Spotted Dog Last Seen (7 page)

“That's okay. She died years ago. This is the anniversary of her passing.”

“Oh,” I said.

“It's a beautiful day,” she remarked, holding her face up to the sun.

The man stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the rest of the cemetery.

“Nothing like a cemetery to teach us about local history. They keep great records.”

I thought back to how quickly Creelman was able to check to see if Trevor Tower was buried at Twillingate. I nodded in agreement.

“Cemeteries. Churches. Schools. They all keep great records,” the man continued.

Great records?
That
got me thinking! We could find out if Trevor Tower had been a student at Queensview by checking the school's records!

Simple!

“Do schools keep records of every student who ever attended?” I asked, just to be sure.

“Guaranteed,” the man said.

Trevor Tower. If he had been a student at Queensview, then it would be easy enough to confirm just by asking the secretary at the school's office. Had Merrilee or Pascal thought of that? No, I was certain they hadn't.

“Well, we must be on our way,” the woman said.

“Yes, we should if we still want to stop for lunch,” the man said, checking his watch.

“Are you going to Sacred Grounds Cafe?” I asked.

“We might,” the man said. “It's close.”

“If you do,” I said, “try the meat loaf. It's excellent.”

“Thanks for the tip,” the man said.

The couple headed off.

I packed up my bin and put Creelman's book and my rubbing into my knapsack.

The next day during recess, I stood in the hallway outside of the school's office and waited to meet Pascal and Merrilee. They arrived together.

“What's the plan?” Pascal asked. “You're going to ask the secretary if Trevor Tower was a student here? Just like that?”

“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”

“She's going to ask why we want to know,” Merrilee warned.

“So we'll tell her,” I said.

“Tell her what, exactly?” Merrilee asked.

“We'll tell her that we found a book at the public library with his name in it, and we wondered if he had been a student here. That's the truth, more or less. We don't have to say that his name was written in a secret code.”

Pascal and Merrilee thought this over.

“I guess we could say that,” Merrilee said at last.

“Let's do it,” Pascal added.

Together, we filed into the office. Ms. Albright, the school's secretary, was at her desk talking on the telephone. When she hung up, she surveyed the three of us, then settled on Merrilee.

“Merrilee! Have you been sent to see the principal?
Again
?”

“No,” Merrilee shot back with surprising force.

“I'm very glad to hear it,” Ms. Albright said. “You and the principal must be running out of things to talk about.”

Merrilee said nothing, but she gave me an angry little push forward.

“We were wondering if you could check the school records for us,” I said in my politest voice. “We'd like to know if Trevor Tower was ever a student here.”

“Trevor Tower?”

“Yes. Trevor Tower. Could you please check?”

“Trevor Tower? What do you know about Trevor Tower?”

“Nothing. Not a thing.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“Trevor Tower. It's the same thing every year. I don't get it.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Every year, a student comes by to ask me about Trevor Tower.”

“Is that right?” I said. I realized then that the mystery book codes had to have been floating around in the public library for years, and that others had been on the same trail before us.

“So you've already looked him up?” I asked. “You keep good records?”

“I most certainly do,” Ms. Albright said.

I thought of my list of t-shirt sayings. If I were to make one for Ms. Albright, it would read,
Not here to make friends
.

The telephone rang.

“Good afternoon. This is Queensview Elementary. How may I help you?”

I formed a tight huddle with Pascal and Merrilee.

“I don't think she's going to tell us. She's too suspicious,” Merrilee whispered.

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“We'll have to trick her into answering our question. Come at her from the side.”

“Come at her from the side? What's that supposed to mean?” I whispered.

“Follow my lead,” Merrilee whispered. “And you,” she added, turning to Pascal, “you say nothing.”

Pascal opened his mouth to object, but Ms. Albright hung up the telephone. Before she could say anything further, Merrilee jumped in.

“We're really enjoying cemetery duty,” Merrilee announced.

“I'm glad,” Ms. Albright said. “Community service is important. Is Mr. Creelman still with the Brigade?”

“Yes, he is,” Merrilee said. “I think he's been there since the beginning of time.”

Ms. Albright chuckled. “You might be right. But I hear that he's been having some health issues, so I wondered if he was still keeping up with his volunteer work.”

“Well, he sure knows everything there is to know about that cemetery. Parts of a grave marker. Types of stones. How to clean them. And just yesterday, we learned how to make rubbings.”

“That sounds lovely,” Ms. Albright said, as she began to straighten the paperwork on her desk.

