by Karen Foxlee
“I really need to go to the library now so I can read up on them,” I said.
“The library will be closed soon, dumpling,” said Mrs. Gaspar.
“There’s a whole hour,” I said.
“I’ll come too,” said Davey. “I need to look up log cabins.”
“No, I’ll look for you,” I said. “Mother said you need to rest in the afternoons. Didn’t she, Mrs. Gaspar?”
Mrs. Gaspar looked at me doubtfully and I held my breath until she nodded that I could go.
I ran through those late-summer streets, all diesel and clanging traffic, green trees and dive-bombing bluebirds. And already I could feel the first cold breaths of autumn hidden on those sunshiny streets. Soon the trees would change their apparel and the sky would sweep itself clean.
“You’re such a good girl,” said Great-Aunt Em. “Coming all this way.”
K:
Kyzylkum
5’ 6”
END OF SUMMER
The J and K issues arrived and we rushed down the stairs to meet them. We considered such letters exotic and they would contain exotic things. A wave of Js first: Jackals and jacarandas, jack rabbits and Chinese jade. Japan and jellyfish and Thomas Jefferson. A street map of Jerusalem. Then the Ks: katydids, Kansas and Kentucky, the Bluegrass State. King snakes and kingbirds and king crabs. Two pages on how to make kites.
Kyzylkum; the great Central Asian desert.
“Kyzylkum,” I said as I fed Charlie, my stick insect, “Kyzylkum.”
Kyzylkum was the most mysterious-sounding place in the world and I was glad for knowing it. Davey watched me.
“One day she’s going to find out,” he said, and I nearly died all over again until I realized it was only Charlie he was talking about.
“Like you can talk,” I said. I knew he had filled out his application to join the Junior Sales Club of America. He’d taken that little form—Please Sir, without obligation enroll me as a member. Send me my free membership card, free portfolio of greeting cards, along with a free prize catalogue—and he’d mailed it. He’d done all that even though he’d been told not to.
I knew he’d also cut out the order form for the Sea-Monkeys. He hadn’t filled it in yet, but I knew he would. He was going to buy those Sea-Monkeys without asking and without any thought for where he was going to hide that bowl full of happiness.
“But, Lenny,” said Davey, “just think of the things I can earn if I sell those greeting cards. The nylon tent! The jumbo AF/FM radio, the Dacron sleeping bag, the walkie-talkies, the complete fishing set.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, to placate him.
“We’ll need those things on our trip,” he said.
Great Bear Lake had not been mentioned since before his operation.
“I guess,” I said.
Even though we rushed down the stairs to fetch those Js and Ks, something had changed between us. It was all my fault, yet some of it was his. He was different and I was different, all in the space of weeks. He was quieter but also full of self-importance. If I went to lie on the sofa, he said, “That’s my spot, I had a brain tumour.” He kept the hawk issue beneath his pillow even when I needed to look at the Hercules beetle. I was so filled up with secrets I couldn’t think straight.
I was dismantling our story of running away to Great Bear Lake, I knew it. I was folding up all the dusty roads. Scrunching them up, a fistful of paper ribbons. I was blowing apart our log cabin with one big breath.
“Lenny,” he pleaded in our bedroom. “We need the tent.”
I shrugged and stared at Charlie.
“Fine,” said Davey quietly, very quietly for Davey. “I’ll go by myself.”
I had told Great-Aunt Em about Charlie, my stick insect. I was frightened to in case she thought less of me. It would have been better if I had a brown horse and I rode it fast up and down Second Street.
“A stick insect, you say?” she said, grinning. “Sounds like a good kind of pet. No mess I bet.”
Her apartment was quiet and filled with echoes. My feet on the floor, even my breathing, which was ragged from running there.
“Put the kettle on,” she said.
We talked awhile about this and that. She told me about waking up with the horses on empty plains, just her and Ez, riding someplace to somewhere else. They were always riding somewhere in those stories. There were gulches and campfires and sometimes even gunfire.
