2

I hung around the store most of the next day. It was Friday, the beginning of the weekend. People from downstate would be coming up to fish the Sandy River. Dad had always told them what kind of fishing tackle to buy. He had kept a supply of artificial flies, too, and could tell which one to use depending on what insects were flying around the river. Mom doesn’t know anything about that stuff. She depends on me because I used to fish with Dad all the time. Sometimes we’d fish from the canoe; sometimes we’d wade the river. Right now I was saving for some new waders.

When some preppy with neatly pressed khaki pants and a funny hat stuck all over with artificial flies comes in, he isn’t exactly happy about a twelve-year-old giving him advice. After we talk a while, though, he stops treating me like some smart-mouthed brat and starts paying attention.

Around two I went out for a Coke with Laura Schawn, who is my best friend. We’ll be in seventh grade next year. Laura and I don’t look at all alike. She’s got this perfect, sleek blonde hair that looks like she’s always combing it, which she isn’t because she’s not like that. I’m tall and gangling with washed-out brown hair that frizzes up into a bird’s nest if there’s even one drop of rain in the air. Laura is a little spacey and forgets things like when she’s supposed to meet you. But you can’t get mad at her because she has this friendly face. It’s round with big round eyes. She looks like the kind of person you make when you first learn to draw. Unlike me, she’s an indoor person who is always doing crafts. Their house is full of stuff made of pinecones and shells and dried flowers. Sometimes I think a hot glue gun is actually part of Laura’s arm. But she’s really loyal to her friends.

Once in my sixth grade class everyone had to give a report on how to identify mammals. I brought the droppings I collected in the woods from raccoons, porcupines, and deer to show the differences. Even though I had put everything in neat plastic bags, the teacher wanted to throw the droppings and me with them out of the room.

Laura raised her hand and said that I had showed her a book a real scientist had written about that stuff and that it was a scientific way to recognize an animal. Later she told me what I did was the grossest thing she had ever seen.

Laura’s dad is an assessor for the township. He checks out houses to see how much they’re worth so he can figure out what the taxes are going to be. I could see she had some news she was dying to tell me. “Dad went to the Tracy place,” she said.

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that.” I still thought of the land as ours. “Was Mr. Tracy there?”

“No. Dad just looked through the windows.”

I asked, “What’s it like inside?” But I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I wanted to keep thinking of it just the way it was when we lived there.

“There were a lot of airplane models hanging from the ceiling. Otherwise it was mostly empty except for some chairs and tables and a bed. He said the cabin didn’t look lived in. I think it’s a hideout.”

Laura has a super imagination. “From what?”

“Maybe Mr. Tracy escaped from jail or some foreign country.”

I thought she might be right. If he didn’t have something to hide, why would he want to put a fence around himself?

A few days later, T. R. Tracy did something even more stupid than putting up a fence. Mom had given me the afternoon off so I could go fishing.

Fishing is my way of feeling close to my dad. He and I had been out on the river in every season and all kinds of weather. Every April he let me skip school on the day that trout season opened. Sometimes it was so cold we had to beach the canoe and build a fire to warm our fingers so we could keep casting. We were out all summer, too, even on a rainy day when you had a hard time telling whether the dimples in the water were raindrops or trout rising. In the fall the summer fishermen were gone, and we fished with the bright colors of the leaves and the smell of wood smoke from the cabins along the river. It was always a sad time because we knew winter was coming and there would be an end to our days on the river.

Sometimes I go over Dad’s fishing diary. He kept it from the time he was a boy. It shows when and where he fished — near the swamp, on the high banks, or just below the bridge. It tells what flies he used, maybe a coachman or a streamer, and what the weather was like. There might have been a hatch on or a light rain. It even lists the number and size of the trout. A lot of the time there’s a note saying, “Lily was with me.”

