Sway (2 page)

S
yd shuffled rainbow shapes with his feet into the dirt outside our back door.

“Is your dad
ever
going to crank that grungy thing up?” he said, nodding toward the old motor home that filled my backyard. Hidden under a blue plastic pool cover, that RV had been sitting there lifeless since March, when Dad puttered it down our driveway for the first and last time ever. It used to be The Roadstar, but some of the letters fell off when he squirted it with the hose, so now Dad just calls it The Roast.

“I don't know when he's going to drive it,” I said. “He's been working on it a lot.”

Syd shot me a look of disbelief.

“I mean he's been working on getting it running,” I said. “Not so much on the grunginess part.”

“You can say that again,” he said, but I didn't see fit to discuss The Roast any more than that.

“Hey! Watch out for the nevergreen!” warned Syd as we made the short one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi journey from my yard to his. He then leapt clean over the hapless little Castanea dentata tree that shares my name—a tree that could easily be mistaken for a branch jammed into the ground if it weren't for the tiny wire fence around it. I'm pretty sure the only way to even prove it's a Castanea dentata is the torn-off tag that stays at the bottom of my underwear drawer.

“So how long will it take Aunt Toodi to drive home from Misery?” asked Syd.

“Not Misery,” I said. “
Missouri
. There was a big flood in a town called Gwynette. And I don't know how long it takes to get from there to Alabama.”

In fact, I didn't know how long it took to get from anywhere to Alabama. I'd hardly even seen the next county.

“Well then, couldn't they call it the Flood of Misery anyway?” asked Syd.

“I guess they could.” I shrugged.

“You going to show her your Book of Scribbles?” Syd asked, both of us swatting hard at a mess of curious gnats.

“It's called the Book of In-Betweens, Syd. And it's not scribbles. It's my
noodling
. My swirlies and jaggeds. You wouldn't understand.”

“I don't think I want to understand,” he said. “Besides, isn't noodling catching catfish with your bare hands?”

“To you, maybe.”

Syd had some nerve insulting my Book of In-Betweens, the journal I'd filled with doodles of everything Mom might want to know from the days in between her being at home. Only I don't call them doodles, but
noodles
instead, because I draw the dreams and memories straight out of my noodle, the way that Cass and only Cass thinks about things. The binder itself isn't much to look at; the front cover just an empty plastic sleeve I'd reserved for one of those photos where your mom is standing behind you with both her arms clasped around you tight like she's telling the world,
This one belongs to me, and don't you even think about messing with her.

Syd kicked a dandelion bald. “If you ask me, your brain is swirly.”

“Well, nobody asked you. And just wait. I'm going to cover my whole room in noodling someday. When Mom and I travel together, I'll ditch the book completely and noodle our big adventures right onto my own bedroom wall when we're home between rescue missions.”

“Whatevs,” said Syd. “Your dad isn't going to let you draw squat on those walls. I bet you haven't even busted open that pack of Sharpies we gave you.”

“Sure I have.”

Syd was right. I turned ten like eight months ago, and I hadn't even so much as uncapped one of those permanent markers, but not because of Dad. Truth is, I was scared of making anything permanent. Most all of the permanents in my life had so far been bad ones. Dad's permanent grass stains, Syd's permanent roof-surfing scar, Uncle Clay's permanent paralysis, the countless bad perms Aunt Jo had gotten at the salon. I'd always wanted to noodle a big something across the wall and have it be my first-ever
good
permanent, but I hadn't even put the first molecule of ink on there. I'd yet to come across anything permanent-noodle-worthy in all of Olyn.

“So where's your mom going next?” said Syd.

“She doesn't make the storms, Syd. She cleans them up. I'll let you know where she goes next when
we
get there.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “She's going to let you go with her?”

“No duhyees,” I said. That is, if
no duhyees
means
man, I sure hope so
.

“But you don't even know how to rescue,” said Syd.

“I know some,” I said. “I bandaged your head that time. And I left cold water for the mailman. I figure I can learn the rest.”

“Yeah, but that duct tape near snatched me bald,” said Syd. “And if I remember right, that water spilled all over the mailbox and ruined your dad's bills.”

There was no wrength at all in Syd's argument, but it still annoyed the stew out of me.

“You know, if you really want to learn about rescuing, you ought to watch
The Fearless Fenwick Show
,” he said.

My left ear got itchy from the surge of aggravation in my head. “Syd, Fearless Fenwick does not rescue. Fearless Fenwick covers his head with bees and lets people shoot him in the backside with paint balls.”

“Well, I bet he
could
rescue,” he huffed. “Maybe even better than you and your mom put together.”

Two itchy ears.

“I highly doubt that, Syd,” I said. “Since my mom pulls kids from floating cars and grandparents from under houses and dogs from the tops of trees, and since she is going to have months to teach me to do all that before her next trip, and since I'll learn it so fast we'll even have one whole month left over for nothing but finger-stringing.”

“Well, whoopdeedoo dot com!” he shouted. Syd tacked a
dot com
onto a lot of things to try and sound cool, never mind that his computer was old enough to have a driver's license.

“Hey there! You two are just in time!” Uncle Clay waved from the screen porch. A few years back, when Uncle Clay had his stroke, everything on his right side quit moving. It made him half able to talk and even less able to walk. Syd tells people that his dad's left is all right, but that his right up and left him.

That morning, like usual, Uncle Clay sat squished into a beat-up gold corduroy recliner. In front of him on his workbench was a stick of green bamboo plucked right from their yard and squeezed tight into a vise. The vise pinched the bamboo steady while Uncle Clay's good hand carved into it with a pocketknife. “Where's that dad of yours?” he asked, in that gurgly way of talking that our family has come to understand. “Tidying up the Nordenhauer nest for Toodi's return?”