We were losing her. I looked anxiously at Merrilee.

But Merrilee was unflappable.

“Mr. Creelman even knows who is buried in every single plot. The cemetery keeps amazing records.”

“Is that so?” Ms. Albright said, reloading her stapler.

“You can give him a name, and just like that, he can tell you if that person is buried at the cemetery or not.”

“Well, good for him,” Ms. Albright said, putting stray pencils into her pencil holder.

“It's impressive,” Merrilee agreed. “We asked Mr. Creelman about Trevor Tower,” she added sadly. “He looked up Trevor's name for us, but there was no record.”

“Oh, my! Trevor would be far too young for the cemetery, I should hope. And besides, he and his family moved away years ago, right after Trevor graduated from grade six,” Ms. Albright said, dumping holes from her hole puncher into her wastebasket like confetti, without realizing she had confirmed that Trevor
had
been a student at Queensview.

“Moved away?” I repeated.

To tell the truth, I was a bit relieved. If Trevor no longer lived in our town, and those mystery code books had been floating around the library for years and years, then there was no longer any locker to open. We had reached the ultimate dead end and could now move on with our lives.

“With all the student records you take care of, how can you be so certain about Trevor?” Merrilee asked.

“It's easy to remember the names of the students chosen to participate in the school's time-capsule program. That only happens once every seven years.”

“Trevor was selected?” Merrilee asked, elbowing me ever so slightly.

“Yes. Seven years ago. That's why it's easy to remember him.”

Pascal gasped, but Ms. Albright didn't seem to notice.

“So, his locker is a time capsule,” I said, almost in a whisper. “It's still here.”

“That's right. Locked up and scheduled to be opened forty-three years from now.”

Her words, so casually dropped, almost knocked me to my knees. But Merrilee took a bold step forward and leaned her hands on Ms. Albright's tidied desk.

“Where is it?” she demanded.

Seven

_____

Famous Last Words

“WHAT LUCK!
Trevor has a time-capsule locker!” Pascal said in awe as we hurried along the upstairs hallway, our shoes squeaking against the linoleum. “And there it is! I can see the plaque from here.”

We stopped and stood in front of Trevor Tower's locker. The engraved metal plaque fixed to it gave Trevor Tower's name, the year he graduated and the year that the locker was to be reopened. Except for the plaque, the locker seemed ordinary in every other way.

“Look,” Merrilee said.

She pointed to the lock securing Trevor's time capsule, which was also ordinary, but I could see why she was excited. It was not a lock that needed a key. It was a combination lock with a dial.

“Twenty-eight. Thirty-four. Eighteen. That has to be the combination,” she said.

The three of us spied left and right, but the hallway was crowded with lunchtime traffic. Even worse, Trevor's locker was located directly across from the school's music room, which was also used as a homework drop-in center over lunch. From where we stood, it felt like the busiest part of the school.

“This is no good,” I cautioned. “Too many people.”

“I can see that,” Merrilee said irritably.

“So we're not going to open it today?” Pascal said with disappointment.

“We need to be careful,” Merrilee said. “Besides, the locker isn't going anywhere.”

“She's right,” I said, a bit relieved that we had put off the deed, at least for now.

I was still not convinced that breaking into a time capsule filled with secrets and meant to stay locked for fifty years was a good idea.

And yet, I had to admit that I was now a little bit intrigued about what the contents might be. Secrets, we knew that, but what kind?

I thought back to my lunch with Creelman and about how, for the first time ever, I had kept my mind's garage door open and had taken a really good look around. Up until then, I had always been afraid of what I might find lurking in the shadowy corners. But with Creelman, I had remembered all the details of the accident, every last one of them. And although I was still having nightmares, at least I had confronted the facts I knew about that terrible day. Doing so somehow made me feel safer and more in control.

If I could live through telling Creelman everything I knew about the accident, I was sure that whatever was inside Trevor Tower's locker could not be as big an ordeal as I had imagined.

“We should complete a week of observations,” Merrilee advised. “Each of us will make notes about what's happening in this hallway at various times throughout the day, and then we'll compare notes. That way we'll be able to pick the quietest time to break in.”

“What do you think is in there?” Pascal asked. He took a bold step forward and sniffed. “It doesn't smell.”

“Step away from that locker!” Merrilee whispered harshly. “We don't want to cause any suspicion. Everyone, walk away. We've never had this conversation.”

She turned on her heels and marched down the hallway, back the way we had come.

Pascal and I shrugged, then headed to our classroom.

