Memory Boy Page 10

  They drew up when they saw me holding the gun.

  “What are you doing?” my mother said. The fear in her voice turned instantly to anger. She glared at Danny.

  “It’s all right,” my father said to her.

  “He’s getting a lesson in how to use his new gun,” Danny replied.

  “His new gun?” my mother asked.

  “If you recall, I offered your family one. Your boy here took me up on it,” Danny said with a shrug.

  “We are not taking a gun,” my mother began.

  Danny stared. He spit to the side. “I guess it goes to show that there’s all different kinds of child neglect.”

  “What do you mean by that?” my mother shot back.

  Danny pointed and glared. “Your kind of parent annoys the hell out of me. You raise your kids on public television and nature shows. Then when the going gets tough—like nowadays—you won’t pick up a gun if your life depended on it. Well I’m telling you right now it might. The highway out there is full of dudes way badder than me. And if you’re not going to protect your kids, you might as well leave them here. We’d at least try to take care of them.”

  “Yeah, right,” Sarah whispered.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” my mother replied, her eyes fixed on Danny. “What gives you the right to judge us as parents?”

  “Nat, easy,” my father said. He put a restraining hand on her arm. He looked at me. “Do you know how to use that?” He pointed to my gun.

  I nodded.

  “He can handle it,” Danny agreed. “The kid’s all right.”

  “Okay. Then he can have it,” my father said. “And I’ll take one too.”

  I turned quickly to my father. My mother’s jaw slipped open. For once in her life she was speechless.

  “Hey, there’s plenty of firepower for everybody,” Danny said.

  My mother’s mouth moved but no words came out. “Come on, Mother,” Sarah said, tugging at her arm. With Sarah moving her along, they headed back toward the tent.

  My father knelt down and peered uncertainly into the bag of weapons.

  “Hang on just a second,” Danny said to him. “I gotta show your boy how to break down his gun. Then we’ll find one for you.”

  I watched him unscrew a nut on the forearm, then separate the barrel from the stock. “Easier to conceal this way, too,” he said with a wink, “plus it looks less scary for your ma.” He handed me the two pieces, then two boxes of shells.

  Something in me would not let me thank him, but he seemed to understand that.

  “I got something a little heavier duty for you,” Danny said to my father.

  “How about something medium duty?” he replied.

  Danny chuckled. “If you can handle drumsticks, you can handle this sweet little slide-action twenty gauge.”

  I was jealous already.

  Danny showed him the mechanism and the safety button, and then tossed a bottle for my father. He drew up and missed it cleanly—but only by a couple of feet. Water sprayed.

  “Again,” Danny said.

  This time the bottle exploded.

  “Right on,” Danny said. “You guys ain’t half bad shots.” He dug out a box of shells and handed them over.

  Then it was just the three us, my father and I holding guns, and Danny empty-handed.

  Danny’s gaze flickered down to our guns. He realized his situation, and grinned. “I guess I never was an A student.”

  “Well, consider it your lucky day, then,” my father said. “The Newell family doesn’t have a long history of shooting people. Though maybe by the time we come back here, we’ll have learned.” There was a hardness, an edge to his voice that surprised me.

  Danny’s grin flattened. “You know, I don’t doubt that.”

  “And count on it—we will be back,” my father said. He turned my way. “Let’s go, Miles.”

  Danny’s wife, Sheila, had been watching from the porch the whole time. As we passed, she called to me, “Tell your sister I’ve got something for her, too.” She glanced toward Danny, who suddenly seemed more fat than big and strong. “A little gift for the road.”

  Back by the Princess, which was now nearly loaded, I found Sarah. “Danny’s wife has a free parting gift for you,” I said. It was an inside joke with us; we had always thought that the saddest phrase in the world was free parting gift.

  Puzzled, wary, Sarah walked to the cabin while I lashed down the gear and inspected the Princess. I kept an eye out and saw her go with Sheila down toward the lake, out of sight.

