Bird Lake Moon (3 page)

They'd been on the road for what seemed like a long time to Spencer. First they'd stopped at the frame shop his parents owned to make sure that everything was taken care of before they left on their trip. Next they'd gone to the pharmacy for sunscreen and bug spray. Then, after they'd driven awhile, they'd stopped at a nondescript diner just off the highway by a sea of tall grass tangled with weeds.

“I've eaten here before,” Spencer's father had said. “It's pretty good. And Jasper can get out and run around.”

They ate outside at a wooden picnic table that was shaded by a large yellow umbrella.

“I'm not very hungry,” said Spencer's mother. “I'll take Jasper for some exercise.” She left her barely touched sandwich and fries and walked off with the dog along the edge of the bordering field.

“Is Mom okay?” Spencer asked his father when his mother was clearly out of earshot.

“She's a little sad.”

“Because of Matty, right?”

Spencer's father nodded.

“But she'll be okay?” said Spencer. He imagined the turtle from the mantel in her pocket.

“I think so. Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Are you sad, too?” asked Lolly.

Spencer kicked her under the table.

“Yes,” he said, “I am. But I'm happy, too. I'm happy to be taking both of you to Bird Lake.” He smiled vaguely and lifted one eyebrow. His voice changed in tone, became lighter, jokey. “And I'm happy to be the father of the two most extraordinary children ever to walk the face of the earth.”

“Well, I'm not sad,” said Lolly in her British accent. “Not one little bit.” She angled her head back and flared the wings of her nostrils.

Spencer shot her a harsh look, unblinking. It went unnoticed.

They finished eating, Spencer's mother and Jasper returned, and everyone piled into the car. In the far back, Jasper circled and circled, then settled down, curling up like a cashew. Right away, Spencer's mother tuned the car radio to a classical station, turning the volume up and up. Normally Spencer would have complained, but he didn't.

On the road again, Spencer felt a certain mysterious sorrow for his mother. He'd never felt terribly sad about Matty. Sometimes he thought he remembered him, but he wasn't sure. Maybe what he remembered were only stories he'd been told and the photographs he'd seen.

Lolly pierced the cocoon of his thoughts. “I named my voices,” she said quietly in her regular voice, as if this were serious business.

“You're a nut,” said Spencer.

Lolly elaborated, undeterred. “The old lady one is named Mrs. Mincebottom. The British one is called Gloria Crumpet. And the Southern one is Susanna McCorky.” Lolly's green eyes were flecked with amber, and they sparkled as she spoke.

“Really, truly, you are a nut,” said Spencer.

“I love nuts,” said Lolly as Susanna McCorky.

“We should tie you on top of the car like a Christmas tree,” said Spencer. “You could wear my swimming goggles.”

“Dear boy,” said Lolly as Mrs. Mincebottom, “there wouldn't be room with the kayak and all the other stuff that's already up there.”

Accepting defeat, Spencer looked out the window again. Low sunlight gilded everything now. The clouds were like lumbering apricot-colored elephants with huge, round bellies. For just a moment, the car seemed to be made of gold.

They arrived. And there it was. The house at Bird Lake.

Darkness was gathering quickly, so that the details of the house were starting to disappear, to become part of the dusky shadows. But Spencer could see clearly enough to know that he was happy to be here.

It was strange how excited he was. He wanted to hurry to the lake, but his father said to wait. “Wait until your mother's ready,” he whispered. Jasper didn't wait—he ran down to the water and came back, then ran around the perimeter of the house playfully, stopping to bow before darting off in the opposite direction.

Spencer forgot about Lolly. And Lolly forgot about her voices, and suddenly appeared to be aware of her mother's mood, and grabbed her hand.

They unloaded the car first, Spencer working eagerly, being helpful. He made a hasty survey of the inside of the house, then he joined his family on the screened back porch. He sensed that his mother wasn't ready yet, but he couldn't contain himself. “Hurry, hurry,” he said, looking at his feet.

He felt drawn to the water, so he moved closer to the screen, right up to it. Lightly, he let his nose touch it. “It'll be okay, Mom,” he heard his sister say. Turning, he tried to participate in the conversation, tried to speed things up, but soon realized that his parents would proceed at their own pace, and he allowed them that.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Finally they walked to the lake together.

