Jackie's Wild Seattle (2 page)

All the way to the Taco Bell, Uncle Neal's pager was beeping, collecting phone numbers for him to call back. He took the pager, the cell phone, and his clipboard inside and returned his calls while he was eating. The clipboard was for jotting down directions. After we'd eaten, there was just enough time to talk. I got a few things figured out about my mysterious uncle:

 

1) Neal's beach apartment was too cramped for him to keep the weights and exercise equipment I remembered from our visit to Seattle before Cody was born.

2) These days he was too busy for all that. Driving the ambulance for Jackie's Wild Seattle was a 24/7 job.

3) Uncle Neal didn't get paid. He was a volunteer.

4) Boeing was starting to build more airplanes again, but so far they hadn't called him back to work.

5) Uncle Neal wasn't broke. He could afford us for nine weeks.

6) Neal wasn't sure he was going to go back to being an aeronautical engineer.

7) We were all going to live at Jackie's house, at the wildlife center, which was an hour northeast of Seattle, way out in the woods.

 

That last item we learned on our way out to the parking lot. Cody immediately liked the sound of living in the woods, but I wasn't so sure. I said cautiously, “I suppose being at the wildlife center wouldn't be boring.”

With a grin, Neal said, “Not a chance. And Jackie has all kinds of room.”

“Does she live alone?”

“No, she has two golden retrievers. Who like kids, by the way.”

“Forget the retrievers,” I said. “What's Jackie like?”

“Ferociously difficult to get along with.”

Even Cody could see Neal was kidding. I asked how old Jackie was.

“Older than dirt, according to her, but don't believe it. She started the center after her kids had flown the nest.”

I had to get to the bottom of this. “You're moving up there on account of us? Is that the reason?”

“Partly, but it'll be better for me too. The wildlife center is my life these days. Makes more sense for me to base out of Jackie's instead of dropping animals off there, then driving an hour home for a few winks. I'll burn quite a bit less gas, and gas is one of Jackie's biggest expenses. Do me a favor and e-mail your mother about our change of address, will you?”

We were rolling again. “So how come you didn't tell Mom you were just about to move?”

“I didn't want to upset her apple cart. In order for her to
leave on short notice, I figured she needed things to be simple, not complicated.”

“Okay,” I said. “I can understand that.”

“I think the world of your mother, Shannon.”

“She does of you, too. The part I can't quite figure is how come you two aren't closer? You hardly ever see each other.”

Neal just shook his head. “Don't have a good answer for that one. Three thousand miles and poor excuses. Modern life, I guess.”

With a look over my shoulder I could tell that Cody hadn't been listening to a word from up front. He was peeking through the door of the carrier, all absorbed with the baby raccoons.

“So I threw you a curve, Shannon, about us living out in the country,” Neal continued. “It isn't what you expected. I'm sorry about that.”

“I haven't even seen the place yet, so there's nothing to be sorry about. It'll probably be fine. I've always liked the outdoors, nature and all that, but more as a getaway, like the Adirondacks for climbing camp, that kind of stuff. I'm pretty used to living a stone's throw from the city. I like it—I like all the go-go-go. But don't worry, I like new things too.”

Our conversation trailed off. I was left wondering how much Neal's taking us for the summer was out of duty, and how much was because he wanted to get to know us better.

I turned the same question around and asked it of myself. Mostly I was doing this for my mom, just like Neal was doing it for his sister. Now what, with nine weeks stretching over the horizon like an eternity?

These last few weeks I'd been up and down and all over
the place about the idea of spending the summer with my uncle. “The kindest person you'll ever meet,” my mother had said, but among my friends she was famous for looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. Yes, I was looking forward to the time with him, but he better be worth it. This was my entire summer we were talking about.

One thing I'd already figured out about getting closer to Uncle Neal. There were going to be some hazards—for instance, him smelling like a raccoon.

