“You can call me that,” the father said.
I took a chance. “I'm going to call you Old Man.”
He laughed. “Try it.” I could tell he didn't mind, though.
“What's next is I'm a walker,” Steven said. “Walk myself all over Branches. I'll walk you, too.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I know motors,” he said. “I drive a truck.”
“Don't believe that.” The Old Man snorted. “Not even thirteen years old.”
“I almost drive, then,” Steven said, giving me a wink. “Legal any day now.”
The Old Man rolled his eyes at me.
“And the last thing, I know tracks.” Steven spread his arms wide. “Animal tracks. All of them.”
I was laughing. I knew he meant for me to laugh. He pushed the black checkers over to me. “Let's see what you can do here, Hollis Woods,” he said. “Win and I'll teach you how to drive.”
“In your dreams,” the Old Man said.
We played a couple of checkers games, Steven taking wild chances, while we dripped ketchup from our hamburgers onto the table and the Old Man egged us on.
Anyway, the picture I was trying for was Steven playing checkers with me that first day. That was the picture I could never get perfect. Maybe it was because he let me win that first game; maybe it was because I let him win the next one. And maybe it was because for the first time I really saw what it might be like to have a brother.
I had been at Josie Cahill's house for three weeks. One morning when I awoke, I reaized my thumb was blistered, but I didn't mind. We 'd been cleaning up the grove of trees. I liked the feeling of hacking and slashing and getting things done. A pile of wood rested under Josie 's back table now. “Not all of it is for whittling,” she had told me. “As soon as it's really cold, we 'll make enormous fires in the fireplace.”
I knew she was wondering if I'd still be there when the cold came.
I wondered too.
I stretched, not ready to get up, and looked around the bedroom. It was wonderful, the first place the sun hit every day, so that squares of light turned the room to lemon gold. I stayed under the rose-and-white quilt for a few moments, then pulled on my clothes to go down to the kitchen.
Josie was bent over the table, eyeglasses perched on the end of her nose, working on a piece of wood. From the hall I could see her reflection in the kitchen window. She knew I was there but she just cut another sliver off the wood and blew it away.
I slid onto a seat opposite her at the table. In front of me were a box of cereal, two bananas, and a Danish neatly cut in half. The Danish was a little stale and the bananas beginning to freckle. Other days chocolate chips were sprinkled into the cereal, but they must have been all gone.
Still, it was a terrific breakfast, with Rice Krispies crackling in the speckled bowl. Fall leaves swept across the garden, and Josie's plane went across the wood with a swish-swish sound.
I sat there with my mouth full, looking around at her kitchen. It was like the rest of the house, filled with surprises: The walls were creamy yellow, and ships sailed along blue ocean moldings. A painted pelican was perched over the stove.
The pelican looked as irritable as Henry.
I told myself I'd have a house like that one day: hatboxes and wigs drawn on one bathroom wall, and high-heeled shoes, dozens of them, marching along in watercolor in a tiny bedroom at the end of the hall.
That yellow kitchen was huge. A couch sat under the window, piled high with embroidered pillows that said things like HENRY'S HOME, V FOR VICTORY, SAVE THE SARGASSO SEA.
I'd never even heard of the Sargasso Sea.
I had drawn the house with paper from my backpack and fat bits of charcoal I had found somewhere. It was lovely to sketch the house, and Josie with her scarf. She watched me sometimes as I drew Henry sitting on top of the old-fashioned radio, and the pelican with beady eyes.
Too bad you don't have your drawing box, I imagined Steven saying, all those yellows and blues.
I was all right, though.
“We'll take a drive in the Silver Bullet today,” Josie said, sounding pleased with herself. She brushed a few shavings off the front of her dress onto the faded linoleum floor. “I have things to show you, Hollis.”
No school on a Monday? I shrugged to myself. If she wanted to forget about it, that was fine with me. I spent most of the time in the back of the classroom sketching, or drawing faces in ink on the plastic desk and erasing them with one wet finger.
I had taken only two days off so far, reminding myself that the mustard woman would probably be checking up on me. And the absence notes I wrote myself and signed in a spidery hand that looked like Josie's were masterpieces: Hollis had a high fever over the weekend. Please send her home if she looks flushed. Or Hollis had a severe rash. We learned that she's allergic to tomatoes. Pity. She really enjoys them.
I shoved the last of a banana into my mouth and watched as Josie plopped a straw hat with a rose onto her head and wrapped one of those filmy scarves twice around her neck; then I followed her out to the garage.
The car was ancient, a Buick from the eighties. The fenders were dented and a streak of white paint ran across the door, but inside, the seats were soft and furry, and hanging from the windshield was a small tree figure of a man with gray whiskers. No, not a man. It was Henry standing on his back legs.
“I put acorn boxing gloves on him but they kept falling off,” Josie said. “You don't have to worry about Henry. Henry's ready to stick up for you whenever the chips are down.”
I had to laugh, thinking about Henry in boxing gloves fighting for me. My main concern about Henry was how to keep out of his way. I stepped back as he jumped into the car and hopped across the backseat to sit on the rear window ledge, his head up, one notched ear forward, his whiskers twitching.