Spencer sniffed. The air smelled of dirt and water and weeds. Dank. The air had an unusual quality to it, as well. Otherworldly. Nothingness and everything mixed. Spencer could
feel
the air. All around him like a thick coat. Or a heavy blanket draped over his shoulders.

Down at the lake, he and Lolly slipped off their shoes. They walked slowly into the cold, black water. Little waves lapped greedily at their ankles and kissed the shore.
Fip, fip, fip
. If Spencer craned his neck a certain way, the moon, which was nearly full, looked as if it were caught in the branches of the big willow tree at the water's edge like a lost ball. Behind him, the lights they'd turned on in the house punctuated the night.

“Stay near,” his mother said.

He felt as if he were being watched. By someone or something other than his parents. I don't believe in ghosts, he told himself.

He also felt as if he were still waiting. Everything seemed to be waiting: his mother, the moon, the lake, the house.

For what?

Who were these people? Mitch wanted to see them in daylight, really see them, so that he knew what he was up against. Then he could form a plan. He had an idea, but he'd need to think it through carefully. It could either be brilliant or disastrous. He wasn't sure.

The intruders—that's how Mitch thought of the people. The name had come to him the night before as he'd sat under the porch, huddled tight as a fist, terrified that he'd be spotted.

It was the dog that nearly gave him away. While the family was down by the lake, the dog nosed around at the back porch like a bloodhound in a cartoon. His swinging tail and bouncy hindquarters kept knocking against the latticework panel—the only thing protecting Mitch, keeping him from being discovered. Mitch hoped that it was the scent of a passing rabbit, or something like it, that had captured the dog's attention, and not the scent of a boy. Him.

Mitch had wanted to bolt for his grandparents' house, but he knew that the dog would chase him. Barking? Biting? Because his father was allergic to dogs, Mitch had never had one, and so he wasn't a good judge of a dog's temperament.

Mitch waited until all four of them—man, woman, boy, girl—had gone back to the house. The dog, too, of course. As the man passed by the porch, he said, “I wonder if there's something dead under here. Jasper's surely interested.” He gave the latticework panel a gentle prod with his foot. At that moment, Mitch clamped down so hard on his bottom lip that it split open.

Only after he'd heard the dog's nails clicking on the floor above him did Mitch emerge from his hideaway and make a run for it. His heart thrashed wildly as he charged across the yard and fumbled through the row of lilacs. A good-size branch lay on the ground in his wake. And only when he was safely in his grandparents' kitchen did he notice that his lip was bleeding and that his legs were unsteady and that his hands were shaking.

Mitch let out a deep sigh. He went to the sink and gulped down three glasses of water. Then, looking at himself in the small oval mirror above the faucet, he dabbed at his lip with a paper towel.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, his mother appeared. “There you are,” she said. “It's dark. I didn't know where you were.” The rising inflection at the end of her statement made it more a question. She moved in. Closer. “And what happened to your lip?”

He felt his cheeks go hot. “Oh, I fell,” he replied, lifting his shoulders high—a gesture that said, “I don't care.”

“Let me see.”

“It's fine, it's fine.” He turned away from her.

She dragged her finger across the countertop. “You need ice.”

“I can do it.”

Her eyes, glazed by weariness, seemed to refocus, take him in all over again. She said, “You look like you've seen a ghost.”

And, just like that, a thought flashed through Mitch's mind.
A ghost
. He pulled back from his fear and anger and sadness long enough for the thought to sink in. He let his mother get ice and a washcloth and examine his lip. He even let her brush his hair out of his eyes without shrugging her off.

Mitch fell asleep that night, thinking about how to haunt the house next door, thinking about how to drive the intruders away.

Now it was morning, early, and he was stationed at the open window in Cherry's well-stocked, well-organized pantry, waiting for the intruders to emerge. The lilacs partially blocked his view, but if he positioned himself just so, he had a fairly clear look at the intruders' front door. And Papa Carl's binoculars didn't hurt.

