Eleven

  “One thing. Where do you live?”

  “One thing.” He echoed her words, for fun. “It's on the road out of town. We'll take the school bus.”

  “But how will I get home again? I live near the school.”

  “A town bus goes along the road. Don't worry—”

  “I can come on Wednesday, or maybe Friday.” She hesitated. “I have to babysit for my little sister sometimes.”

  “Wednesday's good. Friday's good.”

  Possible. Anything was possible.

  Caroline's fingers went to her hair, twirling a piece in front. “Maybe.”

  He grinned. “Yes.”

  3

  Sam's Bjrtnaay

  Mack brought out the crocheted tablecloth that he kept for special occasions, a web of a cloth that had belonged to Sam's grandmother Lydia, dead before he was born. Some of the holes were meant to be there, a pattern of stars; others Sam had poked in when he was five, to surprise Mack.

  Had Lydia really been his grandmother?

  Sam helped put out the plates, taking quick looks at Mack. He'd thought about Mack all day. When he was five or six, he'd lean his head back to see Mack's blue eyes crinkling, the lines around them deepening, convinced that Mack was a giant; Mack could do anything, even though he limped sometimes, bending to rub his leg. Lately flecks of gray were coming into his dark hair and beard, and Onji would nudge Sam: “Your grandfather's getting to be an old guy.” Onji, who had only a fringe of hair around the edges.

  Mack was quiet, and that was fine with Sam. They spent hours in the workroom, Mack humming, with just a word here or there: “Onji's cooking roast beef in the deli, smells good.….A hawk's circling above the river. … “Mack running his hands over a shelf Sam had finished: “I couldn't have done better.”

  Could it be that Mack wasn't his grandfather? But didn't everyone say they looked alike, even though Sam was bone thin? A walking skeleton, Onji said, a Halloween costume. Sam touched his nose, ran his fingers over his mouth. How could he tell if his face was really like Mack's?

  And hadn't Mack showed him a picture of his parents, Julia and Luke ? He had no memory of either of them; both had died, his father in the army, Mack had told him, and Julia from a heart problem.

  Just before dark, Anima came upstairs to their apartment from her restaurant, her dark shiny braid bouncing on her back. Her arms were filled with trays of food. “Ah, please take these, Mack. Watch, they're hot.”

  Anima's voice was clear and high, laughter always just behind her words. She touched Sam's shoulder. “How's my boy?” She moved lightly, like one of the small yellow finches that flew by every fall. The sari she wore tonight was yellow too, floating behind her.

  “Beef curry because it's your favorite, Sam,” she said, a little breathless. “So spicy you'll taste it on your tongue until bedtime. And chicken korma for Mack with lots of coconut milk.” She winked at Sam. “I have to be nice to him until he finishes making the cabinet for the restaurant.”

  Mack looked up at the ceiling, his eyes crinkling. “And after that you want shelves in the hallway, a bookcase for your living room—”

  “All the chicken you want forever,” she said.

  Sam looked from one to the other. Did Anima know about him?

  She helped them set everything out, talking about the cabinet, which would have glass doors and carved feet. She glanced at him. “Quiet tonight, Sam?”

  Before he could answer, heavy footsteps came up the stairs, and Onji filled the kitchen, carrying a huge chocolate birthday cake that had SAM scrawled across the top. All of Onji was wide and round, his face, his nose, even his thick ears that looked as if they'd been stuck on the side of his head like blobs of clay.

  Onji clamped his hand on Sam's shoulder: “Eleven years old, this skinny little kid. Who could believe it?”

  “Some cake, Onji! Thanks.”

  Mack nodded. “That's a pretty good-looking cake for a guy who does nothing but slice roast beef all day.”

  “Not bad at all,” Anima said.

  “Believe it,” Onji said, setting the cake on the counter.

  Sam knew they were waiting for him to slide his finger around the edge of the plate and scoop up a dab of icing. He reached out and took a mouthful of the sweet chocolate. “Terrific.”