  Five minutes passed. “I’ll go see what’s going on,” my father said. He took along his gun. But he had taken only a few steps when Sarah rounded the corner of the cabin. She had a stunned, blank look on her face. Attached to her hand was a small rope. Attached to the rope was a small brown goat.

  “This is Emily,” Sarah said. “Emily now belongs to us.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HEADING NORTH

  A FAMILY LIKE YOURS, FROM the city and all, if you’re gonna make it through these times, you might have to do things you never done before....

  We left Birch Bay with Emily, a crossbreed Alpine goat, trotting along on her rope behind the Ali Princess. Trotting for all of ten feet. Then she hit the skids. Dug in with four pointy little hooves. Wouldn’t budge. She kept staring at us with her weird frog eyes—two bumps way up high and out to the sides of her head—and going “Baack, baack!”

  “We’re not going ‘baack’—at least for now!” Sarah said with exasperation. “Either come along or Miles will drag you.”

  “I will?”

  Suddenly Emily hopped on board—and scrambled high atop the luggage. There she perched like a carved figure on the bow of an old ship.

  “Good work, Goat Girl!” I said.

  “I’m not Goat Girl!” Sarah yelled.

  “Hey, Emily belongs to you,” I replied.

  As we pedaled the Princess down the bumpy gravel driveway, Emily kept her balance and her nose forward like a sailor scanning the ocean. Like she’d been doing this for years.

  “Baack!” she said occasionally, though she clearly preferred going forward. When we reached the hard asphalt of the highway, my father prepared to run up the sail. Emily went “Baack! Baack!” excitedly.

  “You don’t get out much, is that it?” Nat muttered to Emily. So far my mother had kept a maximum distance from the goat.

  “She’s clearly a road goat,” I said.

  “Born to ride,” Sarah added.

  Our mood was weird—light and joky. We’d just had our cabin stolen by squatters and bikers. We were reduced to heading down the dusty highway like Okies in the Great Depression. But no one was arguing or complaining. It was a miracle.

  “Why do we have Emily, again?” my mother asked.

  “She’s a milking goat,” Sarah said; she looked to me, but I held up both hands defensively—as did Mom and Dad.

  “I’ll bet Sheila showed you how to milk her, right, Goat Girl?”

  Sarah glared at me but wouldn’t answer.

  “See,” I said triumphantly. “You do know how to milk her.”

  “What if no one milks her?” my mother asked.

  “She dries up,” Sarah said.

  “And blows away?” I added. Stupid joke.

  “No, she soon quits making milk. At least I think.” Sarah took out a sheet of paper; there was a list of notes in Sheila’s handwriting.

  “Emily’s instruction manual,” I said.

  My father smiled; even my mother grinned.

  “Not funny, Miles!” Sarah said.

  “Baack!” went Emily.

  So with goat and guns on board, the Princess caught a quartering south breeze and began to roll north. I wasn’t fond of traveling in daylight, but the wind was perfect. And now we had weapons.

  I touched the cold hard barrel of my shotgun. One part of me was excited by having my own gun. Another part of me understood this was not a toy—that p
acking a gun meant a lot of things in life had gone bad. A gun could probably make them worse—way worse—in a flash. I glanced at my father. He, too, was looking down at his gun.

  The highway was pale with dust, and the pine forest shaggy white on either side. There were no tracks in the ash other than those of animals, probably deer and coyotes. The lakes were smaller now, and slightly bluer than those in central Minnesota. “Hole in the Day Lake,” Sarah observed, pointing to a green highway sign. “What a great name.”

  “The Hole in the Head Family?” my mother said, giving Emily a glance.

  As we rolled along smoothly north, the town names began to sound more Indian: Nisswa, Pequot. After a long stretch of farmland and very smooth sailing, we entered some hilly country that required us all to pedal. All except Miss Emily.

  We turned by a casino that, weirdly, was very busy. Buses came and went; little white-haired people peered at us from behind the tinted glass of their dusty coaches. Emily went “Baack!” at the buses and the bright flashing marquee lights.

  “You don’t want to go there,” Nat said to Emily. “Gambling is a bad habit.”

