Sway (9 page)

O
n Thursday morning, The Roast
rrr-rrr
-rumbled to life right on schedule, signaling the start of a journey that fake disease, crackpot plans, and one concerned ousin-cay couldn't delay. While Dad waited outside, I ping-ponged around the house, gathering my things.

First, I packed the most important stuff: cell phone, red string, the injured Book of In-Betweens. And then came the
well, you never know
category, which included the Sharpies and the pink plastic beauty box. And finally the regular stuff, like clothes, toothbrush, and flip-flops. As I grabbed a handful of underwear from my drawer, the little fortune-size Castanea dentata tree tag came out with them and fell at my foot. I stuffed it into my pocket to remind myself to ask Syd to water the tree while I'd be gone. After that, I found that the airbrushed tank top made for a good undershirt, with a light hoodie thrown on over it to help me sneak the tambourine back into The Roast.

Then there was just one more thing I needed to do, in case Mom returned while we were gone. I yanked a blank page loose from my Book of In-Betweens and wrote:

Dear Toodi Bleu Skies,


In case Dad didn't tell you, we've gone on a trip in The Roast (bleh).


I know you didn't mean to leave without saying good-bye, and I know you've been trying to call too. My phone ran out of minutes, but I'm going to try to fix that as soon as I can. And I guess if you're reading this note, it means that you're home. Just pllllllease stay here and wait for me.


Love,


Castanea Dentata Nordenhauer


(Oh, and P.S. I took the beauty box with me.)


I wanted to add my first noodling in days to the page, but before I could finish even one little raindrop next to my name, I was interrupted by the jarring honk of The Roast's horn. So I left the good-enough note on the bathroom counter, grabbed my backpack, and went outside, where Uncle Clay, Aunt Jo, and Syd were on their side porch, ready to say their good-byes. When Dad saw me, he slid out from the driver's seat slow enough to only slosh his coffee a little. He crunched his way over the pistachio shells on the ground, and Aunt Jo gave Syd an irritated glance, like she knew he'd been involved in some kind of nutty scheme.

I stood right next to Syd, who shook his whole body in rhythm with the grumble-hum of The Roast. To prevent the tambourine under my sweatshirt from speaking up, or worse yet, dropping out and rolling across the driveway, I had to dedicate one whole arm to pressing my tummy.

“They let you stay home again?” I asked Syd, out the side of my mouth.

“Nope,” he said. “Suspended. For skipping yesterday.”

“Sorry.”

“No bigs. So what was the inside of The Roast like?” he whispered.

“Truly?” I said. “Kind of wackadoo.”

“Good wackadoo or bad wackadoo?”

“Not sure. Some neato things, but definitely some weirdness.”

“Don't worry,” said Syd. “Maybe it's just stuff left over from the dead-robber-spies.”

“Thanks,” I said, with a small kick to Syd's shin. “You're a big help.”

Dad stood between Uncle Clay and Aunt Jo and licked the coffee from his thumb.

“Well, I suppose it's time for some see-ya-laters,” he said. “You all keep an eye on the abode, if you will, while Cass and I are out broadening our horizons.”

“You two take care of each other,” Aunt Jo said to Dad mid-hug.

Uncle Clay grabbed my dad by the hand. “Clean start,” he said, squeezing his fist real tight. “Clean start.”

“I appreciate all the help this week, bro,” Dad said.

“Thanks for trying to get me out of this,” I whispered to Syd.

“No prob.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” I said to him. “Water the Castanea dentata tree while I'm gone? Please?”

Syd rolled his eyes. “Sure, and I might as well feed some dead squirrels while I'm at it.”

“Come on.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I'll squirt the twig.…Now, come here, I made something for you.” He pulled me by my elbow just a few steps over and dug something from his pocket.

“Since I can't be a stowaway on The Roast
and
go to summer school,” he said. Then he handed over a Sucrets box with the words can it! scribbled in black marker on the lid.

“Cass, I'm real sorry Aunt Toodi went. And I'm real sorry you have to go. But maybe when you're on the road, you can put all the thoughts you can't live with in this, and we'll store them in the cellar when you get back.”