  He looked at the three of them, and then at the table with its cloth as they sat down. The paneled kitchen was always cozy, with flames from the fireplace casting orange light over them, but now everything seemed strange, almost as if he didn't belong.

  Sam had dreamed of another kitchen last night, white, cold. He'd reached for an apple on the counter, and a woman had come toward him, her arm raised. Night Cat had darted under the table, and Sam had backed up against the huge refrigerator, terrified.

  Concentrate on dinner, on now, he told himself. Think about the birthday cake that Onji covered with candles. He caught the word pipe.

  Onji looked at Sam from under bushy eyebrows. “It's falling off the side of the wall, banging back and forth.”

  Everyone was looking at him.

  “Last week he lost an oar,” Onji said. “The week before, the shed door was off its hinges.”

  Onji was teasing, and Mack and Anima were laughing, but Sam couldn't stop himself. “Not me,” he said. “I didn't touch the pipe.”

  “You sure?” Onji grinned.

  “Sure I'm sure.”

  It was too late to take the lie back, too late to say yes, he'd been up at night, up in that attic, and to please tell him what that clipping was all about.

  “For the first time,” Anima said, “we found a perfect place to hide your presents.”

  Mack stood up and opened the oven door. He turned to Sam, smiling.

  “Fooled you this time.” Anima's teeth were white against her warm dark skin.

  If only he'd looked in the oven. He never would have gone up to the attic, never would have known about the clipping, never would have had to find out more.

  Anima handed him a square package wrapped in blue paper. “Wait, I have to tell you—” She leaned over him. “It's a book but you won't have much to read.”

  He tore the paper away and opened it to see drawings, patterns, measurements: dozens of wood projects, and very few words. He looked up at her. “You're the best, Anima.”

  She smiled. “Banana crepes later in my apartment.” Her favorites. She'd learned to make them as a child in Kerala, and told him once that her mother's recipe book was one of the few things she'd brought to America with her.

  “But wait,” Onji said, putting a bag in front of Sam. “Here comes a terrific present.” Mack and Anima were laughing again.

  “Not one of those T-shirts.” Sam held it up. It was a blinding yellow, miles too big, ONJI'S DELI—MEAT AND MORE spelled out in green.

  “You'll grow into it,” Onji said.

  Sam laughed too, feeling better. The clipping in the attic had to be a mistake.

  Mack took the last package out of the oven and put it on the table. “Heavy,” he said, and Sam could see how pleased he was about it.

  Under the paper was a second wrapping of flannel. Sam pulled the cloth away and sat back to look at his present. It was much older than he was, older even than Mack, and the handle was worn from years of use: a plane, a tool to smooth wood.

  Sam rested his hand on the knob that would move almost by itself. It would take only a little pressure to run the bottom of the plane across the wood, to curl the roughness away from whatever he was making, until the wood felt like satin.

  “It was my father's.” Mack spread his hands wide. “You're old enough, you deserve it.”

  Sam looked across the table; it was a wonderful thing to have, to add to the tools on his worktable, but even more special because it had been in his family. His family? His grandfather? His great-grandfather?

  He reached out to hug Mack. Please let things be the same.

  It didn't take long to finish dinner. Mack lighted the candles on the
cake. “He's only eleven, Onji,” he said. “There must be thirty here.”

  Onji ran his hand over his bald head. “Thirty-three.” He turned to Sam. “Mack can't count very well. Three for every year.” He looked up at the ceiling as Mack and Anima laughed. “Is that right? Yes.”

  They sang “Happy Birthday,” and afterward Anima said, “If Night Cat could sing, he'd sound like Mack and Onji.”

  “Better,” Sam said. He blew out the candles, and everything did seem the same: all of them smiling at him, the taste of the cake, the presents.

  They hurried to put the plates in the dishwasher. It was time for them to go to Anima's. They walked through her restaurant, where small yellow flowers in baskets decorated the tables. Anima stopped to say hello to people, to nod at the waiters, and then they went upstairs to her living room, as they had almost every night since they found out Sam had trouble reading.