I was drifting along the river, thinking of all those times Dad and I had fished. The afternoon sun lit up the water so I could see the ripples of sand and the bright stones on the river bottom. As the boat rounded the bend, I noticed one of the men who had been putting up the fence. I didn’t recognize him, so he wasn’t a local. He must have been from some downstate construction company. He was pounding a row of cedar logs into the river bottom. The logs were like a stockade shutting off T. R. Tracy’s landing.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I screeched at him.

He looked at me like I was something that had crawled up from the river bottom. “What I’m paid to do. Give the guy a little privacy.”

“If you leave those stakes in, they’ll change the course of the river. Anyhow, they look terrible.”

“That’s none of my business. And I’d guess it’s none of yours.” He began pounding again.

I turned my canoe around and headed upriver toward town. There was no way I was going to let those logs stay there. I felt like a vampire must feel when some busybody drives a stake through its heart. It’s true I was angry with the river, but I still couldn’t let anything bad happen to it.

Two nights later I was back with a rubber mallet in my canoe. You have to understand about the river at night. It’s not just a straight shot downstream. There are sandbars where you can get stuck and stumps in the middle of the river below water level that can knock a hole in your boat. There are sharp bends where the current takes you where you don’t want to go. Worst of all are the sweepers, dead trees that lean out over the river. If you don’t see them, they can sweep you into the water.

Even though I know every inch of the river, Mom doesn’t like me to take the canoe out alone at night. But I knew she would never find out because it was Midnight Madness in Rivertown. The Chamber of Commerce had planned a night when all the stores were open until midnight and had big sales going on. Mom said it was too late for me to be up, so she got Ben Baker to help her. He’s a deputy sheriff and has eight kids, so he always needs extra money. Mom was at the store thinking I was safe in bed. I eased the canoe into the river and headed for Mr. Tracy’s. In spite of a bright moon, it was hard to see. The day had been steamy hot, but the river never stands still, so it’s always cold. That meant there was a fog over the river. Dad called it “a dance of veils.”

An animal was moving along the shore, maybe a raccoon after crayfish or a fox nosing around for ducklings. There was a caddis hatch on, and clouds of fish flies were sneaking out of the water to try their wings. A bat was swinging through the air like a trapeze artist, gulping down the flies.

Because of the fog, it took me extra long to reach the cabin. I was relieved to see everything was dark. The river was shallow at the landing, only up to my knees. I tied my boat up to a tree and waded into the freezing river. I started to pry one of the logs free, giving it some swings with the mallet. Because the mallet was rubber, it hardly made any noise. After a few whacks the log loosened. I yanked it free and gave it a push down the river. One after another I loosened the logs. It took nearly an hour. As the last one floated away, I heard a noise. When I looked up, I saw a light go on and a door open. A flashlight swept over me. A second later I had the canoe untied and was paddling upriver as fast as I could. I started worrying about what I had done. I remembered the warning my dad used to give me: “Don’t just do something, Lily, stand there.”

I made it home and under the covers only minutes before Mom got there. I called out to let her know I was awake. She came into my bedroom, flung herself into a chair, and stretched out her legs. “As far as I’m concerned, the next time the Chamber of Commerce thinks up something like this, they can stay up all night themselves and do the selling. I broke another nail, and right in the middle of the rush Ben got a call from Sheriff Bronson and had to take off. The sheriff wanted Ben to go out on a call. Evidently something was going on at our old place. I can’t imagine what it was.”

“Who called the sheriff?”

“The mysterious Mr. Tracy.”

“Did Ben say what was wrong?” My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if Mom could see my chest bumping the covers up and down.

“Some sort of vandalism. We certainly never had anything like that when we lived there.”

“He shouldn’t have put a fence up.”

“No. I’m sure that made him enemies. Still, that doesn’t excuse breaking the law. After all, it’s his land to do with as he pleases. Now you better go back to sleep. Pleasant dreams, sweetie.”

My dreams weren’t pleasant. I dreamed I was in prison and the Bad Hads were the jailers and wouldn’t give me anything to eat but dog biscuits.