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Closer All the Time Page 6


  She marched into the kitchen and Ted heard her dial the rotary phone. Then he heard her say, “Oh, thank you, Father!” in a very loud voice. She hung up the phone so that it dinged and came back into the living room.

  Mr. Myachin had told her it was all right this once, but they had to promise to mind Nadia and do everything she said. She switched off the TV, and Gregor put on his blue Road Runner bathing suit and loaned Ted the red one again. Nadia met them downstairs with three towels slung over her shoulder.

  They walked past the piano, where Yuri cocked his head from between the plants.

  “Can we bring grasshoppers back?” Ted said.

  “Bring the coffee can,” Nadia said.

  Ted grabbed the can off the top of the piano and they ran out of the house and followed Nadia as she skipped across the shaggy lawn to the path. Nadia could skip very fast, almost as if her feet didn’t touch the ground, and the boys had to run hard to try and keep up. When Ted stopped to catch his breath, Gregor kept running slowly, with his fists clenched. In the field Nadia slowed to a walk. When the boys caught up there were dozens of grasshoppers jumping around.

  They went single file along a path that led downhill to the quarry. The air cooled as they came to the outcropping overlooking the water.

  Ted felt funny to be here alone, but Nadia dropped the towels and raised her arms in the air and said, “Ahhh!” Then she walked out on the outcropping and put a hand on the heavy, cabled rope that Mr. Myachin had left tied to a bush.

  “I might just take a swing,” she announced.

  “Father said no!” Gregor said.

  Nadia stuck out her tongue.

  Gregor picked up a rock and threw it as hard as he could against the wall of the quarry. Then he turned and started carefully down the rocky trail to the flat ledge. Ted followed, picking his way between the rock edges. When he reached the bottom he saw Nadia was still on the outcropping, holding the rope in one hand, leaning back against its weight.

  “I’ll tell!” Gregor yelled.

  “Go ahead, Grasshopper Greg!”

  Nadia stuck her bottom out and snapped the edge of her bathing suit against her hip. She ran to the edge and skidded to a stop, teetering, and grinned down at Gregor. But Gregor only crossed his arms and glared, so she backed away again, and this time ran right off the rock, jumping way out and falling, pulling the slack out of the rope.

  Ted waited for her to swing out over the water, but when she reached the rope’s limit it snapped itself right out of her hands, sending her into a long tumble that ended in an awkward, flat splash into the water.

  The boys ran to the edge of the ledge, and when Nadia reappeared, her long hair fanning out, Ted clapped his hands and even Gregor yelled, Wheee! But Nadia only looked at them and sank again. Bubbles broke the surface and a shock went through Ted. He held his breath, but she didn’t come back. Finally Gregor said, “Come on!” and they waded out until the rock dropped away and then dog-paddled toward the rope trembling into the water.

  They couldn’t find Nadia. Ted even put his face into the water and opened his eyes. Finally they were exhausted and had to splash back to the ledge. They climbed to the top of the quarry and ran gasping back to the field and staggered through the springing grasshoppers to the house.

  When they burst into the kitchen, Mrs. Myachin smiled. “Did you see my new car, you boys?”

  But Mr. Myachin frowned at their wet suits. “Where is Nadia?”

  Gregor sobbed.

  Mr. Myachin looked fiercely at Ted, and when Ted’s mouth trembled he yanked the door open and tore out of the house. The boys and Mrs. Myachin ran after him. Ted had never seen anyone’s mother run like that before. When they got to the field, Mr. Myachin was gone, but the grasshoppers were all stirred up.

  The boys followed Mrs. Myachin across the field and into the woods. They kept up with her, even though Ted’s legs were heavy as granite and Gregor was gasping and straining.

  “Oh, please God, no,” Mrs. Myachin kept saying.

  Mr. Myachin was standing in the quarry entrance with Nadia in his arms, both of them dripping water onto the rock.

  “Run back!” he said, looking at his daughter’s slack face. “Call ambulance!” Mrs. Myachin ran off, knock-kneed, choking.

  Mr. Myachin put Nadia down and knelt over her. He blew into her mouth, pushed on her thin chest. Her hair was in the dirt, and when Gregor tried to brush it clean, Mr. Myachin shoved him away with one hand.

