The Way Back from Broken (12 page)

When both of them were settled, she handed Jacey a paddle. “You—bow paddler—you are the power. Paddle, paddle, paddle. Always the same side. Always the same pace.” Jacey nodded.

“And you—” The woman's head swiveled, owl-like, toward him. “You direct.” She slashed an arm straight down, ending poker-straight and pointing west. “Here.” She karate-chopped down again, now pointing ninety degrees from the first direction. “Or here. You decide direction. J-stroke and go there.”

“J-stroke?” Rakmen asked, wondering if she would karate chop him next.

The woman snatched the paddle from him and turned on the dock so she was sitting alongside the edge and facing the same direction as he was.

“Like this.” She grasped the rounded handgrip of the paddle in her right hand. Her left encircled the paddle shaft down near the blade. Leaning forward a little, she pointed the paddle in front of her with the flat blade facing the sky. She pulled it through the water until it was pointing straight down at the bottom of the lake, then she bent her wrist sharply. Rakmen watched as the paddle blade scooped the shape of the letter J in the water.

“Watch again.”

They watched. Jacey, her face crinkled in concentration, started to put her hair in her mouth, but Edna glared at her, and she dropped it.

“The end of the stroke pushes the water away from you. You use the water.”

“O-kaaay,” Rakmen said. Watching this backwoods Yoda paddle from the side of the dock hadn't exactly cleared everything up.

“You try it now.” Edna thrust the paddle at him, untied the canoe, and pushed them off before either Jacey or Rakmen could argue.

“I am the power. I am the power.” Jacey muttered to herself in the bow. She bent to the task of pulling the blade through the water on the right side of the canoe.

Rakmen took a stroke on the left. Immediately the canoe veered right.

“J-stroke,” Edna called.

He bent his wrist and banged the shaft of the paddle on the side of the canoe with a horrible clunk, but the canoe straightened. He tried again, this time putting more muscle into it. The canoe veered left.

“Too much!” Edna yelled from the dock.

Rakmen eased off the J part of the stroke until he found the exact amount of wrist flick that balanced Jacey's stroke and kept them straight.

“Ah-ha! The Rock Man does it!” the woman crowed from the dock.

Jacey stopped paddling and grinned over her shoulder at him. The canoe immediately veered right again.

“Hey you, Power,” the woman yelled. “Do not stop!”

Jacey redoubled her efforts, showering him with water from her frenzied paddling.

“Hey!” yelped Rakmen.

“Sorry,” said Jacey, through panting breaths. “Can't stop now.”

Rakmen directed them straight ahead for twenty feet before adding extra wrist and turning the canoe toward the left. After another twenty feet, he turned again. They were pointing back toward the house.

“How do I turn the other way?” he hollered.

“No J,” Edna called back.

He went back to a plain stroke and sure enough the canoe turned right in a wide graceful arc. The lake stretched out before them, sun-dappled and twinkly. Rakmen could see the rocky point where they had eaten dinner. Tall pines at its crest swayed in the breeze. Crisp, woodsy smells swirled past him.

There was some pattern to it all that he couldn't quite grasp. It was as if the sweep of the canoe drew everything together. A union of sky and water, stone and tree. There was order. Rakmen felt it but did not understand the way the pieces fit together.

CHAPTER 15

When he and Jacey skimmed to a halt at the dock, Edna beamed at them, and Rakmen couldn't help but smile back.

“Stay here a sec,” said Edna, stumping back into her cabin.

Jacey waggled her eyebrows at Rakmen. “I'm the power! Did you see that? Did you see how fast we went?”

“Yeah, you did good.”

Jacey glowed at him.

“Here ya go,” said Edna, returning with a squashed yellow box of Nilla wafers.

“Oooh. Yum. I love these,” said Jacey, taking a handful and passing the box back to Rakmen. He crunched into a cookie, reminded of his mom's banana cream pie. “That was so super!” Jacey jabbered. “Did you see how fast we went? My arms hurt a little. I like—”

“Listen,” Edna cut her off, pointing to the shoreline down from the dock. Loud rustling punctuated by breaking twigs erupted from the forest. Rakmen stared into the bushes at the edge of the lake, crushing a forgotten Nilla wafer in one hand.

