Wild Life (3 page)

Erik didn't unpack. That would be like admitting he was going to be staying for a while, and part of his mind simply refused to accept that. With nothing else to do, he poked around the room that had once belonged to his mother. Some photos and papers were stuck in the frame around the mirror over the dresser, and he examined them. One picture showed his mom when she was little, standing beside a brown and white calf with a blue ribbon around its neck. She was grinning proudly at the camera. There were several other blue and red ribbons from the Fortuna 4-H, a medal from a school track meet, and a program from a school play in which her part was listed as “Blue Fairy.”

There were a couple of shots of her and an older boy, one where they were smiling and sitting on top of hay bales piled in the bed of a pickup truck, another of them dressed for trick-or-treat. Erik looked closely at the series of school pictures that showed his mother growing from a cute, toothless kid into a cute teenager. In the early pictures, when she was elementary-school and middle-school age, she looked out at the camera with a wide, easy, confident, and, Erik thought, somewhat mischievous smile.

But then, in what he figured were her high school pictures, something changed. The crinkly-eyed, mischievous smile was gone, replaced by a flat, solemn expression. He'd seen kids put on that expression when they wanted to appear cool. Maybe that was what she'd been trying to do, but Erik thought it made her look sad.

Oma called to him to say supper was almost ready. He felt uncomfortable entering the living room where Big Darrell was sitting on a worn-looking chair watching the news, though he was really glad to see the television.
Where there's TV, there's hope,
he told himself.

From the kitchen, Oma said, “Goodness, it's seven-thirty! We don't usually eat anywhere near this late. Erik, I told your momma you'd call her when we got in. Better do it now, so she won't worry. It's two hours later there.”

Erik had forgotten about the time difference. No wonder the day had seemed so long. As he picked up the phone, Big Darrell spoke. “That's long-distance to New York.”

Well, duh,
thought Erik.
I'm the one who just traveled all the way across the country.
He turned to look at Big Darrell, to see if maybe he was kidding around. Big Darrell had removed the cap he'd been wearing on the drive from the airport, and Erik was momentarily startled by the whiteness of his grandfather's forehead compared to the rest of his tanned and ruddy complexion. His face didn't show a trace of humor.

Oma appeared at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. “Oh, he won't talk long. Now, will you, Erik?” she asked, sounding flustered.

So that's what's bugging him,
Erik realized.
Big Darrell's worried that I'll run up his telephone bill, the cheap-skate.
“I can use my cell phone,” he said, reaching into his pocket. But as soon as the connection was made, a message came up saying, “Call Was Lost!”

He tried several times without success. Oma, who had been watching, said, “I don't know much about those things, but most folks around here use a certain company, I forget the name. What is it, Big Darrell, do you recall?”

Big Darrell shook his head.

“Well, the name doesn't matter. But it's likely a different—” She paused, her brow furrowed, as she tried to come up with the right word.

“Network?” Erik suggested.

She brightened and smiled at him. “That's right. It's different here.”

It's different, all right,
Erik thought.

“I could just e-mail her,” he said. “She's online a lot.”

“Oh, goodness,” said Oma. “You need a computer for that, don't you?”

Erik nodded, his heart sinking.

“We don't have one of those. I don't really understand what on earth people are doing, staring at those things all day.”

Erik couldn't believe it. He was trapped in a house without a cell phone or a computer. It was like a nightmare.

Oma handed him an old-fashioned telephone with a coiled cord. “Here. You go ahead and call your momma. I expect she'd rather hear your voice, anyhow.”

When his mother asked, he told her that the plane trip had been torture. She asked a few more cheerful questions, but he was having no part of being cheered up. He wanted to tell her how awful everything was, how he couldn't believe she had sent him to this creepy house with her scary, mean old father who never talked, a place that had no school, where his cell phone didn't work, where there were no other kids, no computer, no
nothing
except junk and, oh, right, don't forget, an out house. He couldn't say what he wanted to say, not with Oma fussing about the kitchen and the Great Stone Face sitting in the living room listening.

“I've got to go, Mom. Oma's putting dinner on the table.”

