Emory's Gift Read online

  The crowd milled around in agitation for about an hour, but it was getting significantly cold, below freezing, out there, and most of them hadn’t come equipped to spend the night in the elements. There was a lot of honking from the traffic jam as most of the cars left.

  That morning I made sure that the first thing my father did was call the school and find out what it meant to be suspended for a week: a school week, ending that evening, or a calendar week, meaning I was punished through the weekend? The news was grim: the principal claimed I was out until Monday, though I was willing to bet this rule wasn’t written down anywhere.

  I couldn’t call Beth until she got home from school, but it was just as well because I didn’t know what I was going to tell her. I hated the idea of her going to the dance and meeting other guys there and dancing with them. My hold on her heart felt so tenuous. What if some ninth graders, kings of the social order, noticed the delicate beauty flowering two grades below them? There was no way I could compete with a ninth grader.

  When I crossed from the house to the pole barn people reacted like I was Elvis Presley. Honestly, were their lives so empty that the sight of a thirteen-year-old boy was that exciting?

  Emory ate what I fed him and then did something remarkable: he went to the far end of the pole barn, turned his back to me, and relieved himself right there. It was as if he understood just how delicate the situation was: the people in our yard all wanted something from him, and we had no guarantee it wouldn’t all turn ugly if he were to go out there.

  What it smelled like in that barn, though—that was far from delicate. I hosed down the cement, feeling like this was a pretty good indication as to how the day was going to go.

  There were so many cars on Hidden Creek Road that it took the news van until almost noon to make it to our property. We had two people wearing robes and chanting who were a couple of real odd numbers, with bald heads and spangled jewelry. Mr. Von, the grave digger in town who everyone said was not right in the head, had made his way up and was wandering around with a bemused expression on his face, approaching people and standing and staring at them as if he thought they were street performers. More than one portable cassette player vied for dominance from different picnic areas that had been assembled on our property. One man held up a sign that I thought said: “PERSPECT,” which didn’t make any sense to me, and then he moved his hand and I saw that it said: “PERSPECTIVE,” which still didn’t make any sense to me. A woman had set up a table with a red velvet tablecloth that had a picture of a man’s palm stitched into it, and she was dealing cards and telling people’s fortunes. Under any other circumstances I might have headed over there to see what she had to say about me, but I sensed that interacting with any of these people would just legitimize their trespass.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that all this was adding up to something bad.

  The family Jeep was parked sideways at the top of the drive, but when my dad saw the TV van he pretty much skipped out the door to unblock their entrance. He was clean shaven and smelled nice again, I noticed.

  Wally looked as good-humored as Alecci did sour. Nichole J. Singleton slid from the truck and held her hand up to her eyes to shield them from the sun and smiled at my father in a way that didn’t seem at all phony. That was probably why she was a famous TV personality, because she had a genuine way of smiling at people when she was being phony.

  For the third time in my life, I put on my suit. It was time for my interview. Man, did it feel good when Nichole painted my face with a makeup brush. I closed my eyes so that I could concentrate on the light, soft sensation. When she told me I was done we headed outside.

  “Need to get something different in the background,” Alecci was saying to Wally.

  “Maybe the porch?” the cameraman said to Nichole.

  “Would it be okay if we shot this on the porch?” Nichole asked my father. It was like watching an order make its way down the chain of command. My dad nodded at her and I half-expected her to say okay to Wally and for him to say okay to Alecci, but instead they all just trooped up the steps and moved the deck chairs around.

  Nichole took out a mirror and checked her makeup. She smiled at my dad, who was hovering around her like an imprinted duck.

  I sort of hated the idea of him getting a crush on someone like Nichole, though I didn’t have the heart to advise him what I’d overheard Alecci say—that she was being so nice because it was her job. Nothing I could tell my dad would matter anyway; he was too far gone. (I knew this because I was in exactly the same position, love-wise.) Besides, there was a potential benefit: when Nichole left for Spokane, I doubted Yvonne would look like anything to my dad but just a lonely grocery gal.