“So have you remembered some stories about my father?” I asked into a pause. I wondered if he woke up with the horses on the empty plains. I wondered where he went to school. I wondered if he had dimples, the way I had dimples and Great-Aunt Em had dimples because I just couldn’t see his face right in my head anymore.
“Paul?” she said.
“Peter Lenard,” I said.
“Well, I promise I will,” she said. “Wondering if you could do a chore for me and run to the pharmacy before it closes?”
“Sure can,” I said.
L:
Log Cabins
5’ 6”
SEPTEMBER 1976
The L issues brought ladybugs and lacewings, larder beetles, leafwings and leatherbacks. I had dreamed of the family Lampyridae, the fireflies, and I was not disappointed. For Davey, L contained log cabins.
Davey drew log cabins. The log cabins replaced tractors. He drew them in the morning and at school and when he got home and before he went to bed. He didn’t draw them cosy cabins in the woods with a sun and birds, he drew them with a ruler, log by log, with correct joints, like a diagram for how to build one. He borrowed How to Build a Log Cabin (with 56 illustrations and diagrams) from the library again and again.
He said, “First you cut down the trees. Then you measure out your clearing. You need to get your angles exact. Then you start the foundations and flooring so the cabin is above the frost. I would use dovetail notches, they look the best.”
I said, “Do I look like I’m interested?”
“You will be,” he said. “When I build one and it stops you freezing to death near Great Bear Lake.”
“What are you two fighting about?” said Mother from the kitchen where she was making meatloaf and Mr. King was watching.
Davey went back to the Burrell’s Build-It-at-Home log cabin entry which he must have memorized already. He ran his fingers along the lines.
“Oh, you’ll thank me,” he said under his breath, eyeballing me.
“Would you look at those log cabins?” said Mr. King, his shadow falling over us. I studied the entry on larvae like my life depended on it.
“Maybe you’re going to be an architect,” said Mother, coming in with the meatloaf. She looked tired. I could tell she was thinking about other things. Radiotherapy, for instance. A letter had come from Professor Cole reminding us of Davey’s check-up appointment. If Mr. King hadn’t been there, she would have slammed that meatloaf right down on the table.
“No, I’m just going to build one log cabin,” said Davey.
“Where are you going to build it?” asked Mr. King.
“Way up north, in the Northwest Territories. At Great Bear Lake.”
I raised my eyes from larvae. We’d never said that out loud before. Never.
“Well, count me in,” said Mother, and her little busy frame materialized in our forest clearing. She buzzed about, tidying the cabin, washing our dirty clothes in the lake, scaring away all the fish.
“Dinner is served,” said Mr. King. “Lenny. Davey.”
Like he was the man of the house.
“Okay,” I said, not looking at him.
I read: Larvae occurs in the metamorphoses of various groups of animals. I re-read those words. I felt my cheeks stinging. The living room filled up with the smell of singed meatloaf.
Mr. King slammed our door hard that night. We’d heard him say, “Please!”
“Please Harry, I’m just so tired.”
“Please,” again.
“Soon,” she said.
I didn’t li
ke the sound of her soon. Davey must have sensed it too.
“I really do know how to build a log cabin,” he said in the dark.
“Shhhh,” I said.
“And when I join the Junior Sales Club of America, I can get the slingshot and the Smoky Mountain pack and frame.”
“Shhhh,” I said again.
“I know you’ll come, Lenny,” he whispered, and turned over on his side.
Davey didn’t grow one inch. Summer ended and school began and we waited for him to grow. We waited and pretended to not be waiting. When my mother drew the line above his head against the kitchen door, she pushed down his hair perfunctorily and slashed the line above him, as though spending too much time focusing might make him start up again. We looked at that line briefly, as though we didn’t much care.
It stayed put.
