by Susan Vaught
I started walking, and Springer followed behind me. “I made him hit a wall,” Springer said. “Mom says she heard he broke a bone and has to get it operated on.”
“Well, he kind of deserved that. Hitting a wall is pretty ridiculous.”
“Yeah.”
A minute or so later, as I pulled open the clubhouse door, Springer asked, “Did you get in any trouble?”
“Nah. Dad called Mom and went to grade papers. Aunt Gus says he’s burning off negative energy. And Mom said I did the right thing. And Aunt Gus asked if I wanted chili for dinner again, and I said yes, so she’s making some.”
Springer seemed to consider all of this as he lowered Sam-Sam to the clubhouse floor, found a head lamp and switched it on so we’d have a little light, then sat on a rock beside Sam. “But you think I did the right thing, too, by not fighting?”
I handed him a Twinkie and a Coke. “I think you did the right thing for you and I did the right thing for me.”
He held his food as Sam sniffed at the wrapped Twinkie. “How can both ways be right?”
I told him what Mom said about people having wars and fighting their wars in their own ways. Then I got my own Twinkie and Coke, and I sat on a rock close to Springer and my dog.
Springer rubbed behind Sam’s ears, then picked up one of Sam’s little balls and tossed it for him. As Sam darted after the toy, Springer took a bite of his Twinkie. He had to throw again before he got it chewed and swallowed.
“So maybe Sam-Sam isn’t a bomb-sniffing warrior,” he said. “Maybe he’s a fetching warrior.”
I lowered my Twinkie. “I don’t think they have bomb-fetching dogs in the army. That wouldn’t work.”
“Well, yeah.” Springer pitched the ball again. “But maybe digging stuff up isn’t his best thing. I mean, he fetches great. And he does pretty good at noticing when people are around. Maybe he could find lost people?”
I shrugged. “Not sure if they have people-finding dogs, but I could ask Mom. When we talked, she asked me which of our suspects I thought was guilty.”
“Ms. Jorgensen maybe.” Springer ate and threw the ball. “But more Coach Sedon.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Remember how we saw him fighting with Ms. Jorgensen outside of the senior high?”
“Yeah. And they were both absent from the staff meeting.”
“Something’s up with them,” I agreed. “But they might not be acting weird about the money. Could be some other reason. And somebody else could have taken the cash, and—I just don’t know.” I quit eating my Twinkie and put the rest on my knees. “I made Aunt Gus tell me when Dad’s hearing is supposed to be, and it’s next Wednesday. I’m afraid he’s going to jail, and there’s nothing I can do to save him.”
I coughed and hiccupped, because I didn’t want to start crying.
Sam-Sam stopped running back with his ball and stood at the door of the clubhouse. He put the ball down and stared at me, then turned his head to the side like he was trying to hear what I wasn’t saying.
I couldn’t keep looking at his silly dog face, or I really would cry, so I stared at my half-eaten Twinkie instead, at how the yellow crumbs blended in with the dirt on my legs.
“Jesse, can I hug you?” Springer asked. “Or would that not help?”
I thought about that. Tried to imagine it. Couldn’t. But I felt pretty awful, so I said, “It might help.”
Wrappers rustled as Springer moved his food. Then I felt him sit on my floor rock, right beside me. Next, I felt his arm around my shoulders, and a gentle squeeze.
Sam-Sam ran forward and ate my leftover Twinkie in two bites. Then he licked my fingers and my hands and my knees and Springer’s knees.
That helped.
And Springer’s hug kind of helped, too.
25
Monday, After the Train Came
I stared down through the hole we had opened in the house rubble as rain slowed to drizzle, then became a foggy sprinkle.
A few feet below me, fingers felt around the edges of the wood tent, then grabbed the top of the V shape.
I reached through the hole with my sock-hands, grabbed a hunk of plaster propped against the side of the wood tent, and pushed it off to the side.
Springer came to the other side of the hole in the rubble and looked down. “Wow,” he said. “It’s like part of the closet just fell over and kept the rest of this mess from crushing her. We need to get her out of there, Jesse.”
“Help!” Aunt Gus yelled.
