The Summer Experiment Page 7

  “Where are your green sweatshirt and black bandana?” I asked, looking her over. Marilee stared down at the red blouse she was now wearing.

  “When Carla spotted me on the swings,” she said, “I knew she’d tell everyone what I had on. Carla has the biggest mouth in the apartment building. So I threw the sweatshirt away and just wore my blouse. And I got rid of the bandana too.”

  “If I ever plan to run away,” I said, “I’d like for you to organize it for me.”

  “I must be in trouble so big it’s invisible,” said Marilee. “I feel foolish, Robbie. My poor parents.”

  “Why did you go swing there in the first place?” I asked. That part had really gotten my attention and I’d put a lot of thought into it, trying to figure out a method to her madness and, therefore, maybe find her.

  “That swing is the last place I remember being truly happy,” said Marilee. “When Mom and I first moved up here, she and Dad were still together. She rented the apartment and started looking for a house. I thought we were all going to live in it. Then Dad drove up from Boston one weekend. He and Mom came out to where I was swinging in the yard and said they had to talk to me. That’s when they told me the truth, that Dad wouldn’t be moving into the new house after all. It felt good to be swinging there again. And then Carla Fowler saw me. Carla has eyes all over her head, like a housefly.”

  “Well, how in the world did you get here from there?” I asked.

  “I ran from the swings at the apartment building and around the corner to the Irving Station. That’s when I saw Mr. Hileman gassing up his truck there.”

  “Genius,” I said. “You’re a genius.” I knew right away what this meant. Charlie Hileman wouldn’t know if aliens landed on the roof of his rattling old truck. He was so out of touch that the transistor radio would seem like Star Wars. He lived alone on the other side of Peterson’s Mountain in a little house in the woods. Folks in town claimed Charlie still thought John Fitzgerald Kennedy was President. Unless a neighbor told him—and his closest neighbor was two miles—he wouldn’t even know Marilee had run away.

  “I got a ride back to Allagash with Mr. Hileman,” she said. “I told him Mack’s Bike Shop was fixing my bike and I needed a lift.”

  I thought about this. My dad’s pickup probably met Mr. Hileman’s old truck on the road. My dad probably even waved at Charlie.

  “Then I hid behind your mom’s lilac bushes,” Marilee continued, “until I saw you go out to the mailbox for the mail. That’s when I sneaked in the back door and up the stairs.”

  “You’ve been in my closet for over two hours?” I asked, amazed. I could never stand still that long, not in a closet anyway.

  “It felt like two days,” said Marilee. “So what happens now?”

  “Any second, you’ll hear a pickup truck roaring into this yard,” I said. “You will then go downstairs and out the front door. In the driveway you will find your mom, your dad, and a very nice woman named Sarah.” It was an order, not a request.

  “I can’t, Robbie,” Marilee said.

  “Yes, you can.”

  “They’ll ground me forever.”

  “Then I’ll see you again when you’re eighteen,” I said.

  Right on cue, I heard my dad’s pickup truck pull into the drive, spraying the pebbles Mom had put down that spring, once the snow was gone for good.

  I went to my bedroom window and peered down at the driveway. They were all piling out of the truck, like sardines from a can. And they were all talking nonstop. I turned and looked back at Marilee.

  “Ready?” I asked, and she nodded.

  “Ready,” she said.

  “Prepare to be hugged,” I added, “before you’re severely punished.”

  I stood at my bedroom window and watched the scene below. I figured Johnny would disappear before all the emotion started up, and I was right. He was nowhere to be seen. Marilee walked toward her parents with a straight and confident posture, which was a good sign. Although, I’ve read that Anne Boleyn did that same walk at the Tower of London just before they beheaded her.

  I saw Catherine’s face break into a big smile, her arms opening to her daughter. Then Mr. Evans hugged Sarah. And then Sarah and Catherine hugged. Then Sarah hugged Marilee. Then my mom and dad hugged Marilee at the same time. Then Mr. Evan hugged Sarah, and then Catherine. Then everyone hugged my mom. It was like watching Wheel of Fortune, when the contestant wins the money at the end of the show and their family and friends come running from the audience to rejoice with them.

