Nekomah Creek (15 page)

“Hey, you over there,” Mom said to Dad. “Father of this brood.”

Dad lowered his newspaper. “Who, me?” His eyes were at half mast.

“Yeah, you.” She squinted at him. “Guess
what.” Her face slid into a slow, crooked smile. “I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided something.”

Dad cocked his head my way. “Uh oh.”

“I’ve decided I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be going through all this with than you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Dad winked at me. “Gee, I can think of lots of guys I’d rather you were going through this with than me.”

Mom drew back like he’d hit her.

I cringed, too.

“Joke!” Dad said quickly. “Joke!”

They’d come so close. Almost back to talking nice again and Dad had to go blow it.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “It was just a joke.”

But she was already crying. “I’m too tired for jokes!” And then she staggered up the stairs.

The babies stood up and stared after her. Then
they
burst into tears.

I felt like crying, too.

“Well, gee,” Dad said. “Looks like I’m in the doghouse now.”

I nodded. This was the most upset Mom had been since Dad gave her a valentine with a big ugly pig on it last year. Dad and I picked it out together. I thought it was pretty funny, but I guess she was hoping for hearts or something.

“I’ve got to get to school.” I stood up.

Only I didn’t make it to school. I didn’t even make it to the door. But since I’m nine, I did make it to the bathroom.

  11  

Only one thing looks sadder than a molding jack-o’-lantern sitting in the rain—face collapsed, insides black and gunky—and that’s twenty-two of them.

I turned away from the window and fell back into a pile of newspapers on the sofa. I could hear Dad on the phone, telling Rose’s mother that everyone was sick and we wouldn’t be going to Powell’s Books after all.

“I’m never going to get to go there,” I said when he’d hung up.

“Yes, you will, Robby.”

“No, I won’t.” I scowled so hard my eyebrows hurt from being jammed together.

“Okay, you won’t.”

I sat up. “I won’t?”

“Oh, for crying out loud! Look, Robby, I’m really sorry everybody got sick but that’s just the way it goes.”

You know those times when it’s about five o’clock on a rainy Sunday afternoon? People are cranky because they’re hungry but there’s no good smell of dinner coming from the oven? The games and toys are in a million pieces all over the floor, nothing seems fun, and the light from every window is a dreary gray? Well, that’s how it was all weekend long.

Even Dad got sick. A couple of times he tried to perk people up with a snappy Zydeco record, but it just seemed like a bad joke with everybody lying around like a bunch of rag dolls.

I kept thinking about those television ads for aspirin and cold medicine. They never say,
Hey, kids, being sick is fun
, but they do make it look cozy. Like when the kid comes in out of the rain and the mom tucks him in bed with nice clean sheets, brings food on a tray, and puts her hand on his forehead with this worried, lovey look.

Maybe Mom likes those commercials too, because sometimes she acts that way. When people first get sick, she knocks her lights out being nice, trying to make them feel better. Her voice is as sweet and smooth as cough syrup—almost enough to make you glad you’re sick. Trouble is, this only lasts a couple of hours, three at most. Then she
gets kind of crabby and starts acting like,
Okay, you can get well now
.

This time, all the niceness got used up on the twins the very first night. What I got was, “Here’s a bucket to put by your bed in case you can’t make it to the bathroom in time.”

Sunday night I was feeling better, sitting on the floor, sketch pad on the coffee table. The little guys were emptying a basket of magazines while Mom cleaned up the kitchen. Dad sprawled on the sofa, feet propped on the other end of the coffee table. He was finishing the Sunday papers, keeping an eye on the TV news at the same time.

On the screen, they were showing a mountainside where all the trees had been chopped down.

“Look at that, Dad.”

“Hmm?” He lowered his paper.

“Even if loggers
are
just doing their job, I don’t see how we’re supposed to feel good about the forests all getting hacked down.”

“Yeah, well …”

“I mean, look at that! It’s ugly!”

“Hey, you don’t have to convince me, Robby.”

“Then how come you stick up for those guys?”

Dad looked puzzled. “Do I?”

“Yeah, it seems like it.”

“Well, I don’t really mean to. Maybe it’s just that we don’t want you to get the idea that everybody
in the timber industry’s some kind of villain, that’s all.”

“Okay—name somebody who isn’t.”

