Another Kind of Hurricane (11 page)

In the end, Tavius and Pierre had gone for coffee
and
a walk. And then for pie and another walk, and finally they ended up back at the Salvation Army, where they sat on the front steps and talked for the rest of the night.

Tavius put his fingers on the sides of his head and wiggled them like anntenae reaching for the early-morning light. The sun warmed his face and matched the cozy feeling that grew the more he talked with Pierre. He grinned and snapped his fingers, still up high in the air. He was excited.

Truth be told, Tavius was excited to be staying at Skeet's house too. Of course he wasn't happy that Hurricane Katrina had descended upon them all, knocking them upside their heads and back down their backsides. But, as he slung the bag of clothes over his shoulder, whistling as he walked the eleven blocks back to Skeet's house, he had to admit that he liked living with his brothers again.

He saw them plenty. It wasn't about not seeing them. He and Skeet went to Enzo's once a week after work for a cold glass of something sweet, to shoot the breeze and sing a few songs up on the roof. He looked forward to that.

But this was better. Lots more chances for laughing. There was nothing better in the whole wide world than a joke catching the funny bone by surprise. Enzo and Skeet were full of the kind that sent Tavius into snorting, wheezing, knee-slapping fits of laughter.

He loved living with Enzo's sharp-as-a-tack kid, Osprey. That was the truest truth to tell. And Ms. Cyn, who reminded him of his mama, he loved her too. And truth be told one more ever-loving time—he was growing fond of Ben and Zavion too.

Just the night before, the seven of them had sat in the kitchen after supper, drinking sweet tea and eating the last bits of Zavion's bread until they all thought they would burst. Then Osprey turned off the lights and said—

Lady and Gentlemen, I will now perform a song for your enjoyment—

Seriously, where did the kid get this stuff?

But first, a public service announcement for the lady: rest assured, there are no creepy snakes in this kitchen—

Which began the laughter, and then Osprey proceeded to sing her rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In,” only
she sang
sanes
instead of
saints
, which made a whole lot more sense and which set off a whole other round of laughter. Even Zavion smiled the littlest bit, which warmed up Tavius's heart in a way he couldn't explain.

Now he knew he couldn't wait to catch Zavion coming out of the bathroom, or in the front door, or working in the kitchen, unawares, and make some joke about the word
sane
and have the chance to see that small smile again.

Shared jokes like that were the two-by-fours that kept a house standing tall. They were logs on the fire and a good smell curling out of the oven. They were what Tavius remembered from being a kid with two older brothers and a mother whose laugh he could hear down the block as he walked home from school. They were what had been missing from his house in New Orleans.

They were what held Skeet's house together now.

Even after Katrina knocked them upside their heads.

And on the top of it all, he had gotten to meet Pierre.

Tavius whistled louder.

He couldn't wait to give Zavion the new clothes.

Something hard was in the pocket of Zavion's new blue jeans.

He stuck his hand inside.

A marble.

A big marble.

Blue like the sky when there's no rain. Green too, like a mountain. And some red and orange. Like fire? Flashes of light?

Zavion had other questions. One, really.

Whose marble was it?

Then another question followed.

Where did it come from?

And the question that bit hard on the heels of the others.

Did Zavion have to give it back?

Zavion was used to finding the answers outside of himself like on his Spanish pop quiz, where one side of the paper had
numbered Spanish words and the other side had lettered English words.

1. El perro	goes with	E. Dog
2. El gato	goes with	L. Cat
3. El pájaro	goes with	O. Bird

But he didn't have answers to his questions now.

The marble felt smooth against the inside of Zavion's fingers. It felt good to wrap his hand around something whole. It made him feel big. Like he could sweep his other hand across the sky and gather the hurricane up tight, gather all that wind and rain, close his fist hard around it, and blow the dust away.

The desire for this hurricane-crushing ability surprised Zavion. It pounded over the memories that had taken permanent residence inside him. Snakes. Oily water. A dead body.

