Trouble (30 page)

Henry did not stretch. He lay still and watched his father and mother. His father. Who had come out of the house after all these weeks.

"Dad," he said.

His parents' eyes opened immediately, as if they had been waiting for the word. And then they were on the bed again, every line in their foreheads slanting down until Henry smiled, then laughed because of the slanting lines, then held his side because laughing hurt so much, but laughing anyway.

And his father and mother laughing, too, so that the lines disappeared and their faces opened into broad expanses of Happiness.

And then Louisa coming in with all the commotion, and Louisa on the bed as well, and laughing all over again—his side hurting more and more, but still laughing. And his father reaching over to put his hand against Henry's face.

"You're a lucky kid, you know that?"

Henry felt the bandage along his rib cage. "I got shot," he said.

"And any one of the fourteen pellets that hit you could have jumped off your ribs and gone into your lungs. But of the fourteen, guess how many did that."

"It feels like fourteen."

His father laughed again. "None. That's why you're a lucky kid. Even one pellet could have been no end of trouble."

"How did you find us?"

"That was easy. I cabled Sanborn's parents to let them know that neither you nor he were where you were supposed to be—which we are going to talk about. Then we followed the Brighams' credit card. Louisa and I were already in Millinocket when Chay came running into the police station. Your mother was at home making more phone calls than a private detective. Between the three of us, we figured things out."

"Let me guess. Sanborn's parents didn't cable back."

"No."

"Where's Black Dog?"

"At the hotel. Sanborn is hiding her, since there are signs everywhere forbidding little children and dogs."

"And Chay?"

A pause. Henry looked at Louisa. "We don't know where Chay is," said his mother.

"How could you not know where Chay is?"

"When Chay came in that night, I recognized him immediately. So did Louisa. We were more than a little surprised, as you might guess. He told us what had happened, and Louisa and I got in a patrol car and they called the ambulance from the station. When Chay tried to get in with us, one of the policeman saw his back and took Chay to the emergency room in Orono. He was all cut. And there were some ... older ..."

"I know," said Henry.

His father nodded. He told Henry about getting him to the hospital, too. About Henry's mother arriving in Orono before dawn after a frantic drive in the Fiat, which only a miracle had preserved from a dozen speeding tickets. It wasn't until Henry was out of danger that his father had thought about Chay again. By then, Louisa had gone back to the emergency room to look for him, but he was gone.

"You called his parents?"

"They've changed their number to an unlisted one. I called the Merton police and they went over. They called back this morning. His father told them that he didn't want anything to do with him anymore." Henry's father looked down at his hands. "Henry," he said, "I know you must hate that boy. I understand that. But if it hadn't been for him, we might have lost ... We owe that boy a lot. Despite what happened with your brother."

Henry looked at Louisa—and then back at his father.

"I know," he said. "Since you can't build your house far away from Trouble, it's good to know people like Chay Chouan."

His father nodded.

Henry closed his eyes. He thought of his sister that night, driving with Chay Chouan, him letting her drive his father's pickup, and then Louisa panicking behind the wheel when she saw Franklin running toward them, glancing through the windshield and seeing her with a Cambodian boy. With Chay. How she must have swerved suddenly, and then tried to swerve back. The wheel spinning. A shriek, sudden and high. Chay grabbing for the wheel, but Louisa too strong in her panic. Screaming, and then the thud of hitting Franklin. The terrible dull and strong sound of the thud. The squealing of the brakes on top of the screaming.

And Chay, knowing the disaster, deciding to protect her. Sending her away. "Go home! Go home now!" Rushing off to find help. The police. Chay trying to find the police!

And Louisa on the road, walking and trying to settle herself. Coming back home late. The long nights of waiting, the long days of the pretrial hearing. More alone than any of them.

Except Chay, who had lost everything for love of Henry's sister.

Henry began to weep. He wept for Franklin, for Chay, for Louisa. He wept for himself, for the Trouble that had come upon them.

He wept for how wrong he had been about it all.