  I heard the bad news later from my mom. Marilee would be grounded for a month. No computer. And no social activities, which meant no Taylor Swift concert. Ms. Swift was playing at the Caribou State Fair and we’d bought tickets. If Marilee couldn’t go, I would just give my ticket away. Going to a concert alone is like being one bookend. Taylor would just have to understand.

  But a month, and in the middle of summer vacation? That’s forever in my book.

  We might as well have stayed in school year-round.

  10

  Back on Track

  With Marilee grounded, my life was pretty much in limbo. I spent the next few days moping around the house, as Mom described it. On my fifth day of being friendless, I came to the conclusion that I needed a break from my own boredom. I looked at my bedroom clock. It was almost 11 a.m., and I knew what that meant over at Allagash Wood Products. Five minutes later, I was biking past the big sign near the main road that said Picnic Tables, Lawn Chairs, Lumber, etc. I was just putting the kickstand down on my bike when Grandpa came out of the main shop, carrying his black lunchbox.

  “Well, look who’s just in time to join me for a bite,” he said. He sat in the shade on the front porch, in one of the sample Adirondack chairs that were for sale, and motioned for me to grab my own chair. I heard the familiar creak as he opened his lunchbox. Three or four times a month, if I found myself looking at the ceiling in my bedroom with nothing much to do, I’d bike over and have lunch with my grandfather. That’s when he would tell me again about the olden days and the history of the big log drives that used to take place in Allagash. That’s when lumberjacks would go into the woods in the autumns and stay in lumber camps all winter as they cut logs. In the springtime, they’d roll the logs into the Allagash River and follow them down to the sawmills where the logs would be cut into lumber.

  “Millions of feet of lumber went down that river in the heyday of the big log drives,” Grandpa would say, and the steady sound of his voice, as if it were the river itself, would bring the past back to me so fresh it was like it had just happened yesterday.

  “Let’s see what her note says today,” Grandpa said, and found his eyeglasses in his shirt pocket. I took my submarine sandwich that I’d bought at Cramer’s Gas & Movie Rentals out of the plastic bag that I’d tied to my handlebars. I pulled out the cold can of Coke and opened it. Then I sat on the shop’s porch, in the shade next to Grandpa, and tore back the wrapping paper around my sandwich.

  “When life gives you lemons,” he read aloud, “make lemonade.” He scrunched up the note and tossed it into the trash can by the side of the shop. “I wish life had given your grandma lemons and she had made me a nice lemon pie. Or maybe those lemon squares with the sliced almonds on top.”

  Grandma put a note with a positive message in every one of Grandpa’s lunches. I know he liked the notes, even if he pretended not to by making light of them. Grandma told me that one day she forgot her daily message-in-the-lunchbox and Grandpa called her on his break, all upset and asking where his note was.

  “First thing I do is to get rid of her vegetable garden,” said Grandpa, as he picked the cucumber, tomato, and lettuce off his turkey sandwich. Grandma was doing her best to see that Grandpa ate healthy.

  “She’s just following doctor’s orders,” I reminded him.

  “Well, she doesn’t have
to,” said Grandpa. “It’s not like she’s in the Marines or anything.”

  “How old were you, Grandpa, when you went on your first log drive?” I asked.

  “I only went on three before they stopped the drives altogether in 1963,” said Grandpa. “I was fifteen when I went on my first one and seventeen on the last one. Some boys started even younger. It was the best way to learn, even though it was awful dangerous at times.”

  I knew this already, but I never grew tired of hearing Grandpa tell me. I also knew all about the log drives. There were lots of old photographs at the Allagash Historical Society and at the town library. Men wore red-and-black woolen jackets and corked boots. Some of them actually stood on the logs as they came downriver to stop them from jamming up. Now and then, an unlucky man went under the cold, swift water and never lived to see his next drive. But back then, the river was the only way to get those big logs down to the sawmills. Then the loggers started buying trucks and tractors and skidders, which had finally been invented. And before long, the log drives died away into history.