“All right, sweetie,” said his mom. “I'm glad you're there safe and sound. Are you sure you're okay? You sound a little funny.”

“Oh, everything's just great,” he said.

His mother must have heard the sarcasm in his voice, and sighed. “We'll call you every chance we get, but it's going to be tricky, with the time difference. They tell us we'll be able to e-mail you.”

“That would work,” Erik whispered into the phone. “
If
there was a computer here. Which there isn't.”

“Yes, I know. But there must be computers at the public library in Crosby,” his mother said. “And I'm sure they'll have them at school.”

Erik didn't answer.

“We can write letters, too,” said his mom. “It'll be like pioneer days. You should like that.”

Again, Erik didn't answer. Into the silence his mother said, “You
will
write, won't you?”

“I guess.”

“Meanwhile, you try to make the best of things, okay? And help Oma.”

“Um-hmm,” Erik said without enthusiasm.

“Try to have a positive outlook.”

“Right.”

“Bye, sweetie. I love you. I'm going to put your dad on.”

Erik waited, knowing that he'd undoubtedly hurt her feelings by not saying he loved her back. But he didn't feel like saying it right then.

“Erik?”

“Hi, Dad.”

“How's it going?”

“Terrific.”

His father chose to take his words at face value. “Well, that's great. I didn't think it would be as bad as you thought it would be.”

Actually, it's worse,
Erik wanted to say.

“It's hard to believe we're going halfway around the world tomorrow. We'll stay in the best touch we can, okay, buddy?”

“Okay.”

“We'll see each other before we know it.”

“Yeah.”

“Hang in there, son. I love you.”

“Yup. Okay. Bye, Dad.”

Erik hung up and sat at the table, where Oma and Big Darrell were waiting to serve supper. The meal was almost as quiet as the ride from Minot, only now they had a few things to say, like “Pass the applesauce, please,” and “Would you like some more peas?” and “No, thanks.”

After dinner Big Darrell went upstairs and Oma explained that he kept “farmer's hours,” going to bed and getting up very early. When Erik turned on the TV and discovered that it only got three channels and the picture was fuzzy, he said he was tired, too, and went to his room.

He lay in the bed that used to be his mother's and stared at the ceiling, wondering how he was going to survive six months—maybe longer!—in this place. He tossed fitfully, mad at himself for not being able to fall asleep when all he wanted was for the longest and worst day of his life to come to an end.

In the morning, Erik waited until he heard Big Darrell drive off before he came downstairs.

“It's sugar beet harvest, Erik,” Oma explained as she fried him some bacon and eggs. “Big Darrell's helping out a cousin of Jim's down near Williston, so he'll be out until after dark.”

When he'd finished his breakfast, Oma told him a friend was picking her up to work on a fall festival they were organizing at the church. She asked him if he wanted to go, but he said no.

“Well,” she said vaguely, “I expect you'll be just fine on your own. There are leftovers from last night for lunch.”

She carefully wrote the phone number of the church on a tablet and set it on the counter. Then her friend's car pulled up outside and she left.

It appeared he wasn't going to have to worry about his grandparents smothering him with attention, which was just fine with him.

Idly, he turned on the TV, flipped through the three channels checking out the grainy pictures, and turned it off. Then he wandered around the living room, but there wasn't much to see except for Oma's coupon organizer and her knitting patterns, and some farm journals of Big Darrell's. He was surprised to see all of his own school pictures, framed and carefully arranged in order, beginning with his kindergarten shot and ending with last year's sixth-grade picture, which was a disaster. His mother had taken him to the barber the day before, where he'd gotten scalped. In the photo, he looked like a pinhead with enormous ears.

It was weird to think that these strangers out in North Dakota had his photos prominently displayed in the living room. With a sigh, he faced the serious question of what he was going to do to keep from going crazy. No answers came to mind, so he started up to his room. Not that there was anything to do there, either, except rearrange the junk in new and different piles.

At the top of the stairs, he recalled the night before when he'd been about to go into the room across the hall from his, the one on the left. His grandfather had cried out, “No!”
Sheesh. What was the big deal, anyway?