Syd's momentary sweetness made me smile inside. That side of him would have made a great stowaway.

“I'll try,” I said, thinking I'd probably be needing a container much bigger than a Sucrets box. “And hey, will you please watch for Mom while we're gone? If she does come back, tell her I need to talk to her right away.

“And promise you won't bust the cloud piñata,” I added.

“Come on,” said Syd.

“Promise!” I said. “And don't let Fake Syd bust it either.”

“I promise,” he said, and gave my belly a jangly wallop. “Nice tambourine, by the way.”

I silenced my gut with a press of an arm as Dad and I crossed the yard to The Roast. It was really about to happen. Me, Dad, and all his secrets were about to hit the road to anywhere-but-Florida. The notion to run in the other direction passed through my mind, but the thought was quickly chased off by a rolling boulder of curiosity.

Dad gave me a little boost through the driver's side, and once he'd shut the door hard behind us, he turned to me and said, “Welcome aboard, traveling partner. Shall we begin our tour of The Roast and its amenities?”

“I guess so,” I said.

“I'll admit it's more Ritz cracker than Ritz-Carlton,” said Dad. “But here goes.”

As he began, I scanned the space and made my best
Wow, I've never seen all this stuff before, and especially not last night when I snuck in here
face.

“Directly to your right,” he said, “you'll see our general living area, which will double as my bedroom when necessary.”

The squishy gray couch was loaded up with my dad's pillow and faded quilt. In front of the couch on a plastic coffee table, his duffel bag sat, with a corner of the Scrabble box poking out through the busted zipper. On the floor next to the couch, the strange MBM suitcase was still pushed up under the driver's seat.

“Dad, who's MBM, and what's in that suitcase?” I asked.

“Oh, all that will be revealed soon enough,” he said, with a slight double-lift of his eyebrows.

“And just beyond the living area is our food pantry, which I've stocked with some sustenance for the road,” he continued, opening the cabinet door to reveal a selection of canned meals that would have made Chef Boyardee himself proud. On the side of the pantry that faced the big couch, there was a hook with a suit bag hanging from it. The suit bag was puffed out full, like there could very well be a gorilla costume inside.

“Now, on the left, you'll find our little bathroom, which I affectionately refer to as the knee-bumper,” he said.

I stuck my head into a room so small, a girl could sit on the toilet and wash her hands and take a shower all at once.

“And this space just past the knee-bumper, I've deemed our thinking area.”

Dad pointed to the scuffed rolltop desk that was bolted down to the floor. On a shelf above the desk was a collection of frayed encyclopedias, two old sets shuffled together. Half of them were labeled 1987, the other half 1998. From beneath the desk, that old wagon of mine still sat and sparkled, like the night before.

“Why'd you bring the wagon?” I said. “Is that on the will-be-revealed-soon list too?”

“You bet,” said Dad, looking pleased that I had noticed.

“And last, but hopefully not least,” he said, squeezing around me to just beyond the desk and sweeping the poinsettia tablecloth-curtain to the side. “Your own custom space.”

He did that part in a weird TV voice, like when you watch an old game show rerun and the announcer is seriously excited about the prize, even though it's just a big ol' seventies microwave.

“Check out that big box under there,” he said. “I found it at the Then Again. It's an old magician's trick box.”

“Yick. Like where the lady gets sawed in two?”

“Well, yeah, but not for real sawed,” he said. “And check this out. A special something from your Uncle Clay.”

Dad pulled the curtain shut and said from the other side, “You like?”

I had to admit that seeing my name that big and in glitter in the daylight was a cool thing, especially the way the glitters fluttered to the floor each time the curtain moved.

“I know it'll take a while for all this to sink in,” Dad said. “So you just do your best to make yourself at home, Cassoline. We've got one stop to make before the adventure begins.”

As I unloaded my things from the backpack, wedging them all into the few storage crevices I could find, I noticed that the mystery smell still crept from the hole in the big wooden box.

“Oh, and sorry about the aroma,” Dad said, like he could read my nose's mind. “I considered sprinkling some cinnamon back there, but I sure knew better than that. I'll see what I can do when we gas up.”

“Thank you,” my nose had me say.

