An Ocean in Iowa (19 page)

At breakfast, Mrs. Myerly still wasn’t her usual self.

Scotty used his fork to pick at his sunny-side up egg. The yoke split in two and he watched as the egg ran toward his toast. “No,” Scotty said, as if trying to tell the egg to turn back.

“Just eat it,” Mrs. Myerly said.

***

That Saturday morning, Claire and Maggie were surprised to see Scotty walk in the door. They had enjoyed the quiet while he’d been away.

“You’re back early,” Claire said from the sofa.

Scotty dropped his bag on the floor in the hallway.

Maggie, who was stretched out on the carpet, said, “Did you do something wrong?”

Scotty didn’t answer, but he was beginning to realize he had.

(15)

The last snowfall of the year came in late March, the day before Easter, and that was the one and only time Scotty helped
Andrew on his paper route. Encompassing Pleasant Street, Center Street, Twenty-first Street, Twentieth Place, Twentieth Street, and Nineteenth Street, the route consisted of sixty-one houses. And Scotty, dressed in three layers of clothing, barely able to move, went along with Andrew Crow.

Because of the early hour, the Judge followed in the Dodge at a safe distance. Claire had insisted the Judge go along. “Scotty is too young to be out at that hour,” she argued. And while she didn’t say it, Claire didn’t trust Andrew Crow.

The Judge knew she was right: It was too early for a seven-year-old.

***

“Do the first three houses. Skip the next two; do the last one,” Andrew had said only minutes earlier.

With four papers, Scotty ran as fast as he could. He opened the screen door of the first house and folded the paper as Andrew had instructed, dividing it into thirds, then tucking one end inside the other. Andrew Crow could fold the papers as he walked. But Scotty had to set the other papers down, kneel, and struggle to get the paper to Andrew’s specifications.

“It took me a while to get the hang of it,” Andrew would later say. “And I’m in the seventh grade.”

When Scotty got the paper folded in the best manner he could (after repeated tries), he walked up to the house, but the paper slipped from under his arm and fell onto the snow-covered porch. When it landed, the paper flopped open.

Scotty turned to see if Andrew had noticed but he’d already gone on to the next block.

It was dark and cold; snow covered every yard. While he stood motionless in his boots, his breathing became pained, his
little shoulders rising and falling, Scotty called out, “Andrew? Andrew?”

A breeze blew through the ice-covered trees, and Scotty hurried to the next house. When he saw the name on the mailbox, he suddenly stopped. It said Fowler. The Fowler house. Inside the Fowler family was sleeping, dreaming. Maybe Bev was dreaming about Mrs. Fowler.

It would be impossible to explain later what he felt then, but standing in front of him—seeing her without seeing her—near an evergreen tree, Scotty felt her, Mrs. Fowler, whom he could remember only vaguely (except for her thick glasses, she was a blur in his memory)—Bev Fowler’s dead mom stood before him.

“Hello, Scotty,” he thought she said.

The Judge’s car with its headlights on was idling at the bottom of the hill. Scotty didn’t have far to run, but he couldn’t move.

Bev Fowler’s mom swayed in the wind the way the trees and bushes swayed.

Gusts of wind snapped his face in bursts. Scotty couldn’t keep the warm tears from escaping—they rolled partway down his cheek. They rolled until they froze.

He listened as she spoke to him. Then he ran, almost falling, down the hill toward the Judge’s car. He was out of breath when he opened the passenger door. He tried to talk. He moved his hands, talking with them, making jerky gestures, as he struggled to describe what he had seen.

“You saw what… her ghost?”

Scotty didn’t know, but yes, he thought he had.

“Well, Scotty,” the Judge said. “Not many people see ghosts.”

Scotty spoke quickly, breathing in the middle of thoughts,
rushing to say it all. He told of how Mrs. Fowler was standing in front of the Fowler house, as if protecting it.

“What did she tell you?”

“She’s watching. Keeping guard. Making sure that her family is safe.”

Scotty finished his report, and in finishing, he had to sit through a long silence from the Judge. The silence gave Scotty the time to panic with this thought: Surely his father would yell at him, or, worse, laugh. Scotty had left himself wide open. He had lied about the death penalty, he’d disrupted school, he couldn’t even tie his shoes. Having destroyed all credibility, he would certainly be sent to where the kids with giant heads filled with water lie around all the time.

