Promise (11 page)

“Wow. I don't think I could handle that.”

“It's not so bad. I have just about everything I need.”

“Except a phone and a TV,” Yo-Yo said.

“And a bunch of other stuff,” Kaden said, laughing. They walked on for a little while, laughing and listing all sorts of things that Kaden could need.

“So, is there any stuff in Cabin Five from when your dad was a kid?” Yo-Yo asked.

“I don't know. I've never been in there,” Kaden said. “It's always locked. I've tried to look through the window but there's only a little crack between the curtains and I can't see much, just furniture.”

“Wonder why your grandmother didn't let you move into Cabin Five instead of Cabin Two? You could have used all your dad's stuff. I've got a lot of my dad's stuff. His desk, his dresser, all his sports stuff, his bat and glove.”

“I only have one thing that belonged to my dad. When I turned nine, Emmett went in Cabin Five and brought out a pair of binoculars. He said he gave them to Dad when Dad turned nine and thought I should have them.”

“Didn't you go in with Emmett?” Yo-Yo asked.

“No, I wanted to but Gram made me wait on the porch. She said there was nothing in there but furniture. The
conversation was over and the door was locked again.”

“If there's nothing in there, I wonder why she won't let you go in,” Yo-Yo pondered.

“Gram pretty much keeps me away from anything that has to do with my dad. Discussions, letters, even furniture. Maybe she's afraid I'll end up like him.” Kaden kicked hard at a rock. It bounced up the road.

Yo-Yo reached the rock Kaden had kicked and nonchalantly took a turn kicking it. “Did the intercoms belong to your dad?” he asked.

“No. They're Gram's way of keeping her eye on me. Whenever I want to do something and Gram won't let me, her excuse is she didn't keep her eye on Dad enough. She doesn't say that to me, though. She says it to Emmett when she thinks I can't hear.”

They walked on, taking turns at kicking the rock. When they reached the muddy patch, the stick was still standing upright where Kaden had left it.

“Look at this,” Yo-Yo said. He started to pull the stick out of the mud.

“Leave it there. It lets me know if anyone has driven up the road,” Kaden said as he inspected the patch. The leaves were uncrushed just as he had left them and no fresh tire tracks were in the mud. There were some raccoon tracks,
though. Kaden pointed them out to Yo-Yo.

“How do you know they're raccoon prints?” Yo-Yo asked, leaning over to inspect them.

“They look like little hands,” Kaden said. “And these are rabbit, with two longer marks in front and two shorter marks, one behind the other, in back.”

“Ever seen any bear prints?” Yo-Yo asked.

“No, but Emmett has.”

Yo-Yo looked all around. “I'd like to see one.”

“Me too,” Kaden said.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SECRETS

The boys reached the end of the road and stepped over the log barricade. As they walked up the short weedy path, Yo-Yo's eyes moved upward, following the steel beams of the fire tower until they reached the small room at the top. A crow jumped from a window. Flapping its wings, it zoomed like a torpedo, aiming straight toward them. The breeze from its wings ruffled Yo-Yo's hair as the glossy black bird sped just inches above his head. Yo-Yo jumped back so fast, he tripped and fell into a sticky briar patch with leafy vines weaving through the thorny branches.

“So, is that your secret?” he asked, pointing to the crow that landed on Kaden's head.

As Kaden leaned over to pull Yo-Yo out of the bushes, the bird jumped down onto his back, its feet grabbing hold of the crisscrossed cord on the backpack. When Kaden straightened back up, the bird hopped onto his shoulder, muttering in his ear.

“One of them,” Kaden answered Yo-Yo. “Meet Kubla.” Kaden swung the backpack around and pulled out the canteen.

“Is he your pet?” Yo-Yo asked.

“No, just a good friend. I rescued him when he was a baby. Now hold your hands out. I'll pour some water in them. I don't have any soap but water will be better than nothing.”

“What for? There's only a couple of scratches and they're not really bleeding.”

“What wasn't prickly was poison ivy,” Kaden answered, nodding toward the vine-covered bushes. “If you wash it off real quick, you might not get any of it.”

