Small as an Elephant (9 page)

Thinking about the elephant,
his
elephant, made him feel anxious. He wished he had put it in his pocket when he woke up.

A message screen popped up on his YouPage. It was Nina!

Jack laughed. He was always saying
long story,
and she was always getting him to talk. But this time he didn’t know what to say. He began tentatively.

More than anything, he wished he could tell Nina — could get her to help him figure things out. But he couldn’t tell anyone this time. Not even his best friend.

Nina had been with Jack when he discovered that there was actually an elephant in Maine — an elephant right off the Maine Pike, the road they’d taken north. The elephant’s name was Lydia. It was what he and his mother had argued about.

That summed up a lot, and was probably true.

Jack closed the screen before Nina could say anything else.

Thinking of her hanging out in the computer lab just frustrated him more. He typed in the Curley Middle School address and read the welcome-back message from his principal and a note about the upcoming Fall Fling. The Fling was a blast last year, and he wanted to be back there, back there with Nina. At least at home, he knew how to do things. He knew if he needed to, he could go over to Nina’s house for dinner. Or he could walk to Ten Tables restaurant, where the owner was a friend of his mother’s. There he’d be pulled into the kitchen and fed something yummy. Here in Bar Harbor, there was no one to help him.

Another woman came into the room. She walked behind Jack and sat at a computer at the far end of the table. The mom next to him greeted her. “Hey there. Was work crazy this weekend?”

“You know it! You wouldn’t believe what happened yesterday,” said the woman.

Jack recognized that voice — it was the woman from Sherman’s! The one who had seen him steal the elephant! The one who knew his name.

Jack huddled closer to the computer, turning his back toward both women. “I’m glad summer is over,” the woman continued. “I’m tired of the crowds.”

He held his breath. Would she mention a boy who had shoplifted? And if she did, would the mother suddenly look over, wonder who this kid was, sitting here in the middle of a Tuesday morning?

Jack wondered if he should try to sneak out another way. Was there another way? Or maybe he should move back into the book stacks until the woman left.

“I’m so tired of the restaurant business,” said the woman.

Restaurant?
Jack got up the courage to look at the woman and let out a long breath. She wasn’t the woman from Sherman’s. She was the waitress from Geddy’s. Laurie.

So it wasn’t so close a call after all. But he knew one thing. He’d go crazy if he stayed in Bar Harbor.

He searched for directions from Bar Harbor to Jamaica Plain and pulled down the arrow to walking time. According to the site, it would take him three days and thirteen hours to walk home. Of course, he’d have to stop and sleep. But still, he could probably be home in a week. He had his sleeping bag. Who knew — maybe he would even get brave enough to hitchhike.

But wait! The Island Explorer! The free bus didn’t just go around the island. It went over to the mainland, too. Jack typed in
island explorer,
and sure enough, there was a bus leaving the village green for Trenton every half hour. Trenton was the town just on the other side of the bridge, but it was a start. He’d bring Mrs. Olson her milk, collect his things, and be on the mainland by tonight.

He searched for
food pantry bar harbor,
and a link popped right up. It was in the basement of the YWCA — and it was only two doors down! He remembered passing the sign.

He thanked the librarian, grabbed the vegetables, and went next door. To access the food pantry, he had to go around to the back of the brick YWCA building. There were discarded screens and a Dumpster back there, but there was also a little parking lot, making it easier, Jack figured, for people to pick up food without feeling like everyone in the whole world knew they needed it.

According to the website, Tuesday morning was one of the few days that the pantry was open, and there were lots of older people and mothers with little children waiting to sign in. When it was Jack’s turn, he explained that the vegetables were from Mrs. Olson and that she needed powdered milk.

“She’ll need lots more than that,” said the man, pulling out the vegetables and placing them in plastic bins, “now that the growing season is over. Come on,” he said. “We’ll refill her bag.”

Jack followed the man around as he filled the bag with pancake mix and syrup, spaghetti, toilet paper, and canned tuna, turkey, and salmon.

“We won’t need to give her canned vegetables; she’ll have her own. But we’ll throw in some of this fruit cocktail.”

Jack knew he’d be tempted to take a can of something from Mrs. Olson’s bag on his walk back to her farm, but he wouldn’t let himself do that. The pantry was counting on her having this food. And who knew how long this food had to last her? He was beginning to see the spiderweb that his mother was talking about: Mrs. Olson used her garden to connect to the food pantry, and now he was one of the strands that helped make that web stronger.

He wished there was a way he could ask for food for himself. But even food pantries had their rules. He’d watched people fill out forms or sign in. The pantry staff would have to know something about him. He couldn’t give them facts, and he didn’t think he was clever enough to lie — not to fool these people. An eleven-year-old kid coming in for food? That was just the sort of thing that would put them on his trail.

But maybe he could suggest something extra. Something they wouldn’t have put in the bag otherwise. Something for him.

“There,” said the guy, putting the dried milk on top.

“Hey,” said Jack, the words practically catching in his throat. “Do you think she would like some cereal bars?”

