Another Kind of Hurricane Page 6

  “Do they always travel together?” said Zavion.

  “Yes, they seem to,” said Ms. Cyn.

  “Yup, we do,” said Enzo.

  “We’ve all got plenty of biceps—” said Tavius, flexing his arms.

  “—but not enough brains,” said Skeet.

  “A third each,” said Tavius. He flicked Skeet and Enzo on their foreheads. “One, two”—he tapped himself—“three.”

  “Together we have a fighting chance,” said Skeet.

  “Sometimes I’m not so sure about that,” said Ms. Cyn, pouring cups of coffee. “Where were you?”

  “The question is—” said Enzo.

  “—where are you?” said Tavius.

  “Or who are you?” said Skeet. “My mother-in-law would never set even one tiny baby toe in the kitchen—” Ms. Cyn swatted Skeet with a dish towel. “Just kidding. Sort of. But not really.” She spun the towel and swatted him again. “Oooooh-wheeee! All right! We went to Diana’s house.”

  “The bird lady?” said Ms. Cyn.

  “Yup. Birds everywhere,” said Enzo.

  “And a vet is staying at her house too,” said Tavius. “She said they’ve rescued more than one hundred birds already.”

  “Diana said she gets twenty calls a day from families who had to evacuate and leave their birds behind,” said Skeet.

  “Why were you visiting Diana?” Ms. Cyn settled herself at the kitchen table and picked up her scarf and knitting needles.

  “We wanted to see if we could help,” said Tavius.

  “Go back into New Orleans with her,” said Enzo.

  “Maybe catch some birds,” said Skeet.

  “And…,” said Ms. Cyn.

  “She said we’d just be in the way,” said Skeet.

  “Us!” said Enzo.

  “Can you believe it?” said Tavius.

  “Do you want me to even answer that?” Ms. Cyn looked up from her knitting and grinned. Zavion stared at her long trail of orange scarf. “You three clowns in the way?” It was enormous now. He wondered how big the person who was getting the scarf was. Maybe it was for Enzo, Skeet, and Tavius all at once!

  “You can never have too much of us!” said Skeet. He reached into the bowl at the center of the table and pulled out three apples. He tossed one to Tavius and one to Enzo. “Right, boys?”

  They circled Ms. Cyn and tossed the apples to one another over her head.

  “Hey, now—” she protested.

  “Hush, Ms. Cyn,” said Skeet. “We got it—”

  “—together—” said Tavius.

  “—oooh, baby, do we ever,” finished Enzo. And as if on cue, they all spun in a circle and bit down on their apples at the same time.

  Zavion couldn’t help smiling.

  The clowns bowed. “Thank you, thank you,” said Skeet.

  “Tip jar is by the door on your way out,” said Enzo.

  “Don’t you let these fools steal your money, Zavion, honey,” said Ms. Cyn. She clucked her tongue and shook her head as she bent over her knitting again.

  Steal.

  The word punctured the corners of Zavion’s upturned mouth like a pin.

  The chocolate bars bounced around in his head like those apples. He should pay back what he owed Luna Market. He knew where it was.

  But how?

  Mama’s story came to him then. Or his question. The question he asked every time she told him the story. She’d be at the edge of his bed, pulling the blanket to his chin. He’d sit up fast, the blanket falling, his nose an inch away from her nose.

  “How?” he’d demand. “How does a mountain travel from one place to another? How is that possible?”

  “Zavion, honey—”

  Zavion’s head snapped up. He opened his eyes. He hadn’t even known they were closed. Had he been talking out loud? Enzo, Skeet, and Tavius sat on the counters around the kitchen and Ms. Cyn still sat at the table, her knitting needles click-clacking, her eyes shining again.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  I will never be okay, thought Zavion.

  “Are you kidding?” said Enzo. “No one in this house is okay.”

  “Especially you,” said Tavius, slapping Enzo on the back.

  “Yeah, you never were,” said Skeet.

  They laughed, and Zavion appreciated the shift of focus.

  How would anything ever be okay again?

