Small as an Elephant (7 page)

“Looks broken,” said his neighbor, taking another sip of his soda.

“You should get that checked,” said the bartender, scooping ice into a glass.

“Nah,” said the bearded guy. “I’ve broken a finger plenty of times playing football. Ice it and splint it. It’ll heal fine. Here,” he said, motioning to the bartender. “Fill one of those rags with ice.”

The bartender took a cloth, filled it with ice, and placed it on Jack’s finger.

The bearded guy nodded. “What’s your name?”

“Jack.”

“No way,” said the guy. “Jack’s my name! Do they call you Jackie?”

“Just Mo — my mother. Sometimes.” Jack turned to the bartender. “Have you seen a woman in here? With short blond hair and blue eyes? She’s kind of skinny and she wears hoop earrings.”

The other Jack — Big Jack — laughed. “You’re going to have to do better than that, kid. You’re describing one-quarter of America.”

“Does she have a tattoo?” asked the bartender. “A tiny one, right here?” He pointed to the soft place between his forefinger and his thumb.

Jack nodded. She had a tattoo. A tiny orchid. The bartender had seen his mother! He remembered her! “When was she here?” he asked breathlessly.

“Yesterday . . . no, the day before. Saturday morning.”

Two whole days ago! Different emotions rushed to be first in line. Jack took a sip of water, pushing them all back, making them wait.

“Did she stay long?” Jack asked.

“She was talking to someone,” the bartender said. “Guy who works for Hinckley.”

“Sails yachts,” Big Jack said. “I know who you’re talkin’ about now. She was a live wire. She your mom?”

Jack knew that if he said yes, they’d be more careful about the details they shared. “She’s someone I met,” he said.

“I see,” said Big Jack. “Hey, Gary, give me that pencil over there. And, Laurie”— he grabbed the attention of a pretty waitress as she walked by —“you got a first-aid kit back there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Go get it for me, please,” said Big Jack.

He must spend a lot of time here,
thought Jack, moving his finger out from under the ice for a moment.

“Well, she was here through lunch,” said the bartender. “The guy she was talking to was getting ready to go off on a charter.”

“What’s that?” asked Jack.

“He’s going to sail someone’s boat to warmer waters, now that the season’s over here,” said Big Jack.

“Warmer like Boston?” asked Jack.

The two men laughed like that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. “Warmer like the Bahamas,” said the bartender.

Jack stopped breathing, which must have blocked oxygen from going to his head. He felt dizzy, like he might faint.

Just then, the waitress —
Laurie,
Jack thought, trying not to think about anything else other than her name — put a little plastic box on the bar.

“Mudo,”
said Big Jack.

Jack looked up. “
Mudo
?”

“Means ‘thank you’ in Ewe,” said Big Jack, “which is what they speak in parts of Ghana, in Africa.”

“Have you been there?” asked Jack. He’d heard of Ghana. They had lots of African-elephant conservation programs there. It seemed like a lucky sign.

“A long time ago,” Big Jack said as he opened the first-aid kit and pulled out some gauze and a roll of tape. He measured the pencil against Jack’s pinky and broke the pencil in two. Then he carefully wrapped Jack’s pinky with gauze and tape, using the pencil as a splint. It didn’t hurt a bit. Or if it had, Jack hadn’t noticed.

“Don’t worry,” said Big Jack. “This is sort of my job.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“No. I help kids that need help. So, where’d you meet this woman?” asked Big Jack.

“Seawall Campground,” said Jack. Lying was getting easier and easier. “She thought she might meet me here. She has something for me.”

“Yeah?” said Big Jack. His eyes told Jack he didn’t believe him.

“Well, I think you’re out of luck,” said the bartender. “I’d say she’s on her way to tropical beaches.”

Jack put his glass to his lips and attempted to finish his water, but his throat was blocked. His mother, on a boat.
Bahamas.
He slid off the stool.

“How about a cheeseburger?” asked Big Jack. “On me?”

Jack knew he should take this man up on the offer, knew he should get something to eat and maybe figure out a way to explain his predicament, but he couldn’t. He was about to lose it. All it would take was one more question, one more kind look, and Jack would spill everything. He couldn’t risk it. He had to think. He had to get air.

“I can’t. I’ve got to get going. Thanks anyway,” said Jack. He couldn’t even look up at Big Jack. “And thanks for fixing my finger!” he called as he turned and ran out of the restaurant, back into the glaring sunlight.

The street was overflowing with couples and families enjoying their last day here on the island. Only none of them
was
an island. They had each other — holding hands, laughing, pointing things out to one another. Jack had no one. Not his mother, who was probably on her way to the Bahamas; not his grandmother, who wanted to steal him away from his mother; not even his one and only friend, Nina, who refused to understand. No one. He was in a bustling, crowded place, and he was entirely alone.

At least he wasn’t hungry anymore. In fact, he was pretty sure that if he ate anything right now, he’d throw up. To get away from the odor of a nearby restaurant with wide-open windows, Jack ducked into Sherman’s, a book- and gift shop. The store was packed with tourists, and twice he bumped into someone with his stuffed backpack. He couldn’t help it. His eyes were darting from face to face, searching for his mom, willing her to be here, willing the bartender to be wrong.

His mom would love this place: books and tchotchkes. He meandered through the crowd to the nonfiction section. He loved to read. In fact, it was one reason why being alone in the apartment didn’t freak him out. He could usually lose himself in a book or in comics in a way he couldn’t when he was watching TV or playing video games.

There were no books about elephants, only ones about Maine animals, so he wandered over to the fiction section. There, he picked up a book called
Trouble
— he was sure having enough of that — but the words swam before his eyes. He snapped it shut and placed it back on the shelf.

