Little Klein Part 7

The wheels spun in the wet sand then caught their tread on the dirt and the truck lumbered back through the brush, back up the hill, back onto the hot, deserted tar.

The river did not intend to swallow people. New waters flowed by the town of Lena every day on their predestined journey. Every day new waters were discovering the quiet green sh.o.r.es, the soaring bluffs, and the rocky and sandy bottom that adorned this particular part of their pa.s.sage. Here, the river narrowed and widened, rounded bends and skirted boulder beds, then split for a ways into two branches a" one calm and even, the other sending the water tumbling over a cliff in a joyful free fall.

Long before the river was born, a warm ocean covered this part of the continent. When the water of the ancient ocean disappeared, it left sediment piled so high in one place that when the rest of the area got locked in glaciers, this plateau was missed, a rocky island alone for thousands of years in a frozen sea. Sliced top to bottom, this plateau would look like a many-layered rock cake topped with limestone.

Future children would easily carve their initials with sticks in this soft stone, and when melting glaciers to the north birthed the river, its waters had no trouble cutting through it. So easily did the limestone dissolve, in fact, that simple rain cracked its surface in places.

By the time the glaciers had disappeared and humans lived on the land, eroding water had carved out caves, caverns, and underground rivers from the limestone. Even this river, intent on its mission to feed larger water bodies, was unaware of the vast geography of its buried sister streams and only during floods did it explore the caves.

The waters that pa.s.sed each season were new, but they were related by the continuous cycle of drops pulled out of the ocean into the air and dropped back down by heavy clouds. Reincarnated sometimes in the very same river, they enjoyed the trip all the more the second time through, like revisiting a childhood home and finding it smaller than one remembers.

The waters that flowed past Lena after heavy rains were the most unpredictable waters. They had a nervous disposition and were easily rallied into tight spinning currents with magnetic grips. Farther down their journey they would look back on that portion of the trip with a sigh a" oh, the exuberance of youth a" for Lena was only a day's journey from the birthplace of the river. And like impetuous youth, the early waters sometimes acted without regard for consequence.

That's how it had been two years ago when a celebratory group took a trip on her surface. They intended to put in at Lena proper and disembark at the park near the river's fork for the annual First Picnic of the Year in which the music of the falling river in the distance would be their entertainment.

That spring the waters flowed quietly past Lena proper. It wasn't until just before the fork that the waters gathered together in a magnetic twirl, ready to dance and fly off the cliff together. With some of the youngest and oldest citizens of the town standing onsh.o.r.e, the waters of that spring carried the long boat on their current past the park, past the food and streamers and horseshoes, and didn't release it until it was airborne.

As the water found its path again below the cliff, it coughed up wood and shoes and Felicia Olson and Crumly Bottom and Lester Prentice and Floyd Ranborn and the Brown couple and many more. Some the water left by banks and in weeds; others it carried on before Officer Linden and his crew lifted them out.

Now the river was running high again. Heavy rains had added a powerful depth to the river that was disguised near town by a serene skin. When three boys on a slatted raft grazed its surface, the river's dark memory trembled. The waters for whom this was a return journey knew the falls were ahead. Even as they pulled the raft into Wilson's Fork, they knew the fate of these boys and steered the craft onto a jutting rock. But the raft met the rock too fast, and the boys could not hold on. The river was able to release their dog into a clump of weeds and brush, but not the boys. The current pulled them in, pulled them down, swallowed those boys whole as it skimmed toward the cliff.

Terrified at its own strength, the water below the falls caught the boys and held them in a churning grip, churning but not sending them downriver. Finally, the river tucked those boys, one by one, safely into a chamber of ancient rock bed worn into a cave by generations of river water. Only a shoe and a cap were released to travel on farther.

b.u.mping along in the back of Nora Nettle's pickup truck put the ice of a nightmare in Little Klein's chest. His nightmares all had one thing in common. Whether he was facing a pack of wolves or arriving at school in his underwear, he was alone. In his nightmares no one called him Little Klein because there were no Big Kleins in Harold's nightmares.

