The Middle of Somewhere

by J. B. Cheaney

  “We might have shot a budding romance in the foot,” I told Gee.

  “Pow-pow!” he replied, pointing his stick down the road.

  I was so bored, we tried roasting things besides hot dogs: bologna slices, baby carrots, Oreo cookies. Gee also tried teaching Leo to catch pieces of food in his mouth, but the dog responded the same way he had to all Gee's lessons: polite cluelessness. “So he's not only scared, he's stupid,” I said.

  “He's not stupid! His brain just doesn't work like other dogs'.”

  “I'll bet all doggie brains work the same.”

  “Don't either! Kid brains don't work all the same. Miss Puff says I'm differently abled.”

  Miss Poff was his second-grade teacher in Lee's Summit, whose name he never got right. “We're not talking about you, we're talking about—” I broke off at thesound of a vehicle coming our way—maybe another camper, which would at least give us something to look at.

  But it was even better: a dusty blue-and-white pickup driven by Howard Sayles, pulling right up beside us with a smooth turn.

  “Hey,” he said, resting one elbow on the open window. “I had to bring Aunt Melba some garden peas, and she said y'all were up here by yourselves. You want to go for a little drive?”

  Gee popped up like a spring. “I get to ride in the back! And Leo, too!”

  I knew kids weren't allowed to ride in truck beds on the highway, but when Howard said “a little drive,” he meant just that: “My aunt says only around the park. But that's a ways.”

  Leo balked at jumping into a strange pickup bed. When Gee said, “Come on, boy!” he just stood with his head cocked to one side, as though asking, What is this ‘Come on?’ When I spoke to him, he whined and slunk back. I suggested to Howard, “Maybe if you start off down the road he'll jump in anyway, like he did with the bike trailer.”

  Howard just stuck out his hand toward Leo. After a minute, the dog came close enough to sniff it. A minute later, he was standing still to have his ears scratched—like he'd never done for me. Howard patted the tailgate lightly. Leo crouched, then pushed off with his hind legs and landed on the bed, his claws sliding on steel.

  “Cool!” Gee exclaimed, and pushed off with his hind legs, too.

  Howard closed the tailgate while I ran over to poundon the RV door and tell Pop where we were going. He yelled something in reply—probably “Okay,” though I didn't stick around to make sure. Howard was in the cab, gunning the motor. When I jumped in, he shifted into reverse and backed away from the campsite. I said, “Hey is there any chance you would let me drive a little?”

  “Well…” He put the motor in forward gear. “It's a stick shift.” I wasn't sure what he meant, until he shifted the stick down as we speeded up. “They're tricky to learn? Especially at night. If you're going to be here awhile, I might could come back in a couple days.”

  “Um … yeah.” I just realized that this was my first time alone in a vehicle with a boy! Or not exactly alone—I turned around to check on Gee and saw two lumps sitting quietly in the truck bed, the smooth lump with one arm around the hairy one. Still, it was a weird feeling, and for the moment Howard seemed as tongue-tied as me. A mile spooled out under the wheels before he said, “Aunt Melba told me how you talked your grandpa into keeping the dog.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn't talk him into it, exactly. I made a bet with him.”

  “But you talked him into taking the bet.”

  “I guess.” After a minute, I said, “The thing is, I can see Pop's side, kind of. Leo's been nothing but trouble so far, and even if we get him home we might not be able to keep him. Still…”

  “Still what?” he prompted.

  “I don't think any human ever took to my brother like that dog has. He's, like, the only one who'll put up withhim no matter what. Of course, my mother and I do, but we have to.”

  “What about your dad?” he asked.

  I hesitated, then told him about my dad. The truck lurched as he shifted down for climbing a hill. “Sorry,” he said.

  “That's okay.” I knew the “sorry” wasn't for a rough transmission.

  He paused at the top of the hill, then backed up. “This here's my favorite spot by the lake. Let's go sit outside.”

  He'd stopped at an overlook with a turnout and picnic shelters. We got out of the cab and walked around to climb into the pickup bed beside Gee. Not beside Leo, who backed into the corner when I came aboard, making like a spare tire.

