Chapter 5
When you live protected by branches and leaves, you favor privacy. Unexpected visitors might even make you edgy. In our case, unexpected visitors often mean the electricity company wants a check or a repo man wants to take Toivo’s truck because he hasn’t paid the bills.
Once, a visitor on an early morning a lot like this one turned into a sheriff standing on our stoop, gesturing Toivo outside, putting his arm around Toivo’s shoulders, and whispering to him quietly as he looked back toward me and Mikko and Alexi.
“Who is it?” I ask Toivo. He shushes me.
There’s a knock on the door. It reminds me of that sheriff’s knock on the door, the one that led to news that brought Toivo to his knees.
Toivo puts one hand over each of the boys’ mouths. “Shhh,” he says. “Get down!”
I crouch on the kitchen floor next to where Toivo and the boys are slouched.
“Who are we hiding from?” I whisper.
“Hello?” comes a woman’s voice from behind the door. Rap, rap, rap. “Mr. Heikkenen?”
Our door is so thin that we can hear her muttering to herself. “Now where did I put that paper?”
Then she yells through the door, “Mr. Toivo?” We can hear papers fluttering, and more mumbling. “What kind of a name is that? Which of these is his first name?”
Now she’s speaking up again. “Mr. Toivo Heikkenen, are you in there? Mr. Heikkenen Toivo! I know this is unexpected, but I had another case just up the road, and I’ve been trying to catch you at home for so long, so I thought I’d stop by.”
We hear sounds like briefcase latches unsnapping. “Let me see here,” she says to herself. “I know it’s here somewhere.…”
Rap, rap, rap. “It’s Miss Tassel, Mr. Toivo. The court has appointed me to your case. We need to schedule the home inspection.”
She drops something that lands with a thud on the porch. “Oh, shoot.” Another thud of something dropping. “For crying out loud, I’m wearing two different shoes!”
Toivo rolls his eyes. The boys put their own hands over Toivo’s hands, which are still covering their mouths. Their wild eyes are watering with laughter.
“Okay, then,” she calls. There’s more shuffling and scratching. A business card slips under the crack in the door. Nobody moves to get it.
The clack, click, clack, click of her mismatched shoes takes her back to her car. We creep up to the window and peer out.
Miss Tassel is short, but she has at least a foot of hair curling off her head. She opens the passenger side of her tan Caprice Classic. Papers and a plastic coffee cup fall out onto the ground. She throws in her briefcase and quickly gathers up the trash and tosses it back into the car before she gets in.
When she turns the ignition, the car goes click and tick and then quiets.
“Starter’s bad,” says Toivo. He chews on the corner of his thumbnail.
She tries again. Tick. Tick. Tick. Miss Tassel smacks the dashboard with her bare hand.
“That’s not going to help,” Toivo says.
Almost as if she’s heard Toivo, Miss Tassel leans back in her seat and crosses herself, then presses her hands together in prayer. She closes her eyes and moves her lips.
“That’s not going to help, either,” I say.
“You got that right,” says Toivo.
Miss Tassel rolls down the window to listen to the engine as she turns the ignition key. She’s clenching the steering wheel and standing on the accelerator. “Come on! Help me, Jesus. Come on! Come on!”
Mikko and Alexi are laughing full on now.
“Good grief,” says Toivo. He stands up. “Grab my hammer, Mikko,” he says.
“Yay!” screams Mikko. He dashes off to grab the hammer out of Toivo’s tool bag, which rests next to the couch.
“Yippee!” shouts Alexi. “Are we going to break her windows?”
“Her bumper?” asks Mikko. He hands the hammer to Toivo and looks up at him with hopeful eyes.
Toivo runs his hand through his thin hair. “Boys, I’m going to fix her car, not wreck it.” Toivo used to work as a mechanic at the motor company before the factory closed up and a lot of people in town lost their jobs.
He squeezes my shoulder. “I guess the jig is up. Fernny, finish getting the boys ready for school.”