Mitch lowered the binoculars to give his arms a break. He'd been resting his elbows on the windowsill, frozen in a pose of concentration, and his arms had become tingly.

He stretched. Blinked. Yawned. There had been that brief moment upon waking when he'd forgotten about his circumstances. But the heaviness returned to his chest, and he'd wondered if it—the heaviness—was simply a condition of his life now, life after his father left. He'd wondered if he'd divide his life this way forever: before he left / after he left. Then he'd remembered about trying to haunt the house, and so he had a purpose and his mood improved, became less a contrast to the clear sky, the brilliant morning light.

He'd eaten a quick breakfast—a few handfuls of Cheerios, right from the box, without sitting down. After that, he got the binoculars and crept to the pantry to wait and watch and plot. (All this was managed without being noticed because Mitch's mother and Cherry were engaged in a serious discussion at the dining-room table, and Papa Carl's truck was already gone.)

At his post by the window, Mitch saw the possibilities unspool before him. He thought he'd begin by doing something small—perhaps leaving an object of some sort on the front porch. Nothing threatening. Just something, that, out of context, might seem to hold larger, strange meaning. An empty root-beer can, or a broken plate, or pieces of candy lined up. Then he'd move on from there. He considered sneaking under the screened back porch in the middle of the night and making noises, but that might be too risky. He also considered eavesdropping to gain some personal information, which he could use to write a cryptic note. Then he could tape the note to their door or to one of their windows. He could fill the birdbath with something gross. He could . . .

His mind was an aquarium, and his thoughts were darting around, this way and that, like little fish.

I just can't get caught, he thought.

All at once, the door flew open and the dog shot out into the yard. Mitch gripped the binoculars tightly, readjusted the focus. Jasper. That was the dog's name. Mitch knew this. Maybe he could use this knowledge against the family somehow. One by one, the family filed out the door and down the stoop. Mitch shrank back a bit, reflexively. He didn't want to be noticed, although it was very unlikely that he would be, from such a distance.

He studied them. The dog was fairly big, shaggy, the color of gingerbread. The man and woman just looked like parents. Mitch guessed that the boy was younger than he was, maybe a year or two. And the girl was younger than the boy. She was probably seven or eight years old. Both the boy and the girl had dull brown hair. The girl's was long, pulled back into a ponytail that swung like a pendulum when she chased after the dog. Seeing the dog in daylight, tail wagging madly, bounding in and out of his line of vision, Mitch realized that it had been silly for him to have been afraid last night. The dog seemed perfectly harmless. Briefly, Mitch wondered if the boy was a potential friend, but he pushed the thought aside.

Through the binoculars, Mitch saw the boy sneak up behind the man and jump, swatting the man's baseball cap off his head. The man turned, laughing, and caught the boy in a playful headlock. The boy was laughing, too.

Mitch felt a stab of jealousy. The circular framing of the binoculars made it seem to him that he was watching a movie. The moment was isolated for him—father, son, together—emphasized, made significant like a lesson.

A memory stirred. Mitch recalled doing the exact same thing to his father last soccer season, after the one game his father had come to. Near the end of the game, Mitch had seen him standing on the sideline, his tie loosened, his shirt cuffs rolled up, his Badger cap, red as a cardinal, tipped low over his eyes. From time to time, he'd yell an encouraging comment. He must have left work early, Mitch had thought. Afterward, on the way to the car, Mitch found the perfect moment to flick off his father's cap. His father stole Mitch's soccer ball. There was lighthearted sparring back and forth. Mitch ended up wearing his father's cap on the drive home. “Don't get it too sweaty, now,” his father had said.

The dog barked just then. Jasper. The man's hat was back on his head. After a look at the lake, they all got into the car. Even the dog. They drove away. And the coast was clear for Mitch to do what he needed to do.

He stashed the binoculars in a cupboard, behind some boxes of pasta and rice that appeared to be about a hundred years old, and turned hurriedly to leave the pantry. He bumped into a folding stepstool that was leaning against the wall. The stool fell, hitting a low shelf and knocking a metal canister onto the floor. The lid came off and sugar spilled out.