One Year in Coal Harbor (14 page)

After school Ked was waiting for me as usual but all I had time to do was call out that I had to catch up with Eleanor and I’d talk to him later. Then I took off after Eleanor, who was speeding toward town on her surprisingly fast dumpy little legs.

Eleanor must have sensed that I might turn desperate enough to leap on her and stop her from going to Uncle Jack’s, because she kept glancing back and speeding up whenever I got too close.

By the time Eleanor ran up the steps to his office and barged in without even knocking, I was two steps behind. My uncle looked up from his desk at our flushed faces in surprise. Then, as if sizing up the situation, he put his pen down and assumed a grave expression.

“Ked stole your money!” Eleanor blurted out. “I came over one day to, to, to …”

It was clear she hadn’t thought ahead how to explain this.

“You came over to?” prompted Uncle Jack.

“And I was peeking through the window and I saw him steal it. Everything that was in the jar on the table. He dumped it out and put it in his pockets.”

“He didn’t!” I cried. “He wouldn’t. You’re lying.”

“I’m not!” she said.

“You’re jealous and you’re lying!”

“I’m not. I wouldn’t want to be with either of you. He’s a delinquent and you’re, you’re CRAZY, like your whole family. My mother says only a crazy woman would go out in a boat in a storm and leave her child.”

Oh, not this again, I thought, rolling my eyes. I’d had so much of this the year my parents disappeared that I was inured to it.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” said Uncle Jack, putting up his hands.

Eleanor and I pulled ourselves up short and stood panting for a second.

“Let’s say,” he said slowly, “that he did take this money.”

“He DID!” shouted Eleanor.

“Okay,” said Uncle Jack. “Even if I knew for sure he did, you know what I would do about it?”

“What?” breathed Eleanor eagerly, as if
now
we were getting somewhere.

“Nothing.”

Her face fell.

“He didn’t anyway!” I said.

“He DID!”

“Just a second, Primrose,” said Uncle Jack, signaling me with his hands to be quiet. “You’re both missing the point. The point is that it is information that would be mine to do with as I liked and what I’d like to do with it is nothing. So case closed. Nowhere to go with this. Thanks very much, let’s all go back to what we were doing before this came up.” And he picked up his pen hopefully.

“Well, if you don’t do anything, I’m going to tell. I’m going to tell everyone and those boys will beat him up.”

“Why would the boys beat him up?” asked Uncle Jack, putting his pen back down.

“Because he let you think one of them had taken it.”

“In the first place, I don’t know where you got your information but I let them know last week they weren’t under suspicion and the matter was closed. So all of this is old news. To everyone.”

“You
KNEW
?” asked Eleanor.

“Yes,” said Uncle Jack.

“He never would. I don’t believe it,” I said. “If someone said he did, they lied. How could you tell the boys that Ked took it?”

“I didn’t,” said Uncle Jack. “No one knows anything, and that’s the way it is going to stay. As far as I’m concerned, I misplaced that change myself.”

“But you didn’t, because I
saw
him,” said Eleanor, and I could see she was simply insane by now, because never in her right mind would she argue this way with a grown-up. She was so out of character that any second I expected her to grab a pair of sharp scissors and wantonly cut up some paper. “Anyhow, you can’t keep me from telling everyone the truth.”

“Let me help you think of this differently, then,” said Uncle Jack, again signaling with his hands for me to stay quiet, because I had opened my mouth, although even I didn’t know what I was going to say this time. I was feeling almost as insane as Eleanor looked. “Think about all the children born into poverty and starving. I know you go to the Anglican church, Eleanor. Haven’t they been collecting money to help children in Africa with AIDS?”

“Yes.”

“Well, some of them still die, don’t they? Really, lots of them. Because they’re not as lucky as you.”

“Yes,” said Eleanor, but she still had on her insanely angry voice. I was kind of respecting how long she could keep herself stirred up. I didn’t think she had it in her.

