Trouble (21 page)

Sanborn actually licked his lips.

They sat down and looked at the menu, and Mike was as good as his word—he came over in half a second, wiping one hand on his apron and holding a green pad in the other. "You boys look a little worse for wear," he said. "Like you slept in a car last night."

"Yeah," said Sanborn.

"And that looks sort of nasty," Mike said, nodding at Chay's Band-Aid. "Just happen?"

Chay nodded. "Little while ago," he said.

"How about you boys order, and then"—Mike bent down and looked at Chay's cheek—"I'll get you a proper bandage. That one's already soaked through. Anyone for the three-egg omelet special?" He took a stubby pencil out of his apron pocket.

Sanborn ordered the three-egg omelet special but asked if he could make it a four-egg omelet special, and Mike said he could for another seventy-five cents, and Sanborn said fine. Henry asked for something more human—two fried eggs with some link sausage and orange juice. And maybe some toast on the side.

"I got English muffins."

Henry took the English muffins and added a side order of bacon to go.

"You got a dog waiting on you?"

"A dog who loves bacon."

"Most do," said Mike. Then he looked at Chay.

"Coffee," Chay said.

Mike paused before he wrote on his pad. "You got to be more hungry than coffee."

Chay shook his head.

"Okay," Mike said. He wrote down Chay's order and headed back to the kitchen. But before he got there, he turned around and called, "Hey, I got this load of winter wood delivered yesterday. Five cords. I don't have time to stack it proper, and almost all of it still needs splitting. And the pine's got to be sorted out, because no matter how much I holler about it, there's always some of that cheap pine that gums things up. Anyway, three boys like you, you could probably do it all in a morning and part of an afternoon. Four bucks an hour. What do you say?"

"No, thanks," said Sanborn. He was still licking his lips and probably thinking about his four-egg omelet and wondering if it came with link sausage instead of bacon.

"I'll throw in breakfast and lunch, too, if you do a good job."

Henry shook his head. "We've got to get going. We're heading up to Katahdin."

"Oh," said Mike. "Climbers?"

"Yeah," said Sanborn, who was wishing Mike would go back to the kitchen.

"I'll do it," said Chay.

Sanborn and Henry looked at him.

"Great," said Mike.

"I'm not going to do it," said Sanborn.

"I'll get your bandage," said Mike, and went back into the kitchen.

"I'm not going to stay here and stack wood all morning," said Sanborn again.

"I didn't say you would."

"Then why did you say you'd do it? If you stack wood, then we have to wait around until you finish."

"He knows that," said Henry.

"So after we eat, we're gone," said Sanborn. "You can stay around and kill yourself, if you want."

"No one is going to pick up two guys and a dog," said Henry. "We found that out yesterday."

"Actually, one of us knew that a long time before the other one of us showed up with his dog."

Mike came back in with the bandage. "You boys know the difference between pine and oak?" Henry and Sanborn shook their heads. "You ever split wood before?" More shaking of heads. "Okay. Well, if you two decide to help out, I'll get you started. Then we'll see how it goes. You can change that bandage in here. And here's some antiseptic cream you should use."

Chay followed Mike back to the bathroom.

Sanborn leaned across the table.

"Listen, Henry, I'm not working around here all day. If we have to walk the rest of the way to Katahdin, we're going."

"He doesn't think we can do it," said Henry.

"Who? Mike? Of course he doesn't think we can do it. I've never split a piece of wood my whole life. You, either."

Henry shook his head. "Not Mike."

Sanborn sat back and looked at Henry. "So you have to prove to him that you can."

"No."

"Yes, you do. And so we're going to spend the day stacking wood behind Mike's Eats instead of driving up to Katahdin. What a jerk you are."

"I love you too, Sanborn."

"Jerk."