  Ah-Gwah-Ching, then the town of Walker, which lay on the south side of some major water called Leech Lake. We stopped at a Dairy Queen there, which had ridiculously high prices but normal-sized portions of ice cream. At least nobody so far seemed paranoid about “strangers.” In fact I think the brown-eyed girl behind the counter kind of liked me.

  “Cool wheels,” she said of the Princess.

  “Thank you,” I said. The girl and I smiled at each other. She looked to be a senior in high school, maybe even older than that.

  “He made it,” Sarah said, smiling at the girl.

  I can’t tell you how I hated Sarah when she did that.

  “Really?” the girl said; she gave me an admiring look.

  “He’s very clever for being sixteen,” Sarah added.

  I kneed her, out of sight below the counter.

  “Is that, like, a goat?” the girl said, changing the subject; clearly I was too young for her.

  “Yes. She belongs to my sister, Goat Girl,” I replied.

  Sarah gave me her I’ll-get-you-later-big-time-for-this look.

  “Do goats like ice cream?” the brown-eyed girl asked. “I messed up an order that’s just going to be thrown out.”

  I glanced at Sarah, who turned to Emily. “Baack!” went Emily.

  The girl filled a paper cup with melted vanilla ice cream. At the sight of it in Sarah’s hand, Emily bounded down from her perch and mashed her nose directly into the mush. A blob formed on her nose as she lapped and lapped at the cup. She made happy, bubbling sounds. “I’d say she eats ice cream,” Sarah observed.

  “So where you guys going?” the girl said, looking again at the Princess. A small group of locals had gathered to look at our “wheels,” including several motocross-type riders. Their engines barked as they showed off wheel stands.

  “Ah … up north,” I said lamely. I kept my eyes on the motocross riders. I wanted to tell her everything, but I had a sudden flash of that carp in shallow water; of his fin sticking out. Weird how I couldn’t get that image out of my mind.

  “You have friends or someplace to stay?”

  “Oh yes,” I said easily, with a sideways glance to my family.

  “That’s good,” the brown-eyed girl said.

  “Why? Aren’t there places around here?” my mother asked casually.

  “No way!” the girl said. “Everything’s full, and there are more and more of these icky homeless people around now.” Her eyes returned to the Princess and fell for the first time upon our luggage. Her face colored slightly. “If you know what I mean,” she said.

  “Oh definitely,” Sarah said, “I just hate icky homeless people, don’t you, Miles?”

  “Time to go,” my mother said cheerfully.

  I agreed. There were a few too many gawkers for my taste.

  We boarded, me at the handlebars now, and pedaled down Main Street.

  “Icky homeless people,” Sarah repeated. “I wish Emily would have bit her fingers off.”

  “But we’re glad Emily didn’t,” my mother said, giving the goat a wary look.

  I glanced back over my shoulder toward the Dairy Queen. I kept thinking what a nice round face and brown eyes the girl had. And round other parts, too. She had made me dizzy when I looked straight at her.

  “Miles—steady as she goes!” my father said. A small motorcycle came straight at us, then veered north, out of sight.

  “He’s thinking of you-know-who,” Sarah said.

  I glared at her.

  “Told you so,” Sarah said.

  I hated it when people in my family read my mind.

  “He hates when I read his mind,” Sarah said.

  “Shut up!” I shouted.

  “All right, that’s enough,” my mother said.

  Families: they’ll drive you crazy. On the other hand, it took all four of us, pedaling hard, to make it up the long slope of the highway north of town. And because I couldn’t get the girl out of my head, I forgot to watch our back.

  A mile beyond town, where the road curved into the trees, a dozen chain saws fired up in the woods.

  “Miles! Here they come!” my father yelled.

  From both sides of the highway, soaring over embankments and up the shoulders, raced the motocross riders. It was like we had fallen into a motorcycle race or a state-fair thrill show. In a chaos of dust and noise, they began to box us in.

  “Lock and load,” I shouted to my father.

  “Aim low!” he yelled back.

