Harvey Comes Home

by Colleen Nelson

  “‘I told you to put it back.’

  “I won’t say I wasn’t relieved to hear Herbie gasping for air, because I was. I thought she’d killed him.

  “‘Bertie!’ I whispered.

  “She shot me a murderous look. I worried that she’d pick up the shovel again. Millard held out the leg bone to her, his face a mix of awe and fear. He’d never seen anyone as fierce as Bertie. Even Ma in a lather couldn’t hold a candle to Bertie Gamache.

  “Herbie writhed in agony on the ground, gripping his ribs. I thought of all the times he’d cornered me on the playground and knew he deserved this agony. But still, to hear his whimpers pulled at me. Nigel and Millard stood gaping at Bertie.

  “‘Take him away, why don’t you?’ she said. ‘He might have a broken rib or two.’ The boys scurried to obey, a cloud of dust rising around them as they fell to the ground beside Herbie. Each of them grabbed an arm and tried to lift him, but that sent him screaming in more pain. Anyhow, his weight was no match for them. I wasn’t sure who to go to—my brothers, who needed my help, or Bertie, who was unapologetically marching back to the grave.

  “He’s hurt real bad, Walter,” Millard said. They’d pulled Herbie’s shirt up. A bruise was already swelling around his middle. Bertie probably had broken a couple ribs and done who knew what else to him.

  “Nigel piped up. ‘He needs a doctor.’

  “‘He can’t walk,’ Millard added.

  “I sighed. ‘I’ll go get the cart,’ I said. Which meant explaining things to Ma and getting in all kinds of trouble. I cursed all four of them and shook my head.

  “‘Bertie,’ I said, but she didn’t look at me. She was kneeling over the bones, her head bowed.

  “‘Just go,’ she said. ‘I’ll do this myself.’

  “By the time I got home, confessed to Ma, tied the horse to the cart, and went back to Herbie, Bertie was no longer there. The skull was gone and so was our shovel. ‘She’s crazy as a loon,’ Nigel whispered to me as we drove into town. Herbie was in the back, his head resting on Millard’s lap.

  “‘No, she ain’t,’ I said with all the conviction I could muster.

  “‘All that for some stupid skull that’s been lying in the dirt. What’d she care about it anyway?’

  “‘What if someone dug up the bones of our kin and started playing with them?’ I said. ‘How’d you feel about that?’

  “Nigel pouted beside me. ‘It wasn’t our kin.’

  “I didn’t know why the bones had mattered so much to Bertie. I ran the events over in my head as we drove the miles to Herbie’s home. I was sorry for Herbie, who kept moaning behind me in the cart. I thought Bertie was lucky she hadn’t killed him.

  “‘You and Mill better stay away from Bertie for a while. She might still be sore about what happened. You understand?’

  “Nigel nodded, and for the first time, I thought he might actually listen to me.”

  There was a long silence, and I could tell that Mr. Pickering was done.

  “Wow,” I breathed. I wasn’t ready for the story to be over. I had questions about what happened next. Was Herbie hurt badly? Where did Bertie take the bones?

  But I didn’t speak up. One look at Mr. Pickering and I could tell that, just like last time, he was exhausted. At ninety-six, even telling a story could take it out of you.

  “Come on, Harvey,” I said, and headed to the door. Harvey stood, stretched, and jumped down to the floor.

  Mr. Pickering’s breath was deep and even. His mouth hung half-open. He was already asleep.

  Chapter 19

  Harvey

  As Mr. Pickering shares his story with Austin, Harvey feels him tense. The subtle beat and throb of blood through his veins constricts, and Harvey senses the change. He’s never been around someone as old as Mr. Pickering. The thick scent of him, heavy with life, lingers on Harvey’s nose.

  Harvey is content beside Mr. Pickering. He doesn’t want to follow Austin when the boy signals it’s time to leave, but he does. Cool air hits his belly when he rises.

