In Pete’s opinion, kids who wanted a little mental health vacation from their parents also won.
A path ran through the winter-barren trees on a meandering diagonal, eventually coming out at the Birch Street Rec, a longtime Northfield youth center whose days were now numbered. Big kids hung out on and around the path in warm weather—smoking cigarettes, smoking dope, drinking beer, probably laying their girlfriends—but not at this time of year. No big kids equaled no hassle.
Sometimes Pete took his sister along the path if his mother and father were seriously into it, as was more and more often the case. When they arrived at the Rec, they’d shoot baskets or watch videos or play checkers. He didn’t know where he could take her once the Rec closed. There was no place else except for Zoney’s, the convenience store. On his own, he mostly just went as far as the creek, splooshing stones into it if it was flowing, bouncing them off the ice when it was frozen. Seeing if he could make a hole and enjoying the quiet.
The arkie-barkies were bad enough, but his worst fear was that his dad—now always a little high on the Oxy pills—might someday actually take a swing at his mother. That would almost certainly tear the thin-stretched cloth of the marriage. And if it didn’t? If she put up with being hit? That would be even worse.
Never happen, Pete told himself. Dad never would.
But if he did?
???
Ice still covered the stream this afternoon, but it looked rotten, and there were big yellow patches in it, as if some giant had stopped to take a leak. Pete wouldn’t dare walk on it. He wouldn’t drown or anything if the ice gave way, the water was only ankle deep, but he had no wish to get home and have to explain why his pants and socks were wet. He sat on a fallen log, tossed a few stones (the small ones bounced and rolled, the big ones went through the yellow patches), then just looked at the sky for awhile. Big fluffy clouds floated along up there, the kind that looked more like spring than winter, moving from west to east. There was one that looked like an old woman with a hump on her back (or maybe it was a packsack); there was a rabbit; there was a dragon; there was one that looked like a—
A soft, crumbling thump on his left distracted him. He turned and saw an overhanging piece of the embankment, loosened by a week’s worth of melting snow, had given way, exposing the roots of a tree that was already leaning precariously. The space created by the fall looked like a cave, and unless he was mistaken—he supposed it might be just a shadow—there was something in there.
Pete walked to the tree, grabbed one of its leafless branches, and bent for a better look. There was something there, all right, and it looked pretty big. The end of a box, maybe?
He worked his way down the bank, creating makeshift steps by digging the heels of his boots into the muddy earth. Once he was below the site of the little landspill, he squatted. He saw cracked black leather and metal strips with rivets in them. There was a handle the size of a saddle-stirrup on the end. It was a trunk. Someone had buried a trunk here.
Excited now as well as curious, Pete grabbed the handle and yanked. The trunk didn’t budge. It was socked in good and tight. Pete gave another tug, but just for form’s sake. He wasn’t going to get it out. Not without tools.
He hunkered with his hands dangling between his thighs, as his father often used to do before his hunkering days came to an end. Just staring at the trunk jutting out of the black, root-snarled earth. It was probably crazy to be thinking of Treasure Island (also “The Gold Bug,” a story they’d read in English the year before), but he was thinking of it. And was it crazy? Was it really? As well as telling them that knowledge was power, Mr. Jacoby stressed the importance of logical thinking. Wasn’t it logical to think that someone wouldn’t bury a trunk in the woods unless there was something valuable inside?
It had been there for awhile, too. You could tell just looking at it. The leather was cracked, and gray in places instead of black. Pete had an idea that if he pulled on the handle with all his might and kept pulling, it might break. The metal binding-strips were dull and lacy with rust.
He came to a decision and pelted back up the path to the house. He let himself in through the gate, went to the kitchen door, listened. There were no voices and the TV was off. His father had probably gone into the bedroom (the one on the first floor, Mom and Dad had to sleep there even though it was small, because Dad couldn’t climb stairs very well now) to take a nap. Mom might have gone in with him, they sometimes made up that way, but more likely she was in the laundry room that doubled as her study, working on her résumé and applying for jobs online. His dad might have given up (and Pete had to admit he had his reasons), but his mom hadn’t. She wanted to go back to teaching full-time, and not just for the money.
There was a little detached garage, but his mom never put the Focus in it unless there was going to be a snowstorm. It was full of stuff from the old house that they had no room for in this smaller rented place. His dad’s toolbox was in there (Tom had listed the tools on craigslist or something, but hadn’t been able to get what he considered a fair price for them), and some of Tina’s and his old toys, and the tub of salt with its scoop, and a few lawn-and-garden implements leaning against the back wall. Pete selected a spade and ran back down the path, holding it in front of him like a soldier with his rifle at high port.
He eased his way almost all the way down to the stream, using the steps he’d made, and went to work on the little landslide that had revealed the trunk. He shoveled as much of the fallen earth as he could back into the hole under the tree. He wasn’t able to fill it all the way to the gnarled roots, but he was able to cover the end of the trunk, which was all he wanted.
For now.
???
There was some arking and barking at dinner, not too much, and Tina didn’t seem to mind, but she came into Pete’s room just as he was finishing his homework. She was wearing her footy pajamas and dragging Mrs. Beasley, her last and most important comfort-doll. It was as if she had returned to the age of five.
“Can I get in your bed for awhile, Petie? I had a bad dream.”
He considered making her go back, then decided (thoughts of the buried trunk flickering in his mind) that to do so might be bad luck. It would also be mean, considering the dark hollows under her pretty eyes.
“Yeah, okay, for awhile. But we’re not going to make a practice of it.” One of their mom’s favorite phrases.
Tina scooted across the bed until she was against the wall—her sleeping position of choice, as if she planned to spend the night. Pete closed his Earth Science book, sat down beside her, and winced.
“Doll warning, Teens. Mrs. Beasley’s head is halfway up my butt.”
“I’ll scrunch her down by my feet. There. Is that better?”