And in that moment, as Scotty clenched his teeth and his heart punched against his ribs, the Judge said simply, “That sounds like something Mrs. Fowler would do.”

Andrew appeared in the glare of the headlights. Rolling down the side window, the Judge explained that Scotty was too young to be a paper boy, so he was taking him home. And anticipating the next question, he said, “And yes, Andrew, you can keep your seventy-five cents.”

Then the Judge drove Scotty home.

***

The following morning Scotty woke to find a basket full of chocolate eggs, jelly beans, speckled malted milk balls, and a chocolate bunny with a red bow.

He brought the Easter basket to his bed, dug around in the green plastic grass, and by breakfast he’d eaten half of his candy.

At church, the Oceans took their regular place.

Behind them, a few rows back, Mrs. Myerly sat between her two boys. She had an Easter lily pinned to her pink dress.
Scotty turned and waited for her to make eye contact, but she stayed focused on the minister. Scotty even waved.

“Scotty,” Claire whispered, “behave.”

He turned around, faced front, and thought, I guess she didn’t see me.

(1)

In the first days of spring, Scotty Ocean abandoned his quest for another mother. Not because he didn’t want one, but by mid-April, he had a more pressing concern.

The group of fourth grade boys, the same ones who built the volcano out of chicken wire, set their sights on Scotty the April day he drank, in their opinion, too much water from the water fountain as they waited in line.

They told him they would be waiting for him after school.

In Mrs. Boyden’s classroom, while he sat dreading the end of the school day, Scotty looked around at the kids in his class. He had never felt so unpopular. He had a sometime friend in Tom Conway, but even Carole Staley had turned her attentions elsewhere, having taken a fancy to Craig Hunt and the new way he combed his hair (a part in the middle).

***

That day he walked home with Maggie, who stayed two steps ahead of him. She liked the distance between them. It served her, because she didn’t want anyone to think she was talking to her brother, especially the group of fourth grade boys who stood with their bikes just outside the Clover Hills Elementary entrance.

Scotty didn’t look at any of them. He stayed as close to Maggie as he could get, walking with his head down. He tried to appear unafraid by concentrating on avoiding the cracks in the sidewalk.

Occasionally one of the boys would pedal up to where Scotty was walking behind Maggie, suddenly slam on his brakes, leaving a fishtail skid mark on the street. Mostly they kept their distance. Maggie Ocean was a popular girl. And as long as Scotty stayed near her, he would not be hurt.

While walking, Maggie gave Scotty a pep talk. She shared her own personal experience. “You can’t figure out popularity,” she said. She told of a girl in the fifth grade who had been the teacher’s favorite in third. “In third grade everybody liked her.”

Scotty asked, “Who?”

Maggie said, “Jodi Jerard.”

Scotty went, “She’s a dud.”

“So you see my point.”

Scotty nodded even though he wasn’t putting it together. All he knew was Jodi Jerard was more of a dud than he was. He looked back to where the fourth grade boys—Cam Sweney, Bob Fowler (Bev’s brother), and others circled on their bikes. He wondered if Maggie knew they were being followed.

Maggie was aware of them, but she thought they were trailing her. She continued with her popularity theories explaining
how she, too,
once upon a time
had been unpopular. “Jodi Jerard had third grade and look where she is now. Fourth grade was more Becky Elder and Leann Stonebrook. Fifth grade is mine.” Maggie Ocean ruled fifth grade.

Scotty shrugged. He only understood what was being said in terms of him. And it wasn’t so much
what
was being said but rather the tone
in which
it was said. Maggie’s tone had a conflicted quality. Most of her sounded comforting but there was a warble, a kind of raspy bite to her voice that seemed to say, “I love watching you suffer, Scotty Ocean.”

As they walked, Scotty ran a stick along the Orvises’ white picket fence. He stopped listening to his sister and started listening to himself. Scotty felt loved and despised at the same time. The disparity of such feelings did not trouble him, for that is how he usually felt. And even though his television heroes—Jody on
Family Affair
, Little Joe on
Bonanza
, and Ernie on
My Three Sons
—seemed to escape such mixed-up emotions, they did have troubles of their own. Jody broke a vase once, Ernie lost his glasses, and that Sunday night, Scotty watched as Little Joe’s heart broke when the woman he loved turned out to be a liar, a cheat. Little Joe felt like crying but he didn’t cry because he’s not a crier. And when Little Joe gets sad, Scotty noted, he climbs on his horse and rides into town or sits at home at the Ponderosa and eats a good meal, and waits for everything to work out, which for Little Joe Cartwright, it always did.