  “Yup,” said Grandpa as he finished a bite of his pure turkey sandwich. “I remember that last drive like it was yesterday. Spring of 1963. The older men, my father and uncles, they knew a way of life was gone for good. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” He pushed about in the paper towels Grandma had used to wrap his lunch.

  “Speaking of cookies, I wonder if she broke down and gave me a molasses cookie for dessert,” he said, his fingers searching. “God knows, I’ve eaten my share of yogurt and Jell-O. I’d like to sink my teeth into a big, fat chocolate donut right now or a piece of blueberry pie. They’re in season now, you know.”

  “Chocolate donuts?”

  “Blueberries,” said Grandpa, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “You’re starting to take after me, aren’t you?”

  I watched as he unwrapped a granola bar and then sighed, as if just the thought of blueberry pie might make him cry.

  “It’s not Grandma’s fault,” I reminded him. “Doctor Massey says your cholesterol level is way too high.”

  “He does, does he? Have you seen my doctor lately?” Grandpa asked, and it was my turn to smile. “I’d like to sit and watch him eat. I bet he’s chowing down right now on my blueberry pie, and he’ll wash it down with my chocolate donut.”

  “You’re so funny,” I said, still grinning. Doctor Massey was seventy-five pounds overweight if he was a pound. His belly even jiggled beneath his white lab coat.

  “You’d probably need a stepladder to reach his high cholesterol,” said Grandpa, and bit the end off his granola bar.

  “Tell me again, Grandpa, about George McKinnon. I know it’s a sad story, but I like hearing it.”

  “Well,” said Grandpa, and shifted his feet the way he always did, resting his elbows on the wide arms of the chair. I could smell the fresh pine smell and knew he’d made the chair just that morning. Allagash Wood Products built everything from local trees and were real careful about harvesting them. Even Martha Stewart had ordered a picnic table from them once. A reporter from the Bangor Daily News came and interviewed the owners about their famous sale. And then everyone went back about their business. That’s how it is in small towns. Sometimes there’s a flare-up of activity and excitement, such as the recent UFO sightings, and then folks just get over it and go on with their lives.

  “George was your great-great-grandfather on your daddy’s side of the family,” Grandpa was saying now. “He married a pretty girl named Sarah Gardner in the summer of eighteen hundred and sixty-five. That autumn, George left with the other lumberjacks to go up to the lumber camps in the woods above Allagash Falls. They would spend the winter up there cutting logs with crosscut saws and hauling them out to the riverbank with teams of workhorses. That’s how it was done back then. No cars, no phones, not even a postal service. Those camps were far up the Allagash River where the biggest spruce and fir and cedar were growing. So there was no coming and going for visits with family. The loggers stayed up in the woods until spring arrived and they came out with the logs, driving them downriver.”

  “And that’s why they called it a log drive?”

  “You got it,” he said. “You’re turning into a regular genius, you know that?”

  “So George McKinnon didn’t see Sarah all that long winter?” I asked. I knew the story well since Grandpa had told it to me many times. I just liked to let him know I was still listening and still curious about the olden days.

  “Nope,” said Grandpa. “He never saw hide nor hair of her.”

  “So what happened that spring of 1866 when he finally came down the Allagash River with the logs?”

  “Well, the first thing all the menfolk did, of course, was to make a beeline for home to say hello to wives and parents and children if they had them. Only, when George got to his house, he was met by some very sad faces.”

  I felt my eyes water. No matter how many times Grandpa told me this family history, the ending always caught me off guard. I didn’t ask, “What happened then, Grandpa?” I had such a big lump in my throat that I couldn’t say the words. I just sat there on the shady porch in the smaller Adirondack chair made for children and waited for the words to come to me.

  “It seems that his beloved Sarah, his bride of just the previous summer, had realized she was expecting a child not long after George left that autumn. Before the river broke free of its ice that spring, just a couple weeks before the log drive would start down with the logs, bringing the men home to Allagash, Sarah McKinnon went into labor. But it was a hard one, and there was no doctor nearby, just midwives who did all they knew how to do. But that wasn’t enough. Sarah Gardner McKinnon and her newborn baby girl both died. By the time George McKinnon opened the door to his house and announced happily that he was home, his wife and child were already in the cold, hard ground.”