  He remembered it vaguely, the beginning of her reading to them. He pictured himself sitting on Anima's couch, Mack next to him, Anima opposite, and Onji coming up the stairs. “Sam has to know the world,” Anima had said. “If he can't read yet, one thing we can do while we try to help him is to give him the world of books.”

  Mack had nodded.

  And Onji: “How?”

  “I'll read aloud every night.” So when things quieted in the restaurant, Anima read to all of them for at least an hour. And what she read! Long poems, the Bible, stories about a kid who dug holes, about a spider who saved a pig. Anima's accent made her sound like an English queen.

  Sometimes they loved what she read, and sometimes they didn't. She'd shrug, reading about copper mining or sea routes. Onji would fall asleep, his snores almost drowning her out. And sometimes Mack put his head back, his eyes closed. But Sam never slept.

  Tonight Anima began an Iroquois legend as they ate the crepes that had been made downstairs in the restaurant. Mack shook his head; he must have heard this one before. He reached out with one hand as if he'd stop her.

  But Anima kept going. “The Creator promised land to the people if they'd stop fighting. They tried, but the arguing began again. Angry, God scooped up the land to carry it back to the sky. But ah! It fell and broke into a thousand pieces, some so small you could get your arms around them. They became islands, floating in a river so large it was almost an ocean.”

  Sam knew that story; someone had told it to him long ago. And somehow, he remembered that river, too.

  Sam's Bream

  Cold. Freezing.

  Going so fast he couldn't catch his breath.

  Skimming over the water, spray on his face, in his eyes.

  Breathing through his mouth, the in-and-out sound of it echoing

  in his ears, Night Cat there beside him.

  The water was dark and wide. Huge chunks of ice spun

  beneath him, crashing into each other.

  A house flashed by in the water, its windows black and shiny,

  and then a flag on a mound of earth, whipping against a pole.

  High up over his head, a number, eleven.

  He put his arms up and covered his face.

  4

  The River

  Saturday, no school. Free.

  The wind roughed the river up into small curls, but for the first time this spring the sun was almost hot on Sam's head and shoulders.

  He pulled the rowboat out of the shed, a huge shed big enough for five rowboats, and dragged it across the grass, breathing in the smell of the clean water at the river's edge.

  Mack slid open the back window of the workshop, a level in his hand. “Be careful, Sam.”

  And from the deli window next door, Onji called, “He's the only kid who could drown himself in six inches of water.”

  “Don't worry,” Sam called back. He knew what Mack was thinking. Last week Sam had rowed past the bridge where the river widened out, the water deeper and swifter there. Somehow one of his oars had floated away from the boat, leaving him a mile downriver to wait for someone to pull him and the boat onto the bank.

  “Stay this side of the bridge. All right?”

  “I will.”

  “He's an accident waiting to happen,” Onji said.

  Mack nodded. “Can't take your eyes off him for two seconds.”

  They were joking, but Sam knew Mack was afraid of the water. Sam threw his sneakers into the boat, peeled off his socks, and splashed his way into the water.

  The temperature was shocking, numbing his toes. He pushed the boat hard, scraping the bottom along the sand, grit under his feet, and jumped in, rubbing his feet with cold hands.

  Night Cat came to the edge of the water and meowed. Not asking. Ordering.

  Sam angled back and scooped him up. “Okay?” He buried his face in the cat's fur. It had a smell all its own, a Night Cat smell. There was that wisp of a memory: the cat, fur matted down, teetering on the edge of a boat. And Sam, reaching, reaching, the boat tilting, the edge almost level with the water.

  He felt a pulse in his throat, his heart thumping, as Night Cat twisted away from him and darted to the backseat.

  Stop, he told himself.

  The pipe clanked against the building. He stared at it. It was worse every day. How was he going to get Caroline up to the attic? Sometimes Mack went away for an hour or two to deliver furniture, but he couldn't count on it. Was it possible to screw the pipe back to the side of the wall?

  But Onji saw too much; Onji saw almost everything. Sam would just have to wait and see.

