Jewelweed (58 page)

“In two days—that's what Ivan said. He's going to bring his pet bat—if he really has one.”

“Do you get along with him?”

“Well enough. But I don't get why he's friends with someone who has to repeat fifth grade.”

“Did you ever ask him about what it's like after you die? I remember you said Ivan thought he might know.”

“I don't think he knows. But Ivan was right about him, he thinks about things more than most other people.”

Amy and Dart finally wore themselves out in the yard, turned off the hose, and climbed up onto the deck leading around the house to the back door.

“Do you think they'll make us something to eat?” asked Kevin.

“I wouldn't count on that,” said Buck. “Are you feeling well enough to ride into town? We can go get something.”

“Yes, I've been better lately, a lot better—those drugs help.”

“Good. Should we tell your grandfather and Ivan that we're going?”

“No, we can bring them back something.”

“Sounds good,” said Buck, picking up Kevin's oxygen tank and helping him stand out of the glider.

A
ugust came to visit Ivan again the following Saturday morning and brought his bat with him. Everyone stood around in the entryway while his mother explained that Milton was a highly educated bat who had been checked out for diseases and would not hurt anyone. And to prove this point she took Milton out of August's shirt pocket and put him on her shoulder. Then she handed him around so everyone could hold him. “He's cute,” she said.

“No he's not,” said Kevin, staring at Milton as if he were a poisonous snake with wings. “That thing is definitely not cute.”

Amy's face wrinkled up because Kevin had said something that might offend Winnie, but Winnie quickly took care of everything. “I probably should have said that in a different way.” She laughed. “I mean, once you get used to him you begin to think of him as cute.”

“I never heard of a red bat,” said Kevin.

“Hopefully they're the most harmless kind,” suggested Dart. She had declined to hold him when he was passed around.

“I'm afraid Milton got into some purple dye,” explained Amy. “I think it looks rather distinguished, though.”

“Can he fly?” asked Kevin.

“Of course he can,” offered Ivan.

August looked at his mom and she nodded. He tossed Milton up into the air. The bat opened his wings, swooped down, rose up, and flew up and down the hallway three times. Then he circled August and dove into his shirt pocket.

“Jesus,” said Kevin.

“You may have noticed,” said August, “that Milton needs some elevation
in order to begin his flight. It's difficult for mammals to take off, because they're heavier than birds relative to the amount of air moved by their wings. It's why they sleep upside down in the air, so they can just drop into flight.”

“What does that mean?” asked Kevin.

“If Milton is on the ground he needs to climb up on something to jump off,” said Wally, scribbling something into his notebook.

“That's correct,” said August. “Bats always begin flight with a gravity-induced swoop.”

“I forgot how funny you talk,” said Kevin.

Amy winced again, but August and Winnie just laughed. “Both August and I are overly verbose, I'm afraid,” she said. “But we both mean well most of the time.”

“How about the rest of the time?” asked Flo, her eyes dancing between August and his mother.

“At those other times you should just ignore us.”

“Does he catch mosquitoes?” asked Amy.

“He consumes on average a thousand insects each hour,” explained August, “and many of those are mosquitoes. That's when he's hunting. But bats help control insect populations even when they're not hunting, because insects avoid gardens and other areas that bats often visit.”

“Why do they do that?” asked Flo.

“Many insects can hear the echolocation signals that bats emit. They probably sound something like sirens to them, but no one knows for sure. And just as people will avoid areas where there are frequent sirens, so will insects.”

“How do you spell
echolocation
, and how often do bats emit signals?” asked Wally.

“
E-c-h-o-l-o-c-a-t-i-o-n
. When bats are hunting for insects, they emit navigational signals about ten times a second. But once they locate a possible target, the emission rate increases to about two hundred a second, and continues at the increased rate until they intercept it.”

“Unless the bug gets away,” said Kevin.

“That's right, unless it gets away, which happens about twenty-seven percent of the time, though this varies according to atmospheric conditions and the density of vegetation within the hunting environment.”

“Well, your bat is welcome here,” said Amy.

“Not in the kitchen,” added Dart.

And then Amy, Dart, and Winnie went out to get a bunch of potted plants from the trunk of Winnie's car. Flo went upstairs to her room, and Wally went out to the pole shed.

“Come on,” said Kevin. August and Ivan followed him into his room, where he showed August a video recording of the turtle coming out of the pond, biting a dead fish, and carrying it into the water.

“Excellent!” cried August, staring into the monitor. “Play it again.”

“Just look at that monster,” said Kevin, pointing at the screen. “His neck and head are bigger around than a softball.”

“What a magnificent specimen,” said August. “He's straight out of
The Age of Reptiles
.”

“Wally's making a trap to catch him,” said Ivan. “Let's go see if he's done.” But before they got out of the house Kevin's nurse came down the hall and said it was time for him to breathe his medicine fumes and do some coughing, so August and Ivan went outdoors without him.

In the shop, Wally had almost finished welding sections of cattle-fencing together, with a hinged panel for the floor. The steel cage was big enough to contain August and Ivan. It was also heavy.

