Memory Boy Read online

  I looked at him angrily.

  His brown eyes were shiny and full. “It was the saddest moment of my life,” he said. And walked away.

  I sat there for a few minutes. I stared out at the water. Then I looked back at my family. They were sitting on the dusty grass and looking at their shoes. I got up and walked over to them. When none of them even glanced up at me, I understood this to be the lowest point ever in our family life.

  “I have an idea,” I said to them. “A place we can go.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SAVING MR. KURZ

  AFTER THE NURSE TOLD ME about Mr. Kurz’s death, I stood there in the hallway alone. I had the strange feeling that something in my life had tilted.

  Shifted.

  Spilled.

  My next instinct was to get the hell out of Buena Vista. In a daze I headed down the hall, but somewhere I missed a turn. I thought the main door was just ahead, but suddenly I was walking through another wing of Buena Vista. More white-haired people, room after room of them. I walked faster. There were attendants in white uniforms here and there, but I didn’t stop to ask my way. I’ve never really been lost in the woods. I’ve been turned around for a couple of days, but never lost.

  Suddenly I arrived in a big open room with a high ceiling: the chapel. It was like a mini church built inside Buena Vista. Our family seldom went to church, especially after my father was gone, but now I stopped. More than anything, after the gleaming rat’s maze of hallways it was the open space that felt good. Across, an old lady was playing the piano and a few quavery voices from wheelchair types were singing along. It was pathetic, but then again it kept them from looking at me. I sat down in a pew. I was actually slightly dizzy.

  As I gathered my wits, the whole conversation with the nurse came back: Bad news, Miles.... I won’t lie to you.... His family never even came for his ashes.... He never got around to telling me which river.... Sorry. I gotta go. The living, you know....

  The living. That was me. I looked up to the front of the chapel. I’m not much for religion, but at that moment my head cleared. Ideas have a kind of wind that blows away brain fog; suddenly I knew what needed to be done.

  Retracing my steps, making the right turns this time, I found Mr. Kurz’s hallway. I went room to room until I found the nurse.

  “Miles,” he said with a puzzled look. He was cleaning a skinny old man’s butt. The sight did not bother me a bit.

  “Mr. Kurz’s ashes,” I said.

  He looked at me. “Yes?”

  “You said they’re here?”

  “That’s right.” He kept wiping.

  “I know what river,” I said.

  A half smile came onto his face. “And?”

  “And I’ll scatter them,” I said. “I’ll do it. I want to do it.”

  He turned back to the pale, thin legs of the old man; he slipped on a diaper, then covered him with a blanket, tucking it tightly along the bed. He nodded his head toward the hallway, where we could talk.

  “The paperwork says family,” the nurse said. “Mr. Kurz’s family.”

  “They didn’t come,” I said.

  “Hey, it’s a sad business, picking up an urn of ashes of a loved one. It’s something that’s easy to put off.”

  I shrugged. He started walking; I followed.

  “Sometimes a family takes several months—even a year—to come by for the clothes or whatever is left. We call them and call them. They say, ‘We’re so sad. We just can’t bear to come.’ Finally we say, ‘There was a wallet—or a purse—some valuables that should be claimed.’ Then they come right away.”

  I looked up.

  “In other words, Miles, wait here,” the nurse said. He smiled as he pointed. We had stopped by the storeroom—Mr. Kurz’s room. I stepped inside. This time it didn’t feel sad at all.

  Within a couple of minutes the nurse ducked into the room carrying something wrapped in a white towel. He unwrapped a jar not much bigger than a maple syrup bottle. HANS R. KURZ was written on the side. “Here you go, Miles,” he said.

  I took the jar.

  “What?” the nurse asked.

  “I expected it to be heavier.”

  The nurse laughed. “No, we just get lighter and lighter as we get older. Pretty soon we hardly weigh anything at all.” He glanced over his shoulder at the doorway.

  “You won’t get in trouble, will you? I mean, if his family comes for him and he’s not here?”

  The nurse grinned. “Hey, things get lost, misplaced, misfiled—we do the best we can, right?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “No problem.”

  There was a pause, and then—awkwardly—we shook hands.

  “Don’t drop him, Miles!” The nurse laughed. “Mr. Kurz wouldn’t like that.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  RETURN FAVOR

  “MR. KURZ,” I SAID TO my family. “He had a cabin.”

  My parents looked at me with puzzlement.

  “Kurz? That crazy old guy from your memory book?” Sarah asked. At least she had read it.

  I nodded.

  “The one you always did imitations of?” Sarah added.

  I shrugged.

  “A cabin? Where?” my father asked. He stood up.

  “Up north. Near the Mississippi headwaters. That’s where he lived.”

  “Is he dead now?” my mother said.

  “Yes,” I said. I made sure my voice held steady. It was weird how I choked up when I thought about him. I turned away to dig out my Minnesota map.

  “So one of his family probably has the place now,” my mother said.

  “I doubt that,” I said with certainty. “He had some brothers and sisters, but they were all city types. His whole family didn’t have much to do with one another. They all thought he was crazy.”

  “How did he end up in Minneapolis in a rest home?” my mother asked.

