Nekomah Creek (20 page)

“Huh. Like what?”

“I don’t know, Robby, but if I don’t do this, it’s going to keep bugging me that I should have.” He pulled on his stocking hat.

“But, Dad!” I was so glad I thought of this. “The babies! You can’t go off and leave them alone!”

“Nice try,” Dad said, “but Mom’s working in her studio with the intercom turned on. She’ll hear them when they wake up. Now, are you coming with me or not?”

Well, I couldn’t let him do it alone, could I?

A light mist was falling as we walked out over our plank bridge. Dad carried the casserole and I hugged a loaf of homemade bread to my chest like it was a teddy bear I needed for courage.

As we passed our mailbox Dad turned to me. “Now what were you telling me about the Thanksgiving money?”

“Oh, yeah.” I’d come home with big news but
forgot all about it when I found Dad packing food for the Downards. “Well,” I began again, “somebody stole the money we collected right out of Mrs. Perkins’s desk.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. Just think of all those pop cans we collected.”

“And they don’t have any idea who did it?”

“Guess not. I thought maybe it was Orin, but then Mrs. Perkins said it was taken right after school yesterday, and that’s when he was down by the bridge, wrecking my diorama.”

“Even Orin can’t be everywhere, doing every bad thing at once, huh?”

“Right.” I shifted the bread. “I tried to find out some other evidence, like if anything else was missing from her desk, but Mrs. Perkins just goes, ‘Robby, this is not an Encyclopedia Brown case. If you know anything about it, tell us. Otherwise, it’s none of your business.’ ” I scowled. “I don’t like her very much.”

“I get that idea.”

“And she doesn’t like me either.” I waited for him to deny this.

“Well, that’s the way it goes sometimes.”

I blinked, surprised.

“You’re not going to hit it off with every teacher the way you did with Mrs. Kassel last year.”

Real comforting. Well, at least he was honest.

We had reached the Downards’ mailbox now.
Over it hung a shingle that said “Dressmaking.” It seemed strange, walking right up the driveway I’d hurried past so many times before. When the dogs spotted us they started barking and jerking against their chains.

I looked at Dad. Maybe he’d decide to turn back?

But he gave the dogs a few pats and they calmed down, sniffing us in a friendly way as we went up the front steps.

Dad knocked on the door.

I heard some yelling inside, then the door swung back.

Orin. His eyes got as big as beady little groundhog eyes can get. He looked nervous. Maybe he thought I’d brought Dad over to get him in trouble about the diorama.

“Hi, Orin,” Dad said. “We thought we’d look in on your dad. Is he up for visitors?”

Orin checked out Dad’s brown bag covered casserole. “What’s that?” he said, like he thought maybe we were delivering a bomb.

“This,” Dad said, “is chicken a la Hummer.”

Orin’s mom appeared behind him. “Orin, if we have company, don’t make them—” Then she saw us. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, hello.”

I’d seen Mrs. Downard at school programs. She always seemed too thin and delicate to be Orin’s mom. Today she looked pretty tired.

“We were sorry to hear about your husband’s
accident,” Dad said. “We just brought a couple of things to help out with your meals.”

“Oh. Well, that’s real nice.” The lines between her eyebrows smoothed out. “Come on in. Elvis is just watching some TV.”

I glanced at Dad, hoping we could drop the food and go, but he walked right in like he always visited the homes of people who hated him.

Off to the left I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Downard’s sewing room—fabric piled everywhere, a couple of frilly dresses hanging on a rack. Sometimes at night we’d be driving by and we’d see her working in here, framed in the lit-up window, bent over her sewing machine.

“Now don’t be looking in there,” she said, hurrying to close the door. “Such a mess.” We followed her into the living room.

Was it stuffy in here or was it me? I couldn’t breathe. I stood with my arms tight to my sides so I wouldn’t knock off any of the little figurines that were on every shelf and table. And the walls! I’d never seen so many pictures before. Orin’s mom really had their place decorated fancy.

Elvis sprawled on the sofa with his eyes closed, his broken arm in a sling, his leg cast propped on a coffee table made out of a thick disk of tree trunk, sanded and varnished. A game of checkers was on the table too.

“Elvis, Honey? Bill Hummer and his boy are here.”

Elvis grunted. It wasn’t friendly. On the other hand, I could see he wasn’t about to jump up and slug Dad, either. He glanced at us and nodded. He ran a hand through his messy hair and turned back to the giant-screen TV.

“He’s not himself,” Mrs. Downard whispered. “Still having a lot of pain.”

Not himself was right. He looked so different from the way he had in class the other day. His face was kind of gray and creased. He seemed smaller.

