The Middle of Somewhere (9 page)

This was the first I'd heard of a tent. It kind of
confirmed his attitude toward us, but I had to admit a little space sounded good to me, too. And it would temporarily solve my problem—which I suddenly remembered—of the missing bedsheet. We got out of the cab and Pop opened up the storage garage at the back of the Coachman, where all kinds of stuff was stored on shelves or hung on Peg-Board hooks: tools, lawn chairs, spare tire, even a garden hose. He tossed a tent, sleeping bag, and cot on the ground.

I helped spread the tent and thread the poles through the sleeves on top of the dome. My mood was going wobbly, so I tried to affirmatize my attitude.

“This'll be fun!” I set one end of the pole into the foot pocket and held it steady as he raised the tent. “We used to go camping all the time with Daddy. Gee wouldn't remember. We had one of those ridgepole tents with a divider. Mama called one side the living room and the other side the bedroom. On our last trip it rained for two days straight. We sat in the living room and played dominos, and then Daddy put on some music and we all danced. Only Daddy was way too tall to stand up in the tent, so we danced on our knees! I remember him doing all these disco moves, and it was so funny. …”

My point was to show Pop we were gung ho for anything he cared to dish out, but talking about Daddy for any length of time always made me suddenly want to stop talking. About anything. In a voice meant to sound chipper, I changed the subject. “So, what do you want for dinner— hot dogs or mac and cheese?”

Pop snapped the rain-fly poles in place and tied the last
corner down. He seemed to be going out of his way not to look at me. “Tell you what. I'll fend for myself tonight and you just fix something for you and Gee.”

“Well, can I come in long enough to use the stove, at least?” The question came out a little sarcastic, I'll have to admit.

“Sure. Sure. Whatever you need.” He unzipped the tent door and threw the sleeping bag inside. “Sorry I don't have two bags, but the cot's not bad to sleep on. I'll show you how to set it up.”

“That's okay. I can figure it out.” All of a sudden I needed a break from him as much as he did from us. With my chin up, I marched down to the seedy-looking playground. Gee was playing king-of-the-hill on the merry-go-round with two other boys as wired as he was. It looked to me like somebody was sure to be killed. But I just sat on one of the two swings—the kind with the butt-squeezing rubber seat—and pushed myself back and forth while the chain squeaked and grumbled overhead. There was a pay phone at the end of the drive, and this would have been a good time to call home, except that I couldn't trust my voice just then.

Note to me: there are some things I should never, ever talk about. Especially when my mood is wobbly.

By the time Gee's new friends went home to their campsite, and I dragged him back to ours, the sun was swinging low and we could tell Pop had been busy. The fire he'd started on the grate had burned down to coals, the sleeping bag was rolled out on one side of the tent, and the cot was set up on the other, with pillows and blankets, and
a lantern hanging from the center hook. The cooler was stocked with cans of Dr Pepper, bunches of grapes, and a package of hot dogs. Hot dog buns and a bag of marshmal-lows were stacked on the cooler so we could have our own wiener roast. Pop must have walked to the campground store, because the marshmallows and soda weren't part of our stock.

I would have thought it was really nice of him, except for the fact that he'd kicked us out like cats.

“Oh boy!” Gee yelled. “This'll be fun!”

He wanted to invite his other-side-of-the-campground friends, but that sounded like more fun than I could stand. I talked him into a nice quiet dinner for two, and it stayed mostly quiet until he caught his hair on fire with a flaming marshmallow. Just a little fire—half a can of Dr Pepper put it right out.

The sun set while all this was going on, but Gee didn't notice until it was time to walk to the showers. Once there, I had to send him back in twice before he got all the Front Street washed off. On the walk back to our campsite, he dropped our flashlight and the batteries fell out. I caught one, but the other rolled into a ditch. We went on in the dark, with security lights every fifty feet to show us the road. Clouds rolled spookily across the moon.

Our little tent looked sad and abandoned when we finally reached the campsite. One light glowed in the bunk window of the RV, where Pop must have been reading in bed. That made me think of reading a bedtime story to Gee, as Mama sometimes did to settle him down after a
wild day. But Pop hadn't thought to leave us any books, and I sure wasn't going to knock on his door and ask for one.

