The house is from old-fashioned times. It rises into Bumper’s view – gray and plain, surrounded by trees – from the way-back of the station wagon, which fills with salty air and the familiar scent of summer. But this year they are not staying at the Guild’s. They have their own house. When his mom stops the car, Bumper climbs over the back seat and he and Robbie push open the heavy door, followed as always by Maura, and run out to explore. Around back, a shaded lawn slopes gently down to a rocky shoreline. There is a narrow wooden dock jutting out and small boats tied to it on either side. Brothers and sister clamber onto planks and run to the end. It’s water but it’s not the ocean. Bumper can smell the beach nearby.
Be careful, Mom calls out behind them.
Are these ours?
Can we go sailing?
No.
Bumper looks down into the blue-black water and wonders how deep it is. Robbie grips him by the shoulders and shoves him toward the edge. Bumper feels his knees buckle before being pulled back. Stop it! he yells and ducks under his brother’s arm and runs back to the house. Wooden steps lead to a screen porch which looks out over the lawn to the water. Inside, the walls are wood-brown, and the furniture seems old and worn, not like the Guilds. It has a musty smell. The kitchen is small, and the refrigerator and stove remind him of an old movie. Upstairs the rooms are mostly empty with unmade beds. There is a room for mom and dad, and two other rooms with small beds. Bumper and Robbie will have to share a room. Or Bumper and Maura. They run from room to room, looking out the windows – to the water, to the road, to the houses next door – and back down. Mom is carrying in her suitcase, which was heavy.
Get your bags, kids, she says.
Do I have to share a room? Bumper asks.
With your sister.
No fair!
Where’s the TV? Robbie asks.
No TV.
No TV?!
When’s dad coming?
The dog’s name is Brandy. She comes from next door, has floppy ears and a long brown coat, which is soft to pet. Her big wet nose tickles Bumper when she presses into his neck. It makes him think of honeysuckle and he follows the smell to the fence, blooming in yellow and white along the gravel driveway. If you pull the tiny flower and suck the bottom you can taste the faint sweetness. Brandy follows him as he plucks and sucks flower after flower. He doesn’t know if the taste is real or his imagination.
Bumper smells cookies. He opens his eyes in the darkness, but nothing makes sense. The window is in the wrong place. He hears crickets outside and his sister breathing across the room. He stares into the shadows and tries to remember what the room looked like. A stick of blue light on the floor. Is that the door? The cookie smell is warm, sweeter than honeysuckle, browner than Brandy, and there is chocolate inside it. He sits up and looks down. He can’t see the floor. How far is it? He swings his feet over and reaches his toes down and there it is, higher than he expects, and colder. He stands and steps carefully toward the blue stick, waving his hands before him. Finally, he finds the doorknob and turns it. The hallway is less dark but different from what he remembers. More familiar. The aroma is stronger and coming from behind a door with his name spelled on it with colorful letters. When he opens it, he is amazed to find his old room. He can make out his bed, his red bed lamp, his stuffed animals lined up against his pillow. Smokey The Bear. Astronaut Snoopy. His toes find the fuzzy rug at the foot of his bed. The door is open to the bathroom, and through that, to Robbie’s room. He follows the sweet smell past his sleeping brother and, quietly, down the back stairs which lead to the kitchen, with the black and white tiles, and the butcher’s block table, and shelf of glass jars. Lookout Circle. He hasn’t seen it since they moved last year. But there on the counter is the glass jar, and inside it, neatly stacked, are the crisp, brown cookies. As Bumper steps quietly and reaches for the jar lid, he hears his parent’s voices from the living room. He freezes.
How dare you? his mother says sternly.
His father grumbles something back.
He listens to their voices hissing at each other, then turns back to lift the lid and reaches carefully into the jar to take a cookie, crisp in his hand.
God damnit! shouts his father.
He drops the lid, clink, and freezes again.
His parents stop talking. He brings the cookie to his nose and breathes in warm sugar and chocolate.
What do we do now? his mother asks.
Bumper bites into the cookie: the most perfect taste in the whole world.
The way to steal money is like this, he tells Maura. Reach into the coat pockets in the closet, one after another. Some coats have pockets on the inside as well as the outside. Dad’s coats always have gum. The top drawer in dad’s bureau is littered with pennies, nickels and sometimes more. Treasure lies at the bottom of Mom’s pocketbook. Hold the coins tightly so they don’t make a sound. At Toytown, on the way home from school, you can buy Wacky Packages. Jail-O. Weakies. Cap’n Crud. Now, across the road there’s a store with old-fashioned gas pumps that don’t work. Heath Bars. Butterfingers. Bumper asks Mom for the balsa wood plane with a rubber band propeller.
No, she says.
Why?
She doesn’t answer. Seventy-five cents.
The sand is lava. Bumper and Robbie hop and dance Ow! Ow! Ow! Mom laughs and Maura jumps up from her lap and imitates them: Ow! Ow! It’s safe on the towels. Dad is in the water. He stands and waits for waves. A big one curls high above, and he puts his hands up and dives toward the shoreline and disappears as it crashes over him. For a second, he is gone under the foamy water. Then he stands up dripping, but not where Bumper expects. He walks back toward the ocean, watching for the next white-capped peak to rise above him. He does this over and over. Bumper wants to join him, but the waves are too big. Robbie wants to swim to Elephant Rock.