That line stayed the same in July. In August. In September. It stayed the same no matter what. When he lay on the sofa and watched Days of Our Lives. When we walked to the park. It stayed the same even though he still ate the same amount. When we went back to school, the line stayed the same. Davey had his blood tested and Professor Cole phoned and said the results were good.
When school started, my new teacher was Mrs. Albrecht. She was no-nonsense but pleasant enough, and an added bonus was that she liked science. She liked people to bring in bugs and spiders. We had a classroom ant farm. She asked for volunteer ant farm custodians and my hand shot up so high I nearly hit the roof. “I see you like the insect world, Lenny Spink,” she said to me in front of the whole class. “It’s good to see. It’s a real good thing to see.”
I couldn’t help my smile. I tried to cover it over with my lips but I couldn’t. Another surprise that first day of school was that Matthew Milford had had his mole surgically removed, including all five feelers. Even more surprising than that was what happened. Girls started noticing him. It seemed everyone liked Matthew Milford without his hairy mole. Tara Albright picked him in Farmer in the Dell to be her wife.
I watched how everyone liked him now. He was a brand new version of Matthew Milford. A revised edition. They couldn’t wait to read what was inside. I watched like an interested scientist to see if he still stuttered.
I found a chafer bug on a branch outside the art classroom. It was a dull brown with black piped edges. I watched it for a while, then took my matchbox from my schoolbag and caught it quickly. When I turned, Tara and Tabitha were giggling behind their hands and pointing at me.
“Lenny Spink is a bug lover,” said Tabitha.
“Yeah, Lenny Spink just looovvvesss bugs,” said Tara.
They weren’t mean girls, really, they weren’t, and I don’t hold it against them. They were just enjoying themselves. Some days are boring in the schoolyard, and you’ve got to find things to interest you and giggle about.
“It’s for my brother, anyway,” I said.
Tara smiled and nodded. But then Tabitha said something under her breath and I knew it was about my brother. I had a radar for that kind of thing. I could pick out the words tall and big from any conversation within fifty yards.
“What did you say?”
They didn’t answer, just giggled a bit more. Giggling was their weapon. It was a pretty good weapon. I felt my quills growing.
“L-l-l-l-eave her alone,” said Matthew Milford. I don’t know where he’d come from.
They didn’t like that. They didn’t like the newly de-feelered Matthew sticking up for me. Tabitha rolled her eyes. Tara looked dreadfully embarrassed to be found wanting beneath his gaze. I started walking. I kept thinking of that bug in the matchbox in my bag. I wished I was a bug in a dark matchbox. I tried to control my breathing. I tried to retract my quills.
“Don’t w-w-w-w-w-w-worry a-a-a-a-a-a—” started Matthew.
“—About them,” I finished. “I’m not.”
“Wh-wh-wh-what, k-k-k-k—” he started.
“Kind of bug?” I finished.
I took out the box and slid it open a little.
We didn’t talk. It was easier not to talk. We just gazed at the bug.
“You’ve got no mole,” I said finally.
He nodded in the affirmative.
“I miss it,” I said. “I liked it.”
His smile could have powered a whole city, a big city, like New York.
I kept the secret of Great-Aunt Em inside me. I went to Fifth Street whenever I could. It wasn’t so difficult once school started. I had things to do. I’d forgotten something. I needed to get something. Leaves for Charlie the stick insect, a carefully overlooked library book I had to return. Something very important that I had to deliver to CJ. It was all about timing with Davey. I had to wait until his favourite show was on. If that didn’t work and he still wanted to come I had to threaten him. A topical threat. Relevant to the day. There were any number to choose from.
“Davey, I’m meeting CJ in the park and it’s secret stuff.”
He said, “I promise I won’t listen.”
I said, “No, I’m going alone. I promise I’ll be home soon.”
He said, “I’m going to tell Mama.”
I said, “If you tell Mother, I’m going to let her know you bought the Sea-Monkeys without asking and that they are on their way in the mail.”