The wind was picking up, blowing fluffy white cotton-wood seeds off the trees. A gusty ghost-shape swirled by.

“I've changed my mind,” Gee announced. “I want to sleep inside after all.”

No point in reminding him of the cold hard facts. “No, this'll be
fun
.” I unzipped the tent door and crawled in. “Come on—you take the cot. It'll be like sleeping on a trampoline.”

Not a smart thing to say, because of course he wanted to bounce on the cot. After he flipped it over on himself, he settled down long enough to dictate a postcard to me— the “wind sculpture” one—and stayed mostly on topic. Then we played a few rounds of Go Fish with the cards Pop had thoughtfully packed in our overnight supplies. Poker would have been my choice, but Gee had trouble remembering whether a straight beat a flush or vice versa.

Once he was tucked in bed, I started the good-night song Mama used to sing to him, but he cut me off: “Hey! I'm not a baby.”

“Okay. Good night, sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite.”

“ 'Night, Ronnie.”

I turned the lantern out and wiggled down into the sleeping bag. After a minute, he said, “Ronnie?”

“Huh?”

“Do you think there's any bedbugs in here?”

“Nope. The door zips up, remember? Nothing can get
in here. Besides, if they do they'll get me first. You're the one that's off the ground.”

“Okay.” A few minutes crawled by, bedbug-like, while the wind sucked the tent walls in and out, in and out. “I don't want anything to get you, Ronnie.”

I sighed. “Won't happen. It was a joke, all right?”

“Oh. Okay.”

He was quiet for a while. Everything was so quiet, I could hear our eyelids blinking. After a while, I must have dozed off, but it didn't feel like I'd been asleep any time at all when Gee said, “We're blowing away.”

The wind had kicked up. In fact, several winds had kicked up, and they were all playing tag around the tent. Our tent didn't want to play. Its sides drew in and puffed out with every shift in wind direction, and I could feel the forces of nature tugging at the stakes that Pop had pounded in just a few hours ago. They were holding on by their slender aluminum fingernails. “We're not going to blow away,” I said.

“How do you know? We're gonna be picked up and spinned around and around and set down in some place we've never seen before.”

“You've watched
The Wizard of Oz
too many times. Things like that don't really happen.”

“They do too! Ever heard of a tornado? One time I saw a picture of a whole tree picked up and stuck in a house like a toothpick!”

“This isn't a tornado. It's just wind.” The wind poofed and the tent shuddered as the rain fly slid all the way back:
scriiiiiitch
. I could see it hovering over the back window
like a droopy eyelid, and next minute felt rain splashing in from the front. “Shoot! That's all we need.” I got up to zip both windows shut, then crawled back into the sleeping bag. Rain pelted down in big fat drops, first like bullets from a single-shot .22 rifle:
ping! ping! ping!
Then
rat-tat-tat-tat-tat
, like a machine gun.

“What's that noise?” Gee whispered.

“It's raining, dummy!” Usually I don't call him names, since he gets enough of that at school, but my nerves were pretty strained by then. Pop could have at least come out to see if we were okay. The stupid zipper pull on the rear window rattled in the wind, and it sounded like a mocking laugh:
huh-huh-huh
.

“No,” Gee said, still whispering. “It's not the rain, it's … a creature. It's right outside. And it's … snortling. Can you hear?”

I listened closer but wasn't sure if I heard what he was talking about. “It's probably just the rain fly. It slipped over where it's not supposed to be.”

“Oh,” he said. A minute later, he said, “It's still where it's not supposed to be. Maybe you ought to go fix it.”

“Oh, right—in the dark, in the rain. No, thanks. Just go to sleep.”

Splatter-patter. Huh-huh-huh. Snort-snortle. Just go to sleep
, I told myself.

Then Gee yelped and turned the cot over. Next minute he was burrowed up against me, clutching his blanket and shaking so hard his teeth rattled. “It moved!”

“What moved?”

“That thing that's outside the tent! I felt it, and it's
big
!”

Nothing like a night in the great outdoors!

Gee whimpered, “I want to go inside.”

Me too—but that would be caving, saying we couldn't take it and giving Pop an excuse to cart us back to Missouri. “You probably felt the wind pushing in.”

“No! There's a creature out there!”

