The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [23]
Jed was always thinking about other people. Like the time he rescued Grum’s prize cuckoo collection. Grump had given her most of the clocks when he was stationed in Germany after the war. Sentimental value didn’t mean much to Pa. When he was moving Grum in with us, he threw her clocks in the dump heap even though Grum begged him not to.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,” Pa argued, in what was, for him, a tender voice. “You know there’s no room in the house for all your crap.”
True, there wasn’t any room. Between the windows, doors, and cupboards, we hardly had enough space for a calendar downstairs. Upstairs the house had mostly roof for walls, no place for clocks with pendulums that need to hang flat. The bunk beds barely fit in the window dormer.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way, son,” Grum said, with her chin trembling stubbornly. “You just don’t want me to keep the clocks because you hate them.”
Also true. We’d all heard Pa’s funny stories about the naughty things he’d done to silence the cuckoos when he was a kid. Like following Grum when she wound the clocks and unwinding them after her. Or jamming Popsicle sticks behind the birds when they popped out. Hanging the clocks upside down. No matter how many spankings he got from Grump, Pa kept trying to shut up the cuckoos.
Pa always got everybody laughing silly when he told his childhood cuckoo stories. The way he told them, it was hard not to laugh. He’d act out the parts, mimicking his little boy self and Grum and Grump like a comedian on TV. But if you really thought about what was happening, it wasn’t that funny.
We waited nervously to hear what Pa would say back to Grum. He sucked on his teeth for a while before answering. “Mother, do you really think that if there was a way to keep those clocks for you, I wouldn’t?”
Jed had been pacing around with his hands in his pockets, kicking rocks and acting like he wasn’t paying attention, but he was really churning over every word. “Are you saying you would keep them, Pa, if we can find the space?”
“What do you think I’m saying!” Pa returned.
And that’s when Jed came up with the idea of moving himself and Grum’s cuckoos out to the castle. Pa benefited from the deal. He kept the couch.
Thinking about Jed and Pa and their disagreements made me wonder again which one was right about Stanley Odum. Now that an ORC sign had showed up on the commune door, I was starting to lean toward Jed. How could a bunch of people disappearing overnight be good? What kind of an offer couldn’t they refuse from Boots Odum? What good could that guy be up to, mining mysterious rocks and keeping it all a big secret? On the other hand, Pa always said that there are some things we aren’t supposed to know. For our own good. So I still wasn’t sure who was right. But one way to find out was in my hand.
As I waited to fall asleep, I held Odum’s blinky pebble next to my cheek. It felt warm and relaxing, like sucking my thumb used to feel before Pa trained me out of it. A memory popped into my head from when I was little, sitting on Pa’s shoulders. It was just me and him working on the castle on a Saturday because Ma had taken Barbie to Daisy Scouts, and Jed was in the gore raking leaves for Grum.
“Whaddya say we put the finishing touches on this beauty and surprise the rest of the clan?” Pa had suggested, and now he was letting me place the last fieldstone in the vaulted ceiling. Best moment of my life so far.
It made my heart ache along with my stomach and teeth and growing bones to think about how Pa had changed. How everything had changed. Suddenly it was the present that didn’t seem real . . . Grum tiptoeing around with her osteoporosis, Jed gone nobody knew where, Pa always blowing up, the house practically falling