Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [26]
He couldn’t wait to see Mrs. Olson’s face when he gave her this bag. He felt like Santa delivering a sack of presents. But before going to her door, he snuck into the barn. He dropped the bag and grabbed the box of cereal bars, then climbed into the loft. There he devoured one bar in four bites. A few crumbs remained in the package. He remembered an elephant his mom once told him about, who was captive but each day put aside a little of his grain for a mouse to eat. Jack made a little mound with the crumbs on the spot where he had slept.
He dumped the five remaining bars into his backpack, hid the cardboard box under the wooden table, and placed the toy elephant securely in his pocket.
On Mrs. Olson’s doorstep was his bag of vegetables, with a little note that said Thank you. Jack rang her doorbell, eager to show her all he had brought, but she didn’t answer. Maybe she wasn’t home, but he suspected otherwise. He suspected it was something else that kept her from opening the door. A kind of pride, maybe.
Jack picked up his vegetables, threw on his backpack, and started his 248-mile walk home.
As the bus traveled to the mainland, Jack read the schedule and tried to decide on the best place to get off. The farthest point the bus traveled to was the IGA in Trenton. He was pretty sure the IGA was a supermarket; he and his mother had gone to one in Mattapan. He remembered because they had tried to guess what the letters in the name stood for:
INTERESTING GREEN APPLES
INTERNATIONAL GRAPES AVAILABLE
ISLAND GROCERIES ALWAYS
IRATE GRUMPY ASSOCIATES
INCREDIBLE GRAINS ADVERTISED
IMPERIAL GRAY ASPHALT
Every idea was unbelievably stupid, but they had had fun just the same.
So, he could get off at the IGA, but he suspected it would be in a pretty populated area, and he would need to find a place to camp out. The bus wouldn’t arrive until about four; it was dark these days by seven — kind of late to begin walking south. Plus, he was tired from all the trips he’d already taken between Mrs. Olson’s farm and Bar Harbor.
The stop before the IGA was a campground called Narrows Too. Jack didn’t have money for a campsite, but he figured a campground would be closer to wilderness — wilderness where he could hide for the night. Decision made. He’d get off at Narrows Too.
Unfortunately, the campground wasn’t at all what Jack had imagined. It was on the main highway and wide-open — a place intended for RVs rather than small tents. It would be difficult to sneak into and even more difficult to hide in. He decided to walk up and down the road to see what else was in the surrounding area.
The smell of steamed lobster drew him toward the Trenton Bridge Lobster Pound. Outside were six wood-burning vats with steam rising from them. Oh, how he wished he could have a plate of steamed mussels or a lobster right now! He could taste the warm butter and tender meat. Or a roll! Even just a roll!
After pitching the potatoes into the woods on his walk back to Bar Harbor — he’d have had no way to cook them, and he didn’t think you could eat them raw — Jack had finished a green pepper and another cereal bar, but these didn’t satisfy him after so much walking and carrying. He wished he were a mangy dog right now that could crawl under one of the outdoor picnic tables and beg for scraps.
Maybe he should have kept the potatoes. He probably could have bartered for something. Would they have thought it cute if he’d offered to trade some homegrown potatoes for a lobster roll?
It seemed like every decision he made had good consequences (his bag was lighter) and bad (he had nothing to offer