Little Klein (6 page)

“One: Don’t pussyfoot around when you get a nibble.”

“Woof!”

“Two: Don’t pull up too fast. Let ’im get the hook all the way in his mouth.”

“Woof!”

“Three: Set the line.” This with the yanking of an imaginary rod and a snap of wrists.

Wagging tail.

“And four: If you’re going to be a real fisherman, you have to bait your own hook.”

“Woof! Woof! Woof!”

Luke pulled a fat earthworm from the can they’d filled after dark the night before and tore it in half. “No use givin’ ’em a whole juicy guy like this if they’re not going to get a chance to digest it anyhow. All you need is a tantalizing sample. Want the other half, LeRoy?”

With a clump of oatmeal suddenly squirming in his stomach, Little Klein held his breath and threaded his hook.

“There you go! Toss it out.”

LeRoy and the Bigs sat down on the bank to watch Little Klein and offer tips. The bamboo pole was twice Little Klein’s height and the line twice again as long, so a new method of casting was devised. Little Klein laid the line out along the edge of the water and the pole after it. He walked back to the hook end of the line and tossed it in the water then ran back to the pole end, lifting it from the middle and rotating it out over the water.

When he grew tired of standing and jigging the worm, he sat cross-legged on the sand, his eyes not leaving the tip of his pole. The suspense of the first cast over, the Bigs argued over what new bait might tempt The Minister today, the merits of a cube of cheese being weighed against a wooden red spinner. LeRoy sauntered into the trees for a sniff around. The weight of the long pole having tired Little Klein’s jigging arm, he let the line float off downstream and his attention drift.

The Minister was returning to his rocky den after his morning laps around the area and was surprised to see a snack resting right there on his floor. He rolled his eyes up to the ledge. No large-eared creatures peering over. A snack, free and clear, and he hadn’t had a worm in oh, so long. Ordinarily he would have been more cautious, but an annoyingly sociable carp had been dropping in lately and The Minister was not about to share, so with a greedy gulp he swallowed that half worm whole and settled in for a nap.

At that same moment Little Klein decided to try his luck upriver a ways. He lifted his pole and turned to take it with him. Shoot. His hook must have snagged. He yanked. The Minister woke with a sharp pain in his belly and that annoying carp watching him with her watery lovesick eyes. He tried to burp the pain out and was nearly successful, but then it lodged itself in his lip.

The Minister lurched about, trying to free himself of the pain. The carp came at him, wanting to help, and with a furious exhalation of bubbles The Minister showed her his back fin as he swam away in a panic. On the other end of the line, Little Klein felt not the pleasing tug of the fish he’d nearly caught on the stick but a yank that nearly stole the rod from his hands.

“Bite!” he screamed, gripping his dancing pole. Little Klein dug his heels in the sand and skidded down the shore, caught as much by The Minister as The Minister was caught by him. And then he was in the water, skipping along the surface but not letting go.

“Bite!” he called again when he could get his face out of the water. Ahead of him, The Minister sped toward a submerged tree root, braced himself, and snagged the line he knew was trailing him. With a rip he left the hook and part of his lip behind and was free. He swam unsteadily back to his den, snuggled himself under a rock, and, without the energy to dismiss the loitering carp, The Minister slept.

As the line went slack, Little Klein sank. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and LeRoy ran along the shore after him. The boys dived into the river and pulled Little Klein out, still clutching his rod.

“Tip number five: Let go of the rod before it pulls you in.”

“Woof!”

“He got away,” mourned Little Klein as he examined the dangling line. “He must have been enormous. I’ll bet it was The Minister.”

“Nah. The Minister never eats worms.”

The Bigs used to be tree climbers, but as they’d grown tall, they’d grown heavy. The backyard pine was a testament to their girth, with its shattered lower limbs. Only Little Klein could navigate the nubs of these former branches, shinnying up to higher limbs to keep lookout whenever needed.

Today, Little Klein was watching for Stanley Klein, returning father and husband, as well as allergic and uninformed owner of a dog named LeRoy.

LeRoy howled at the base of the tree.

“Take that dog somewhere today,” Mother Klein ordered the Bigs as she weeded her garden. “He can’t be here when your father arrives.”

“Ma!” whined Luke.

“Go on, guys,” said Little from high in the branches. “I’ll come find you after Dad gets here.”

“Oh sure. When after? Tomorrow? I don’t think so,” said Mathew, Luke grunting his solidarity.

“Mercy, Lord, you gave ’em to me,” pleaded Mother Klein with the sky. “You should have dealt me more patience while you were at it.” She drew her small frame to its full height and turned to the Bigs. “Boys, take LeRoy and find somewhere you haven’t been before. . . .”

“She means get lost,” muttered Luke.

“Go,” finished Mother Klein.

Little Klein watched the road from between the branches. The last time his father had been home was four months ago, and he was sure he’d grown since then. There had been a snowstorm that kept the boys home from school. Mother was afraid the snow was too deep for Little Klein, but Father had said, “Let him go play, Esther. Just put a red hat on his head. He won’t disappear.” Little Klein’s heart swelled for his father then. His father thought of him as one of the boys. But outside the snow
was
deep, and it was sticky, too. The way it stuck to Little Klein’s pants and jacket and mittens gave Luke an idea. By the time Father Klein came out looking for him, Little Klein had been rolled into a snowman. Only his wildly flapping hands and the hole revealing his frozen face gave him away. Instead of punishing the Bigs, Father Klein had laughed. He’d hooted. He’d chipped Little Klein out of his snow wrapper, tears running down his face, and called him his little elf.