Dad thought. Then he smiled. “Ever hear of Stoney Halliday?”

I cocked my head. “Is he Scotty Halliday’s Great Grampa or something?”

“That’s right. And you’ve heard of Halliday Tree Farms? Well, Stoney started his own sawmill years ago. He bought up logged-over timber lands and replanted them. There’s thousands of acres right in this county growing strong young trees now thanks to Stoney Halliday.”

“Gee.”

“Nobody can tell me a man like that doesn’t love trees. Or care about people. Takes a lot of looking ahead and thinking about others to plant trees that won’t be big enough to cut in your own lifetime. He’s even got a scholarship fund set up. Do you realize that any kid in the Douglas Bay School District who gets accepted to Oregon State can get a full scholarship from the Hallidays?”

“Really? Why’d he do that? Just to be nice?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“He must be really rich.”

“He is, but you’d never know it to see him around Douglas Bay. Drives a pickup older than ours!”

Wow. That was a new one to me. I thought rich
people were all like that guy who buys everything in New York so he can stick his name on it.

I went back to sketching as the news droned on. It was going to rain, the weatherman said.

So tell me something I
don’t
know …

Then I heard the announcer say something about Children’s Services.

My head snapped up.

On the screen were a lot of people at some sort of meeting.

“This has gone too far,” one woman was telling the official-looking people up front. “These are our children!”

Another woman was crying, telling how her baby had been taken away and she wanted him back.

My heart started pounding. “Dad, what is this?”

“Hmm?”

“This news story. What are they talking about?”

“Oh. Well …” He watched for a moment. “Social workers, I guess. Whether they’ve been going overboard lately, taking kids away from their parents.”

My mouth went dry. “Have they?”

“I don’t know. These folks sure think they have.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. Little prickles were zipping up and down the back of my neck.

“But why?” I said. “They don’t say
why
they took the kids away.”

“Yeah, well, that’s TV news for you. Sound bites, they call it. A quote here, a quote there. You don’t begin to get the whole story. About this, the timber controversy, or whatever it is. Makes it hard to know which side to take. Or if there’s something somewhere in the middle.”

“Well, do you think that if—”

A horrible shriek. It was Mom, standing in her studio door.

Dad and I jumped up and followed her into the studio. The busy babies had struck again. They’d got into the tubes of watercolor paints. Little purple and blue fingerprints were everywhere.

Mom moaned, holding up her newest original. Ruined.

She whirled on me. “Robby, I’ve told you a million times to close the door. Just look at this!”

“But Mom, I—”

“You were the last one in here. Wasn’t that some of my sketching paper you had out there?”

“But I closed the door.”

“Not tight enough, obviously!” She wadded the wrecked drawing, hurled it into a wastebasket, and marched out. “Do you realize how many hours of work I just lost?”

“But why’s it always
my
fault?” I yelled after her. “I’m not the one that smeared paint around!” I stomped out of the studio and threw myself on the sofa. I felt like bawling, but now that I’m nine, of course I had to act mad instead.

Freddie and Lucy had stopped their magazine trashing and stood up, scared by the commotion.

Mom glared at me. “The babies are too little to know any better.”

“No they’re not,” I said. “Look at her.”

Lucy whipped her stained hands behind her back with a guilty grin.

“Stop arguing,” Dad said. “The damage has been done.”

“But why’s it always MY fault. No matter what happens, it’s MY fault. When they’re nine and I’m …” I paused to count … “sixteen, everything’ll
still be
my
fault. I guess it was just my fault I was born first, huh?”

“Okay,” Dad said. “Mom doesn’t need this now.”

“Hey, I feel bad her picture got wrecked too. But Dad, I’m sure I closed the door.”

“Right.”

“I did! Why won’t anybody believe me?”

“Robby, that’s
enough
!”

I went up in my loft and I didn’t come back down. I lay there the rest of the evening trying to read, but mostly thinking mean, mad thoughts.

I halfway wished Children’s Services
would
take me away. Then Mom and Dad would be sorry. They’d think of all the things they’d been unfair about. I hoped they’d feel real guilty. Maybe they’d even be on TV, pleading to get me back. I pictured their tear-streaked faces. Yeah, I might kind of enjoy that.

If only I knew for sure they’d get me back.

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