Chasing Augustus Read online

  I pedal faster as Avery Taylor swerves close, rolls his window down, and howls, “Get off the road!”

  I push on. Rain streams inside my shirt and down my arms. Leaves whip into my sprockets and clack and snap. Two dump trucks lined up at the sandpits, their lights on, their windshield wipers whipping, wait for me to pass. As they pull out and the engines grind and the wheels slap against the wet road, a driver leans out and yells, “Go home!” and points to the sky.

  I shake my head like I can’t hear and shoot ahead, listening for my dog’s heart beating as the wind spits grit into my teeth.

  In the next moment, the sky lights up and the first bang of thunder claps in front of me. The hairs on my arms split, the nerves in my neck twist. My dog wasn’t afraid of anything but thunder.

  The trees brace themselves, the ground waits. I try to remember what The World Book of Unbelievable and Spectacular Things says you are supposed to do in a storm like this, but the only page I can remember about lightning is the one with seven dead cows lying on their backs—their hooves raised stiffly in the air—and this hardly helps at all.

  Rain falls so hard it snakes into my goggles, and I have to pull them off and toss them in my basket. My heart rushes, my blood pumps. Harry’s going to thrash me.

  A bolt of lightning wallops a tree and bark snaps and sparks pop. Smoke fills my nose. Finally, after hemming and hawing, I turn my bike around—this is too much, even when you would do anything to find your dog, even when your dog is terrified of thunder and you know, big bear that he is, he could be shaking under a tree somewhere, his big gooseberry eyes lonely, scared, and miserable.

  I remember hearing a long time ago that if I ever got caught in a lightning storm, I should squat on the ground away from all trees and bury my head in my knees. I drag my bike off the road and hunker down, feeling like a wet onion.

  I am interrupted when a black jeep with a duct-taped roof rumbles up over the hill.

  The pounding rain makes my teeth chatter and pastes my T-shirt to my back, and the thunder banging all around me makes me jump—but these are not the reasons I shiver.

  Most folks don’t call her anything but Swanson.

  She’s not very old, not very young, but sort of in the middle, like my papa. She lives by herself on an old farm on the other side of town and never talks to anyone. My papa told me her mother died when she was a little girl and she never spoke after that.

  Every winter thousands of crows roost in her pine trees, and television cameras and newspaper reporters line up, but since she doesn’t talk, she runs into her little house, closes the curtains, and stays there until everyone gives up and goes home.

  Keeping to yourself like that just makes the rumors swirl. Kids all over town say she shoots squirrels and can catch you no matter how fast you run and they dare each other to knock on her door, see who can steal apples from her tree, place wagers on who can make her talk.

  Avery Taylor set up a betting pool when he was in sixth grade to see who was brave enough to break into her barn and climb her hayloft—at midnight.

  —

  The jeep rumbles to a stop. The engine trembles in the cold, the window rolls down. Swanson’s red-checked hunting hat is pulled low and covers most of her bone face. I smell the warm wet wool.

  I take a few steps back, trying to disappear into the rain. What’s she doing out here? Her farm is on the other side of town, where apple and peach orchards grow.

  My papa used to say her father was meaner than a skunk and she doesn’t have anything and never did. He was in the same grade and she wore shoes so big they slipped off her heels when she walked. She kept to the shadows and made herself so invisible that it was weeks before anyone noticed she wasn’t going to school anymore, and the only reason anyone figured it out was that the flap-flap-flap sound of her shoes was silent.

  My papa used to give her free donuts. Harry says she’s a piece of work.

  I try and melt into the rain as Swanson rolls the window down further. All around me thunder booms, rain falls in sheets; another clap of lightning hits and Swanson points to the passenger door. No kid in her right mind would ever climb into that jeep. I shake my head, rush to my bike, get a running start, and jump on. My goggles and helmet bounce in the basket because I don’t take time to put them on.

  It is nearly suppertime when I race a soaked Blackbird into town and past the big house with the sweeping lawns on Main Street where Gorilla Dog lives.