The marble made him feel like he could jump back into New Orleans, jump with his knees bent and his thigh muscles gripping—like he was doing the standing long jump—and land with both feet hard, right into the middle of his street, right next to where his house used to be, with a huge splash that would send the three-feet-deep water into the sky, miles high and miles wide.

Zavion held the marble up to his eye. He could just make out Papa in the dining room, hunched over another tiny canvas. A blue, green, red, and orange Papa. Like a painting of Papa. A painting of Papa painting.

That struck Zavion as funny and so he laughed. Which felt strange. He hadn't laughed in a long time. And something about laughing made him feel…hopeful.

The door blew open and Osprey ran in. “Zavion!” She flung her cold hands around Zavion's neck. “What do you have in your hand?” she said.

She didn't miss anything.

“What do you have in yours?” said Zavion. A leash dangled behind her with a washcloth tied to one end.

“This”—Osprey pulled the leash close to her side—“is Fluffer.” She reached down and patted the washcloth.

“Where's Flower?”

“She ran away. Now, show me what's in your hand!”

“Nothing's there,” said Zavion, slipping the marble back into his pocket.

“Do you have a secret?” said Osprey.

“Well, I wouldn't tell you if I did, right?”

“Would you tell Fluffer?”

“Not even Fluffer.”

Osprey stood on her tiptoes and grabbed Zavion around
the neck. She leaned in close to his ear. “Do you have a magic?” she whispered.

A magic
. Zavion liked that.

It sounded like his wishing rocks with their white stripes lined up on his windowsill.

Yes!

The marble was just like his wishing rocks.

He squeezed it in his hand and smiled. He could feel the bright blue, green, red, and orange radiating their colors against his palm. Like the moon on the river. Or the sunset over a marsh.

Like a magic.

“Yes,” said Zavion, still smiling. “I have a magic.”

And if the marble was a magic, then wasn't the person who put it in the pocket of the jeans a magician? And didn't magicians make things appear just where they wanted them to?

That meant the marble was supposed to come to him.

Didn't it?

Jake adjusted the rearview mirror. The carabiner clipped around the mirror swung and the silver baseball flashed bright in the sun.

“I knew you weren't sleeping at your house. I knew you were up on the mountain that night,” said Jake. “I used to sleep up there too.”

“You did?”

Jake adjusted the mirror again. He hit the baseball with the back of his hand, and it swung so hard it flipped over the carabiner, shortening its chain. “Yup. I snuck out of the house on a few clear nights when I was about your age.”

“You did.” This time it wasn't a question.

“Yup. Nothing like the top of Mansfield at night. Feels like driving to the end of a dead-end road. You're there. That's it. End of story.”

Henry wanted to reach up and stop the baseball from flickering. It made him dizzy. He didn't know what Jake was talking about and he did know, all at the same time, and that made him dizzy too.

“Nothing else there when you're up so high and it's so dark. Just the wind and the moon and the stars. Yup, it sure feels like the end of the road.” Jake ran his hand through his hair and put it back on the steering wheel. “Or the beginning, I guess.”

Henry stared ahead at the highway. It was straight and flat and stretched on forever, it seemed.

Jake took a deep breath and said very quickly, “Is there anything else you can tell me? About Wayne's accident?”

Henry rolled down the window a little more. The guardrail whizzed by in a gray blur. He opened his mouth and let the wind fill it, and fill his nose and eyes and ears too. It tasted salty and bitter.

What could he tell Jake?