  I knew that my father needed to move on from Mom, that a man can’t stay faithful to a dead woman forever. I expected that if it hadn’t been for the fortuitous arrival of Nichole J. Singleton from Channel 6 News, my dad and Yvonne might have gotten pretty serious with each other. Now, though, his eyes were open to the possibility of other women and maybe he wouldn’t settle for the default. If he took his time we’d both be a lot better off.

  I had this worldly perspective because I’d kissed two women so far that year and it wasn’t even November.

  “Look at that,” Alecci said. “Wally, get a shot of that.”

  A man in a really dumb bear costume was dancing around out in the driveway. It looked homemade out of brown carpet samples. My dad and I glanced at each other in disgust.

  “Okay, Charlie, are you ready? This is taped, so you don’t have to worry about making any mistakes,” Nichole told me. Her smile was so warm and genuine it made me grin right back. “Wally?”

  “I’m ready,” said Wally.

  Alecci pulled out a piece of paper and read it to himself so we’d know he had a function of some kind, too.

  I was pretty sure I would be nervous, but Nichole’s eyes were so kind I just talked to them and forgot all about the camera. She asked me questions to lead the story up to the bear being locked in the barn.

  “And then when you got home from school, what did you see?” Nichole asked me.

  “Well, no, I wasn’t in school that day,” I corrected.

  Alecci was a man so impatient that he could signal displeasure with no more than a subtle shift of some papers in his hands. Nichole gave him a sharp glance and then smoothly corrected herself: “When you got home, what did you see?”

  I explained there was paint on the floor and words on the wall. As I did I looked around for McHenry, but he had gone home the night before and hadn’t yet returned.

  “Stay with me, Charlie,” Nichole said softly. I snapped my eyes back to hers.

  “So the bear wrote those words himself,” Nichole said.

  I closed my mouth.

  “Charlie? Who wrote those words on the wall?”

  “Well, we don’t really know.”

  Nichole just stared at me with those warm eyes. Alecci slapped the papers against his left palm. “For chrissakes,” he muttered.

  Nichole turned to the camera. “Let’s take a minute,” she said.

  “Cut!” Alecci barked. He was giving me an accusatory look. I glanced over at my dad, and he met my eyes and shrugged.

  “Charlie, can we go somewhere and talk?” Nichole asked.

  Her tone was exactly what the teachers use when they ask you politely to go somewhere with them so they can read you the riot act. I figured I was in for a real chewing out, since probably the whole reason why the TV crew was here in the first place was to cover the story of the bear who wrote on the wall. Otherwise, it was just a bear in Idaho—not exactly something for the evening news.

  We went around to the back deck and sat on the wooden chairs. A ridge of dark clouds was coming up the valley like an advancing army and soon we’d have wind and rain to contend with.

  Nichole took in a deep breath, looking around. “This place is so pretty. I grew up in Los Angeles; we have mountains there, but they are noth
ing like this.” She turned and smiled at me. I braced myself for the question: Why did you just lie on camera? Instead she said, “Tell me what she was like.”

  I must have looked as stupefied as I felt.

  “Your mother. Laura Hall. Tell me about her.”

  When I finally found my tongue again, I told Nichole about my mom’s upside-down tomato cages. I guess they had been on my mind a lot. I explained how I made these dumb cloth flags for them and how carefully she had taped each flag into a tightly wound spool of cloth at the top. “That was her last good day.”

  Nichole was looking away and wiping at the lower part of her eyes with a tissue. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, and then she turned back to me. “Charlie,” she said, “you get to say whatever you want in that interview. Don’t let Tony Alecci or anyone else tell you anything different.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Between you and me, though, what do you think it means that he has a message? A message for whom? About what?”

  Funny how having her ask me that one simple question made everything clear for me. I knew why Emory was still hanging around, why he ignored my urgings to get up to the mountains. I have a message. He was still here because he hadn’t delivered his message!