It was threatening rain when we showed up for cemetery duty the next Wednesday afternoon. The dark clouds hung low, and in the distance, lightning struck. The first plops of rain hit the grave markers surrounding us.

“I bet we'll be in the library today,” I predicted, as the three of us stood waiting by the gate.

Sure enough, Loyola whistled from the front steps of the library, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled over her head to protect against the weather.

“The Brigade's in here,” she yelled, hastily waving us over.

We left the cemetery, but I fell behind when I stopped to look left, right, left, and then left, right and left again before crossing the street. I caught up to the others on the library stairs. They still hadn't noticed my extra-cautious habit of checking for traffic.

Once inside, we made our way past the stacks to the research area at the back of the library. The Brigade were already sitting at the tables when we arrived. They were leafing through piles of books they had collected. Three blue plastic bins were stacked on the floor beside Creelman.

We slid into some seats across from them.

“Today's lesson is going to build on what you already know about symbolism and how epitaphs have changed over time. To do that, you'll be designing your own gravestone,” Creelman announced.

“Now we're talking!” Pascal exclaimed. He reached for a blue bin.

I was also excited. Design work was something I could always throw myself into. Words combined with pictures and whatnot! I nearly whooped!

“Not yet,” Creelman said, glowering at Pascal. He moved the bin out of Pascal's reach with a push of his foot.

Pascal settled back in his chair.

The rain had picked up force and was now spraying against the stained glass. We had escaped indoors just in time.

“In order to design your own gravestone, you'll need to do some research. Find out what other cultures and religions like to put on their grave markers so that you can make informed choices. For example, there are specific ways that the military respect their fallen soldiers. And there are specific occupations like ship-building and fire-fighting that have their own emblems.”

“Emblems? You mean songs? How do you put songs on a gravestone?” Pascal asked.

“What's that, now?” Creelman asked, his scowl deepening if that was possible.

“He's confusing
emblem
with
anthem
,” Merrilee jumped in. She turned to Pascal. “An emblem is like a crest or a coat of arms. An anthem is what you sing before hockey games.”

“Got it,” Pascal said. He faced Creelman, waiting to pounce with another question.

Creelman cleared his throat and continued at his steady pace, but started fiddling with a pencil. It looked like he was desperate for a cigarette.

“Our earliest gravestones used to be about warning the rest of us that death was certain or that time on earth was fleeting.
Here lies the body of
… with pictures of coffins or crossbones or shovels. Not very cheery. Then attitudes changed, and gravestones started to include symbols of hope and life after death. Lots of winged cherubs. The dead were thought to be asleep. Later, gravestones featured urns and weeping willow trees, which were symbols for the grievers who were left behind, and not so much about the dead. Nowadays, you'll see gravestones that tell us something about who the buried person was. Symbols include hobbies or pets or whatever else that person held special in life.”

“Maybe I'll include symbols of my favorite band or what I like to eat,” Pascal said.

Creelman did not respond to Pascal directly, but he did not pound on the table either, even though he looked as if he might have wanted to. Instead, he plowed on with his directions.

“Remember, a gravestone, through words and art, tells the world who you were and how you want to be remembered. Most important, keep this in mind. Your choices are permanent.” He pounded the table. “
Per-man-ent!
They're etched in stone. You can't change a gravestone like you can change a t-shirt,” Creelman warned, and he gave me a level stare.

I looked down at the t-shirt I was wearing that day. It read,
If you don't make mistakes, you're not really trying
.

“So, look through these books before you begin. And when you're ready, take one of the bins. Inside you'll find a large roll of paper, felt markers and colored pencils. There's tracing paper if you want to copy a design from a book, and glue and scissors. You'll also find alphabet stencils so that you can write out your epitaph.”

Creelman turned to me and his face softened. I almost didn't recognize him, except that he had had that same look when he was staring out the window back in the cafe.

“Give careful thought to your epitaph. These will be your famous last words. You need to choose something that will withstand the ravages of time.”

A dark silence rolled in like a fog, and when I glanced again at Creelman, he was busy rearranging his face into his usual scowl.

“We'll be back to check your work.”

And to no one's surprise, the Brigade marched out of the library into the downpour.

As I watched them leave, I thought back to the book of epitaphs that Creelman had lent me. I had been reading it every night, mostly when I woke up from my nightmares. I had come across a few sayings that would be great for my t-shirt collection, and I remembered one epitaph in particular that I thought I wouldn't mind seeing on my own gravestone.