  I wiped the warm tears from my eyes, then shoved the last of my sandwich back into the plastic bag that said CRAMER’S GAS & MOVIE RENTALS in big red letters on the front. I tried not to think of what George McKinnon must have felt that sad day so long ago.

  “Now, remember the rest of the story before you go boo-hooing and scaring all the customers away from this shop,” said Grandpa. I did my best to smile. “Don’t forget that five years later George married a pretty girl with long brown hair named Mary Jane Hafford, who would become your great-great-grandmother. He married her and they had a lot of children. One of them your great-grandfather, Tom. That’s how you’re here, honey. You’re here because that sad incident happened in the first place. Ain’t it strange how life can be?”

  “I don’t care,” I said. I didn’t. Sometimes, when I listened to the story, I would gladly give up ever being born just so Sarah and her baby girl could have lived. “Besides, if we weren’t born, we’d never know it anyway. We wouldn’t miss a thing.”

  Grandpa smiled. “Know what I admire about you, Robbie?” he asked. He was looking at his watch now and I knew that meant his lunch hour was over. “I like that you don’t run from the hard facts of life. You keep asking me to tell you that story, even though you know Sarah and the baby aren’t going to make it, no matter how many times I tell it. I can’t change the past. But still, you want to hear the truth of that day. That takes courage, honey.”

  And then he ruffled the top of my hair with his big hand, which I have always hated. I leaned in close, asking for his arms. That was the time, at the end of the story, that I really wanted to let loose and boo-hoo, as Grandpa calls it. I wanted to boo-hoo so loud I’d scare the daylights out of all the customers who might be driving up to the shop to buy a birdhouse or a kitchen stool or a canoe seat. I didn’t even care if one was Martha Stewart herself. But before I could cry, Grandpa did what he always did just then. He locked his arms around me and let me lie against his chest, smelling the sweet smell of his Old Spice aftershave, which comes in a white b
ottle with a little red clipper ship on it. He let me sink into the safety of his arms and be thankful that we were both born so that we got to know each other and share lunches and jokes and oral history every chance we got.

  “Hey, you,” said Grandpa, and lifted my chin so he could look into my watery eyes. “Would you do me a favor? Would you ride your bike over to Doc Massey’s house and snatch what’s left of my blueberry pie so I could have a bite of it for supper?”

  By the time I was done laughing, Grandpa had closed his black lunchbox and snapped it shut. He’d thrown what was left of his granola bar out to the Canada jays and chickadees and grackles that always came around to see what the crew at Allagash Wood Products might be having for lunch.

  Then Grandpa kissed me on my forehead and went back to work.

  ***

  Time crept on like a snail or an inchworm, slow as cold molasses. I felt like I was in a glass jar, looking out at the world as I waited for Marilee’s freedom. It had been two weeks since she’d run away and still I had heard nothing from her. I could only hope her parents would let her instant-message in a year or two. Maybe even attend school. But it was becoming apparent to me that I’d have to carry out the Peterson’s Mountain plan all by myself. And I didn’t like that idea. First of all, I missed not seeing my best friend. Second of all, I’d have to turn the fishing lantern on before I stood up and presented my ghostly self. Part of me, if the truth was told, was still a bit peeved at what Marilee did. I didn’t blame her parents for putting on the ball and chain. But it added a big ball and chain around my own ankle as well.

  The need for revenge, however, rarely goes away. Sometimes, it even grows larger. And mine had grown larger, like a giant poturn, as the days passed. Finally, I could stand it no longer. I folded Mom’s white nightgown and laid it on my bed. I grabbed a hand towel from my bathroom and put it on top of the gown. Down in the toolshed, I rummaged until I found the fishing light. I checked to see if it needed new batteries and it worked fine. But I’d bring a couple extras just in case I needed them. I had to think of everything, especially now that I was thinking alone.