  He remembers the comfort of curling up on another bed, circling until he found the right spot. The sweet smell of her dreaming would fill his nose. Maggie. A memory of her dances just beyond him, and he feels a sudden pang as if he were very hungry. He remembers the way she would rub the scruff on his neck and tickle his ears. Her scent is gone now; he can’t create it, but he could still identify it. As he trots behind Austin, the shadowy memory of his Maggie slips from him as quickly as it appeared—pushed aside by the smells littering the hallway carpet.

  Chapter 20

  Maggie

  Across the city, Maggie and her mother have returned from the exhausting task of papering the neighborhood with posters. Eighty-six posters with a photo of Harvey and her mother’s cell number have gone up in shopping centers, grocery stores, bus stops, schools, and community centers. Maggie brims with desperate hope that the phone will ring any minute.

  “Can I take your phone with me?” she asks as she goes upstairs to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. “Someone might call in the night.” Maggie’s mother agrees. She is too tired to argue or explain that it is unlikely that anyone will phone so late.

  Maggie brushes her teeth. The bathroom is directly over her father’s office, and she can hear her parents talking through the air vent. Their voices are distant and echoing, but perfectly clear. “You shouldn’t lead her on like this,” her father says. “The dog’s been gone for a week.”

  “You never know,” her mother answers. Maggie can hear her sigh.

  “It’s a waste of time.” Maggie feels her father’s words like a punch to the gut. How can he just give up on Harvey?

  Her mother’s voice shakes. “If you’d seen her face when I told her—”

  In the bathroom, Maggie gulps back tears. She has done a good job of keeping her fears at bay, but hearing her father’s opinion sets her off. She thinks of little Harvey and how he used to curl up on her bed at night, fitting snugly in the crook of her knees. A wave of sorrow washes over her. She misses him utterly and completely. In all her twelve years, she has never felt such a loss.

  What if one of the twins went missing? She knows her father wouldn’t give up searching, no matter how hopeless it might seem. How can he think she’d give up on Harvey?

  Maggie falls asleep with the phone on the pillow beside her, the ringer turned up to its highest volume.

  There will be no messages when she wakes up on Tuesday morning, but she will have puffy eyes and a tear-stained face that she makes sure her father sees before he leaves for work.

  Chapter 21

  Austin

  When Mr. Pickering opened the door the next afternoon, I wondered if he’d been sleeping all day. His white hair stuck up at the back and he was wearing pajamas and a robe. Harvey noticed the change too. Instead of trotting into Mr. Pickering’s room like he lived there, he hung back, wary. Warning bells rang in my head, but I ignored them. Lots of people had lazy days.

  “What’s that dog doing here?” Mr. Pickering growled, eyeing Harvey.

  I didn’t answer right away, hoping his confusion would pass like last time. “This is Harvey. He loves to visit you.” Harvey tilted his head when he heard his name.

  Mr. Pickering harrumphed, took a few steps toward the recliner, and stared at Harvey as if trying to place him. Harvey took that as an invitation and trotted into the suite and up onto the recliner.

  “General, get off the furniture,” Mr. Pickering said.

  “You mean Harvey,” I corrected, and immediately wished I could bite my tongue. Grandpa told me it stresses old people out to be corrected. The last thing they want is to be reminded they’re losing their memory.

  A flash of recognition came over Mr. Pickering’s face. “Yes. That’s what I said.” Then he looked at me suspiciously, and I knew he c
ouldn’t place me either.

  “I’m Austin, Phillip’s grandson,” I said, and waited for him to answer. “I wanted to hear more about Bertie,” I added, hoping to jog his memory.

  “How do you know Bertie?”

  The warning bells were getting louder—more like sirens, actually. “I don’t. You’ve just told me some stories. I’m curious to know what happened after you found the grave and she hurt Herbie.”

  The confusion on Mr. Pickering’s face cleared. His shoulders fell down from around his ears and he made it the rest of the way to the recliner. Harvey jumped down to make room for him and then leaped back up when the old man was settled. It was like the two of them had been friends forever.

  “Was Herbie okay in the end?”

