I looked out across the water, thought of my visit to the cabin. “Reverend Hay and I went up to Len’s place again today. I brought the stuffed raccoon, and Hay brought more things for Birdie – clothes from the clothes closet at the church, a pair of shoes that are more the right size for her, shampoo, a toothbrush, and whatnot. I asked Len if Birdie had another name, and he knew enough to tell me it was Lillian. I tried the name out on Birdie, and she turned right around, like she’d known it all her life.”
“Kids don’t usually fake something like that.” I could tell by Andrea’s tone that she was thinking about what should happen next. “How did she act when you went up there?”
“A little more comfortable this time. She didn’t seem quite so worried about us being around.” I leaned over the railing next to Andrea. “She likes Hay, but then they all do. He’s got a way with kids. He’s about half kid himself. You know, if you can talk your boy into being in Hay’s production of
The Waltons
, you should. Hay will introduce him around, help him get to know folks. Some of the times we moved as kids, I don’t think we would’ve made it if Mama hadn’t gotten us tied up with a church. Those men were like extra fathers and grandpas to us. Good examples. We needed that. Church gave us something constant, no matter where we were.”
Ripples of light reflected off the water and slid over Andrea’s skin. For a second, I forgot what we were talking about, and the kiss came to mind instead. I wondered how she felt about it. Too bad I hadn’t waited a little longer to suggest a boat ride. Maybe she would’ve decided to go. Then again, maybe I was giving myself too much credit. Right now, she seemed to have her mind squarely on business.
“I think I’d have to drag him down there kicking and screaming.”
“He’s a little big for that.” I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Andrea. She had her hands full. I couldn’t picture what kind of guy would leave someone like her, not to mention his own kid.
Her shoulders sank. “Yes, he is. Unfortunately.”
Everything in me wanted to slip an arm around her, pull her close, promise to make her situation turn out all right. Not that I’d know how to do that, but maybe after I took Dustin to the water safety course one day next week, we’d just happen by the Tin Building Theater for a few minutes. I could come up with some excuse for needing to go there. It wasn’t like the kid would have any choice about it – unless he wanted to swim home.
I thought about mentioning the idea to Andrea but then decided I was probably better off keeping it to myself. If it didn’t work out, she wouldn’t have to feel bad about it.
She shivered, and I knew I needed to let her go inside. The day was catching up with me anyway, and I was ready to head home and crash. Unfortunately, I still had the little bandito to take care of.
“I should go inside.” Andrea eyeballed the house again. “Will you let me know what else you find out about Birdie? I’ll talk to my boss when I get to work tomorrow – see what more we can do to get some help for Birdie. At the very least, the situation needs some oversight until we can figure out what’s going on with the mom.”
Even though in some ways I hated to agree, I knew that Andrea was right. Len obviously cared about Birdie, and she seemed attached to him, but he didn’t have a clue about taking care of a little girl, and that place he lived in was a wreck. I just hoped that whoever came in on the case had some understanding of a man like Len. A lot of folks would take one glance at him and write him off. But if you really looked, you could see that Birdie needed Len. It was hard to picture him as a parent, but he was looking after that little girl the same way he cared for helpless animals, like that baby coon.
Andrea and I told each other good-night, then I left her with the water safety form and went on home. Neither of us had said anything more about the kiss, but it was on my mind as I crossed the lake and pulled up to the dock by my cabin. Across the way, high above everything else, I could see the lights of Larkspur Cove as I tied up my boat and headed into the cabin. It was late enough that I figured I could just shower, feed and water little Bandito, fall into bed, and be dead to the world. I didn’t want to ponder anything tonight, or lay in bed staring at the log beams on the ceiling. I just wanted to close my eyes and believe that Moses Lake might be a new beginning, after all.
For a few minutes while I was there on the dock with Andrea, it was like all the painful stuff floated off into the lake and disappeared. I wanted to hang on to that feeling, to believe it was possible to build a life that looked forward instead of back. Letting go of the past is easier said than done, but right then I could see where it might be possible.