It was only LeRoy's s...o...b..r on his foot that a.s.sured him now in this truck that he wasn't dreaming. Harold Sylvester George Klein grabbed LeRoy's face and lifted it to look at him.

"LeRoy. You've got to help me find the guys."

LeRoy whimpered and laid his head back down.

The rickety truck bounced slowly along.

"What if they're drowning, LeRoy? What if they're calling for help? Why can't she go faster?" he pleaded in vain. All the cold fright turned to hot rage in Harold's chest as he relived the moment the raft had slipped out of his reach.

"They left me on sh.o.r.e!" He pounded his fist on the barrel next to him.

"Ouch!

"They left me on Sh.o.r.e! They ditched me. Again! Bullies. We're going back. Come on."

Harold braced his feet against LeRoy's side and pushed until the dog slid toward the end of the truck. He scooted his rear forward and pushed again until they were at the gate. He looked back at the cab, but the window was too dirty for him to see in or for Emma to see out. The gate latch had been eaten by rust and just a rope looped over a hook held it closed. Once released, the gate flopped down like a slide to the tar slowly rolling out below them.

"Ready, LeRoy?"

LeRoy whimpered and laid his head on his paws, looking up at Harold with what he hoped was his most pitiful gaze but which Harold interpreted as a nod of agreement.

"Good boy. There's my boy. This old truck is barely moving. It'll be easy. Close your eyes. I'll count. One . . . two . . . three!" Harold pushed off and slid out of the truck, landing with a thud that knocked the wind out of him.

"See," he said when he caught his breath. "Nothing broken. That wasn't so bad, was it, boy? LeRoy?"

The road next to him was empty. Turning, he saw LeRoy's face in the truck bed, growing small. His mouth was open in a bark, but the sound was lost in the rattle of the pickup.

"Shoot, LeRoy!" Harold stood up. "Ow! Ow! Ow!" He tested out his limbs. Everything worked, but his sitter smarted with every step. "I'm going to get those guys," he muttered as he trudged along. As soon as he started feeling sorry for himself, his energy waned. So Harold mustered up all the old grudges stored in that little-used part of his heart.

"Can't even get a dumb old dog to follow me." He walked a little faster as he mimicked the deeper voices of his brothers. "Little Klein isn't big enough to ride a bike. Little Klein isn't strong enough to fly a kite. Little Klein isn't tall enough to . . . Three milk shakes and oh, a strawberry kiddie cone for him." Harold kicked a stone. "I want vanilla!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. "In fact, forget the cone a" I want a root beer float!" He started to jog.

"Gardens are not just for sissies!" He clenched his fists.

"Ditchers!" A squirrel was rooting around on the side of the road. Harold hissed at him. "Scat, you!" he shouted.

Then he saw the tire tracks coming up out of the gra.s.s and leading into the trees. Harold stopped. He turned to follow the tracks.

"Be there, guys. Be there," he chanted in a whisper with each step. The sweat that had drenched him while he ran returned as an uncomfortable chill when he reached the dense shade of the trees. All his blood huddled in his heart, thumping and pumping, threatening to burst out of his chest. His feet heavy and his head light, Little Klein followed the sound of the falls until he was standing at the edge of the cliff. He whistled, then stopped to listen. Nothing.

Had Mean Emma Brown and the old lady seen something and not told him? He didn't see any dead bodies on the sh.o.r.e or floating in the water. Just a lone board, caught going round and round where the falls. .h.i.t the river below.

"Come on out! I won't tell!" he shouted, then whistled again, but the falling water drowned out even his whistle. He ran his hands over the goose b.u.mps on his arms while picking his way along the sh.o.r.e, then wound back up over the hill, around the bend, until he could see flattened gra.s.s where they'd sat on the raft before launching it in the river.

