Tucker

by Tom Birdseye

  Sunday, September 11

  Dear Mom,

  Just a quick note today. I want to watch the football game on TV. Do you think I should still root for Cincinnati now that I’m living closer to Seattle? I guess it doesn’t matter. What I really like best is watching the instant replays. Don’t you wish you could have them on Christmas morning? It would be like getting to open each present twice!

  Tucker smiled at the thought of doubling the number of Christmas presents with video magic. That’s just like her to think of something like that. He read on.

  Tucker and I had so much fun yesterday. We watched a big turkey named Icarus chase a dog! It was really funny. Then that turkey actually kissed Tucker! Can you imagine being kissed by a turkey? yuck!

  Tucker looked up from the letter, through the trees and across the road toward his house. Yuck is right. It was funny, though, wasn’t it? He went back to the letter, picking up speed as soon as he read the next line.

  Tucker is a great brother. He knows so much about the forest and about Indians and things like that. He introduced me to his friend, Joe Allen, too. I told you he even let me have his room to sleep in while I’m here, didn’t I? Wasn’t that neat of him to do that? He’s REALLY NICE.

  Tucker read the last sentence again. She used capital letters to write REALLY NICE. Boy, if she only knew what I’ve been thinking about her all of this time, she wouldn’t have. He stuck his hand down in his pocket and felt for the Indian chief. I shouldn’t have been so hard on her for so long. She really isn’t all that bad. He turned back to the letter.

  Idaho is neat. We can see the mountains from the kitchen window and I even saw a big deer with huge antlers out in the meadow behind the house yesterday evening. It was just like in a movie or something. That deer was so beautiful!

  Tucker nodded to the letter as if Olivia were there instead, actually saying to him what he was reading.

  Being here with Tucker and Dad is even better than I thought it would be. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all live together as a family? Think about it. OK, Mom?

  Bye for now.

  Love,

  Livi

  Tucker read the entire letter again, this time more slowly. The last paragraph he read twice more, one particular phrase in it four times.… together as a family … together as a family … together as a family … together as a family. The words seemed to stand out from the rest of the letter as if they were written in bright red ink. Tucker couldn’t take his eyes from them. Would it be so great? Together? Together as a family?

  Tucker stood. He folded the letter carefully and put it back into the envelope. “Together as a family,” he said out loud, testing the words to see how they felt on his tongue.

  There was just enough glue left on the envelope flap for it to reseal. Tucker licked it and pressed it shut, then ran quickly out of the woods. He put the letter back in the mailbox, then walked down his driveway toward home.

  “Together as a family … together as a family.” The sound of it felt better each time he said it. Better than he ever could have imagined. He bounded up the steps, a smile growing larger on his lips with every upward motion, reaching ear to ear like his sister’s by the time he opened the kitchen door.

  It vanished instantly, however, when he saw Livi sitting at the kitchen table. The look in his sister’s eyes spoke of nothing but pain. “It’s Dad, Tucker,” she said in a shaky voice. “I just got a call. He’s fallen off the roof of the Eldridges’ barn.”

  12

  “I want to see my dad,” Tucker said nervously. “Why won’t they let me see him?”

  He and Livi stood in the doorway of the emergency room at Bonner General Hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Eldridge stood behind them in the hall. They had given them a ride into town.

  “It’s all right, Tucker,” Mrs. Eldridge said gently. “They have to fix that leg of his first, you know.”

  Tucker shifted from foot to foot, trying to see around the curtain where a doctor and two nurses worked on his father. “But are you sure that a broken leg is all that’s wrong with him?”

  Mr. Eldridge put his hand on Tucker’s shoulder. “The fall knocked him out for a few minutes. It was at least thirty feet. Thank goodness I had pushed that old straw out of the barn with the tractor. He fell right onto it.”

  “But is he going to be OK?”

  Livi jumped on Tucker’s question before Mr. or Mrs. Eldridge had a chance to open their mouths. “Of course he is!” It was the first thing Livi had said since leaving the house.