For the first time in a long time, I went to bed anticipating tomorrow. The last thought that crossed my mind, right before I drifted off, wasn’t about Aaron and Mica and whether they were scared, or in pain, or suffering in those moments before the waves swamped the boat and swept them under. I didn’t picture the scene in my brain – try to rewrite it to where I was there with them, to where I could pull them out of the water. Or better yet, tell Aaron not to get the boat out at all – there was a storm coming, and the motor needed work. Usually, before I went to sleep, I was back there on our little beach, warning Aaron to keep off the water.
But tonight, I was just across the lake, with a pretty girl on a pretty night.
In the early hours before sunrise, something soft and gentle stroked my hair. I was caught up in the middle of a good dream. In it, I was racing across the lake, the boat moving so fast the hull was high in the water, skimming it, smooth as glass. The night was clear and cool, a big orange moon hanging on the horizon. Strands of silver-edged clouds streaked the sky, hanging in patches over the stars. Andrea was beside me in the boat, her hair loose, streaming behind her like dark ribbons. Tipping her head back, she laughed into the wind, stretched her hand across, slipped it into mine, brought my fingers to her lips and . . . nibbled on my pinkie . . .
The moonlit night, the lake, the boat, and Andrea vanished like a mirage in the dry country, but the finger-nibbling kept on. I cracked an eye open, and in the dim, gray light from the dusty window over my bed, I watched a pair of tiny black hands pick up my ring finger. A little masked face looked it over to see if it was edible.
“Hey!” I croaked, and jerked my hand away. Bandito scampered to the edge of the bed, then stood up on his hind legs and chattered at me, his head bobbing back and forth like he was trying to make a point. From the looks of things, he thought I was late with breakfast.
“How’d you get out?” Sitting up, I yawned and combed back my hair. My ear was wet and slimy. All that good stuff in the lake dream was really just me getting a grooming from a raccoon. “You little rascal,” I said, and he scampered to the hollow spot between my knees, then rolled over onto his back, laid there with all four feet in the air, and started purring like a cat. I grabbed a cell phone cord from the lamp table and dangled the end above him, and he batted at it. No wonder people tried to keep baby coons as pets. They were cute little things. Too smart for their own good and not much fun to share a house with when they got older, but you had to like the little ones.
I played with him a minute before I picked him up, got his breakfast from the kitchen, and then took him back to his cage on the porch. He’d opened the slide latch slick as a whistle. Guess he’d watched me do it enough times that he’d learned how. After he got out of the cage, it wasn’t any problem for him to slip into the cabin through an old cat door. The only good thing was that he’d come looking for me instead of ransacking the place. I’d seen what could happen when raccoons found their way into houses. A gang of smash-and-grab burglars had nothing on a mob of raccoons. They were quick, smart, and could get into almost anything.
I put the little convict back in his cage with his vittles, which I figured would keep him occupied while I looked for some wire to keep him locked up while I was gone.
The phone rang, and when I answered, my nephew was on the other end. Levi’s voice was still faint and squeaky this morning. I figured Laurie had rousted him early, so she could have him call before I headed off to work.
“Hey, buddy, what’s up?” I said, and I was almost dreading the answer. I knew that Laurie was bringing in the big guns to try to get me to come home for the birthday party next weekend.
“I dunno,” Levi yawned out a long, sleepy sound. “I just woke up.”
“I can tell.” I heard Laurie whispering something in the background. I could almost see her wheeling a hand in the air, trying to get Levi to move on to the point of the call. “How’s your ball team doing, buddy?”
“Good.” There was a long pause. Laurie whispered again, then Levi came back. “I got a home run last night.”
“A home run? Your first one?” I said, and felt the sting of not being there to see it. That was Laurie’s point, of course. She knew I’d spent hours out in the yard with that kid, working on hitting Wiffle balls.
“Uh-huh. Coach Lee gived me some lessons.”
