When the last student to come out the middle-school door stepped on the bus, Doris didn’t pull forward.
“Where’s Luke?” she called out.
No one knew where Luke was, and Doris was obviously irritated. She radioed in to the school office to report Luke missing, then pulled forward to the elementary door. The younger students boarded the bus but Doris stayed put. She waited until Luke had been located, not at school but at Pillie’s. Doris was fifteen minutes off schedule and not too pleased.
As the bus let out the last student before heading up the hill out of town, Kaden moved up to the seat behind Doris.
“Could you stop at Emmett’s?” he asked. “I want to let him know Yo-Yo and I can help him split wood on Saturday. And you could use a little treat.”
“Well, for just a second,” Doris said as she swung the bus into Emmett’s driveway.
“Yo-Yo made the wall,” Emmett announced as Kaden and Doris entered the kitchen.
“You got the fishing pictures developed already?” Kaden asked. Emmett’s old camera used real film and sometimes it was months before he took enough pictures to use up a whole roll.
“Right there,” Emmett said, pointing to a photograph. Yo-Yo was holding up a not-very-big sunfish but a record-size smile stretched across his face. His hair was sopping and his wet shirt clung to his body. It was the first fish Yo-Yo ever caught. He was so excited when the fish tugged on the line, he fell off the log he was standing on, right into the water. But he landed the fish.
“Sweet! He’ll love it when he sees it,” Kaden told Emmett.
“Never seen a boy fall into the river as many times as that boy did,” Emmett said, “but he always came up grinning. I took two. You can give one to Yo-Yo.”
“You can give it to him yourself,” Kaden said. “He’ll be here with me Saturday to split wood.”
“Good,” said Emmett. “So, who wants pie and ice cream?”
It was more than an hour before Doris let Kaden off at the cabins. Gram sat on the couch with her feet up. The TV was on. She had a glass of iced tea in one hand and the remote in the other.
“Don’t know why people are so enamored with televisions,” she said, not even glancing at Kaden, who went straight to the refrigerator and put in half a pie. “Used to be good shows on TV, but there was nothing on all afternoon worth watching.”
Gram turned off the TV and looked up as Kaden turned around.
“What happened to you?” she said. Kaden’s face was streaked with sweat and dirt. His T-shirt had dirty hand marks down the front and his knees were covered with caked mud.
“Zoysia grass,” was all he said. He had to explain it thoroughly to Doris and Emmett but Gram didn’t need any more of an explanation.
“Oh, good. I was wondering if it got there,” Gram said. “How much did you get planted?”
“One thousand, nine hundred and fifty-seven,” Kaden said.
“All in fifty minutes?” Gram said. “I should have bought a thousand more.”
“No, you bought enough,” Kaden said. Plopping down on a kitchen chair, he told her how he and Yo-Yo planted 907 by themselves.
“Don’t worry,” Gram said. “I’m not going to order any more. We’ll see how these take first. Why don’t you go take a shower?”
“That’s exactly what I was planning,” Kaden said. “Where’s Dad?” The white truck was not in the driveway.
“He was gone most of the day. He has to meet with his parole officer every Monday and Wednesday,” Gram said. “But when he came back this afternoon, we had a little disagreement.”
“About what?”
“He wanted you to go with him to visit his friends and I told him you couldn’t, not on a school night.”
“He got mad about that?”
“That and my telling him I wasn’t too keen on you hanging around with his friends. I told him I need to know where you are and who you’re with,” Gram said.
“I was at Emmett’s,” Kaden said. “I needed to tell him Yo-Yo can come help split wood Saturday.”
“I knew where you were,” Gram said, “or at least I assumed I knew.”
“What if Dad had stopped at Emmett’s for me?”
“I thought of that,” Gram said, “but I trust you would have the good sense to say no on a school night. And to tell me where you were going.” Gram paused and started chuckling. “Not to mention, I know Doris and her rules. Doris would insist she bring you to the proper destination. Your dad would be no match against Doris when it came to obeying her rules.”
Kaden laughed with Gram, imagining Doris in a standoff with Dad. As he walked over to his cabin to get clean clothes, Kaden thought about what Yo-Yo would be saying if he had heard Gram. Yo-Yo would have Doris holding Kaden hostage in the bus with SWAT teams aiming guns at Dad’s white pickup. Yo-Yo’s influence had taken over and Kaden was in full TV-cop-show mode when he opened the screen door and stopped cold. Sitting on his bed was another gift. An MP3 player. A note was sitting beside it.
Got this from a friend. Thought you’d like to hear something besides that old stuff your grandma plays. —Dad
It kind of creeped Kaden out that when he least expected it, Dad had been there. In his room. In the tower. If Dad was going to give him gifts, he wished he would do it in person, face-to-face. Maybe it’s just hard for him to show his feelings, Kaden thought. Kaden put the note under the mattress with the photo album. Then he picked up the MP3 player, put the earbuds in, and turned it on. It was already loaded with a ton of music. He listened as he grabbed his clothes and went to Cabin Four. When he got done with his shower, Gram was on the porch.
“What’s that?” Gram asked, pointing to the cords coming from Kaden’s pocket to his ears.
“It’s an MP3 player,” Kaden answered. “Dad left it on my bed.”
“What’s an MP3 player?” Gram asked.
“It plays music,” Kaden said, pulling it out of his pocket and showing it to Gram. “Didn’t Dad show it to you?”
“No, didn’t say a word about it,” Gram said. “How much does one of those cost?”
“I don’t know, quite a bit,” Kaden said, “but I don’t think he paid anything. There was a note. He said he got it from a friend.”
“Is that right?” Gram stated. “So how does it work?”
Kaden told Gram how music was downloaded onto it.
“Just no playing music while you’re supposed to be studying,” Gram said as she got up.
“Okay,” Kaden said, following her into the cabin.
“Now put some music on the turntable so we can both listen,” Gram said, pulling out an album from under the sink. Soon Gram was singing along about a big tough guy nobody messed around with. Kaden got Gram laughing as he drowned out the chorus, singing how you couldn’t mess around with Gram either.
The rest of the evening felt good. Just Kaden and Gram. Back to normal. Except after dishes, Kaden turned on a TV and Gram watched, too.