Before you know it, Toivo’s shimmied under the front of Miss Tassel’s car to give the starter a whack. Before I close the door, Mikko sniffs. “Smells like smoke out there,” he says.
I smell it, too. Suddenly, my heart drops. “What did Miss Tassel say?” I ask the boys. “Did she say something about being ‘just up the road’?”
The boys ignore me while they stuff their feet into their shoes. Alexi’s big toe sticks out of a hole in his.
“Hurry up, guys,” I say. “Let’s go.” I weave their arms through the straps of their backpacks and shove them out the door.
Miss Tassel stands near the bumper of her car. Toivo’s legs stick out from underneath it.
“Hi, kids!” She’s got a great big smile on that looks sincere but makes me nervous.
“Hi,” I say.
“On your way to school?” she asks. She crosses her arms, then uncrosses them. Maybe she’s nervous, too.
“Yeah, but we’ve got to pick up our neighbors first.”
Her smile tightens. She points up the road with long pink fingernails. “You mean those children who live over there?”
In the direction she’s pointing, thin strands of black smoke curl in the dusty pink sky. “Mark-Richard and Gary? Yeah.”
Toivo slithers out from underneath the car. “That should do it.”
Miss Tassel moves out of Toivo’s way. “The kids aren’t there this morning. I just came from there. The smoke…” She hesitates.
“What?” says Toivo. “What is it?”
Miss Tassel leans over and whispers to Toivo, “It’s from their house.”
“Mark-Richard! Is he okay?” I ask.
Miss Tassel puffs her cheeks. “I shouldn’t have told you that—but, yes, everyone is fine. The boys got out of the house without getting hurt.”
Toivo wipes gravel off his jeans. “I should get over there and lend a hand.…”
“No one’s there,” says Miss Tassel. “I just stopped over to see if I could salvage some of the kids’ things and get some comfort items to them.”
“Where?” I say. “Where are they?”
Miss Tassel moves gravel around with the tip of her shoe. “You’re going to have to talk with Mark-Richard, I’m afraid,” she says. “I can’t tell you that.”
“But when?” I ask. “Today?”
“No,” she says. “Not today.”
“Did you take him and Gary away from their parents?”
“Fern,” Toivo warns.
“Did you?” I demand, more loudly than I intended.
Miss Tassel tilts her head the way adults sometimes do when they’re telling kids things they don’t want to hear. “It’s complicated, Fern.”
I start down the driveway. “Come on, boys,” I shout to Mikko and Alexi. They listen for once and follow behind me. Both boys stare lightning and axes and hot lava at Miss Tassel. “We don’t want you to come here anymore!” I add, and start running, with the boys keeping pace.
We keep running toward Mark-Richard’s house. After a while, Alexi calls out, “Ferrrrn, slow down!” He sits in the middle of the road, forcing me to slow down, then stop.
“Come on!” I walk back toward him. “Up! You can’t sit here. You’ll get hit by a truck.”
“My legs feel like licorice. Why are we running away from that lady? Is she bad?”
“She’s a witch,” says Mikko. “She took Mark-Richard and Gary away. Now we can’t be friends with them anymore.”
I pull Alexi to his feet and dust him off. “They’ll be back.”
But I’m not sure they will.
All is completely still and quiet. No wild turkeys, coyotes, white-tailed deer, spiky porcupines, corn snakes, or any other woodsy creatures. The silence is eerie, as though everything is hiding and holding its breath.
The smoke gets denser the closer we get. “Boys, walk next to me.” I pull them by their backpacks to either side of my body.
Mikko twists and fights. “Knock it off, Fern!”
“Shhh,” I hush them. “Listen! Listen to the woods.”
Mikko cups a hand around his ear, and Alexi pauses.
“I don’t hear anything,” Alexi says.
“I know,” I say. “It’s weird.”
“Maybe the fire scared all the animals away,” says Mikko.
I shrug my shoulders. “Yeah, maybe.”
