Trouble (25 page)

Henry looked over at Chay—who was predictably white. "It doesn't mean anything," he said. "He's not going to give you a ticket for stopping on the side of the road to look at a mountain."

Chay put the truck in gear and drove back onto the road. Very slowly.

It was almost noon now; the brightness of the day had paled into a lighter blue, and the air had whitened until it held all the promise of a still, savannah heat. Already Henry's back was sweating against the leatherette seat, and he could hear Black Dog panting—which only made things hotter.

"So is air conditioning only for lazy Americans?" Henry said.

Chay shook his head. "It doesn't work," he said.

Henry lowered his window as far as it would go.

By all rights, Henry thought, there should have been a cool breeze. The road to Millinocket wound past shadowy pines and by stones that led down to blue water on both sides. It seemed made for a cool, breezy drive. But under the noonday sun, the stones were heated and the air beneath the pines was breathless.

Henry unstuck his back from his seat and sighed.

There were other cars on the road to Millinocket—all of which were passing them, since Chay was driving slowly so he wouldn't catch up with the policeman. Those cars had their windows wound tightly up, and everyone inside looked cool and fresh. A lot had young kids in them, some with balloons, and more and more of the cars were decorated with red, white, and blue bunting flapping in the hot breezes, flying straight out from antennas, dragging back from rear bumpers.

"It looks like the Fourth of July," said Sanborn.

"It
is
the Fourth of July, you jerk," said Henry.

"Thank you, Mr. Calendar Man," said Sanborn. "I'll be sure to consult you for all the high holidays."

"Sanborn, everyone in the country knows it's the Fourth of July except you."

"Oh, you took a poll this morning?"

"Quiet," said Chay. A policeman drove past them, going the other direction. The same policeman.

Chay's hands went white again. His face, too.

"Keep going," said Henry. "We're just part of the crowd."

Which they were. In fact, they had to drive more and more slowly as the traffic started to back up, and the bright and brave bunting that had been flying in the breeze from the cars began to go limp. And that was the way it stayed for the next half hour, as Chay rode his brake behind bumpers on into town.

Millinocket was as decked out for the Fourth of July as any of the cars—even more so. Every building that had a second floor had a flag draped from it. Starred-and-striped bunting leaped across the street from one pole to another. Red, white, and blue balloons held on to anything that they could. The scent of cotton candy and corn dogs and grilled frankfurters filled the air. Henry heard the bright notes of a brass band warming up somewhere.

Most of the side streets were blocked off with orange cones, and when Henry looked down them, he could see people in bright yellow T-shirts directing cars and floats and bicyclists—all sporting red, white, and blue streamers—and waving their arms at milling trombonists and trumpeters. On the sidewalks along the main street that they were driving on, people were walking with folding chairs and blankets, probably to find the best seat for a parade.

Henry turned around to see how Black Dog was handling Millinocket. She looked fascinated. She seemed to figure that the streamers were made just for a dog to chase, and she was willing. She watched them all, her ears going down for a moment when they passed one streamer, but then perking up again with the next one. Her mouth was open, and she was drooling in her excitement.

Then, ahead of them, a police siren wailed suddenly. And a second, and a third.

The children walking along the road clapped and cheered; some put their hands over their ears and laughed.

But Chay did not clap or cheer or laugh. He looked around quickly, from side to side, and then in a spasm of panic, he turned the pickup into one of the blocked-off roads, squashing three orange cones and heading toward one of the men in the bright yellow T-shirts—

"Chay!" said Henry.

—and stopping abruptly when the man held up his arm.

"
That
way," the man in the yellow shirt said, pointing. "Classics are supposed to be two blocks over and one block down." He waved Chay on. "Go down there, and they'll show you."

Chay went down there, and more people in bright yellow T-shirts showed him. While Henry and Sanborn sank lower and lower in their seats, and while Black Dog began to bark at the more exciting streamers, Chay drove the two blocks, turned left at the waving yellow arm, and then stopped close behind a green DeSoto that looked as if Cleanliness and Purity had descended upon it; it gleamed coolly, even in the hottening sun. Henry peeked behind them. A white DeSoto had closed in.