  Gregor fell backwards and started crying again.

  “Shut up,” Mr. Myachin said. He blew again into Nadia’s mouth, pushed rhythmically on her chest. Water came out of her mouth. He kept at it until a siren wailed in the distance, and then he picked her up and ran heavily back through the woods.

  Ted and Gregor fell far behind, stumbling through the field and up to the house.

  There was an ambulance in the driveway, bouncing red flashes off the Myachins’ new car. Mrs. Myachin was looking into the ambulance with her hands clenched at her sides, and when the boys came up she turned and said, “Gregor, you go to Teddy’s house and wait there.”

  Men were talking urgently inside the ambulance. Mrs. Myachin took an awkward step up then, and a man with a big, pale mustache glanced in a stricken way at the two boys as he helped her inside. The man pulled the door shut and the ambulance zoomed off, flashing and beeping.

  Ted and Gregor looked at each other and started across the hayfield. It seemed to take forever, grasshoppers springing up on both sides. Neither boy said anything the whole way.

  Toward the end of that summer the Myachins sold their house so they could move back to Russia. Ted’s mother said it was because they needed someone to talk to in their own language.

  “It’s so sad, Teddy,” she said.

  Ted hadn’t been to visit since that hot Saturday, but when he heard they were leaving, he’d asked if it would be all right to go and say good-bye to Gregor, and his mother said she thought it would, but he should hurry because it was almost suppertime.

  So Ted set out across the hayfield and knocked on the side door, the one with the metal latch that the Myachins used instead of their front door.

  After a few seconds Gregor opened the door and looked out at Ted.

  “Hi,” Ted said.

  “Hi,” Gregor said. “You can come in if you want.”

  The living room was nearly empty of furniture, but the grand piano was still there and Yuri was, too. He hopped out from behind a plant and looked at them.

  “Are you really going back to Russia?” Ted said.

  “Yes,” Gregor said. He put his finger on a piano key and played a high, plinky note. Then he put his hands in his pockets.

  Yuri looked at them with his head cocked.

  “Want to go get some grasshoppers?” Ted asked.

  “Okay,” Gregor said.

  The boys went out though the side door. The field was cropped now and it was cooler, but there were still a few grasshoppers dodging around at half speed. They hadn’t brought a container—the coffee can was still down at the quarry, Ted remembered—but they managed to grab enough with both hands to make Yuri a reasonable meal. Ted could feel them squirming inside his fists. He walked back with his hands out to the side.

  In the house he and Gregor put them on the piano one at a time and Yuri chased them down and ate them. But Gregor aimed the last one wrong and it jumped off and hopped down the short hallway to the kitchen.

  “Catch him!” Gregor said.

  Ted ran after the grasshopper, dropping to his knees and trapping it against the baseboard next to the kitchen table, where Gregor’s parents stood wrapping dishes in newspaper. He squeezed the grasshopper and looked up at them.

  Mr. Myachin just stared back with his big, dark eyes, but Mrs. Myachin patted him on the head. Ted pulled the grasshopper’s legs off so it couldn’t escape again. He was very angry at it for trying to get away. He took it back to the piano and gave it to Yuri, who pecked it twice and
swallowed it down. Ted gave him the legs, and Yuri ate those too, then cocked his head and ruffled his wings. Ted thought he looked pretty healthy. He asked Gregor if they were going to turn him loose when they moved back to Russia. Gregor said they already had, a couple of times, but Yuri kept coming back and tapping on the window.

  “Really?” Ted said.

  “Yes,” Gregor said.

  Mrs. Myachin came into the room, looking tired.

  “I’m sorry, Teddy,” she said, “but you have to go home. Gregor must get to work and pack.” She patted his head again and went back to the kitchen.

  Gregor led Ted to the side door and held out his hand. Ted noticed a smear of tobacco juice on his palm. They put their hands together and solemnly shook.

  “I’ll probably never see you again,” Gregor said. He jiggled the latch and opened it and they went into the yard. “My father said he’ll leave a window open for Yuri when we leave,” Gregor said.

  “Good,” Ted said. His whole chest felt tight.

  “Maybe he’ll fly over to your house.”