  How could he pay back the market?

  He didn’t know, but he knew he had to figure it out. If he could just pay back the money for the chocolate bars, maybe he could make this whole hurricane mess go away.

  The sound of laughter interrupted Zavion’s thoughts. Ms. Cyn’s head was thrown back as she laughed, her laughter like bread dough, like a mountain, rising into the air.

  chapter 18

  HENRY

  Henry sat at the top of the driveway and threw a rubber ball for Brae, who raced down the hill chasing it. How could Mom have done that? How could he have let it happen? How could the marble be gone?

  Before that night on the mountain, Henry and Wayne had rules for exchanging the marble. They weren’t official or anything. They weren’t written down and hung up in their bedrooms. But they were rules that they just knew, and they seemed to work.

  The marble worked.

  Henry’s football team rarely lost a game, and when they did it was because of Nopie and his stupid butterfingers. Apple pie fingers. And Wayne’s soccer and baseball teams never lost. There was something about accepting the marble, and then holding it, feeling its smooth circle go round and round and round that inspired a sense of invincibility in Henry. He didn’t even have to think about feeling invincible. It wasn’t a thought. It just was. It was hope and bravery and confidence all rolled together just like he rolled the marble in his hand.

  It was true that he found the marble the day he and Mom moved into their house. After he had picked his room, he found it on the windowsill. And it was also true that he met Wayne that same afternoon. Everyone knew those parts of the story. What they didn’t know was the first part. The part about Henry getting up early in the morning, that morning he and Mom moved, and Henry feeling so heavy with sadness that he laid himself down in the driveway in front of the car and wouldn’t get up. Not for breakfast, his last scrambled-egg breakfast in the only house he had ever known, not to play in the tree house his father had built, and not even when Mom finally got into the car and turned it on. She had to lift him up kicking and screaming, hold him back against the seat of the car with her elbow while she wrestled with his seat belt. She surprised him with a bag of cheese puffs for the ride, but even his favorite food didn’t make him feel better.

  Henry remembered believing it was the end of the world. What did he know? He was only four years old. He also remembered grabbing onto one idea and squeezing it until it was blue. If there was a sign at the new house, then he knew he would live beyond that last day in the old brown house.

  So he had walked upstairs, picked his new room, and there it had been. Right on the windowsill.

  The marble.

  And now it was gone.

  The thought made Henry want to lie down again, this time in front of the car or pickup or eighteen-wheeler or whatever had driven off with the marble. He lay down in his driveway instead, beside Brae, who was chewing on the rubber ball.

  “What am I going to do?” he asked Brae. Brae leaned in to sniff Henry’s nose. “Do you smell an idea?” said Henry, rubbing Brae under the chin. “ ’Cause I don’t feel anything cooking in here—” He tapped the side of his head. Cooking made Henry think of Nopie and his stupid apple pie, and he said, “Stupid!” out loud and then he said, “Oh, not you, Brae! Never you! You’re the smartest dog-cow I know—” He sat up, took the ball, put his hands inside his sweatshirt pocket. “Which hand?” he said. Brae sniffed Henry again, this time around his pocket, and nudged Henry’s left hand. “Right!” Henry said. “You’re right every time!” He threw the ball again and watched Brae as he r
aced down the driveway.

  Suddenly, his brain was racing too.

  Suddenly, his brain was an oven and he was cooking up an idea fast.

  If Brae could chase a ball, why couldn’t Henry chase a marble?

  The marble was in New Orleans.

  Jake was going to New Orleans.

  Henry could hitch a ride with Jake and find his marble.

  This was a triple-decker cake of an idea!

  Brae loped back up the driveway and dropped the ball at Henry’s feet. He licked Henry. “Do I taste sweet, Brae?” said Henry. “Cake sweet?”

  And right there at the top of the driveway, under Mount Mansfield, Henry felt the heat of a tiny bit of hope.