  They all looked at her. She had inched through the doorway and now stood beside the nurses’ station. She was staring hard at the curtain. “Of course he’s all right!” she repeated without looking back at them. “That’s my dad in there.”

  Tucker watched her. She continued to stare without blinking, watching the curtain as if she believed she could mend a broken leg just by concentrating, as if she had to do it all by herself or it wouldn’t get done.

  Reaching in his pocket, Tucker found the carving of the Indian chief. His fingers ran over it like water over pebbles. He took a deep breath, then let it out. A family together, right? Then he moved over beside his sister, and they waited for their dad.

  13

  “And a-one, and a-two, and a-three, step, slide, twirl.” Livi danced across the living-room floor in time to the jazz playing on the stereo, her ponytail spinning out and above her head in a helicopter whirl. She stopped near Tucker, who sat in the rocking chair watching. Going on point like a ballerina, she then tiptoed back to her waiting “partner”—the vacuum cleaner. A dainty curtsy to the idle machine brought another chuckle from Duane Renfro.

  “Livi, you’re just as silly as your grandfather used to be,” he said from his place on the couch. He reached down and patted the cast on his leg. “Home for only an hour and you’ve entertained me nonstop, just like he would’ve done. I remember it like it was yesterday. Pops never missed the chance to get a few giggles out of a captive audience.”

  Livi turned and curtsied as prissy as she could make it. “Captive audience?” she said. “They can’t keep somebody like you flat on your back!”

  Duane laughed. “Oh, yes they can. Until you guys get a father with enough sense not to step backward off a barn roof, flat on my back is just where I’m going to have to stay for a while. I had to promise Dr. Lawrence I’d keep this foot up until the swelling goes down. Then I can move around using crutches. It was the only way I could talk him into letting me out of the hospital. He wanted to keep me there overnight for observation. I told him I’d get the best possible observation if I just went home. Little did he know how right I was.”

  “Aren’t you glad you only broke your leg, Dad?” Livi asked, again dancing with the vacuum cleaner. “If you hadn’t landed on that pile of old straw, you’d be missing this show right now.”

  Duane laughed again. “Imagine that, me laid up in the hospital and you delivering one of the great jazz ballerina performances of the century.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Livi said from the middle of a pirouette. “That hospital wore me out.”

  Duane let out a long sigh, his face turning thoughtful. “They say that if you think you are dying, your whole life flashes before your eyes; you can see everything you’ve ever done for as far back as you can remember.”

  Livi stopped. “You mean like a rerun on TV?”

  “Not exactly.” Duane chuckled. “More like the highlights of an entire season, I guess.” He reached down and traced Tucker’s and Livi’s signatures on his cast with his finger. “But my whole life didn’t flash before my eyes when I fell off the barn roof today. Instead, when I was lying on that hospital table waiting for Dr. Lawrence to set my leg, I gave a lot of thought to just one part of it.”

  “What was that?” Tucker asked from the rocker.

  “You two,” Duane said, “and how glad I am that you’re both here with me.”

  “Aw, shucks!” Livi boomed, covering her eyes i
n mock embarrassment. “Us?” She bounced over and kissed her father on the cheek, then spun around with her arms out. The grin on her face flashed out, then disappeared as she took yet another spin, this time with the vacuum cleaner cord in tow. It wrapped around her ankles, tripping her. She ended up on the floor, facing Tucker. “I guess Dad meant he’d be missing a hog-tied ballerina performance if he were still in the hospital. This is about as silly as a turkey chasing a dog, right, Tucker?”

  Tucker had been in the rocking chair since they came home from the hospital—just sitting and rocking, watching his family act like a real family. He smiled. “I saw Maggie out by the turkey pen earlier. She was probably teasing Icarus about how few days are left until Thanksgiving.”

  Livi giggled as she tried to unravel the vacuum cleaner cord. “You watch,” she said, “Icarus will make a break for it any day now. This is the Wild West, isn’t it? He’ll become a turkey outlaw, a real desperado!”

  They all laughed at this one, imagining Icarus on the run, a tiny cowboy hat perched on his head, a red bandanna for a mask, six-shooters strapped to his fat feathery sides.