“You’re supposed to be getting your nails done!” I yelled back as I sat up and grabbed more boards on the big heap underneath me, pulling them and digging at pink stuff. I kept pulling and digging until my muscles screamed like I wanted to scream.
“Oh,” Springer said as he pulled at boards, too. “Oh. Oh!”
Aunt Gus pushed more rubble away from the boards that had sheltered her. Now she had her head and arms and shoulders out from under the wood that had saved her. Springer and I dug harder and faster, trying to clear her a path to climb out of the collapsed house, once she got free.
“You aren’t supposed to be here,” I said again. “Why are you here, Aunt Gus?”
Rocks and insulation fell and bounced off the wood tent. Aunt Gus let out a groan. My heart skipped at the sound, and I stopped digging.
“Aunt Gus?” I yelled. “Are you okay?”
“There’s a house on my head, Jesse.” She coughed as she scooched the rest of the way out from underneath the protective boards. “My favorite bathrobe is ruined. I don’t have a smoke and I really want one, and I could use a bottle of water.” She looked up through the hole we had opened. “But other than that, yes. I’m okay.”
Springer and I worked together to shift aside a big board with bricks stuck to it on one end as Aunt Gus got slowly to her feet. Little by little, she stood, her shoulders and head rising out of the house wreckage, through the hole Springer and I had widened.
That’s when she started barking.
No, wait. Not her.
Sam-Sam and Charlie!
Both dogs wriggled out from under the wood tent. Aunt Gus stooped and picked them up, putting one under each arm.
Sam yapped and squiggled and I pulled the socks off my hands and crammed them into my pockets, and as my aunt stood again, lifting the dogs free of the rubble, I reached for my dog. I took my sweet little Sam-Sam from Aunt Gus and buried my face in his fur and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, then let him lick my face until I smelled stinky doggy spit in both nostrils. Then I handed him to Springer and leaned toward my dust-covered, bleeding aunt.
She gave me a half-smile. “Glad to know where I rank in your world, niece of mine.”
I hugged her without asking, careful not to fall into the hole she was standing in, and she hugged me back with one arm while Charlie jerked and grunted in her other arm.
“What in the world are you two doing here?” Aunt Gus asked. “How did you even get to the house so fast?”
“We walked,” I said into her dust-coated shoulder. “Or sort of ran. I thought you were at Nails, Nails, Nails so I wasn’t worried about you.”
“Weather scared me off.” She turned her head left, then right, taking in the devastation on our road. “Might have done better if I’d gone.”
I straightened up and studied her face. “Your forehead is cut. It’s bleeding.”
She let me wipe it with my sleeve, then handed me Charlie. With a bulldog-sounding grunt, she pushed herself out of the hole and sat on the debris pile. I handed Charlie to Springer to hold along with Sam, because that bulldog stank like puppy sewage and weighed almost more than me.
Then I edged over to Aunt Gus and helped her get up again.
As soon as she stood, she tottered on the loose boards and started to sway, and I had to grab hold of her waist to keep her on her feet. Springer put the dogs down and helped me steady her, then held her hand as I kept hold of her waist. Together, we stepped her down off the pi
le of rubble, out of the chaos of the stuff that used to be a house, and moved her all the way to the curb, where we sat her down.
Her fingers fluttered to the cut place on her head. “Made me woozy. Sorry.”
Springer was on his phone, and I figured he was calling 911, but he pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it, then listened again.
Sam-Sam licked my ankles.
“Where’s Charlie?” Aunt Gus asked. “Charlie? Charlie!”
“I called Emergency, but it just rings and rings,” Springer said. He punched at his screen. “Let me try again.”
I heard a bulldoggy woof and looked back toward the house wreckage. Charlie was sitting on some boards, gazing toward us but not trying to come to where we were, even though Aunt Gus was calling him.
“Sit,” I told Sam. “And stay.”
Sam panted at me and smiled and bounced, but he sat and he stayed as I made my way up the rubble to Charlie. As I got to his boards, he pulled himself toward me with his front paws but didn’t stand.