We take light steps on the gravel road. Soon Mark-Richard’s driveway is in sight. The smoke becomes denser, but not choking. Mark-Richard’s house wasn’t much more than four thin walls of plywood. The fire probably burned out fast.
At his driveway, we stop. Only the skeleton of their trailer—four upright boards and a small section of the floor—remains, scorched black. Off to one side of the charred house is a pile of toys and clothes and a mattress the firefighters must have saved. The woods between our houses are thick, but I can’t believe I didn’t even hear sirens.
Alexi leans into me. He puts his thumb in his mouth. I don’t tell him to quit being a baby.
Mikko inhales sharply. He grabs my hand. His is damp and icy cold. He points at the garbage pile. “Look.”
A black bear stands up and spies us.
He’s at least six feet tall. His coat is shaggy and dull and black as cast iron. The kind we call “dump bears” is what he is. They show up every now and then, when they can’t find enough to eat in the woods, to eat people’s garbage or drink from their rain barrels. He must have frightened all the other animals away.
“Don’t. Move,” I whisper. Usually, when news of a bear wandering around gets out, people continue about their ordinary business with a few extra precautions. Don’t let little pets outside. Carry bear spray.
I don’t have bear spray.
Mikko steps behind me and whimpers. Alexi takes the thumb out of his mouth, leans down, and picks up a stone.
“Don’t!” I scold. The bear huffs, angry at us for interrupting him. He drops to all fours and then stands up again. He smashes aside rubbish with his two front paws.
We gasp and step back. I clutch Alexi to me and reach behind me to hold on to Mikko, too.
“Fern?” Mikko cries.
Alexi winds up and throws the stone toward the bear. “Go away!” he shouts.
“Alexi, no!”
But it’s too late. The stone hits the bear near his eye and drops to the ground. The bear roars and swipes at the stone, flinging up clumps of gravel. He leaves deep claw marks in the earth. Then he drops to all fours again and steps toward us.
“When I say ‘run,’” I tell the boys, without moving my mouth, “you run and don’t stop until you reach the water tower.”
The boys breathe hard. I scan the ground for something to protect us. Then, out of the woods, I see a flash of fur running toward the bear.
The bear shakes his giant head.
A dog opens his jaws. His gritty bark snaps the air.
Ranger.
“Run!” I say. My brothers scramble off behind me. “Run!” I turn and watch them until they are safely down the driveway.
Ranger and the bear snarl at each other. The bear takes swipes at Ranger. Ranger gnashes his teeth at the bear.
I walk backward and watch. The bear turns sideways and shakes his coat. Ranger keeps his gaze fixed on him. The dog’s whole body seems pointed like a dart. The bear turns back once more and roars at Ranger, and then he saunters off into the woods.
After he’s disappeared, Ranger sits down but keeps watch.
When I catch up with the boys, I wrap them both up in giant hugs.
“Gross,” says Mikko, but he squeezes me back. “That bear was going to eat us! But that wolf saved us.”
“Ranger isn’t a wolf,” I say. “He’s a dog.”
“Is he yours?” asks Alexi. “Where did you get him? Why didn’t you share? Why do you get to name him?”
“He’s not mine. I just know him.” I notice that the sun is high. “We’re going to be late. Come on.”
Toivo likes to tell a story about Mom even though he wasn’t there when it happened. He just retells it from the way she told it to him. Once when I was small, Mom took me for a walk. She put me in the stroller. Out of nowhere, a Doberman dashed out from woods and made a beeline for me. Its fangs dripped with madness. That’s how Toivo tells it anyway.
Mom stepped in front of me just as the dog leaped for my face. The dog jumped up on her, ready to bite, but she shoved her thumbs into either hinge of the dog’s jaw and pushed them down into the Doberman’s throat. Then she heaved the dog backward. It landed on its back. Got up. Put its tail between its legs and slunk away, whimpering.
That’s the kind of mom she was.
I don’t know what I would have done had Ranger not come and distracted that bear. But I’d like to think that I would have protected my brothers the way Mom protected me.