Tilt - Alan Cumyn [43]
“I saw it on TV,” the boy said.
“But your dad never took you out? He never left you on the dock or anything?” Stan felt like a prosecutor pulling on an uncertain line of questioning.
“We went to a store once,” Feldon said.
“A fishing store?”
“I want to go to the Tilt-the-World!” Lily cried.
Stan looked where she was pointing. Across the street at the Longworth Mall, a lone groaning silver ride glinted and whirled in a fenced-off section of parking lot. A few kids screamed, but most of the swinging arms of the mechanical beast were empty.
“It’s probably not safe in the rain,” Stan said. “Mom would never let you.”
“You couldn’t afford to take us anyway!” Lily said. She poked Feldon on the shoulder. “Nobody has any money. Not in our family!”
“My mommy has money,” Feldon said.
Stan grabbed Lily’s wrist and pulled both kids across an intersection.
“She’s going to come get me,” Feldon said.
“Does she even know where you are?” Stan asked.
“Why wouldn’t she know?” Lily demanded. She was allowing herself to be led.
“We play secrets a lot,” Feldon said.
“What kind of secrets?” Stan pressed.
Feldon started to hum a little tune, then flattened his lips together like he would not talk no matter what happened.
The river was only a few blocks away. Stan steered the kids around a deep puddle.
He stopped and kneeled down to look Feldon in the eye.
“This is important. Does your mom know where you are?”
Feldon shook his head and stared down at his shoes. But what he said was, “My mom knows everything.”
—
Lily cast into the trees, into the weeds, into a bush beside Feldon’s head, and Stan took the fishing rod from her so she ran onto a log by the river’s edge where faeries hid and talked to them for quite a while on her belly with the ties from her raincoat dragging into the edge of the water.
Feldon opened and closed the tackle box, opened and closed it, and took out each colorful, prickly lure, his little fingers wonderful at avoiding every barb. He lined up the spinners and the leaders and the big hooks and the bobbers, the lead weights, the rubber worms and the spoons. They were like an army in the grass, or a specialized audience come to watch while Stan cast out beyond the shallows and slowly reeled in, cast out and reeled in.
So much was happening, and yet it was not long before he was thinking again of Janine. What did she do after the kiss, when she got back to the dance with Leona?
Did she kiss Leona the way she kissed him?
Why hadn’t she told him it was a cancer dance? She was a good talker. Why did he have to get there to find out?
Why didn’t she tell him about . . . the girl thing? Everyone knew anyway. Even Jason Biggs.
What else didn’t Stan know about her?
“Lily!” Stan called out. She was leaning out to the water, her foot planted in mud.
“I have to get the ship back!” she said.
Stan grabbed her arm just as she was slipping. The “ship” was a pine cone spinning in the current out of reach.
Stan picked up another one and handed it to her.
“That’s not the ark of Ignola!” she said. She threw it in the water.
“The ark of Igwash,” Stan muttered.
“What are you talking about?” Lily said. “You don’t know anything!”
He did know some things. He knew, whatever it was with Janine, that kiss was real. A person could run away from it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t important.
A kiss like that changed lives. You didn’t just give up on it.
“I hate fishing!” Lily said, splashing her hand in the water. “Why did we ever come?”
“It helps you think,” Stan said.
18
It was canned bean soup for dinner but Stan didn’t care. He was so hungry he shoveled the brown mush into his mouth and washed it down with water. Prison rations, practically. But the biscuits were fresh-bought not frozen, and his mother had warmed them.
They were all sitting together in what just two days ago would have seemed an impossible scene: his mother and father at the same table, drinking wine — Gary’s from the other night — with three children now instead of two, everyone eating