Still, I had no idea about the symbols that I might like to use. I reached for the nearest pile and began to leaf through one of the books.

“I'm looking for joyful symbols,” Merrilee remarked as she flipped through the pages of her chosen book. “I want mine to be about celebrating life.”

Joyful symbols? Good grief! I was dead certain she would go for all the spooky ones to create a truly terrifying gravestone that would force people to take a wide circle as they passed by. But I didn't say a word. I realized that I was never going to figure out Merrilee, and I wasn't about to die trying.

“I'm going to go for a superstar theme,” Pascal said. “When people walk by my gravestone, they'll wish they had known me, and weep. What about you, Derek?”

“I think I'd like mine to be peaceful. I'd like to make people feel comforted.”

Merrilee stopped flipping pages. She looked directly at me with an intense stare.

“That's really nice,” she said, but with no emotion whatsoever.

Then she went back to her books as if she had said nothing at all.

Was she being pleasant or spooky? It was baffling. I went back to my books.

As I flipped through the pages, I realized that there were symbols for absolutely everything imaginable. It turned out that if I wanted to go with peace and comfort, my symbol choices included a dove, a lighthouse and an anchor.

That was a nice discovery because those symbols reminded me of the yellow and blue cottage we rented every summer for our family vacation. It came with a small two-person sailboat, and my dad had spent hours teaching me the ropes. I loved the feel of the wind pushing the sails, and how we could skim across the water so quickly. I loved the quietness of it all, and the excitement during gusts. I loved the musty smell of the life jackets and the cool spray on my face and the peanut butter and jam sandwiches my dad packed, which we ate when we reached the island with the lighthouse.

I grabbed a blue bin and opened it to take out the supplies. I wasn't sure how much time passed, but I was pleased with how my design was coming together. It was the same feeling that I got with the t-shirts I made.

The three of us worked in silence. The only sound was the rain sweeping across the stained-glass windows. I thought back to our first day of cemetery duty, and I remembered how creeped-out I had been back then.

What had changed? It surprised me to realize that I had actually begun to look forward to Wednesday afternoons. Merrilee was right. It was nice to be working outdoors. And Pascal turned out to be pretty entertaining, sometimes asking questions that I would never dare to ask. The three of us did not have much in common, but here we were, working together, getting along.

I sat back and surveyed the pile of books on the table.

Could Creelman also have helped to make me feel better about cemeteries? Were his weekly lectures somehow lessening my fear of graveyards? And then I thought about it — reading weathered marble, figuring out carved symbols, mapping plots, cleaning stones, taking rubbings of epitaphs that we liked. Creelman had been showing us all along that cemeteries were much more about the living than they were about the dead.

“Done,” Merrilee announced.

She stood up to admire her drawing. Pascal and I joined her.

Merrilee's gravestone featured a large harp surrounded by a wreath of acorns. Below that, two winged angels knelt facing each other while drinking tea. Her epitaph read,
Life is for the living
.

“Nice,” both Pascal and I said at the same time, and I realized that Merrilee had also been taking in Creelman's message.

Pascal and I continued to work on our gravestones while Merrilee disappeared among the stacks, then made her way to the library's front desk to talk to Loyola about the latest book she had read. Her voice and Loyola's booming laughter wafted back to where we sat.

As I colored in my lighthouse, my mind wandered.

A popsicle. The sound of a lawnmower. An orange rubber ball.

The smell of grass. The sun. Laughter.

Dennis. The stained pavement. A carved stone lamb.

“Derek?”

I looked up.

“You okay?” Pascal asked.

It took a few seconds to realize where I was. I looked at my work. I had been coloring the beacon of the lighthouse for who knows how long.

“Sure,” I said, trying to look casual by stretching my arms. “I'm going to get a drink of water.”

I made my way to the fountain by the front desk and took a long cool drink.

“Hey, Derek,” Merrilee said when she spotted me. “Come check this out.”

She was pointing to Loyola's bulletin board of lost-and-found bookmarks. How many people came back for their lost items, I wondered. Not many judging from the way the items were cluttered and spilling over the sides.

Then I spotted a folded piece of paper with Loyola's name on it.

“What's that?” I asked, pointing to the paper.

Loyola unpinned and unfolded the paper. It had been the front cover of an essay she had written. She read the title out loud.

“‘How I Did Not Spend My Summer Vacation.'”

I noted that the fold marks had almost worn through. I could also see that someone had written a comment underneath the title, but I couldn't read it upside down.