Another Kind of Hurricane (23 page)

“Ben?” said Jake.

“Yes?”

Zavion liked hearing that.
Yes
. The word
yes
coming out of Papa's mouth. He watched Papa wipe up some more of the spilled paint. Papa's face was turned toward the floor, but Zavion knew those eyes on the top of his head were looking right at Jake.

“You're a painter. A good one.” Jake gestured to the freshly painted wall. “I'm not. Annie and I need our house painted. We're in need of a change.” He paused. “And here's the other thing. I need to repay you.”

“I don't understand.” Papa looked up.

Jake spoke quietly. “You let me not be there. You might not even know it, and I don't even know if I can explain it. But for a little while, you let me be here. For that I will always be grateful.”

Papa stood up. He walked over to Zavion, who silently handed him the marble.

“Let me let you not be
here
. Let me let you be
there
for a little while,” said Jake.

Papa closed his hand around the marble. He climbed the ladder. He held the marble up to the wall, like it was the moon, or a planet. He was silent for a moment before he spoke.

“You think from way up there, high in the sky, the hurricane seemed so vicious? Seems like from that perspective it could have looked like a gray sky, a big wind or two, and a few heavy drops of rain, nothing much else.” He took a deep breath. “Being right inside it, though—sweet Jesus—it made me believe in gods, or monsters. I keep seeing the walls of the house breaking apart around us”—he looked at Zavion—“me jumping and watching you jump behind me. I keep seeing you falling off the door. I keep feeling my hand slip, trying to find you in that water. Trying to get you onto the door.” He tossed the marble into the air and caught it again. “Those roof shingles—” He opened his hand, the marble balanced in the center of his palm. “I can't seem to step any farther away than right smack in the middle of that damn hurricane.” He turned to Jake. Even through his own sticky eyes, Zavion could see tears welling up in Papa's. “I owe you an apology for what I said before.”

“No need,” said Jake.

“Well, I am sorry,” said Papa. “And maybe you're right.”

Zavion opened his mouth but then promptly closed it again. The best he could do was be quiet.

But quiet was not Ms. Cyn's idea of best.

“Sounds like a good offer, Ben,” she said as she knitted. “You need the work. I know you do.”

“Jake's right too,” said Henry. “About being a bad painter? Believe him. He isn't good at it.” He turned to Jake. “Remember trying to help Wayne and me with that tree house? You painted more leaves onto the walls than were on the tree.” He turned back to Papa. “Jake needs you. For the good of his house, you need to come.”

Zavion held his breath. Papa was silent and still for a moment. Then he looked at Zavion and slowly nodded. “Okay,” he said, tossing the marble to Jake. “Okay, we'll come.”

Yes
, thought Zavion.

As Jake drove the truck up Highway 10, he thought about faith.

Faith.

At Jake's suggestion, Annie had contacted Margarita and was already learning Spanish. She told Jake that when she confessed to Margarita that she was afraid she might be too old to learn anything new, Margarita had said no one was too old to learn. She had said,
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark
.

Only she had said it in Spanish.

La fe es el pájaro que siente la luz cuando el amanecer todavía está oscuro
.

Fe
.

Faith.

Fe
.

Jake couldn't get the word out of his head.

It sounded like a musical note.

Sometimes a word could ring in the air like a bell.

Like a warning.

Like a celebration.

Like the marking of time.

The minutes ticked by as they drove up the highway. Henry sat by the window, his forehead pressed against the glass. Zavion sat next to Jake, asleep on his shoulder. Ben lay in the bed in the back of the cab.

The smell of cinnamon, peanut butter, and chocolate wafted through the cab of the truck, four slices of Cora's cake carefully wrapped for their journey. Jake couldn't believe their luck, not that he believed in luck.

Meeting all these people.

Making all these friends.

Henry finding the marble.

Maybe it wasn't luck.

Maybe it was faith.

A word like that reverberated. It didn't care if there was a fence or a wall or sixteen hundred miles of sadness between one pair of ears and another, it slipped inside any old way it could.

And so the word became a bridge.

A place to meet.

A place to connect.

Kind of like passing a marble back and forth
, Jake thought.

He patted his shirt pocket, where the marble sat just outside his heart.

Henry watched Jake hold the marble like it was the very world itself. Then Jake closed his hand around it and held it to his chest.

“I knew you took this from Wayne's casket.”

“You did?”

“Yup. I can't explain why. But I just knew. Couldn't blame you.”

“I'm—”

“Nah. Don't apologize. I mean it. No reason for one more thing to be buried in the ground.”

“Jake, I don't know why I took it. I just—I wanted—”

Jake held up his hand. “No need, Henry.” He held the marble against his heart for a moment and then opened up his hand. “You want it?”

Henry pulled his shoulders up to his ears and then dropped them.

He didn't know if he wanted the marble or not.

Zavion woke up in North Carolina and kept his eyes open all the way to New York. The highway up north looked almost the same as the Louisiana highway, especially at night. It stretched out in front of the truck for miles, gray and black and hard. But there were hills on either side of it, and in the faint dusky light, they looked like little countries to Zavion, one after the other rising up out of the earth, and the occasional tall tree looming high above the hills like a flag.

Zavion imagined he was trekking up and over each of the hills, leaving one country and entering another.