The Middle of Somewhere (5 page)

“Ronnie?” Gee asked now, after a moment of silence.

“Huh?”

“Did I screw things up again?”

“What do you mean, screw things up? Don't wipe your face with your T-shirt! It's all green!”

“Is Pop not taking us to Kansas because I jumped off his camper?”

“It's not a camper, it's a— How'd you know about the Kansas idea?”

He just shrugged.

“Well,” I said, “it probably wouldn't have flown anyway. He never stays with us for more than three days. It was probably crazy to think he'd want us for a whole week or more.” I really meant “you,” not “us,” but was trying to be nice about the whole thing.

“You coulda gone. I'd stay here and take care of Mama.”

I'll bet you would
, I thought. But it was a sweet offer anyway. After a minute, I gave him a careful, sideways hug. “Thanks.” We turned the corner onto our street. “But it would be good if you'd start using your head a little before—”

“Look!” he yelled, pointing toward our house.

I looked, blinked, still couldn't believe my eyes.

There in the driveway—high, wide, and shiny in the noonday sun—stood Pop's maroon-and-white RV.

What changed his mind? He didn't say, and I didn't ask him.

Because the sight of that maroon-and-white house-on-wheels in our driveway again was like the test that got postponed. The eight ball that rolled into the corner pocket. The Screamin' Eagle at Six Flags that has room for one more rider, and I'm it. When your luck changes, don't ask why.

Pop was in the living room, perched on the very edge of the recliner as though unwilling to stay a minute longer than he had to. Mama was stomping around the bedroom on her crutches, scrounging clean underwear out of the laundry basket and stuffing it into an old gym bag. “Gee!” she exclaimed at the sight of him. “What did you do, crawl through a culvert? You've got two minutes to take a shower!”

“What's up?” I whispered.

Mama raised her shoulders, then her eyebrows. “He changed his mind. If you still want to, you can go. But listen to me, Ronnie. He told me that some days he'll be gone for hours at a time on his motorcycle and he'll have to leave you and Gee at a campground. I told him you're used to being in charge, but at home you have some backup, at least. It's an awful lot of responsibility. If you don't feel up to this—”

A week or more in an RV? “I'm
on
it.”

“I know you are, sweetie. Just hope this isn't a big mistake. Have you seen Gee's inhaler?”

“Inhaler?!” Pop yelled from the living room. “What's that for?”

Mama's laugh sounded nervous. No wonder: a hyper little boy was one thing, but a hyper little boy who sometimes stopped breathing might send that RV out of the driveway even faster than the first time. “For his asthma, Dad. It's not serious. He just has a minor incident every few months—less all the time, really—and when it happens we all know what to do. Oh, and Ronnie—”

She signaled me to come closer, murmuring, “Be sure you take the Ritalin prescription. Just in case.” She smiled really big, only it wasn't her usual smile. “One more thing—I bought a new cartridge for his Game Boy last month—Mad Mechanix. It's on the top shelf of the linen closet. Supposed to be a birthday present, but…”

She wiggled her fingers and I thought,
Good plan
. A new game could keep him occupied for most of our first day on the road, and part of the second, and maybe as much as an hour on the third, and by then we'd be so far away Pop would have to think twice about turning around to bring us home.

After his two-minute shower, which didn't quite get all the green off, Gee stuffed some action figures and a toothbrush in the gym bag Mama had packed for him. Then she sent him outside for a farewell tour of the neighborhood so he'd be out of our hair while I packed my own stuff. Mama hobbled back to the couch, where she kept
remembering things to do: “Take some macaroni and cheese!” “See if I've got a calling card in my purse—and do you want to pack my old binoculars? I'm not sure where they are.” “I need my glue gun! I think it's under the bed. …”

“All packed,” I announced, marching through the living room with my duffel bag under one arm. “Where should I put this, Pop?” He only shrugged—a little stunned, I guess.

Mama was back on her feet, rummaging around in her desk drawer. As I went out the door, she called, “Bring your brother with you when you come back in.”

Gee was in the driveway, trying to explain Pop's job to the neighborhood kids. In Gee-speak this came out as “wind prowler.”

“What's that?” Casey wanted to know.

“He goes looking for wind,” Gee said, “and we're gonna help.”

“Help
how
? Wind just happens, whether you're looking or not.”

I walked between them to get to the RV door, which is near the back and opens into the kitchen. The sink was directly ahead, dinette to the right, bathroom to the left. Everything was in its place, from the row of vitamin bottles above the sink to the row of books beside the bunk— not a stray spoon or sock or spatula. What I like about RVs is how efficient they are, every bit of space accounted for. Then it hit me: wherever I put my bag, it wouldn't belong. And
anywhere
Gee put himself, he didn't belong. He sure couldn't be tucked away like a spatula in his own special drawer.

No, the minute he came on board, this tidy little world would be wrecked. If my shy little duffel bag spoiled the order, just imagine what a mini-whirlwind could do. Maybe this trip wasn't such a good idea.

I shook my head and tried to think like Kent Clark: when you come to a fork in the road, take it! Or something like that. I dropped my bag on the nearest dinette seat.

Pop came out of the house and the bon voyage committee scattered at the sight of him. “Go on and say goodbye to your mother,” he said to Gee and me. We started in, but his next words stopped us: “I told her that I had work to do, and if you kids give me any trouble, we'll turn around and come right back here, understand?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, nodding fiercely at Gee.

“Yes, sir,” he repeated.

