Wish (11 page)

Mrs. Odom came out and told them to stop, and then she sat on the couch and told me not to worry. She was sure Wishbone would come back.

“You got to think positive,” she said.

“Yes, ma'am,” I mumbled.

Did she know I'd said that mean thing to Howard? If she knew, I bet she wouldn't want me on her team anymore.

That afternoon Burl drove us into town to search parking lots and Dumpsters. Dwight and Lenny made some Lost Dog signs and we nailed them to telephone poles and fence posts.

It was almost suppertime when me and Howard rode our bikes back to Gus and Bertha's and checked the trap one more time. Then we sat in lawn chairs out by the garden and watched dragonflies flit over the tops of the marigolds.

In my head, I said, “Howard, I'm sorry I said that about your wish. You know, about your up-down walk?”

Then I'd say, “Shoot, nobody even
cares
about your up-down walk.”

But then, he'd know that was a big, fat lie, 'cause he saw those kids leaving him out of their kickball games and cutting in line in front of him like he was invisible.

So I sat there in silence with my thoughts spinning in my head. Maybe he didn't care about what I said. I mean, he was still being nice to me. He was helping me look for Wishbone.

“You sure do look forlorn,” Howard said.

I didn't know one other kid in the whole world who would use the word
forlorn
. But that was the perfect word to describe me.

Forlorn.

Just before supper, Jackie called and told me she went to see Scrappy in jail and he got a tattoo.

“Don't you even want to know what it
is
?” she asked when I didn't say anything.

“Um, sure.”

“A bird,” she said. “A blackbird in a cage. Right on the back of his hand. Can you believe that?”

“I guess.”

Then she rambled on about how graduating from high school wasn't all it's cracked up to be and how much she hated her job at the Waffle House.

“People leave the tables all nasty with syrup,” she said. “And they plop their crying babies in a highchair and expect me to bring them their blueberry waffles in, like, a minute.”

She told me that her boyfriend, Arlo, wrecked his car and turned out to be a loser.

“And Carol Lee saw him at the mall with Darla Jacobs,” she said, “so I told him adios, sucker, and then—”

“Aren't you gonna ask me about Wishbone?” I said.

“What?”

I'd been telling her all about Wishbone when she called. How smart he is and how he learned to sit and stay and how he slept beside my bed.

“Wishbone,” I said. “My dog. Aren't you even gonna ask me about him?”

“Oh, um, sure,” she said. “How is Wishbone?”

“Gone!” I hollered. “He's gone.” And then I spewed out the whole sorry story about how he'd run off and how I'd looked everywhere but I figured he'd rather be a stray than live with me. I tried to stop but I couldn't. I moved on to how he didn't want me the same as nobody else wanted me and how I hoped she was enjoying her perfect life while I was stuck here in Colby with a bunch of squirrel-eating hillbillies. And then I hung up and sat on the floor with my back against the wall. I could see Bertha in the kitchen stirring something on the stove and pretending like she hadn't heard me.

When the phone rang again, I just looked at it there in my hand.

Bertha stopped stirring.

Ring.

Ring.

Ring.

“Hello?” I said in a trembly voice.

“Charlie…” Jackie's voice floated through the telephone line, soft and sure. From Raleigh to Colby. I pictured that voice traveling from Carol Lee's fancy brick house, along highways and over treetops, and then up the winding roads and down the gravel driveway into this little house perched on the side of the mountain and finally getting to me, sitting on the floor and needing to hear it.

“I'm sorry about Wishbone,” Jackie said. “I really am. I hope he comes back.”

I watched a fly dart from the window screen to the lamp to the ceiling.

“Charlie?” Jackie said.

“What?”

“I know this whole situation has been hard on you.”

Situation?

Is that what this was? A situation?

“I think Mama's getting better,” Jackie said. “I talked to her yesterday and she sounded better.”

What did that mean? That she got out of bed? That she got her feet on the ground? That she cared one little bit about me? That I'd go back to Raleigh and our broken family would suddenly disappear and in its place would be a
real
family, holding hands and saying the blessing?

