If Kaden had gotten the dog he wanted for his eleventh birthday, it would have barked when the man walked up the narrow path from the road. The man would have wondered how a dog got trapped in the top of an abandoned fire tower. He would have tried to rescue it, and Kaden’s secret hiding spot would have been discovered instantly. But the man took no notice of a crow cawing incessantly from the window of the fire tower. Kubla was much better than a watchdog if you really wanted no one to notice you. And that was exactly what Kaden wanted. No one to notice.
Kaden should have easily gone through life unnoticed. He was very average. Average height and weight. Unnoticeable brown hair and eyes. Made average grades. But in the small town of Promise, Kaden felt he stood out like a crow against snow. He was the kid whose father was in prison.
When Kaden first heard the vehicle, he picked up the binoculars. Not many cars turned onto the rutted, nearly undriveable dirt road leading up to the fire tower. On the first warm days of spring or when the color changed in the fall, a few hikers might come from Chapston City, forty miles to the north. They would park at the log barricade and wander up the weedy path to the tower. There, they’d be disappointed to discover the bottom set of stairs was gone.
But this was a scorching August Friday. Hikers rarely came in the summer, discouraged not only by the heat but also by ticks and jungles of poison ivy. Kaden put the binoculars to his eyes. He focused on the spot where a small piece of road showed through the trees. Kubla sat on his shoulder. The vehicle soon passed through the open spot: an old white pickup with a big plastic cargo carrier taking up most of the bed.
When the truck disappeared under layers of leaves, Kaden sat down out of sight from anyone below and waited. Kubla waited, too, chattering in Kaden’s ear and pulling at strands of his hair. He pestered Kaden whenever he wanted to play, but now Kaden gently pushed the bird off his shoulder. It wasn’t long before the truck pulled up at the log barricade. Music drifted from its open windows. Then the engine turned off and the music quit. A door squeaked open and slammed shut. There was no talking.
Just one hiker, Kaden thought. He was tempted to take a quick peek but was afraid he’d be seen. People always looked up when they first approached the fire tower.
Kubla darted out one of the paneless windows, making a racket of harsh warning caws. Kaden knew the hiker was making the usual inspection of the tower and surrounding area. When Kubla perched on his favorite limb near the edge of the clearing and quieted to just a few grunts, Kaden knew the hiker was heading back toward the truck.
Kaden quietly peeked out. A man in blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a cowboy hat was stepping over the log barricade, his back to the tower. He didn’t look like the typical hiker. No daypack. No canteen hanging from his belt.
Kaden ducked back out of sight until he heard the truck start up. Once again, he picked up the binoculars. In the summer it was hard, but if he got at just the right angle, he could see where the dirt road met the main road. Kaden wanted to see which way the truck turned.
If the truck turned right, it would go around the bend past the five stone cabins where Kaden lived with Gram. Disappointed hikers frequently stopped there to ask where the trailhead was. Gram always had a grumpy lecture waiting for Kaden if hikers stopped.
“A worthless lot,” she’d say. “They’ve got too much time on their hands if they can just go tromping aimlessly through the woods all day. What they need are jobs, but not one even offered to help. It’s obvious the place could use some fixin’ up.”
Not that Gram would accept help from strangers, and she certainly wouldn’t pay anyone. She had Kaden, and when hikers bothered Gram, Kaden could expect extra chores to satisfy Gram’s fight against laziness.
Kaden kept his binoculars aimed at the little spot of road. If the truck turned left, it would curve down the hill and drive by Emmett’s. Emmett Adams was the only other person who lived this side of Promise. You couldn’t see his house from the cabins, but the old man was their only neighbor.
Unlike Gram, Emmett enjoyed company and had hand-painted signs lined up by the road inviting people to stop. One had a horse’s head with a cartoon bubble saying “Be Neigh . . . borly! Pull on in and have a chat.” Another had a dog saying “Come on in, I don’t bite.” On a third was a stick figure in a T-shirt, shorts, and big hiking boots saying “Hike on in—FREE DRINKS.” Not many stopped but when someone did, Emmett loved it.
“There’s no hiking trail at the tower,” Emmett would say, “but there’s the promise of a good time right down the hill.”
The hikers would politely chuckle at his lame joke but Emmett knew the hikers were good for business at the Big Apple Grocery Store and Pillie’s Purple Cow.
Now Kaden saw the truck slow to a stop at the main road.
“Good, he turned left,” Kaden told Kubla, who had flown back to the tower and was now strutting around the floor, proud he had run off another intruder. “Gram’s been grouchy enough lately without strangers irritating her.” Even as he said this, he wasn’t convinced the man in the white truck was really a stranger, though.
Kaden put down the binoculars and looked absently at the vast view of the late summer forest that spread in all directions below him. Normally, he would have been dreading returning to school. This year should have been especially worrisome. He would be starting middle school. But today, the last Friday of summer vacation, all Kaden could think about was the letter. It had been four days since the letter arrived. Four days of being able to think of nothing else.