“You wouldn’t!” he cried.
He didn’t come with me. He didn’t tell Mother. I watched him at the table to see if he would but he turned his head away from me, which was almost worse than him telling would have been. His kind of hangdog-Davey ignoring.
Great-Aunt Em with her stories was always waiting for me.
“We were horse girls, Lenny,” she said again as soon as I was in the door. “And, boy, could we ride, Casper, Medicine Bow, Horse Creek. Mile after long mile. We rode, Ez and I, we rode those dusty miles with our hair flying out in the wind behind us.”
“Could my father ride a horse?” I asked. I was ready this time. I needed to know.
At night when I said his name in bed I pictured him on a horse as a boy. It felt good to be able to see him. I saw him kick those stirrups and gallop, and a little piece of me that was missing was filled in.
But Great-Aunt Em didn’t say anything. She looked right through me with her blue eyes and continued right on with the story of her and Ez.
I ignored that but it made my nerves jangle. I put the kettle on for her and swallowed down my worries. I ran her errands. The pharmacy, the grocer, I fetched her bacon at a little butcher one street over.
“You Mrs. Spink’s family?” the butcher asked me.
“She’s my great-aunt,” I said. I worried at his use of the word Mrs, but chose to ignore that too, chose to swat away that thought like a worrisome fly.
I had questions ready to fire at her when I returned from the chores. Questions about Peter Lenard but they fizzled out on my tongue as soon as I stood in front of her. I was scared to hear more of her excuses.
“You’re a good girl,” said Great Aunt Em. “Will you come tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said.
September 10, 1976
Burrell’s Publishing Company Ltd
7001 West Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46241
OUR GIFT TO YOU IS THE GIFT OF KNOWLEDGE
Dear Mrs. Spink,
I’m writing to let you know about a fantastic opportunity to grow your knowledge! The Wonderful World Book. That’s right, you heard it! The Wonderful World Book is published quarterly and each volume will focus on a particular region and its people, flora, and fauna! Are you interested yet? Hold onto your seat. As a valued customer, we can sign you up for The Wonderful World Book introductory offer for only $5.99 per month. Hurry! Sign up to this amazing deal and avoid
disappointment,
Yours sincerely,
Martha Brent
General Sales Manager
* * *
P.S. We’re all wondering how Davey did after his operation. Everyone at Burrell’s headquarters is sending
him well wishes. I’ve enclosed a complimentary copy of The Wonderful World Book: North America, which includes the bald eagle. —Martha.
Trouble Coming
5’ 6”
EARLY NOVEMBER 1976
Mr. King saw me running home late. He was waiting at the Greyhound bus station for some boxes. “Where you been so late, Lenny?” he said, like he had a right to ask such a question. But more than anything he gave me a fright because I was running fast to get to Mrs. Gaspar’s. I knew she’d already be making the dinner. I was supposed to be there cutting up vegetables, and the sun was almost setting behind the buildings.
“Nowhere,” I said, my hand to my heart. “Nowhere.”
“You got a sweetheart,” he said, smirking. “I can tell.”
I looked at the box of cherries Mr. King was holding. I needed to take something like that to Great-Aunt Em. I’d taken her a feather, a leaf, my drawing of Charlie the stick insect, but these were paltry offerings. I’d thought about taking my unstuck Buffalo, Wyoming sticker. I’d thought about my whole empty jewellery box. A handkerchief, laundered and ironed from a distant, more boring section of the family.
“Yeah, you got a sweetheart,” said Mr. King.
“I have not, you wouldn’t know anything,” I said.
“Hey, you show a little respect, young lady,” said Mr. King. “I’m going to have a word with your mother.”
“See if I care,” I said, and I crossed the road and didn’t even look back at him.
Mrs. Gaspar was beside herself. She was praying to the patron saint of lost children and wheezing. A fine wheeze, deep in her chest, like a squeaky door.