“Maybe I can come visit you soon,” Jackie went on. “I'm gonna get my driver's license in a couple of weeks. Did I tell you that? And Carol Lee got a car for graduation. Can you believe that? If I get some time off from my godforsaken job I could come to Colby. We could go to Asheville and hang out. They have vegan restaurants there. Did you know that? I'm thinking about becoming vegan and I bet if I…”

She jabbered on about all the things we could do, but she left out the part about how she would go back to her perfect life and I would still be here without my dog and wishing I hadn't been mean to Howard.

That night when Gus got home, the three of us drove around looking for Wishbone. We went down to the school and over to the diner. We drove through trailer parks and up alleys. While we drove, Bertha told us a story she'd read in the newspaper about a dog that fell out of the back of a van in North Carolina and managed to find his way back home to Indiana.

“Almost four hundred miles!” she said. “The family had been on vacation over in Maggie Valley. I can't hardly believe that.”

Gus was quiet, shifting a toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other while he scanned the roadside and the parking lots and the woods as he drove. Every now and then he said, “Don't worry, Butterbean, we'll find him.” But I was thinking that maybe now was the time to change my wish. Maybe next time I got a chance, I should wish my dog would come back.

Finally it got too dark to see much anymore, so we headed home. We turned into the driveway and that old car bounced and squeaked over the holes, the crunch of tires on gravel echoing in the still evening air. The headlights sent beams of light dancing through the mountain laurel and chokeberries beside the driveway.

Finally the house came into view and I thought my heart was going to leap right out of me at what I saw.

There was Wishbone, wagging his tail as he trotted toward us, dragging his leash on the ground behind him.

 

Nineteen

Wishbone had liverwurst and scrambled eggs for dinner every night for a week. He learned to roll over and turn in circles and flip a dog biscuit off his nose and catch it. And he didn't sleep on the floor beside my bed anymore. He slept right in the bed
with
me. I didn't mind his liverwurst breath one bit. I loved his soft, warm fur and the feel of his heartbeat against my cheek when I hugged him.

Every night after supper, when me and Gus and Bertha sat out on the porch, Wishbone snored contentedly while I rubbed my bare feet over his warm back. Sometimes he'd jump up and let out a bark at a noise down in the woods. A raccoon or a possum or maybe even just the rustle of leaves in the wind.

“That is one happy dog, Butterbean,” Gus would say.

Then Bertha would urge Gus to tell us another story about his dog, Skeeter.

“How about that time he fell in the river when y'all were fishing and your brother jumped in after him and flipped the boat over?” she said.

Gus chuckled, but before he could say a word, Bertha said, “Oh, I know! Tell Charlie how your sister used to dress Skeeter up in her Girl Scout uniform.”

I took Wishbone to the Odoms' almost every day. I still hadn't told Howard I was sorry for what I said about his up-down walk, so there was always a big ole elephant in the room for me. But Howard, he never let on that anything had happened between us. Still, I felt mad at myself for not speaking up. I kept thinking about what Bertha had said about judging folks for how they fix their mistakes, and I knew I wasn't doing a very good job of fixing mine.

Every time me and Wishbone showed up at the Odoms' front door, one of them would say hey and wave us in and I'd get caught up in the flurry of that family like a tornado spinning me off of my feet.

Me and Howard played Parcheesi at the kitchen table with a fan whirring in the doorway, while Wishbone scurried around searching for dropped crackers or spilled juice. Cotton would stick his face right up against the fan and let out a Tarzan yell, his voice coming out all quivery and making us laugh.

Burl and Lenny would come in and make tomato sandwiches, leaving greasy black fingerprints on everything they touched. It seemed like they were always working on some kind of engine. Car. Motorcycle. Lawnmower. Every once in a while, a swear word would drift through the screen door from out in the yard and Mrs. Odom would march out there and tell them to hush up talking like that.

Dwight went to baseball camp at the YMCA and came home covered in red dirt and sweat. Most days, he and Cotton ended up in some kind of wrestling match, throwing sofa cushions at each other until Cotton ended up whining to Mrs. Odom.