But I didn't have time to think about that. I slid into the car as Josie backed out of the garage and down the driveway in one great swoop and, never looking, barreled onto the street.
You wouldn't believe this, I told Steven in my head, and grabbed the edge of my seat with both hands.
Josie began to talk, glancing down at her movie-star hands, long and thin, her nails painted fire-engine red but chipping here and there. I wanted to tell her to slow down but bit my lip instead.
I thought I was going to be dead by the time we reached the first crossing. But by the second corner I realized there wasn't that much traffic, and the few cars on the road stayed well out of our way, so I began to relax and listen to what she was saying.
“Going to stay and have yourself done up in a tree?” she asked. “Stay longer and I'll teach you how to drive. Like the movies? We can do that, too.”
My mouth went dry. How to drive? That's what Steven would say. You could tell her a story about that, couldn't you?
I brushed at the air, wanting to brush him out of my head. I was trying to think of what illness I'd give myself today, when the Silver Bullet turned another corner and stopped. Spread out in front of us was a canal with a few fishing boats, kerosene trails sliding out in back of them on the water, and beyond the boats, beyond the canal, was more water than I had ever seen.
It moved and rolled, it shimmered, it glowed irides-cent silver. The Atlantic Ocean. I itched for a piece of drawing paper.
“This is my ocean,” Josie said, as if it belonged to her personally, like one of her hats.
It was the way I felt about the Delaware River. A pain filled my chest as I thought about it. I wanted to sit in the Old Man's rowboat, to lean over and put my hands into that clear water, to watch the catfish riding along on the bottom, the schools of pickerel lazing in the warm sun.
“So what do you think?” Josie asked.
“Bigger than a river,” I said. “Rougher.” I spread out my hands, trying to think of the difference. “It's wonderful, but …”
She waited.
“You can't get your arms around it.”
“Ah,” she said,
stopping to think. “There are salt-water people, and freshwater people.” She held up her hand. “Then there are some who don't even know enough to fall in love with the water.” She looked at me with satisfaction. “But they're not us.”
I nodded, thinking of how the river might look as it reflected the last of the fall leaves.
“We'll get out,” Josie said, “and walk along the jetty.” She was singing under her breath now, a bit of a song I had learned somewhere. “By the sea, by the sea.” Henry followed us as we went toward the jetty, a path to the sea made of huge boulders tumbled one on top of the other. They were slippery, those rocks, with places your feet could get caught, and I wondered if I should help Josie climb up. But she didn't need help. She swung herself up next to me, her scarf blowing in the wind coming off the sea. “Just breathe,” she said.
She didn't have to tell me. I had never smelled anything like that air: fish, and kerosene, and salt.
“I don't know what I'd do without the ocean,” she said.
And then we skittered out to where I couldn't see anything but water in front of us. Josie pointed down with one foot. Between the rocks were pockets of water, and some of them had tiny fish swimming around in them, fish so small they were blurs of pewter. In one pool was a crab whose claws were no bigger than my pinky nails.
I knelt down on the edge of a boulder and put my fingers into the water, watching their reflection as the water moved, feeling the spray on my shirt. Was there snow on the mountain yet?
Don't think about the mountain.
I thought about Steven and the Old Man and Izzy and I put my hand on my chest because there was such an ache inside.
Josie was a statue standing above me, holding her hat against the wind, her eyes closed, a half smile on her face.
“I thought maybe I'd stay for a while,” I said slowly. “As long as you want me to, that is.”
Josie opened her eyes and beamed down at me.
“So if you'd like to work on my tree figure …”
She raised her hand to her scarf. “I've already started.”
And I knew Steven would be saying, What are you doing, Hollis?
The river meandered along in front of the Regans' summer house, and on the opposite side was the Old Man's mountain.
What was it about that mountain? Coming from Long Island, I had never gotten within yelling distance of anything more than a hill. So why did this mountain look so familiar? I stretched my neck to look up and up at its rocky self mostly covered with evergreens.
“You'll fall over,” Steven said.
I shrugged, reaching for my backpack. Inside were a bunch of colored pencils, stubby things I had collected wherever I could find them. It would take six of them, blues and greens and grays, to get the color of the river the way it was the first time I saw it.
“Do you know how to fish?” Steven asked.
“If I wanted to.” I squinted at the river; didn't know how to fish, didn't know how to swim. I was still trying to figure out how to stay away from that water when the Old Man brought the fishing rods out of the shed.
Izzy Regan, the mother, came out onto the porch, the screen door slamming behind her. She waved at us. “Hey, guys, catch me something to go with pole beans and corn on the cob.”
“Yuck to the beans,” Steven said.
“I like pole beans,” I said. I'd heard of polecats, but never pole beans.
Izzy nodded at me. “It's great to have a girl around, Holly. We have to stick together against these guys.”
Izzy was the tallest woman I'd ever seen. Her blond hair was wrapped around her head, and she seemed to be smiling just for me.