  Nichole was watching me speculatively. “What is it?”

  “I know what we need to do,” I said simply.

  We went around to the front of the house. My father was lingering at the near edge of the front porch and sort of lit up when he saw Nichole and me rounding the corner.

  There was a man talking to the camera on the porch. “Civil War expert,” my dad told Nichole in a whisper. The guy was pretty much bald, but he had some hair growing above his ear that he’d oiled and plastered to the top of his head to fool everyone. He seemed pretty nervous and tugged at his tie a lot as he blinked at the lens Wally had focused on him.

  “So what is your opinion, Professor?” Alecci asked.

  “Well, the people behind this were clever, but they made some mistakes,” the professor responded. “There was, indeed, a Michigan Third Regiment of infantry that mustered out of Grand Rapids in May of 1861, and ultimately did see some action in Virginia, where the Chickahominy River lies. But it was actually the Fourth Michigan Regiment, under the command of Colonel Dwight Woodbury, that fought the Rebel army at New Bridge.”

  I could see from Alecci’s expression that he didn’t understand this any better than I did.

  “So you’re saying…,” Alecci prompted. Nichole fidgeted by my side.

  “The account is not historically accurate as far as we know,” the professor stated.

  “Were you able to find a soldier listed on the rosters for the Third Regiment of the Civil War?” Alecci asked.

  The professor didn’t like the way the question was phrased. “The Michigan Third Regiment of the Army of the Potomac,” he said deliberately and slowly. “No, I was not able to locate a roster with the name Emory Bain listed on it.”

  “Okay then,” Alecci said. He turned to Wally. “Cut.”

  “What are we doing?” Nichole demanded instantly. She sounded angry.

  “We’re keeping the story alive,” Alecci responded smugly. “Adding controversy.”

  “And you conducted the interview?”

  “I’m the producer,” he replied.

  “That’s right, Tony. You are the producer. I’m the reporter.” She turned to the professor, who was just standing there looking nervous. “Tell me, Professor, are the rosters from the armies of the Civil War so complete that you can say with certainty that no man named Emory Bain ever fought for the Michigan Third Regiment?”

  “No, they are—”

  “And isn’t it possible that a soldier from the Third Regiment might have somehow been involved in the fighting on the Chickahominy?”

  “The battle at New Bridge is fairly famous,” the professor said cautiously. “We know it was the Fourth Regiment.”

  “Do we know that no soldiers from the Third Regiment were involved?”

  “Of course, we can’t say anything for sure about individual soldiers who might have moved between regiments. It was war. Anything can happen in war.”

  Nichole turned back to Alecci with a defiant expression on her face. He spread his hands. “We got writing on the wall and this guy says it may not all be kosher,” he explained defensively. “He’s the expert. Controversy sells. It gets us airtime.”

  “We’re standing here on this man’s front porch,” Nichole responded, gesturing to my father, “and you’re saying he’s a liar.”

  “No, the kid said the words could have been written by anyone! After that, do you think we even have a story? At least the professor here gives us something to talk about,” Alecci exploded. “Look at this godforsaken place! Look at these people. You want to have come out here for nothing?”

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” I said quietly.

  Everyone looked at me. Wally’s gaze was as blank as his camera’s lens—he recorded; that’s all he did. Alecci’s eyes were snakelike, Nichole’s were encouraging and kind, and my father looked pensive. I sighed.

  “It’s what’s the most important, and we forgot all about it,” I explained. “He has a message.”

  chapter

  THIRTY-THREE

  THERE are days when the weather comes storming out of the north and lashes the area so violently it’s easy to believe Nature has completely lost her temper over something, and moments after my big TV interview that’s what happened. The Woodstock festival out in our yard fled before the assault, pelted with icy rain and cutting winds. The guy in the bear costume found out what it was like to try to walk wearing wet carpeting, and at the top of our driveway he shed the whole assembly and ran down Hidden Creek Road clad only in his Skivvies.