  He roars as he jumps off the porch and chases me, but I am faster than even the train and I whiz by the donut shop, where I know Harry will be standing at the giant mixer, adding the last of the yeast to the flour. I fly past with my head down.

  Blood pounds in my ears. I need an ice cube.

  Bells on the donut shop door clang behind me and I soar past the Shop Value and up our driveway, pushing my bike inside the shed, where Harry keeps his old ladder and all his tools, then I rush past Eddie’s Barbershop (not stopping for candy or a quick hello) and open the big door to our apartment building. Maybe Harry will believe me when I say it wasn’t me on the bike if I am already frying fish sticks and boiling peas.

  There is another card from my mum sticking out of the mailbox, you can tell from the tight, thin handwriting. I don’t stop, though, and I fly up the stairs, sopping wet, and I don’t see the boy in the gigantic wool coat. Of course I plow right into him.

  It is a hard hit and we both go flying and the Monopoly game he is holding flips upside down. Red hotels and little green houses scatter everywhere.

  “What are you doing just standing in the way like that?” I yell at him, rubbing my knee. I am on edge from the crash and wondering if Harry will catch up to me, and my voice is very loud.

  The boy burrows into his coat. His face is thin and pale and his cheekbones stick out like he hasn’t had enough to eat. It is hard to tell what the rest of him looks like, because the coat is five sizes too big and reaches to his ankles, but his eyes are a sharp blue.

  When Mrs. Salvatore sees me, she yells, “For the love of God, Rosalita, I told you to stay out of that storm.” I ignore her because I am watching the boy drop so far into his coat that his ears disappear. “Well, don’t just stand there like a clumsy ox,” she says. “Help Philippe clean it up.”

  Oh, fly me to the moon. I scoop up the Monopoly money as fast as I can, forgetting my bike helmet behind me until it thumps down the stairs at the exact moment the front door opens and my grandpa stomps in with a scowl the size of Saturn.

  He figures everything out in about two seconds, I can tell you that.

  Even my toes sweat. Harry doesn’t believe in air conditioners.

  My grandpa counts under his breath and tosses his hat on the coffee table and limps to his lazy chair, where he unties his work boots, slips his slippers on, and picks up the newspaper. He whips through the pages too fast.

  I hurry into my room—neat and orderly as always (with my papa’s old army blanket tucked tight)—and change into a dry shirt and a new pair of shorts. I wipe my springy curls with one of the thread-thin towels that Harry tells me we are going to keep until we can see through them, so stop complaining. Then we have our usual supper with Alex Trebek.

  Here’s how it works: I cook fish sticks, frozen peas, and fried potatoes on some nights, hot dogs and baked beans on others—the quickest suppers I can think of. Harry wants his jar of pickled hot cherry peppers on the table every night and do not forget the tartar sauce if you want any hearing left. Also, bread and margarine with every meal, you will be sorry if you forget, and make sure there is always coffee brewing. And if you leave the salt off the table you will get the boot right out the door. It’s a lot to remember, I can tell you that.

  The cat clock over the sink swings its tail, ticktock. I pile peas on our plates and snap on the little television that we keep in the kitchen and Jeopardy! pops on. Harry winces when he gets up from the lazy chair. My grandpa doesn’t want me noticing his gray hair or how his hip bothers
him from all the standing he does in front of the donut fryer. I am not supposed to ask why he is limping. If I want to live here, I do not stick my nose in his affairs.

  I put three fish sticks on my plate and three on Harry’s. I am mighty grateful for the TV. That way we don’t have to talk.

  Alex Trebek: “Galileo is said to have done gravity experiments by dropping weights from this tower.”

  Harry sits up, but I rush with “Leaning Tower of Pisa.”

  Harry grunts, scoops a forkful of fish stick. I wait to eat because a bite of peas might slow me down. The players keep their fingers on the answer buttons. My nose itches. My toes steady themselves.

  Alex Trebek: “It’s said that Catherine Howard, his fifth wife, still runs screaming through his palace.”