And then we were down on the bank, barefoot, standing in the shade of a few scrub pines. The Old Man put a rod threaded with a lure into my hand. “The best one,” he said. “This is for luck.”
He showed me how to cast so my arm went back and over my head and the line sang out. I watched the feathery lure glide on the water, and then did it again, and again.
I could see the bottom of the river. I could stand on that soft sand dotted with rocks, I thought, and be safe. I put one foot into the cool water and then the other, feeling tiny fish nibbling at my ankles. Across the way was the mountain, tall and green.
“Pop's mountain,” Steven said. “I'll show you tomorrow. There's a road going up …”
The Old Man tightened his mouth. “Be careful of that road. I'm afraid of it.”
Steven twitched one shoulder. “I'm not afraid of anything.”
Anyting, I thought. The stucco house woman seemed a world away.
We stood there, the Old Man pointing to a cat-fish nosing its way along, then a frog sunning itself on a rock, and I closed my eyes. I knew the East Branch of the Delaware River was home.
Like a miracle I caught my first fish that afternoon. Hooked it and watched the silver curve as it broke the surface of the water. It was a huge fish, and Steven said, “Bet you a buck you can't hold on to it.”
He was right there with the net, though, wanting me to get it, as I slipped on the rocks, feeling the water on my legs and then my back as I slid. I tried to get my balance with one hand, my feet going out from under me, not sure how deep the river was, wondering if my head would go under.
Steven's arm was on my elbow then, holding me up, and the Old Man called, “You're all right, Hollis.”
My feet anchored into the sand then. I edged myself back, pulling on the rod, and then the fish was mine.
Steven poured a pailful of cool water over my head so my hair was dripping, my clothes soaked. The Old Man was smiling, nodding, and Izzy came down to the bank to see what was going on.
Later I drew it all, and whenever I look at the picture I remember the taste of the fish that night, grilled on the coals, my feet bare under the porch table, and in front of us, the river. I remember Izzy touching my shoulder as she stood up to get something from the kitchen.
Why did I have to mess everything up?
Every night we ate soup from a can, Josie, Henry, and I. We sat at the table under a stained-glass lamp that tossed rainbows onto the kitchen ceiling. On the wall was a quick picture of Henry I had drawn. He was wearing boxing gloves and batting at the light cord.
Josie whittled away on a slice of wood as we dunked bits of donuts or slice-and-bake chocolate chip cookies into the tomato soup. On Josie's check days we ate big.
“We shouldn't do this,” I told her as we trundled home a cartload of donuts, a case of cat food, and our check-day treat: a gallon of cherry vanilla ice cream and enough Snickers bars to keep us chewing for a week of television nights. “We should spread it out.”
Josie didn't answer. She hummed a scrap of an old song I had never heard before. That's the way she talked sometimes. She'd start with bits of this and that, it could even be poetry. You had to untangle her words in your head like balls of knotted string. And sometimes she'd break off in the middle of a sentence, small frown lines on her forehead.
I knew something the mustard woman didn't know, something even Emmy, star of the agency, hadn't guessed. Josie forgot things, forgot words, forgot what she was doing. Not all the time, but still too often. Josie knew it too. She'd look at me helplessly, hands in the air, and then I'd rush to finish her sentence for her or to turn down the flame under a pot of soup that was ready to boil over.
“My cousin Beatrice is waiting,” she sang one night, and handed me my jacket. She gave her straw hat a twirl as she passed the hook it hung on in the hall. “Much too cold for this.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To the movies.”
“What will we use for money?”
Josie didn't answer. She pulled a brown hat out of the closet and stood at the mirror, arranging the veil in front of her eyes. In the dim light of the hall, she looked young; her skin seemed to glow.
She saw me staring at her, and for the barest second before I looked away, I could see that her eyes gleamed. “Wait a minute.” Sh
e reached out and gently took my arm so I stood in front of the mirror.
I didn't much like to look at myself; there was that scar just healed from the accident on the Old Man's mountain. If I didn't see the scar, I didn't have to think about that night and the terrible sound of the truck slamming into the rocks as we slid toward the edge.
Josie took the brown hat off her head and put it on mine. She fluffed out the veil so it covered my face down to my nose and then she stood back.
I drew in my breath at the reflection. No scar, no freckles, and my sandy hair, which usually poked out in all directions, looked soft, almost curly. I looked different, almost … Pretty wasn't even the word.
“Ah,” Josie said. “You know it too. This is the way you're going to look very soon. This is the way you'll look for the rest of your life. You have a beautiful face.”
I swallowed. I didn't want to take the hat off. I wanted to leave it on forever.
“Wear it.” She patted my shoulder, then opened the closet door to take out another hat for herself, a green wool one with flecks of gold and an iridescent clip on one side. She smiled at me. “It's yours to have forever, even when you leave me.”
“I won't leave,” I said.
She started to say something, but instead fiddled with the lock on the front door and dropped the key into her pocketbook. As we went past the garage, she shook her head regretfully. The gas gauge was almost on Empty—I had seen that the other day—and we had about forty cents to last us until the middle of the month.