Little Klein (11 page)

Bumping along in the back of Nora Nettle’s pickup truck put the ice of a nightmare in Little Klein’s chest. His nightmares all had one thing in common. Whether he was facing a pack of wolves or arriving at school in his underwear, he was alone. In his nightmares no one called him Little Klein because there were no Big Kleins in Harold’s nightmares.

It was only LeRoy’s slobber on his foot that assured him now in this truck that he wasn’t dreaming. Harold Sylvester George Klein grabbed LeRoy’s face and lifted it to look at him.

“LeRoy. You’ve got to help me find the guys.”

LeRoy whimpered and laid his head back down.

The rickety truck bounced slowly along.

“What if they’re drowning, LeRoy? What if they’re calling for help? Why can’t she go faster?” he pleaded in vain. All the cold fright turned to hot rage in Harold’s chest as he relived the moment the raft had slipped out of his reach.

“They left me on shore!” He pounded his fist on the barrel next to him.

“Ouch!

“They left me on SHORE! They ditched me. Again! Bullies. We’re going back. Come on.”

Harold braced his feet against LeRoy’s side and pushed until the dog slid toward the end of the truck. He scooted his rear forward and pushed again until they were at the gate. He looked back at the cab, but the window was too dirty for him to see in or for Emma to see out. The gate latch had been eaten by rust and just a rope looped over a hook held it closed. Once released, the gate flopped down like a slide to the tar slowly rolling out below them.

“Ready, LeRoy?”

LeRoy whimpered and laid his head on his paws, looking up at Harold with what he hoped was his most pitiful gaze but which Harold interpreted as a nod of agreement.

“Good boy. There’s my boy. This old truck is barely moving. It’ll be easy. Close your eyes. I’ll count. One . . . two . . . three!” Harold pushed off and slid out of the truck, landing with a thud that knocked the wind out of him.

“See,” he said when he caught his breath. “Nothing broken. That wasn’t so bad, was it, boy? LeRoy?”

The road next to him was empty. Turning, he saw LeRoy’s face in the truck bed, growing small. His mouth was open in a bark, but the sound was lost in the rattle of the pickup.

“Shoot, LeRoy!” Harold stood up. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” He tested out his limbs. Everything worked, but his sitter smarted with every step. “I’m going to get those guys,” he muttered as he trudged along. As soon as he started feeling sorry for himself, his energy waned. So Harold mustered up all the old grudges stored in that little-used part of his heart.

“Can’t even get a dumb old dog to follow me.” He walked a little faster as he mimicked the deeper voices of his brothers. “Little Klein isn’t big enough to ride a bike. Little Klein isn’t strong enough to fly a kite. Little Klein isn’t tall enough to . . . Three milk shakes and oh, a strawberry kiddie cone for him.” Harold kicked a stone. “I want vanilla!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “In fact, forget the cone — I want a root beer float!” He started to jog.

“Gardens are not just for sissies!” He clenched his fists.

“Ditchers!” A squirrel was rooting around on the side of the road. Harold hissed at him. “Scat, you!” he shouted.

Then he saw the tire tracks coming up out of the grass and leading into the trees. Harold stopped. He turned to follow the tracks.

“Be there, guys. Be there,” he chanted in a whisper with each step. The sweat that had drenched him while he ran returned as an uncomfortable chill when he reached the dense shade of the trees. All his blood huddled in his heart, thumping and pumping, threatening to burst out of his chest. His feet heavy and his head light, Little Klein followed the sound of the falls until he was standing at the edge of the cliff. He whistled, then stopped to listen. Nothing.

Had Mean Emma Brown and the old lady seen something and not told him? He didn’t see any dead bodies on the shore or floating in the water. Just a lone board, caught going round and round where the falls hit the river below.

“Come on out! I won’t tell!” he shouted, then whistled again, but the falling water drowned out even his whistle. He ran his hands over the goose bumps on his arms while picking his way along the shore, then wound back up over the hill, around the bend, until he could see flattened grass where they’d sat on the raft before launching it in the river.

“They started here,” he said in a soft, quivering voice, pantomiming his shove. He followed the path along the river again. “They started swirling there,” he said a bit louder. He followed the trail over the hill where the river forked, then mustered his most determined voice: “And there’s the rock that caught the raft.”

Harold peered across the water. Had they gotten out on the other side? There was no movement. His calls brought no response. He looked over the falls again, and his knees melted. He knelt and looked downriver.

What if they did go over? He lay on his belly and pulled himself to the edge with his elbows until he was looking directly over the cliff, the spray of the water misting his face, the sound deadening his thoughts.

He covered his ears and tried to concentrate. What would happen if they did go over? The falls weren’t so tall, not like Minnehaha Falls when he visited his aunties. Maybe the boys would go under at the bottom, but wouldn’t they bob back up and float downstream? That had to be it. They must have crawled out where the river gets shallow and slow again. Emma Brown and the old lady just panicked when they didn’t see them — that was all.

Harold pushed himself back from the edge and stood up. He walked through the woods to the place where a trail wound down the steep slope. Standing at the base of the falls, he looked up into the tower of water. He turned and started downriver, studying its surface and whistling into the woods. In one place the land rose above the river and Harold had to steel his squirming stomach and peer down again. Just beyond this was the footbridge.

He stood in the middle of the bridge and looked in both directions. It was when he kept following the river and looked back at the bridge that he saw it. Something caught on a reed under the bridge. He rushed back, splashing along the shore and wading carefully under the bridge. It was a black All-Star gym shoe. Size big.