  “Henry the Eighth!” I scream, just as Harry says, “Hen—”

  My toes begin to relax and we go to commercial. I have to pretend to concentrate on the lady washing her kitchen floor with a Swiffer so I won’t have to make small talk with Harry. I eat some of my peas. I stab a potato. Harry spreads more margarine on his bread. He shakes salt on his fish. He spoons another lump of tartar sauce. Then he tosses his fork onto his plate and it clangs loudly.

  “What I want to know is how can you be thick as a plank?” His brows jab out over his glasses. “Riding out in a storm like that—you could have been killed.”

  —

  It would be so different with my papa. When things were wrong in my life, he would push the corduroy cushions together in the back of the donut shop and say, “Rosie-Posie, I know something’s wrong. You can’t fool an old bear like me—now sit and tell me everything.”

  Augustus would nestle up close and I would feel his warm dog breath on my neck and my papa would stir up a chocolate frappe with whipped cream in summer or a hot cocoa with cinnamon in winter. I’d let out all the hurting things about my mum (like how I really didn’t have chicken pox on Mother-Daughter Day, they were purple marker spots so I could stay home, or how she stomped all over the sunflower blooming inside me each time she told me I needed to try harder or I’d never amount to anything).

  My papa kept flipping donuts because it was easier to say things when someone wasn’t looking straight at you. My papa understood things like that. He knew all about kids and their feelings.

  “Well?”

  Harry takes a loud slurp of coffee and slams the cup down. The table groans. Lights flash, Alex Trebek tells the last-place contestant she is correct about the question I just missed while my ears were buzzing from Harry, and the points add up.

  “I told your mother when I took you that I knew nothing about raising a girl. But I do know one thing—you are grounded from that bike.”

  I jump up; my chair flips over. “For how long?”

  “Until you are thirty at least.”

  I wonder if he can do that. I decide he can’t. “But how will I find my dog?”

  He tosses his napkin on the table. “I already told you we can’t have a big sloppy dog like that living here. Now give it up.”

  Flea-brained-lout. “I will never give my dog up, not ever.”

  Harry drums the table. “I never asked for this, Jack,” he says under his breath.

  Jeopardy! comes back on. Harry snaps the television off. “That was Mrs. Salvatore’s new boy you ran over. She wants you to help him.” He takes another gulp of coffee.

  I clear the table. I throw the fish stick box and two soda cans in the trash, even though Harry tells me to recycle or else. I scour the baking sheet until my fingers cramp. I already mapped out my summer and it is this: each day, every day, I will look for my Augustus, and when I find him, we will spend each day, every day, doing what we love most—being together. “I don’t need you to help me make friends.”

  Harry grunts and puts the jar of pickled hot cherry peppers back in the refrigerator. “This boy—he’s a special case. The state asked Mrs. Salvatore to help. And it’s not your choice anyway. I’ve got plans for you all summer long—you will help this new boy get settled, plus you can do some cleaning, baking, mending, whatever the heck Mrs. Salvatore wants, and when you’re not doing that, you’ll be at the donut shop with me. One thing’s for sure—I’m locking up that bicycle.”

  I wheel around. “You can’t do that. You can’t ground me from my papa’s bike.”

  Harry’s ears sizzle. He stomps on the trash can so the lid pops up. “What’s this?” he snaps when he sees the cans I wasn’t supposed to put in there. “We get five cents apiece for these.”

  He pulls them out, finds the tuna can I stuffed in there yesterday and also the clam chowder can that now smells like the bottom of the ocean.

  “I could skin you alive,” he snarls as he digs deeper, and I imagine him reaching the coffee grounds and then feeling beneath to the report card where Miss Holloway listed my grades and wrote that for sixth grade I am going to have Mrs. Barrett (the teacher nobody wants). At the very bottom, in the comments box, she wrote, Rosalita has had a very difficult year.

  I go back to pot scrubbing. My head throbs. I hold my breath. Milk-livered-weasel.

  “What’s this?” he mutters, standing up behind me, and I hear the wet paper sound of him uncrumpling the folds in my life.