Some days it was so hot, me and Howard would lay on the porch with ice cubes on our foreheads and tell knock-knock jokes. One day, Mr. Odom put a tarp in the bed of his pickup truck and filled it with water. We sat in there with our shorts and T-shirts on and ate frozen Kool-Aid in paper cups.

“I wish we could go to a real swimming pool,” Howard said.

“When I go back to Raleigh,” I said, “I'm gonna take swimming lessons like I did last summer.”

“When are you going back to Raleigh?”

I shrugged. “I don't know for sure. I'm just saying … when I do…”

“Maybe if you stay in Colby, Daddy will drive us over to the lake one day,” Howard said. “We can take Wishbone. I bet he'd like to swim.”

“Maybe.”

“Let's go down to the creek,” Howard said.

I sighed. He'd been trying to get me to go back down to the creek behind his house for days, but I was nervous.

“What if Wishbone runs off again?” I said.

“Hold on to the leash real good,” Howard said. “But really, Charlie, he don't wanna run off. He just made a mistake last time.” He tossed a saltine cracker on the floor for Wishbone. “He came back, didn't he?”

So I finally said yes, and the three of us trudged down the path to the creek, with ferns tickling our legs and Wishbone sniffing at every little thing along the way. But when we got there, a bad, heavy feeling settled over me. Instead of seeing the tiny silver minnows darting around the mossy rocks, I saw the look on Howard's face when I had said, “You wished you didn't have that up-down walk.” And even though he acted like he didn't care anymore, for me those words still hovered in the air between us like a storm cloud.

I tossed a pebble into the creek and watched the water ripple and the minnows scatter. “I'm sorry for what I said, Howard.”

When he looked a little puzzled, I added, “About you wishing you didn't have that up-down walk.”

“Oh.” He tossed a pebble into the creek, too, and Wishbone leaped in after it, sending up a spray of cold water.

“I know that was a mean thing to say and I'm sorry,” I said.

I waited for Howard to say, “That's okay,” but he didn't.

I waited for him to say, “Don't worry about it,” but he didn't.

I waited for him to say, “Aw, heck, Charlie, I forgot all about that,” but he didn't.

In fact, he didn't say anything for the longest time, and then he shrugged and said, “I'm used to kids saying mean things about the way I walk.”

Ouch!

Stab me in the heart, Howard!

Toss me into the Mean Pile with all the other hateful kids in Colby.

Squish me into the mud like the worm that I am.

My eyes darted from tree to rock to creek to fern while I scrambled to figure out what to say next. And then I spied it. A blackbird feather nestled in the leaves and pine needles beside the creek.

“Look!” I said, grabbing the feather and holding it up for Howard to see.

He squinted at it, pushing his glasses further up on his freckled nose.

“Something to wish on,” I said. “You stick it in the ground and make a wish.” I held it out to him. “Here. You take it. Make a wish.”

He shook his head. “Naw.”

“Why not?”

He took his glasses off and wiped drops of creek water off of them with the edge of his shirt. Then he put them back on and said, “'Cause I know my wish ain't never coming true.”

Well, now,
that
surprised me, coming from Howard, who was always Mr. Positive.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

“I just do.”

“But look at
me
,” I said. “I've made the same wish every day since fourth grade and it hasn't come true yet.” I stroked the top of Wishbone's wet head. “But if I make that wish enough times, I know it will someday.”

“Then I hope it does,” Howard said.

I held the feather out to him again. “You sure?”

He nodded.

So I stuck the feather into the soft dirt beside the creek, closed my eyes, and made my wish.

On the way home that day, the feeling that had been weighing me down so much since I'd said that mean thing to Howard felt a little bit lighter. I wasn't sure if I had fixed my mistake, but at least I had tried.

 

Twenty

When Bertha told me Jackie was coming to visit, my thoughts bounced every which way. I was excited as all get-out to see her. I'd missed her like crazy and hoped she'd been missing me, too. But I had some of ole Scrappy's anger simmering inside me. It seemed like she was so busy being happy that she didn't have time to think about me.