  Tucker watched as his father tried to give Livi directions on how to get untangled from the vacuum cleaner cord. They were both laughing so much, nothing was getting done. I really was wrong about Livi. Maybe she should be a member of The Tribe. Joe Allen sure doesn’t seem to care about any of it one way or the other. He reached in his pocket and held the carving of the Indian chief. A tribe is a kind of family. That’s what we’d be. Livi says that Mom is interested in getting the family back together again. In her letter, Livi made it sound so right, like there’s really no other way. Family … together … all of us … after seven years. “Think about it. OK, Mom?” That’s what Livi wrote.

  Tucker stopped rocking. Together, Mom? All of us? Like Livi wrote to you? I’ve saved your letters. I’ve got them memorized. I wanted to talk to you on the phone the other night, but I just didn’t know what to say. Maybe you didn’t know what to say either, Mom. Maybe that’s why you haven’t written more, or called. Would it make a difference in what you decide if I wrote to you, too—like Livi? I know I’ve been bad about that. I always thought it would be siding against Dad if I did. Anyway, I didn’t think it was possible that you two could get back together. Dad said that you didn’t want to be part of our lives anymore. You just sort of faded away for me. I started to think about you like you were a dream I had had a long time ago, like you weren’t real. I didn’t want to write to someone who wasn’t real. Would it make a difference if I wrote now, Mom? Now that you seem more real again, even living so far away in Kentucky? Now that Dad is trying again, to prove to you that he can make it? Now that we’re all here but you? Together, Mom? Is that what we really need?

  Tucker let the Indian chief fall back into his pants pocket, then got up and walked into the kitchen. He went to the cabinet drawer, where everything that didn’t have another place was kept, and picked out a pencil. He could still hear Livi and Duane in the living room, Livi giggling and saying something about being too young to have to spend the rest of her life with a vacuum cleaner tied to her ankles. Duane’s chuckle seemed as light and airy as his daughter’s mirth.

  Tucker sat down at the kitchen table and flipped back in his school notebook until he came to clean paper. He rolled his pencil back and forth in his fingers, then listened again to his father’s and sister’s laughter. All here but you. Then he began:

  Dear Mom …

  14

  It was the following Friday after school before Tucker and Livi could get the pie made. “Fresh huckleberries poured into a ready-made crust,” Livi said. “A surprise! Dad will love it!”

  The swelling had gone down quite a bit in Duane’s leg. He was up and about now, though not a lot. Tucker and Livi had helped him hobble out behind the garage on his crutches. They left both him and Maggie sitting in lawn chairs next to the woodpile, the autumn sun shining warm on them from a crystal-blue sky. Then they had rushed inside and got to work.

  “Are you sure he doesn’t know what we’re doing?” Tucker asked, checking the oven temperature to be sure it was right.

  “A complete surprise,” Livi said, licking the huckleberry juice from the spoon.

  Livi suggested that Tucker alone deliver the pie to Duane when it was done. “That and a fork … or two,” she said with a smile.

  “But you helped make this pie just as much as I did,” Tucker insisted.

  She picked up a dishrag and began wiping off the kitchen counter. “Yep, and you can bet I’ll get a big piece after dinner,” she said. “I just want to finish cleaning up here and then write Mom a letter. We’ve all been so busy, I didn’t get to write yesterday.”

  Tucker stood, pie in hand, and looked at Livi. I mailed my letter to Kentucky on Monday. That was five days ago. It probably took three days to get there. One day for her to find time to answer. Three days back across the country. That’s seven days. I should get a letter from Mom this coming Monday. Livi has been getting one a day. Starting Monday I’ll get a letter—

  “Go on,” Livi said, shooing Tucker toward the door, dishrag waving. “Don’t worry about me and that huckleberry pie. You’re forgetting that it’s your turn to do the dishes tonight. That’s when I’m going to sit and eat a piece as big as Icarus the turkey!”

  Duane and Maggie were still in place when Tucker walked around the garage to deliver the huckleberry pie. The only difference was that they were both staring intently at the woodpile.