I released the tambourine from my shirt, sending it bouncing across the floor like an air hockey puck. Then I peeked around the curtain to see Dad, seemingly unaware of the noise, buckling himself in and adjusting all the things around him like a pilot might do. That is, if a pilot's controls consisted of cold coffee, Kleenex, and a lime-wedge air freshener. Clipped to the visor over my dad's head was a photo of baby him and toddler Uncle Clay eating from the same bucket of dirt. When Dad flipped the visor up, I saw grown-up Uncle Clay through the windshield, wearing the same grin on his face, the cloud piñata dangling all scruffy in the distance over his head. Dad popped the Gordon Lightfoot CD into the dashboard and began to sing kind of quiet and shaky-voiced, “‘Carefree highway…let me slip away, slip away on you.…'”

We made the turn from the backyard onto our own driveway, The Roast lurching back and forth like a dog about to be sick. I scrambled up onto my box-bed and looked out the back window just in time to see Syd, Aunt Jo, and Uncle Clay with openmouthed, surprised faces that made them look like carolers on a Christmas card. My dad had just run clean over the Castanea dentata, without the slightest clue what he'd done. There weren't even any remains left behind, like the tree had just disintegrated under the weight of The Roast. As we bumped off the driveway, I saw
You don't mean it
form slow on Aunt Jo's lips.

I
pulled the crumpled tree tag from my pocket and crammed it into the can it! box.

While Dad and Gordon Lightfoot and I rolled slowly past the all-too-familiar sights of Olyn, I planted myself in the desk chair and opened to a blank page in the Book of In-Betweens. On it, I fast-noodled a fitting tribute, a skull and crossbones made out of a leaf and two twigs. I was just fixing to wonder if a Castanea dentata tree was even capable of growing stately and strong at all, when my dad turned in to the gas station so dramatically, my pencils rolled right off the desk and onto the floor with all manner of The Roast's loose doodads joining them there.

As he backed up and inched forward at least five times to line up with the gas pump, Dad said, “Cass, I have a feeling it's time to establish some Rules of The Roast.”

When we finally squeaked to a stop, he said, “Ever hear of holding down the fort?”

Well, of course I had. All the times Mom had gone rescuing, it was the last thing she would say to me. All but this last time, that is. She'd say, “Be my little fort-holder, Castanea.”

“Here's the thing,” said Dad. “Apparently The Roast, well, she likes to make some wide turns, which are more than a little unsettling to her innards. So we'll call this Rule of The Roast Number One:
A big turn is your concern
.”

It was the first rhyme I'd ever heard him do, like he was trying to be all Toodi Bleu Part Two or something.

“From now on,” he said, “when we take us a swerve, you'll have the ever-so-vital job of securing anything that you are long-armed and stretchy-legged enough to reach. The last thing I want is for you to be knocked silly by a flying book.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You willing and able?” he asked.

“Able,” I said.

“Care to practice?”

“Sure.”

“All right, let's see here,” he said. “Our signal to activate wide-turn-stuff-securing mode will be as follows…

“Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!” My dad made such a holler, I chomped the edge of my tongue. And when I didn't jump into action, he did it again. “Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig Leeeeeeeeeeeeft!”

If for no other reason than to avoid one more holler, I practiced my part of the plan, discovering that if I stretched hard enough, I could secure small desk items with one hand, keep the coffee table from tumping with my left foot, block the wagon from rolling out from under the desk with my other foot, and finally, with my right forearm, I could hold all but one encyclopedia volume on the shelf above. I decided that, in the event of a real flying encyclopedia emergency, X-Y-Z could be sacrificed. Xylophones, yo-yos, and zebras had nothing to do with storm rescue research anyway.

“Excellent first effort,” said Dad. “I'm going to fill 'er up and run inside for a few items. Want to come along?”

“No, thanks. I'll just hang out.”

“Okay by me,” he said. “But sit up here in the passenger seat so I can have an eye on you.”

While Dad got the gas glugging into The Roast, I caught sight of our own little church, which was right across the street from the station. The sign in front said,
Triumph is just UMPH added to TRY!
Brother Edge was replacing the exclamation point that had fallen off. In my side mirror, I watched Dad hook the gas nozzle back on the pump. Then, all quick and nonchalant, he yanked a chunk of Castanea dentata tree from under the back bumper and stuffed it into the garbage can. Dad shouted a hello to Brother Edge and waved to him on the way into the store.