From the book section, he squeezed his way toward the shelves that held toys. Mostly, they were the kinds of toys that keep kids busy during long car trips — kids like him, who didn’t have DVD players. He turned his eyes away from the mechanical puzzles and the Mad Libs, saw a rack of plastic animals, and smiled. These were the types of toys he had liked best when he was younger.

He wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the neck of a plastic giraffe — so smooth to the touch. If he’d been alone in the store, he would have smelled the plastic. He searched for an elephant.

He thought he saw one in the corner of the rack, but it was a rhino. Jack held the rhino for a moment before putting it back. He remembered a story he’d read — a
true
story — about a mother elephant who tried to rescue a baby rhinoceros who was stuck in mud. The elephant was using her trunk to rock the baby loose, but the mother rhino didn’t understand. She thought the elephant was threatening her baby, and she charged, forcing the elephant to back away. The mama elephant would wait awhile and then go back and try to free the calf. She was charged time and time again, maimed, even — rhinos can be really fierce — but the elephant wouldn’t give up. She wouldn’t leave that baby to die.

Jack searched madly for an elephant and finally found one, a small one, walking on tiptoes the way elephants do. Even though it was a toy, he knew it was an African elephant: the highest point was not its shoulder but the center of its back. Its trunk was pointed up — a symbol of good luck, his art teacher had told him once when she’d examined his drawings. Jack held the baby elephant in both hands. Its wrinkled trunk lay against his splintered finger.

“May I help you?” asked a woman suddenly standing at his side.

“How much is this elephant?” he asked, knowing full well the cost was more than the coins he had in his pocket.

“I think the small size is two-fifty,” she said. “But I can check if you want.”

“That’d be great,” he said. Maybe they’d hold it for him.

As the woman walked away to check the price, Jack calculated the number of bottles he would have to find to purchase this elephant, remembering that there’d be tax. More than fifty. Even if he dug in trash cans, it was unlikely he’d be able to collect that many, and have money left over for food, too. Besides, he should probably be thinking about saving up for a bus ticket or something.

The elephant seemed to smile at him. He searched the rack for other elephants, but there were none. Just this baby.

A lone one. Like him.

Jack’s thoughts spun. The elephant was so small, and the store was so crowded. . . .

He thought of his mother, thought of her leaving him here on an island, thought of her laughing and spinning and seeing magical things with some guy on a sailboat. . . .

He did it.

He slipped the elephant into his pocket and ran toward the door.

“Hey!” the woman yelled. “Stop!”

He didn’t stop. He pushed his way through hordes of tourists and out the door.

“Jack!” he heard. The voice was a deep bellow. It must be Big Jack from the restaurant. He kept running.

Then he heard his name again. This time, a woman’s voice: “Jack!”

Mom?
He looked over his shoulder.

But no. It was just the woman from the store. Standing next to her was Big Jack, hunched over from running.

Jack kept going, shouts of “Get back here!” fading behind him.

Jack ran straight out of town. Not only had he stolen something (more than one thing, if you counted the cans and bottles he’d taken from the B&B), but people
knew
he had stolen something, and they knew his name. He was only a sighting away from being caught.

He ran away from the crowded sidewalks, past the gazebo on the village green, down sidewalkless, winding island streets for about twenty minutes, until he came to a dirt road. Would they search for him down there? Not likely. After gulping down the entire contents of his water bottle, he followed the rutty road to a single farmhouse surrounded by fields.

There didn’t seem to be much activity at the house. No cars in the driveway, no tractor in the distance. An old black-and-white dog came out of the barn and ambled up to him, like it was his regular job to greet guests and be petted. Didn’t even bother to bark.

“Hello?” Jack called, having no idea what he would say if someone appeared. But no one responded.

Jack noticed the house was a lot like this dog: nice but worn down. Kind of tilted in some places and bulging in others. After a few pats, the dog strolled back into the barn. Jack followed him.

At one time there might have been livestock in this barn, cows or sheep, maybe, but not any longer. Now it was being used for storage of old, rusty equipment and gardening tools.

Cool! There was a loft. Ever since his third-grade teacher had read the part in
Charlotte’s Web
where Avery and Fern swing from a rope in Mr. Zuckerman’s barn, Jack had wanted to look down from a loft. He climbed the wooden ladder cautiously, trying not to put weight on his sore finger.

There were some cushions and some scratchy wool blankets up there, and a wooden box turned over to make a table of sorts. Jack guessed that kids used to play here — maybe even had sleepovers. But it was clear from the look of things that it had been a long time ago. Mouse droppings were everywhere.

Even though Jack was from the city, mouse poop didn’t gross him out. Heck, in the city he’d seen rats — and their apartment had plenty of roaches. Mice were nothing at all. Jack shook one of the blankets out and covered the cushions. Then he sat down and tried to imagine that he lived on this farm. That this loft belonged to him. He pulled the elephant out of his pocket and placed it on the box where he could see it. It was his now.

He yanked his sleeping bag out of his backpack, and his comic books, too. He’d rest here for a little bit, and then he’d figure out what to do.

It was night when he woke with a start. He’d fallen asleep, and it was pitch-black in the barn. Without his cell phone, he didn’t know if it was ten o’clock at night or two o’clock in the morning. He lay there, wondering what he was going to do. What if the bartender had been wrong? What if his mother was looking for him?
Maybe I should go back to the campsite tomorrow,
thought Jack.

But school started tomorrow.
How long will it be,
he wondered,
before the guidance counselor starts looking for me?
Would he just be wasting valuable time by hoping his mother showed up?

“On her way to tropical beaches,” the bartender had said.

Round and round went his thoughts, each one feeling momentarily promising . . . and then hopeless. Night sounds — crickets, a truck horn in the distance — grew louder around him. Everything had an opinion.