They didn't talk much after Chay came back, and it wasn't long before Mike brought Sanborn his four-egg omelet and Henry his fried eggs. But Mike brought Chay what looked like a five-egg omelet, its edges reaching the sides of the platter and covering the sausages stored beneath. "You're going to need something sticking to your bones if you're going to work," Mike said. Henry thought that what was on Chay's plate could have fed all three of them, plus anyone else who came in to Mike's Eats that morning. But Chay had no trouble with it.

He was finished when Mike came back with the side order of bacon and the bills for Sanborn and Henry. "You going to want these or not?" he said. He handed Henry the brown bag of bacon. The grease was already coming through.

Henry took the bag and looked at Sanborn. "I guess we're going to work," he said.

Chay didn't say anything. He didn't even look up from starting his last bit of sausage.

The door to Mike's Eats opened.

"You boys let me know when you're ready, and I'll show you what needs doing. How are you two this sunny morning?"

Mike said this last part to his new customers. Two policemen.

"We'll be fine as soon as we get a cup of your black coffee," one of them said.

Chay looked up, froze for a second, and then looked back down at what was left of his sausage. Henry felt his sudden and full fear.

"Looks like you got a load of wood to stack," said the other policeman.

"Yup. And I just hired these three boys to split and stack it for me."

"That right?" said the first policeman.

Henry felt their eyes shift toward them. He hoped that they didn't look at Chay and get suspicious. He figured that he should say something that would show that they had nothing to hide—like driving on a suspended license.

"Hey," he said.

Both the policemen nodded. "So where's that coffee?" the first one said.

When Mike went to get the coffee, Chay stood up—slowly—and turned and walked toward the door. He looked as though he was walking without any knees. Henry and Sanborn followed him out. "You be careful out there," said the second policeman.

"We will," said Henry, and tried to walk as if he didn't care—or at least more naturally than Chay.

When they got outside, Chay was already sitting in the pickup.

"Why were you walking so funny?" said Sanborn.

"I wasn't walking funny," said Henry.

"You were walking like you had to go to the bathroom."

"I was not."

"Oh, there's a brilliant comeback. 'I was not.' What's next? 'Oh, yeah?'"

Chay turned on the ignition.

Henry looked at Sanborn, then walked over to the truck and motioned for Chay to roll his window down. "What are you doing?" he said.

"If you want to come, get in."

"Chay, we didn't pay. If you drive away now, what do you think Mike will say to the two policemen in the diner?"

A long moment. Chay reached out and turned off the ignition. Henry could see that his hand was trembling.

"Let's just get to work," said Henry.

Chay looked up at Henry and laughed. Again, not a sweet laugh. "You're telling me to get to work. When is the last time you worked for something you ate?"

"Ask me in a few hours," said Henry. He went around back and climbed into the pickup bed. Black Dog was sitting up, wagging her tail because she'd been waiting for the promised bacon as patiently as a dog could. Henry tore open the bag, and she happily did the rest.

Henry climbed back down when she had finished eating the bacon and licking the bag, and then he heard Chay's door open and close.

Just as the two policemen came out of the diner.

Henry looked over at Chay, whose body had locked. He was staring down at the ground.

"Let's get going, Chay," said Henry. "Chay."

The two policemen sipped at their cups of coffee and watched them as they walked by. Then the second policeman strolled behind Chay's pickup and looked at the license plate. When he got back to his patrol car, he set his coffee on the roof, took out a pad, and wrote something down.

Mike came out, wiping his hands on his apron and letting the screen door slam behind him. He met the boys by the pile of wood—the suddenly huge, impossibly big pile of wood.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. Over here's where I want it stacked. You see where I've driven these posts in? Between them. Bark side up. Nice and flat and even, since I'm particular about how it looks. If you find any pine, it goes over there, between
those
posts." He looked in the pile and picked out a piece. "You see this? It's lighter than anything else, it's got a straight grain, kind of yellow, and it's got this piney smell." He held it out for the boys to smell, which they did. "That's for tourists who don't know any better and just want to sit out under the stars with a campfire and pretend they're roughing it. We split on this stump over here." He looked at Sanborn. "You want to split first?"

