The Exact Location of Home (21 page)

May 28… It's Memorial Day weekend on the lake, and I am doing far too much remembering on this old dock. This is where I brought L fishing for the first time, taught her how to put a worm on a hook. I don't know who squirmed more
.

I have to stop myself from picturing Mom baiting a hook. This book isn't about her any more. I turn the page.

What's become of those memories?

A great blue heron on shore not twenty feet from me just lunged into the weeds. Until he moved, I hadn't even seen him, though I'm sure he was watching me the whole time. He's lifted his head now, and a frog's hind legs stick out from his beak. That frog probably had all kinds of plans for today. Eating flies. Swimming in the shallows
.

The heron gulps and the legs disappear as if lifts its great wings and flies off toward the island. Plans don't always work out
.

“No kidding.” I close the journal and turn to climb back into bed.

“No kidding what?” Scoop is standing in the doorway holding a toaster.

‘What's that?” I ask him.

“No kidding what? You said no kidding. No kidding what?”

I look down at the journal in my hands. Full of some stranger's words. It's too much to explain.

“I don't know.”

“Did you ever find your dad?” he asks, sitting down on his bunk with the toaster in his lap.

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Well, kind of.”

“Oh.” He presses down the level you push to start the heating coils when the bread goes down. It's not plugged in, though. “How do you kind of find somebody?”

“You find out where they are and it's not here.”

“Not even close?” He studies his reflection in the side of the toaster.

“Not even close.”

“Oh.” He puts it down and looks at me. “So you're sad.”

I toss the journal back onto my bunk and sit down next to him. “I guess. Kind of mad, too. I wasted a whole bunch of time looking for him.”

Scoop nods.

“So what's this for?” I pick up the toaster.

“Mrs. Kennedy brought it to breakfast today.”

Shopping cart lady. I nod. “Yeah?”

“She thought you could fix it.”

I turn the toaster over in my hands and hold up the stripped cord. “It's kind of beat. And they have one in the kitchen she could use. She probably ought to just throw it out.”

“She likes this one,” Scoop says. “Her husband gave it to her for their wedding.”

“Ha. Probably a zillion years ago.” I toss it on the bed.

“Thirty-one, she said. Her anniversary is next week.” Scoop picks it up again and puts it in my lap. “I
told
her you would help.”

I look down at the toaster. There's no way I can fix that cord, and who knows what else is wrong inside. The coils are probably shot, too. “Yeah, well it turns out I can't.”

Scoop looks up at me. “I told her you can fix anything.”

“I used to think so.” I toss the toaster, climb back into my own bunk, and push the journal aside.

Scoop climbs up after me.

“Do you think you could give me a break?” I say. “I'm not having the best week.”

“I know. That's why I'm keeping you company.” He picks up the journal. “If you didn't find your dad—at least not here anyway—whose journal is this?”

I shrug. “Don't know.”

He flips through it. “Don't you want to find out?”

“Not really.”

There's a knock at the door. I figure it's Mom, so I yell “Come on in!” And in steps the shopping cart lady. She must have left her cart in the dining room.

“Hi, Mrs. Kennedy!” Scoop jumps down from the bunk and gives her a hug. “He couldn't fix it.”

“Oh. I see.” She picks up the toaster. She looks sad. “I just couldn't bear to get rid of it. So many memories. I was just hoping …”

While Mrs. Kennedy winds up the cord, I picture her without her shopping cart, looking young and happy with a Mr. Kennedy at a kitchen table in a real house. Maybe even with kids. And then I get why she wants to keep the toaster. She was hoping. And sometimes, that's enough to get you through.

It got me through the past few weeks. In another month, Mom's going to have her degree, and we'll be okay. Dad still won't be here. But we'll be okay.

“Mrs. Kennedy?”

She looks up at the top bunk. “Yes?”

“Keep the toaster,” I say. “I mean, I might be able to look at it again after I can go to the hardware store, after my mom and I find a place. I might be able to help you with it, even though it's pretty beat. And I'm not even positive, but—” I don't even
know what I'm saying any more. The words spill out. “It's just—it's an important toaster. So just keep it just in case.”