“They brought a nice casserole and some homemade bread,” Mrs. Downard said. “Wasn’t that thoughtful?”

Elvis grunted again, one point higher on a scale from mean to friendly.

Dad started the small talk—how we’d heard about the accident. How we were real sorry about it but were glad it wasn’t worse and all that. How we’d be glad to help them out any way we could.

I noticed a bunch of get-well cards on the mantel. One was one of my mother’s designs! After the first surprise, my muscles loosened a little. Funny—just knowing that a friend of the Downards liked my mom’s artwork made me feel better about the Downards themselves.

Orin watched us, head hunched into his shoulders. He looked different today too. Almost timid. His little sister Peggy came down the hall, dragging her hand along the wall. She sidled over and tucked her head under her mother’s arm.

I had the feeling Elvis just wished we’d leave. He never even turned the TV down the whole time Dad tried to make conversation.

Finally, without taking his eyes off the screen, he said, “Sherilyn?”

“Yes, Elvis?” Orin’s mom hurried over to him.

“How ’bout another one of them pills?”

“Oh, dear. Hurtin’ pretty bad, is it?” She glanced at their cuckoo clock. “Still another hour before the next one. The doctor said—”

“Forget the doctor!” Elvis’s good arm jerked like he wanted to hit the guy in charge of the pills. “Just gimme one.”

She jumped to get it.

Boy, my dad would never talk to my mom that way, no matter what kind of shape he was in. And if he did my mom would probably just go, “What’s with
you
today, Buster?”

“Well,” Dad said. “We didn’t mean to tire you out.” He turned to Mrs. Downard. “That’s a big pile of rounds you’ve got out there. Could I split some of that up for you? I’ve got some time here before I need to get dinner on.”

She glanced at Elvis. “Gee, that’d be—”

“Naw! I’ll do it,” Elvis said.

Dad tried to kid him about it. “Come on, now, Elvis. It’s going to be a while before you’re up to that.”

Elvis grunted, partly like he had to agree, partly like he was hurting.

Well, I never thought I’d be saying this about Elvis Downard, but I felt sorry for him. Being big and strong is great, but big and strong can be gone as fast as a Doug fir can crack the wrong way.

“Well, thanks then,” Elvis said. “I guess I’ll have to owe you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said.

Orin’s mom looked pleased. I think she hadn’t liked Dad before, but now she did.

“Get your jacket on, Orin,” she said. “You two kids can help him stack it.”

“But Mo-om …”

“Git!” Elvis snapped, his good arm jerking again.

The air outside felt cool and soft on my face. We had gone in there and we had survived.

Orin came down the steps, pulling on his parka. He glanced at me, then looked away.

Together we watched my dad take his jacket off and roll up the sleeves of his flannel shirt. He made a big show of spitting on his palms, then rubbing them together. He winked at me. Then he spread his legs, hoisted the ax, and started splitting those logs.

Now I have some favorite sounds, like the sound of the babies giggling. That’s a tough one to beat. But there’s not much that’s nicer than the ring of an ax in the stillness as a pile of firewood’s getting split.

Right then, standing there with Orin, both of us watching my dad swinging that ax, I felt kind of proud. Who cared what anyone else thought? I thought my dad was one heck of a guy.

I looked at Orin and hoped he knew what I was thinking. I was thinking, yeah, that’s right, that’s my dad. He can chop wood
and
he can make a casserole.

  19  

As soon as we started home, I thought Dad would say, “There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

But he didn’t say anything. He just turned up his jacket collar against the mist and began whistling.

I fell in step beside him and wondered: Did I feel better now because we’d done the right thing? Or did I just feel better because the visit was over?

“Hey, Robby!”

I turned around. It was Orin, standing at the end of his driveway.

“Can I talk to you?” he called.

I looked at Dad to see what I should do, but he just shrugged. Then he checked his watch. “I’ve got to get dinner going.”

I looked at Orin again. “Okay,” I told Dad. “I’ll be home in a minute.”

Dad headed up the road. I turned and slowly walked back toward Orin.

He picked up a pebble and threw it into the ditch. Then he threw another one. Finally he said, “I know who stole the Thanksgiving money.”

“You do? Who?”

“Nathan Steckler.”

“Oh.” I believed it. Nathan was mean enough. Then I remembered something. “Wait a minute—isn’t Nathan’s dad one of the guys laid off at the mill? That’s who the money was supposed to help in the first place.”

Orin shrugged.

Weird. Well, maybe this was what Mrs. Van Gent meant when she talked about stress in families where the dad’s unemployed.