“So Scotty,” Maggie concluded as they stepped up onto the porch of their house. “What do you think?”

“Uhm.”

“You didn’t listen, did you?”

“Yeah, I…”

“I just told you the secret of being popular. And you didn’t listen.” Maggie let the screen door slam. “Do you know how many people want to know the secret of being popular?”

Scotty stood on the porch for a moment, then looked back up the street two houses to where the pack of fourth grade boys stood, straddling their bikes. He had survived the day.

(2)

April birthdays included Mrs. Boyden, who asked the kids to sing “Happy Birthday” to her, which they did. She wouldn’t reveal her age, but she said that it was her greatest hope that all of the students would live as long as she had. “May you be so lucky.”

Ruth Rethman, whose actual birthday wasn’t until the end of June, had elected to celebrate hers on April 23.

Years earlier, Mrs. Boyden had realized there was an injustice being done to the students with summer birthdays. Since school would not be in session, she thought it only fair to let each kid with a summer birthday designate a day as theirs.

In the weeks to come, Shari Tussey and the Hammer twins would have their own parties, which weren’t parties really, but opportunities for mothers or fathers to bring treats for the entire class and for the honored student to wear the cone-shaped birthday hat for the entire day.

“Scotty,” Mrs. Boyden said, “you need to pick a date for your party.”

“No.”

“Don’t you want a party?”

Scotty shook his head.

Mrs. Boyden had never had a student who didn’t want a party. “Of course you do. Everyone wants a party.”

“No,” Scotty said as he wandered out to recess. Anyway, he thought, doesn’t she get it? I’m not turning eight.

(3)

Scotty’s alliance with Tom Conway was made out of necessity.

Tom had gone through an unpopular phase early in the year. He’d been beaten up by a group of boys from Sacred Heart, the Catholic school, but he hadn’t cried enough to make doing it again worth anybody’s while. So older boys left him alone. And he knew secret routes home, where a hole in a fence could allow for a quick getaway; he knew about strategy and outsmarting the older, dumber boys. Best of all, he had a secret weapon, and whenever Scotty heard it clunk around in Tom’s lunch pail, Scotty felt safe. How great, he thought, to have such power. He believed this had kept them safe, and this is why he made sure to walk home with Tom every day he could.

But, in truth, boys from the third through fifth grades had been assigned to their Little League teams. After school, on most days, these boys rode off to baseball practice. They had lost interest in beating up Scotty.

Tom must have known he had the upper hand in their relationship. “You pussy willow,” he liked to say. “Scotty is such a pussy willow.”

Scotty smiled at these words.

“You’re a dog face, a cat lick,” Conway ranted. “You’re a Q-tip—you’re a fart maker.”

Sometimes Scotty fell on his knees he laughed so hard. Or he rolled on his back in the new grass, cackling, his legs kicking at the sky above him.

And for a time things were fine.

***

Then, on a Friday afternoon at the end of April, Scotty and Tom walked home, their lunch pails swinging in unison. At the top of Ashworth Road, those same fourth grade boys—dressed in their new baseball uniforms—biked past them.

Without thinking, Scotty started to shout, “Hey, pussy willows!” Tom joined in. “You’re all fart makers!”

The fourth graders stopped on their bikes and looked back. They couldn’t believe what they were hearing: Two little runt second graders shouting at them, calling them names. They turned around and started after them.

Scotty and Tom ran, splitting off from each other immediately, as if by instinct. Tom headed toward the empty lot on Twenty-second Street where a new house was being built and Scotty proceeded straight down the street, disappearing from sight as he rounded the corner—unseen, he dove into a mini-forest of evergreen bushes, and began a desperate crawl.

He knew he was forbidden to be on the yard of the Lattimers. They were an old couple who didn’t like children. But emergency situations brought about desperate choices—using his forehead to burrow, Scotty went further, deeper into the middle, evergreen needles pricking him. It smelled like Christmas.