And his parents wept beside him—his father, freed from the house. His mother, beside his father. Louisa, weeping, holding him so hard that he could not breathe without hurting, but not wanting her to stop holding him. And who knows how long they would have stayed that way—so tight and holy that even the efficient nurses and orderlies who came to their door did not come in—until there was a
plink, plink, plink
against the window of the hospital room, and Henry's father went to see what it was, and it was Sanborn, throwing gravel up and trying to hold Black Dog, who had figured out that Henry was somewhere in this building and was doing everything she could to get inside.

She went berserk when Henry came haltingly to the window. She yelped and jumped and twirled in circles and pirouetted on her hind feet and barked the whole time. Henry laughed—even though it was hurting badly now—and he leaned out the win-dow—which also hurt—and hollered down to his dog, until a nurse saw them and harried Henry back to bed. She tightened the sheets around him as though she was putting him in an envelope, and said that if he was feeling well enough to get out of bed, then he should feel well enough to eat something, which he promised to do, and which he did—even though the eggs weren't cooked in butter, obviously, and they weren't sunny-side up, and they had no salt, and the toast was the healthy stuff.

Afterward, the doctor came in and took off the bandages on Henry's side. "You're a lucky boy," he said, and Henry and his parents looked at each other. "Do you know how many of the fourteen pellets entered your lungs?"

"None?" said Henry.

"That's right, none. If even one of them had found its way in, you would have been here a lot longer. As it is, I'll put a dressing on this again, and we'll keep you for just one more night. Then you can go home and brag about how you survived getting shot."

"Thanks," said Henry.

And after the doctor had left with Henry's parents, Louisa closed the door to her brother's room and sat down on his bed and took his hand. He held hers tightly. They talked. He smiled at her. "Great," he said. And then, very quietly, "Oz."

"Oz," she whispered. When their parents came back, Louisa took a deep breath, looked at Henry for a moment again, and said to them, "I have something to tell you."

Black Dog went berserk again when Henry walked slowly out of the hospital the next day. Sanborn could hardly hold her. And when they all got into the car and Sanborn let her go, she was all over him, so that he had to protect his side against the onslaught of her snout, and front paws, and back paws, and tail, and everything in between.

"So," said his father, "how does it feel?"

"Good as gold," said Henry.

"We'll be at the hotel in ten minutes," he said.

"The rooms are lovely. They're near a lake. You can see the lake from the window. It's beautiful," said his mother.

His parents were trying too hard. They had been trying too hard since Louisa told them about the accident.

But the hotel
was
close, and the rooms were lovely, and the lake did look inviting—even though the doctor had warned Henry against infections that might come from swimming. Still, it wasn't inviting enough to keep him awake, and when he lay down experimentally to try the bed in the room that he and Sanborn were sharing—and in which Black Dog was hiding out—he fell asleep almost immediately, waking later that night only when his parents came to check on him, with Louisa between them.

"I'm fine," he said, before they asked.

His father nodded. "We thought you might like to stay up here with Louisa and Sanborn."

Henry's mother looked a little unsure. "You'd be all right?"

"We'll be all right."

His father rubbed the side of his face. "We're going down to meet with Mr. Churchill tomorrow morning. To see about ... To see what our options might be."

Henry's father looked at Louisa, then at Henry's mother.

"Whatever they are," he said, "we'll ... well, you were right, Henry. You can't build your house far away from Trouble."

Henry nodded.

His father smiled again. It was so good to see him smile.

"So you think the three of you will be all right with Black Dog?"

The next morning Henry's parents drove off in the BMW to Blythbury-by-the-Sea.

Louisa and Sanborn went to get Henry's continental breakfast—which was a whole lot better than the continental breakfast at some rustic lakeside resorts.

When they came into his room, Henry was standing and dressed.

Sanborn put the breakfast on the dresser. "What are you doing?"

"If I was in trouble, I'd go to Katahdin. That's what Chay said. He said he would wait there, and something would happen. Or someone would come."

"Someone like who?" said Sanborn.

"Someone like us." He looked at Louisa. "We're going to Katahdin. We're going to find Chay, and we're going to bring him back down."

