Chasing AllieCat (6 page)

Nine

Aunt Susan’s Nephew

June 6

A few days later when I got back from the Blue Ox, Aunt Susan was frying bacon for BLTs. “Sadie, will you make toast, please? And slice tomatoes, too?”

I nodded, washed my hands, and started toasting.

Aunt Susan pulled her hand back from the splattering grease. “Ouch. Oh, Sadie. Guess what. One more body to cram into the house.” In her yellowed tank top and stringy hair that needed a wash, she looked more like wilted celery than ever, if that were possible.

“Who? Why? You’re already overcrowded, aren’t you?”

“Your cousin Joseph is coming to stay here, too.”

“My cousin? I don’t have a cousin Joseph. Do I?”

“Not really.
My
sister’s son. Joe is the brother of the kid who died last year. Remember when Scout and I flew to Arizona for a funeral? And dropped the kids off at your place? That kid’s twin brother. My sister said he needs to get away for a while.”

“How old?” I asked, dropping more bread into the four-slice toaster. “And what happened?—I mean, how did he die?”

“Seventeen. Horrible accident.”

I waited for more details, but she sealed her lips and shook her head. Obviously an off-limits topic.

“
Seventeen
? Great. S’pose I have to give up CCC.”

Aunt Susan threw me a look over her shoulder and sighed. “I think we’ll put a cot in Scout’s study. Joe’ll be here next week.”

I spread mayo on toast. “Why’d you say yes?”

“’Cause I couldn’t say no. It’s not
all
my fault
I’m running a homeless shelter here.”

I glared at her back.

She swished three tomatoes under a stream of cold water and handed them to me. “If I remember right, Joe’s into biking, too.”

“Great. Just great.” There would be no escape, even on my bike. The tomatoes spewed bloody juice under my serrated knife.

After lunch, I went into Scout’s study and called Mom. “Did you hear about Joe?” I asked.

“Joe?”

“Susan’s nephew. This kid’s twin brother died, I guess?”

“Oh. Right. I remember. What about him?”

“He’s coming to stay, too.”

“What? Isn’t it going to be
really
crowded in that house? Has Susan lost her mind?”

“It’s way too crowded now. And yeah, I’m pretty sure she has. She’s sort of wilting away.”

“I hope Susan knows what she’s doing. Family’s good. Too much family isn’t.”

“Remember, Mom, it was
Scout
who said
okay
to Timmy and me coming for the summer.”

“I know. Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”

“Maybe. Is it working?”

“Stop, okay? I miss you a whole bunch. But it’s wonderful to be here.”

“You’re
thriving ?
”

She laughed. “I guess so.”

“Think you and Dad will get back together?”

“What’s this you mentioned about a mountain bike race?” she asked.

“Way to change the subject, Mom.”

“I don’t want to talk about Dad right now. We have always worked together well, but I can’t imagine we could still be married, Sadie. Don’t get your hopes up, please.”

I was quiet.

“Okay, Sadie?”

“I’ll try. Hey, Mom, do we have health insurance?”

“Of course we have health insurance. Both Dad and I have you on our plans. I gave the insurance cards to Susan. Since when did you start worrying about health insurance?”

“I just wondered, is all.”

“What are you doing on your bike, young lady? Why are you asking me this?”

“Something Allie said. She sewed up her own leg ’cause she didn’t have insurance, is all.”

“Who exactly is this Allie girl?”

“She’s cool. She’s my friend. The one I met during the cannon ball fire.”

“Sadie—”

“I have to go,” I interrupted her. No harm in her feeling a
tiny
bit of worry. “I’m meeting Allie in a couple minutes. Have fun digging. Think of us here in the mosquito-infested river valley.”

“Very funny. I love you,” she said. “Sadie?”

“Hmm?”

“Be careful.”

“I love you, too. See ya, Mom.”

Ten

Scout

June 8

That Friday, I walked in the door and Aunt Susan was smiling for the first time all summer. “Scout’s coming home,” she said.

Scout’s and Thomas’s lawyers appealed their sentences, and had to agree to a bigger fine, but they argued that Norton would get his money faster if the big boys worked rather than sat in jail. Scout would be home on Monday.

I had to ask for a day off from work so I could babysit while Aunt Susan picked him up.

June 11

Scout stepped out of the minivan and the kids mobbed him. He moved across the yard like a giant walking tree, kids hanging off his branches. Peapod leapt in circles around him for five solid minutes. Aunt Susan didn’t look so wilted.

