removed his reading glasses. He rubbed his eyes, and perhaps in his exhaustion spoke without thinking.
Because of the round house, he said.
The old round house? Did it happen there?
He did not answer.
What happened to Mom, did it happen there?
Again, no answer.
He shuffled away the papers, stood up. The light caught the lines in his face and they deepened to cracks. He looked a thousand years old.
Chapter Four
Loud as a Whisper
Cappy was a skinny guy with big hands and scarred-up, knobby feet, but he had bold cheekbones, a straight nose, big white teeth, and lank, shiny hair hanging down over one brown eye. Melting brown eye. The girls loved Cappy, even though his cheeks and chin were always scraped and he had a gap in one eyebrow where his forehead had been opened by a rock. His bike was a rusted blue ten-speed Doe had picked up at the mission. Because their house rattled with tools on every surface, Cappy kept it halfway fixed. Still, only first gear worked. And the hand brakes gave out unexpectedly. So when Cappy rode you’d see a spidery kid pedaling so fast his legs blurred and from time to time dragging his feet to stop or, if that didn’t work, throwing himself suicidally over the crossbar. Angus had a beat-up pink BMX that he meant to paint before he realized the color kept it from getting stolen. Zack’s bike was new, and a cool black, because his dad brought it after he had not shown up for two years. Since we couldn’t drive legally (although of course we drove whenever we could), the bikes gave us freedom. We didn’t have to rely on Elwin or on Whitey’s horses, though we did ride the horses, too, when we could. We didn’t have to ask Doe or Zack’s mom for a ride, which was good on the morning after school let out because they wouldn’t have taken us where we wanted to go.
Zack had confirmed, from listening in on his stepfather’s burping police radio (he did this constantly), where the crime against my mother had taken place. It was the round house. A two-track bush road led to the old log round house on the far side of Reservation Lake. Early that morning, I got up and stepped quietly into my clothes. I slipped downstairs and let Pearl out. Together, we peed outside, in the back bushes. I didn’t want to flush the noisy inside toilet. I sneaked back in, barely opening the screen door so it wouldn’t whine, easing it slow so it wouldn’t whap shut. Pearl entered with me and watched silently as I filled a bag with peanut butter sandwiches. I put them in my pack together with a jar of my mother’s canned dill pickles and a water jug. I had agreed to write a note to tell my dad where I was—all summer, he made me swear. I wrote the word LAKE on the legal pad he’d left for me on the counter. I tore off half a sheet and wrote another note that I stuck in my pocket. I put my hand on Pearl’s head and looked into her pale eyes.
Guard Mom, I said.
Cappy, Zack, and Angus were supposed to meet me in a couple of hours at a stump we used—just off the highway, across the ditch. There, I left the other note, telling them I’d gone ahead. I had planned this because I wanted to be alone at the round house when I first got there.
It was a lofty June morning. The dew was still cold on the wild rose and sage in last fall’s mowed stubble, but I could tell that by afternoon it would be hot. Hot and clear. There would be ticks. Hardly anyone was out this early. Only two cars passed me on the highway. I turned off onto Mashkeeg Road, which was gravel, enclosed by trees, running partway around the lake. There were houses by the lake, screened by bush. An occasional dog popped up but I was pedaling fast and I came and went so quickly through their territories that few barked and none followed me. Even a tick, spinning through the air off a tree, hit my arm and could barely cling. I flicked him off and pedaled even faster until I reached the narrow road that led to the round house. It was still blocked by construction cones and painted oil drums. I guessed that was the work of the police.