"Henry, the only thing that's holding you together is a few stitches," said Sanborn.

"I'd say that twenty-two is more than a few. And the wonder of it, Sanborn, is that I'll still be able to climb faster than you."

"But Dad told me that I shouldn't drive anywhere," said Louisa. "He told me that fifteen times."

"Did they take both cars home?"

"No."

"Did Mom leave the keys to the Fiat?" said Henry.

Louisa smiled.

An hour and a half later, Louisa was driving the Fiat slowly and carefully through Millinocket, past the museum of Thaddeus Baxter, and on to the turnoff toward Katahdin. Henry sat in the back with Black Dog, and his side ached, but not as much as it had by the lakeside they were passing now. Ahead, Katahdin. The hugeness of the mountain appalled him. And when they came to her foot, where Katahdin adjusted her stately robes, Henry looked upward and scanned the ascent while holding his side. "Jehoshaphat," he said—but only to himself.

They checked in at the ranger station, and they read all the signs about hypothermia and the chronicles of foolish and unprepared hikers who hadn't paid attention to the weather or who had gone without enough water or proper training or sufficient clothing and so had died dismal deaths. "Jehoshaphat," said Henry again, a little louder.

But despite the chronicles, Sanborn and Louisa shouldered the two packs—Henry didn't even try to point out to his sister the rule that said that she was a girl and girls should never, ever carry a pack if an accompanying boy is there to carry it for her—and they started out to find Chay and bring him back down the mountain.

A little way past the station, they could see the Keep Ridge to the south. Above it, to the north, the Hamlin Ridge rose up and cut the blue sky in an impossibly sharp and clear line. The ridges were jagged, and rocky, and naked, and open, and exposed to every wind that might think about playing with the mountain. And it didn't look close to what might be thought of as a steady climb—rock leaped up to rock, boulder to boulder, rise to rise, cut edge to cut edge, until everything fell off at a place high and far away.

Henry wondered if Sanborn could do it. He put his hand against his own side. He wondered if
he
could do it. He let Black Dog loose, and she sprinted ahead. No one wondered if she could do it. And no one wondered if Louisa could do it. She was already taking the lead.

Sanborn looked back at Henry. "This is crazy," he said.

"Yup," said Henry. And they began, pushing through the scrub brush, their feet on the hard and level granite that bore up the mountain. The sun glinted off the mica, and if it hadn't been for the generations of lichens and bright springy moss that had found their way onto the path, it would have been rock all the way. But once they were on it, Henry felt Katahdin's welcome, as if the mountain was easing their way a little. They stopped briefly at the patches of blueberries—a little early for these, but a few mostly blue—and, after a mile or so, they stopped again as the trail tipped abruptly upward.

"This is it," said Henry.

He took one step forward, and so came onto Katahdin herself.

He had come as far north as he could. But even though he had come so far from Blythbury-by-the-Sea, and so far from Merton, all he could think about was Louisa.

He climbed Katahdin, thinking of her. He found a sheltered cleft in the rock, thinking of her. He covered himself that first night with pine boughs, listening to the murmurous haunting of the flies, thinking of her.

But she would be fine. They would all be fine. Henry was in the hospital, and his parents would be around him. Louisa, too. She would be fine. His dog would be fine. Even Sanborn.

If he didn't have anything else—and he didn't—he had that.

He sat against the side of Katahdin, and waited, hopelessly, for what would come.

A
BOUT A QUARTER MILE
into the ascent, Henry's ribs began to ache. He walked so that he didn't show it.

About a half mile into the ascent, Henry's ribs began to throb with every step. He tried to put his feet carefully and softly on the path.

About three-quarters of a mile into the ascent, Henry's ribs were shooting pains that reached up into his shoulders and down to his ankles. He started to take quick breaks to look at remarkable tree barks so that he wouldn't show anyone the aching.

By the time they reached the base of the Keep Ridge and really began to ascend, the deep throb in his side was making him nauseated, which is hard not to show, and which Sanborn would probably have noticed if he wasn't so grateful for any short relief that Henry's remarkable tree bark breaks gave him.