Next door to the gas station was the Best Yet Discount Foods, which Syd calls the Best Yet Disco, because Aunt Jo did a slippy dance on a smushed avocado there once while “Stayin' Alive” played overhead. I noticed a nest wedged into the Y of the big Best Yet sign. In it, a bunch of baby birds bobbed their rubbery heads while their mother made trips back and forth to a packet of french fries spilled on the ground. I imagined a Toodi Bleu Bird flying off to another nest in Florida, with my little rubber baby bird butt stuck down in the letter Y.

Y us.

Y this.

Y now.

Sighing, I gave a little stir to the pile of things in the center console—various gum, ancient peppermints, ballpoint pens, and a toothpick or two. In the midst of it all was a small piece of paper, a gum wrapper with a name and address written down.

Kenneth Brandt, 42 Wintergarden Street,

Fort Napaco, FL

Suddenly, that one address landed heavy as a whole phone book on my brain. Could that be
the
Ken? It had to be
the
Ken. We didn't know any other Kens. I considered swiping the wrapper, but thought, What if Dad is taking us there to get Mom, and needs it? So real quick, I wrote myself a copy on another wrapper, just in case I might need it too.

When I leaned to put the address in my back pocket, something beneath me rubbed my ankle in a most irritating way. It was a big piece of paper rolled up like a scroll in the floorboard. I tried to unwedge it and take a quick peek as Dad rounded the back of the RV. Before I could get it loose, though, both Dad and his jumbo bag of teriyaki beef jerky had already climbed in.

“Sorry if you saw any of that tree carnage back there,” he said sadly. “Some landscaper I turned out to be, huh?”

I pretended I didn't even know what he was talking about. After all, if he didn't already know that tree was important to me, I sure wasn't going to tell him about it or any other important things now. Dad was developing quite a knack for making important things disappear.

“Did you get some smell-good stuff?” I asked.

“Yeah. Hopefully these guys will do the trick,” he said, producing an air freshener from behind the jerky bag. It was a bonus double pack of two little cardboard pizza slices with arms and legs and faces that winked at me. One was a mister with a mustache, and the other a missus with red smoochy lips. Dad busted the seal on his beef jerky and it smelled almost as bad as my box-bed. I couldn't get those fresheners opened fast enough.

“Look at ol' Brother Edge over there,” he said. “I bet he'll fix that sign a dozen times this week. When your Uncle Clay and I saw him the other day, he was in a stir trying to knock a hornets' nest from the awning before the church swap meet, but check it out. He still found the time to gather us a little something for our trip.”

Dad leaned toward me and opened the glove compartment, bumping my knees a little with the door. Inside was a stash of CDs, each case with the word
Encouragement
written in orange on the spine. Dad's
It's a dirty job
ball cap sat upside down next to the collection.

“Some of his best sermons to go,” said Dad. “The ones with the most
UMPH
in them, I guess. On Sundays, we'll take a rest from our work and give a listen.”

Dad tried to slam the glove compartment shut eight times before it stuck.

“Speaking of work,” I said. “Where's the meat?”

“In the church parking lot, like always,” Dad said.

“Not the swap meet. The M-E-A-T.”

He aimed the bag of jerky my way.

“No,” I said. “The
meat
. That we're supposed to sell this summer.”

“Oh that,” Dad said. “I thought you'd never ask.” He squinted one eye and looked down into the bag. “Cass, have you ever looked at, I mean really studied, the number eleven?”

“Um, not really.”

“Look here.” He pulled two long matching pieces of jerky out of the bag and dangled them side by side in front of me. “Now, pretend this is the number eleven, albeit a teriyaki-flavored eleven.”

“All right.”

“See how the left and the right of the number eleven are in perfect balance with one another? Ignoring the lumps and bumps of the beef jerkiness, of course.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, that there is a good demonstration of what's so great about being almost eleven years old, Cass. On one side, you're old enough to gain knowledge about certain unexplained secrets of this our tiny mobile world, and on the other side, you're still young enough to appreciate the magic of them. It's the perfect balance.”

