Jack didn't know much about his uncle; he'd been around, off and on, and once he'd bought him a windup boat-a huge thing with a good slow-working spring in the mother that he and his brother, Tom, used on the artificial lake in the park. Another time he brought both Jack and Tom books about space. But Jack hadn't really seen him that much, and he and his father didn't seem to be all that close. His uncle had been in the Army for a long time, in the war and then overseas in Germany. He was an M.P. His father used to talk about him every once in a while as his big brother, but there was about six years' difference between them and it seemed like they never got to know each other very well.
So his uncle watched the game, smiling or squinting against the sun. Jack couldn't tell which.
After the game was over, after Jack's team won and gathered in a circle and threw their hats into the air, his uncle stood at the bottom of the grandstand with his hands in the pockets of his bright blue jacket and he smiled. He put his arm around Jack and said, 'How you been, kiddo?'
They got in his car, and Uncle Martin talked about getting something to eat. Jack said he thought they should go back to the house; he was supposed to meet Tom there to play some more ball in the backyard.
His uncle looked over at him and smiled. 'I'll get you back before you know it, kiddo.'
He kept driving. They drove for a long time. His uncle kept making excuses for why they weren't going to Jack's house. 'We'll get there soon,' he said.
They drove about an hour outside the city, then they stopped at a hamburger place. They sat outside and ate on one of the round white enameled-metal tables. Uncle Martin spread a map out and began to study it. He pushed his fisherman's hat farther back and scratched his head. 'No,' he said, once or twice. Then he said, 'That's it.'
'What's it?' Jack asked.
Uncle Martin folded the map and smiled. 'A surprise,' he said. 'Your father didn't want me to tell you till we got there.'
Jack stared at him, and Uncle Martin gave a hearty laugh and reached across the table and slapped Jack's shoulder. 'I'm taking you on a trip!'
Jack regarded him blankly. 'What do you mean?'
'We're going to go someplace, you and I.'
'But what about my father and Tom?' Jack protested. 'I don't have any clothes.'
'Your dad said it was fine. Said you needed a treat after the school year you put in. Where we're going there are clothes and everything. Do you like to fish?'
Through his perplexity, Jack's eyes brightened.
'That's right, kiddo-we're going to fish, and camp out, we're going to do all kinds of things. You know,' he said, 'I've been waiting a long time for this. Did your father ever tell you what a good fisherman I was?'
He searched his memory and found nothing, but his uncle had such an earnest, expectant look on his face that he nodded. 'Yes.'
'He did?' Uncle Martin said. His face lit up. 'Well, I'll be damned.'
Uncle Martin became thoughtful again, and suddenly he got up and cleared the table and said they should be going. 'Got a long ride ahead of us,' he said.
They got into the car and Uncle Martin reached under the driver's seat and took out an open pair of handcuffs. 'Darn seat belt doesn't work very well, kiddo,' he explained, snapping one of the cuffs around Jack's right wrist and the other to the door handle. He did it so quickly and solemnly that Jack didn't question it. 'I believe in safety,' Uncle Martin said, and then he started the car.
They ate up a lot of highway. They crossed New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Jack slept for a while. When he awoke they were in the Poconos. His uncle was humming to the radio, which was tuned to a station playing 101 Strings. Jack's wrist hurt where the cuff had tightened into it. His uncle saw him try to loosen it and reached over and pulled his left hand away.
'Leave it be,' he said seriously. 'Safety, like I said.'
They drove up into the Poconos, through and beyond the summer communities, into an area as lonely as Eden. Macadam turned to dirt, then to trail. Then without warning the car found a short flat driveway that curved to a dead stop in front of a cabin. It looked like any other vacation home, with a short deck out front.
Uncle Martin got out of the car and jogged around to Jack's side. He opened the door, deftly unlocked the cuff from the door handle and pulled Jack out of the car by it. Jack yelped a protest, but Uncle Martin ignored him, still humming. Now, suddenly, Jack was afraid, and started to resist the cuffs, but Uncle Martin only turned to him and told him to be quiet. 'The fishing tackle is inside,' he said.
Uncle Martin brought him into the house, through a big living room with a huge stone fireplace and attached kitchen, and up the stairs. There were two closed doors off the stairway, and Uncle Martin opened the first one.
There was balloon wallpaper on the walls. A brand-new Sears bed butted one wall, with a rodeo pattern coverlet turned down. The sheets had Roy Rogers's face on them, with Trigger's profile next to him from the neck up. Roy smiled wryly, like he always did, eyes squinting. There was a new Sears chest of drawers, too, the tag still on it; on top of it was a hand mirror, an ebony-handled hairbrush, an old coin bank in the shape of a baseball made out of printed tin. The closet was open, filled with new jeans, shirts and a blue suit. There were pajamas and white shirts and socks still in their bags, the shirts folded around flat pieces of cardboard to keep them stiff, with pins stuck in the collar to keep them in place.
'This is your room,' Uncle Martin said quietly, pulling Jack gently in by the cuffs. Behind the door was a long package wrapped in brown paper. Uncle Martin picked it up and handed it to Jack.
'Open it,' he said.
Jack opened it. There was fishing tackle in it, a pole, a freshwater lightweight reel spooled with four-pound test line, a clear-plastic tray of panfish lures and red and white bobbers and split-shot sinkers.
'I didn't lie,' Uncle Martin said.
Jack stood in the middle of the room, and he began to cry. Tears rolled out of him and he couldn't stop. The fishing pole fell out of his hand to the floor.
His uncle stood nervously next to him, holding the open end of the handcuffs, and then he said quietly, 'I'll leave you now,' and he dropped the cuffs and left the room and bolted the door behind him.
It was then that Jack saw that there were no windows in the room.
They fished three or four times a week. There were trout streams nearby, and a small lake a quarter mile beyond that. His uncle got him up at six in the morning, made breakfast, sometimes waffles and bacon, and then they dressed and fished. For the first two weeks his uncle told him that this was what his father wanted, but after that he said nothing.
Jack tried to get away the first day they went fishing, but his uncle tracked him down in under an hour and brought him back. A week later he tried again, but his uncle found him in thirty minutes. He didn't try again for a while. He asked small questions here and there, and discovered that his uncle owned five square miles of land. The nearest neighbor was eight miles away to the west.
Sometimes his uncle called him Jerry, his father's name.
Days went by, and weeks, and months. When his uncle went out without him he cuffed Jack to a ring anchored in the stone mantel over the fireplace. His uncle hunted a few times, bringing down a stag deer in late August. His uncle skinned and butchered it. He packed all but two steaks in the freezer, and that night Jack had venison for the first time. Also that night the weather turned cooler.
He hadn't tried to run away since June. He continued to ask small questions.
One day in mid-September his uncle went into town for supplies, cuffing Jack to the ring in the mantel. Jack had patiently worked on the ring for three months. As his uncle's truck pulled away he slipped the ring out of the wall.
Under his bed, he had squirreled a full three days' provisions into a canvas sack. The sack had two strips of heavy cloth sewn to it, making a crude backpack. Jack put it on and went to his uncle's bedroom where he hoped to find one of his uncle's rifles.
He'd never been in this room. 'Now, Jerry,' his uncle had told him, 'I want you to stay out of my room. It's all I've got.' There was a dead-bolt lock on the door. Jack tried the knob. It was locked. He threw himself against it. The first time the wood yielded slightly, but held the lock; the second time, the bolt splintered and the door flew inward.