Scout grilled burgers and made homemade ice cream. I think he’d lost a little weight in jail, but if the way he ate that day was any indication, he was bent on gaining it back as fast as possible.

Eleven

Rednecks and Allie and Me

June 14

Thursday, when I was making change at the cash register for a couple who had eaten twenty-four dollars’ worth of steak and given me a fifty-cent tip, a rusty, red-faded-almost-to-orange Grand Am with out-of-state plates pulled up to the Blue Ox’s gas pumps.

The first thing that caught my attention was the bike. A mountain bike, a blue Gary Fisher, was strapped in the car-top rack. Full of mud, that mountain bike got
used
. An aluminum ladder with a red warning flag tied on the end hung out of the trunk, a shock of black hair hung over one eyebrow on the driver, and a cigarette hung from the driver’s lips.

None of the bikers I knew smoked. Preserve the lungs for long rides. Have reverence for clean air, and all that. This biker smoked. Maybe the bike was just alternative transportation in case the decrepit car gave out. He unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, leaned against the car door, and savored a last drag on his cigarette before throwing it out of range of the gas pump.

The cheap-tipper-steak-eaters marked the last of the breakfast rush. The nine o’clock oldster coffee klatch had two full pots on their table, and they could help themselves while they played pinochle. So this dark-haired stranger got all of my attention. I knew he couldn’t see me past the red-checkered curtains on the tinted front window. I was safe, gaping at him.

Barb was arranging muffins and cinnamon rolls in the pastry case. She whistled. “Child,” she said, “I know you think that one looks good, but to me, he looks good for nothin’ but trouble.”

I tried to think of something smart to say, but I couldn’t. That boy was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen on two legs, off the movie screen. And what would Barb know? She had to be sixty years old.

“Why is it,” she asked, “that the good girls always go for the scoundrels?” She humphed back toward the kitchen.

“Is that what you did?” I asked in the direction of her back, not taking my eyes off my customer outside. Good customer service and all.

“What did I do?”

“Were you the good girl who went for a scoundrel?”

“Ha! No, not me.”

I turned my head away from the boy outside to look at her.

Barb stopped in the doorway and grinned at me. “I wasn’t a good girl.” She disappeared behind the swinging door.

I’m afraid my mouth was still hanging open in Barb’s direction when
he
came in to pay. They were renovating the gas station area of the truck stop, so everybody who didn’t pay at the pump had to pay at the restaurant cash register. He handed me two twenties, and I shook when I counted back his change.

He winked at me. He
winked.
But he didn’t say anything. Not a word.

I said, “Thank you, have a nice day” in a croaky version of proper customer service. I smacked myself on both sides of the head as he folded himself back into his car, lit another cigarette, and disappeared up Highway 22.

Late in the day, Allie and I rode through the woods like always, then out a gravel road by Lake Crystal and didn’t turn back for three hours. When we finally did, Allie said, “We’re gonna need to book it to get home before dark now.”

We circled back, and finally, we turned onto County Road 68. The traffic was heavy here this evening and we still had several miles to go.

“Glass!” Allie yelled, and swerved toward the ditch. Glass, both red and clear, was strewn across the pavement and shoulder. Somebody had crashed here by the intersection. Behind her, I rolled into the ditch to avoid the mess, but Allie hadn’t swerved in time. Twenty feet down the road, her back tire deflated with a
phooph
.

“Shoot.”

I slowed to a stop. We both glanced toward the horizon, where earth and sky met, calculating the time until dark. The bottom of the sun was already touching the rim of the world, a giant orange drop ready to be squeezed over the edge by darkness. Probably only forty-five minutes to an hour of light left.

She hopped off the bike, opened her brakes, yanked open the quick-release lever, and slid her rear wheel out of the chain and off the bike. She pried the tire from the wheel, pulled out the punctured inner tube, and ran her thumb around the inside of the tire. Sure enough, her thumb struck a chunk of glass wedged into the rubber between the nubs of tread.

She yanked back her hand. A bright bead of blood rode her thumb. She sucked it clean, and more carefully, she touched the spot again. From the outside of the tire, she pulled a quarter-inch shard of glass and tossed it into the weeds. She checked the rest of the tire, and blew up the inner tube with her mouth to make sure there was only one hole.

She surveyed the ditch and pointed to the remains of a magazine. “Hand me that, will you? That’ll work.”