She nods and finishes wrapping the cord. “That's what I'm going to do,” she says, and heads for the door. “But I'll tell you this. I'm no fool. I'm still going to find another way to toast my bread.”

She leaves, and I almost smile.

I flop back on my bunk and my head clunks the journal. I pick it up again.

“Know what I think?” Scoop says.

“What?”

“I think you still want to know who wrote that even though it's not your dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He says it like one of those tough guys starting a saloon fight in an old movie, and it makes me laugh.

“Okay, then,” I say. “Want to come with me on a secret mission?”

His eyes light up. “Sure!”

“Go tell your mom I'm taking you to the park.”

We head out into the sun, and Scoop is step-step-running-skipping to keep up with me. We need to hurry because if I'm not back when Mom gets off work, she's going to flip.

“Slow down, will ya?” Scoop jumps off the curb and I grab his hand to lead him across the street.

“Nope. We need to hurry. You always have to hurry when it's a secret mission.”

“It's cold out here.” Scoop zips his sweatshirt. “I shoulda brought a coat.”

“Walk faster. You'll warm up,” I say. But he's right. It's getting chillier.

We rush past the huge houses and cross the bridge just as fluffy snowflakes start to drift down from the clouds.

“Snow!” Scoop almost falls off the curb trying to catch a flake on his tongue. He makes me think of Gee. She loves those big, fat snowflakes.

“Watch out, will ya?” I take his hand and turn toward the water tower.

And I stop.

Because there he is.

Sitting on a towel underneath the tower. Leaning back on his elbows, staring up at the falling snow. Holding my letter in his hands.

His long legs stick out like puppet legs in front of him. His hair is gray, almost white, and when I turn, I see his moustache is, too.

“Mr. Webster?”

I shuffle through the dry grass, up to his red and yellow striped towel. The red is faded almost to pink.

He lifts his head. “You go by Zig, right?”

I nod.

“I know you from your old paper route. You and that red-haired runner girl were the only kids who were ever up when I went for my walks.” He hands me the letter. “I'm not the person you meant this for, am I?”

I shake my head. “But you're Senior Searcher.”

He pulls a GPS unit just like mine from the pocket of his navy windbreaker. “That I am.”

“Hey, can I see that?” Scoop says. Mr. Webster hands it to him, and he starts pressing buttons, a huge smile on his face. I always told him not to touch mine, afraid he'd mess up the coordinates I'd entered.

“I've found fifty-three caches and counting,” Mr. Webster says. “I took a break for a while this fall, though.”

“This summer, too,” I say. “Since the end of June.”

He nods slowly. “Yep. Used to be three of us old geezers out looking for treasure together—Dominic, George and me. Dominic's grandson told him about this geocaching
business, and we all thought it sounded like a better way to get exercise than just wandering around with no place to go. And George was a whiz with electronics, so he got us all set up with the GPS units.”

George? I thought about my box of electronics from the garage sale. “Did you say your friend's name is George?”

Mr. Webster smiles a kind of sad smile. “It was. George died a while back, and I got so busy with my wife being sick and then … well … it kind of seemed frivolous to keep playing a silly game.” He squints into the morning sun and holds up his hand to block it so he can see my face. “How'd you know I stopped in June? You been following me from cache to cache?”

I nod.

“And you thought Senior Searcher was somebody else. Not some old man wandering around Lakeland to get his steps in.” He lifts his jacket to show me the pedometer on his belt. “Doctor says ten thousand steps a day on this sucker will keep my heart healthy.”

“Can I see that, too?” Scoop says. Mr. Webster slips it off his belt. Scoop holds it in his hand and starts jumping to make the numbers change.

“I thought … I actually thought you were my dad,” I say finally. “I'm Kirby junior and he's Kirby senior, so …”

“Oh. So you thought Senior Searcher …”

Senior Searcher
.

Senior
Citizen
Searcher.

I was so sure. It just never occurred to me it might not be him.