Just ahead, Seattle's skyscrapers were looming. Out of the blue, my little brother announced that Seattle was the third-riskiest city for earthquakes in the whole United States.

“Don't I know,” Uncle Neal agreed.

“Wait a minute!” Cody practically shouted. “You were here for the 6.8!”

“I certainly was. You should have seen my apartment. Every single thing on the walls came down, and most of my dishes and glassware walked right out of the cabinets and crashed on the floor. It was quite a mess. Fortunately, nobody got killed in that quake.”

“I know, there's a picture in my
Book of Disasters.”

“His favorite book,” I explained.

“I'll show it to you later, Uncle Neal. The picture is of a place in Seattle called Pioneer Square. The bricks fell off the buildings.”

“I could take you there right now,” Neal told him, “but I have to warn you, they've picked up all the bricks and stuck them back on the buildings. Or would you rather go to the top of the Space Needle?”

It wasn't much of a contest. We left Sage and the raccoons in the shade of a parking garage and took the mono
rail to the Seattle Center, where the Space Needle was the featured attraction. A quick ride on an express elevator, and we were high above the city.

Forget about the stunning views of the downtown skyline, the neighborhoods and Lake Washington, the harbor and the cruise ships, and the island-sprinkled waterways of Puget Sound leading out to the Pacific. Cody had eyes only for the gigantic glacier-covered mountain to the southeast. “Mount Rainier,” he whispered reverently. “That mountain is one of the biggest disasters waiting to happen in the whole world. When it blows its top, it's going to be
major.”

“I hate to disappoint you,” his uncle said, “but that might be thousands of years from now.”

“Or this summer, while we're here,” Cody insisted.

“I can't tell if you really want to see that or really don't want to see that.”

“Both,” I answered for Cody. “Enough already about disasters, before we move on to tidal waves.”

Uncle Neal gave Cody some quarters for the telescope, so he could look at Mount Doom to his heart's content. We sat at a nearby table and talked. Neal said right away, “Tell me about Cody's disaster fixation.”

“Obsession, you might call it.”

“How far back does it go?”

“A little more than nine months. September 11, 2001, to be exact.”

“Oh well, that explains a lot.”

I lowered my voice and told him all about it, how my parents had gone off to work, I was headed to school, and Cody was at our neighbor's across the street—Joey's mom drives them to school. “They were just getting into the car when all these people came running down the street, toward the
riverbank. You remember where we live, don't you, half a block from the Hudson River?”

“I sure do. You're two minutes' walk from that amazing view of Manhattan.”

“That's right. So there's Cody, suddenly hearing everyone shouting that one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center had been hit by an airplane. An accident, everybody thought. Mrs. Donnelly and the boys ran down to the end of the block to see. The building was already sending up that huge column of smoke. They got there about five minutes before the hijackers flew the second airliner into the second tower.”

“So Cody actually saw that happen.”

“He sure did. He saw the airplane coming, saw it hit the building, saw the ball of flame and everything. Everybody knew that the twin towers were gigantic office buildings with tens of thousands of people working inside. Mrs. Donnelly said everybody just stood there on the bluff, petrified. There was nothing to do but watch the tallest skyscrapers in New York City burn. Suddenly, from the top down, one of them just collapsed. They saw it fall, saw the dust clouds boil up and blot out lower Manhattan. Joey's mom said that people started crying, screaming. Cody and Joey were really, really scared.”

Uncle Neal, biting his lip, was at a loss for words. I finished up quickly. It was still so hard to talk about. “The three of them ran back to Joey's house and they saw the second tower come down on TV. Cody has a best friend, Mike Wyatt, whose dad worked on the ninety-fifth floor of one of the towers. Cody had even been in his office once.”

“I take it Mike's father lost his life.”

“Yes. And Cody's having a real hard time getting over it.”

Neal winced and said, “Everyone in the country's still trying to adjust, but the closer you were and the more involved, the worse it would affect you. Cody saw it with his own eyes, and he hadn't even turned seven.”