  A leader, in black leather, black helmet, and visor, drew a pistol and waved it at us. My father, in the right rear bay, stood up and fired. The leader’s rear wheel exploded in shreds of rubber and wire spokes; the bike pitched forward and ejected its rider into the ditch, where he tumbled like roadkill.

  I swung and squeezed—and blew out the rear tire of another bike. It, too, flopped over—exactly in the path of another bandit, who thump-thumped over the rider. Suddenly the chain saws were gone, receding back up the embankments. The two dumped riders, scrabbling like insects, crawled after them and disappeared into the brush.

  My mother and Sarah, heads low, hands over their ears, kept pedaling at high speed. My father and I stared at each other.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “You look kind of white,” he said.

  I laughed once. Sort of a single, strange bark of a laugh.

  “You didn’t kill anybody, did you?” Sarah breathed. She risked a look back.

  “No, we didn’t kill anybody,” I said. “A couple of motorcycles, maybe.”

  My father laughed, and we high-fived each other.

  “I can’t believe I hit that tire,” he said.

  “Me neither,” I said. “I aimed for the front and hit the rear!”

  Adrenaline pumped through me. I held my gun aloft. “So,” I said to my mother. “Our family doesn’t do guns?”

  She looked at me, then at my father.

  “I hate these times,” she said softly. She turned away as if she couldn’t bear to look at us right now.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  FARTHER NORTH

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON WE WERE dragging, particularly my father and I. The adrenaline rush of scaring off the motocrooks was gone. Into its place had trickled a strangely depressed feeling—at least I felt it, but I could sense it in my father, too. Right after the encounter, we had whooped and held up our guns like big-time terminators. Now we were quiet.

  The wind was switching too.

  “There’s a campground not far ahead in the Chippewa National Forest,” I said, checking the map. We were about fifteen miles east of Bemidji, and no more than twenty-five or so from Kurz’s cabin. Alleged cabin, as my mother would have said.

  “I’m ready,” my father breathed.

  The entrance to Norway Beach Campground curved bet
ween tall, thick pine trees, and led to big Lake Winnibigoshish somewhere beyond. There were several sets of footprints—adults’ and children’s—on the narrow, ashy road. Even Sarah noticed the tracks. Just to be safe, my mother put on “the vest,” and then we pedaled forward between the trees.

  As we came around the last curve before the lake, a gate blocked the road. It was crudely made—somebody was a real wood butcher here—from thin boards and bent-over nails. But a gate was a gate. And a guard was a guard. A burly woman with a shotgun slung over her shoulder stepped from behind the trees.

  “I thought I’d seen it all,” she said. She blocked the middle of the road as she stared at the Princess.

  “Good afternoon,” my mother said.

  The woman nodded, then looked up. “You’re not looking to camp here?”

  “Are you a park ranger?” my mother replied.

  “In a manner of speaking,” the woman said. She had beefy arms and big hands. Her eyes flickered down my mother’s body.

  “I ask because this is a national park, right?” Nat said.

  “Right,” the guard said. “But these days, well, the real rangers are not around much. So it’s first come, first served. And as you can see, we here in the campground are first come.” Behind her, through the trees, I could see dense clusters of motor homes, trailers, and tents, plus patches of gray-blue water beyond.

  “Are you saying you’re full?” my mother asked.

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “We’re just looking for one night,” my mother said easily. “Be on our way first thing in the morning.”

  The guard glanced at Nat; at her big belly. “Looks like you folks gonna have another mouth to feed pretty soon.”

  “That’s right,” my mother said. “Another three months or so.”

  The guard shrugged. “Okay, one night then. As long as we’re clear on that.”

  “We’re clear,” my father said. His voice sounded tired and flat.

  “Then that will be a hundred for the one night.”

  “A hundred?” Mother asked.

  “Dollars,” the woman said. “Cash.”

  “For who?” Mother exclaimed. “Who gets the hundred?”

  “Campground management,” the woman said. “Mainly security, night watchmen, that sort of thing. Sometimes we have to weed out undesirables. People who don’t fit in, if you know what I mean.”