Again, that night Bumper wakes and is at first confused but his eyes adjust, and he can make out the shape of the room in the darkness and hear his sister’s snotty breathing. He hears voices and climbs off the bed and tiptoes to the door. Sounds are coming from downstairs, kids’ voices, and adult voices and Grampa’s Irish music. Whiskey, you’re the devil you’re leading me astray. He grips the railing and quietly steps down to the landing. He can see his cousin’s living room with the white carpet and blue couches and the fireplace where Grampa is placing a log on the fire. Uncle Bobby is talking to him. He’s tall. Dad is there, too. Their voices are hushed and serious under the music.
His cousins run through the room, Cathy and Margaret and Brigid. Robbie and Maura are there too. Bumper runs down to join them. Auntie Mary steps out of the kitchen and stops them.
She has red hair and talks like Grampa, but meaner.
Where did you get that?
Margaret hides something behind her back.
Get what?
Come now, Auntie Mary says, tell the truth and shame the devil.
Cathy turns to them and rolls her eyes. For the rest of Thanksgiving the kids make fun of Auntie Mary: Tell the truth and shame the devil, they laugh. Bumper thinks of the devil, red with horns and smiling.
Under the house there’s an old-fashioned washing machine. Two white tubs and a motor. His mom has figured out how to use it. It makes a loud chugging, sloshing sound. It has a roller for squeezing the water out.
The army and navy store has medals and fake hand grenades and old uniforms. Bumper and Robbie get cloth soldier hats that fold flat. Maura wants one too. Later they find sticks and play war in the backyard. Bumper falls dead and Maura falls dead beside him but she’s not good at it because she can’t stop smiling.
At dinner, Dad says you are taking swimming lessons and that’s that. Robbie starts to cry. And then Bumper cries. And then Maura cries. Nice job, Bob, says Mom. The next morning Dad has gone back to the city. It feels different when Dad is away.
Mom’s pocketbook is by her bed. Bumper feels around the lipstick and the keys and tissues and finds a clutch of quarters. Three quarters equals seventy-five.
That night there are no sounds or smells, but he goes downstairs anyway. He hears his father’s voice, in the sunroom of their new house. It’s daytime. The stone floor is cold under his bare feet. Dad is talking slowly. He sits at the edge of the big wicker chair facing a boy sitting on a green ottoman. Bumper recognizes himself. He’s fidgety.
I’ll be living in a new house for a while, Dad says.
He pauses and sighs and rubs the top of his head, where the bald spot is. Bumper is looking past him into the backyard, which is cold and brown and empty.
Bumper, Dad says sharply. Pay attention here. Bumper.
The next day, Bumper walks past the honeysuckles and crosses the road, which is pale and smells of tar, to the old store with the old-fashion gas pumps, gripping the quarters. Hello, young man, how can I help you? the lady says.
Balsa wood is light and fragile. Bumper opens the slim plastic package and pours the contents on the floor by his bed. Robbie and Maura and Mom are downstairs. The red plastic thing holds the propeller on the front, and another red thing holds the rubber band at the end. He slips the thin wings gently through the slats, bending, almost breaking. They have to be even on either side. Then the small tail wing slides in the back. Tiny red wheels on wires underneath. He turns the propeller with his finger and winds the rubber band and lets go. Whoosh! The plane skitters across the floor. He picks it up and runs downstairs and out the back steps to the lawn. He winds the rubber band until it knots, one by one, tightly, from the propeller to the tail. He lets it go and the plane flies from his hand up, up and down across the lawn and tumbles into the grass. He jumps in the air and runs after it. He is winding the band again when the screen door snaps, and Maura’s footsteps trundle down to the lawn.
What’s that?
She runs to him.
Let me!
No!
Bumper holds it above her head and winds the propeller again. Faster. The knots on the pale band double on top of each other. Maura reaches for it. Letting go, he can feel the tiny wind on his fingers as the plane jumps out of his hand and into the air. He laughs as it soars.
Where’d you get that? Robbie calls from the porch.
Bumper and Maura run after the plane, which hits a tree branch and tumbles down.
Mom! calls Robbie.
The wings are crooked, but not broken. He resets them.
Mom is angry. Robbie is smiling. Maura reaches for the plane on the table.
Don’t!
Where did this come from? Mom asks. Bumper?
The store.
Where did you get the money to buy it?
Bumper looks at the plane.
Did you steal it? asks Maura.
Tell the truth and shame the devil, Robbie says mockingly.
Maura laughs. Tell the truth and shame the devil!
Did you take it from my purse?
Bumper feels heavy and his face is hot. Mom shakes her head, like it hurts. She stands up as tears stream down his cheeks.
Go to your room. You can tell your father tomorrow.
Bumper opens his eyes in the dark. A stiff warm breeze blows over him from the window. He climbs out of bed. The door is open, and the hallway is still. He walks downstairs to the empty living room. The plane is still on the table, but he knows he’s not allowed to touch it. He walks out onto the porch. The moon is high and white and casts a light on the water. The tree branches and leaves rustle and bend. Bumper opens the screen door and walks slowly down the steps and out onto the lawn. The wind is strong and warm, but the grass is damp and cool under his feet. It’s bright and dark at the same time. He walks down the slope and steps onto the dock. It creaks and the boats bob and strain against their ropes. He walks carefully to the end of the dock and looks down into the water, flickering with moonlight but black beneath. The wind is louder here. He wonders if he can hear the waves on the beach. Wind and surf sound the same from far away. He pictures the waves crashing in the moonlight and imagines himself crushed and tossed beneath them.