“Evicting poopers,” I said.

“He's a little on edge this week, huh?” Uncle Clay said.

“More like the last few weeks,” I told him.

“Well, you just be extra patient with your dad, Cass. He's trying to figure some things out.” He tapped on his forehead.

I wondered what in the world could be so hard to figure out that it would make a man accidentally brush his teeth with sunscreen.

“All I know is, poopers or not, the forecast for today calls for fun.” Uncle Clay pointed over to Aunt Jo's clothesline. From a wire, there dangled the biggest cloud-shaped piñata ever. Fashioned from scraps of newspaper weather reports, the cloud, like all of Uncle Clay's homemade piñatas, had been customized for the celebration at hand. Across the picnic table below it, Aunt Jo and the wind played tug-o-war with a red tablecloth. Uncle Clay loosened the vise and handed the stick over for my inspection. There were tiny lightning bolts scraped into the tough green skin.

“I've named it Ye Olde Piñata Whacker,” he said. “You think your mom can handle this thing, Cass?”

“Yes, sir. This is really neat,” I said, tracing my pinkie over the lightning grooves. “My dad told me he has a surprise too.”

“So I've heard,” said Uncle Clay.

“You know what it is?” I asked.

Uncle Clay said “Nope,” but he wasn't very convincing.

“Oooh! Can we try that out?” interrupted Syd. He swiped the bamboo stick and whacked at the air, way too close to me for comfort.

“In a little while,” said Aunt Jo, stuffing soft drinks into a cooler of ice. “You two have your own jobs to do before the party. Syd, you're in charge of spreading this tablecloth. And Cass, will you close the storm cellar doors? We can't have someone falling through that thing like a tiger trap.”

“Aw, how come I get the girlie job?” Syd whined.

Uncle Clay chuckled as he resecured Ye Olde Piñata Whacker to his worktable and began to carve its official name into it.

“Can it, Syd,” said Aunt Jo as she handed me the railroad spike they used to fasten the cellar doors.

I loved any excuse to peek into Aunt Jo's storm cellar, that tiny underground room on the side of their house nearest ours. It's not a regular shelter, stocked with things their family can't live without. Instead it's full of things their family can't live
with
. Stacked on old shelves are dozens of jars with little notes crammed inside. Complaints. Bad ideas. Thoughts they don't want to think anymore. Instead of canned goods, they call them canned
bads
. When Aunt Jo and Uncle Clay and Syd tell each other to
Can it!
, it means to put it in a jar and get over it.

The sun through the open cellar doors put a shine on some of the topmost jars, and I leaned till my neck hurt to try and read one of the notes.

“You know you can add something to that collection if you ever need to,” Aunt Jo said.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “But all I've got is good thoughts today.”

“Well, we sure don't want to put away the good stuff,” she said. “But if some bads ever show up, you know where to send them.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Syd told me once that the first thing he ever canned was a napkin that said,
Okruh is grose.
Now I imagine Syd would write things like
I hate repeating the sixth grade.
Or
I sure wish my dad could play football with me.
The only complaint I could even muster at that moment was
I wish moms had faster cars.
It took my whole self pushing against those thick wooden doors, one at a time, to close up the cellar. Each thud made the jars tinkalink.

Syd waited for Aunt Jo to disappear into the house before he wadded up the tablecloth and stuffed it under the grill lid instead of spreading it on the table.

“If your dad is going to sell meat again this summer,” he said, “you think he could score me some mud bugs?”

Syd had told everybody at school he could pull apart a crawfish and eat it in three seconds. I figured he wanted to prove it.

“Doubt it,” I said. “Why don't you get Fearless Fenwick to find you some? Maybe he'd let you fling them at his behind.”

Syd popped open a Fresca, gulped a mouthful, and skutzed it between his front teeth right at my face. “Flood of Misery!” he sputtered.

Scrambling to the cooler for something worse I could spit back, I caught sight of my dad standing puffed-up proud across the way on our doorstep.

“Got 'em!” he called out, waving a bulging bag of birds in the air like a winning bingo card. But no sooner did he stoop at the edge of the driveway to grant the dizzy birds their freedom, there came a little white Volkswagen Rabbit zooming up like a blur and stopping just shy of his feet. Panicky peeps came from every which way as Dad and doves scattered for their lives, the birds taking to the sky and my dad checking to see that all his parts were still there. When the exhaust smoke cleared, there was my mom, her knuckles wrapped tight around the steering wheel. Her car sat crooked on three good tires and one bad.

“You don't mean it,” said Aunt Jo, holding a bowl of Funyuns and a fistful of bendy straws. Aunt Jo always said that when she could hardly believe something.

“Now, that's what I call disturbing the peace!” Uncle Clay garbled out.

My dad stood stunned, holding that empty paper sack like he might well need to breathe into it. The car door swung open and my mom stepped one foot out onto the gravel, her hot pink sandal more high-heeled than I ever knew a sandal could be. A cluster of shrunken fruits sat just above the toe hole, and her toenails were painted to match the cherries. She gave a
hold on a sec
finger-wave out the door and reached to the floorboard for her things.

“Mercy me,” Mom said, unfolding herself from the driver's seat. She came out with stuffed-full grocery bags hanging from all her fingers and a pink plastic box under her arm. I'd never seen my mom so tall or so tan. There were more little fruit clusters printed all over her dress, and the light breeze made the hem of it flap against her knees. Her hair looked more on-purpose than it ever had before, with layers and layers of flowy flippiness and flippy flowiness. To draw it, you'd have to take out all six of the browns from the crayon box and hold them in your fist together.