As Simple as It Seems (10 page)

Pooch was scratching again, and when I opened my eyes to look at him, I could see that there were angry red hives staining the backs of his hands. Checking on the patch would have to wait—he was upset enough as it was.

I thought about my mother and wondered what she would do if she were in my place. I remembered a trick she'd used to distract me when I'd been little and scared about having to get a shot at the doctor.

“Let's sing,” I said in a chipper voice that mimicked the one she'd always used with me.

“Sing?”
said Pooch.

“To make the time pass more quickly.”

“I can't carry a tune,” he said.

“That doesn't matter,” I told him. “Nobody's listening but me. Do you know ‘Miss Mary Mack'? I'll teach you how the clapping part goes too. Put down the
umbrella—you'll need both hands.”

It wasn't raining anymore, so Pooch put down the umbrella and I taught him the words to the song.

Pooch made a halfhearted attempt to learn the clapping game that went along with the words, but his eyes kept darting around nervously, and the hives had spread to his neck and cheeks now.

“What if nobody comes?” he asked, rubbing the backs of his itchy hands down the legs of his pants to
scratch them. “What if we have to sit out here all night? What if there's a tornado and we tip over? Or a giant wave fills the boat with water and we sink?”

I had to think of something fast to stop Pooch's growing list of terrible what-ifs before he drove us both over the edge into full-blown panic. I didn't know enough about dinosaurs to carry on an intelligent conversation, and although I knew he was fascinated with the subject of ghosts and death, under the circumstances I didn't think it was a good time to bring that up. So I took a chance and guessed at another topic that I thought Pooch might want to talk about.

“Tell me about New York City.”

 

People in Clydesdale called New York City “The Dirty Side,” but everybody I'd ever met who lived there thought that it was something special. Pooch perked up immediately when I asked him about it.

“Have you ever been?” he said.

“Actually, I was born there,” I told him, and when he looked at me as if he didn't believe me, I added, “At Mount Sinai Hospital.”

Apparently that little detail was enough to convince him.

“No way!” he cried excitedly. “That's where I was
born too! I almost died because I came two months early. They had to stick a lot of tubes in me so I could breathe.”

“I almost died too,” I told him.

“Really? How come?”

It wasn't the direction I had thought the conversation would go in, but after all the lies I had told Pooch, I thought maybe telling him the truth for a change might undo some of the damage.

“My real mom was an alcoholic. She's the reason I look the way I do. And I got my mean streak from my real dad. He's in jail for killing someone.”

Pooch didn't say anything, so I figured maybe I'd gone too far and he was back to thinking that I was lying to him, but then I noticed that he was looking past me toward shore.

“Look!” he said, pointing.

Someone had heard our cries for help after all.

“Jack!”

As soon as he heard his name, Jack began running back and forth along the edge of the water barking frantically.

“He's a good swimmer, right?” Pooch said. “If we get him to come out to us, we can tie the rope to his collar and he can pull us back in.”

I crooked my pinkie and whistled.

“Come on, boy!” I called, clapping my hands. “Come and get us, Jackie boy.”

It didn't take much coaxing to get Jack into the water. Soon only his head and the tip of his tail were visible as he paddled steadily toward us. He was a strong swimmer despite his missing leg, and in no time at all he had reached the boat. Pooch scrambled up to the front and quickly began to pull in the rope. When the soggy frayed end finally floated into sight, he fished it out and handed it to me so I could lean over the side and attach it to Jack's collar.

“Careful!” warned Pooch as we tipped and the edge of the boat came precariously close to the water.

I told Pooch to scoot over and sit up on the opposite side of the boat to balance us while I tried once more to lean out and tie the rope to Jack's collar.

“Every time I get close, he swims away again,” I said.

I made several more attempts, but each time I reached for him, Jack would swim away. After a while he stopped coming near the boat at all and began paddling a few feet away in a big circle around us.

“What's he doing?” asked Pooch.

“I think he's protecting us.”

We sat in the boat watching as Jack continued to circle, his big paws paddling in a steady rhythm, head tipped back and ears floating out to the sides like wings. It started to rain again, but we didn't bother to put up the umbrella.

“Dumb dog,” I muttered in frustration.

“We could write a note and stick it under his collar,” suggested Pooch.