  “This is neat” Gee said happily. “The water has stars in it.”

  The lake nestled among the low hills like a mirror in a giant's palm. The wild Kansas wind had settled down to a light breeze that rippled the surface and made the stars look like they were jumping up and down.

  “Ever' once in a while,” Howard said, “the water's as still as glass. Except for when a fish strikes? Then it's like somebody stuck in a pin.”

  A turquoise band of sky wrapped the western horizon like a ribbon. Our voices sounded so quiet and cozy I wanted us to keep talking. “What do you do on the farm?” I asked him.

  “Whatever needs doing. Plant. Disk. Cultivate.”

  “Cool!” bubbled Gee, who had no idea what two out ofthree of those words meant (I wasn't too clear on them, either). “Do you have cows and horses?”

  “Nope. My sister raises chickens. To eat? But we grow corn and soybeans.”

  “Do you drive a tractor?”

  “Sure. Since I was five.”

  “Wow! I wish I was a farmer. Do you have to go to school?”

  “Sure I go to school. We get out early sometimes, spring and fall.”

  “So you spend most of a day at school, then come home and work some more,” I said.

  “Yep.” Howard's voice sounded matter-of-fact but proud underneath. “My folks'd have a hard time getting along without me.” I thought about Mama getting along just fine without us, except for missing us, of course, and felt a touch of envy. “Look!” He pointed at the sky. “Shooting star! Did you see it?”

  We both shook our heads.

  “Keep looking, over there. See the Big Dipper?” I nodded, but Gee had to know what the Big Dipper was and pestered us until we'd traced it enough times to poke through the sky. “Watch that space between the Dipper and the horizon,” Howard continued. “I'll bet we see some more.”

  We watched as the turquoise light faded to black and the stars came out thick as daisies. Gee was fidgeting when a silver scratch appeared in the dark sky, like an Etch A Sketch line. “I saw one!” we yelled together.

  For the next few seconds, that neighborhood of the sky was full of them, as if it were the Fourth of July over there.Gee leapt up and hopped all over the truck bed, making tools rattle and Leo cringe. “They're having a party!”

  Howard told him to sit down, then asked, “Who is?”

  “The angels. Maybe it's a bowling party, and the stars are bowling balls!”

  “Sit down,” Howard said again. Gee flopped on Leo, who groaned. “They're not really stars, y'know? They're meteors. Space is supposed to be full of meteors. Bombarding us all the time? But when they hit the earth's atmosphere, and start plowing through all those little particles? They burn up with friction. That's what you're looking at—There's another one.” He leaned back on the side panel. “Sometimes you see lots of 'em. Depends on the angle they're coming from and how clear the night is.”

  I shivered, leaning back against the wheel well.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  “A little.” The tank top and shorts I'd been wearing all day didn't cut it for night. He was pulling off the flannel shirt he wore over his T-shirt. “Oh, you don't have to—” Without a word he tossed it over to me, and it felt so warm I had to put it on. “Do you do this a lot? Come out to look at the stars?”

  “Best show in town.”

  “Do they make you feel, you know—small?” In books and movies, people are always looking up at the stars and feeling like specks of nothing.

  “Nope,�
�� he said, clamming up.

  I pried him open again. “No? They're so big.”

  “Yeah…”

  “There goes another one!” Gee yelled. “Whoosh!”

  “I don't feel small just because they're so big,” Howard said. “But because they're so awesome I feel… awed.”

  There was a long pause, while Gee made noises: “Fzzzt! Yowza!”

  “So,” I said at last, “you're not, like, blown away at all?” I was, with those billions of lights that looked close enough to breathe on me.

  “Sure I am. That's what ‘awe’ is. What if God put 'em there to be awesome? Then I'm feeling just what I'm supposed to feel, right?”

  “I guess. I'll have to think about it.”

  “In fact, it makes me feel kind of special. That I can look at 'em that way. You don't see ol' Leo wondering about the stars.” He leaned forward and stuck his hand toward Leo, who stretched his nose out and sniffed before licking it.