  Mr. Pickering frowned. “He was laid up for weeks after Bertie swung at him. I told you we’d found the skeleton?” he asked. I nodded. “Well, Ma was fit to be tied when she found out that we’d been digging in another man’s field. Ma put us to work hauling water to what was left of her garden. Guess she thought giving us chores from dawn to dusk would keep us out of trouble.”

  “What about Bertie?”

  “Didn’t see her much for the rest of the summer. Figured she’d moved the skeleton though, because I found the shovel leaning against the cow barn a few days later.” Mr. Pickering shook his head. “Must have taken her days to dig through that soil.

  “The twins tattled on Bertie, telling Ma the whole story about how she’d swung at Herbie. Guess they enjoyed that they were blameless for once. Ma wouldn’t let me see Bertie after that. Called her a loose cannon and said she had poor breeding. Truth be told, I was relieved. What I’d seen in Bertie that day had scared me too. I suppose Bertie figured she was in a mess of trouble, because she didn’t come around after that. She was probably still mad at me for taking Herbie back home.

  “I figured I’d see her when school started. The class had shrunk to only a handful. So many families had moved away because of the drought.” He paused. “I told you about the drought?”

  I nodded. “In ’33 and ’34, right?”

  “Grain prices had gone down to nothing. Even if the crops had been good, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. Pretty much everyone in Wilcox was on relief. As soon as he could, Pa went off to the bush to work for the lumber company. To be honest, we were relieved to see him go. The summer had been hard on him and he was a bear most nights, yelling at one of us boys for the smallest thing.” Mr. Pickering broke off. When he started up again, his voice was different, quieter.

  “One night I caught him sobbing at the kitchen table. Ma stood over him, rubbing his back as his shoulders quaked. I’d never seen my pa cry. Ma glanced up in time to see me disappear behind the door. She didn’t speak of it the next morning, but the air in the house had shifted. Ma was holding all of us together. The weight of the family rested on her shoulders; I wondered how she didn’t crack under the pressure.”

  Mr. Pickering took a deep breath. His eyelids were heavy. “Mr. Pickering?” I said quietly, ready to take Harvey and leave.

  But then his eyes snapped open. “We survived ’34 and everyone was relieved when fall arrived. There was talk that we’d have an easy winter, that Mother Nature would take pity on us after the drought.” He laughed ruefully, which made me think that wasn’t what happened.

  “Our teacher that year was… Miss Hayward, I think. She was young and pretty, and I didn’t think she’d last long. Someone would ask her to get married, and then we’d start all over with a new one. It had happened plenty. During my schooling, I had at least eight teachers.

  “We’d been in school for about a month when Bertie showed up. I hadn’t seen her since the day Herbie got hurt. Herbie’s jaw dropped when she walked in.

  “My stomach flipped when I saw Bertie. A whole lot of things ran through my head. ‘Hey there, Bertie,’ I said, twisting around in my desk to talk to her. ‘How’ve you been?’ I pretended like things between us were normal, even though I knew they weren’t.

  “She was even skinnier than before. I wanted to think her pa had come back for her and got her fed and set up right with help from relief. But seeing the way her cheekbones stuck out, I knew that wasn’t what had happened.

  “‘Getting by’ was all she said, which was no answer at all. There was a haunted look to her that left me cold. I wanted to blame her pa or even Herbie and the twins, but I knew that’d be a lie. I was the one who abandoned her in the field that day. She hadn’t been around because of me.

  “I sat there the whole morning, working up the courage to try to win her over at lunch. But then a baseball game got started and I was asked to pitch. I’d been planning to offer her a ride back with us, as a way to make peace. Ma had let me take Victor and the cart to school. But as I led the horse out of the school barn, Bertie left the yard without so much as a backward glance in my direction.

  “The whole day, Nigel and Millard had given Bertie a wide berth, watching her movements like a couple of scared mice. It was a nice change, to be honest. The twins and I were at each other’s throats constantly—at school and at home. Anything was an excuse to battle. Our scraps were usually harmless, but Nigel and I got into it most often. I tell you what—he was a sneaky one. I caught him raiding the cellar or sloughing off his chores more than once. With Pa gone, it fell on me to discipline Nigel. Ma was busy with Sylvia, looking after the three of us, and running the farm. Half the time, she turned a blind eye to his antics. But I couldn’t.