In the house I got a long hug from Mama, who said, “Honey, I sure hope this works out. If you start having doubts, let me know and I'll ask him to bring you back. Or send Lyddie if he can't. Here's my calling card—sure wish your grandfather had a cell phone, but he's been too stubborn to get one. So watch for pay phones, and let me hear from you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Try to help your grandfather, and keep Gee out of trouble, and have a good time. Not necessarily in that order, though. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

“And one more thing.” She gave me an envelope. “I put a few dollars and some stamps in here. I want you to buy
postcards and make Gee write to me every day. Or have him tell you what he wants to say while you write it down, and make sure he stays on topic. More or less. His teacher told me that writing or dictating will help him focus. One more thing for you to worry about, but—”

“I'll do it, Mama.”

After a final hug, I let Gee at her. She told him the usual stuff about being good and minding me and Pop, even though she knew he'd forget it as soon as we backed out of the driveway. Then she wiped her eyes and told him to go to the bathroom one more time.

Gee took the dinette seat, facing forward, with his lunch-box full of Roman gladiators and race cars on the table in front of him. Once he was buckled in, he froze up. It had finally dawned on him that he really was leaving his home and Mama for a long time. One of his therapists explained that in different situations he might pull into himself, like a turtle, in order to size up his new environment and decide where he fit. He'd be busting out of himself soon enough, I figured. So it was time to size up my own new environment and decide where I fit while I still had the chance.

Kent Clark says the best way to do that is to listen, which means get the other guy talking. Once we were on the highway, I said, “I've been reading up on wind power. Do you really think it has a future?”

Questions like that pushed Pop's explaining button, and he went on for quite a while. I had already heard most of it, but then he added, “The thing about wind power is,
you can't make it. Can't tell the wind where or when to blow, or how hard. But you can learn to work with it. Kind of like rowing the flow.”

I sat up straighter, all ears. “Right! I get it. So what's the plan? Like, what's our first stop?”

“The university in Pittsburg, Kansas. I've got an appointment in the morning with a couple of professors in the physics department. They got hold of a government grant—”

“You mean money?” I interrupted.

“Yeah, salary and expenses. Not that expenses are much—all I need are a few instruments for measuring wind on the plains and the gas to get me out there.”

His overall plan was to park the RV in campgrounds for three or four days at a time and set up temporary wind-tracking stations at various spots within a sixty-mile radius. He'd visit each spot every day on his Yamaha. “Then,” he went on, “I record all the data and run averages. They're giving me a wireless laptop for that, but I don't look forward to figuring out the program.”

Bingo! “I can do that.”

He glanced over at me. “You can?”

“Sure. You saw my report card—all As in computer skills.”

“Oh. Right.” The wheels started turning in his head. I snuck a glance and a thumbs-up sign at Gee. He was looking at trees and hills outside his window and shifted his gaze to me with no change of expression, like I was another tree.

“Heads up, kids,” Pop announced. “We just crossed the border into Kansas.”

I faced forward in time to see the WELCOME billboard flash by. Kansas looked just like Missouri. It still did about half an hour later when we pulled into a campground, where Gee finally let loose. Since it was a little RV park with not much to do, “letting loose” meant running around the loop a few times, splashing in the creek nearby, and picking up a dozen ticks in the woods. For dinner we had chicken noodle soup and canned green beans. “I'm not much of a cook,” Pop said while cranking the can opener. “When we get to a grocery store tomorrow, you kiddos can pick out what you like.”

Bingo
! I thought again. Cooking is not my favorite thing, but I can do meat loaf, baked potatoes, mushroom soup chicken, and Casserole à la Sparks. If we stopped at a used-book store long enough for me to get my hands on a cookbook, I could add to my repertoire.

When I suggested this, Pop's expression brightened, like he was thinking the grandparent gig might not be so tough after all. Then I volunteered to wash up and he offered to take Gee to the creek and show him how to hunt crawdads. They walked down the path as sweet as a Hallmark card, and I had the place to myself for a while. I looked around to see what needed organizing.

We hadn't messed up anything too much yet. The interior still looked like a picture on one of those brochures I used to pick up, where there's an open coloring book on the table or a sliced onion on the kitchen counter to show that the place can actually be lived in. I didn't leave the dishes in the itty-bitty sink to drain, but dried them and put them away in their proper stacks in the cabinet. Then I squeezed
out the dishcloth and laid it over the edge of the sink. But that didn't look right, so I draped it over the neck of the faucet—any better? A towel rod under the sink would be best, and I was looking for a place to mount one when Gee's unmistakable scream dropped on me like a bomb.

I was streaking down the path toward the creek even before the echoes had died away. A little crowd had gathered on the bank—two men, one woman, and a girl about Gee's age—all trying to make him stop jumping up and down and spinning in circles while he yelled, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” Pop stood a little ways off, shaking his head.

“What happened?” I panted.

“The craziest thing. I caught a crawdad for him so he could see it up close. He wants to hold it, so I let him, and then … he kisses it. So what's a self-respecting crawdad supposed to do?”

I could see it now—about three inches long with a little lobster-like tail and one waving claw. The other claw was the part attached to Gee's chin. “Little boy,” the woman kept insisting, “you have to hold
still
.” She finally clamped him down by the shoulders, and while Gee paddled the air, whimpering, one of the guys pulled the critter loose.

“Eeeeuw,” said the girl.

“Why would he do something like that?” Pop murmured to me.

“Scientific curiosity?” I suggested.

Gee did show some curiosity once the crustacean let go of him—in fact, he wanted to keep it for a pet. But the man who'd pulled it off his chin said their chances for
bonding were shot. After thanking him, Pop told us, “I'm going back to the truck. Gee, why don't you show your sister how to find crawdads?”

Which I took to mean,
You kiddos stay out of my hair for a while
. Obviously, I would be spending a lot of this kind of quality time with my brother. It was kind of fun, though, turning over the flat rocks to see if there were any gray fan-tailed critters underneath. Gee was
trying
to get bit now, but the crawdads had their little minds set on escape.