Me & Jack (9 page)

chapter 15

W
e decided to build a fort.

The idea came up during Sunday school in notes Ray and I passed back and forth. I knew exactly where we should do it.
By the arrowheads
, I scribbled just before class got out.
Come to my house after lunch.
Prater never attended Sunday school and only half the time did his family come to church, something I was glad for because then I could make plans with Ray without Prater butting in.

Now Ray and I stood in the woods deciding how to construct the fort. Jack lay on the ground close by, his leash looped tightly around a tree.

“We could put up a hut like on
Gilligan's Island
,” I said.

“Or a tree house.” Ray pointed to a cluster of trees.

I bent down to a blueberry bush and popped one in my mouth. Mmm, sweet now. “Hey, what if we dig part of it?” I remembered seeing soldiers hiding in foxholes on television. “Then we could cover the top and make a secret entrance.”

“Yeah,” Ray said. “Like camouflage.”

I ran back to the house for shovels while Ray cleared the sticks and stuff out of the way. When we first thrust the shovels into the ground, it was like trying to dig concrete. It wasn't long before we decided to take a break. Jack pranced in circles as I untied his leash and wound it around my hand. “Let's go!” I patted his side.

Jack yipped and we took off. The trees blurred as we raced by them. We pounded up the mountain and sailed over a tree stump, and I ducked when we passed under a low branch. Jack and I took the mountain like soldiers racing through an obstacle course. Then Jack caught scent of something and made a line drive through the woods.

“Wait!” Ray called.

“Jack, stop.” I tried to slow him down but he pulled me forward, intent on his prey. I glanced downhill to Ray. He was bending over slightly, bracing his hands on his knees; his chest was heaving.

“Stop, Jack,” I said and tugged at the leash. He stopped but huffed and strained against the leash to continue his charge. I pulled him in closer. “C'mon, boy, we have to wait for Ray.” He groaned in frustration, but I held firm and he gave up the chase. We trotted down to Ray, who was still trying to catch his breath.

“Man!” he said between gasps. “How fast can you run?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don't know,” I said and grinned. “As fast as Jack makes me.”

“You're, like, in the Olympics or something.”

I laughed.

“Okay,” Ray said, straightening up. “I'm ready.”

Jack pulled me as we zigzagged across the mountain. He veered at an angle we'd never followed before. I was holding back a little, making Jack go slower. I didn't want Ray to feel bad, and plus it was more fun if we could all do it together. We ran without talking; only our footsteps sounded through the woods.

Suddenly, Jack stopped. I sensed where we were on the mountain, but we had never been on this side before. Whatever Jack had been tracing was lost to him; he now pranced after a yellow butterfly that flitted by.

“Hey,” Ray said, walking ahead of us. The trees thinned in that direction, like there was a clearing on the other side. Ray stopped before the edge of the trees and hunkered down. “C'mere,” he whispered.

“Come on, Jack,” I said quietly. We crept up to Ray and crouched beside him.

“Alan's backyard,” Ray whispered.

I nodded. From our hiding place, we could see down through the woods to Prater's tree house. It was finished now. Trim decorated the doorways and windows, and the whole thing was perfectly square. His tree house looked exactly like a dollhouse. I shifted back on my feet. It was weird, spying on him like this, even though I didn't see him anywhere. Still, I didn't like being here—I didn't want to get caught.

“Let's go,” I said.

Dad was tinkering in the garage when we got back. Before Ray left, we went up to my room and I pulled out my Pennsylvania shoe box. I had planned this moment from the time we decided to build a fort, and especially since we didn't find any more arrowheads in our digging.

I laid the arrowheads on the carpet in front of me. The points were a bit rounded off, but that could have been from all that time in the ground. One of them was a little bigger than the other. I picked it up and rubbed it with my thumb. “The last person to touch this was an Indian,” I said to Ray. “You can have it.”

Ray reached for it. He turned the arrowhead over in his hand a few times and looked up. “Wow.” His voice was solemn, respectful. I wondered if he imagined the brave as I did. “I can keep it?” he asked.

“Yep.” It was, for both of us, a serious gesture. Giving away a thing of such importance meant something. He'd stuck up for me more than once, so he rightly deserved an arrowhead.

“Thanks, man. I'll take good care of it.”

I reached under my bed and pulled out a wooden recorder. “Let us now smoke the peace pipe.”