—

Lying on his belly, at the edge of the cliff, Henry felt and saw little things first. Soft moss under his bare arms. A sapling growing out of a crack in the rock, its roots firmly dug into that small space of dirt. Henry hadn't noticed either of these things when he was flying down the mountain determined to win the race. But he noticed them now, he noticed them first, his mind racing with
the fear of what had happened to Wayne. Maybe Wayne had slipped on the moss. Maybe he had grabbed for the tree. Henry imagined Wayne's fall, off the rock, down onto the sloping ledge fifteen feet below, straight into the crevasse—

For the second time that morning, Brae sat on his haunches and threw his head up high and keened to the sky. The sound echoed off the rocks. This time it sounded like Brae was calling—not to the sun and not to the moon—but in the other direction, into the very center of the mountain, into the very center of the earth. The sound of his voice spiraled around the rocks, traveled in a circle down, down, down until it penetrated the earth below Henry's horizontal body—

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaayne!!!

Henry wanted to keen his name too, send his voice down, down, down to where he knew Wayne lay—

—

No
.

No no no no no no no
.

He could not tell Jake what he saw when he finally, finally looked over the edge.

—

Jake breathed in and it sounded funny, like the air got caught on something in the back of his throat. It was a ragged, shuddery kind of a sound. “Or how about telling me something
Wayne said?” Jake's voice was searching for something, opening cupboards and pulling out drawers.

And there it was.

Something Wayne said
.

A shady, hidden memory of the night before the accident—

—

Henry and Wayne barely needed their headlamps as they hiked up the mountain, the moon was so full and bright. The trees were shorter up this high, more like shrubs than trees, and the sound of rustling branches came at their knees instead of above their heads. It was a softer sound too, the branches were covered with needles not leaves. Soon they used their hands to climb up steep rock faces. Brae bounded ahead of them, leaping on and off the rocks three times for every one grab their fingers made
.

Then they were at the top
.

“We made it!” shouted Wayne, throwing his backpack off his shoulders. He spun in a circle. Brae ran around him
.

“Uh, yeah,” said Henry. “Like always.”

“Never at night, though, Henry. Isn't it amazing up here? Look at the sky. Look at the moon.” Wayne continued to spin. He looked like the top of a helicopter, his arms spread wide. Like a helicopter just beginning its flight—

—

Henry couldn't bear to remember it. But it was coming.
Oh man, oh man, oh man
, it was coming. He felt sick. He thought he might have to ask Jake to pull over.

Jake looked over his left shoulder and changed lanes. Henry peered into the window of a station wagon as Jake accelerated past it. Two boys were playing cards in the backseat.

“The night before—” Henry took a deep breath. “The night before, when we were on the top of the mountain, we were…ummmmm…we were talking. A lot. We were talking a lot.” They had been too. Henry didn't usually talk that much, he was the nodder or the head shaker. And Wayne was the fists-clenched puncher. But that night they had talked a lot.

Jake switched back into the right lane.

“We…ummmmm…we talked about—” Henry struggled to say something. To say anything. “How it felt good to be on the mountain,” he said miserably. “Wayne said he felt—he said—he loved climbing to the top of the mountain at night.”

Was that enough? He did want to give Jake something.

The station wagon sped past the truck. Henry saw the backs of the two boys' heads. They were close together and moving in a jerking motion, back and forth. Henry imagined they were trying to pull cards out of each other's hands.

Jake cleared his throat. “So he was happy?”

Henry nodded.

At that point he had been, anyway.

—

Jake and Henry drove in silence after that. Henry's brain felt scorched. Like the wind had burnt the clouds that filled his head, and now the sun was too bright and too hot. He didn't want to remember so much. He wanted those clouds back.

The clouds outside turned cream-colored, then yellow, and then a sort of orange. Like the sun had baked them longer and longer as they drove south. The air was thicker too, even saltier, though Henry couldn't believe that was actually possible. Henry saw a dead dog by the side of the highway. He thought he saw its tag gleaming in the sun, and he wanted to stop, but Jake said no. The dog made Henry miss Brae. Crap, he missed him. He missed him in a way that felt like he had been hit in the chest with a baseball so hard it broke through his skin, snapped his ribs, and tore apart his heart.

“I wonder if those two boys in the station wagon ever stopped fighting,” he said at one point.

“Don't know” was all Jake said back.