I dabbed my eyes with my fingers. “Sorry,” I said.

“Don't be, Shannon. I understand.”

“I guess I haven't gotten over it myself. I have nightmares too, not that I ever told my parents about them. They had enough on their plate with Cody. He took it so hard. Cody knew Mike's dad so well—he was their soccer coach. Our family went to his funeral. There was no body or anything. Most of those three thousand people who died were just ground to dust.”

“Cody will come through it,” Neal said softly.

“Mom says he'll be okay,” I said. “He hasn't had a nightmare in a couple months, at least that she knows about, which is partly how she talked herself into thinking it was okay to go to Pakistan with Dad.”

“Is there another part?”

“Well, she thought going to Seattle might help get Cody's mind off it. Everything would be so far away and so different. She says to just let him work it through. I guess she ought to know, being a pediatrician and all.”

“So his disaster obsession may not be such a bad thing.”

“That's what Mom thinks. She says it's part of his healing process. Eventually he should move on to something else. You should see his library of disaster books, all natural disasters, by the way. It would be kind of refreshing to see him go back to
Captain Underpants.”

Cody was off the telescope and soon we were back in the van and rolling again. Neal had new messages and calls to make. Some could wait, but there was one he had to attend
to right away. Somebody's dog had torn up a possum in Redmond, Washington, famous for Bill Gates and his Microsoft Corporation.

Before Neal even started the van he put a sturdy yellow vest on his border collie. It was heavy canvas with a cloth liner, and covered the dog's back, sides, and shoulders. The vest fastened at her neck and around her middle with plastic buckles that Neal cinched tight. “What in the world is it?” Cody asked.

“Flak jacket,” Neal replied, suddenly intense. “Sage wears it for a hot rescue, which involves finding the animal.”

“So what's a cold rescue?”

“That's when somebody hands you a baby bunny or an injured sparrow in a cardboard box. Sage and I, we live for the hot rescues.”

“Sage looks tense,” Cody observed as we sped away.

“Just terribly, terribly alert,” Neal said.
“Longjaw,
Sage,
Longjaw.”

Suddenly his dog was as focused as a ballistic missile. “What was that?” I asked.

“I just told her what animal we were after. I only use that word when we're in the hunt mode. You two, don't ever, ever say that word to her. It's only for business, and I'm the only one who says it. I can't just use the word
possum.
Then every time somebody said ‘possum,' she'd think she was supposed to go find one. So we have our own code.”

The highway took us over a floating bridge across the long lake behind the city, Lake Washington. Ten minutes later Neal pointed out a bumper sticker and joked that we must be getting close to Redmond. It said
WE ARE MICROSOFT. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.

Neal found the neighborhood he was looking for, and the
house. It wasn't Bill Gates's mansion but it was about four times the size of our house on Liberty Place back in Weehawken. An elegant lady met us at the door. “Maybe I could have caught it, but I was afraid. I called all over the place. Finally I called the police and they said they'd call you.”

“I'm glad you were persistent,” Neal said as he pulled on a heavy pair of gloves.

“I'm sure it's hopeless. It crawled off and is probably long gone.”

“No, the possum's still here.”

The woman looked at him strangely. “How do you know?”

“My dog told me as soon as we got out of the van.”

Cody and I looked at each other. Somehow we had missed this.

The backyard was enormous. Two acres, the lady said. It was basically a jungle of trees, bushes, and blackberry vines.
Hopeless
is the word I would have used too. Sage whined impatiently at Neal's side. Neal picked up the kennel carrier and said something I couldn't quite hear. Sage took off like a shot.

About ten seconds later, in a far corner of the yard, the border collie came to a screeching halt in front of a thicket of rhododendrons. When Neal caught up, she led him inside. Sage's partner came back out a minute later with the bizarre-looking beastie, all jaws and teeth, in the carrier.

Cody was, for once, speechless.