chapter 22

HENRY

Mom had needed a little coaxing to give her blessing.

“You really want to go, Henry?” she asked. She sat on the front steps, dirt smeared across the knees of her blue jeans.

Henry nodded. He was perched on top of the fence at the side of the house. Jake leaned against it next to him.

“I don’t know—”

“Please, Mom—”

“It’s just so far away….How safe is it? What if it’s too hard to be there…in the middle of all that…chaos? Jake has a job to do. He can’t just turn around and come home if you decide you want to leave—” Mom ran her hands through her hair and left a mark of dirt on her forehead.

“It might be good for him, Eliza,” said Jake. His voice was quiet. “I can tell you I’m counting on that for me.”

Henry watched Mom look at Jake. She bit her lip.

“You told me I didn’t need to go to school right now, remember?” said Henry.

“I remember. But what about seeing your dad on Monday?”

“Mom, I can miss that, can’t I?”

Mom nodded. “You really don’t mind taking him, Jake?”

“I promised him a trip. I’d better make good on it.” Jake smiled, but it stopped at his cheeks. His eyes looked sad.

Mom stood up then. She walked over to Henry and put her hands on his knees. Her fingernails were caked in dirt too.

“You go, then,” she said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” said Henry.

“Help Jake, okay?”

“Okay.”

Mom looked at Jake. “I guess he’s yours,” she said. She touched Jake’s shoulder. “Thank you.” Then she sighed. “I’ll miss you, Henry. And who’s going to help me in the garden?”

“Brae will—”

At the sound of his name, Brae dropped the stick he was chewing and tipped his head to the side.

—

Saying good-bye to Mom had been hard, but saying it to Brae was harder.

Brae had put his head into Henry’s lap as soon as Henry sat up in bed the next morning. Henry scratched him behind the ears. “I’m gonna miss you, boy,” he said. After he’d put on his football jersey, he asked Brae to sit, lifted his chin, and looked straight into his eyes. “Don’t learn any new tricks while I’m gone, okay?”

Brae licked his nose.

—

Henry’s ears were vibrating with scraps of sound. Boxes being dragged, boots shuffling, the three-note tune Jake endlessly whistled. Henry craned his neck from his seat in the front of the truck and saw a group of big-rig drivers by the police station, drinking cups of coffee. There was Jake, talking to the one woman there.

Stacks of bags and boxes were piled high in the back of the trailer. What was in them? Maybe Little League shirts or yo-yos or comic books or cookies. What would a kid all the way down in New Orleans do with a Green Mountain Insurance Company baseball shirt? One of the bags looked like it was full of stuffed animals, a black and white cow peeked its head out the top. Were there cows in Louisiana? Henry thought of the kinds of animals that were in New Orleans. He’d looked them up. Alligators, feral pigs, yellow warblers, shorebirds. And lots of butterflies this time of year. He’d also looked up how far Louisiana was from Vermont. Almost sixteen hundred miles. Henry thought about how many times a marble would have to turn to get from here to there. He shook his head. Wayne would know how to do the math to figure that one out. Henry didn’t have a freaking clue.

How long had it taken his marble to get to New Orleans? It hadn’t rolled there—that was for sure. It had traveled just like he was about to, tucked away in a truck. Henry couldn’t believe it. Here he was, in the parking lot of the state police department, in Jake’s truck, almost on his way to New Orleans. He and Wayne had always wanted to go on a road trip with Jake. And Jake had promised them—this year would be their year—

And now—

Now—

Wayne couldn’t go. He would never be able to go.

Across the parking lot, a trucker Henry didn’t recognize put a box into his trailer. The clouds behind him moved as he moved, like he was loading them onto the truck too, like he was shipping Vermont skies south with the yo-yos and comic books and cookies.

—

Jake climbed into his seat. “This is going to be quite a field trip,” he said. “I was talking with one of the other truckers—not a regular—her name is Margarita—do you know her? She lives in Underhill too, just moved there last year. She teaches Spanish, actually—I should tell Annie— Anyway, Margarita just got back. She said that the smell of garbage in New Orleans is overwhelming. The food-and-clothing drive coordinator said the same thing, and Margarita confirmed it. Cat litter and rotting milk, she said. Are you sure you’re prepared for all that?”

Henry was never prepared for a math test, no matter how many practice problems his teacher gave.

He was never prepared for how lonely he felt at his dad’s house, even though he had gone there every Monday for the last six years of his life and his dad had a houseful of kids.

No, he was not prepared.

Jake laughed. “Me neither,” he said before Henry had even opened his mouth. “Being prepared is not the issue. The issue is what you do when you’re taken by surprise.”

“Here—” said a voice.

Who was that? Henry leaned around Jake to look down at the ground. Talk about a surprise—a bad surprise! Nopie! Nopie was talking to Jake. “Some apple pie. I thought you could eat it on the ride.”

“That was mighty thoughtful of you,” said Jake. “Thank you. And thank your mom for me, okay?”

“Okay,” said Nopie. “Good luck down there.”

“Thanks.”

Nopie stared up at Jake with his crazy-wide turtle eyes. Jeez. Wasn’t he going to leave?

“Aren’t you going to wish me good luck too?” said Nopie finally.

“Good luck?” asked Jake.

“For finding Tiger.”

Oh man! Give it up, Nopie. Didn’t he know he wasn’t going to find him?

There was another, smaller pause, and then Jake said quietly, “Good luck, then, Nopie.”

And then Jake slammed the door shut and started up the truck.

He turned onto the highway and opened the window. A thin sliver of wind found its way through the crack and blew across Henry’s face, and he felt freer and freer as they moved farther and farther away from the mountain.