Sanborn—who was not a happy Sanborn—shrugged.

Mike picked up a length of wood and a maul that was leaning against the stump. "This is oak. See how it's too big for a woodstove? You set it up here on the stump and—" He swung the maul in a circle overhead and landed it on the end of the oak, which suddenly lay on the ground in two pieces. He looked up at Henry and Chay. "Oak always splits so nice," he said. "Why don't you boys get started on the stacking. Throw anything bigger than this"—he put his two hands together to show proper woodstove width—"throw those over here to the splitter. Once he gets tired, you can change around. And before you do any of that, you'd best get your dog tied somewhere over in that shade. There's rope inside the back door of the house up there"—he pointed up the hayfield—"if you need it. Just knock on the door and holler for one of the kids, and he'll find it for you. Tell them I told you to ask for a bowl of water, too."

Henry walked up to the house and knocked at the back door and hollered for one of the kids, who appeared with his mother, who figured out what he needed. But instead of going to find it, she yielded to the kid, who really, really, really wanted to help, and so it took a while until he found the rope and brought it over to Henry with the bowl of too much water, his mother smiling broadly the whole time. Henry took it from him and tousled the kid's hair—which the kid loved—and then walked back down to the diner and tied Black Dog in the shade while the kid held the bowl of water for her. After she finished her drink—which she really needed after the bacon grease—the kid sat down in the shade to pet her. Black Dog was overjoyed.

Henry started to stack with Chay while Sanborn tormented a piece of wood for about ten minutes or so until he finally got the knack of it—sort of. They worked that way for an hour, and then another hour, sweating in the growing heat of the bright day. Mike stopped them a couple of times with some sour lemonade, and once he split while they drank, splitting in a few minutes about as much as Sanborn had split in an hour. Then he handed the maul back to Sanborn. "Don't aim at the top," he said. "Aim at the block and go through the wood." Understanding dawned on Sanborn's face as if he had just figured out that the world is round and not flat. After that, the splitting went better.

And maybe it helped too that three more of Mike's kids came first to watch and then to help, which slowed things down considerably but which made splitting and stacking a lot more fun. Even Chay smiled.

By noontime, when the kids were called back up to the house and Sanborn announced that his four-egg omelet had worn off and that Mike had better have something good to eat for them soon, Chay and Henry had stacked almost two-thirds of the woodpile in rows as neat as anyone could ever want them. If it hadn't been for crew practices, Henry figured, his hands would have been all blisters. As it was, he felt as though he had gone through a couple of workouts. He watched Chay for a moment, turning the pieces bark-side-up on the top of the stack. His black hair was as wet as if he had dumped a pitcher of water over himself. So was Franklin's rugby shirt.

Henry handed a piece up to him and Chay turned to stack it—neatly. "So," said Henry without looking at him, "how come you didn't fight back this morning?"

Chay took the next two pieces from Henry's arms. He fitted those two as well.

"Suppose I had hurt you?" he said.

And Henry felt that he really was what Sanborn had been telling him all along—a jerk. Of course he couldn't fight back. How could Chay have won?

They walked together to the woodpile—which was a whole lot smaller now.

"Maybe a graveyard wasn't the best place to settle things," Henry said.

"The graveyard," said Chay. He began to take a load of wood into his arms, piece by piece. Henry did the same, throwing out some pine. "My family has nothing like that. I do not even know where they took my sister. They buried her in the refugee camp, but I don't know where. No place. A refugee camp is no place." He laughed his unhappy laugh. "That's where I'm heading now," he said. "No place."

They finished loading up their arms and walked back to stack the wood.

Henry thought of the cold stone brooding over his brother's grave:
. He thought of Franklin's empty room with no light turned on. He thought of the late-night dark of his own room, and of the wide emptiness of a cold sea.