“Coach Lee?” I asked. “The high school coach?” What in the world was Laurie thinking, getting private lessons for a kid in T-ball? She couldn’t afford that, and Levi didn’t need it. Right now he should just have fun and enjoy the game. Just because his daddy had gone to college on a football scholarship didn’t mean Levi needed to start training in kindergarten.
“Uh-huh. Chris took me. He got me a bat for my birthday present, but it’s not my birthday yet, but it’s okay if I can use the bat, Chris said.”
“That’s good, buddy.” Laurie knew it’d be hard for me to hear about Levi getting his first home run without me, and Chris setting up lessons. Since he was a school principal, he had pull. “That’s real good. I knew you’d get a homer this year. You just keep working hard. That’s how your daddy did it.” That old, heavy feeling settled over me like outdoor gear too warm for the season. I remembered how it felt to be back in Alpine, stirring guilt like a boiling pot.
But the truth was that right now Levi sounded as happy as I’d ever heard him. “Uh-huh. It was so cool! The ball . . .” He went on with a blow-by-blow description of his big moment, and I felt like I was living it right along with him.
“Awesome,” I said when he was done, and this time I didn’t cast his daddy’s shadow over him. “You worked hard and it paid off, huh?”
“Yup.”
I started telling him about the baby coon on the back porch. Laurie was talking in his other ear, though. He barely heard me.
“Uncle Mart, you comin’ for my birf-day?” he repeated, like a robot.
“No, buddy. I can’t make it this time, but next week, you watch for the UPS man to show up, all right. He’s bringing you a big birthday present from Uncle Mart. You share it with your brothers, too, you hear?” When the boys got that blow-up waterslide I’d ordered, Laurie and Chris’s yard would be a permanent mudhole, but man those kids were gonna have fun.
“Okay,” Levi chirped, just as happy as could be. That probably vexed Laurie some.
“Say hi to everybody at the party for me, all right?”
“ ’Kay,” Levi answered, and hung up the way the kids usually did – without bothering to go through a long-winded good-bye.
I headed for the shower with Levi’s birthday on my mind. Aaron’s birthday was the same day as Levi’s, but this year Levi’s birthday could just be Levi’s birthday.
I climbed into the shower with the big homerun on my mind, but without even thinking about it, I switched tracks and started replaying the dream where I was gliding across the lake with Andrea. I thought about feeling her hand in mine, and then waking up and figuring out I wasn’t sailing off into the wild blue with a pretty girl – I was being nibbled by a raccoon. Before I knew it, I was laughing to myself, my head falling back against the wall, the water streaming through my hair. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed like –
A squeal, then a flapping sound broke up the moment, and a blast of cold air hit me. I jerked my head up and blinked away the water just in time to see Bandito losing his balance on top of the shower rod. For a second, he stood on two feet, flailing his paws like a fat man on a high wire. The shower curtain swayed, the rod wobbled, the raccoon lost his balance, and the rest was a five-second disaster. Bandito tumbled forward, caught the top of the curtain with one paw, and then the next thing I knew, coon, curtain, curtain rod, and two towels were headed my way. I ended up pinned in the corner, water spraying all directions, and the coon squealing, spitting, snarling, and trying to claw his way through the curtain.
“Dadgummit!” I hollered. Most of the noise bounced off the curtain and came back at me while I was trying to get my feet untangled, catch the coon, and turn off the water. I had a hold on him through the curtain at one point, and was halfway on my feet before he wiggled loose.
While I was making another grab for him, I lost my balance, twirled like a ballerina, bounced off the sidewall, about knocked myself out on the faucet, and landed in the corner again. For a half second, I just sat there, watching little tweetie birds flutter around my head. Then I came to, heard the coon spitting and chattering as he scampered off, and realized the water was still spraying around the bathroom. Once I figured out which way was up, I unwound myself, found the water faucet, and got it turned off. When I finally made it to my feet, the bathroom was covered with water, the coon was gone, the curtain was in a wad on the floor, and the guy in the mirror had what looked like it might turn into a shiner in an hour or two.