“Great,” Yo-Yo said sarcastically. He grabbed the canteen and sloshed its entire contents over his arms and legs.

Kaden walked to the other side of the fire tower, disappeared into the dense foliage, and came out holding the coil of rope and rock.

“That's cool, a rock with a hole all the way through it,” Yo-Yo said.

“It's a friendship rock. Emmett gave it to me.”

“Where I used to live, friendship rocks had a different color line all the way around it, like a ribbon on a gift. What's the rope for?”

As if to answer his question, Kubla pushed off Kaden's shoulder and flew to the top of the tower, cawing the entire way. Yo-Yo looked at the tower and back to Kaden. “You don't mean . . .”

“Yep. That's another one of my secrets.” Kubla cawed down to them. “He's telling me to hurry up.”

“But how—” Yo-Yo started.

“It's easy. Watch.”

Kaden launched the rock over the beam, climbed the rope to the landing, and yelled down, “Your turn.”

Yo-Yo tried, but once he was a few feet off the ground, his efforts just made the rope swing. He dropped back down.

“I don't think I can!” he yelled up.

Kaden came back down the rope. “It took me a while to learn, too,” he said. “Emmett had to hold the rope at first.”

Kaden pulled the rope taut and stood on it. “Try again. It will be easier if it can't swing.”

It took a while but Yo-Yo finally made it to the crossbeam. Kaden talked him through how to get on the landing and then climbed up again. He removed the rope from the crossbeam
and coiled it over his shoulder.

“Why are you untying it? We're not going to jump down, are we?”

“No, but I don't want anyone to know we're up here.”

“Who would come here?”

“Hikers,” Kaden said, but as he started up the stairs he added under his breath, “and maybe my dad.”

When they had climbed through the trapdoor, Yo-Yo went from one side to the next, looking out in all directions. “This is so awesome!” he said. “You can see forever up here.”

Kaden thought about the first time he climbed up the tower. Emmett had brought a ladder and Kaden followed him, circling upward from landing to stairs, landing to stairs. When they reached the top, Kaden scrambled through the trapdoor and did exactly what Yo-Yo was doing.

As Yo-Yo peered out the windows, Kubla made soft chortling sounds, his black feet grasping one of the metal window frames. Kaden hung the rope on the peg and let the rock drop noisily to the floor. The bird half flew, half jumped to land on the rock. He stood there for a while, gurgling and muttering, then jumped to the floor. With both feet together, Kubla hopped halfway across the floor and picked up something with his beak. Then he strutted back, one foot in front of the other like a proud general. Opening his wings, he
made a flying leap back to the window frame, where Kaden stood beside Yo-Yo. A matchstick was in the bird's beak.

“Watch this,” Kaden said to Yo-Yo. He took the matchstick from Kubla and dropped it out the window. Kubla dove after it.

It was Kubla's favorite game, retrieving matchsticks. The bird's aviator stunts, barrel rolls, loops, and torpedolike plummets always fascinated Kaden. The bird tightly turned out of a dive and unbelievably came up with the matchstick grasped in his shiny black beak. Unless distracted, Kubla rarely missed his retrieve.

“That's so wicked!” Yo-Yo said. Kubla returned, landed on Kaden's head, and leaning over, held the matchstick in front of Kaden's eyes.

Kaden dropped the matchstick for Kubla again and sat down, leaning against the wall. He opened the backpack and took out two sandwiches and juice boxes. He handed a sandwich to Yo-Yo as Kubla flew back through the window. Kubla took one look at the open backpack, dropped the matchstick onto the floor, and hopped into the backpack. The backpack looked alive as the crow moved inside, and there was a muffled sound of the bird pecking at the cookie package.

It wasn't long before Kubla emerged from the backpack
with a cookie in his beak and darted quickly through the open window.

“He'll go over to the dead limb on that tree,” Kaden said without standing up to look. But Yo-Yo watched attentively as the bird dove downward. Just as Kaden said, it landed on a large dead limb. The limb was near the top of the tallest tree but the tree reached only half the height of the tower.