"I suppose you know," said Sanborn, who was also looking out behind them, "that we are now a part of the Millinocket Fourth of July parade. And we don't even have any streamers."

"We can turn off as soon as we get moving," said Henry.

Chay nodded.

But since no parade ever gets under way quickly, moving took some time. And there were more than a few people in bright yellow T-shirts who passed them and looked sort of wonderingly at them, until Sanborn finally got out of the car, went over to a fire hydrant that had three red balloons holding on, pulled the strings from the hydrant, and tied the balloons onto the tailgate of Chay's pickup—which Black Dog thought was wonderful.

When the line of classics did get moving—very, very slowly— Henry and Chay looked for a side street to duck into. But the people with the bright yellow T-shirts lined the route, waving their arms and directing them, so that there was nowhere to go except to follow the green DeSoto in front of them—almost on the DeSoto's bumper, since the yellow-T-shirted people kept hollering that they were supposed to "close ranks," and the white DeSoto was right on them, pushed a little by the large float from the Great Northern Paper Company filled to overflowing with potted pines destined for lumbered forests.

"We might as well start waving," said Sanborn. So Henry and Sanborn waved as they came onto the main parade route, and everyone lining the street cheered each new classic and waved small paper flags and blew on small plastic horns and shot water pistols up into the air.

Black Dog could hardly contain herself.

They crawled along, waving, and Black Dog barked, and the balloons on the tailgate bobbed, and Henry realized that he was starting to melt.

"Does this classic have anything to get up a breeze?" he said to Chay, and he looked at the temperature controls.

Chay had turned them up to blow out heat into the cab.

Henry looked at him. "Are you crazy? It's got to be a hundred degrees in here."

"A hundred and fifty degrees," said Sanborn.

Chay pointed to the temperature gauge for the radiator, whose needle was almost,
almost
touching the red zone that did not mean anything good.

"So what are we going to do?" said Henry.

"Overheat," said Chay.

"Does blowing the hot air in here get it down?"

"Sometimes."

Henry looked at the gauge, whose needle was now clearly in the red zone. "What happens if it overheats?"

"More of that," said Chay, pointing to the front of the pickup, where Henry could see a wisp of white steam escaping from beneath the hood.

"And what happens if there's a lot more of that?"

"It means," said Sanborn, "that there's going to be a lot of unhappy parade people behind us."

W
HAT HAPPENED NEXT
happened very quickly, and none of it was really anyone's fault, since classics have already given everything that can be expected of them and are bound to complain sometimes. Especially when it is very hot.

Black Dog was leaning farther and farther out from the pickup's bed—probably to escape the heat coming through the cab window. But whether it was the heat or not, when she saw a red balloon that was suddenly let go, she barked twice and leaped out. Henry, who was still trying to wave at the crowd even though he was melting, hollered, then opened his door and ran out after her.

At the same time, the wisp of smoke from under the front hood suddenly turned into a gusher with a surprising volume. Henry heard the hissing of the steam and the "Oohs" of the crowd—who thought it was part of the parade—and then he was gone after Black Dog, who was weaving in and out of the parade route, jumping up anytime the hot air blew the balloon back down, and barking in between times. Henry ran after her, yelling "Black Dog, Black Dog," and no one knew if Henry was warning them or calling to the dog, so they took the safer option and began backing away from a dog that was running wildly and jumping like a lunatic. When she stopped for a moment and thrust her nose into a dropped cone of cotton candy, the frothy pink on her snout looked like the kind of foam anyone who was worried about rabies might be suspicious of, and now the backing away took on a look of panic.

Meanwhile, the entire parade had stopped, and Henry thought he knew why. The driver for the Great Northern Paper Company's float was standing on one of the potted pines to see what the holdup was. The pilots for the Millinocket Municipal Airport float were clambering up onto their plywood control tower to see. The Millinocket Junior High School Marching Band was playing the theme from
The Bridge on the River Kwai
and marching in place—until Black Dog ran right through them and knocked the percussion section completely off their rhythm, which got everyone in the band out of step. Then, still pink-snouted, she charged into the Veterans of Foreign Wars and through the Cub Scout troop behind them, and so past the Millinocket fire engine that was spouting a spray of water to cool everyone down, but, since it was now blocked, was simply soaking the same people over and over again.

