Eleven (8 page)

Caroline waved her hand at them. “We never unpacked, only the things we absolutely needed.”

They sat on the couch with the small table in front of it. “Let's see what you have,” Caroline said.

He pulled the papers out of his pocket, messy now,
the rubber bands broken. They went through the driver's license, the ferry schedule, the scrap of paper:
Children's Home, 11th Street.

Next was a picture of Mack. He stood stiffly next to a woman, probably Lydia. They were leaning against the glass window of a hardware store, Clayton's. Last was a picture of a young girl sitting against a tree with water in the background. He'd seen that one before.
“Julia, your mother,”
Mack had said.

Sam wondered who she really was.

And that was all.

On Tuesday morning Sam was awake early again. Downstairs, he cut little pieces of glass and began to fit them into the small spaces he'd cut into the castle walls. He hurried now, anxious to join the walls together.

The tiny windows were longer than they were wide, almost slits. He ran glue along the edges, his hands sticky with it, the rectangles so small it took forever to put in each one. He just finished before it was time to get ready for school.

That afternoon, Mack had varnished the cabinet he'd made for Anima, and the four of them stood there in the empty restaurant, looking at it. “The best you've ever done, Mack,” Anima said.

Mack ran his hand along the wood, testing its smoothness. He and Mack did that with everything, always feeling for the last rough spots. Mack glanced over at him, and his eyes crinkled the way they did when he was about to smile. Sam smiled back and nodded. They were thinking the same thing. The wood would be smooth as glass.

Onji clapped his hand on Mack's shoulder. “Perfect, like everything you've ever done.”

Mack shook his head, a movement so quick Sam would have missed it ordinarily. If only he knew what Mack was thinking.

But then Anima said, “We'll have a celebration, all of us. And isn't your friend Caroline coming tomorrow? Ask her to stay for dinner.” She was laughing. “She hasn't lived until she's tasted my chicken curry.”

“As long as she doesn't know the ingredients.”

Anima had an innocent look on her face. “Everyone likes chicken.” Her delicate hands waved. “Onions and lemons—”

“It's the coriander, the cumin.”

“Good. I'll make an Indian cook out of you one of these days.”

The next afternoon, Caroline came, and they went into the workroom. She'd brought a box of carefully wrapped knights with her. She opened the one on top.

“The medieval lady.” He held it up. “She looks just like you.”

They perched on chairs in front of the table, and she
held the wall pieces as he glued them together and set them on the base. They stood back. “It's a castle,” she said. “It's really a castle. We should name it.”

He was surprised; he'd thought they'd talked about it. “Bold,” he said. “Bold Castle.”

“Just right,” she said, nodding.

“It fits, doesn't it?” He leaned over to show her where the surrounding wall would be, and she pulled a mirror out of her bag. “Guess I can do without this. You can use it for a moat.”

Why not? “Neat.”

Caroline wrote it all down, but then she glanced up, twisting her bracelets anxiously. “We have to hurry.”

“We have plenty of time. Anima said six o'clock. Onji's going to close early—”

“I don't mean that. My father's going to meet someone tonight about teaching art in a college. Can you imagine? He says he wants to settle down. My mother said it would be permanent; she was dancing around the kitchen.” She raised her hand. “Not here. It won't be here.”

Caroline stopped and went on in a voice so low he could hardly hear her. “One more school. I'll have to stand at the classroom door and all the faces will be strange, staring at me—”

She ran her hand over the castle wall. “But this is going to be the most perfect thing, Sam. If only I could live inside, hidden away with my family forever.”

“I'll build you a room and put the medieval lady inside.

No one will know you're in there, but you'll be there forever.”

He saw a quick flash of tears in her eyes. “And you can remember it when you go away.” He tried to think of something else to say, something easy, something that would take them away from her leaving. “Just a few rough spots here and there. Look.” He picked up the sandpaper and handed it to her. “If you rub lightly—”

She began to work with the sandpaper, her head tilted, her hair covering the side of her face. She brushed it back impatiently and looked out at the parking lot. “There's gravel out there. Maybe we could put a little of that around the edge and make a path.”