  “Shhhh!” Duane said without looking up, finger to his lips. “Maggie and I have been waiting a good ten minutes to take a shot.”

  Tucker craned his neck forward to see what was going on. His father held a squirt bottle in one hand, pointing it at the woodpile. “There’s one.” He slowly raised the squirt bottle and squinted one eye to aim. “I’ve found their hideout, and now I’m going to teach those stinkbugs not to invade our house every fall.”

  “You’re shooting at stinkbugs?” Tucker asked, pie and two forks in hand.

  Duane nodded, the squirt bottle still trained on the woodpile. “Big-game hunting, Tucker!” he laughed. “Lions, tigers, bears, stinkbugs. I just couldn’t resist, so I armed myself with this handy bottle of windshield cleaner I’d left out here.”

  Maggie squirmed on her chair and let out a low growl at the dark gray bugs now crawling out from under the woodpile. Duane took a deep breath, checked his aim again, then with a whoop started squirting. “Yahoo! Take that and that and that, you little stinkers!”

  The mixed smells of windshield cleaner and stinkbugs under attack filled the air. Maggie barked. Duane pulled and pulled on the plastic bottle trigger until all of the bugs had retreated back under the woodpile. He chuckled. “You’d think a man with two college degrees would know you can’t wash the smell off those things as easy as the grime off a windshield, wouldn’t you?”

  Tucker laughed. “I hate it when I step on one by mistake.”

  Duane pinched his nose between a finger and his thumb. “Awful smell, isn’t it? Like rotten eggs or something worse.” He reached over and patted Maggie on the head. “Stinkbug hunting with a squirt bottle. Only a man with a broken leg would do that, huh, Maggie?”

  The smile on Duane’s face faded. He looked down at the cast on his leg. The crutches lay on the ground beside his lawn chair. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to take you hunting this deer season, Tucker,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Tucker stood very still for a moment. Duane looked up at him. Tucker hesitated, as if he had forgotten what he came for, then offered the pie.

  Duane reached out and took it, pulling it under his nose and inhaling deeply. The smile returned to his face. “Huckleberries,” he said. “I love the smell of them almost as much as the taste.”

  Maggie jumped from her lawn chair. Tucker slowly sat down in it. I’ve been practicing with my bow every day. Tomorrow is opening day. It’s my final test of worthiness and skill. I can do it alo
ne. I knew Dad probably wouldn’t be able to help. He hasn’t been able to help with finishing the bow either. That’s OK. He’s been busy looking for a job. And now there’s his leg. I can do it alone. That’s OK.

  Duane stopped sniffing at the huckleberry pie and looked at Tucker. The expression on his face changed somehow, not dropping the smile the pie had brought him, but not holding it either. “Your mother used to make huckleberry pies for me when we first got married. We were fresh out of college, and I was working at my first teaching job. We were in Kentucky then, so she had to use canned huckleberries. But she knew how much I loved the taste and the smell of them right out of the oven. She knew that being back East, so far away from everything I’d grown up with here in Idaho, was hard for me. The pies were like her gift from the West. We were very much in love.”

  Tucker handed his father one of the forks. I’ve been watching and tracking the big buck. I know just where to wait—in the birch tree behind the meadow. I know I can get him. I just know I can. One shot to the chest. My final test.

  “But huckleberry pies don’t keep a marriage together,” Duane said. He stuck the fork into the center of the pie and cut out a bite. “It can fall apart despite the fact that two people love each other.”

  Tucker stuck his hand into his pocket and let the carving of the Indian chief slip into his hand. He gripped it tightly. It’s OK now. Everything is going right for me. I’m going to get that big buck tomorrow. It’ll be perfect. Only one shot. Mom’s letter will get here on Monday. Dad will get a job soon. A tribe! That’s what we’ll all be. Family! Together! It’s going to happen. I just know it! It’s GOING to happen!

  On and on he went, gripping his dreams just as his fingers gripped the carving in his pocket—family, the hunt, The Tribe. The images kept coming in seemingly endless streams … so fast and free Tucker never gave notice to the tears that had welled up in Duane Renfro’s eyes.