Hound Dog True (10 page)

Uncle Potluck shrugs. "Thank the corn."

Uncle Tommy pushes his plate across the table. There are three cobs on it, clean picked, not a kernel in sight. "What am I beginning?" he asks.

"Indigestion," says Uncle Potluck. "The corn predicts Alka-Seltzer. Who's next?"

Me,
Mattie thinks.
Pick me. Tell me what kind of person I am. Tell me what I am beginning.

She thinks it tight and loud inside her head,
me me me,
knowing Uncle Potluck will hear it. But he does not.

What he hears, what Mattie hears, what everyone hears, is matter-of-fact Quincy Sweet plunking, "Me."

Q
UINCY NUDGES HER PLATE
toward Uncle Potluck, but before he can touch it, Miss Sweet snaps up Quincy's cob.

"Let me. She's my niece, after all." She holds Quincy's corn up like Uncle Potluck did. Says
mm-hmm
and
aha,
like he did.

"Okay," Miss Sweet says. "Okay, I have it. Okay, so all these rows are totally straight, see? That says Quincy's future is all mapped out perfectly. Quincy's going to be super-popular. And she'll have lots of awesome boyfriends, and next thing you know she'll be Prom Queen, like I was."

It is the best fortune Miss Sweet can think of, Mattie can tell. She's trying to be nice, but Quincy just watches her dinner plate.

It doesn't move, the dinner plate. Neither does Quincy.

Miss Sweet turns to Mama. "You can just tell she's going to have a lovely figure. She's already in a B-cup."

Mattie crosses her arms over her chest. Sees Quincy do the same.

Miss Sweet doesn't see. She's turned her look on Uncle Potluck. "I was totally flat until I was fourteen," she says. "But girls today mature so much faster. I read it in
People.
They call them 'tweens' now, too."

And then Miss Sweet starts in talking about how tweens wear lip gloss and tweens do texting and how all tweens want is to be grown-up and all they think about is boys. Mattie watches Quincy's face, knowing that all she is thinking about is stabbing her aunt with a fork.

"It's all true," Miss Sweet says. "There have been studies."

"Nobody studied me," says Quincy. It doesn't sound one bit plunky, either.

Miss Sweet starts to say something else, but then Quincy grabs the corncob. Chomps three big bites.

There.

There.

There.

"Study that," Quincy says, and before her cob hits the plate, the porch door is slamming shut and Quincy is stomping out through the garden dusk.

"They're prone to drama, too," says Miss Sweet.

 

For a minute, the room is quiet. Feels like anything could happen.

Mattie waits.

Waits for Miss Sweet to stand up and go after Quincy. Or Mama to. Or Uncle Potluck to pick up somebody else's cob, maybe even Mattie's cob, and go on with the fortunetelling. Mattie could stay here and listen about her future and never have to go out and talk to the moon at all.

Except none of that happens.

What happens is that Mattie Breen does a small brave thing.

She stands up.

Stands up, everyone looking, and goes outside.

Out into the half-dark, past the bean tepees and tomato cages and the stone rabbit standing lonely guard. Up past the tangle of pumpkin vines, past Mama's friend tent.

Up she walks, up the rise to the woods, to the rock ledge by the apple tree. Up to Uncle Potluck's rock, to Mattie's rock, to the place she knows, even in the half-dark, Quincy Sweet will be.

Q
UINCY IS ON
THE ROCK.
Sitting on it, knees up, arms folded over them, toolbox and bag papers at her side.

"Poor Moe," Mattie says.

Maybe it's a dumb thing to say. Maybe she should have let Quincy talk first.

But Quincy talks second. "Poor Moe," she says. Like a secret code.

She puts her papers on the grass, Quincy does. Drops her toolbox on top of them, making room for Mattie to sit on the rock.

Mattie sits. Pulls close her own knees. The clouds move around some and the light changes, tinting the sky as dark as Miss Sweet's lipstick, Mattie thinks.

Quincy must notice, too. "I wear lip gloss at school," she says.

Quiet.

"I do, too. Or did. Once," Mattie says. "I don't say much at school. I didn't talk at all that morning. By lunch the gloss had turned to glue. I thought my lips would rip off if I tried to open my mouth."

It is a silly thing to say. So silly, Quincy laughs.