  He waved back at both windows, a little guilty that he wasn't helping Onji today. Saturday was Onji's busy day. And Mack's, too. Mack had been in the workroom early, repairing an old chair, smoothing out a deep gash in one of the legs and threading in new caning for the seat.

  Sam began to row, feeling the pull in his arms and his back. As the boat moved away from the shore, the sound of Indian music floated out of Anima's restaurant, light music with bells that reminded him of Anima herself.

  Sam rowed fast, through the narrow channel where the rushes were over his head. He pulled the dripping oars into the boat and dropped the anchor, a brick tied with a rope, onto the sandy bottom.

  Overhead, the stalks swayed and rattled against each other, and a kingfisher flew up and away from him. He sat back and raised his face to the sun, listening to the water lapping against the boat.

  It was the best place to think.

  Missing. He said it aloud, and Night Cat looked up at him. “I have to think about all this, figure ou…” His voice trailed off.

  Mack always tackled things in steps, counting on his fingers, one of them bent from a long-ago accident. “First sand the pieces, then join them with carpenter's glue, use the clamps until everything dries. Next, sand again, stain—”

  And Mrs. Waring in the Resource Room: “Look at the syllables, break the word down, one piece after another.”

  Steps.

  All right.

  Caroline first. She was the key. They'd open the box somehow, she'd read what the clipping said, and anything else that might be there.

  Caroline didn't know he could hardly read. With her head down, turning pages, she might not have noticed that he left for the Resource Room every afternoon.

  How could he tell her?

  His mind veered off. That room. He knew it as well as Mack's workshop. And Mrs. Waring, the smell of her lunch coffee strong as she spoke, her voice with a twang: Saaam. Her smile was great, even though her teeth were a little crooked.

  Once she'd showed him a book with about four words on each page, words he couldn't read. “What does it all look like to you?” she'd asked.

  He'd shrugged. How could he say the lines moved like black spiders, stretching their legs and waving their feelers across the pages?

  She was sorry, he could see that. “Look.” She pointed out the window. “What do you see?”

  “Trees, two of them.”

  “Yes. You see the branches, the leaves. And that tells you they're n
ot houses, or clouds. You don't even have to think about it. Trees.”

  He'd felt something begin in his chest, because he couldn't imagine that happening when he read.

  “That's the way it is with words,” she'd said. “After a while, the circles and lines will mean things. They'll jump out at you, so that trees are trees, and not clouds.”

  The bell had rung then, and he'd escaped. That thing in his chest was growing, was going to explode. He'd held it in while they gathered up their books in the classroom, held it in on the bus, almost bursting with it, just waiting until he reached Mack in the workshop.

  Mack had sat with him on the bench at the side wall as it finally burst out into the loud sound of his crying. Mack's arm had gone around him, and he'd hardly been able to get the words out, only “—spiders on the page that will never look like anything but spiders.”

  He'd buried his head in Mack's shirt, smelling furniture wax and pine, and Mack had cleared his throat. “You have a gift, Sam. A gift like mine.”

  He'd burrowed deeper into Mack's shirt, listening.

  “You don't know it yet,” Mack had said, “but it's the wood. It talks to us.”

  What did that have to do with anything?

  “Already you feel the wood under your fingers. I've seen you.”

  That was true. Sam would run his fingers over the wood, imagining where it had come from: pine from the forests here in New York State, or mahogany from the jungles far away. He knew what the woods were good for, what they could be made into.

  “You read the wood,” Mack had said. “And that's something that almost no one else can do.”

  Mack had turned up Sam's chin with those broad fingers. “You'll learn to read, Sam. It may take longer than most, it may never be your strong point. But you have this.” Mack's hand swept over the workroom, wood stacked waiting to become chairs or tables, tools gleaming. And in a voice Sam strained to hear: “You have me, Sam. Me, and Onji, and Anima. And we all love you more than anything.”

  Now clouds moved between the sun and the boat. Sam pulled his jacket up against his neck, and Night Cat slid off the backseat, almost as if he didn't have bones, and curled up next to him.