He thought of movies he'd seen in which there was a house with a forbidden room, which turned out to hold a terrible secret or else was once the scene of a gruesome murder. He laughed out loud. How likely was it that anything half that interesting lay behind a door in his grandparents' house in the middle of nowhere? He should be so lucky.

Even so, he wanted to open that door. He pretty much
had
to open that door.

He paused, his hand on the knob, feeling he was doing something wrong.
That's stupid,
he told himself. It wasn't as if he'd been told to stay out. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if his grandparents had actually reacted as strongly as he'd thought. Probably the room was really messy and Oma was embarrassed at the way it looked, the way his mother always acted when company showed up unexpectedly—though it was kind of hard to imagine that a room could be more disorderly than the one he was staying in.

He turned the knob and stepped inside. To his surprise, the room wasn't at all messy, but perfectly neat and tidy.
Oddly neat and tidy,
he thought, especially compared to the rest of the house. He looked around, at the framed photograph on the dresser of a proud, smiling young soldier in uniform, at the American flag on the wall, at the dog tags and the gold heart-shaped medal hanging from a purple ribbon, and all at once he understood.

This was his uncle's room, the uncle he'd never met, his mother's brother, Dan, who had died in Vietnam when his mother was fourteen. Erik had almost forgotten about Dan. His mother never talked about him. She said it made her too sad. All Erik really knew about Dan was that his mom had loved him and he was dead.

It felt wrong to be here. Suddenly unable to breathe, he left the room that was Dan's shrine and shut the door behind him.

Desperate to get out of the house, Erik put on his jacket and walked onto the porch. It was a nice day, he realized. The sun shone and the persistent wind of the night before had lowered to a whisper. He was amazed again by the prairie spreading so far in all directions, with no house in sight and no signs of other people. The sky looked so big. Gazing up, he thought of his parents, who were probably in an airplane at that very moment. It hardly seemed real. He felt very small all of a sudden, and even lonelier and farther from home.

Wandering aimlessly around the yard, he kicked up gravel in the driveway and checked out the combines and tractors. The tires on some of those monsters were higher than the top of his head! He tried to imagine what it would be like to drive one.

Then his eyes fell on the out house. He'd never been in an out house before. Would it be really stinky? He opened the door cautiously, prepared to shut it fast, but to his relief it didn't smell bad at all. Maybe because it wasn't used much.

The open door let in enough light to see, and he observed with a grin that this was a two-hole model. He'd heard of such things but could never quite get his mind around the idea. He tried to picture sitting side by side out here with someone else, and doing—
what?
Having a friendly conversation? Looking straight ahead and pretending the other person wasn't there?

He shook his head. As he'd explained to his mother, he often wished he lived back in the days of the pioneers, but in this particular regard, he was grateful for modern conveniences. He read the sign posted on the wall above some stacked rolls of toilet paper, which said, “The job ain't finished 'til the paperwork is done,” and cracked up. It was his first laugh since arriving in North Dakota, and it felt good.

There was a pile of ratty old
Life
magazines on the seat bench, and that was about it. He was ready to leave when he heard a noise outside. He froze, listening.

It sounded to Erik like someone
panting
, as if he'd been running hard. But who would have run all the way out here? Then he heard just the slightest whimper. Was it a whimper of pain or fear, or something else? He was spooked by the strange sound, but he couldn't very well hide in the out house and hope whoever it was went away.

Cautiously, he pushed the door open wider and peered out. From the corner of his eye, he saw something move into the barn. He caught only a quick glimpse of a shape, enough to know it wasn't a person but an animal, although what kind he hadn't been able to tell. He wasn't quite sure of the size, either.

He walked slowly to the big barn door, which slid from side to side on a metal track and was now halfway open. Slipping inside, he waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the dim light. He was vaguely aware of the pleasant smells of earth, grain, motor oil, and hay; aware, too, of his racing heart, as he imagined some crazed, slathering beast springing at him from the gloom. Did they have wolves out here? He didn't know. He hoped not.

Soon he could pick out the forms of different objects: a workbench with tools, some shovels and rakes leaning against the wall, scraps of lumber, bales of hay, sacks of what he figured was fertilizer, and an old, beat-up car. Then, in the corner by the stacks of hay bales, he saw movement.