“Crows can't hang on to things with their feet,” Kaden explained. “He'll bite down and get a little bit but most of it will crumble and fall. Then he'll fly down to eat the pieces. When he's finished, he'll be back for another but I won't let him have any more.”

Kaden wolfed down his sandwich and stood up. He went over to the metal chest, opened the lid, and dropped in the backpack. The lid slammed shut just as Kubla returned. Squawking, Kubla jumped up on the lid, then jumped to Kaden's shoulder and gave it a peck.

“Ouch! No!” Kaden exclaimed, pushing the bird off. “He's mad he doesn't get seconds,” he told Yo-Yo.

Yo-Yo had been so engrossed watching Kubla, he'd only taken one bite of his sandwich. Before he knew what was happening, a flutter of wings came toward his hand. The bird grabbed at the sandwich and made his getaway, taking most of the sandwich with him.

Kaden laughed at Yo-Yo's startled expression. “Snooze, you lose,” he said, “especially with peanut butter sandwiches. They're his favorite.”

Yo-Yo looked toward the dead limb. Kubla stood with the bread hanging from his beak.

“That's why I made three,” Kaden said. “I figured Kubla would get one somehow.”

Kaden opened the chest again, pulled out the backpack, and tossed it to Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo reached into the backpack but quickly pulled his hand back out.

“Gross!” he exclaimed, holding up his hand. A thick gooey white glob covered his fingers. Kaden laughed.

“It's not funny,” Yo-Yo said, but Kaden kept laughing.

“Give me your canteen.”

“Won't do any good. You used up all the water washing off poison ivy but there's an old rag in there.” Kaden pointed to the chest.

Yo-Yo opened the chest. “Wow, there's a bunch of stuff in here.”

As Yo-Yo wiped off his hand Kaden carefully removed the extra sandwich and the bag of cookies from the backpack. He turned the backpack inside out and took the rag from Yo-Yo.

“It didn't get on the sandwich or the cookies,” Kaden said as he wiped the bird's droppings from the backpack. With his
index finger and thumb, Yo-Yo picked up a small corner of the sandwich's baggie and held it up for inspection. Satisfied, he ripped open the baggie and took a big bite.

Kubla flew back through a window. Yo-Yo turned his back on the bird but Kubla was undeterred. He reached over Yo-Yo's shoulder and tried to nab the sandwich. Kaden reached out and took hold of the bird. “You've had enough, you little pig. Let Yo-Yo eat.”

Yo-Yo finished his sandwich and started rummaging through the chest. Pushing aside a book, a pad of paper, and a wadded-up T-shirt, he inspected an assortment of rocks and feathers. He picked up a turtle shell and then looked inside a small box, which held some dried butterflies and a cicada shell. On the bottom of the chest was a long, flat metal tool with a wooden handle. The metal was smooth on one side, but sharp pointy teeth completely covered the other side.

“What's this?” he said.

“It's a rasp. I'm making a walking stick for Gram.” Kaden pointed to a long stick with a big knob of wood on one end leaning in the opposite corner of the tower. “I'll scrape it with the rasp until it's the right thickness for Gram's hand. Then I'll have to sand it smooth, and I'm going to carve a crow from that knob.”

Yo-Yo put the rasp back, pulled out the binoculars, and
looked out the windows. Kaden sat back down on the floor, continuing to pet Kubla. Kubla made little gurgling noises of contentment, almost like a cat's purr.

“Emmett's pretty cool showing you how to get up here,” Yo-Yo stated as he looked through the binoculars.

“Yeah, it was my tenth-birthday present from Emmett. Gram gave me Cabin Two with a set of intercoms, but Emmett gave me a secret hideout.”

“So this,” Yo-Yo said, waving his arm around the tower, “and that,” he added, pointing to Kubla, “is your secret.”

“Yeah,” Kaden answered.

“How come you keep this a secret? If you told everybody, you'd be the kid with a tower, not the kid with the dad in prison.”