  “I’ll ask Mom if I can go,” said Henry. “She’ll let me go.” He paused. “No, she won’t. Shoot.” He paused again. The heat-spark flickered dramatically. Hope, no hope, hope, no hope. “What am I going to do, Brae? I need to get that marble. But how? What would Wayne do?” Brae stared into Henry’s eyes. “You’ve got the answer, don’t you? What is it?” Henry stood up fast, almost knocking Brae in the nose. “Right! He’d sneak onto the truck! That’s what he’d do. And that’s what I’m gonna do.” He took a deep breath. “Who am I kidding? I can’t sneak onto Jake’s truck.” He looked into Brae’s eyes again. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. I’m just going to have to talk to Jake. I’m going to have to get Jake to convince Mom that I can go.”

  With that, Henry turned up the heat on his cake, on his triple-decker, perfect cake of an idea.

  marble journey part II

  CORA KRISHNASWAMI

  Marble cake! That was it! She couldn’t wait to go to the kitchen in the back of the Salvation Army and bake it.

  Cora wanted to try making a marble cake with three flavors swirled together. The usual marble cake was two. Chocolate and vanilla. But that was a little too ordinary for the occasion, Cora thought. Two ordinary. Cora laughed at the joke inside her head.

  “Pardon?” The woman at the counter looked up from writing her check.

  “Hmmmm? Oh, no, nothing—something I just thought of—” Cora unclipped her hair and let it fall across her shoulders.

  Like toilet paper tucked in the waistband of a pair of blue jeans, Cora always managed to drag embarrassing stuff out into the public. She couldn’t seem to keep the roll of thoughts she had from spilling out of her mouth.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t even know I laughed out loud.”

  This time it wasn’t so bad. Just a random laugh. But people were sensitive these days. Cora knew that. They’d been through so much—too much—and there was nothing funny about any of it. She was lucky. Her small house had been spared. But not her neighbor’s. His house sat lower than hers and it got flooded even when hers did not.

  “Well, it’s important to find something to laugh about,” said the woman. She picked up her shopping bag from the counter.

  “Yes,” agreed Cora. The woman was generous. She could have been put off by Cora’s laugh. Her neighbor could have been put off by her too. If he had been able to hear her over the rain and wind. Of course she had blurted out that she was queen of the mountain as she stood on her front porch as the rain and wind came down. She still didn’t know why she had said that. She had stepped outside for just a moment and was overcome by the raging battle taking place all around her little house. Knives of rain clattering down. The shriek of the wind. And she was, on her covered porch, just above it all. She had felt a sense of relief, and a weird thrill, and before she knew it, this queen thing had escaped from her mouth.

  Just half a second later, she turned her head and saw her neighbor on his roof, water pouring out of his downstairs front window. Cora had seen him on the roof plenty of times before—he hung out up there with his daughter sometimes, but mostly with two other men. His brothers. They came over to her neighbor’s house and sang up there a lot, and she loved to listen to them.

  “Do you have any children?” Cora asked the woman.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “Why?”

  “We just got a big donation from Vermont,” said Cora. “I haven’t gone through all of it, but there are some great kids’ clothes.” She indicated a pile on the side counter. “Take a look. Someone is about to come by and take them to Baton Rouge.”

  The woman walked to the clothes and thumbed through a stack. She pulled a pair of blue jeans from the middle and unfolded them. “These look almost new,” she said.

  Cora nodded.

  “But they’re too long for my son.” She began to fold them again.

  “Oh, I’ll do that,” said Cora. She took the jeans from the woman.

  “I should get home to him,” said the woman. “I’m starting to let him stay home alone, but only for an hour or so at a time.”

  “How old is he?” asked Cora.

  “Ten,” said the woman.

  “Sort of an in-between age, huh? A little too young to stay home alone, but also a little too old to need supervision?” asked Cora.

  “Yes, exactly.” The woman began to walk toward the door. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re open.”

  “What do you think of chocolate, peanut butter, cinnamon cake?” Cora blurted out.

  “It sounds delicious,” said the woman.

  “Oh good. To me too,” said Cora. “Three cheers for the generator! I’m trying to make a marble cake with three flavors. Three cheers for three flavors!”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “It’s for three things, so I thought three flavors would be a nice touch.”