Dad leaned in, bit off half a 1, and gave me the other 1. I took a nibble, finding the taste way less bizarre than his little speech.

“Regarding the meat,” Dad continued. “You just don't even need to worry about that. We're about to have a summer beefy with new places, new faces, and some lumps of wonder mixed in along the way.”

“Florida would be a lump of wonder,” I said, bracing inside for the scowl I expected from Dad.

“I've got forty-nine better ideas than Florida, Cass.”

As soon as he said those words, I wanted to crumple them up and stuff them right back into his mouth.

“Then why do you have Ken's address written down?”

Dad almost urped his jerky.

“Well, now that you mention it, I've been wondering the same thing myself, Cass. I looked the address up, I guess out of some kind of morbid curiosity. But it occurs to me that that little piece of knowledge may well cause us some surplus suffering.”

He picked up the gum wrapper and crammed it into the plastic quick-mart bag. I was so glad I'd made a copy.

“How come we can't just try?” I said. “Maybe go and see her? I bet both of us talking to her will help. We could stay there until she changes her mind.”

“It won't do any good, Cass.”

“It might.”

“It won't.”

“So then, where
are
we going?” I said. “Do we even have a map?”

Dad peered over a pair of convenience-store sunglasses that were already so stretched they scooted down his nose.

“I see that you are ready for Rule of The Roast Number Two,” he said. “And that is:
Maps are for saps
.”

“Then how will we know where to go?”

“Go lift the lid on that magician's box back there,” Dad said.

“My bed?”

“Yep. Go on back there and have a look inside.”

Arming myself with the new air fresheners, I made my way to the back and lifted the pile of things off the box. I opened the latch to find a small collection of old shoes inside. There was a clog, a dress shoe, a hiking boot, and a loafer. One almost new, one almost crumbling, all of them dirty, and none of them matching.

“Whose are these?” I asked.

“Don't know. Uncle Clay and I found them while we were running errands this week. On the side of the road. In the middle of the road. One about to fall into a sewer drain.

“Which brings us to Rule of The Roast Number Three,” he said. “
It's the shoes what choose.
”

Again with the rhyming. Who is this man, I wondered. And what has he done with my dad?

“The shoes choose what?” I said.

“Choose where we go. What I mean is, that there is our map,” Dad said. “You and I are going to drive until we find a deserted shoe in the road, whatever kind of shoe it may be, and then we'll stop to work in the nearest town thereafter.”

I started having that strange other-planet feeling again.

“But why shoes?” I asked.

“Because,” he said, “I heard a certain someone once mention how exciting it would be to not know where she's going next, and to have to be ready for anything. I thought of the shoe thing when Clay and I found all those the other day. They were like a sign.”

He started the engine.

“I'll admit it's an unconventional way to see what life is like in someone else's shoes. But frankly, I felt like you and I needed some
why not
on this trip, and it just seems to me like a good
why not
thing to try.”

Lowering the box lid slowly, so as not to puff out a blast of stink, I watched Dad's face in his rearview mirror for some sign of
Ha-ha, just kidding about the shoe thing
. A twitch, a wink, anything. But he was serious as he could be.

“And we're not coming home until we find a matching pair,” he said.

I dropped the lid of the box right onto my thumb.

“What?” I said. “You mean two alike?”

“Two alike.”

“Together?”

“Not necessarily.”

My stomach got a little twisty. “But that could take forever!” I said, feeling certain that forever wackadoo would not qualify as a good permanent.

“Yeah, well, the way I see it, Cass, if we find something good out here on the road, then forever might not be such a bad thing.”

My thumb still throbbing, I knotted Mr. and Mrs. Winky Pizza onto the latch of my big metal shoe-box bed. Within seconds, the scent of oregano replaced the foot smell in my space, but I still took my little velvet pillow and crammed it into the hole just in case. Once my nose was totally satisfied, I made my way back to the passenger seat and buckled in.

“Sorry,” said Dad sheepishly. “I seemed to have overlooked the stink factor. We can shove those shoes in a bag if you'd like.”