Henry tracked Black Dog by following the confusion she left behind—and the red balloon that now and then rose above everyone's head. If it hadn't been for the spray of the fire engine catching the balloon solidly and throwing it down to the ground, Black Dog might have kept on running. But when Henry finally got to her, she had taken the balloon into her mouth and killed it well enough. She held it in her jaws and showed it to him proudly when he came up. She grinned and wagged her tail.

What could he say except "Good dog"?

Henry looped his belt around Black Dog's collar and wiped most of the pink froth off her snout. "C'mon," he said, and turned to head back into the stalled parade.

But when he turned around, he wasn't so sure he wanted to head back into the stalled parade. Ahead of him he could see the brilliant orange feathers on the tall hats of the Millinocket Junior High School Marching Band gathering together. The percussion section was flocking toward them purposefully. Trouble.

Henry looked around. Every store up and down the block had closed down for the morning. None had a light on or an open door.

Except one. And over its screen door was one word:
KATAHDIN
.

Henry did not believe in Fate. But sometimes, believing has nothing to do with acting. The sign said "Katahdin," and that was enough. He drew Black Dog close to him and, trying to walk like someone whose dog hadn't just run through the entire Millinocket Fourth of July parade, he crossed the street and opened the screen door. A tiny silvery bell tinkled happily as he and Black Dog went in.

Henry could see that what they had come into wasn't actually a store. It looked like a museum. Sort of. Mounted prints torn from old books covered one wall; on the other side of the room were pictures of Katahdin, showing every angle of the peaks and labeling the major trails in bright red lines: the Russell Pond Trail, the Chimney Pond Trail, the Northwest Basin Trail, the Baxter Peak Cutoff, the Helon Taylor Trail, the Dudley Trail, the Appalachian Trail—all the trail names that he had studied. Photographs of the mountain taken from overhead were taped to the ceiling, so that Henry could look above him and see straight down into Katahdin's Great Basin. It was dizzying.

Lights between the ceiling photographs shone on neatly arranged and labeled artifacts on three long tables. Henry, still holding Black Dog close, followed rows of arrowheads, whose chipped edges and tips looked fierce enough to pierce deeply into whatever they hit—still. "The Work of the Great Abenaki Nation," read a sign between the rows, and Henry tried to imagine himself striking at a thin stone until only this lethal thing was left in his palm—in his probably bloody palm.

"Those there I found mostly myself," came a voice from the back of the room.

Henry looked up.

"Eighty years of looking's in that case," said the voice.

The first thing Henry noticed about the man was his mustache, mostly because it covered so much with a startling white. Henry wondered how his voice got through it all—or food, for that matter. Everything else in his face arranged itself around the mustache. It was a base for the broad nose that ran well up into his forehead, and provided symmetry for the thick white eyebrows that spread out from its top like spume from a fountain running down into pale eyes—which were looking at Henry, and harder at Black Dog.

"Don't usually allow dogs in here," he said.

Henry turned quickly at the sound of the Millinocket Junior High School Marching Band's percussion section, which seemed to have fanned out through the streets. The dead birds on top of their tall hats bobbed back and forth like Polynesian birds of prey.

"'Course," said the man, "there's always the exception for a good old dog."

Black Dog looked up at the man, and Henry could tell right away that she liked him and that she wanted him to know that she
was
a good old dog. Henry let go of the belt and she trotted across to him, her toenails clicking on the planks of the wooden floor.

"Thanks," said Henry. "I think my dog destroyed the Fourth of July parade."

"That so?" he said. "Wasn't much of a parade to begin with. But I don't guess that you came from wherever you came from just to see a Fourth of July parade in Millinocket. You going up Katahdin, just the two of you?"