This time would be different. Now Little Klein had bigger stories to tell. He had fish tales. His corn stalk was emerging. They had a dog and he got to be the one to deliver the news. His father would let him keep LeRoy once he met him and found out what a good dog he was. He hooked his knees over a high branch and dangled upside down while he watched cars approach and pass the house. Little Klein watched until the noon whistle blew in town, until his head was heavy with the blood all draining south, until it was so heavy in fact that when he reached up to grasp a branch to pull himself up again, he slipped and fell through branches, which slowed his fall but didn’t stop it until he landed facedown on a bed of pine needles and a fresh heap of LeRoy doo. He pulled at a pine needle in his ear and groaned as he rolled over.

“There’s
one,
” said a voice attached to a pair of shiny new shoes.

“Dad!” coughed Little Klein as he pulled himself up then fell back.

“Ooff,” he said, lying on his back, resting a hand on his stomach, and encountering the smelly LeRoy paste. “Ick!”

Stanley crouched down and peered at Little Klein’s face. “You all right, Little Guy? Can you get up?” He turned toward the house. “Esther! You in there? Boy’s hurt out here! Esther!”

“Dad, I’m okay,” huffed Little Klein as he rolled over to his side and slowly pulled himself up to sitting.

“There,” said Stanley, moving back a little. “There now. Thatta boy.”

“My baby! Stanley? Is that you? He fell out of the tree? Heavens to Betsy! Is he broken?”

“Since when do you let him climb trees?”

“Don’t pick him up yet. He could have injured his back or neck.” Mother Klein knelt next to Little Klein while Stanley stood awkwardly by.

“I’m fine,” said Little Klein, swiping a palm across his face, spitting, and struggling to his knees.

“He’s fine,” echoed Stanley Klein.

But Mother Klein picked him up and his face went red.

“Hi, Dad,” he said as they swept past Stanley and into the house, where he was propped on the couch with blankets and pillows while Mother Klein scrubbed at his head with a wet cloth. Stanley sat in a side chair and waited for Esther’s attention.

“Where are the boys?” he asked.

“Oh, they’ll be back in a bit,” she said, and they launched into an exchange of adult talk that left Little Klein out. Here he was on the couch like a baby, like nothing had changed, but things had changed, if only his father would see. Right this minute there were no Bigs in the house to distract his father from his youngest son. This was Little Klein’s opportunity to have his father’s sole attention.

“We got a dog!” he interjected at last. Silence was not the expected reaction, so he continued. “His name is LeRoy and we built him that house that’s in the backyard and he —”

“You have what?” Stanley exclaimed, rising slowly, his eyes darting around the living room as if the dog would appear from behind a chair or picture frame. “You can’t have a dog,” he said finally as he dropped into his chair. “No dogs. Absolutely not. Get the notion out of your head, boy.”

Stanley turned back to his conversation with Mother Klein, who scrubbed Little Klein’s head harder.

“Ouch!” he said. “But we
do
have a dog and his name is LeRoy and he’ll be back soon and you’ll meet him.” This time the silence was much shorter. Stanley looked at Esther, who was giving her sternest eye to Little Klein, who said, “What?”

“You’re right,” said Mother Klein. “You do look fine. Go back outside now and wait for your brothers.”

“But I —”

“Go.”

Little Klein trudged as far as the back door, which he opened and closed, and then tiptoed back in to listen.

Little Klein was not allowed to be superstitious. Mother Klein blessed his head every morning, and according to her, luck had nothing to do with his head resting safely on his pillow at night.

But today, listening in from the kitchen to his parents talking about LeRoy, he remembered about the mirror.

“Can’t have a dog here,” Stanley was repeating.

“. . . protection . . . no harm . . .”

Last week when the Bigs were wrestling their way through the front door, they’d knocked the mirror off the entry wall. Mother Klein had simply dealt out broom, dustpan, and bandages while Little Klein counted slowly, realizing his brothers would be living out in the world on their own before they’d be free of the seven-year spell he wasn’t supposed to believe the mirror held.

The next day Matthew and Luke conked heads so hard their eyes may have leaked, they threw up, and Dr. Dahlke had to be called. While the doctor pulled at their eyelids and shone a thin light in their pupils, diagnosing concussions, Little Klein studied Mark, who didn’t look so big without his flanks and imagined what a thin pair they’d be alone. So sure was he that his conk-headed brothers were catching the train to Saint Peter’s pearly gates that when a spider dropped from the ceiling at the moment the injured sat up to argue, Little Klein saw it as an eight-legged sign of good fortune, a reduction of the mirror’s sentence. But once his relief wore off, Little Klein forgot about the mirror, superstition, and bad luck.

“He’s going to the pound and that’s all there is to it.”

The mirror, it seemed, had not loosed its curse.

Little Klein had to find his brothers before they brought LeRoy home.

The boys had started walking in the direction of downtown and why not? On the way they could chance meeting Lucy or Janet. There was Anderson Park for running little kids off the monkey bars and winding the swings over the top bar. Once downtown, there was Mildred to tease and sodas at Nile Drug. Little Klein became so involved in imagining the adventure of finding his brothers that he did not hear the voice until it was shouting at him: “Hey, Klein boy!”

Little Klein looked up. He looked in front of him, behind him, then again the unfamiliar voice bellowed, “Over here, runt!”

Little Klein’s eyes followed the voice across the street. There stood Mean Emma Brown, the tallest girl he’d ever seen, her hair in shock on all sides, men’s boots on her feet, legends of her nasty temper generating an aura about her.