  “Maybe he thinks you're awesome,” I said. I was thinking a lot more highly of the kind of boy who drove a pickup and wore a John Deere cap. Even if I didn't feel like licking his hand.

  “Zip-zip! Two at the same time!” Gee flopped down between us to catch his breath. “It's like a hundred human cannonballs.”

  “Hey,” Howard said, “you ever heard of Cannonball Paul?”

  I'd have been happy to never hear that name again, but Gee was all over it. Howard had seen the blazing amazing Paul at the grand opening of Farm and Home World in Garden City. So Gee had to hear about his outfit (sparkly), what he said (not much), what the cannon looked like(uh … like a cannon, only really long), and how fast, high, and loud he flew. Howard thought it was pretty cool.

  “Tell me about it,” said I, sarcastically.

  “I thought I just did. …”

  “That's what I want to be when I grow up,” Gee announced.

  Howard laughed. “You'd be good at it, I think.”

  A bird piped up from the lake, starting a chorus of squawks and shrieks from its neighbors. “Sandhill crane,” Howard said as Leo lifted his head and made a strangly whine. “Don't that dog know how to bark?”

  Gee defended his mutt. “He was treated bad when he was a puppy That's what we think. He's afraid of everything.”

  “That's no excuse. What's the point even being a dog if you don't bark?” Howard inched over to Leo—not so fast as to startle him—and made a low growl in his throat. The dog cocked his head, probably thinking, What the heck …? Then Howard gave a sharp, low bark, and Leo wriggled back into the corner.

  “Cool!” Gee exclaimed. “Barking class!” Next minute, we were running through the entire canine vocabulary, from woof-woof to yap-yap to aroooooo! Once Leo understood we wouldn't let him off the hook, he finally managed a yap that sounded like it had been squeezed through a rubber hose.

  He was probably just telling us to cut it out, but Howard decided we'd made a good start. “Anyway, it's time for me to head for home.”

  After we'd motored around the lake and returned to our campground, I noticed another RV, bigger than ours,had taken up residence a few sites down. Howard stopped under the security light and let the motor idle.

  “Well…,” I said. “Thanks for the ride and everything.”

  “Never thought I'd spend all that time teaching a dog to bark.”

  I laughed. “Next time, you can teach me to drive. Or we could go fishing again. I liked it.”

  “I like hooking a four-pound bass, too.” He might have been making fun of me, but when he smiled, I didn't really care.

  I put my hand on the latch and leaned against the door. “Well… good night.”

  “G'night,” he said, and then: “Hey. You got an e-mail address or anything?”

  Kent Clark says you should always have extra business cards on hand, so I reached into my shorts pocket and gave him one. He looked at it with respect, unlike my friends at school. “I've got to get me some of these.”

  “How about you?” I asked him. “I mean, do you have addresses and that kind of stuff?”

  How dumb can anybody sound, I ask you? But he answered, with obvious pride, “Got a cell phone. Give me another card and I'll write the number.” I passed one over, along with a pencil stub. After a few seconds, he handed them back, saying, “You ever need anything, just call.”

  That sounded so sweet it needed an appropriate reply. But just then my brother yanked open the door I was leaning on, and I fell out of the cab.

  What came out of my mouth wasn't very appropriate.

  Unfortunately, the worst things in life “just happen,”

  too—there's no way you can plan for them.

  —Veronica Sparks,

  Olympic-caliber planner

  The next day made me wonder why we'd ever left Missouri. To begin with, I didn't sleep well in the tent with Gee twitching and Leo snortling. After Pop left at dawn, I dragged my sleeping bag inside and rolled up on the sofa. When I finally rolled off the sofa, it was because Gee had tied a bunch of empty tin cans to Leo's tail to see what he would do. What he did was tear off like all his former abusive owners were after him, which just made the noise worse, which spooked him even more, and so on.

  By the time we finally got him stopped, he'd turned over an industrial-size garbage can and woke up the new neighbors, who were trying to sleep in. The lady of the house let us know they'd come out to the lake for some peace and quiet, and if we didn't tie up that dog right now she was going to march down to the manager's office and complain.

