Jewelweed (9 page)

Sometimes Ivan had to remind himself that August came from such a tiny place. He had no idea what went on in important places like Grange, where there were a lot of stores and cars and lights and noise, and several thousand people living close together. Ivan never made fun of him, though. It wasn't August's fault that he was born in deep ferny woods in the middle of the Ocooch hills. Besides, he had Ivan to ask about the rest of the world, and they shared everything.

Dart turned down the dead-end road leading to August's driveway, and Ivan checked again to make sure he still had his suitcase with his stuff. It was actually an old blue plastic typewriter case, which his mother called a suitcase. The typewriter had been taken away, but it still smelled like ink inside. It made a fine place for clothes, though, with a little compartment for special things and a hard plastic handle for carrying.

Ivan liked going to August's. He lived in a log house with big rooms. There was always something to do, even though August's mom wouldn't let him watch most television shows or play video games. They burned wood for heat and his dad had a homemade wind generator for electricity. On days when the blades didn't turn, the lights sometimes went off. Coyotes screamed at night, owls hooted, and you never knew what to expect.

He and August knew everything for miles around. They found animal trails snaking along the rims of valleys, and holes as big as barrels in trees.
They made bridges over the creek so they could cross without getting wet, they found places where they could swing over on a rope and places where they could jump all the way across. In the middle of a ravine they built a fort with long spiky poles, windows, and a roof. They knew where rattlesnakes lived by the hundreds in Sun Rock Cliff, and the Secret Night Gate, where the militia went into the Heartland Reserve to do its martial arts training and plan to overthrow the government. There was almost nothing they didn't know about in the area.

Still, whenever Ivan stayed away from home for very long he wondered about his mother—what she did when he wasn't there. He knew she had lived in Red Plain after she moved out of her mother's house in Luster and before she moved to Grange, and he wondered if she went back. He didn't know what she did when she lived in Red Plain, and he'd never been there himself. But somehow the name of the town seemed dangerous, filled with blood.

“What are you doing this weekend?” Ivan asked as they neared the end of the dead-end road, where August's driveway went off into the trees.

“I've got errands to run and some cleaning jobs.”

“Is anyone coming over?”

“Not that I know of. Ivan, are you worried about something?”

“No. I just wondered what you would be doing.”

“Same thing I always do,” she said. “Work.”

As they turned off the road, his mother put the Bronco into four-wheel drive, and they bumped over the narrow dirt lane through the trees. August's pet bat heard them coming, flew around in front of the windshield, and sped off into the woods. About a year ago August had found Milton lying on the floor of his bedroom. He brought him back to life with drops of warm milk with insects mixed in it. During the winter Milton was gone for a while—back to the cave beneath Sun Rock Cliff, where August thought bats hibernated. But in the spring Milton came back and stayed with August most of the time, except when August was in school.

“Just look at that,” his mother said, scowling. “A bat in the middle of the day. Horrid, filthy things.”

Ivan didn't reply. Adults and flying mammals never got along, and talking about them usually just made for trouble. Even August's mom
sometimes had a problem with him, and she had feelings for animals and bugs that were unnatural in a grown-up.

August said Milton was a long-eared bat. They were pretty rare, with ears that were larger than those of an average bat. August thought he looked quite distinguished, which was sort of true.

As they came closer to the house, Ivan noticed that his mother's face got a pinched look from all the old engines and four-wheelers and snowmobiles and everything else August's dad had stacked around and was going to fix up someday.

“A nice home like this, with two incomes. It's a crime, Ivan. When we have a place of our own it's going be different. It's going to be nice.”

Ivan guessed that August's mom felt the same way. Women were especially alert to things looking good. Mrs. Helm's response to the situation was to make her own little place away from the house. It had thousands of flowers and bushes, a fountain with running water, fancy fish, and colored rocks, and it was almost done. All that was left was for August's great-uncle Russell, whom people called “Rusty,” to build some chairs and benches.

Mrs. Helm said she needed a park for her peace of mind, which is something August said adults didn't have a lot of, at least not around here. August said his mom thought a peaceful place was needed because something very bad was beginning to happen to the whole world. Ivan kept trying to get August to tell him what this was, but he hadn't figured it out yet. He just knew it was real bad.

When Ivan and his mother walked up and knocked on the front door, no one answered. They climbed between several four-wheelers and ride-on lawnmowers without wheels, but they still couldn't see anyone back there. There were trees everywhere.

“Hey, August!” Ivan called, but his mother said not to shout, because only people with no class talked without keeping their voices down.

From about a hundred yards away August's mom yelled back, telling them to come on ahead. For some reason Ivan's mother didn't find anything wrong with August's mother shouting, and they hurried through the backyard and down the path leading through Shrubbery Jungle. Then they walked through the tunneling vines of flat-headed red and orange flowers to where Mrs. Helm had set some small sandwiches and lemonade on a wooden table. A tiny smile crept over his mother's face. She
clearly agreed with August's mom that eating triangular cucumber-and-lettuce sandwiches with napkins next to a fountain was a very good thing to do. But it was also true that she liked her a lot more than she liked most people. When they got up close she even allowed Mrs. Helm to hug her, though she didn't hug her back.