"They started here," he said in a soft, quivering voice, pantomiming his shove. He followed the path along the river again. "They started swirling there," he said a bit louder. He followed the trail over the hill where the river forked, then mustered his most determined voice: "And there's the rock that caught the raft."

Harold peered across the water. Had they gotten out on the other side? There was no movement. His calls brought no response. He looked over the falls again, and his knees melted. He knelt and looked downriver.

What if they did go over? He lay on his belly and pulled himself to the edge with his elbows until he was looking directly over the cliff, the spray of the water misting his face, the sound deadening his thoughts.

He covered his ears and tried to concentrate. What would happen if they did go over? The falls weren't so tall, not like Minnehaha Falls when he visited his aunties. Maybe the boys would go under at the bottom, but wouldn't they bob back up and float downstream? That had to be it. They must have crawled out where the river gets shallow and slow again. Emma Brown and the old lady just panicked when they didn't see them a" that was all.

Harold pushed himself back from the edge and stood up. He walked through the woods to the place where a trail wound down the steep slope. Standing at the base of the falls, he looked up into the tower of water. He turned and started downriver, studying its surface and whistling into the woods. In one place the land rose above the river and Harold had to steel his squirming stomach and peer down again. Just beyond this was the footbridge.

He stood in the middle of the bridge and looked in both directions. It was when he kept following the river and looked back at the bridge that he saw it. Something caught on a reed under the bridge. He rushed back, splashing along the sh.o.r.e and wading carefully under the bridge. It was a black All-Star gym shoe. Size big.

"I knew it!" he exclaimed. "They're down here somewhere." He left the shoe on the gra.s.s and searched for footprints, flattened gra.s.s, any sign of a herd of large, wet brothers. When clues eluded him and his whistles went unanswered, Harold finally dropped down, pulled his knees up to his chest, and wrapped his arms around them. No magic kit would make the Bigs reappear. For the first time in his life, Harold was alone, but he didn't feel small. It was his turn to take charge. The rhythm of a growing wind in the trees kept a steady beat in Harold's head, and with it the pulse of his problem. His brothers had gone over the falls. But they weren't in the river. Over the falls. Not in the river.

Harold stood up. The falls. He walked back.

He watched the sheets of water unfurl. Down they fell, down beneath the surface, then bubbling up again. If his brothers had gone under, would they bob up in front of the sheet or behind it?

What was behind the waterfall? He edged himself toward the wall, keeping his head down to avoid getting water in his eyes. Shielding his eyes with his hand, he peered behind the sheet of water. It wasn't a flat wall of rock as he'd imagined. It was pitted and creviced. Just above knee level was a shelf wide enough for a boy his size to climb on. Harold held his breath and stepped. To his surprise he did not slip into the grip of the water. He held on to a jutting rock next to him and breathed.

"Okay," he said out loud, preparing to step back to dry ground. "They're not here." But Harold's legs were more afraid than he was. They refused to budge.

"Holy Moses," he gasped. "Holy Moses and a can of nuts."

The name LeRoy means "king," and while LeRoy didn't know that, he had always fancied himself a fierce, fearless leader. He felt the admiration of his family, his subjects, and knew they'd follow his decrees. In his wandering days, he'd sauntered around with his tail in the air, a snarl at the ready, never following the other dogs.

But every creature holds at least one secret, and the day LeRoy watched Little Klein disappear on the pavement behind the pickup, LeRoy learned the truth about himself. LeRoy was a chipmunk in the body of a wolf.

Yes, his family answered his barks, but if they'd raised a hand at him, he'd have whimpered and hid. Sure he'd snarled, but only at dogs on leashes or behind fences. In his wandering days, when other wanderers, having finished their sc.r.a.ps at the back door of the bar, ran off in a pack, LeRoy always went in the opposite direction as if he'd had somewhere better to go, when really he simply craved the safety of his little spot by the river.

