Words of Stone (13 page)

“Well, to be truthful,” Floy said, “I ended up taking Joselle home in the middle of the night. It was a sudden departure.”

“Is Joselle okay?” Blaze had carried the button with him. He felt for it in his pocket and pressed it into his leg. He looked at Floy intensely, seeking an answer.

“Oh, sure. I didn't mean to mislead you. Don't worry about Joselle. She's fine. Joselle's Joselle.” Floy swatted at a fly with her magazine. “Listen,” she said, “do you want something to eat?” She stepped aside and gestured for Blaze to enter the house. The sweep of her arm pushed the door open all the way. “I think I've got some cookies. Store bought.”

“No, thank you,” Blaze said politely, moving slowly off the porch. He backed up to the railing and leaned against it. “But—but is she coming back?”

“Oh, she'll be back. As a matter of fact, she ran off at the mouth about you to her mother. She told her mother that she wanted to live here, she liked you so much. Her only true friend in the world, she called you.”

Blaze blushed completely and uncontrollably.

“It'd put me away for sure,” Floy said. “Having her live with me.” She sighed and rolled her eyes. Then her eyes welled. “You know Joselle. She's a handful. But a sweetheart, despite all her troubles.” She laughed, and it seemed to Blaze that it wasn't exactly a joyful laugh.

Blaze cleared his throat.

Gary stretched and yawned. A long wheezy yawn followed by heavy panting.

“She really likes you,” Floy continued. She was blinking her eyes quickly, as though she had something in them, irritating them. “It's the only time I've ever seen her so interested in another child.”

Looking down, Blaze played with his feet, waggling his toes; his shoes seemed sizes too small. “If you talk to her, will you tell her I said hi?”

“I sure will. And you say hello to your father and your grandmother for me. Funny, we live so close and never see each other.”

Blaze said that he would. Then he went up to Gary and petted him, cooing to him as he stroked his sides, the way Joselle had shown him. Gary's tail wagged briskly, and Blaze hopped off the porch.

“You're a nice young man,” Floy called. “I'd like Joselle to be around you more. Thank you. Thanks a lot.”

“Bye,” Blaze said, turning back toward Floy for a moment before running home, his heart booming.

He had gone to Floy's with the intention of demanding the return of his key collection, and now he didn't even care about it; he only missed Joselle. He had thought and thought about how he could ever forgive her, and already it was done.

Several mornings later Blaze rose to discover a small wrapped box outside his bedroom door. A note was attached. It said,
I made these for your ark. Love, Claire
.

Blaze opened the package and found a pair of shiny bronze foxes, no larger than an inch in any direction. Blaze picked them up. He hadn't told Claire that he owned only one of each animal. Of course she'd assume there'd be two. The foxes sat on Blaze's palm, heads low, tails curled slightly sidewise. He moved his hand, examining the foxes from every angle. The details fascinated him: delicate lines to indicate fur, the holes that served as eyes, the teensy upturned peaks that formed the pointy noses. The foxes were more sturdy and heavy than Blaze's plastic animals. More beautiful, too.

He looked at the foxes for so long that they became huge. So huge that there was barely enough room in the world for anything else.

Something wasn't right.

Blaze peered at the drawing on his canvas from various distances, tilting his head this way and that way. He still had not begun to paint. He thought of asking Glenn for help, but he wanted to do this all on his own. To make it work.

Blaze had considered adding objects to represent Claire and Joselle to the painting right from the start. And that's exactly what he decided to do.

Claire would be easy. He drew two foxes as expertly as he could, looking carefully at the statues from Claire. He drew them on the underside of the full moon, flying, reaching out and up and toward the ark. The only pair of animals on the canvas.

Joselle was more difficult. But after about an hour of thinking and sketching, it became obvious; with only a few changes, the large, round full moon could also serve as Joselle's button.

It seemed right. Everything circled the button-moon the way Blaze's summer seemed to revolve around Joselle.

He knew it wasn't perfect, but he felt as ready as he would ever be. And so he began to paint.

I
t was August. School would be starting soon. Blaze and Nova were at the cemetery, tending the flowers beside Reena's grave. Glenn had been working with them, but decided to go for a walk. “I'll wait for you by the car,” he told them. It was parked at the side of the highway.

“Dad doesn't like it here, does he?” Blaze said. He was pulling handfuls of weeds and piling them into Nova's basket.

“I think he was just ready to leave,” Nova said. “It
is
taking me longer than I thought it would, but I wanted to cut all the roses back.”

“Sometimes it's scary here,” Blaze told her as he watched withering rose petals flutter to the ground.

“Sometimes.”

“And sometimes it's just quiet.”

“I think you're right.”

While Nova finished working with her clippers, Blaze ran his hand over his mother's name.
REENA PREHN WERLA
. No matter how hot it was outside, the stone felt icy to his touch. The chiseled edges of the letters numbed his fingers. Sometimes he'd press his hand against the stone until an impression was left on his skin. He'd watch it vanish like breath on a window.