A huge shape was pushing through the branches.

Jacey grabbed at his sleeve.

“What in the—?” Rakmen muttered.

The shape emerged into sunlight. Not a bear shape or a moose shape. It was a canoe. Upside down. With legs. An arm snaked up over the top of the canoe and flipped it to the ground. A mud-splattered, bearded sasquatch of a man slung off a heavy backpack and began mopping sweat off his forehead with a wadded bandana.

The man threw back his head and drained his water bottle. When he was done drinking, he wiped his face with the back of his hand. Catching sight of them, he waved.

Jacey waved back.

Rakmen elbowed her. “Don't encourage him. He's probably homeless.”

Edna busted into wheezing laughter.

“What?” Rakmen demanded.

Tears leaking from the sides of her eyes, Edna waved him off with one knobby hand. The crazy man loaded his canoe and sat on the bow seat facing backward. Within seconds he was skimming toward them, single-handedly propelling the canoe in a straight line.

“How's he doing that alone?” Rakmen asked.

Edna's laughter abated. “It's all in the J.”

“Hey, there,” said the man when he got close enough. “Gorgeous morning, isn't it?”

Edna nodded.

“Are you lost?” Jacey asked.

“Lost?” he chortled. “No way! I am living the dream.”

Rakmen shifted on the rough boards of the dock. The guy looked like a meth head.

“How long you been out?” Edna asked him.

“Two weeks on trip. Now I'm heading straight for the boat landing and a double-scoop ice cream cone for breakfast.” He leaned into his paddle stroke, the muscles in his back straining against his sweat-stained shirt. His beard shook as he grinned at them.

“Enjoy,” said Edna as he skimmed by.

“I want ice cream for breakfast,” Jacey whispered, awed into something like silence.

Rakmen watched the man paddle away. “What did he mean on trip? Like acid?”

Edna gaped at him, and then started laughing so hard she hacked up a glob of mucus. “On trip means canoe camping. That portage—the trail—it leads to a string of wilderness lakes.”

“In the woods?”

“Of course.”

“That's nuts. Why would anyone want to do that?”

Edna cracked up again, bending over her knees and shaking in her lawn chair. “You are a city boy, aren't you?”

Rakmen bristled. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“No, I guess not,” said Edna dryly, “if you're into that kind of thing. Me, I prefer the woods.”

Rakmen watched the man paddle across the shifting surface of the lake. One moment it reflected cloud white and sky blue, the next a hundred different shades of green. The man didn't look anything like a meth head, Rakmen realized. He didn't jitter or twitch. He didn't look like he was about to jump out of his own skin.

And he didn't look homeless either, in spite of the unkempt hair and the grime. He wasn't a man who'd been chewed up and spit out. The bearded man paddled like home was a canoe, and he knew exactly where he was going.

. . .

It rained on and off—mostly on—for six days. Jacey had taken pictures of every piece of crap in the cabin—twice. Rakmen marked time in his notebook.

Tuesday: five mice.

Rain = even more mosquitos.

Cat piss stink in the woodshed. Leah says maybe bobcat. WTF?

Thursday: three mice.

Leech on canoe after we paddled to Edna's.

Will she ever stop talking?

Sandwiches. Mold on the bread.

Friday: three more furry corpses.

Everything smells like rot.

Leah stayed in her room most of the time reading and rereading a book called
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
When Jacey asked her if it was about Thanksgiving, Leah had answered, “It's about trying to make sense of the world.”

“Sounds boring,” said Jacey.

Sounds pointless, thought Rakmen.

Jacey found a box of ancient art supplies. A pad of cotton drawing paper, yellowed around the edges. A box of pipe cleaners in brown, green, and orange. A tray of dried and cracked watercolor paints. Drawing pencils. When she slathered bright smears of paint in the shape of turtles and rocket ships, it reminded him far too much of the basement at Promise House.

Only he couldn't leave after an hour.

Rakmen texted Molly and then paced the room trying not to text her. He read a battered booklet from the 1950s on how to thrive if confined to a bomb shelter for extended periods of time. Preparation is key! A Boy Scout manual on fishing from the same era depicted cheerful white boys crouched by streams and lovingly placing trout in wicker creels.