“We don't have anything to write on, and a note would just disintegrate when it got wet anyway. The rope is the best idea—we just have to figure out a way to get him to come closer.”

“Hey,” said Pooch suddenly, “does Jack like chocolate?”

“He's not allowed to eat chocolate. Why? Do you have some?”

Pooch started patting the pockets of his pants.

“I just remembered,” he said. “I've got one of those brownies you brought over yesterday. I never got a chance to taste them, so I stuck one in here somewhere in case I got hungry later and needed a snack.” He finally found the right pocket, reached in, and pulled out a neat little square of tinfoil. “We can use it to bribe Jack. I won't feed it to him. I'll just let him sniff it—then while he's distracted, you can put the rope around his neck.”

It was worth a try. Pooch unwrapped the brownie, got down on his knees, and held it over the side of the boat for Jack.

“Come and get it, boy,” he called. “Nice yummy brownie, just for you.”

Jack slowed down long enough to sniff the air but decided he wasn't interested and kept swimming.

“Too bad you don't have any cat food in your pockets,” I said. “I know he likes that.”

Finally Pooch gave up and sat back down in the boat, defeated. He looked at the brownie in his hand. Then he held it up to his face and studied it closely.

“I don't see any nuts in this, do you?” he asked.

I glanced at the brownie and shrugged. I was trying to think if there was any other way to get Jack to come closer.

“What about if we made a loop and tried to toss it over his head as he swims by?” I asked.

“Like Sugarfoot, you mean?”

“Who's Sugarfoot?” I asked.

“Some cowboy my dad used to watch on TV when he was little.” Pooch held the brownie out to me. “Want half?”

I shook my head. Pooch bit off a corner of the brownie and began to chew while I turned my attention
back to Jack, who was still circling the boat.

“Hand me the rope and let's see if I can make a loop,” I said.

Pooch didn't answer.

“Hurry up, hand me the rope,” I said again. “Here he comes.”

Pooch coughed, and when I looked over at him, his face was bright red and he had his hand on his throat.

“What's wrong?” I asked, alarmed. “Are you choking?”

He shook his head. His eyes were bulging.

“Nuts,”
he gasped, letting what was left of the brownie slip out of his hand and fall into the bottom of the boat.
“There must be nuts.”

Pooch was wheezing and clawing at his face with his fingernails. When he opened his mouth, I could see that his tongue was horribly swollen. He closed his eyes and slid off the seat into the bottom of the boat, and he lay there shaking while panic rose inside me in hot waves. My mother had made those brownies and only now, now when it was too late, did I remember what she'd said about the recipe.
Half regular flour, half nut flour.
The nut flour must have been made from walnuts! What was it he'd told me about his allergy attacks? There was something, but I couldn't think straight, I was so terrified.

“Tell me what to do, Pooch,” I said. “I don't know how to help you.”

But Pooch didn't answer; his whole body was shaking so violently now, it rocked the boat.

“Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “Somebody, help!”

I don't remember getting into the water, I only remember that it was cold. I must have scraped my face as I went over the side, because my cheek stung, and somehow I managed to knock my glasses off and lose them. Clinging to the side with both hands, and blind as a bat, I began to inch my way toward the back of the boat.

“Please don't die, Pooch,” I whispered. “Please don't die.”

My nightgown floated up around me like a cloud in a bottle green sky. When I reached the back of the boat, I hung there by my arms for a minute, stunned and shivering, and then I began to kick my feet the way I'd learned to do with a kickboard in the Washerville swimming pool. After a while I looked to the side, and to my great relief I could make out the jagged blur of trees changing shape as we slowly slipped past. It was working. We were moving toward shore.

Jack came and swam next to me, close enough that his big paws grazed my side underwater as he paddled. Now that he was within easy reach, I could have tried to tie the rope to him again, but it might not have worked and there wasn't any time to spare. There was
no sound coming from inside the boat; Pooch wasn't moving at all anymore.

 

I was out of breath and completely numb when I finally touched bottom with my feet. I quickly pulled the boat up onto shore and climbed in. Pooch was lying still in the bottom of the boat and didn't answer or open his eyes even when I shook him. Fearing the worst, I laid my head on his chest—and burst into grateful tears when I felt it rise and fall. Maybe it was the flood of relief that unclouded my brain long enough for my memory to retrieve the word—
EpiPen!

