Memory Boy (14 page)

“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.”

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 packing 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.