  After supper on Sunday nights I wait for my mum to call. Here’s how it works.

  Harry makes sure he is out of the house and off to the donut shop. I ask him doesn’t he want to stay and talk to her, too, but he pushes his fishing hat on his head and stomps to the door.

  “Then why do I have to?”

  He turns around. “Because she’s your mother. You got to talk to your mother. It won’t kill you.” Then he slams the door.

  I think maybe he is wrong. I think maybe it will.

  I sit at the kitchen table, put my feet up, crunch a carrot. I drum my fingers on the table. What I really want to do is get out to the toolshed, pick the lock, pull my bike out, and go find my dog.

  I flick on Jeopardy!

  Alex Trebek: “In 1865 he said, ‘Whenever I hear someone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.’ ”

  “Lincoln,” I whisper as the phone rings.

  —

  “Rosalita?”

  “It’s Rosie.”

  “Yes. How are you, Rosalita?” My mum’s voice is crisp, clipped.

  I shrug.

  “How is your summer?”

  Silence, except for the drumming of my fingers and the tapping of my toes.

  “Rosalita?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I asked you a question.”

  “I’m fine, same as ever.” I roll my eyes.

  Silence.

  “Very well, then. Put your grandfather on.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Again?”

  I nod.

  “Rosalita?”

  “He’s at the donut shop.”

  “Why? It’s like he doesn’t want to talk with me.”

  I nod.

  “Rosalita, I haven’t spoken with him in almost three months.”

  “Well, you call when he’s not here.”

  “I can’t help the time difference from California. I work very long hours, Rosalita. I would appreciate it if you would help me with this.”

  “It’s Rosie.”

  My mum sighs. “I need to talk with him occasionally, find out how things are going.”

  “It’s not my fault he’s not here.”

  “No, I didn’t say it was.” My mother is quiet, I hear her breathing. Alex Trebek says: “A Nebraska brick was a square of prairie turf used to build this type of house.”

  I whisper, “Sod.”

  “What?” my mum says. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing,” I snap.

  “Look, Rosalita, I would like to get more involved in your life.”

  I imagine her scrubbed and polished, her heels without a single nick. I make a little salute to the air. I am fine here. Not
perfect, but at least I have a chance at finding my dog.

  “Did you hear me, Rosalita?”

  I nod.

  “Rosalita? Why won’t you answer me? This is so frustrating.” There is quiet for a moment, then: “Robert, this is so upsetting.”

  Robert is her boyfriend. He is a lawyer, too, and when they aren’t working, they host dinner parties and serve caviar and thin crackers on tiny plates.

  I hear a muffled voice in the background, then my mum saying, “Rosalita?”

  “I’m here. What I really want to know is what did you do with my dog?”

  My mum sighs long and slow, like she is letting out fishing line. “You ask me this every single week. Robert, she asks me about that dog every time I call.” I hear deep breathing and then: “Rosalita, I already explained to you that I put a sign up at that grocery store across the street and someone came and took the dog. I don’t know who it was. Nor do I want to talk about this further.”

  She pauses, then says, “Rosalita?”

  I don’t answer.

  She sighs and says, “I am making plans to come out so we can discuss your future. Please tell your grandfather I will notify him directly.”

  Then I hear a click and she is gone.

  This is what it’s like to lose your dog.

  You are dull as paint and blank as paper. Your life used to be filled with the lumpiest dog you ever saw—one that pushed out screens and leaped out windows, he was so happy to see you.

  He’d run around you, dizzying you up like an old spinning top, and then he’d jump on you and you’d fall and he’d lick your face like you were a piece of sweet butterscotch and he’d turn up his mouth in that funny way of his and you knew he was grinning.

  You’d yell at him awful bad for pushing you over like that and for being such a big lug and you’d notice a sad look come in his eyes and you’d feel just terrible. So you’d let him have the fattest pillow on your bed that night, and when he was all snuggled up next to you, he’d sigh and get his Gloaty Gus look on him, like he had the best life of any dog ever, and of course you’d have to hug him because he was right.