Laughs and laughs like she's going to roll right off the rock. The kind of laugh Mattie can't help laughing with.

"It's true!" Mattie says, still laughing around and around, like a screw untwisting.

Quincy unfolds her legs. Divides her hair for braiding, though she has no bands for the ends and one braid frees as soon as she moves to the next.

A breeze comes, a cloud shifts, slivering a half-light over the trees, opening the darkening sky to the moon.

"It must have heard your lip gloss story," Quincy says.

Maybe. Maybe Miss Moon came out for the lip gloss story.

But the lip gloss story is not the one that needs telling. Not the one Mattie needs the moon to hear. There is another story, a twist-tight story coiled up inside her. And there, with Quincy on the rock beside her, Mattie tells it.

***

It starts out backwards from the way she has told it before, to Moe and Miney and to herself.

She was so big, it starts. So big I thought she'd swallow me up.

The story goes on that way. Bottom turning to top.

The magic word.
Og-ree.
Notebook pages soaked dark. Stories fist-crunched. She, Mattie, had said
ogre.

Ogre.

Ogre.

How the girl said it:

Og-ree,
in a sound-out way.

How the word had been in a story in Mattie's notebook,

in her yellow notebook.

How the girl had come upon the notebook in Mattie's backpack,

after looking in all the other backpacks.

How she had come in small to the coatroom.

How her name was Star. How she had come in looking for change.

***

The words loosen. Unwind.

Mattie feels herself breathe. Slow and deep, in and out.

"Poor Moe," says Quincy. "That was good. I mean, it was bad. A bad thing that happened. But how you told it was good. No wonder you're a writer," she says. "You're good at stories."

I am,
Mattie thinks. It is not a question. It is a statement. A truth. A matter of fact. "I am," she says.

She does not know how loud she says it. Does not know if she has whispered or shouted. Does know that she hears an echo, like the kind you hear on mountaintops. Except this echo is not bouncing off mountains or the woods or the tent or the house. It is not an outside echo at all. It is an inside echo, and Mattie hears it.

Big and round and full as the moon.

I
T IS DARKER NOW.
The moon is high above.

Quincy looks up and Mattie looks up, both looking up to the brave round moon.

"Now what?" whispers Quincy.

"You can tell your things," Mattie says. "If you want."

"I did. Before you got out here. I told about Duey and Nicolette and Crystal. All that," Quincy plunks.

All that. Same stories Mattie's already heard. Same plunky things she's already said. It won't work, Mattie wants to tell her. Trusting the moon means saying things that are secret. Things that matter.

She starts to tell Quincy so, but the moon is lighting Quincy's face. She is looking up, twisting her hair in a wishful braid.

Which is how Mattie sees, finally. How she knows that the things Quincy has said do matter.

That is Quincy's secret.

 

Another light, round and white, bobs off the back porch, through the garden, into the yard, lights up a corner of the friend tent. It stops there. Tilts, then shines back up the rise.

"Mattie?"

It is Mama.

"Up here," Mattie says.

Mama has a flashlight—the firefighter kind that Uncle Tommy uses—and the white of it is so hard, Mattie needs to turn her eyes away, to lift them back to the moon.

"I put the sleeping bags and an extra flashlight in the tent," Mama says. "You want to put on your pajamas?"

"Where's Crystal?" asks Quincy. The lights are on in the rental house.

"Her closet door won't close. Tommy said he'd take a look."

"I'll sleep in my clothes," Quincy plunks. "I don't feel like changing."

"Mattie?" Mama asks.

Mattie shakes her head. "I'm okay the way I am tonight."

Mama stands there, the flashlight pointed at the rock. "I'd better get back," she says finally. "Your principal has a substitute janitor coming tomorrow. She needs Potluck to tell her what has to be done before school starts."

Mattie shields her eyes to see past Mama to the kitchen window. Watches the Uncle Potluck shadow fiddle with its hat.

"He's so shy around her," Mama says. "It's cute."

Shy. Mattie has been called shy. Knows it does not feel cute. "My notebook," Mattie says.

"It's still under your pillow." Mama says. "I didn't—"

"Would you give it to Uncle Potluck?" Mattie says. "My custodial wisdom notes. He can give them to Principal Bonnet if he wants."

"Are you sure?"

Mattie is sure.

