been stolen, carted past the open door by a robber. Cracker crumbs were scattered across the living room floor, rnorsels for the ants to claim. And the squirrel rampaged on the roof, chattering and creating a racket -- his teeth, I imagined, smeared with peanut butter.
13
Dickens didn’t come for me the next day.
I ate saltines on the porch steps and waited, listening to the noisy cicadas, hoping that a quarry boom would suddenly erupt and silence them for a while. Then I played Shark Attack with Classique. She was a goldfish on my fingertip, swimming in front of me while I chomped at her.
'Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me!'
'Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-!”
And when I put her in my mouth she tasted worse than cough syrup. Some strands of her hair got under my tongue, and I had to spit them out. Then I kept spitting until I couldn’t taste her anymore.
'You’re gross,” I told her. 'You’re dirty.'
'You love Dickens,' she said.
'No, I don’t! How do you know?'
'You love him because he’s a shark hunter. You want to kiss the cut on his head and hold hands.”
'And he has a submarine too.'’
'Except it’s fake.”
'But he’s going to be rich and buy a real one. He has more pennies than you. But I won’t show you if you don’t shut up that I love him, Classique, because I don’t really.”
Dickens was a flamingo. He walked funny. But he hunted the monster shark. And he was my friend.
'He’s a sissy.'
'Sometimes he’s a captain too.”
In Lisa he roamed the South Pacific. Perhaps he appeared on TV -- that’s where I always saw boats and oceans and submarines and sharks. I might’ve seen him on PBS -- his submersible exploring the remains of the Titanic -- and didn't even know it was Dickens at the helm.
'He’s sailing under the seas.'
'So he’s not coming.'
'But maybe he will.'
'Maybe he forgot where What Rocks is-'
'And he’s searching.'
'Because we’re in danger.”
What Rocks was sinking fast; it’d just hit an iceberg. Soon I'd be swallowing saltwater. So would Classique. We had to stay afloat until Dickens rescued us. He was our only hope.
'Come on,” I said. 'Don’t give up. We have to swim for dry land.”
'But I can’t swim.'
'Dog paddle,' I said. 'Dog paddle like the wind!'
We drifted from the steps -- my arms parting the waves - and let the tide carry us away. Then we were underwater, gliding past the seaweed-sorghum. I held my breath for as long as possible. But it was hard. So I transformed into an octopus, my fingers fluttering like tentacles. Classique became a seahorse. And in the grazing pasture, we swam around the upturned Titanic, where minnow-hoppers darted in and out of the busted windows.
'It sank to the bottom of the sea,' I told Classique, gazing into the murky interior of the wreck.
'No one survived,' she said. 'It’s spooky.'
'Let’s go.”
We floated over the rise to see if Dell was in her meadow. But she wasn’t. So we swam off -- eventually surfacing by the tracks, panting for air near Dickens’ wigwam. We’d almost drowned.
'The monster shark could be anywhere,' I told Classique, stooping. 'We better be on the lookout.”
The squashed pennies stretched along the rail like misshapen drops from a candle. And I tried peeling one up, but it wouldn’t budge. The shark had crushed it good and proper.
'It’s dangerous here. We’re safer in the submarine,'
I imagined the shark racing forward, teeth snapping as it sailed after us. ·
'Shark attack!” I yelled.
And Classique and I scrambled across the tracks, down the embankment, and into Lisa. But Dickens wasn’t waiting inside. He wasn’t at the helm, goggles in place, searching the ocean floor for What Rocks and me. And the wigwam didn’t seem any more like a submarine than it had the day before.
'Shark attack”
Lisa was falling to pieces, and Classique hated her. She thought the wigwam smelled worse than What Rocks. With all the junk and the dirt, she thought Lisa was more of a wreck than the bus; part of the shotgun roof had caved in overnight, several long mesquite branches lay crosswise on the crunched bicycle, other branches covered the shredded tires, others stood vertical -- stabbing the ground and jutting out the gap in the roof. The collapse sliced the wigwam in half, making the already confined interior more cramped.
Lisa’s been sunk, I thought. Dickens can’t swim. He isn’t even an octopus or a seahorse.
'The pirate did it,” Classique said. 'She boarded the submarine and took him prisoner. The captain will walk the plank for sure. She’ll drown him because she’s a pig. She left you in the field. She’s trouble.”
And Dell came to mind -- pound cake in one hand, her lips wet with apple juice, her dark lens glinting in the afternoon sunlight. She was out there somewhere, waving a sword above her head -- 'Aye! Aye!' -- or pressing the tip of the sword against Dickens’ spine as his flip-flops clomped toward the end of a plank.
'Save him! Save the captain-'
'--or he’s shark food!'
But we didn’t have to save Dickens after all. He was fine, mumbling to himself and smiling, raking the front yard of his and Dell’s home. And he wasn’t in flip-flops or a swimming suit. The goggles weren’t on his forehead. He had on a red baseball cap and a T-shirt. He wore jeans and cowboy boots. He looked like a farmer.
'He’s not a captain or a prisoner-”
'-or anything.”
Classique and I were cloistered among mesquites, spying behind a juniper bush, watching as Dickens went in circles. He kept going around and around, raking his bootprints, mumbling and smiling, mumbling and smiling. He couldn’t get it right. Soon as a patch was raked, he’d turn and step backwards into it. His bootprints were everywhere.
And Dell was there too, wearing her hood and mittens, picking tomatoes and squash in her garden, setting the vegetables into a plastic bag, tossing some aside. And she was whistling to herself. But every now and then she’d pause, telling Dickens, 'No, no, see -- you’ve forgotten a spot, of course. Pay attention.'
She’d point, jabbing a finger.
'Not there -- there.'
And Dickens would scan the dirt, searching for what he’d missed. He’d step backwards, creating new bootprints.
'Right there. Yes, right there.”
Then he’d rake nervously at the bootprints before him, mumbling and smiling, mumbling and smiling.
'No, no, see -- now there’s more. You’re messing it all up as you go. Pay attention, right?'
It could’ve continued for hours -- Dell pointing, Dickens raking and making fresh bootprints -- except Patrick the Bagger Boy arrived in his Nissan. The horn honked twice as the pickup truck came bouncing over the bumpy driveway, sunlight reflecting off the windshield.
The honks startled Dickens; he let the rake fall. Then, biting his bottom lip, he glanced at Dell and hugged himself.
'Uh-oh,” he said.