He nodded. Did they have gravel in the days of castles? They might have had crushed stone. And if not, it was their castle, after all.

And then it was time to go to Anima's. They walked around in front of the building with Mack, circling Night Cat, who was washing one paw. A sign on the door said

CLOSED TONIGHT FOR A PRIVATE PARTY.

“That's us,” Sam said.

Inside the restaurant, one table had been set up in the middle of the room for all of them. Even Onji's daughter, Ellie, was there.

Anima, her face red from the heat of the oven, brought out one tray after another, nodding at Caroline. “I love the cabinet Mack made for me, and someday Sam will be able to do the same thing.”

Sam looked toward the side of the room. Mack had used pine; he'd carved figures of birds into it, the birds they saw out back. He'd used antique brass for the handles and hinges.

Sam thought about what Anima had said. He couldn't do something like this cabinet yet, but someday he would. Mack's words:
“You have a gift.”

Could you have only one gift? He needed more. He needed Caroline to stay; he needed to know more about himself, Sam Bell. And suppose he could read? Thinking about having all of it was almost like telling himself the fairy tales Anima read, with genies and godmothers granting wishes.

Onji spread his hands wide. “Pretty sad when my greatest accomplishment is a hot pastrami sandwich.”

Sam looked across the table at Caroline. She was grinning at him. She remembered the first day in the cafeteria with the pastrami sandwich and the Gummi Bears. “Your sandwiches are the best,” she told Onji. “Sam is so lucky.”

Anima sat, and they began to eat, crunchy vegetables in a thick, spicy coating. “Will you stay and listen to me read tonight?” Anima asked Caroline.

“Of course,” Mack said. “Sam and I will drive her home afterward.”

“Good,” Anima said, going to the kitchen for more food.

“I'll stay too,” Ellie said. “A great dinner, then reading afterward. Anima's stories.” She tapped Onji's shoulder. “Remember that one about the old Iroquois legend? The islands the Creator dropped in the river, thousands of them?

Wasn't it where you and Mack grew up, where all of us were born?”

Mack said, “I'll go help Anima,” and Ellie said, “I will too,” and by the time they came back with almond pudding in small flowered bowls, the story was forgotten.

Except that it was all Sam thought about for the rest of the meal. “…
where all of us were born.”
It was the place he wanted to know about.

It rained the next morning, with thunder rolling across the sky, and even though Sam and Eric ran from the bus across the schoolyard, their shirts were soaked.

Sam went into the classroom, stamping the water out of his sneakers. Caroline was standing at her desk, squeezing the ends of her hair, drops of water spraying the desk in front of her.

A sub was there today. Caroline motioned to Sam and whispered, “Let's go down to the Media Center.”

They slipped out and went down the hall. “Great to have a sub,” Sam said. “She'll never miss us.” He jumped up to touch the ceiling light. “Ellie was talking last night—” he began.

“Yes. She said something about thousands of islands. Maybe ten thousand.”

They pushed open the doors. A kindergarten class was having a story hour, and Mrs. Hurd, the librarian, glanced up absently. “You might have dried yourselves off.”

“Just using the computer,” Caroline said. “We'll be careful.”

They sat next to each other, Caroline's notebook between them. “You know how to use the computer?” she asked.

“Anyone can press a button.” He grinned at her, but he was shivering. Maybe it was because his shirt was still wet, sticking to him, or maybe it was because of what might be there on the computer.

Caroline tapped his arm. “Punch in ‘ten thousand islands.’ ”

Easy to punch in 10,000. He hesitated, but how to spell
islands
⁷
.

She didn't wait; she leaned over to type it in for him, and instantly, a page of blue came up with numbers that stood out and were repeated over and over among the words.

“Florida,” she said.

He whispered it, closing his eyes.
Florida?

Mack's driver's license.

Caroline began to read. “Everglades, vacation paradise, boating. There are pictures here too, Sam.” She pointed with the mouse to bring the pictures up: mossy green trees reflected in swampy water, fishing boats under blue skies, and sails on the horizon.

