. “’Cause you know I’m not.”

  This from the same Syd who once got both pinkies jammed into a Chinese finger torture at the flea market and panicked so hard he ripped the thing right in two.

  “Whatever, Syd.”

  “Great,” he said, with a thumbs-up. “Now, let’s split up for the day. We’ve got tools to gather, dark clothes to find, and alarm clocks to set. Plus, I have to make a fake Syd for my bed.”

  “A fake Syd?” I laughed. “Can I keep him as my cousin instead?”

  Syd rolled his eyes. “See you at midnight.”

  I climbed up onto the grass, feeling a little twinge of nervousness when Syd whispered behind me, “Be sure to wear some gloves tonight…in case we have to eak-bray an indow-way!”

  When Real Syd came tapping at my window at 11:59 p.m., I was beyond prepared.

  Dark purple sweat suit, for camouflage. Check.

  Old fuzzy slippers, for their tight fit and quiet sneak-ability. Check.

  Dad watching Bonanza rerun way too loud in other room. Check.

  Cousin wearing an old Batman costume. Check.

  I scrambled out my bedroom window to find Syd wearing a tool belt cinched around his plastic cape. One pocket held a long black flashlight, another held Uncle Clay’s big wrench, and the rest were filled with pistachios.

  “Hey, Batboy, you think you could have brought a quieter snack?” I whispered. Syd rushed at me to thump my arm but couldn’t follow through without nutshells tumbling to the ground. We stood side by side surveying the dark tallness of The Roast, its shadow looming large and spooky.

  “So which window’s gonna bite the dust?” asked Syd, whap-whap-whapping the wrench into his palm.

  “Shouldn’t we at least try the doors first?” I asked.

  “If you want to waste time,” he said.

  Just to aggravate him, I strolled over slow as I could and checked the driver door. Locked. I checked the passenger door. Locked. I checked the middle door. Unlocked.

  “Dang,” said Syd, holstering his wrench.

  I pulled the door open, slow and quiet. There was so much darkness inside, it spilled right out, all mixed with the smell of spray paint and cough drops. My goose bumps came together with second thoughts about the whole midnight plan.

  “We’re going to need your flashlight,” I said.

  Syd handed over the light. He had a scared, You go on in and I’ll stand watch out here look on his face.

  “You go on in. I’ll stand watch out here,” he said, standing stiff with the wrench squeezed tight in his hand. “Just let me know if you need backup.”

  “Come on, Syd,” I said. “This was half your idea in the first place.”

  “I know.” He shrugged. “But what if there are ghosts of past owners hanging out in there?”

  “What in the world?” I said.

  “Like old dead robbers who were shot by police. Or old dead spies who were shot by the FBI. Or old dead robbers who spied on the old dead spies who robbed them?”

  “Syd, you’re not making any sense,” I said. “Besides, I’m sure they’d all run at the sight of a handyman in a cape.”

  Syd made a cross-armed pout and secured the wrench in his pocket. I stepped up into the darkness of The Roast by myself, holding Syd’s flashlight out at full arm’s length. I’d never walked into something with so little idea of what to expect. It felt like landing on a whole other planet.

  Just then, the flashlight faded to half strength, and I was forced to take things in just one bit at a time, shining my wa
y item by item through the front of The Roast. At first, my weak beam of light revealed a scattering of very Dad-ish things. A Swiss Army knife with all the tiny tools fanned out like a little sunshine of gadgets. A half bag of stale candy corn. A caseless, scuffed-up CD of Gordon Lightfoot—Complete Greatest Hits. The middle section of the motor home simply held a gray velour sofa on the right and a rolltop desk with a folding chair to my left. Nothing much mysterious about all that.

  It wasn’t until I lit my way farther to the back that things became not so predictable. The entire rear section of The Roast seemed to be separated off from the rest by a tablecloth covered in faded poinsettias. The tablecloth hung from the ceiling like a curtain, tied back with one of my old ponytail ribbons. Inside the little area behind the curtain, filling most of the space, sat a wooden box long as a bathtub and tall as my hip. On the front of the box, I noticed there was a plate-size hole, just big enough for me to stick my face into and regret it when I got a noseful of dirty-sock smell. I couldn’t see inside the box through the hole, but I sure wasn’t about to put my hand inside, scared it could very well be holding the ghost socks of dead robber-spies.

  On top of the wooden box was a stack of familiar items mixed in with some unfamiliar. I recognized the cushion from Syd’s den couch laid all the way across the lid. Folded neatly on that was the yellow afghan that Aunt Jo made me years ago, the one I’d retired because my long middle toe used to get caught in it. The next level up was a small blue pillow of worn velvet, and balanced on that was a fresh box of colored pencils, newly sharpened and great for noodling. A little red sharpener sat on top of the pencils like a cherry.

  Above all that, out the back window, Syd’s head popped up as he jumped for a peek. “Freezer?” he said on his first jump. He’d nearly startled the soul right out of my body.

  “No freezer!” I said on his second jump.

  “Meat?” he said on his third.

  “I don’t see any!” I said on his fourth.

  I ignored the fifth, sixth, and seventh jumps, and waved the light around for more discoveries. There was “CASS” written in glitter in Uncle Clay’s jagged handwriting on the back side of the curtain, a poster showing the construction of the Eiffel Tower in six different blackand-white photos thumbtacked to a wall that had been freshly painted white, and a stack of old wrinkly magazines on the floor. So this is what they were doing in here, I thought. Setting all this stuff up.