Small as an Elephant - Jennifer Richard Jacobson [5]
“Twelve dollars,” said the guy.
Jack’s mouth fell open.
“Nah, just kidding. Free — free to people who buy butts — but you can have one.”
Jack used all but a few coins to pay for his groceries and then started out the door.
“Hey!” shouted the guy.
Jack’s heart pounded. Did he do something wrong? Take something by accident?
“You won’t burn anything down with those, right?”
Jack stopped and held up the marshmallows from his bag.
“Oh, yeah,” said the guy. “Cool.”
As he walked back past the registration hut, thinking about toasting his Jet Puffs, Jack suddenly remembered the sign he’d read inside when he and his mother had registered last night: COLLECTING FIREWOOD IN PARK PROHIBITED. It was hard to believe they meant it; the woods along the campground road were full of dead wood, low branches on trees that had died, sticks covering the ground. It was all right there for the taking. Wouldn’t it be helping them to gather some of this brush? The woods would look neater. . . . Did he dare?
Maybe he’d just hunt around his own campsite, where he wouldn’t be so obvious.
He glanced toward the site where Aiden’s family was staying. He could hear Julie talking in a hyper, squeaky way and the others laughing. Jack thought about walking over and just saying, “Hey, you’re going to the talk tonight, right? The schedule at the gate says it’s about owls. . . .” but he knew Aiden’s parents would start asking the usual questions, which he’d have to answer carefully:
Where’re you from?
Boston — Jamaica Plain. (He liked answering Jamaica Plain before people had the chance to say What part? which was what they always asked, even if they’d visited Boston only one time.)
Are you camping with your family?
My mom.
Where’s your dad? (Julie would probably be the one to ask this.)
He’d settle on the truth. He’d had enough practice lying to know it was best to tell the truth whenever possible. I don’t have one.
Would you and your mom like to join us? (That would probably be Aiden’s mom.)
She’s not feeling well, he’d say. That was as close to the truth as he could come.
But the imaginary conversation made him tired — tired of thinking, tired of trying to figure things out. Definitely too tired to risk talking to Aiden’s family.
On the way back to his campsite, he passed bundles of wood for sale — only two dollars — but he was out of money. His mother had better pay him back tomorrow; that was his souvenir money he’d spent on food. Buying food was her responsibility.
He slipped into his tent, ripped open the food packaging with his teeth, and ate salami-and-cheese sandwiches without the bread. Hors d’oeuvres, he thought. Then he stuffed a handful of raw marshmallows into his mouth and closed his eyes.
“Baby elephant,” he heard his grandmother saying. He was five, and they were sitting at a table. He had just stuffed his sandwich crusts into his mouth.
“Baby elephant,” she’d said.
“Elephants have to stuff their faces,” he’d said with a full mouth.
“I know,” she said. “You told me. Three hundred pounds of food a day.”
It was his earliest memory of his grandmother. Was it truly a memory or a story he’d heard his mom tell? He wasn’t sure.
Once, Jack had asked his mother if they were ever going to see his grandmother again.
“Never!” Mom had said, wiping her face. She’d been crying a lot that day. “I’ll never forgive that woman for what she tried to do to me — to us, Jackie.”
They were sitting together in the multicolored hammock Mom had hung from the ceiling of the dining room — a room they had never used before the hammock. She had her favorite poetry book in her lap; he had woven his toes in and out of the soft hammock strings and was reading The Cowboy and His Elephant. It was a book for adults, but he could read it — and liked it.
“Of course you can read a book for grown-ups, Jack. You