“Listen, do you want to go home and tell Casey you were too scared to spend a whole night in a tent? Or would you rather tell him that you spent all night outside in an almost-tornado? I'll bet he's never done that.”

Gee didn't answer, but he snuggled a little closer. I had to admit, he felt a little like a teddy bear on a scary night— though squirmier than most.

I guess we wore ourselves out enough to sleep, because dawn light woke me up. That, and a noise outside the tent.

Slowly I turned toward the east and the pale pink glow throwing silhouettes against the nylon wall. The rain fly still sagged over the zipped-up window. And underneath it was a hulky bearlike shape.

I bolted upright in the sleeping bag. First thought: there really
was
something out there! And second thought: it ate my brother! But then came the unmistakable sound of Gee whispering, which is louder than most people talking. Easing out of the bag, I crept through the open door of the tent, then stood up and tiptoed around the corner.

What had seemed like only one creature was really two—my brother and a big shaggy dog with a thumpy tail.
Gee looked up at me with a huge grin and said, “His name is Leo. And he's
mine
.”

He'd always wanted a dog but couldn't have one, because since Daddy died, every place we'd lived had a “no pets” policy. His asthma was a factor, too, though less of one now. Mama told him she'd think about it when we moved to Partly, but so far she'd had too many other things to think about. I knew she thought a dog would be good for Gee—teach him responsibility, be a loyal companion, and all that—but I was pretty sure she had something a little smaller in mind.

As for me, I don't have anything against dogs, but never especially wanted one. They're messy and in the way, and more so the bigger they are. This dog looked like he could stop a truck.

“He's probably covered with fleas!” I said. “We're going to have to spray you with Raid before you get back in the RV!”

At the sound of my voice, the dog scootched back and hung his head. “You hurt his feelings!” Gee said.

“Pop's gonna hurt more than that.” My eye fell on an empty hot dog package. “You didn't feed him, did you?”

Stupid question. I stepped closer and pushed aside the long hair on the dog's neck, while he wiggled his butt like he was trying to corkscrew himself into the ground. “He has a collar,” I said. “That means he belongs to somebody. Maybe somebody in this campground.”

“But he doesn't have any tags!”

“How do you know his name, then?”

“I just do. Right, Leo? Whoever he belonged to turned him loose, and now he belongs to me.”

The dog burrowed his nose into Gee's chest as if begging,
Protect me
! Like he didn't even know he could have me for lunch. I sighed. “Somehow I don't think Pop'll see it that way.”

No surprise there. Our kindly old grandpa got up with the sun, chipper as a bluebird after his peaceful night, and emerged whistling from the RV. “So, how'd you two survive? Looks like we got a little rain. We'd better—what the
heck
?”

The sound of a man's voice sent the dog straight to Panic City. He lunged out of Gee's arms and made a bolt for the trees, where he stood quivering like a cornered mouse. “Where'd that thing come from?” Pop demanded.

Gee explained, sort of: “He's a dog and he stayed by our tent last night and he likes me and I want to keep him! Please?”

Pop was shaking his head even before Gee got to the “I want” part. “No way, José.”

“But
why
?” The “why” came out long and whiny

Pop started ticking reasons off his fingers. “Number one: I couldn't afford to feed him. Two: no place to keep him. Three: he's probably loaded with fleas. Four: he's been spooked. Whoever had him before probably didn't treat him right, and that's why he's so jumpy. Watch this.” Pop stamped a foot toward the dog and clapped his hands sharply. “SCRAM!” Leo whirled and ran, then turned back, whining.

Pop's reasonable reasons just made Gee wail louder.
While we packed up the tent, he was clutching Leo under the trees as though he'd never let go.

“Before we take off, he's going to the shower,” Pop told me. I knew he meant the boy, not the dog. “And be sure he washes his hair.”

So I dragged Gee off to the shower, and then back to the RV, where Pop was impatiently waiting for us. The dog had crept closer, inch by inch, until he crouched on the edge of the campsite, thumping his tail. I took Gee firmly by the arm and pulled him up the steps. Pop lobbed a rock in Leo's direction, yelling again, “Scram!”

Gee dissolved in tears then, and I decided to sit with him until the crisis was over. When we pulled out of the campsite, I caught a last glimpse of the dog, looking so sad and lonesome I could almost forget about the fleas.