Listening hard, he heard it again: panting, followed by a whimper, and another.

He looked in vain for a light switch. Sliding the barn door all the way open to let in some daylight, he began walking very slowly toward the sound. Knowing that a cornered animal can be dangerous, he approached the hay bales from the side, to leave the creature an escape route. If it didn't want him any closer, it could choose to run for the door rather than attack. He hoped.

As he drew nearer, he could hear the animal panting harder and could see that it was shaking, but he still couldn't make out what it was. He wondered what kinds of animals lived out here that he might not know about. How big were badgers and what did they look like? What about coyotes?

Closer now, he could see that the animal was about the same size as a dog, not a big dog, but not a small one, either. Medium-sized. Its fur was mottled, and its head appeared dark, but there was something really, really odd-looking about it.

The creature whimpered in earnest then and lifted its head, and the picture became clear. It
was
a dog. And sticking out from its muzzle were about a hundred of what he immediately knew must be porcupine quills. Whitish tan in color and an inch to two inches long, they covered the dog's entire nose and bristled angrily from its mouth and from the area close to its eyes.

Erik gasped and stopped, horrified, not knowing what to do. He tried to remember what he'd read or heard about porcupine quills. He was pretty sure they had barbs on the ends that made them really difficult to remove. And that they were terribly, terribly painful.

“It's going to be okay, boy,” he said softly and soothingly. “Don't worry. I'll figure something out. We'll fix you up, boy, don't worry.”

Despite its obvious pain, the dog gazed up at him and—he could scarcely believe it—wagged the tip of its stubby tail back and forth several times. Then it rose unsteadily to its feet and looked at him uncertainly.

“Don't worry, boy,” Erik said, trying to keep his voice low and reassuring in spite of his racing heart. “I'm not going to hurt you any more.”

He'd heard stories of people pulling out porcupine quills with pliers, but thinking about how much that would hurt the dog made him feel queasy inside. The idea of calling a vet raced through his mind, but he didn't know who to call, or whether vets even made house calls, especially for a kid they didn't know. Then he remembered that Oma had left the church phone number inside on the counter.

“I'm going to go call for help now, okay, boy? Don't worry. I'm not deserting you. I'll be right back, I promise. Okay? Just hang on, okay?”

The dog gave a low whine, and Erik tore himself away. Afraid the dog might run off while he was gone, he closed the barn door and ran to the house.

He dialed the number Oma had left, and was momentarily taken aback when a strange woman answered, saying, “Red Butte Lutheran Church.”

“Is Oma—I mean, is—” Erik panicked for a moment, unable for the life of him to think of Oma's real name. “I'm looking for my grandmother, she's—”

“This'll be Erik, then?” the woman said.

“Yes! Yes, that's me. Is Oma there?”

“You betcha she is, young man,” the woman said kindly. “And she's so happy you've come to visit. Why, she was just telling me how big you are, and how—”

“Excuse me,” Erik said desperately, “I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is kind of—an emergency.”

“Oh, my! Goodness! Just a minute. I'll get her.” The phone clattered as she put it down, and Erik heard her call, “Grace! Grace, you'd better put down that crepe paper and come to the phone, quick, now!”

After a moment, Oma picked up the phone and said breathlessly, “Erik, is that you? What's happened? Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” he said quickly. “It's just that I—I found a dog. It's out in the barn, and its whole face is full of porcupine quills, and I didn't know what to do, and I wondered if you could call a vet or something.”

“Oh, dear,” said Oma. “The poor thing. Let me think…I'll call our friend Bob Thompson and ask him if he'll come out to the house. He's a veterinarian.”

Erik felt suddenly weak with relief.

“Erik, listen to me,” Oma went on. “In the meantime, don't you go near that dog, you hear? If it's in pain, you don't know what it might do.”

“Okay,” he said. “I won't.” He didn't mention that he'd already gone near the dog, and it had done nothing more than wag its tail. Erik wasn't sure why, but he felt certain the dog wouldn't bite him. There was no need to say this to Oma, however.

“You stay put, now, until I get home.”

“I will. And, Oma? Please
hurry
.”