A Bird On Water Street (7 page)

“I'm going to Piran's,” I said.

“You ought to see if Buster wants to join you today, being his last day and all. I'm sure Livvy would appreciate him being out from underfoot. But yu'uns stay out of trouble, okay?”

“Yes, ma'am.”
Tell that to Buster
, I thought. Buster was okay when he was calm, but I was tired of being his keeper when he wasn't, which was most of the time. It's why I wasn't too upset he was moving, though I'd miss Aunt Livvy and Uncle Bubba. Like Grandpa sometimes said, “You can pick yer friends, but you can't pick yer family.”

It was a nice walk down Killer Hill—a little windy, but the sun was out so it wasn't too cold. The sky was a sharp blue against the orange hills and the river flashed shades of amber and brown as it rolled by me.

Wisps of fog were still burning off when I got down to the Quinns' house. It was always cooler at their place, being so close to the river. I got goose bumps as I walked to their front door, which was still in shadow. But it was warm inside.

“C'mon in, Jack,” Mrs. Quinn hollered. I squeezed into their small kitchen as she yelled down the hall, “Piran, Jack's here.” She returned to feeding something mushy and green to Piran's new little sister, Emily. Mom called her their “happy little accident.”

Mr. Quinn pressed past me. “Morning, Jack. How are your parents holding up?”

“Morning, Mr. Quinn. Fine, I suppose.”

Truth was, my parents didn't say much about the layoffs, not in front of me anyhow. Not that they had the time. Mom had been down at Aunt Livvy's helping her pack, and Dad was working a lot of overtime since the rest of his crew was gone.

“Should be a quiet day at the post office, honey. I won't be late.” He kissed Mrs. Quinn on the cheek and Emily on the head before he left.

Emily started squalling just as Piran entered the kitchen. “Hey, Jack.”

“God!” Hannah yelled from down the hall. “Can't anybody get some sleep around here?”

I looked to see if she was comin' out, but no such luck. The twins ran by in a blur playing superheroes, chasing each other from room to room.

“Shut up already!” Hannah screamed.

“Watch your tongue, young lady,” Mrs. Quinn hollered back.

“Emily cried all night.” Piran rolled his eyes. “Let's get outta here before I get stuck babysitting. See ya later, Ma.”

“Don't forget your inhaler!” she called behind us.

“What you want to do?” Piran asked as we walked back toward the bridge.

“I promised my mom we'd go get Buster,” I said.

Piran scrunched up his face.

“He can't possibly start a fight on his last day in town,” I said.

“He better not.”

We headed up Killer Hill and cut south on Poplar Trail. “Have you ever noticed how roads are always named after whatever they cut down or chased off to put the road in?” I asked. “I mean, do you see any poplar trees? And our house is on Bear Ridge. What a joke.”

“Yeah, but our house is on Lick Skillet Road, from when folks got so hungry during the depression that they'd lick a hot skillet clean,” Piran said. “That don't seem so funny to me.”

I nodded and looked away. I got a lot of stomachaches, but never from hunger.

A long orange rental truck sat in front of Buster's house. Dad and Uncle Bubba were carrying a large trunk up the ramp.

“Livvy, what you got in this thing?” Uncle Bubba grunted.

“It's full of family heirlooms and they're breakable. Be careful,” she said.

“Watch it there, Bubba,” Dad called out from the depths of the truck bed. “You're about to crush me. Agh!”

“Oops, sorry Ray.”

Buster stood at the bottom of the ramp waiting with a box in his arms. His bottom lip stuck out like a little kid.

“Aunt Livvy, you think you could do without Buster for a while?” I asked.

Buster looked at her with eyes big as dinner plates.

“Oh, go on,” she said. “You've done plenty for today.”

He smiled and dropped the box he was holding.

“Careful with that!” Aunt Livvy shouted. Her normally calm smile hid behind a deep frown.

Piran and I had to run to catch up with him at the end of the road. “I didn't want to give her a chance to change her mind,” he said. “Where we goin'?”

“Where do
you
want to go?” I asked. “Bein' yer last day and all.”

“The tailings pond, the dry one, Old Number Two,” Buster said. Of course he would want to go where we weren't allowed on his last day here.

Piran and I looked at each other and shrugged. How could we say no?

We followed the railroad tracks out of town. My arm itched like wildfire as we passed the trestle bridge, though luckily Eli and his friends weren't around.

“Dare you to cross!” Buster laughed loudly at his own lame joke.

“Not funny,” I groaned. Piran shook his head.

The only thing that was supposed to keep people out of the Old Number 2 Tailings Pond was a faded
Danger
sign on the gate that blocked the dirt road leading in. We followed the well-worn path that hooked around it to the right and walked to the edge of the pond. I stared at the expanse of wasteland with its out-of-this-world look. So much of our world was out of whack lately that it seemed a fittin' place to be.

Buster hoisted an imaginary machine gun and danced across the pond. “
Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow.
Enemy fire incomin'!”

Piran and I blasted back with our laser guns. “Silly human, you don't stand a chance against our advanced weaponry.
Piu, piu, piu!
” That was one thing the erosion ditches were good for—they made great bunkers.

Suddenly, an engine roared and a shiny new yellow Jeep with enormous bumpy tires lunged into view over a hill.

“Duck!” Piran yelled.

We dove behind a large rock to hide and watched the Jeep do doughnuts around the tailings pond, kicking up clouds of the fine silicone dirt. Given the direction the wind was blowin', the dirt would be coating our parents' cars back home before it settled down.

It might even coat the moving van as a going-away present
.