There weren't any chairs to sit on, so the two women carried their lunch over to the colored rocks beside the fountain. After August's mom said a few words of prayer, they each picked up a sandwich and nibbled on it, wiping their mouths with red napkins after every bite. Ivan said he wasn't hungry and just watched. His mother rarely talked to anyone. She said most talking went nowhere fast. But now the two women chattered away like a couple of finches, pecking at their brown-bread sandwiches and sipping from plastic cups, perched on rocks with their knees together. Several times Ivan's mother laughed, then quickly covered her mouth with a napkin, prompting Mrs. Helm to smile and say, “Oh, Danielle, you're such a treasure.”

His mother even told Mrs. Helm that she was thinking about applying for a live-in job with the owners of the construction company.

“Oh, I hope you do,” said Mrs. Helm. “I've met them and they're nice.”

“I don't see how they could be,” said his mother. “They're rich.”

At that point Mrs. Helm looked at Ivan and said that August was somewhere down by the creek. Ivan left his suitcase on the table and walked into the woods. It was cooler there. Before long Milton found him and flew around his head several times while he crawled through a hole in the fence. Ivan followed him across the Long Stretch, where it was hot without the shelter of the trees. Pretty soon they were back into the cooler woods again.

August was a short distance down the creek, sitting with his back against a tree and staring into the water. Ivan could tell—even from that far away—that August was trapped in one of his moods again. He was odd that way. Ivan knew him so well that he could almost see his thoughts. Sometimes August worried about his great uncle and aunt because they were so old, other times he thought something would happen to his father when he worked without safety equipment, and then often he just worried about why people were always thinking up ways to hurt each other. There was almost nothing he couldn't worry about.

Ivan didn't really understand why August got so upset by things. Compared to him, August had everything. His dad and mom were the best parents, and August's mom was so kind and warm that sometimes Ivan could hardly keep from going up and asking her to hold him. That was stupid, he knew, because he was almost twelve, but she was like that. As for his dad, when he looked at August, Ivan could tell how much he liked him. And then August's bedroom was nearly as big as Ivan's whole apartment. He had a computer and he took music lessons, Science for the Gifted, and Latin. He seemed to have everything, but he still couldn't stop worrying. Ivan told him he was too nervy, but it was like telling someone they were too small. It was just the way August was.

As August stared into the moving water, Milton dove in circles around him, catching mosquitoes, biting flies, gnats, picnic bugs, mayflies, and no-see-ums. After he cleared the air of everything he could eat, he landed on the tree trunk several feet above August's head, folded his pointed wings, and disappeared into the knurled bark.

When he saw Ivan he jumped up and came over.

August seemed to change more than anyone Ivan knew. Every time he saw him he was different. Sometimes he moved different and other times he just looked different. This afternoon his hair looked long, shaggy, and very light brown, almost blond. He also seemed bigger, almost as if his arms and legs had grown. His jeans were wet all the way up to the pockets, and water oozed out of his shoes.

“Hi, Ivan,” he said, smiling. “Did you just arrive?”

This seemed too dumb to answer, so Ivan didn't respond. August was so used to being alone that sometimes the first things he said were kind of stupid.

“What are you doing?” Ivan asked.

“Making a dam,” August replied. “We can do it together, or we can do something else. Your choice.”

“I like making dams good enough,” Ivan said, and August showed him what he'd already done.

The dam was about half-built.

“We're going to need some bigger rocks,” said Ivan.

“I know,” replied August.

“How long you been out here?” Ivan asked.

“I don't have a watch.”

“I have one, see. My mother got it for me at the dollar store. Oh, by the way, your mom says to come back and get something to eat if you're hungry.”

“I'm not.”

“Me neither. Besides, I brought a couple candy bars. Want one?”

“Maybe later.”

“Yeah, maybe later.”

Milton flew around them several times, devouring the latest crop of flying insects, then went back to the trunk of the tree, where he again disappeared into the bark.

They set to work and before long found a rock in the shape of a rhinoceros head with the horn busted off. It took both of them to carry it, and when they put it down August called it “the buttress.”

Then they found an even-heavier rock—boulder-sized, weighing maybe two thousand pounds. “It would be nice to have that one,” Ivan said, “but there's no one in the world can lift that rock.”

“Not anymore,” said August.

“There never was.”

“There was someone, but he's gone now. My dad said there was nobody like him.”

“Who?”

“I told you about him before. His name was July Montgomery and he had the strength of three or four men, maybe more.”

“How come?”

“No one knows how he got that way. He and my dad were best friends.”

“Where is he now?”

“He died before I was born. Most people believe the government killed him. When they discovered his body everything looked highly suspicious, like some government agency had murdered him and tried to make it look like they hadn't.”

“How did they do it?”

“They used a tractor.”

“And he was a friend of your dad's?”

“Yes. My dad was a close friend of his, maybe the only one, and they went places together all the time. Dad won't talk much about those old
days now because of how much it hurts to think of his best friend being murdered. And my mom won't either. She was well acquainted with him too. I think my dad was the only person July Montgomery trusted, because as a rule he didn't have much time for other people. He was a loner.”

“Like we are when we're not together,” added Ivan.

“Correct.”

They went back to building the dam, finding rocks and stacking them up. When water began to seep around the sides, they went after sticks and leaves, chunks of sod and clay. The air filled with insects again, and Milton came out to get them. Then the water started coming over the top and they hunted for a long curved rock. But as they worked Ivan could feel August worrying, until finally he couldn't take it anymore.

“Okay, I'm not working on this one minute more until you tell me why we're doing it.”