The man smiled. “Well,” he said, “I wouldn’t have thought . . . but who knows?”

Jack began to reach for his favorite strawberry brand.

“But let’s choose those over there. They’re more nutritious.”

The day had grown hot — or at least it seemed so to Jack, who was carrying an incredibly heavy bag back to Mrs. Olson’s farm. The cans were forever rolling around in the bag, shifting the weight from one side to the other. Twice, the netted bag had caught on his broken finger, causing pain to pulse right up through his arm. He had to stop every five minutes or so to rest. He wished Mrs. Olson had given him a wheelbarrow or something. He was tempted to break into the cereal bars, but, knowing how long the trip back home would take him, he vowed to be careful with food. He would wait until he was back at the farm.

He couldn’t wait to see Mrs. Olson’s face when he gave her this bag. He felt like Santa delivering a sack of presents. But before going to her door, he snuck into the barn. He dropped the bag and grabbed the box of cereal bars, then climbed into the loft. There he devoured one bar in four bites. A few crumbs remained in the package. He remembered an elephant his mom once told him about, who was captive but each day put aside a little of his grain for a mouse to eat. Jack made a little mound with the crumbs on the spot where he had slept.

He dumped the five remaining bars into his backpack, hid the cardboard box under the wooden table, and placed the toy elephant securely in his pocket.

On Mrs. Olson’s doorstep was his bag of vegetables, with a little note that said
Thank you.
Jack rang her doorbell, eager to show her all he had brought, but she didn’t answer. Maybe she wasn’t home, but he suspected otherwise. He suspected it was something else that kept her from opening the door. A kind of pride, maybe.

Jack picked up his vegetables, threw on his backpack, and started his 248-mile walk home.

As the bus traveled to the mainland, Jack read the schedule and tried to decide on the best place to get off. The farthest point the bus traveled to was the IGA in Trenton. He was pretty sure the IGA was a supermarket; he and his mother had gone to one in Mattapan. He remembered because they had tried to guess what the letters in the name stood for:

I
NTERESTING
G
REEN
A
PPLES
I
NTERNATIONAL
G
RAPES
A
VAILABLE
I
SLAND
G
ROCERIES
A
LWAYS

I
RATE
G
RUMPY
A
SSOCIATES
I
NCREDIBLE
G
RAINS
A
DVERTISED
I
MPERIAL
G
RAY
A
SPHALT

Every idea was unbelievably stupid, but they had had fun just the same.

So, he could get off at the IGA, but he suspected it would be in a pretty populated area, and he would need to find a place to camp out. The bus wouldn’t arrive until about four; it was dark these days by seven — kind of late to begin walking south. Plus, he was tired from all the trips he’d already taken between Mrs. Olson’s farm and Bar Harbor.

The stop before the IGA was a campground called Narrows Too. Jack didn’t have money for a campsite, but he figured a campground would be closer to wilderness — wilderness where he could hide for the night. Decision made. He’d get off at Narrows Too.

Unfortunately, the campground wasn’t at all what Jack had imagined. It was on the main highway and wide-open — a place intended for RVs rather than small tents. It would be difficult to sneak into and even more difficult to hide in. He decided to walk up and down the road to see what else was in the surrounding area.

The smell of steamed lobster drew him toward the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound. Outside were six wood-burning vats with steam rising from them. Oh, how he wished he could have a plate of steamed mussels or a lobster right now! He could taste the warm butter and tender meat. Or a roll! Even just a roll!

After pitching the potatoes into the woods on his walk back to Bar Harbor — he’d have had no way to cook them, and he didn’t think you could eat them raw — Jack had finished a green pepper and another cereal bar, but these didn’t satisfy him after so much walking and carrying. He wished he were a mangy dog right now that could crawl under one of the outdoor picnic tables and beg for scraps.

Maybe he should have kept the potatoes. He probably could have bartered for something. Would they have thought it cute if he’d offered to trade some homegrown potatoes for a lobster roll?

It seemed like every decision he made had good consequences (his bag was lighter) and bad (he had nothing to offer anyone else). He’d have to do a better job of thinking things through.

While standing there, taking in the torturous smells, Jack began reading the license plates of the cars parked off to the side. It was an old habit. Since his mom did so much driving, she played the license-plate game over and over again. She’d seen all fifty states three times now. Not many people could claim to have seen a Hawaiian plate three times. Well, OK, if you lived in Hawaii, you could. Jack’s favorite was the one from Tennessee — it had an elephant on it.

There wasn’t a single Maine plate in this parking lot. There were two cars from Connecticut, a minivan from New Jersey, and a pickup truck from Massachusetts.

Massachusetts? He looked around as if the faces of the people going in and out could reveal their state identity. What if the driver of the pickup was heading south? He could ride with them. He could be home tonight! He imagined the conversation in his head.

“Hey, are you on your way south? Me too! Would you mind giving me a ride?”

He was being stupid. No one was going to willingly transport a kid without his parents’ permission. They’d guess he was a runaway. They’d call DSS in a nanosecond. Still, it was an idea that was hard to let go of.