  I explained about his sister’s funeral. How his family trapped Mr. Kurz in the city. Put him in Buena Vista.

  “That’s sad,” Sarah said.

  My parents were silent.

  “Well, certainly somebody must live in his cabin now,” my mother said.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “There’s no road to it. Though he did have a car,” I added. Didn’t run on gasoline, it ran on itself.

  “How can you live in a cabin with no road to it but still have a car?” Sarah said.

  I shrugged. “He said his road was the river.” Where I lived, a good man could jump clear across the Mississippi.

  “Jump across the Mississippi!” Sarah said. “They were right. He was crazy.”

  I didn’t realize I had spoken aloud. “He also said nobody ever bothered him there, not even the tax man.”

  “Not even the tax man?” my father repeated.

  I nodded. “He was obsessed with not paying taxes.”

  “If you own land, you pay taxes,” my mother said. “Nobody escapes real estate taxes.”

  The land belongs to the people. And I’m people. “He said he lived on public land,” I replied.

  My father’s eyes blinked and blinked. He began to pace. “Maybe he had some kind of hunting shack on state-forest land. Lots of people do. There’s thousands of acres of state land up north. If he did, and if you say nobody bothered him, then it certainly would be safe there.”

  My mother remained sitting. “Let’s get serious. We need more than an imaginary cabin somewhere in the north woods.”

  “Yeah, Miles,” Sarah added, though with less certainty than my mother. The “safe” part had caught her attention.

  “Mr. Kurz had a cabin on the Mississippi. I know it,” I said. “And I’ll bet I could find it.”

  Everyone looked at me, then at our own cabin, and then back at me.

  “And if you can’t?” my mother said.

  I shrugged. “Honestly?”

  She nodded.

  I met their gaze. “I don’t know
,” I said quietly.

  A crow cawed somewhere in the trees; in the silence it was as if our whole family life hung in the balance.

  “How far away is this alleged cabin?” my mother said. She stood up. So did Sarah.

  I had already opened my Minnesota map. I squinted down at it, then held my thumb against the mileage scale. “It’s near Bemidji, which is up by the Mississippi headwaters. That’s only about eighty miles. One day—or night—on the road.”

  My father looked toward the lake to check the waves. “The breeze is right,” he said.

  “Then some local exploring when we get there,” I added. I tried not to be too enthusiastic, tried to hedge my bet just a bit; still, I knew the cabin was there. Mr. Kurz couldn’t have made it all up.

  “Well,” my mother said uncertainly.

  My father spoke up. “We know we can’t go back to the city—at least not yet. And for the moment we can’t stay here. So if we go, what’s the worst thing that can happen? We spend the summer camping on the Mississippi.”

  My mother was silent.

  “Mr. Kurz said there was a freshwater spring near his cabin. There are probably fish in the river,” I said.

  “I still think it’s a little crazy,” she said. “But then so is the world right now.”

  “I hate that Danny,” Sarah said, shooting a look toward Birch Bay. “Anyplace would be better than here.”

  With sudden energy we set about packing. It was exciting, as if we were striking out on a family trip—the best kind of trip—one with no exact destination. As I finished stuffing our sleeping bags and stowing my gear (I’m a fast packer), I heard the sound of someone splitting wood down by the lake.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said.

  When I came around the corner of the cabin, the goats went crazy again. Big Danny looked up from beside a woodpile. He was sweating, and with the axe in hand he looked like Paul Bunyan.

  “What do you want, kid? Don’t tell me they sent you to get me to change my mind.”

  “No. We’re leaving,” I said.

  “So you came to say good-bye, then.” He grinned.

  “Not really,” I said. “I came for a gun.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  PACKING

  HE LOOKED AT ME. “A gun,” he repeated.

  “You offered my family a gun. And I accept.”

  He pursed his lips. His eyes scanned me up and down. I thought he was going to say something about my age, or my size. But he didn’t.

  “If I give you a gun, you ain’t going to shoot me with it?”

  “No,” I said (not that I hadn’t thought about it). “It’s not for people. Unless, I don’t know, if I had to sometime …” That last part slipped out. I thought of those losers under the bridge, their cigarette smoke. I thought of those bandits on their four-wheelers.

  “That’s exactly right, kid,” Danny said. He turned, tossed his axe overhand at the nearest tree; after two rotations the axe flashed and went chonk, blade first, into the bark. I was impressed. “A family like yours, from the city and all,” he said, taking off his gloves, “if you’re gonna make it through these times, you might have to do things you never done before.”

  “I mainly want the gun for food,” I said. “If we run out and can’t buy any, I can hunt.”

  “You ever hunted before?”

  “Nope.”

  “But you’re a fast learner,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He grinned, gap-toothed. “Anyway, nobody can teach nobody how to hunt. You got to learn the woods on your own. So first things first: What do you know about guns?”

  “I’ve heard a few things,” I said, meaning stories from Mr. Kurz. I didn’t want to go into that here. “And I’ve shot a BB gun a few times.”

  “That’s it? That’s all? Your family never had a gun of any kind?”