And now. Now LeRoy craved nothing more than to sleep in an upstairs bed out of the heat and damp and away from racc.o.o.ns and unpredictable cats. But he'd lost his boys.

So powerful was his shame that when the truck rolled up to a stop sign in town, LeRoy jumped out and slunk between two garages. He curled up between a stack of firewood and a garbage can and closed his eyes.

His boys had been laughing. They were spinning. Then they were screaming.

LeRoy, who was scared of the fish in the river, had leaped in, hadn't he? He who had never stayed afloat had motored with all fours. But they kept disappearing. One head here, another there, then gone, then another scream. The water was pushing him. He'd paddled out. He'd crawled up the bank, and when he looked back, the heads weren't there.

Where were his boys? LeRoy tried to go to sleep, but the air was so empty of boy smell. He sniffed at the garbage can, but it was no good. He needed his boys. LeRoy rose up on his st.u.r.dy legs and picked his way to the alley and slouched slowly out of town.

As whiffs of bacon and oil gave way to sweet roadside clover and last week's angry skunk, LeRoy moved from his usual wander pace to a saunter. A building wind was roughing up his coat and confusing his nose.

LeRoy didn't used to have so many worries. Were there eight smelly shoes next to the back door at night? Was his pack together? Had one strayed? They were hard to herd, hard to herd.

Used to be LeRoy had few cares. Find some food. Find some shade. Find some tomfoolery. Sleep. Life was simpler then. He used to have running dreams, before his family. Now he had chasing dreams, dreams of failed rescues, boys-in-danger dreams, dreams that he had no teeth and his legs were short like a house dog's and his tail ineffective like a cat's. Once he even dreamed he was a cat. LeRoy could, right this windy minute, crawl into the arms of some well-worn tree roots. But before he could muster the courage to quit, a gust of wind blew his tail clear off course and LeRoy imagined his littlest boy out there somewhere, unanch.o.r.ed.

Wind, trouble, boys. Wind, trouble, boys. LeRoy had a hunch. He joined forces with the wind, and LeRoy ran.

Then a car sped down the road toward LeRoy, and he skittered into the brush, catching himself up in a nasty tangle of dead nettles. The boys would pick him out of this mess. Where were his boys? The river. The river.

Harold was a rattling bag of tinder sticks. So this, he thought as he tried to distract his feet and hands from the enormity of their current responsibilities, is what Buster Ludlow meant when he said, "Get a sandwich, Kleinlet." Maybe a few extra sandwiches would have padded him against these aggressive rocks poking into his ribs. The Bigs sure had padding enough. What would the Bigs do in his situation? One, they would find him and take him home before Mother knew he was missing. That's what Harold would do. He'd find the boys before Mother knew anything had happened. That Mean Emma Brown was already on her way to spread panic. Harold was still paralyzed, but he could start by calling for his brothers.

"Guys!" he squeaked, and was immediately ashamed of the effort. "Guys!" he tried again. Harold thought about the wolf with those pigs and their houses. He'd need lungs like that wolf's. Harold reached down to his deepest growl, to his maddest memories, to his biggest thoughts. He drew in his widest breath, and Harold whistled.

The force of his effort swept him off his feet, and he landed with a thwap on his knees on the ledge, sc.r.a.ping his face on the way down. His nose pressed against the cool wall, he breathed in the dank air and tasted blood from his lip mixing with the bitter tang of the stone. He turned and shifted to his b.u.m. In this position his feet found another perch just below. Harold hung his head. He put fingers around his smarting knees. Salty water leaked out the sides of his eyes. What was the use?

But he whistled again.

"Help!" came a shallow cry.

Harold didn't lift his head. "What?" he said sullenly.

"Help!" came the cry again.

Harold's head snapped up. Was he dreaming? He stood gingerly on the muddy lower ledge and shuffled farther from sh.o.r.e, to where the water surged out away from the ledge.

