New Jersey
Michael Colvert was lying on his bed, the rubber soles of his shoes pressed delicately against the wall, and he pulled back the leather pouch of his slingshot once more. He had sent nearly a hundred imaginary stones through the air.
He was glad to feel the smooth wood handle in his hand once more. He had tried to explain what a good shot he had become to his father, but his father hadn’t seemed much impressed. Michael wondered if his father thought he was a little old for slingshots and was, instead, ready to have his own gun—for hunting, though his father hadn’t said anything like that. To his friends’ bewilderment, Michael wouldn’t shoot at birds or squirrels, and used the slingshot only for target practice—soda bottles, old gasoline cans, school crossing and speed limit signs by the road—and now he could hit small targets from fifteen yards away. None of his other friends could make such a claim.
In the kitchen, he could hear the soft drone of his mother’s voice. In the last week, since he had returned home, she had spoken in hushed, halting tones every time someone called to see how the boy was doing.
“Well, we’re just taking it slow and easy,” she would say.
“We’re not really talking about that very much right now, to be honest.”
“A little quiet, but that’s to be expected, considering all that he’s been through.”
In these moments she was quick to turn to see if he was listening, which caused him to direct his attention out the window at the neighbor across the street, who was forever mowing the yard, or if he had a copy of Boys’ Life in his hand, he would read the headline “A Sailor’s Knot Saved This Scout’s Life!”—letting his lips move for effect—for the tenth time without reading any further.
James Colvert and his wife had separated nearly a year ago; he then moved to Michigan, where an old college friend had offered him a partnership in a shipping business. Michael had spoken to him a few times on the telephone since then—on Michael’s birthday, at Christmas, and when the Knicks made the playoffs. He promised to have Michael come visit him once he got settled into his new home, his new job, but mostly Michael’s mother had done what she could to erase him from their lives. Their marriage had been marked by long stretches of silence in between too many cruel arguments, and in a relatively brief spate of years they arrived at a general state of shock that they could have ever loved each other at all. There were no pictures of his father in the house, except for a snapshot Michael kept in his drawer of the two of them on a Ferris wheel at the state fair, with Michael holding a candy apple nub and his father flashing his crooked grin as the bright lights beneath them swam like colored fish.
Three weeks earlier Michael’s father had pressed his face against the narrow pane of glass inside the thick oak door, his eyes scanning the classroom, and Michael watched him for several seconds before recognizing him. Before Michael could say anything, the man gently opened the door, and Mrs. McCauley, the sixth-grade math teacher, walked over to him, her powdered face squeezed into an expression of concern, as he whispered into her ear. She nodded once and said, “Michael, your father needs to see you.” Whether any of this seemed unusual to Mrs. McCauley, Michael could not tell. He nodded and bounded out into the hallway, his heart racing.
“Well, here he is in the flesh,” James Colvert said. “Let me look at this fine-looking young man.” He put his warm, heavy hand on Michael’s shoulder, and at that moment Michael thought he might collapse from the weight of it.
“Now that’s what you call growing,” he said. “How tall are you now?”
“Fifty-seven inches, exactly,” Michael said quickly.
“I’ll bet you’re a hundred pounds, too,” James Colvert said.
“Almost,” Michael said.
His father nodded, and then turned to look over his shoulder.
“Well, let me explain the plan we’ve got going here, and then we can skedaddle. I’ve got a carload of fishing equipment out there in the car waiting for us, and all we have to do is hop in and take off.”
“Where are we going?” Michael said. He was aware of his voice bouncing off the lockers in the empty hallway.
“The Great Lakes State, where else?” James Colvert said. “Fishing, hunting, camping, whatever we like. But we have to go now is the thing. I talked to your principal all about it, so we’re all square there.”
“What about Mom?” Michael asked. He looked back in the window to see Mrs. McCauley drawing a pie chart on the blackboard.
“Mom knows all about it,” he said. This was a lie, and James Colvert was surprised at how much he enjoyed saying it. “She’s just kept it a secret, like I asked her. She’s good at keeping secrets, your mother. Case in point. But like I said, we have a whole heck of a lot of driving ahead of us, so we should get started.”
“What about school?”
“Yeah, your teacher’s in on it, too,” James Colvert whispered, but this wasn’t true, either. “It’s all right for you to miss the last few weeks, since you’re doing so well.” Earlier in the spring, he had called the school’s secretary for the date of the last day of classes, but by the time he booked their cabin, the available dates didn’t mesh with Michael’s school dates. That morning, after he watched Michael head off to school from his car parked down the street, then saw Michael’s mother drive off to work, he left a postcard in the mailbox explaining that he was taking Michael camping and that he would have him back by the end of June. He left no telephone number, and didn’t say where they would be—omissions he particularly relished.
James Colvert began walking down the hall, and Michael noticed the scuffed boots under his father’s khaki pants, which were severely worn, with a hole in one of the back pockets. Michael looked once more to his classroom, but Mrs. McCauley was out of view, and then someone said something to cause the class to laugh before she could quiet them down. Michael raced to catch up.
“Wait, my books,” he called out.
“You won’t need them,” his father said. “Your teacher will take care of them.”
There was a sparkling red Mercury Monterey out front, where the school buses would start to line up in the afternoon. Michael watched the bald spot on the back of his father’s head and tried to remember if it had been there before.
“Now was I lying about the fishing gear?” his father said, his arms held out like an eager salesman. There were at least four fishing rods that Michael could make out, and a large metal tackle box that sat on the vinyl seat. There was a net and a pair of adult-size waders lying on the floor.
Michael smiled—for the first time, he realized. “That’s a lot,” he said. “You could catch a whole lake with that.”
James Colvert snorted. “The car’s brand-new, too. I flew in a few days ago and picked it up for the trip.”
Michael felt light-headed; it was as if he had stepped inside one of his Richie Rich comics.
Traffic on the Garden State Parkway was light, and the stubby pines that had been planted just a few years earlier were towering over the roadside signs. When a truck carrying fruit out of the state and, some miles later, a truck carrying steel pipes passed, Michael was sure that the drivers were craning their heads to admire the beautiful car.
Later, when they were about to cross the New Jersey state line, Michael thought of giving a small cheer. He thought his father might appreciate that, but then it came and went, and no other sound he could think of over the low moan of the motor seemed particularly right.