“Come here,” I said. I clucked my tongue like Aunt Gus usually did, and Charlie inched forward, then stopped.
“Seriously, you big lump, come here. Your mom wants to hug you.”
Charlie scooted some more. His butt wiggled like he was trying to wag his nub tail, but then he flinched and whined, and he stopped coming toward me.
Frowning, I leaned over the board and picked him up—and he yelped.
“Charlie!” Aunt Gus cried from the curb.
Charlie struggled and cried out again, and I had to work to settle him in my arms. One of his back legs didn’t feel right. He wuffled and whimpered against my chest, drooling down my already-wet shirt.
“It’s okay,” I whispered to him as I eased us forward off the boards, then carried him to my waiting aunt, who was probably only still sitting down because Springer had quit trying to call 911 and had his hands on her shoulders.
“His leg,” I told Aunt Gus as I handed him over. “It’s hurt. I think it’s broken.”
“Oh, no, oh, no, no, no,” she said, kissing his head. “My poor little baby.”
Charlie kept whimpering and cuddled into my aunt, actual tears rolling out of his bulging bulldog eyes.
I blinked to keep myself from tearing up, then snatched Sam off the ground where he had waited on me like the good boy he was. Inch by inch, I checked all four of his legs and paws. They seemed okay. He licked my fingers as I turned to Springer, who was trying Emergency again.
“Do they have a 911 for dogs?” I asked. “We need to get Charlie some help, too.”
“Nobody’s answering,” he said, lowering the phone. He glanced around at the destroyed street and wiped his eyes with one hand. “Not 911, or the police, or the fire station. I guess they’re all busy. We’ll have to take care of ourselves, at least for now.”
“Not good,” I said.
“My poor dog,” Aunt Gus said over and over, and I could tell she was crying, and that nearly made me cry all over again.
Despite people right next to me and my dog in my arms and distant horns and alarms, the world seemed wrong and quiet and empty.
“Okay.” I hugged Sam-Sam. “It’s okay. We just wait here. Dad’ll come. He’ll know what to do.”
“My folks are on the way, too,” Springer said. “I texted them your address and told them I’m okay.”
I was about to ask Springer if his dad would be hard to deal with, but Sam alert-barked and tried to get out of my arms.
“No,” I told him, but he barked again, and thrashed harder, more than he ever usually did.
With a sigh, I lowered him to the ground. “Fine, but you’ll have to sit right here, and—”
My dog took off like a shot, running straight across rubble and grass to the pile of boards and bricks that had been our neighbor’s house. He ran around to the back section, stopped, looked around at me, then alert-barked.
“Come here!” I shouted, moving toward him, feeling my heart in my throat, terrified that he’d climb on that pile of mess and fall in and hurt himself or get killed.
“Jesse, don’t you leave us,” Aunt Gus said. “Just call for him.”
I stopped at the edge of our yard and clapped and whistled. “Sam. Hey, buddy. Come here like a good dog. Sam-Sam?”
Sam wagged his tail and turned a circle, like he really wanted to do what I asked, but he stayed in his spot. Then he turned back to the rubble and barked.
“Jesse,” Springer said, his voice low and worried. “I think you need to go over there and see what’s bothering him. I’ll stay with your aunt and Charlie.”
“Oh, no you don’t!” Aunt Gus hollered. “Jesse, you come back here right this second!”
I kept walking, and I heard Springer talking to Aunt Gus, settling her down as I made my way to my barking dog.
“What is it?” I asked as I got to him and reached down to pick him up.
He danced away from my hands and barked, and that’s when I heard voices. Soft at first, then louder.
“Help! We’re trapped in the closet. Help! Please help!”
I wheeled toward Springer. “It’s my neighbors. They’re stuck in their house!”
And then I was pulling my sock mittens out of my pockets and stuffing my hands inside, and looking to see where I could move boards to make a path to where I heard our neighbors shouting.
“We hear you!” I told them, digging through a pile of splintered siding.
“Jesse!” Dad’s voice from behind me. “Wait for me, honey. I’m almost to you.”
I turned around, and Dad was there, running toward me. At the same time, a man and woman I didn’t recognize came jogging from behind what was left of our house, as if they had come through the woods.