  “We don’t have a piano,” Ted said, and then he turned and walked away. He couldn’t look back, not even when Gregor called, “Bye!”

  When he heard the door shut, it freed him to run. He sprinted across the hayfield, trying to stomp on the grasshoppers. At home he dodged past his mother and ran to his bedroom. When she tapped on his door he said, “Stay out!” because he couldn’t talk to anyone just then.

  In bed he rolled onto his stomach. The sheet went wet against his face and the breeze through his window made the sheet cool. He got the hiccups and held his pillow over his head until they went away. Then he threw the pillow on the floor and turned onto his back. He held his breath, and it got so quiet that he could feel his heart beating.

  Then he heard the piano faintly from the Russians’ house. It was a sad song that made Ted’s breath come in hitches. After a while it changed and became like the music to a cartoon, louder and jangly. Then it stopped altogether. Ted lay still, waiting, but the music hadn’t resumed by the time his mother called him to supper.

  That was the last time Ted heard the piano.

  Some other people moved into the farmhouse that fall, and he never saw the Myachins again. But he never forgot them, either. He remembered them whenever he looked at the farmhouse, or thought about the quarry. He remembered when school began and he still didn’t have any friends, and again when summer returned and he walked through the field and grasshoppers jumped out of his way.

  Oh, he never forgot them, not ever. Even thirty and forty years later, after everything else that had happened in his life, Ted Soule would sometimes come slowly awake early in the morning and realize that he was holding his breath and listening, as if there might be music outside, or maybe even a beautiful girl saying, “Look at me.”

  Arnold

  Arnold Stimpson walked up the newly plowed road, feeling the brittle cold on his face. He knew that a week was probably not long enough to have stayed away, but his aunt was just going to have to live with it. He was tired of waiting by himself.

  He clumped in his rubber boots up to the River Road and crossed to where his cousins were waiting. He dropped his paper bag beside their array of lunch boxes and looked at Julie, the nicest cousin, in her puffy yellow jacket. He could hear their dogs barking from behind the house. It always bothered him that their dogs had to stay in a pen.

  “Hi, Arnold,” Julie said.

  “Hi,” Arnold said.

  Linda, the oldest cousin, stood atop the snowbank. She had a puffy winter jacket, too, a red one. All the cousins had them.

  Arnold was still wearing his fall jacket, which was too short in the arms and more like a heavy flannel shirt, anyway.

  “I thought you weren’t allowed up here anymore,” Linda said.

  “It’s a free country.”

  “It’s private property.”

  “Not the road.”

  Arnold’s cousin Mark stood beside Linda. Arnold couldn’t tell if he was still mad. He knew his aunt Lois was from the way she was staring out the kitchen window. He looked back at her until she turned and spoke to someone he couldn’t see.

  A few seconds later Uncle Mike came outside and got in the car. He backed out of the driveway, drove up to the crossing, leaned across the seat, and rolled down the passenger window. Uncle Mike had reddish-brown hair and a snub nose, like Arnold’s mother. Like Arnold, too, for that matter. Arnold thought he looked more like a Mitchell than the cousins did.

  “I’m surprised to see you here,” Uncle Mike said.

  Arnold looked at his boots.

  “I thought we’d decided you would wait at your own house.”

  “I did, for a week,” Arnold said.

  Uncle Mike frowned. Then he looked up at Mark and raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t care.” Mark touched under his eye.

  Arnold wished now that he hadn’t socked him. But Mark shouldn’t have said he was stupid, either.

  “Can you keep your hands to yourself?” Uncle Mike said.

  “I will,” Arnold said.

  “All right, we’ll give it one more try.”

  Uncle Mike slid back behind the wheel and let the car idle toward the road. When it was even with the big snowbank he waved over the roof.

  “Bye, Daddy!” the cousins all cried.

  The Plymouth turned onto the tar road, and the cousins walked out to watch, the arms of their jackets whispering against their sides. Then Julie yelled, “Bus coming!” and they hustled back, grabbing their lunch boxes and lining up according to age.

  The bus came hissing to a stop and Mrs. Morrison levered open the door. Arnold waited until last, then climbed the steps and followed Mark down the aisle toward the Hurd brothers, who lived on the Desert Road and always got on first.