“I thought it was my dad. Yeah.” It sounds so dumb now.

I wait for Mr. Webster to laugh at me, but he doesn't. He reaches into his jacket pocket. “Want a butterscotch?”

“No thanks.”

“I'll have one.” Scoop stops jumping with the pedometer long enough to pop the hard candy into his mouth.

Mr. Webster has one, too. He looks up at the water tower. Clouds are blowing past so fast behind it that it looks like some weird time-lapse thing in a movie.

“Sorry about that,” he says.

“About what?”

“About not being your dad.”

“Oh. Well … yeah. I guess that's not your fault.”

“Have a seat.” He slides over to one side of the faded towel. I have no idea why, but I sit down.

“Here's your pedometer,” Scoop says, dropping it in Mr. Webster's lap. “I got it up to ten thousand for you, so you're all set for today.” He turns to me and points over to the base of the tower. “I'm going over there to pick some of those little purple flowers for my mom.”

“Don't climb,” I tell him.

“They're asters,” Mr. Webster says. “The last flowers to bloom in the fall.”

“Cool,” Scoop says and runs off, but Mr. Webster keeps talking.

“Asters are the die-hards. The ones who won't give up no matter how cold the nights get. I like a flower like that.”

“That's cool,” I say. I pull out Mr. Webster's journal. “Here. This is yours, right?”

His face lights up. “Thought I'd lost it for good,” he says. “I must have dropped it on one of my hikes. Where'd you find it?”

“By the marble cache along the lakeshore.”

“Gotta watch out for trains on that one,” he says.

“Yep. We know.”

He flips through the pages of his journal. “This thing held up pretty well.” He stops at the last entry, reads it. Then looks up at me. “What made you think this was your dad's?”

That was the greatest question ever. What did?

“Well, there were some parts in there where he—I mean, where you—talk about missing L. My mom is Laurie, and they're divorced, so I thought …” I look down at my sneakers. “I don't know what I thought.”

He smiles a little. Sad. “That L is for Lucille. My wife.”

“Are you and your wife divorced, too?”

He shakes his head. “My wife is in a home—a skilled nursing facility. Her doctors think she has Alzheimer's Disease. Last summer, she started wandering off and almost—” He nearly chokes on the words. “I can't take care of her any more.”

“Sorry.” I don't know what to say.

“Not your fault. Any more than it's my fault for not being your dad.” He tries to smile. “I just wish I could have found a nurse to care for her in our house. There's a shortage of home health care providers. The few that were available cost more than we
can afford, and insurance…” He shakes his head and then waves off what he started to say. “Ahh. You don't know about insurance.”

I think back to the waiting room. The rabies shots. I'm lucky I didn't get sick. “No, I get it. That stinks.”

Scoop comes running up with a fist full of flowers—asters. They look like it's the middle of spring, even though we've had at least two nights of frost this week. “Here,” he says, handing half the bouquet to Mr. Webster. “You can have these.”

“Thank you,” he says and holds them to his nose. “Lucille and I used to picnic here back when the tower was in use. It was a lot cleaner then. But still with the big, open sky.” He looks up and I follow his eyes. One of the clouds looks like a hippo. “Lucille loved to find shapes in the clouds. She used to love the wildflowers, so I appreciate these, young man.” He nods at Scoop.

Tires scrunch on gravel at the side of the road. The engine dies and Mom gets out, still in her apron. I hear her tips jingling in her pocket from here, which means she didn't even stop at the shelter.

She walks right up to the towel. “Kirby Zigonski, I—”

Scoop jumps up in front of her. “Here!” He thrusts the rest of the flowers up at her and blurts out, “They're assers, and they're the toughest flower around.”

Mom takes the flowers. She looks at me. She looks at the striped towel. At Mr. Webster. Her eyes drop to the GPS unit in his lap, the black leather journal in his hands, and they soften.

“I told you to stay home this morning,” she says quietly.

“Yeah, I know.” I don't say it in a snotty way or a challenging way or any other kind of teenager way. I just say it. “But I had to come.”