They both rummaged through the drawers and shelves filled with the detritus of Leroy's life. Rakmen found a folding knife, still sharp as anything, with the initials RJP on the handle.

“Who do you think this belonged to?” he asked, opening the blade and running a finger along it.

“Don't know,” said Jacey. “Uncle Leroy's last name is Thoms. So he'd be
LT
.”

As Rakmen replaced the knife in the drawer, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he grinned to see Molly's name on the screen.

Guess what?
she texted.

You're taking me skydiving when I get back?

Mom'll love that. Guess again.

He racked his brain for the most high-risk sports he could think of.
Scuba diving? Ice climbing? Base jumping?

She doesn't let me walk around the block alone.

He set down the phone and felt the concrete setting up around his limbs. It always came back to the damage. Every joke, every chance they had to break free, Promise House caught them and held them. He wondered if he'd made her cry.

Rakmen swept up the phone again.
Sorry. Didn't mean to be a dick. I can't guess. Tell me.

One of my drawings won an art contest.

!!!!!!!!!!!!! Of course it did! You're amazing!

*Blush.*

Truth!

“Hey Rakmen,” Jacey said. “Check this out.”

Jacey's bugging me about something, he typed. Catch you later?

Yes! You must save me from utter boredom. :-)

He couldn't help smiling as he tucked the phone into his pocket.

Jacey was standing by the fishing lures holding up a pocket-sized notebook. “It's like yours.”

“What's in it?”

“I dunno. A code or something.”

Rakmen took it from her and flipped through the pages. Neat rows of tiny print filled line after line.

10 July 1959, 4 lbs 2 oz, 4 colors, silver Williams, w/ RJP

17 July 1959, 2 lbs 14 oz, 3.5 colors, black rooster tail, w/ RJP & EDB

The log began in 1958 and continued through 1977. Sometimes there were additional notes about weather or water conditions. Sometimes there were other initials, but mostly it was RJP and EDB.

“I think it's about fishing,” he said. “See the weights?”

“Uncle Leroy really liked to fish.”

That was an understatement. In the fifties, he and RJP must have fished all summer, every summer. In the sixties, the frequency dropped, weekends only. Then in the seventies it was erratic, a week here, a day there. The last page had three lines.

12 Sept 1977, 6 lbs 0 oz, 3 colors, Mepps gold spinner, w/ RJP

13 Sept 1977, 2 lbs, 5 oz, 2.5 colors, gold Williams, w/ RJP

26 Sept 1977

“That's weird,” said Jacey. “What happened on September 26th?”

“Looks like he gave up fishing, I guess. We should eat lunch.”

Jacey tucked the notebook back where she found it and helped him make sandwiches. When the sun came out in the middle of the afternoon, Jacey threw down a vintage National Geographic circa May 1984 and tugged Rakmen's arm. “Come on! Let's go exploring.”

“Gimme a minute,” he said, shrugging her off and finishing his text to Molly.
I'm sorry they won't let you go.
She'd been invited to the beach with a friend from school, but of course, her parents had said no.

I'm used to it. Bummed tho, she wrote back.

“Rakmen—” Jacey whined. “I want to go see Edna.”

“Get us a water bottle and some bars and we'll go.”

It's outdoor activity hour at Camp Fall Apart. Tiny dictator insists on a canoe ride,
he texted.

Sounds like fun. Can I go to camp?

Even over text, he knew she was faking cheerful. He couldn't decide which of them had it worse. Molly's parents kept her home. His had sent him away.

Next summer for sure.

It's a date.

That sounded good to him.

Rakmen pulled their rain jackets off the coat hooks behind the door and waited while Jacey filled a water bottle. He itched to see the sun and get out of the cabin even if meant going to see grouchy old Edna. Anything was better than staying here.

Rakmen was half out the door with Jacey right behind him when a loud metallic bang exploded inside the wall behind the sink. Turning back toward the kitchen, he heard another ominous clunk and the deep gurgle of rushing water.

The bedroom door slammed open, and Leah stormed out. “What's going on? I'm trying to read.”