Hide and Seek (5 page)

“Not much, I’m afraid, except to make and take phone calls. But I bet our Razi here can find it.” Daddy waited for Mr. Gorman to nod his approval before he handed the cell phone to Razi.

“Give it a try, young fella. It was a birthday present from my girls, and Tracyanne tells me there’s nothing I can do to break it except for dropping it in the Grand River. The buttons are so little, I can barely see ’em. That’s what getting old does for you.”

Razi cupped the cell phone in both his hands. Keisha had seen him do this before with handheld games, TV remotes, even Mr. Sanders’s new digital camera. He could barely read, but Grandma said that Razi intuited the way things worked.

They all watched as Razi started pressing buttons. After a few distressing bleeps from the phone, an image of a camera popped up. “Here it is!”

“Good job, Razi.” Daddy held out his hand. “Can I see?”

“Wait a minute.…” Razi’s nose touched the keypad as he pulled the phone close. “That’s
my
pumpkin!”

“It can’t be your pumpkin,” Daddy said. “I just stepped over Jack-o’-Lantern in the front hall.”

“No! The one I use for trick-or-treating.”

“That’s a plastic pumpkin, Razi. Give me the phone, please.” Keisha was about to grab it from her brother when Zeke and Zack rode up on their bikes.

“Hey there!” Zack dropped his bike on the ground while Zeke leaned his against Mr. Gorman’s garage.

“Well, hello,” Mr. Gorman said. “Are you part of the rescue squad, too?”

“We’re here about a deer in distress,” Zeke said, out of breath.

“Can I see, too?” Zack asked, reaching for the phone. He and Keisha bumped heads as Razi held it out.

“Maybe we should agree to pass the phone around to avoid on-the-job injuries. As the elder, I will go first.” Daddy took the phone and squinted at the image on the screen. “Well, now I’ve seen everything.” He gave the phone to Keisha.

Razi was hopping up and down. “We have to get my pumpkin back. It’s almost Halloween!”

“And what are you going to be for Halloween?” Mr. Gorman asked. “Tracyanne junior is going to be a pirate.”

“I’m going to be a police officer.”

“No you’re not. You’re going to be an alligator,” Zeke said. “Keisha, quit hogging.”

“Hold your horses, mister.” Keisha wasn’t ready to let go yet. The photograph was too small to see well, but it looked like a young deer was snooping inside a plastic pumpkin, looking for food, or maybe even water. But the part that didn’t make sense was that the pumpkin was off the ground. Somehow it was stuck to the deer’s head.

Zack put his chin on Keisha’s shoulder. “How come he doesn’t just pull his nose out?”

“Don’t say
his
nose,” Zeke said to his brother. “Boy deer have antlers. This is a girl deer.”

“Right. Girls are always sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

Keisha was about to defend the girls of the world when Daddy asked her, “Can you send that photo to our computer at home? That way, we can blow it up and get a closer look.”

Razi grabbed the cell phone out of Keisha’s hands and started punching buttons.

“Careful, Razi,” Daddy cautioned. Then he pointed down the slope to an opening in the woods below. “Is that the trail that leads to the ball diamonds?”

“It is, but first you have to go through the wetland area.”

“Hmmm.” Daddy rubbed his chin.

“There.” Razi handed the phone back to Mr. Gorman. “I just sent it to everybody,” he said.

“But what about Daddy? He’s not in Mr. Gorman’s address book. Can I see it for a minute, Mr. Gorman?”

“Be my guest,” Mr. Gorman replied.

“Can I be your guest, too?” Razi tugged on Mr. Gorman’s sleeve. “Do you have cookies?”

Mr. Gorman nodded. “I must warn you, though. I’m a bachelor. They’re cookies from a package.”

Cell phones weren’t hard to figure out. Soon Keisha had sent the photo to their home e-mail.

Daddy shook Mr. Gorman’s hand. “We’ll take a rain check on the cookies. Thank you kindly for your assistance. And if we find this deer, you’ll be the first to know.”

“With trackers like these, I think you have a good chance.”

Keisha looked at Zack and Zeke and Razi, who were busy chest-bumping each other. Then she looked up at Mr. Gorman. Was he serious?

“Let’s take a walk, kids, and see if we can spot some tracks. By the way, boys, I wouldn’t be so certain that this is a girl deer. It might be a button buck that—”

“We’re on the hill now, Daddy,” Razi broke in. “Can I somersault down there?”

Daddy nodded and Keisha watched Razi run down the hill, his arms flung out to catch the breeze. He looked happy for the first time all afternoon.

“What’s a button buck?” Zeke wanted to know.

“Well, in their first year of life, male deer don’t grow a full set of antlers. They just have what are called horn buds.”

“I didn’t see any buds,” Zack said. “I still think it’s a girl. Wait for me, Razi!”

Zeke and Zack ran after Razi.

“I can do four in a row,” Razi bragged.

“We can do more than that!”

“So what did you make of that little picture, Key?” Daddy asked. “The screen was too small for me to see. We’ll blow it up when we get home and be able to tell whether we say ‘he’ or ‘she.’ ”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Keisha asked. “It’s in trouble, either way. Somehow that pumpkin is stuck tight.”