The woman stopped and grabbed hold of Springer, smothering him in a hug and kissing his head.
The strange man jogged past me and met Dad. I saw Dad nod, then shake the man’s hand. After that, Dad came straight for me. He opened his arms and I ran into them.
“You rescued Gus?” he asked.
“Charlie has a broken leg,” I told him. “And Aunt Gus gets dizzy when she stands up.”
“Don’t try to stand up,” Dad called back to Aunt Gus.
I didn’t quite hear her answer, but I wasn’t sure it was polite, because Springer told his mother, “They aren’t mad. It’s just how they talk to each other.”
When I let Dad go, I turned to the strange man, who looked like an even taller version of Springer, only without the smile.
He offered me his hand.
I shook it for a second, then let go.
“I’m Dan Regal,” he said. “Springer probably told you I work in construction.”
I nodded, still wondering if he was going to be a nice man, or Mr. Jerkface.
He pointed at the rubble. “Let me look at this and be sure we’re pulling out the right boards, and not doing anything that will make the pile collapse more.”
That made sense to me, so I moved.
As Mr. Regal reached for a board, I said, “You might want to use your socks as gloves if you don’t have real ones. That stuff cuts and burns after a minute.”
Mr. Regal and Dad both glanced at me.
I held up my sock-covered hands. “It was Springer’s idea. He helped me get Aunt Gus out of our house.”
Mr. Regal glanced toward Springer, and he seemed to straighten up a little. “That’s a pretty smart idea.”
“I’m coming to help,” Springer yelled. “Mom’s going to stay with Charlie and Miss Gustine.”
“Miss Gustine?” I asked Dad.
Aunt Gus said something else that might not have been polite.
“Sit,” I told my dog, pointing to the ground where he danced.
Sam-Sam sat.
Meanwhile, Mr. Regal took off his shoes, pulled off his socks, covered his hands, and looked at Springer.
“Good work, son,” he said. “Thinking of this for our hands—and helping to save Jess
e’s aunt.”
Springer’s cheeks flushed, but he smiled.
Then his father put his shoes back on and got to work.
So did my father and Springer, and so did I.
26
The Weekend Before
Dad and Aunt Gus and I sat around the kitchen table Saturday night, digging into Aunt Gus’s famous Smoked Chipotle Meatloaf, and Dad’s famous Skin-Still-In Mashed Potatoes. I heated the peas, but peas didn’t amount to much. I mean, nobody would be too interested in Jesse’s Over-Nuked Green Pea Husks. Still, I poked a few in my mouth. They were passable if you just chewed and didn’t think too much.
Dad flourished his fork between bites, and after he swallowed, he asked, “Why do you think Coach Sedon stole that money?”
From the living room on the other side of a stretched-out baby gate, Sam grumbled and whined, and Charlie snuff-snuffed. The gate rattled but held.
I breathed in the tangy tomato of the meatloaf, and the buttery potato smell. “You heard him in the office, how he was treating us.”
“Point,” Aunt Gus said, talking with her mouth full, which Dad ignored.
“That makes Sedon an ass, not a thief,” Dad said.
“I think ass counts as a swearword,” Aunt Gus told him.
“Does not.” Dad gave her a quick glare, and then he was looking at me again and waiting for me to get down the huge hunk of meatloaf I’d just tackled.
“Something’s wrong with him, Dad.” I wiped the corners of my mouth with a paper napkin. “Mom said to listen to my belly, and my belly says Coach Sedon isn’t right.”
Sam-Sam yapped from the other room.
Dad ate for a minute or so, then said, “I guess I can’t disagree with you on that.”
“Miracles!” Aunt Gus announced, tucking a piece of meatloaf into the napkin in her lap, no doubt to save it for Charlie.
“I think Ms. Jorgensen’s covering for him, too,” I added.
Dad gave this some consideration but shook his head. “Ms. Jorgensen might be trying to help him, honey. You know, with whatever’s gone wrong for him. When people work together for a long time, they can become friends.”
I put down my fork. “Well, are you friends with Coach Sedon?”