  The woman smiled.

  “Thing One: I hope that you—oh, not you”—Cora pointed at the woman—“you, my neighbor, move back home. Thing Two: I love listening to you and your trio sing. And Thing Three: I’m sorry for what I said out there in the hurricane—” The words tumbled out of Cora’s mouth.

  The woman stared at her.

  Cora shook her head. She had gone and done it again. Toilet paper in the waist of the jeans, right there in public. She twisted her hair back into a bun and clipped it into place. She could at least keep her hair neat.

  She looked down at the blue jeans in her hands and slowly finished folding them. By the time she looked up, maybe the woman would be gone.

  chapter 19

  ZAVION

  Zavion knew it was wishful thinking, thinking if he could just pay back the money for the chocolate bars he could make the whole hurricane mess go away. But he still felt like he had to try.

  Zavion found Papa in the living room hunched over a tiny canvas.

  A tiny square slate roof shingle, actually.

  The kind Zavion had given as an IOU at Luna Market. More shingles were scattered all over the table.

  Zavion had overheard Tavius and Enzo offering them to Skeet and Papa.

  “We figured Skeet could use them for some art project, so we collected them as we walked,” said Tavius.

  “You should have seen us. Waterlogged and weighed down with these shingles in our pockets,” said Enzo.

  “It gave us something to focus on,” said Tavius.

  “You should use them too,” said Enzo to Papa. “Make lemonade out of lemons.”

  “Make slate-ade out of slate,” said Tavius.

  Zavion had watched as Papa picked up a piece of slate and turned it slowly in his hands.

  Now he was painting on one.

  “What’s up, Zav?”

  Zavion knew for a fact that if mothers had eyes in the back of their heads, fathers had them on top of theirs. How many times had Papa been bent over a mural sketch working but still knew that he had entered the room?

  It wasn’t Mama’s soft-eyed stare and bear-hug combination, but it was still comforting. Most of the time. Not today, though. But that wasn’t Papa’s fault. Zavion was on a specific, scary mission today.

  Zavion sat down across from Papa. His short hair was grayer than Zavion could remember seeing before. Papa’s hair was often all different col
ors—he had a habit of rubbing his fingers into his scalp while he was painting—but this gray was not paint.

  Zavion breathed in the familiar smell of acrylic mixed with hair relaxer and cedar deodorant. It was the only familiar thing his body had experienced since they left their house to slog through the water, and it made him suddenly and forcefully sad.

  “What are you painting, Papa?” he asked.

  He was stalling for time before he asked his question. The question that could only have one answer.

  “Tiny landscapes.”

  “You never paint tiny.”

  “True.”

  “You’ve only ever painted one landscape.”

  “True too.”

  Papa’s paintings were of Mardi Gras and musicians and fishing for shrimp and oysters and catfish. They were huge too. He usually painted right across a whole wall.

  “Sometimes the world tells you to do something new.” Hearing that made Zavion’s sadness break apart like fireworks. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard. Maybe Papa was ready for something different. “I woke up with this mighty strong urge to paint some very small landscapes,” continued Papa. He picked up a slate shingle that was drying next to him. “The slate makes the colors pop,” he said. “And it feels good to hold this tree in my hands.” He opened his fingers so the shingle balanced in the middle of his palm. “It’s in one piece. I can see the whole thing.”

  The tree was from the Appalachian spruce-fir forest.

  “A red spruce?” Zavion asked, but he was sure he was right. Its green needle-tipped branches reached to the very edges of the shingle, and the sky around it was a tropical blue, almost like the sea, but quieter and flat, no brushstrokes to indicate waves. “Mama’s tree?”

  Papa nodded.

  It was the tree at the top of the mural that Papa had painted in Zavion’s room. The tree that stood on top of Grandmother Mountain, where Mama had grown up. It wasn’t actually there—the University of North Carolina Public Television broadcasting tower was on top of the real Grandmother Mountain—but Papa had given Mama a red spruce on theirs.