Frantically I searched Pooch's pockets, yanking out soggy tissue packs and several stashes of his little glass bottles until finally I found what I was looking for. Luckily the instructions were printed on the side of the EpiPen, and although I was as good as blind without my glasses, I was able to read them by holding the package up close to my face. I did what it said to do: pressed the black tip of the tube into the side of Pooch's thigh and held it there while I counted to five. Then I dropped the EpiPen on the ground beside the boat and ran to get help.

I never would have made it home without Jack. He was my eyes, leading me along the path. When I finally stumbled out of the woods, I ran across the yard and up
the front steps crying, “
Come quick! Come quick!
” but the house was completely dark and there was nobody home to hear my cries. Even without my glasses on I could tell that there was something odd about the way the door looked. When I ran my hands over it searching for the handle, I discovered that it was broken, hanging cockeyed from one hinge, a large hole in the mesh where Jack had pushed through the screen to get out. I tried to pull it open, but it was jammed, so I stood dripping wet on the porch, trying to figure out what to do next. The sound of my pounding heart echoed in my ears until it slowly dawned on me that the hollow steady thumping was not my heart at all, but the bass drum of the Clydesdale Band beating in the distance.

 

Annie and I had ridden our bikes down the hill into town many times together. Once she had even dared me to do it with my eyes closed. I thought about that time as I sped along on my bike through the dusky light, the blur of the dirt road flying by beneath me with only the sound of the band to guide me into town. I had left Jack at home, locked in the garage, whining. I was afraid that if I let him come along, he might run too close to the bike and accidentally knock me off or hurt himself. The music grew louder the closer I got, and finally I
skidded around the corner onto Main Street, where I could make out the shape of the crowd gathered in front of the bandstand. I got off my bike, letting it fall with a clatter to the ground. I can only imagine how I must have looked in my tattered nightgown, pushing through the crowd and jumping up onto the bandstand, wild-eyed and screaming for my mother. She was the only one I wanted and, like Honey, I had found my way to her.

“What is it, Verbena?” my mother said, as I clung to her, sobbing uncontrollably in front of the stunned crowd. “What's happened?”

 

The next part is a jumble. My father and some other local men left immediately to get Pooch. Because there was no road down to Bonners Lake, they had to go on foot. We didn't know the phone number over at the Allen house, so my mother and I went and got Pooch's mom and told her what had happened. By the time they carried Pooch out of the woods, it was dark out and the ambulance was waiting for him in our driveway.

I remember how cold the speckled rock felt under my bare muddy feet that night as I stood on it, watching the flashing red lights of the ambulance disappear down the hill into the darkness. My mother came and stood beside me.

“It's all my fault,” I told her. “I knew about the nut flour. I just forgot. I'll never forgive myself if—”

“It's not in your hands,” my mother said, putting her arm around me. “Come inside now and we'll find you something dry to put on.”

My mother tried to comfort me, but I couldn't stop thinking about how Pooch looked, lying there so small and helpless on the stretcher as they lifted him into the ambulance. Pooch had told me he believed death was a natural part of living. But I didn't want to live in a world that could take someone as good as Pooch away forever, while someone as rotten as me got a second chance.

“It's not fair,” I sobbed. “We have to do something.”

“All we can do now is pray,” my mother told me.

 

It was midnight when my father called to tell us that Pooch was out of danger. The doctors decided to keep him overnight for observation just to be sure, but he was going to be fine. I had been far too upset to eat or sleep, but after my father's phone call, I ate two bowls of chicken noodle soup, then curled up on the couch under a blanket with my head in my mother's lap. Honey came and sat on the arm of the couch, and Jack, exhausted, lay snoring on the floor beside me. He was still damp from being in the lake and he smelled awful, but I didn't care.
I reached down and worked my fingers into his fur, and I fell asleep with my hand resting on his back.

 

The next morning my mother dug up an old pair of glasses for me to wear until we could have some new ones made. She brought me cinnamon toast with the crusts cut off, and a cup of hot chocolate with a mountain of marshmallows floating in it.

“Do you want a bite?” I asked, holding out a piece of toast to her.

She looked at it. “I shouldn't,” she said, shaking her head.

