Trouble

  "This," said Henry very, very slowly, "is embarrassing."

  "Then we'll only tell people who've been shot by a shotgun," said Sanborn. "And, boy, when I find them, I'll tell them how Henry Smith couldn't even get shot without throwing up."

  "You ... jerk."

  "Shut up, Henry."

  And he did. They both did. The moon rose big above them, dimmer but still bright enough to fade out most of the stars. Bright enough to light all Katahdin, so that it shimmered against the darkness behind it. And still bright enough to light the campsite around them. And the trees. Why had he never noticed the texture of tree barks? How they showed the way these trees had faced the weather that swept down from the mountain and had come out full of scars—but still okay. What a miracle the tree barks were in the moonlight.

  Sanborn got up to put more branches on the fire. And he brought back another shirt. He folded it into a pad and replaced the rugby shirt against Henry's side.

  "You got it bloody, didn't you?" said Henry.

  "You got it bloody," said Sanborn.

  "You never get a rugby ... you never get a rugby shirt clean after it gets blood on it."

  "You use bleach," said Sanborn.

  "That's why you go around with pink rugby shirts, you jerk. You don't use bleach on colors."

  "You can use bleach on colors if the water is cool enough. And they're not pink—they're just faded."

  "They're pink because you use bleach."

  And that's what they were talking about—whether or not you should use bleach with your colored laundry—when a row of flashing lights came screaming up the road and stopped opposite the field. Lights came on as doors were opened and Henry could hear voices. Sanborn stood and called and waved his arms, and Henry felt as if the last act of the play was finally coming on to the great climax. It had been a long play, and it was time to go home to bed, because he was awful tired.

  So when the first new member of the cast came on and knelt beside him, Henry looked up at his face—he tried to keep it in focus, but it was blocking out the spotlight and the crisp edges of Katahdin—and he closed his eyes.

  "Henry," a voice said.

  Now Henry was sure he was in a play. It sounded like his father.

  "Henry!" Louisa?

  Something licked his face and whined.

  "You're going to be all right," said his father's voice.

  That sounded like his cue. Henry turned his face away from the licking and let his eyes close. He did not try to open them again.

  23

  HENRY DREAMED STRANGE DREAMS. His father's face was in many of them. Sometimes it was Captain Thomas Smith's face, held with his shaking hands and lit by firelight. High and shrill noises. Shrieking pain. Too many blankets. Bright lights. White. Chrome. Strange and heavy odors that gagged him.

  His Buck knife—he wondered where his Buck knife had gotten to. And Black Dog.

  His father's face. Louisa's face. Sanborn's face. His mother's face.

  Then more of the strange and heavy odors. He tried to stay awake. He tried to straighten his eyes to figure out why he kept seeing these faces. And then the odors got too heavy, and he fell asleep. Deep and dreamless, like the mountain.

  And when he woke up, he saw his father's face again. And his mother's. He blinked, and blinked again. His arms were too heavy to raise up to wipe his eyes, so he blinked once more to clear them.

  His parents were still there after all the blinking, faces and all. They were slumped in two chairs they had pulled together at the end of Henry's perfectly made white bed. Their arms were around each other, their faces side by side, as if they had fallen asleep cheek by cheek. This probably wasn't easy for his mother, Henry figured, since it looked as if his father hadn't shaved in at least a week—which, once upon a time, had been unusual. His mother's face was not as pale as Henry's sheets, but it was heading in that direction, and it wasn't helped by her uncombed hair above or rumpled clothes below. Henry blinked again. He could see their breathing, their mouths so close that it seemed as if they were giving vital air to each other.

  He tried to stay as still as everything else in the room. He didn't want to wake his parents. He watched them. He watched their love.

  Then quietly, because they were so deeply asleep, he raised his right hand slowly, and then his arm to see if he could do it without hurting himself. He couldn't—but it wasn't a bad hurt. More like the kind of hurt you feel the next morning after a hard crew workout. He twisted his body a little to see what that would do—and decided he wouldn't twist it again for a while.

  He tried raising his legs, and that went well—which was good, because he'd have to go to the bathroom soon and the apparatus on the table next to him that looked designed for the purpose wasn't anything that he intended to use.

  He let his legs down, then raised them again.

  And that was enough to waken his parents—whose eyes opened. Who stood up in their rumpled clothes. Who automatically tried to straighten their clothes, which were past straightening. Who gave up and were on Henry's bed. Who opened their mouths.

  And who had no words to say.

  Henry watched his parents catalogue him. They laid their hands against their son's face. They looked down at his two good arms. They listened to his breathing, in and out. They saw the brightness of his eyes.

  "I'm all right," Henry said. It was hard to talk. He could still smell the strange odors, still feel their heaviness in his throat. "I guess I'm all right."

  His father nodded. They took each other's hands. Then Henry closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  He slept for about a day.

  Sometimes he woke up a little.

  When he did, he saw his parents. Once he thought he saw Sanborn. Twice he thought he saw Louisa.

  But mostly he slept dreamlessly, the kind of deep, deep sleep that a body needs for everything to reset. He did not turn on the bed, and hardly noticed when a nurse came in to check on him, or when an orderly went by to collect an uneaten meal, or when his father kissed him lightly on the forehead, or when his mother or sister held his hand. So when he finally did wake up, he woke up half-startled, as though he had come up out of a deep and long ravine and suddenly he was on the summit, and the air was brilliant and blue, and the wind low and smooth, and the smell in the air ...

  Well, that was when he realized he wasn't up on a mountain. That, together with the throb in his ribs. And his father and mother in their chairs, slouched against each other, asleep again. Holding hands. Smiling. How long had it been since he had seen them together, smiling?

  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 g
oing 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.