I tooted on the recorder. Jack's ears perked. I gave the recorder another good toot and Jack howled like he was trying to harmonize. Ray and I laughed. He slipped his hand over Jack's head and then took his turn on the recorder, accompanied by Jack. Jack's lips formed a perfect O.

“Look,” I said. “Look at Jack!” But even our laughing did not interrupt Jack's soulful baying. His mournful sound seemed ancient and primitive to me, like it was part of this mountain and these arrowheads and a history of things that only Jack knew. I put the recorder down and stroked Jack gently until he stopped.

chapter 16

“‘T
he Trouble with Tribbles,' ” Millie answered. We sat at the table, lingering over our apple pie and debating the best
Star Trek
episode. Jack lay under the table, hoping for crumbs.

“No way! It's ‘A Piece of the Action!' ” Best episode ever.

Millie pressed her fork into the pie crumbs on her plate. “Which one is that?”

“The one where Kirk and Spock pretend to be gangsters in order to get the people on this other planet to stop fighting each other.”

“Oh, yeah.” She nodded. “But I like the Tribbles one better. It's cute.”

Well, that's what we want in our science fiction—cute. The gangster one was better. Still, I couldn't believe Millie was such a big fan of
Star Trek
. I was about to ask her what else she liked about the show when Dad pushed open the back door and slung his briefcase on the counter.

“Hey, Dad—which Star Trek—”

Jack nearly turned over the table when he jumped out to greet Dad. I had to hold down my milk glass. Jack danced around Dad, yipping and pawing him, sniffing his feet.

But Dad didn't lean to pet him like he usually did. His face was slack, his eyes rimmed in red. His whole body slumped with exhaustion. Sitting down, he dropped his head into his hands, raking his hair with his fingers.

My heart struck a fast beat. I'd seen him like this only once before and that's when the doctor told us about Mom's cancer. My voice cracked when I asked, “Dad—what's wrong?”

Millie rose and patted his back.

“I talked with Stan Kowalski today. He got a visit from an NCO and the army chaplain—”

“No!” Millie clutched her arms to her chest.

Dad lifted his head and stared into space. “David was killed in action. They'll be flying his body back.”

“Oh, dear Lord.” Millie's hands flapped in the air. “Poor Jan. Oh, my gosh …” Tears rolled down her face. She pulled a tissue from her apron pocket and wiped her cheeks.

The muscles in Dad's jaw flexed. His eyebrows pressed down and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I drove over to their house.” He looked up at Millie. It seemed as though he were pleading or searching. “They lost their son …”

Bewilderment filled his eyes. I was younger when Mom died; I knew only how sad I was. Now seeing the grief on Dad's face, I didn't know what to do. Someone died. He wasn't related to us, but he was connected somehow. He was connected through death.

Millie reached out and hugged Dad, and he let her.

Jack laid his head over my feet. I couldn't believe that guy—
David
—I couldn't believe
David
had died. I didn't have to wonder what his family was doing right now; I knew firsthand.
This can't be real
, they were saying to each other.
I just sent him a card the other day
, or,
I thought he was coming home. They said he would come home.
Yeah, I knew
exactly
what they were saying.

After a few moments, Millie broke off, poured a cup of coffee, and set it on the table for Dad. “I've got to call Jan, okay?”

We stared at the table, listening to Millie sob into the phone.

“Let's get out of here,” Dad said, already climbing out of his chair, unbuttoning his shirt.

Jack stirred at the movement. “Where to?” I asked.

“I don't know.” He wrested his air force shirt off. “But let's go.”

chapter 17

W
e sat on the beach at Harveys Lake, sand crunching into our shorts because we didn't have a blanket or even towels. When we headed out, Dad just wanted to drive; we didn't know where we'd end up. At least he'd thought to change out of his air force clothes.

Jack lifted his nose in the air, sniffing different gusts. The fishy odor of the lake, the buttery popcorn scent from the concession stand, and the whiff of hot dogs breezed over us—a smorgasbord that smelled like summer.

Towels carpeted the beach. Brightly colored umbrellas looked like happy mushrooms sticking out of the sand. So many people laughing, playing, splashing in the water. Jack yanked at the leash. No sitting around for him.

“You want to go for a walk?” I asked.

He barked and jumped in answer.

“Dad?”

“Yep.” He pushed himself up and dusted off his shorts. He always looked younger out of his uniform, especially in shorts and a T-shirt. Sometimes people thought he was my bachelor uncle instead of my dad.