Could he remember any of that? Could he picture
sailing that little toy boat there, holding the string as it bobbed along on the edge of the water? “Big fish,” he said. “Game fish, I think you call them. Do you see anything—”

She scrolled down and clicked. Immediately there was a photo of a huge fish coming up out of the water, glinting silver, its tail a fan. The fisherman, back arched, at the stern of a sailboat—it even had a double mast—strained to bring in the fish.

Florida.

The kindergarten class moved out of the Media Center and Mrs. Hurd wandered over to them. “What are you working on?”

Caroline's face flushed. “We have a project on the Middle Ages in Mrs. Stanek's room. We have to build a castle, knights…” Her voice trailed off. Her fingers were crossed.

Mrs. Hurd squinted at the screen. “I don't think Florida had anything to do with the Middle Ages. I'm not sure the Europeans had even gotten to the Everglades yet.”

“We just—” Sam said.

“I think you'd better go back to your classroom. And find some towels, dry yourselves off.”

They went out and stopped at the fountain for water. “Wet inside and out,” Caroline said.

“It's not right.”

“What? Walking out of the classroom without permission? Getting the library floor wet? Mrs. Hurd sending us back? What, Sam-I-Am?”

He ran his hands over his arms. He was still cold. “Florida doesn't feel right.”

She wiped her mouth. “But Mack's license—”

“I dream of cold. The water is gray, not blue; it's almost black.”

She nodded uncertainly.

He raised one shoulder. “Dreams aren't always right, I guess, but still—”

She sighed. “So maybe the legend doesn't fit.”

The door of their classroom opened and the kids barreled out, the sub in back of them.

“Art,” Caroline said. “I forgot.”

“Do you two belong to this class?” the sub said as they fell into line.

“They were probably in the Media Center,” Marcy said.

“Thank you, Marcy,” the sub said.

“Yes, thank you,” Sam echoed under his breath.

By that time they were filing into the art room. The teacher gave out paper. Free drawing.

Sam began to sketch. A sailboat with a double mast that looked like eleven. Water that was gray, the boat almost over on its side. Was he drawing the boat in the photo from the attic? Was it the toy boat? Or maybe it was a boat he'd like to build someday.

Which one ?

He couldn't be sure.

In the workroom that afternoon, Sam cleared the table to make room. Caroline had left her notebook. He flipped it open to the front. Castle
by Sam and Caroline.
Easy to read, and some of the other words weren't so hard either. They were written down in rows:
Plywood, e-z cut, tall, mist
, another word that had to be
moat
, one that might have been
gravel. Sandpaper.

In the back of the notebook were more words: some of hers, and the page he'd written.
Big fish M.

He put the notebook aside and opened Anima's book to a drawing. He began to cut the tower roofs, shaping them like pizzas, each circle cut into six pieces. The center points would be the peaks, and they'd fan out over the towers.

He leaned over the castle without its roof. He'd added a
room just for Caroline, and once the roofs were put on top, no one would be able to see inside. It would be just for her.

Perfect
, he could almost hear her say.

He looked out the half-opened window at the back of the workroom. The leaves that covered the trees were still pale and new looking, but shoots of wild onion poked up in patches among the reeds at the water's edge. It was really spring.

Caroline's voice was in his head:
Hurry, hurry.

Beyond the reeds, Mack sat on Anima's bench, head up to catch the sun. Onji stood in the water in old hip boots and his waterproof jacket, fishing. Ellie must be there today to take care of the deli.

Mack and Onji were laughing. “Your feet are so big you're mucking up the whole bottom,” Mack was saying. “The fish need glasses to see the bait.”

What was the name of that fish Onji had talked about? M. Sam hummed the sound, smoothing most of the small roof pieces before he remembered.
Muskie.

Sam threw the cloth over the castle and went around back to go to the deli. Mack and Onji saw him and raised their hands.

“Catch a pickerel for dinner, Onji,” Sam called.

“Maybe. I'll try.”

In the deli kitchen Ellie was stirring a pot of onion soup on the huge stove. “Want a taste?”

“I'll wait. I just want to use the computer in Onji's office. All right?”

“Why not?” Ellie said. “Dad would say, ‘Goodbye, computer, when Sam gets his hands on it.’ ”