“I knew it!” he exclaimed. “They’re down here somewhere.” He left the shoe on the grass and searched for footprints, flattened grass, any sign of a herd of large, wet brothers. When clues eluded him and his whistles went unanswered, Harold finally dropped down, pulled his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them. No magic kit would make the Bigs reappear. For the first time in his life, Harold was alone, but he didn’t feel small. It was his turn to take charge. The rhythm of a growing wind in the trees kept a steady beat in Harold’s head, and with it the pulse of his problem. His brothers had gone over the falls. But they weren’t in the river. Over the falls. Not in the river.

Harold stood up. The falls. He walked back.

He watched the sheets of water unfurl. Down they fell, down beneath the surface, then bubbling up again. If his brothers had gone under, would they bob up in front of the sheet or behind it?

What was behind the waterfall? He edged himself toward the wall, keeping his head down to avoid getting water in his eyes. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he peered behind the sheet of water. It wasn’t a flat wall of rock as he’d imagined. It was pitted and creviced. Just above knee level was a shelf wide enough for a boy his size to climb on. Harold held his breath and stepped. To his surprise he did not slip into the grip of the water. He held on to a jutting rock next to him and breathed.

“Okay,” he said out loud, preparing to step back to dry ground. “They’re not here.” But Harold’s legs were more afraid than he was. They refused to budge.

“Holy Moses,” he gasped. “Holy Moses and a can of nuts.”

The name LeRoy means “king,” and while LeRoy didn’t know that, he had always fancied himself a fierce, fearless leader. He felt the admiration of his family, his subjects, and knew they’d follow his decrees. In his wandering days, he’d sauntered around with his tail in the air, a snarl at the ready, never following the other dogs.

But every creature holds at least one secret, and the day LeRoy watched Little Klein disappear on the pavement behind the pickup, LeRoy learned the truth about himself. LeRoy was a chipmunk in the body of a wolf.

Yes, his family answered his barks, but if they’d raised a hand at him, he’d have whimpered and hid. Sure he’d snarled, but only at dogs on leashes or behind fences. In his wandering days, when other wanderers, having finished their scraps at the back door of the bar, ran off in a pack, LeRoy always went in the opposite direction as if he’d had somewhere better to go, when really he simply craved the safety of his little spot by the river.

And now. Now LeRoy craved nothing more than to sleep in an upstairs bed out of the heat and damp and away from raccoons and unpredictable cats. But he’d lost his boys.

So powerful was his shame that when the truck rolled up to a stop sign in town, LeRoy jumped out and slunk between two garages. He curled up between a stack of firewood and a garbage can and closed his eyes.

His boys had been laughing. They were spinning. Then they were screaming.

LeRoy, who was scared of the fish in the river, had leaped in, hadn’t he? He who had never stayed afloat had motored with all fours. But they kept disappearing. One head here, another there, then gone, then another scream. The water was pushing him. He’d paddled out. He’d crawled up the bank, and when he looked back, the heads weren’t there.

Where were his boys? LeRoy tried to go to sleep, but the air was so empty of boy smell. He sniffed at the garbage can, but it was no good. He needed his boys. LeRoy rose up on his sturdy legs and picked his way to the alley and slouched slowly out of town.

As whiffs of bacon and oil gave way to sweet roadside clover and last week’s angry skunk, LeRoy moved from his usual wander pace to a saunter. A building wind was roughing up his coat and confusing his nose.

LeRoy didn’t used to have so many worries. Were there eight smelly shoes next to the back door at night? Was his pack together? Had one strayed? They were hard to herd, hard to herd.

Used to be LeRoy had few cares. Find some food. Find some shade. Find some tomfoolery. Sleep. Life
was
simpler then. He used to have running dreams, before his family. Now he had chasing dreams, dreams of failed rescues, boys-in-danger dreams, dreams that he had no teeth and his legs were short like a house dog’s and his tail ineffective like a cat’s. Once he even dreamed he was a cat. LeRoy could, right this windy minute, crawl into the arms of some well-worn tree roots. But before he could muster the courage to quit, a gust of wind blew his tail clear off course and LeRoy imagined his littlest boy out there somewhere, unanchored.

Wind, trouble, boys. Wind, trouble, boys. LeRoy had a hunch. He joined forces with the wind, and LeRoy ran.

Then a car sped down the road toward LeRoy, and he skittered into the brush, catching himself up in a nasty tangle of dead nettles. The boys would pick him out of this mess. Where were his boys? The river. The river.

Harold was a rattling bag of tinder sticks.
So this,
he thought as he tried to distract his feet and hands from the enormity of their current responsibilities,
is what Buster Ludlow meant when he said, “Get a sandwich, Kleinlet.”
Maybe a few extra sandwiches would have padded him against these aggressive rocks poking into his ribs. The Bigs sure had padding enough. What would the Bigs do in his situation? One, they would find him and take him home before Mother knew he was missing. That’s what Harold would do. He’d find the boys before Mother knew anything had happened. That Mean Emma Brown was already on her way to spread panic. Harold was still paralyzed, but he could start by calling for his brothers.

“Guys!” he squeaked, and was immediately ashamed of the effort. “Guys!” he tried again. Harold thought about the wolf with those pigs and their houses. He’d need lungs like that wolf’s. Harold reached down to his deepest growl, to his maddest memories, to his biggest thoughts. He drew in his widest breath, and Harold whistled.