“And think of all the terrible things that happen to people. And to trees too. Is it the trees’ fault they are to be clear-cut? People and animals and trees and everything alive are born into circumstances they have no control over. Bad and unfair things, undeserved things happen to them every day. And knowing this and how lucky we are,
we feel so helpless and maybe a little guilty because by chance we were born into better circumstances. And we can’t change that. We can’t level the playing field. We can’t make those circumstances not exist. But although we can’t keep undeserved bad things from happening, we do have control in making undeserved
good
things happen. We can say, Maybe this person technically doesn’t deserve that I give him a break, or look the other way, or let him get away with it. But I can. I have
that
power even if I haven’t the other. You see what I mean?”

“No,” said Eleanor.

“Is it fair that Ked has to stay in foster homes? That this is the childhood he is having?”

“Yes,” said Eleanor.

“No, it isn’t. Even you can see that!” I said.

“Really, Eleanor, do you think so? A good Christian like you?” asked Uncle Jack, and I could see by his slightly sarcastic tone that she was really beginning to annoy him, because Uncle Jack was never sarcastic. “Why is it fair? What did he do to deserve it?”

“Well, his parents—” started Eleanor, but Uncle Jack interrupted her.

“We’re not talking about what his parents did or didn’t do. We’re talking about Ked and what he’s got to contend with that none of us can change. Now, if he stole the money, does he deserve for me to let him off the hook? Is that
justice
?”

“NO!” said Eleanor, obviously feeling on much more secure ground now.

“That’s right, if he stole the money, justice would say that he shouldn’t be let off the hook. But I don’t believe in justice.”

“Huh!” snorted Eleanor, in a tone that implied that nothing he believed surprised
her
.

“Because if there was justice, he wouldn’t have had the childhood he’s had. Maybe we don’t live in a just universe. Maybe we live in a universe where all you have control over is your own kindness. And as far as I’m concerned, the kind thing to do is to leave that poor kid alone. And think about it, that’s quite an interesting little power to have. Get it?”

“No,” said Eleanor.

I looked at Uncle Jack but he didn’t look back at me. It was really quite an interesting idea and I wondered if he had come up with it on the spot. He was looking intensely at Eleanor, trying to bend her to his will. I could have told him he was whistling in the wind. Eleanor is one of those people who are normally incredibly wimpy, so it’s really annoying to find just how stubborn they can be when their wimpiness should be working in your favor.

Her brow was furrowed and she looked Uncle Jack right in the eye. “I don’t care. I’m going to tell everyone.”

“Then you’ll have to explain what you were doing at my house when you saw him. What
were
you doing?” asked Uncle Jack, looking innocently curious.

“I was …” She stopped.

“Were you there to see anyone in particular?” asked Uncle Jack. I didn’t think he knew about Spinky. I was pretty sure I was the only one who knew about Eleanor’s abiding love for him, but Uncle Jack was so much smarter than the average bear that sometimes even
knowing
how clever he was, he surprised me.

“I was looking for Primrose,” said Eleanor stoutly.

“No, she wasn’t,” I said. “I know who she was there to see, and if we’re going to be going around telling everyone things—”

“Never mind,” said Eleanor hastily. “You’re all crazy. You and your mom and your dad and your uncle. You’re all cracked. I don’t want to have anything to do with any of you.” Then, before she slammed the door, she said to me, “You’d better keep your mouth shut.”

“You’d better keep
your
mouth shut!” I called after her.

Then I sat down in the chair across from Uncle Jack and he got a box of bourbon biscuits out of his middle drawer and we silently ate about a dozen.

“You know Ked didn’t take the money, don’t you?” I said.

Uncle Jack looked at me for a long moment and then he said, “Of course, Primrose.”

When I got up to leave he heaved a sigh and said, “I’m going to be gone for a few weeks.”

“Where are you going?”

“Down island. I have a lot of business there. I’ve been
commissioned to hunt for some farmland around Duncan and I’m selling some holdings.”

“This is the worst time to go,” I protested. “Any second Dan Sneild could pop the question.”