As we walked, I kept Jack close by. We stuck to the loose, white sand, away from the actual shoreline so as not to bother people. Jack zigzagged on the leash like a divining rod—nothing was getting by him. He'd smell every smell on this beach before we left. I grinned, but when I looked up at Dad, I saw he was lost in thought.

“What are you thinking about?” I bet I knew.

He shrugged.

We passed a huge building with white letters on the roof:
SANDY BEACH.
Good thing they spelled it out for me—I never would've known. Jack snarfed up the ketchupy leftover of someone's hamburger without even stopping. His ears were erect, his step bouncy.

Dad sighed as we passed under the shade of the building. “I'll be going to the funeral.”

I'd been to only one funeral, and I always tried not to think of it. Not to think of all the other ladies crying, not to think of the pastor who spoke but didn't really know my mom. Not to think of her body lying there with everyone staring at her. Her favorite flowers rested on top of her coffin. Dad had bought them.
She would have liked that
, everyone said.
No, she wouldn't
, I wanted to yell.
It means she's dead
.

When someone dies, it's weird because then there's a kind of party afterward. People eat and some drink beer and then they actually tell stories and laugh.
Laugh—w
hile you sit there knowing that even right now, a hoist is lowering your mother into the grave. A backhoe is pushing dirt over her. I swiped at my eyes. I must have gotten some sand in them. “I'll go with you,” I said to Dad.

He didn't argue.

Jack pulled us along. Speedboats zipped out on the lake. The farther away we got from the building and paddleboats, the less populated the beach became. The arches of my feet were getting sore from pushing through the sand.

Dad pointed to some patchy grass and a lone tree. “Let's sit over there.”

We caught a bit of shade. Some high schoolers were out chicken-fighting in the water, the girls on top of the guys' shoulders tugging at each other and shrieking. Just as I leaned back to rub my foot, Jack took off.

I leaped up and ran. “Jack!”

He headed toward this boy and girl tossing a Frisbee. They didn't even seem to notice him.

“Jack!” Behind me, Dad whistled.

Then I saw—as if in slow motion—Jack spring up and catch the Frisbee. He trotted to me with the Frisbee in his mouth, the leash trailing behind him. But as I bent to grab it, he took off, stopped, and waited.

The boy laughed. “That was a good catch!” The girl was smiling, too.

I neared Jack. “C'mon, boy. Give me the Frisbee.”

He huffed and planted his front paws in the sand, ready for takeoff. The boy and girl moved closer. Jack didn't move at all, but his eyes darted between the three of us.

“Gotcha!” The girl lunged for the Frisbee.

Jack hightailed it out of there, running right over the blanket of some adults.

“Dad, get him!” the girl yelled.

By now, my own dad had joined the chase. Jack bounced between us like a pinball in a machine. His eyes shone with excitement and his ears were red. Like a deer, he leaped and darted; there was no catching him.

Finally, their mom stood up with a sandwich. “C'mere, boy!” She waved it around. “C'mere!”

Jack's eyebrows lifted and crunched down as his gaze flitted over his pursuers. He took a halting step toward the lady, and she stretched her arm out with the sandwich. “Ham!” she called out to me, smiling.

Taking another step and then another, Jack inched closer until his nose was almost touching the bread. I moved slowly in. His nose twitched, being that close to the ham. He dropped the Frisbee and I snatched the leash.

“Yay!” The girl threw up her arms.

Their mom smiled at me. “Can I give him the sandwich?”

“Yeah, of course!”

She glanced over at Dad and me. “Y'all boys look hot. Whyn't you join us for some lemonade?”

Dad said, “No, no, we don't want to bother you. Thanks for helping us get the dog, though.”

Waving him off, she pulled out paper cups and poured us some lemonade. “No bother a'tall.”

Oh, man, that cold lemonade right then was the best thing I ever drank in my life.

She invited us to sit down and eat, so before Dad could protest again, I had my butt down and my hand on a plate. The boy and girl came over, asking if I was from around here. Their accent was about as strong as their mom's, and I was sorry to hear they were just visiting their grandma and heading back to North Carolina in a few days.

But, for a moment, as Dad and I sat eating their ham sandwiches and tangy potato salad, we were all in one spot, talking with our mouths full and laughing. There was no war here, nobody dying, no one being mean. We threw the Frisbee until we couldn't see it anymore. The sun turned orange and drifted behind the mountains, and everything became dark again.