"You want me to walk you down to the tent?" Mama asks, lifting the flashlight again. "It's pretty dark out here."

Quincy shakes her head.

"We'll find our way," Mattie says.

 

They do find their way, Mattie leading, Quincy following, down the rise, to the tent, to the sleeping bags.

The flashlight Mama left in the tent makes it bright enough for Quincy to draw. She pushes some bag pages to Mattie. "I can draw and listen for the moon," she says. "Can you listen and write?"

Probably she can, but for now Mattie just listens. Listens to Uncle Tommy's motorcycle growling down the drive. To Miss Sweet leaving for work. Principal Bonnet saying she'll stop by again tomorrow, if that's all right. Uncle Potluck saying how her visit would be an honor.

Listens to the scritch and scratch of pastels on grocery bags, to the slow and stop of it, and later to the
swee swee swee
of Quincy Sweet's quiet snore.

Listens for something else, too. Something she has not listened for in a long time. She listens for a story, one inside her head that she can write down.

A brave Moe story, maybe. Or she could rewrite an old story. She still remembers some from her yellow notebook.

A breeze ripples the tent sides, flickers the warning labels at the seam. Mattie thinks about the stick man. Wonders if he is enjoying the ride.

She puts her pencil to the rough of the bag paper.

In the morning, when she wakes, Mattie is surprised by what she finds on the paper bag page. What she has written. It is only the beginning of a story, but it is a good beginning, she thinks. The kind that makes you want to know what comes next.

In Ms. Morgan's fifth grade class, you do not stand in front of the blackboard to introduce yourself. And it is not just the new kids doing the introducing—it is everyone. "You are all new to me," Ms. Morgan says.

And so they are moving down the rows, one by one, each person standing and saying their name. Each person standing, saying something interesting about themselves.

There are seven desks before Mattie's. Seven people introducing themselves.

The first two Mattie doesn't remember the name of, her heart beating
whoosh-whoosh-whoosh
in her ears, covering up everything. She made her eyes watch their faces, though, and the second one, a boy, had smiled at her.

Next was another boy. "I'm David Braun," he said. He had a dog, a big one, and he had taken it to obedience school all summer, but still the dog wouldn't sit on command. Makes Mattie think of Stella.
Underneath,
she thinks.
Underneath, maybe,
that dog knows.

Which gets her thinking about the underneath of all these kids in her class, the parts they maybe don't share right away, but are as hound dog true as their hair color or their shoe size or any of the things you can see.

Mattie misses the next girl's name thinking that.

Tells herself
Pay attention,
at the same time thinking that maybe most people aren't going to be paying such close attention when she introduces herself, either. Which makes the whooshing quiet some. Not all, but some.

End of the first row. A girl. Nadia Benedict. She has a box full of fossils under her bed.

Beginning of row two. Mattie's row. Mattie feels her face redding, feels her heart
thumpthumpthumping.

Katie Culp. She has a twin brother, Joe, and went to the Grand Canyon on vacation.

"Next," says Ms. Morgan.

Mattie wants to look at the next person's face as he stands, but her own face is redding so much, all she can do is look at her notebook. It is a new notebook—a regular one—blue with wire spiraling around one edge. Inside she has written some of the stories she remembered from before and some new stories, too, about the stone rabbit and even one about Uncle Potluck's hat. Mattie puts her hands on the notebook, makes herself listen to the person at the desk in front of her.

"I'm Jed Kim," he says. "I have seven chickens." And then he says their names, smooth as eggs.

"Who's next?" Ms. Morgan asks.

Mattie stands. Keeps one hand on her notebook.

"I'm Mattie Breen," she says. Her voice is quiet, but no one says
Speak up.
Everyone can hear.

"I write stories."

This novel, like my first, began as a picture book—a shy girl, a gregarious uncle, and the magical possibility that if we have the courage to speak about what matters most, a real friend might appear, and listen.

As the story grew to novel length, a number of real friends appeared for me. My critique group members—Kelly Fineman, Susan Sandmore, Myra Wolfe, Ellen Miles, Leda Schubert, and Norma Fox Mazer—read this story countless times and led me to what was hound dog true underneath. Kate Messner and her daughter, Ella, read the book aloud and told me when it echoed. Loree Griffin Burns and Marla Frazee kept me going throughout the process—reminding me to take small brave steps.