“I’m sure he will,” said Uncle Jack, passing me the biscuits again. But now he had a twinkle in his eye. Did he
want
Miss Bowzer to marry Dan Sneild?

“Harumph,” I said.

“I think he is certainly going to pop the question and I think the answer is going to be yes and it’s part of the reason I’m going down island,” said Uncle Jack.

“To escape?” I asked. “Because it will break your heart? Can’t you fight for her?”

“Don’t worry, I have no desire to compete for the same heart that Dan Sneild is trying to claim.”

So that was final. Uncle Jack didn’t love Miss Bowzer after all. I had been wrong all along and so had my mother. All that French food for nothing. My stomach felt like stone. Miss Bowzer would marry an otter and Uncle Jack would be lonely forever. I took another bourbon biscuit and crunched on it with sharp, cranky teeth.

Uncle Jack did the same and finally said, “That friend of yours, Eleanor, is kind of a pill, isn’t she?”

I nodded and grabbed another bourbon biscuit. “I imagine she made up that lie because I kind of ditched her.”

“Jealousy,” said Uncle Jack, chewing ruminatively. “It’s amazing how often people try to stir up jealousy. You’re
always lucky if it doesn’t backfire. Read
Othello
, Primrose, it’s a very interesting play. Shakespeare knew everything.”

“I wasn’t
trying
to—” I began.

“I didn’t mean you. I was thinking of someone else. We’re out of bourbon biscuits,” he said, shaking the empty box. “Want a fruit crème?”

I was about to settle into emptying another cookie box with Uncle Jack when I saw Ked going down the street.

“I gotta go,” I said.

Uncle Jack looked up but kept trying to open the fruit crèmes and nodded. He was very intent on getting to those cookies and when I left he had two jammed in his mouth. He was not going to want his second TV dinner tonight.

I ran outside and joined Ked.

“I passed Eleanor,” he said. “She looked crazy and you wouldn’t believe the look she gave me. What happened?”

“Oh, girl stuff,” I said. “And I was just visiting my uncle. You know, popping in.”

I am the world’s worst liar, I thought. I didn’t sound remotely like myself.

Ked glanced at me and I could tell he thought I sounded phony too but he just said, “Let’s get the bikes.”

We rode and rode without talking and the woods and hills passed by and I couldn’t see how Ked could ever stand to leave this place. Why didn’t he fight to stay here?

We rode so long that by suppertime my legs were shaky
with fatigue but it was as if he and I and the hills were all part of one thing, separate from other things on Earth. Just as my mother and father and I were part of one thing, separate from all else. And these small subsets within the universe, I decided, are maybe what people love best. Whether it is you and the ocean or you and your sisters or you and your B and B, your husband and children.

I was thinking about this after dinner while I did homework and my parents watched TV but it wasn’t until I was in bed that night that I thought about Eleanor again, insane with jealousy because she’d been excluded from Ked’s and my subset. Then I wondered who Uncle Jack
did
mean, if it wasn’t me, when he was spouting off about trying to stir up jealousy.

In the weeks that followed, Ked and I rode out to Jackson Road every day to visit the trees while we could.

There were usually a few Hacky Sack kids on Jackson Road keeping an eye on the mountain. We also ran into them at The Girl on the Red Swing, where Miss Bowzer had taken to feeding them in exchange for help in the kitchen. The first night they came in, trying to pool their money to split a dinner, she said they could have the leftover chicken for free—she had cooked too much. They said it was nice of her but they were all vegetarians.

“I can’t just let them starve, Primrose,” she said to me. “They’ve got such big eyes under all that unruly hair.
They remind me of a miniature poodle I used to have. He was always covered in tangles with his eyes just peeking out. Of course, he was a meat-eater.” She sighed.

So after that she devised a vegetarian chili that they loved. She always kept a big pot on the stove and we got used to seeing them walking in at any time and helping themselves. Because of their ragged clothes and dreads she said they all looked like war orphans. She started calling them the vegetarian war orphans and it stuck and a lot of us called them that too.