"h.e.l.lo!" he shouted. "Guys? Guys? It's me! h.e.l.lo?"

Silence.

Harold looked back at dry land. He looked out at the falling water. He slid ahead another foot before the ledge ended abruptly. Harold's stomach flipped. As he pondered his soupy death, there was another call.

"Help! We're down here!"

It was a Klein. And he sounded close a" around-the-corner close.

"Where are you?"

"Here! Look down, look down!"

It was Mark's voice.

Harold's hands, already wet from the rocks, were now slick with sweat. If his heart hadn't already beat out of his chest, he was sure it would be popping through his T-shirt at any moment, probably busting open then and leaking all over his insides. What more damage could looking down do? Harold peered at the water churning below him, at the jutting rocks, at the height he'd managed to climb, and everything Harold had eaten in recent memory came up the elevator and launched itself out and down, down, down into the swirling mist.

A wind came up in Lena. A clothespin-popping, cat-launching, paper-delivering wind. It inhaled trees, drawing leaves and branches toward Market Road, then exhaled them like feather dusters wildly clearing the gathering clouds. Keen eyes, arthritic joints, and sharp olfactories were consulted to determine the nature and intent of this day's wind. Self-proclaimed experts gathered at Sam's Skelly, where Officer Linden presided, the warning lights and siren of his official vehicle at the ready.

"Sky's not green enough."

"It's too late in the season."

"Tornadoes are sidereal, and I seen no prediction in the stars last night."

"Stars? Hogwash. My knee remains one-hundred percent accurate, and it says we've got ourselves a tornado brewing."

"There's rotation in the clouds to the west."

"Nope, Harvey, them's straight-moving winds."

"S'not hot enough."

"Not humid 'nough either."

"Sure smells like a twister."

Widow Flom had been standing at the back of this town gathering, holding her tongue as if it were a wild puppy on a short leash. Finally, the leash snapped. "If I might add a modic.u.m of actual science to this stew of nonsense, it's hotter than blazes, the sky is a wicked green, and these are no kite-flying winds. This looks to be a pernicious storm. Take your lame joints, starry eyes, and overgrown nozzles home where they belong. I can't believe I've stayed tuned this long."

The crowd erupted in indignation.

Officer Linden broke into the uproar. "Thank you, Mrs. Flom. Let's all just calm down here. Fact is we got ourselves a big wind. As usual, when it's over, people on the east end will return wayward goods to the police station to be collected by folks from the west end. Now go make sure your neighbors are getting their kids and their selves inside. I don't want to hear about any fly-aways. We all smell a storm coming, so get going."

As the crowd began their muttering dispersal, Nora Nettle's pickup sputtered into the lot, nearly mowing down newlywed Priscilla Warren, who was not yet used to jumping at the sound of Nora's oncoming truck.

"Durn creaker," cursed Mr. Gamble. "Can't you take her keys, Linden?"

"Already tried, Mac, already tried."

Nora Nettle opened the driver's side door and climbed down.

"Listen to me now," she ordered.

Several people shook their heads and hurried toward home.

"Listen to me now!" she screeched, reaching back into her pickup to honk the horn. "Those Klein Boys done took Wilson's Fork and gone over the falls. Most likely they're dead and drowned, but we oughta find 'em anyhow. The mother will want something to bury, don't you know."

"Little Klein didn't go over!" came a voice from the other side of the truck. Emma Brown appeared and hopped into the bed of the truck. "We have him right . . ." she looked under tarps and behind barrels. "He was right here! The dog, too."

Emma Brown's reputation among most adults of Lena was shaky at best, given rumors of her behavior and of her family's misfortunes. Now, finding her in the company of Nora Nettle, standing in an empty pickup, they didn't linger for further explanation.

"Get in," Nora Nettle commanded Emma. She reversed into the quickly parting crowd, chugging back down Main and out of town.