After he finished making it, Wally put the trap on a little trailer and used the garden tractor to pull it slowly toward the pond. August and Ivan rode with the cage, keeping it steady. There were two frozen carp inside.

“You know what happened the other day?” asked August.

“Of course I don't know,” replied Ivan. “I wasn't there.”

“Skeeter Skelton came to see Blake Bookchester at the shop. Do you know who Skeeter Skelton is?”

“Everyone knows who Skeeter Skelton is. Some people say he's made out of old motorcycle parts.”

“I know. I heard that too. Well, he rode all the way into the shop, climbed off his motorcycle, asked if he could have a cup of coffee, and talked with Blake for ten minutes over by the lathe.”

“Could you hear them?”

“Not much. Skeeter asked Blake if he wanted to do a little lazy riding together, become road buddies and sometimes go places together on weekends. Blake said he'd like that, and explained where the coffee he filled up
Skeeter's cup with came from. But after that I heard them talking about your mom.”

“What did they say?”

“I couldn't hear very well because my dad started banging with a wrench on a mower blade. But I heard them say ‘Dart' six or seven times.”

“What else?”

“Skeeter said something about Lucky.”

“What was it?”

“I couldn't hear.”

“I hate that guy.”

“I know. And after he said his name Blake picked up a ball-peen hammer and slammed it into the workbench.”

“I've got something to tell you, August,” Ivan said.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It's something real big.”

“What is it?”

“I think Blake Bookchester might be my dad.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“How do you reason that?”

“It's not so much the reasons, it's the way I feel about them. He came over here and talked to me for a long time, and then he talked to my mother. He said he was an old friend of hers, but the way they looked at each other, I mean, it seemed really different. Anyway, he told me you were going to get another bat.”

“He saved Milton's life,” said August.

“I know, you told me.”

“The other day, when he and I were alone at the shop, he asked about you,” said August.

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him you were one of a kind.”

“Couldn't you think of anything better to say about me than that?”

“Not right then.”

“So what do you think about him being my dad?” asked Ivan. “I mean, do you see anything wrong with that?”

“No. He's a man of the highest moral principles,” replied August.

“Except that he's an ex-con.”

“True.”

“And another thing,” began Ivan, but just then Wally turned off the tractor.

“Here we are, boys. Let's get this cage unloaded and bait the trap.”

The boys jumped out and went to work. Wally had a good plan. It was a lot like an old-fashioned box-trap, he said, simple in design and guaranteed to work.

“We've been setting box-traps since mankind first came down out of the trees and learned to walk on two legs,” he said, putting the trap next to the water and tilting it open. “This is our lucky day, boys, I can feel it in my bones.”

“What do your bones feel like?” Ivan asked.

“They feel like yours do.”

“My bones don't feel like anything,” replied Ivan.

“I know,” he said. “But when you get older you feel them hurting and rubbing together, except when they know something is about to work out just right. And then you don't feel them at all.”

“I think you've got it, Wally,” said August, and the old man carefully crept out from beneath the tilted cage. Inside, the two frozen carp rested on the metal trigger. When nudged, this trigger would trip the heavy steel cage, trapping whatever nudged it.

“This is going to work, boys.”

“I think you're right,” added Ivan. He was trying to feel his bones.

The three of them sat down next to the cage then. They looked out over the shiny surface of the pond and imagined the giant turtle coming out. Milton flew from one end of the water to the other, catching insects and occasionally skimming the surface, picking up floating bugs. After a half-hour or so, August whistled him back. He said Milton shouldn't wear himself out too much during the day. He was, after all, nocturnal.

“Where's Kevin?” asked Wally.

“With his nurse,” said August. “It was time for his medicine.”

“He'll want to see this.”

Ivan nodded. “I'll go see if he's done. You two wait here.”

When Ivan got to his room, the nurse was still pounding on Kevin's back.

After supper that night, August, Kevin, and Ivan went outdoors to
check on the trap. They sat on the bank near the cocked cage and talked. Their young voices moved over the water, rising and falling. As the sun dropped below the distant ridge, a shadow slowly grew over them. Three ducks dropped out of the sky and landed on the pond, spreading circles around them.

“So this Wild Boy, he's real?” asked Kevin.

“As real as you are,” said Ivan. “I've seen him with my own two eyes, stood next to him—as close as you are now.”

“It's hard to believe,” said Kevin.

“I know it.”

“And he just moves around and does whatever he wants?”

“That's right, whatever he feels like. August and I think he lives in caves, but he's probably got hundreds of places to spend the night. He just goes wherever he wants. He's a free spirit.”

“Where are his parents?”

“I've wondered about that,” said August, “but no one knows.”

“Were they wild too?”

“No one knows,” replied Ivan. “The hermit knows more than anyone else, but even he doesn't know very much about him. And because the Wild Boy can't speak our language, there's no way to ever know.”

“What does he do when he gets sick?”

“He doesn't,” said Ivan. “He's wild.”

“Everyone gets sick,” said Kevin. “Wild has nothing to do with it.”

“He never gets sick. Diseases roll off him like water. He never catches a cold or anything. His body is tough and he can sleep in subzero winters and baking-hot summers. It makes no more difference to him than it would to a bird or a rabbit.”