  “‘Bertie!’ I hollered, once I’d hitched Victor to the wagon.

  “‘What’re you thinking, offering her a ride?’ Nigel growled at me. ‘Ma doesn’t want us near her, not after what she did to Herbie.’

  “I wasn’t sure Ma still felt that way, but I knew Nigel would be certain to tell her I’d given Bertie a ride home if it meant getting me in trouble. Bertie never turned around anyway, so I snapped the reins and off we clambered down the dry dirt road. But the whole way, I was thinking that I should’ve gone after her, tried harder to give her a ride.

  “When we got home, the twins dropped their lunch pails and ran off with their slingshots. They were hoping to hit some squirrels. Mr. Friedman, who was a furrier, had started coming to Wilcox once a month. Mr. Hackett would sell pelts to him for three cents a piece and give us two—a small fortune to us boys. I put Victor out in the paddock and went to find Ma. She was busy in the kitchen, with Baby Sylvia underfoot, as usual.

  “‘Ma?’ I said.

  “She turned to me, a lump of dough in her hands. Her long brown hair was always tucked up with pins at the base of her neck. A few strands had escaped, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand. ‘What is it, Walt?’ She began rolling out the dough on the kitchen table.

  “I tell you, I didn’t know where to begin, but my window of opportunity was closing. Sylvia or the boys would demand attention in a minute and I’d be left with the question hanging off my tongue. ‘It’s Bertie.’

  “Her eyes flickered to my face and back to the dough.

  “‘She came to school today. She—’ I broke off. By now, we all knew what hunger felt like. But now I knew what it looked like too. ‘Could I take her some food? I don’t think she has much.’

  “Even as I said the words, I knew we didn’t have much either. And what we did have had to get all five of us through a winter. But Ma paused in her rolling and looked at me. ‘Is her pa back yet?’

  “I shrugged.

  “‘You think she’s all alone out there?’

  “I shrugged again.

  “Ma lost her patience. ‘Well, find out, for heaven’s sake! We can’t afford to feed another mouth, but I’m not about to let the poor girl starve. Yes, take her something from the cellar, but be mindful.’ Ma set her mouth and went back to rolling the dough.

  “The cellar door was to the left of the stove. I opened it and
climbed down the ladder to the dirt floor. Pa had built rows of shelves all along the walls, and Ma had been busy canning and preserving what she could. It looked like a lot now, but as the winter wore on, the shelves would empty and we’d be eating canned turnips and bread for dinner again. Or not. Pa had given me free rein with the shotgun and told me it was time I got hunting. He’d taken me over to a neighbor’s and I’d tried my hand at skinning and carving a deer. Let me tell you, there was no better smell than a venison steak frying on the stove.

  “Against the wall sat an empty burlap sack. I grabbed it and put in some potatoes and onions and a jar of pickles. Most of the blueberries I’d picked that summer had been made into pies, but there were a few jars of pie filling Ma planned to use later. I put one of those in too.

  “As I slung the sack over my shoulder and climbed out of the cellar, Ma nodded to a fresh-baked loaf of bread on the counter. ‘Bring her half of that. We need the rest for breakfast.’ I did as I was told and set off across the yard with the bag of food and General bounding along beside me.

  “‘Where’re you going?’ Millard called.

  “‘To Father Perrin’s,’ I lied. ‘Ma wants him to have this.’ Hearing the priest’s name stopped the two of them dead in their tracks, and they went back to squirrel hunting.

  “I’d seen Bertie’s house from afar, but I hadn’t had a reason to get up close to it in all the time we’d been friends. The shack was tucked into a small clearing, with the creek—if you could call it that—running beside it. A mishmash of wood and tin siding had been used for the walls, and the roof looked ready to cave in.

  “‘Bertie?’ I called as I entered the yard. It was quiet. A clothesline was strung up, but there was nothing on it. A chair with a busted leg rested against the side of the house. I walked up to the window and peeked inside. One pane of glass was broken and I heard her voice before I saw her.