The boys raced over the wooden boardwalk that crossed the marsh. As they got closer, Keisha heard a gurgling stream.

Daddy stepped off the trail and squatted down. “With the rain recently, I thought maybe …”

Keisha squatted next to him.

“Here, little deer!” Razi called out from a distance. “Come here and I’ll pull the pumpkin off your head!”

“Shhhhh!” said Zack or Zeke. “You’re scaring him away, Razi.”

“I’ll give you a cookie.…”

“Here we go.” Daddy was pointing to a set of tracks. It was easy to spot deer tracks. Unlike squirrels or chipmunks, or other animals you might see in the park, deer had hooves. Their tracks looked a little like bunny ears, with the tops close together but not touching.

“These are full-sized tracks,” Daddy said. “I don’t think they belong to a button buck or a fawn born this spring.” He stood up, keeping his eyes on the ground.

Keisha followed him, examining the leaves and branches. “Look, Daddy.” She pointed to a stand of bushes growing along the stream bank. The bushes had bite marks down low and high up.

Daddy grabbed one of the low branches. “Hmmm. And look down here.”

Keisha followed Daddy’s finger and saw another set of hoofprints, only these were much smaller. “Mamas and babies stay together for about a year,” Daddy said. “I wonder what Mama thought when her baby deer came home with a pumpkin on its head.”

Before Keisha could answer, she and Daddy were interrupted by a crashing and snapping of twigs. It was Zack. “Ummm, we need some help with Razi. He’s up a tree again.”

“That would be a B. I. D.” Daddy dropped his nibbled twig. They followed Zack back to the boardwalk and down the path until they came to an old oak tree.

“I was watching him, honest!” Zeke said. “I just stopped to tie my shoe.”

“I was trying to catch a frog,” Zack confessed.

Nobody had to tell Keisha what happened. Mama always said Razi was part monkey. When he found a tree to climb with a good branch low enough to swing up, he couldn’t resist.

“I can see the deer!” Razi called to them from the branches. The fall had been so warm that the trees hadn’t shed as many of their leaves as usual. It was hard to see exactly how far up Razi was.

Daddy cupped his hands around his mouth and called up, “It doesn’t really matter if you can see the deer, Razi-Roo, because we can’t see you. And seeing you is the first order of business.”

“I am the king of all that I see!” Razi shouted. “Key, come up here with me.”

Keisha had already pulled herself up onto the first branch. Razi was like a baby bear. He liked to go up, but
he didn’t always know how to get down. Looking down and seeing how high up he was frightened Razi. This wasn’t the first time Keisha had to talk him down from a tree.

“I want to see the deer, too, Razi. Can I join you?”

“I command you to make me a ladder,” Razi ordered Keisha once she’d touched his shoe to let him know she was close.

“One ladder for King Razi.” She squeezed Razi’s left foot. “Put this one on it first,” she said. “Hold on with your hands and I’ll show you.”

“I can see Horton Street! There’s Mama and baby Paulo!”

They were not high up enough to see Horton Street, but with Keisha nearby, Razi could enjoy being up in the tree even more. It was useless to try to rush him. Razi did things in his own time.

What Keisha could see was Huff Park. Through a break in the leaves, she followed the boardwalk path through the marsh. Then she found the place where she and Daddy had seen the deer tracks. Two paths crisscrossed through the marsh and over the streambed. She couldn’t understand why people would walk on those paths. The marsh was so mucky. They must be animal trails. Near the center of the marsh, a circle of grass had been trampled down. From above, it looked like a big
nest among the bushes and little trees that grew out of the muck.

“Careful!” Zeke called from below.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Keisha answered back. At the moment, she was feeling just a shade past sassy because she really wanted to be tracking the deer with Daddy.

“Keisha, it’s getting late,” Daddy said. “And dark, too.”

Keisha understood. In a few weeks, the time would change and it would be lighter in the late afternoon for a while, but now it seemed to grow dark so early. She thought hard. How could she get Razi to come down faster?

“Look, Razi, the moon.”

“I don’t see it.”

“You have to come down a branch. Oh, it’s a big harvest moon. There’s a space down here with me. I bet Wynken and Blynken and Nod are in that moon.”

“I want to see Wynken and Blynken.” Razi let Keisha guide his foot to the branch just below it.

“Maybe we can get all bundled up and watch the moon from the porch tonight. I’ll read you the story.”

“Can you see the river of crystal light?” Razi took another step down.

“Not yet, but if we get home in time to help Mama
with supper, maybe we’ll see it from the porch.”

“I don’t like herring fish.” Razi was now lost in the story of Wynken and Blynken. Two more branches and they’d be close enough to jump down.

“They’re not herring fish, really. Remember? The fish are the stars, and the nets of silver and gold are the last rays of the sun, and the—”

“Hey, next time take us up there,” Zack said. He had interlaced his fingers so that Keisha and Razi didn’t have to jump but could step right into his hands.

“Yeah, your dad made us stay down here and find something intelligent to say to our mom about tree bark.” Zeke held out the piece of bark he’d been studying.

“I don’t think there’s anything to say about tree bark that isn’t boring,” Zack said.

“Time to go, kids.” Daddy was rubbing his stomach. “In fact, I think it’s time for dinner.”