  I shrugged. “No.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Parents like yours ought to be arrested. Well, luckily school is in session, kid. Wait here.”

  Soon he returned from the cabin carrying a heavy duffel bag with both hands. Steel clanked inside it. He opened a padlock around the handles. He started laying out weapons large and small, long and short.

  “Geez!” I said without meaning to.

  “Don’t ask where these come from. That ain’t important anyway. I’ll just say that a gun is made to be shot, not hung on somebody’s wall.” It looked to me like he had knocked off about fifty walls somewhere.

  “Let’s see, here’s a thirty aught six—that’s a deer rifle—but this one will knock you on your can....

  “Here’s a twelve-gauge shotgun, pump, but it’s a little long for you....

  “Here’s a nice lightweight twenty-two pump action, accurate but mainly a squirrel gun. Not enough stopping power, if you dig....”

  I swallowed and nodded once.

  “This one’s a nine-millimeter semiautomatic, but a pistol’s not a good beginner’s gun, no way, and it’s no good for hunting....”

  He stood up and looked me over and stroked his beard. “We need something just right.... Wait a minute.” He dug deeper in the bag and came out with a medium-sized long gun with a bolt action. “Bingo!” he said.

  He handed it to me. I put it to my shoulder.

  “Whoa!” he said angrily, hopping sideways. “First thing you gotta learn is muzzle safety.” He batted the barrel end away from him toward the lake. “You never point the muzzle at somebody unless you mean to use it—got that?”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Consider any gun loaded until you know it ain’t. If you do that, nobody ever gets shot even if you were an idiot and the gun did go off by accident.”

  That made sense.

  “What you’re holding there is a four ten shotgun.”

  “It looks like a rifle,” I said. It had a skinny barrel like a rifle.

  “Small-bore shotguns are kinda in between,” Danny said. “The four ten number means that the barrel diameter is just a hair over four tenths of an inch. Lots of guns are named that way—for the size of their bore.”

  “How many shells does it hold?”

  “Just one. And one’s enough for a scrawny little devil like you.”

  I shrugged. I was thinking more along the lines of something I could jack shells into while riding the Princess, like Arnold Schwarzenegger did on his Harley in those old Terminator flicks.

  He dug in the bag and produced a box of shells, then tossed a single to me. It was a tube of hard red plastic seated in a small brass cup. The shell was about the same length and diameter as my pointer finger. The plastic end was crimped inward; the whole thing had a faint rattle.

  “That’s fine shot you hear,” Danny said. “Tiny steel balls a little bigger than coarse sand, a little smaller than BBs.”

  I nodded.

  “You can buy shotgun shells with different shot size, all the way from a real fine shot like number nine, which is almost like salt, on down through six, and four, and coarser—the smaller the number, the bigger and fewer the shot. The last stop on that chart is a slug.”

  “A slug?”

  He looked at me. “You really are stupid, aren’t you? But it ain’t your fault. It’s how you was raised.” He dug deeper and found a few loose shells. He examined the ends, then tossed one to me. I could see solid, dark lead poking out from the crimped end.

  “That there’s a single chunk of lead, one per shell.”

  “Like a rifle bullet,” I said.

  “You got it, kid. And the slug, well, that’s the beauty about this four ten. You could kill a deer or a bear with this—or let the air out of someone coming after that pretty sister of yours.” He grinned at me.

  I kept my face blank. Now, for sure, if there was anyone I could imagine shooting, it was Danny.

  “On the other hand, you can shoot ducks and grouse—on the fly—just by switching to fine shot.”

  I looked at my gun.

  “Ready to try it?
”

  I swallowed. “Okay.”

  He glanced around, found a beer bottle, and pitched it out in the water. The bottle splashed, then began to bob along with its thin neck up.

  “Here’s how the bolt works.” He stood close beside me (his T-shirt smelled like vinegar; his breath was worse). “Lift up, pull back; shell in; push forward, then down. Now you’re locked and loaded.”

  Squinting my eyes against his smell, I dropped in the shell and followed directions.

  “Take aim on that bottle.”

  I sighted down the barrel; my heart was pounding. The muzzle bobbed and weaved more than the waves.

  “Squeeze it off.”

  I pressed the trigger—harder and harder—but nothing happened. I jerked at it; still nothing.

  Danny laughed. “You know why it didn’t shoot?” he said.

  I shook my head sideways.

  “Because the safety was on. I did that on purpose.” His stench washed over me again as he leaned close. He put his finger on a little lever just behind the bolt. “‘S’ and ‘F.’ That means ‘safe’ and ‘fire.’ It’s one more way to keep your gun from firing accidentally. They may be in different locations, but all guns got some kind of safety.”

  “I see.”

  “You ready now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Lever to ‘F.’”

  I clicked it sideways.

  “Squeeze—and don’t flinch this time—it ain’t gonna hurt you.”

  Suddenly the gun bucked against my shoulder and cheek and the bottle sprayed into brilliant bits of glass. “Hey, Daniel Boone himself,” Danny said.

  Except that within seconds Daniel Boone’s whole family came racing around the corner of the cabin. “Miles?” my father cried, running just ahead of my mother.