I felt bad. She was probably saying no because of the mean things I'd said to her about her weight.

“You look really pretty today, Mom,” I told her.

She studied me, and her face softened.

“Thank you,” she said. When she turned to leave, I reached for her. “Don't go,” I said.

I scooched over to make room for my mother, and she came and sat beside me on the couch. There was something I needed to get off my chest.

“I know I wasn't supposed to be down at the lake,” I began, “and I know that I shouldn't have lied to Pooch. You probably think I don't know right from wrong, but it isn't true.”

My mother started to say something when there was a loud thump directly behind us—a sound we both knew meant that a bird had just hit the window. All the feeders hanging in the yard brought the birds in close to the house, and sometimes they would confuse a reflection in the glass for open sky. Whenever it happened, we would run outside to check. Usually the bird would have flown away already, and we'd never even know what kind it had been, but this time, when we turned to look at the window, there was an ominous spot of orange and a tiny white feather stuck to the glass.

My mother stood up and I followed her out into the yard, where we found a small bluish-gray bird lying in the grass beneath the window.

“Poor little thing,” she said, bending over it. “It's just a baby.”

The tiny bird was opening and closing its beak rapidly, but no sound came out.

“Should we take it to Dr. Finn?” I asked.

My mother shook her head.

“Better to leave it be,” she said.

The little fledgling spread its wings and raised its tail up and down a few times, as if testing to see if all the parts were still working. For a second I felt hopeful. Maybe once it had rested for a bit, it would recover
enough to fly away. But after a while the fluttering of its wings against the grass caused it to fall over onto its side, where it flopped helplessly for a minute until finally, exhausted, it lay still. The way it was tipped up, I could see its legs tucked underneath it, two brown cherry stems held tightly against its pale breast, the long delicate toes curled into tiny fists.

“Let's go back inside,” my mother urged.

“No,” I said, “I want to stay.”

I sank down in the grass, and my mother got down beside me. It lasted only a few minutes, the bird lying still throughout, with the exception of its rapid breathing and the beak, which continued to open and close in silent song until the very end.

I had seen dead animals along the side of the road, and fish washed up on the edge of Bonners Lake, but I had never witnessed the exact moment when life passed out of a creature. It was the most terrible and at the same time the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I started to cry, and my mother put her arm around me.

“These things happen,” she said, trying to comfort me.

But it wasn't the bird I was crying about.

“Please don't send me away,” I said.

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked.

“Like Teddy,” I said, “and Uncle Mike. I know I'm warped, just like them, but I can't help it. It's like some kind of poison got poured into me and it's turning me into somebody I don't want to be. I promise I'll try to do better. I do know right from wrong. Please don't give up on me.”

“Oh, Verbie,” my mother said, “how could you think that I would do such a thing? Send you away? You are my whole world. I couldn't live without you. Don't you know that?”

“But I'm bad,” I sobbed, the words catching in my throat like the tiny claws on the ends of the little dead bird's toes.

She took my face in her hands and held it tight until I'd caught my breath.

“I want you to listen to me very carefully,” she said. “You are not like Teddy or your uncle Mike. Do you hear me? You are sweet, and good, and kind.”

“I lied to Pooch and he almost died.”

“He's lucky to have a friend like you,” my mother said.

“
Lucky?
”

“You saved his life, Verbie. You were such a brave
girl to do what you did. I've never been more proud to be your mama.”

“You're just saying that to be nice. But no amount of nice can fix what's wrong with me. You said so yourself.”

“There's nothing wrong with you, little girl,” my mother said. “You're just growing up is all. Feeling mixed up and mad at the world is a part of that for almost everyone. It certainly was for me. I gave my parents a real run for their money—especially my mother. It'll pass, Sugarpea. I promise.”

When she called me by that name, I started to cry again, even harder this time. She put her arms around me and rocked me back and forth just like Pooch and I had rocked the boat to loosen it from the mud.

“Poor little thing,” she whispered, “poor little thing.”

I buried my face in her neck and closed my eyes, and we sat like that for a very long time. Mama and her Sugarpea.

We put the baby bird in a cardboard box and buried it under the lilac bush. I had never been to a funeral, except for the one in the fourth-grade play, so after we had covered the box with dirt I said the only words I knew that might be appropriate.