I handed it to her. She ripped off a square of glossy paper and placed it inside the tire as a “boot”—to protect the inner tube in case the punctured tire rubber had sharp edges. She pulled a spare inner tube from her jersey pocket and blew into it, inflating it to soft-sausage consistency, then laid it inside the tire, forced the tire back into the metal rim with her thumbs, and pumped it all the way up. Her arm muscles flexed like supple rope.

Finally, she stuffed the limp, punctured tube into her jersey pocket. Mountain bikers always looked like pocket gophers with the pockets on the wrong side, packed full.

Allie glanced at the sky. “We gotta make tracks,” she said as she slid her wheel back onto her bike frame.

When the sun sits like a bubble on the horizon, it reminds me of cohesion in chemistry, how one drop of water will stick to a glass when it seems like it shouldn’t, how you can get a rounded top on a glass of water (called a meniscus—don’t ask me why I remember that, but I do). It’s as if the sun is sticking to the sky when it shouldn’t, and it tricks your eyes—the sun has really sunk below the horizon, but your eyes hang onto it. Then you look away, and when you look back, the sun has slipped over the edge in one fast
bloop
. Gone.

The sun had slipped away while Allie was changing her tire, and we were riding against time to get back before dark. Neither of us had brought lights.

Allie rode hard, ahead of me, for about forty minutes. I was dripping with sweat, my chest sounded like a locomotive, and dusk was settling in around us.

Allie turned the corner toward Minneopa Cemetery, a steep little eighth-of-a-mile climb. After the descent on the other side, we would only be about two miles from LeHillier.

We stood into the hill, rocking our bikes side to side to get the most forward, uphill thrust for each pedal stroke. Allie is a beautiful climber, smooth as silk, and if you didn’t know better you’d think it was easy for her. But it’s hard as heck. She just knows how to mask her pain. I caught her rhythm, followed her up, breathing heavier and heavier but watching her smooth, constant pedal cadence. She was so much stronger than me that I was getting a little farther behind, the farther up the hill we went.

Then, behind us, we could hear the roar of glass-pack exhaust on a big vehicle. Sounded like an oversized pickup. Automatically, we both swerved right, off the pavement onto the shoulder to be out of the way, to give him extra room. The truck roared closer. I could see Allie’s head go up. She didn’t want to turn her head and lose her rhythm, but she rode closer to the outside edge of the shoulder. The glass packs got louder, closer, and suddenly the noise was
too
close. I threw a look behind me in time to see a midnight blue pickup, American flags flapping above each door, bearing down at us, two wheels on the shoulder, spitting gravel, headed straight toward us.

“Hit the ditch!” I screamed, and swerved completely off the road, careening over the edge of the shoulder. My front wheel caught on a rock, sending me catapulting over the handlebars and slamming against the far side of the ditch.

The wind was knocked out of me and the truck roared by, but I could see Allie just ahead, not budging from her spot on the shoulder, the truck headed straight for her. “Allie!” I screamed. There were only a few feet to spare. She whipped her handlebars to the right, but her wheel slid in an arc into the ditch. Her tire couldn’t get enough traction to stick and she slid sideways, down into the ditch—on her leg, foot clipped into the pedal, through the gravelly cinders and weeds. Her helmet hit dirt.

The truck drove right through the spot where Allie had been, the front wheel eight inches from her head. One wheel slipped off the shoulder, losing traction. For a horrifying moment I thought the truck might tip over on Allie, but it dug its tires in and spun out, gouging into the soft earth, spraying us both with gravel, cinders, and dirt.

The passenger stuck his head out of the window and yelled, “Get off the road! You’ll get yours now, you little—” But I couldn’t hear the rest. A beer bottle sailed out like an exclamation point.

Allie ducked and the bottle glanced off her helmet, hit her shoulder, and splattered her jersey with urine-colored liquid.

“Assholes!” she screamed.

The truck revved, and loud ugly laughs rolled over us. It spun off, sending another spray of gravel from the shoulder over Allie. Gravel bounced off her helmet and her sunglasses, and one rock hit her in the cheek.

“You ASSES!” she screamed. The truck roared away over the hill, and swerved as if it didn’t anticipate the sharp turn on the crest of the hill. Tires squealed on the corner, but there was no crash. They’d made it around the bend upright.

“You ASSHOLES!” Allie screamed once more. She lifted her hand to her cheek and her fingers came back bloody.

“Are you okay?” I jumped over to her, grabbed her chin so I could look at her wound.

She jerked her face away from my fingers. “Fine. Let’s go. It’s gonna be frickin’ dark.”