  Mark said, “Hey,” and slid into the seat opposite the Hurds. He didn’t shove over, so Arnold took the next seat. The bus low-geared into a turn onto the dirt road and started off.

  Arnold sat eyeing the Hurds. He called them the Turds, but Mark didn’t think that was funny anymore. He liked them now, and had even gone over to play on the desert a couple of times. Arnold still thought they were sissies, though, especially Larry, the older one, who had wispy blond hair and wore gloves instead of mittens and was always reading books. He had his nose in a book right now. His head nodded as the bus bumped down the dirt road, but he kept right on reading, snapping a page over. He read very fast, which was another thing Arnold didn’t like.

  “Whatcha reading, Larry Turd?” Arnold said.

  Larry patiently swiveled the cover toward Arnold: The Wind in the Willows.

  “That’s a girl’s book!” Arnold jeered. He looked at Mark, but Mark just moved impatiently on the bus seat. Arnold sat back and crossed his arms. Then he reached out and poked Larry Hurd in the arm.

  “Larry Turd, the Girl in the Willows!” he chanted, but Larry ignored him. When Arnold, after waiting a minute or two, knocked the book out of his hands, Larry’s brother picked it up off the floor and said, “Why don’t you lay off?”

  Lucas Hurd was younger than Larry, but bigger. They didn’t look much alike, but that was because they were stepbrothers. Mark had told Arnold that after he’d come back from playing with them. Neither of them knew exactly what a stepbrother was, though.

  “Why don’t you make me?” Arnold said to Lucas.

  “Somebody’s going to someday.” Lucas handed his brother the book.

  Larry brushed it off and started right in reading again.

  “Too bad you’re too chicken,” Arnold said.

  “Fighting’s stupid.”

  “That’s what all the chickens say.”

  Lucas faced forward and didn’t reply.

  They rode along in silence until the little set-back house where Arnold lived with his mother came into view. Lucas Hurd glanced at Arnold then and whispered something to his brother, who took one hand from his book and smothered a l
augh.

  “What’s so funny?” Arnold said.

  “Nothing.” Lucas was still grinning.

  “Cut it out, Luke,” Mark warned from across the aisle.

  Arnold looked at Mark, then back at Lucas.

  “What?” Lucas said. “I was just gonna say that we might be chickens . . .”

  “Shut up, Luke!”

  “. . . but at least we don’t live in a chicken coop!”

  Lucas grinned at his own audacity, but only until Arnold stood up. Everybody got quiet then while Arnold swayed in the aisle with his hands on the seats. Then he leaned over and started punching. Larry Hurd ducked down to the floor while Lucas tried to swing back. Arnold struck raised arms and the hard back of the seat, and finally—with a meaty smack—Lucas Hurd’s cheek.

  Lucas let out a squeal for Mrs. Morrison, but she was already pulling the bus over to the side of the road. When she hit the brakes, Arnold stumbled to his knees. As soon as he got up she had him by the ear. She pulled him down the aisle and said, “Sit!” when they got to the stairwell.

  Arnold sat in the slushy dirt from everybody’s boots.

  Mrs. Morrison glared around until the bus grew quiet, then got back behind the wheel.

  Soon they were rambling along the dirt road again, stopping to pick up Daryl and Karin Sleeper and the Philips kids. They all squeezed past Arnold and moved down the aisle. Daryl sat with Mark Mitchell, and Karin sat with Emily Philips. She turned to look at Mark and Daryl whispering as the bus started off. Then she faced front again.

  Outside, fat snowflakes began to fall.

  The bus reached the turnaround at the end of the road where you could see the river. Then it headed back. When it got to Arnold’s house all the kids looked out the window. Arnold looked too, through the tall, smudged glass panels in the door.

  You couldn’t really tell that it had been a chicken coop, he thought. Not unless somebody told you—somebody like Mark. Mark knew, because his father had helped their grandfather work on it, finishing what Arnold’s stupid father had left undone. They’d added glass windows and shingles and a door. It had been a brooder coop anyway, not a real coop, like the empty two-story building that still stood behind it. Arnold could just remember when the big coop was full of chickens. He remembered his grandfather chopping their heads off, and how they ran around afterwards and everybody jumped so as not to get splashed.