The Middle of Somewhere (15 page)

The next day made me wonder why we'd ever left Missouri. To begin with, I didn't sleep well in the tent with Gee twitching and Leo snortling. After Pop left at dawn, I dragged my sleeping bag inside and rolled up on the sofa. When I finally rolled off the sofa, it was because Gee had tied a bunch of empty tin cans to Leo's tail to see what he would do. What he did was tear off like all his former abusive owners were after him, which just made the noise worse, which spooked him even more, and so on.

By the time we finally got him stopped, he'd turned over an industrial-size garbage can and woke up the new neighbors, who were trying to sleep in. The lady of the house let us know they'd come out to the lake for some peace and quiet, and if we didn't tie up that dog
right now
she was going to march down to the manager's office and complain.

“What were you thinking?” I hissed at my brother after we'd freed Leo from the cans.

“I just wanted to see what would happen!” he wailed.

“Did you think it would be anything good? He was traumatized when we got him—you probably set him back a whole year. See? He's hiding again.”

Leo had backed into his favorite spot between the rear wheels.

“I didn't mean to,” Gee sniffed.

“Tell
him
that.”

“Okay.” He scooted under the RV beside the dog, and I heard him explaining, “I'm sorry, Leo, I didn't think it would scare you that bad. …”

Sighing, I went inside the RV to rustle up some cornflakes. The milk in the refrigerator smelled a little on the sour side, which seemed funny because Pop had only bought it the night before. I poked a couple of Pop-Tarts in the toaster and turned on the radio but couldn't get anything besides country-and-western music and farm reports.

When the toaster popped, I decided to enjoy a nice quiet breakfast by myself. And after that, I'd straighten up the place—which definitely had a lived-in look by now, with my sleeping bag sprawled on the sofa and Pop's bunk unmade and his breakfast dishes in the sink. Maybe, if Leo could keep his boy occupied, I could even do a little organizing around here.

No such luck, though. I was halfway through breakfast when Gee's scream came from the direction of the lake, where he wasn't supposed to be. Running down the nature trail, I almost got knocked over by Leo. Gee was right behind, his legs dotted with black slimy things.

We both freaked out a little—I can handle rampaging squirrels easier than black slimy things. “Where have you
been
?!”

“Down on the edge of the water,” he wailed, “where the mud is.”

That explained it—leeches. After we both stopped the
Eeeuuuwww
business, we discovered that the suction could be broken with a twig. Gee then figured out that they would attach to anything, and before I got them all off his legs he had one slurped onto each fingernail.

“That's disgusting!” I said. “They'll suck your blood.”

“They won't suck my nails, will they?” He waved his black squishy fingertips in front of my nose.

“Get outta here! Why do you have to be so retard—?!” I stopped myself, but not soon enough.

“I'm
not
retarded!” He stamped with both feet, accidentally scraping his ankle on a piece of root sticking out of the ground, and had to walk the rest of the way home trailing blood. And it wasn't even noon yet.

For lunch we had string cheese and baby carrots and crackers, but no milk because it had gone so bad I threw it out. Then we walked down to the beach to kill the afternoon. After cooling off in the water, I buttered myself with sunscreen and stretched out on my beach towel. Meanwhile, Gee dog-paddled out to the guard rope and started thrashing around in the water like he was drowning. I paid no attention because he can swim like a fish—but a man who was building sand castles with his kids plunged into the water to rescue him. Only to find, when he got to the victim, that Gee was hanging on to the guard rope with both feet. The man dragged him back to the beach and gave us both a lecture on—guess what?—the Boy Who Cried Wolf. That story never sinks in with Gee, but the adult world doesn't give up.

I was really looking forward to Pop's return so I could
get a break—and when punching numbers into a laptop and cooking dinner looks like a break, that should tell you what kind of day I was having. So the sound of his Yamaha roaring up the road, earlier than expected, was music to my ears. Until I discovered it was only bringing him to wash up and change his clothes.

“Y'all can get your own dinner tonight,” he said. “Here, I bought some more hot dogs.”

“What—?” I sputtered. “Where are you going to be?” I wondered if he'd ever heard of “quality time,” or if he just figured he'd already put in enough of that.

“Moderate your tone, young lady. Melba waved me down on the way in and invited me to her place for dinner.” He disappeared into the itty-bitty bathroom.

I squared off against the door. “Is this what dancing the polka under the Japanese lanterns leads to?”

He didn't hear me with the water running, but in a minute he poked his head out. “Forgot to mention. We'll head out tomorrow.”

“Where to?” I gasped.

“North.”

That left me sputtering again. “But—but—”

He paused on his way to the shirt closet. “But what?”

“I'm… not ready to go yet.” Lame, but I didn't feel like explaining that Howard had kind of promised to come by tomorrow and teach me how to drive a stick shift.

“Sorry, darlin'.” Pop tossed me a preoccupied grin. “This is a business trip, you know. Wagon train's gotta roll.” He frowned at his shirt rack. “What do you think? Polo or oxford?”
“Stuffed,” I muttered under my breath. “What's that?”

“Nothing. Pop? Could you maybe come back before dark and take Gee for a walk?”

“Huh?” He looked at me, the way he hadn't up to now.

“I could use a break, that's all.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay, I could probably do that after we run the numbers for today. Now, how about some privacy?”