  “What were you thinking?” I hissed at my brother after we'd freed Leo from the cans.

  “I just wanted to see what would happen!” he wailed.

  “Did you think it would be anything good? He was traumatized when we got him—you probably set him back a whole year. See? He's hiding again.”

  Leo had backed into his favorite spot between the rear wheels.

  “I didn't mean to,” Gee sniffed.

  “Tell him that.”

  “Okay.” He scooted under the RV beside the dog, and I heard him explaining, “I'm sorry, Leo, I didn't think it would scare you that bad. …”

  Sighing, I went inside the RV to rustle up some cornflakes. The milk in the refrigerator smelled a little on the sour side, which seemed funny because Pop had only bought it the night before. I poked a couple of Pop-Tarts in the toaster and turned on the radio but couldn't get anything besides country-and-western music and farm reports.

  When the toaster popped, I decided to enjoy a nice quiet breakfast by myself. And after that, I'd straighten up the place—which definitely had a lived-in look by now, with my sleeping bag sprawled on the sofa and Pop's bunk unmade and his breakfast dishes in the sink. Maybe, if Leo could keep his boy occupied, I could even do a little organizing around here.

  No such luck, though. I was halfway through breakfast when Gee's scream came from the direction of the lake, where he wasn't supposed to be. Running down the nature trail, I almost got knocked over by Leo. Gee was right behind, his legs dotted with black slimy things.

  We both freaked out a little—I can handle rampaging squirrels easier than black slimy things. “Where have you been?!”

  “Down on the edge of the water,” he wailed, “where the mud is.”

  That explained it—leeches. After we both stopped the Eeeuuuwww business, we discovered that the suction could be broken with a twig. Gee then figured out that they would attach to anything, and before I got them all off his legs he had one slurped onto each fingernail.

  “That's disgusting!” I said. “They'll suck your blood.”

  “They won't suck my nails, will they?” He waved his black squishy fingertips in front of my nose.

  “Get outta here! Why do you have to be so retard—?!” I stopped myself, but not soon enough.

  “I'm not retarded!” He stamped with both feet, accidentally scraping his ankle on a piece of root sticking out of the ground, and had to walk the rest of the way home trailin
g blood. And it wasn't even noon yet.

  For lunch we had string cheese and baby carrots and crackers, but no milk because it had gone so bad I threw it out. Then we walked down to the beach to kill the afternoon. After cooling off in the water, I buttered myself with sunscreen and stretched out on my beach towel. Meanwhile, Gee dog-paddled out to the guard rope and started thrashing around in the water like he was drowning. I paid no attention because he can swim like a fish—but a man who was building sand castles with his kids plunged into the water to rescue him. Only to find, when he got to the victim, that Gee was hanging on to the guard rope with both feet. The man dragged him back to the beach and gave us both a lecture on—guess what?—the Boy Who Cried Wolf. That story never sinks in with Gee, but the adult world doesn't give up.

  I was really looking forward to Pop's return so I couldget a break—and when punching numbers into a laptop and cooking dinner looks like a break, that should tell you what kind of day I was having. So the sound of his Yamaha roaring up the road, earlier than expected, was music to my ears. Until I discovered it was only bringing him to wash up and change his clothes.

  “Y'all can get your own dinner tonight,” he said. “Here, I bought some more hot dogs.”

  “What—?” I sputtered. “Where are you going to be?” I wondered if he'd ever heard of “quality time,” or if he just figured he'd already put in enough of that.

  “Moderate your tone, young lady. Melba waved me down on the way in and invited me to her place for dinner.” He disappeared into the itty-bitty bathroom.

  I squared off against the door. “Is this what dancing the polka under the Japanese lanterns leads to?”

  He didn't hear me with the water running, but in a minute he poked his head out. “Forgot to mention. We'll head out tomorrow.”

  “Where to?” I gasped.

  “North.”

  That left me sputtering again. “But—but—”

  He paused on his way to the shirt closet. “But what?”

  “I'm… not ready to go yet.” Lame, but I didn't feel like explaining that Howard had kind of promised to come by tomorrow and teach me how to drive a stick shift.