  Wally and Alecci raced to their van and jumped inside and took off, but Nichole followed us into the house. She was a little bit like Beth, in that way: she always seemed to know what to do.

  My dad made coffee and gave me hot chocolate and built a nice fire. It was so cozy I could feel myself being lulled into the same strange delusion that my father was entertaining in his own mind—it seemed like Nichole was here to stay. She’d come over for meals and we’d sit and talk in front of the fire while a storm roared outside and slapped rain hard against the windows.

  What snapped me out of it was a telephone call my dad answered. He turned and looked at Nichole. “No, no interviews,” he said firmly. Nichole gave him an encouraging nod. Another reason she’s so nice, I thought to myself. Eliminates the competition.

  “So, Charlie, you said the bear has a message. What do you think it is?” Nichole asked me. I liked being asked questions by her. It was really comfortable having her attention, feeling those blue eyes focus all their warmth on me. I guess in some ways I knew she was using her charm on me for the same reason she was buttering up my dad, but I wasn’t inclined to resist it, not at all.

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But I know it’s important.”

  “Whatever it is,” my father said, “we need to hear it by Monday.”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t help the sad feeling that seeped through me then. All the pieces had come together in my mind. I knew that I was the only person who had figured out how the bear had written his words on the wall and that if I just went out to the pole barn, opened a can of paint, unlocked the tomato cages, and slipped one over Emory’s paw he’d be able to tell us his message. I hate to admit it because I know it is selfish, but I wasn’t ready to say good-bye, so I didn’t say or do anything.

  Nichole was looking at me with a concerned expression. “What is it?”

  She barely knew me and yet was more keyed into my moods than my father ever had been. I didn’t want to tell them why I was so wistful, though, so instead I told her a different truth.

  “I’m not going to be able to go to the dance tomorrow.”

  My father gave me an odd look. Though he had seen me kis
s a girl with his own eyes, he just didn’t seem to understand how my life had changed—I was no longer a little boy tossing G.I. Joe dolls out the second-story window; I was a man who could have gone on an actual date this weekend if I hadn’t been suspended and also had had the nerve to ask her. I explained to Nichole about the suspension from Benny H.

  “Fighting in school is very serious,” she said slowly, processing the story.

  “Yes, but I was only supposed to be suspended through Friday and now it’s the weekend, too,” I explained, essentially fabricating a technicality.

  Nichole turned to my dad. “How do you feel about it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a shame he can’t go. It does seem arbitrary and unfair. I get the feeling that if I hadn’t called his attention to it, the principal would have let Charlie in without giving it a thought.”

  I was astonished. My father hadn’t indicated anything but complete indifference about the matter until now.

  “Why don’t I call him?” Nichole suggested pleasantly.

  Her conversation with the principal was one of the most delicious I’ve ever heard, and I only was privy to the one side of it. After introducing herself and her news channel, Nichole asked him all sorts of questions for which the answer could only be, “I’m an important man.”

  “It must be difficult to run a school with children that age; how do you manage?… You seem awfully young to be in such an important position; why have you risen so quickly?… Education is so crucial; what called you to the profession?”

  Ten minutes of this and he was as relaxed as a nursing baby. “So, regarding Charlie Hall,” she said smoothly. “He’s been through so much, I’m sure you and your staff are doing everything you can to help him reclaim a normal life.”

  The principal probably said something like, “We’re doing everything and I’m an important man.”

  “It’s a shame, then, that he won’t be allowed to go to the dance tomorrow, don’t you think?” Nichole asked. “If there’s anything that could help a boy forget all the furor surrounding a national news story, it would be going to a party with his peers. So tell me, if we were to go down to the school tomorrow night, could we interview you about the dance?… Wonderful! Perhaps we could shoot some tape of Charlie at the party?… That would be great!” Nichole winked at me. “Thank you very much; I so look forward to meeting you in person.”