About ten minutes later, he left the RV, in clean khakis and a button-down shirt, trailing a scent of Old Spice. “Be good,” he called, gunning his Yamaha.

Gee ran over with two handfuls of mud to give him a good-bye hug, but Pop scooted off just in time.

I dragged out the charcoal, remembering all the times in Kent Clark's book where he says to break out of your old routines. “Oh boy!” yelled Gee. “Can we roast marshmallows again?”

“We're out of 'em.”

“Then let's roast Gummi Bears!”

“Why don't you go do something for a while, okay?”

What he did was enlarge the mud puddle he'd been working on and teach Leo how to make paw prints— mostly on the lower edge of the RV because it was so nice and white.

I decided that after roasting our hot dogs—which were getting very old-routinish—we'd take a nice long walk to the pay phone and call Mama. Melba told us earlier it was fixed. Since our neighbors kept giving us hostile looks, it seemed like a plan. Especially after the unopened soda
can—the one Gee left too near the coals—overheated and blew up, spraying Coke everywhere. “
Cool!
” he yelled.

When we got to the phone, he was so sticky he'd caught a few flies. I dialed the number, and when Mama answered, he had to talk to her first. She finally got the full story of Leo in one piece—or rather, several pieces put together more or less in order: how he found us during a storm and we hid him for three days before I won him fair and square in a poker game, and Gee was having the most fun he'd ever had. Leo got a chance to talk to Mama, too, though he didn't have much to say until Gee pulled his ears.

When I got on, she sounded a little worried. “Is all that true?”

“Pretty much. If you factor out the Gee-ness.”

She knew what I meant. “But do you mean to tell me your grandfather gets along with the dog?”

“He doesn't have to get along with the dog. The dog takes off like a shot every time Pop shows up.” I told her about Leo's peculiar personality, which just worried her more.

“I'm not sure we can keep him. We'd have to get him checked out by a vet, and I don't have the money right now. …”

I had the phone cord stretched so I could keep an eye on my brother while he tried to get Leo to lick the flies off him. “Don't worry about it. This dog may ditch us before we ditch him.”

“Is Gee behaving himself? Has he worn out Mad Mechanix yet?”

I ignored the first question. “Mad Mechanix? It's still in the original box, mint condition.”

“What? You mean he's been staying busy without it?”

“That's one way to put it.” I changed the subject. “How are you doing?”

“Really good, sweetie. Wait'll you see how much I've done. …” While she tallied up the snowman, stocking, and wreath count, I noticed that Gee was no longer in sight. I left the receiver for a minute, just to reassure myself. They—the dog and his boy, I mean—were crouched by the roadside, staring at the ground. Probably at the world's unluckiest earthworm. Back at the phone, Mama was raving about “… these darling little crocheted bells Lyddie found in a magazine. Wait till you see them.”

“Cool.”

“Ronnie? To tell you the truth, it's kind of bittersweet. I love having all this time for crafts, but I sure miss my munchkins. Still, I'm really proud of you—and your grandfather, too. I guess he's finally stepping up to the plate. Sounds like an experience Gee will never forget—”

Just then a high scream pierced the night—not Gee's. “He's not the only one,” I said. “Listen, I'd better go see what he's up to. Talk to you later—bye!”

Gee was still by the road, only now he was on his feet, waving his arms like one of those whirligigs. Meanwhile, Leo was setting a new speed record for distance covered while dragging a nylon rope. But what really caught my attention was the lady standing next to a bicycle, screaming bloody murder while a man tried to calm her down. Melba came marching from her trailer across the road,
while Pop stood at the open door with an expression I couldn't describe.

It took a while to sort everything out. When I'd seen Gee and Leo staring at the ground earlier, what they were looking at was a black snake with its long white belly turned up. Gee thought it was dead, but when he picked it up by the middle, it whipped around and tried to bite him on the hand. That startled him so much he threw it out into the road. Anybody would.

But in Gee's world, if he does what anybody would do, the results aren't what anybody would get. The place where he threw the snake happened to be occupied at that moment by a young couple on bicycles, out for a pleasant ride around the lake. She got hysterical, he ran his bike into hers, and the snake didn't come out so well, either. Let's just say he wasn't
pretending
to be dead anymore.

“I didn't mean it!” Gee bawled. “I didn't mean to!”

He might have been apologizing to the snake, for all we knew. But Melba assured the two cyclists that it was an unfortunate accident, and I made Gee say he was sorry. The man accepted his apology, but I wasn't sure the lady did. Anyway, they rode on.

Pop never budged from the trailer, leaving the parenting talk to Melba: “I hate to tell you, Gee, but this afternoon I got a complaint from a gentleman who was down at the beach when you swam out. …”

The lecture was for me, too, the gist being that I'd shirked my duty as brother's keeper. “But of course that's not all your fault. I've been telling your grandfather he shouldn't leave you alone so much, even though you're a
very responsible girl. …”
Duh
, thought I—and who made him leave us alone tonight?

Before anything else could happen, I dragged Gee to the shower to scrub off the mud, exploded Coke, flies, gnats, and possible snake spit—even though it was still at least three hours from bedtime.

“Are we leaving tomorrow?” he called through the shower curtain.

“Sounds like it.” I could have said more but restrained myself.