The Jeep's back tires sank deep into the ground once, but it pulled out before it sank further. The ground wasn't stable—which is why the
Danger
signs were there, and why we
weren't
supposed to be there, as far as our parents were concerned. And yet, here were a bunch of whoopin' idiots riding around in a big, heavy vehicle.

“I don't believe our bad luck!” Piran shouted over the noise. “Eli Munroe! How's he got the money to buy that brand-new Jeep?”

“Don't know. Dad said the mine wouldn't hire him . . . before the layoffs,” I said. “And I saw him get fired from the gas station.” I hadn't heard of him working anywhere else, either.

“Why are we hiding?” Buster said. “You ain't scared of him because of what happened at the trestle bridge, is ya? We were here first. We could try to run 'em off.”

“I swear, Buster, keepin' you out of trouble is a full-time job,” I said. “Just keep down, y'hear?”

Buster's face clouded over. “Don't worry. I won't be your
job
for much longer.”

“That's not what I meant . . .” I started to say, but his attention was already back on Eli.

I couldn't help but compare the two. Was Eli like Buster, all brash and no common sense? Or was he just a guy whose dream had been ripped away? Eli wanted to be a miner—he'd even quit school to become a miner—but they wouldn't hire him. Now he seemed to have nothing to do—or at least nothing good.

Without the mine, was I going to turn out like Eli? Was that my future too?

O

As soon as church let out the next day, we headed over to Aunt Livvy and Uncle Bubba's house again. The truck was full to the top but Uncle Bubba managed to squeeze in one last box anyway. The chairs and tables that used to decorate their home looked sad wedged together like a bunch of unimportant clutter: The oak dining table where they'd spent a lifetime of meals. The chair with the chipped corner from when Buster broke his tooth on it as a kid. The plaid couch where they took their Christmas photo last year.

Could our entire life fit into one truck like that?

Buster leaned against his family's station wagon, slamming a ball into his glove again and again.

“Hey,” I said as I leaned against the car next to him.

“Hey,” he mumbled, his lip sticking out again.

Uncle Bubba pulled down the cargo door of the truck and brushed off his hands. “I guess that's it then.”

Aunt Livvy and Mom hugged and burst into tears.

“Women,” Buster and I said at the same time.

I looked at him sideways. “Good luck, Buster. Really. And try to stay out of trouble, will ya?” I smiled.

“Yeah, okay.” An expression passed over his face that I'd never seen before—something different from his usual rock-hard scowl. His chin started shaking and . . . Was he trying not to cry? I shifted my feet and looked the other way.

“Let me know what happens with the Union,” Uncle Bubba said to Dad.

“Will do,” Dad said.

They shook hands good-bye, so Buster and I did too. But our mothers insisted on hugging everybody and soaked our shirts with their tears. “We'll see yu'uns at Thanksgiving,” they both sobbed.

Uncle Bubba climbed into the truck and Aunt Livvy and Buster loaded into their station wagon. Mom, Dad, and I waved as they drove off down Poplar Trail. Mom kept wipin' her eyes.

“Grace, they're only going to be an hour and a half drive away,” Dad said. “It's not like you won't ever see your sister again.”

“I know,” she said, “but it won't be the same.”

I agreed. And somehow, I was feeling left behind.

r

Chapter 10

Halloween

A cold snap snuck in as Halloween grew closer. The sky turned a brilliant blue, making the orange landscape stand out even more. Along with the sulfur, the smell of fireplace smoke drifted through the air.

Mom and Dad weren't saying much to each other and the air in our house felt thick as mud with all the silence. Not that they had much chance to talk if they'd wanted to. Between Dad workin' so much overtime and all the Union meetings, I barely saw him anymore. So I was surprised when early one Saturday he woke me up and said, “Let's go get us a pumpkin, Jack.”

That meant going to the Spencer farm outside of Coppertown!

We drove west through the Tohachee River Gorge along the winding road that was cut into the cliff and ran dangerously close to the water's edge. Semi trucks passed us from time to time, nearly pushin' us against the rock wall. Dad said it was the only road running east-west through the mountains so the trucks had to use it—there was no other way through.

When trucks weren't blocking our view, I watched the river. It broke into foamy rapids over enormous boulders as it rushed through the gorge. The slope on the far side was covered in tall trees whose leaves had turned all different colors. It looked like a giant bowl of Fruity Pebbles cereal—even the rapids looked like milk runnin' through the middle.

I kept turning my head this way and that—I didn't want to miss a thing.

Classic country music spilled out of the radio—June and Anita Carter, Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline. Mom sang along to all of it. Dad reached for her hand and I leaned back in my seat, enjoying the break from the tension that had been growing in our house.

When we got to the Spencer farm, yellow, red, and purple leaves skittered across the parking lot like small animals. I chased after them, collecting a handful of perfect specimens, and showed 'em to Mom. She'd spent her summers as a little girl with her grandparents up on Beech Mountain in North Carolina, so she knew a thing or two about plants—even if her garden never did very well.

“This is a sugar maple,” she said. “You can tell by how yellow it is and its points. And that's an oak leaf.” It had more rounded edges and was deeply cut in. “And this is a tulip poplar.” It was what Buster's road was named after. It looked alien and fat compared to the others.

Even though Miss Post's quiz on trees was long past, I was still interested. And the real things looked way better than any pictures in a book. “I want to keep 'em,” I said.

“They'll dry out and turn brown if you leave them exposed,” Mom said.

She reached into the backseat and handed me her Bible, which she hadn't removed from the car since church last Sunday. “Here, press them between the pages. That'll help preserve 'em longer.”