When he was in the second grade, Blaze had found a picture of a cemetery in a big book at the school library. He couldn't remember the name of the book, and although he had looked for it again several times, he never found it. The picture was of four boys sitting on tombstones, riding them as if they were horses. The boys were wearing hats and blowing trumpets, as Blaze recalled it. The picture frightened him the day he saw it, and he always thought of it when he came to the cemetery. He could never do what the boys in the picture were doing. But he could imagine Joselle doing it. He saw her clearly. Joselle—hopping onto a gravestone, clicking her heels and whooping, wearing a loopy grin on her face and an outrageous hat on her head. It didn't seem wrong for Joselle.

Blaze took Joselle's button out of his pocket and rolled it along Reena's gravestone. When it fell onto the ground, Blaze picked it up, wiped it off on his shirt, and tucked it into his sock. Sometimes he kept it there, sometimes in his wallet, sometimes in a pocket. But he always carried it with him now, wherever he went.

“We'd better go,” Nova said. She leaned on Blaze as she got up.

“It looks nice,” Blaze remarked, helping his grandmother gather her things. He felt sleepy all of a sudden, and yawned.

“Give me your hand, Blaze,” Nova said. She held it until they reached the car.

Being at the cemetery had given him the idea to go to the hill. He walked around the black locust tree, weaving in and out of the stones.

Blaze thought about the burials he had been responsible for: Benny's, Ajax's, Ken's, Harold's, Ortman's. And everything went fuzzy for a moment. In some ways the whole idea seemed childish to him. Had it always? Or was this some new feeling? He wondered how changes take place in people. He wondered if people knew when things changed in their minds any more than they could feel their bones or hair growing.

Blaze took the five stones, added one for Simon, and formed a letter
J
with them as best he could near the black locust tree.

He hadn't seen Joselle since the morning in the rain.

He wondered if he'd ever see her again.

When Blaze painted, hours could pass without his knowing, and he could vacillate between complete satisfaction with his work and total disappointment within that time over and over again.

It had taken Blaze weeks to finish the canvas. He had gotten to the point where he just couldn't do anything else to it. And yet, he didn't want to show it to Glenn or Nova or Claire. He didn't want to explain what anything meant.

Blaze signed his name in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas, using little white dots of paint to form the letters.

On the last Saturday in August, Blaze woke up feeling exceptionally buoyant. He and Glenn and Claire were going to the county fair. They would be leaving early and making a day of it. Blaze was out of bed and dressed in minutes. He went to the window and threw open the curtains. The morning was shiny with rain from the night, the air breathtakingly clear. Above the hill, the sky was a radiant blue, and beneath the black locust tree on the slope of the hill were stones. The stones were white moons that bled together. They spelled:
I'M SORRY
.

Blaze stared at them until all the sounds of the morning quieted to nothing—the birds, the clock, the wind. Then he pinched himself to verify that he was, in fact, awake and alive, and bounded down the hallway to Glenn's room.

He'd have to explain some things to Glenn, but Blaze felt that he could handle that. There was a lot of telling to do, but he'd only say as much as he needed to for now. Blaze had simply told Glenn and Nova that Joselle had gone home. He hadn't told anyone about the words of stone. Maybe he'd even show Glenn the painting.

Blaze's footsteps were much too loud for early morning, but he didn't seem to notice. He reached Glenn's bedroom and stopped, loosely holding the doorknob. He didn't know where to begin. He thought for a minute, then slowly opened the door.

“Dad,” he whispered excitedly, “get up. I want you to look at the hill.”

It was a good place to start.

When Alice Rice and her parents were halfway across the bridge, Alice felt strange. Her breath caught high in her chest and she became light-headed. It seemed as though there wasn't enough air in the car.

“Look,” said Alice's mother from the front seat. “It's beautiful.”

“As always,” said Alice's father. He was driving. He slowed the silver rental car. “What do you think, Alice?”

The sun was blazing. The water—beneath and beyond them—glinted wildly. Seconds earlier, Alice had been thinking that the surface of the water was like glossy, peaked blue-green icing sprinkled with truckloads of sugar. Now, she had to remind herself to breathe. She was dizzy and slightly afraid. Her hands were clenched. What was wrong? This had never happened to her before. She'd always loved the bridge, loved the feeling of being suspended, like a bird, between the mainland and the island.

“Alice?”

The sensation passed as quickly as it had come. “Beautiful,” Alice finally said, relieved. “I wonder who'll see the first dolphin this year.”

“I don't know,” said Alice's father, “but there's the first pelican.” He pointed. To the left of the car and not much higher glided a big, drab, knobby bird.

“They look prehistoric to me,” said Alice's mother.

Alice concentrated entirely on the pelican. The bird was so odd and silly looking, a mysterious, mesmerizing wonder. Alice reached out, pressing her palms flat against the half-opened window. She'd seen pelicans before, every year that she had been here, but when you see something only once a year it's always new, as if you're seeing it for the first time. Everything is new here, she thought. New and exciting.

The pelican plunged out of sight, and Alice's mind drifted back to the feeling she'd had. She was somewhat superstitious and wondered if the feeling meant that something bad was going to happen. She tried to shake the thought out of her head. She was hoping that this would be the best trip she'd ever had. They would be celebrating her birthday on this trip. In a few days. This, alone, wasn't unusual—her birthday always came during their annual vacation—but what made this year special was that this would be her most important birthday yet. Ten. Double digits.