Hound Dog True (7 page)

She imagines his face filling with relief, sees him bringing her back to Authorized Personnel, showing her the special chair he'd already had made for her—
MATTIE MAE BREEN, CUSTODIAL APPRENTICE
printed on the back.

The last screw twists into place. Now all she needs to do is test things.

Mattie turns the knob, right then left. Watches a silver tongue poke in and out of the side of the door. Walks around to the outside doorknob to test that, too. There's a button on it—a lock. She pushes the button and the knob stops turning. The lock works.

Now for the final test. Her expertise.

Mattie hurries back into the principal's office and shuts the door. The vacuum cord is wedged tight underneath, so she has to push extra hard against it, but finally the door closes.
Click.

"Mattie Mae Breen, Custodial Apprentice, will now demonstrate her door-opening expertise," she says. But when she turns the knob, it will not budge.

The button, she remembers. She had left it pushed in. On the other side of the door.

She has put the doorknob on backwards.

Mattie Mae Breen has locked herself in the principal's office.

D
AYS PASS AND WEEKS PASS
and no time at all passes until Mattie hears Uncle Potluck's muffled singing outside the administrative office.

She will have to call to him and tell him she has locked herself in. Tell him how she is the one who needs help. How even her door-opening expertise has failed.

Uncle Potluck sounds louder once the administrative office door opens, and Mattie hears him full-voice singing about a magic someone he is resolving to call.

"Uncle Potluck," she says. It comes out quiet, but even if she were shouting, Uncle Potluck would not have heard her over all that happens next. All that happens all at once—the vacuum cleaner leaping and a twanging sound like an old guitar and a crash, a horrible crash, followed by words Mattie has heard mostly in movies and on the playground. Words unleashed.

Mattie does not need to see him to know what has happened. Uncle Potluck has tripped over the vacuum cord that she left plugged in by the administrative office door.

"Uncle Potluck?" Mattie calls. "Are you all right?"

There is a pause, long and deep enough to drown in.

Mattie hears a hoot. And another. "Mattie Mae," Uncle Potluck says. "I fear my traitorous knee has turned on me, and I am in need of your assistance."

He needs her.

Uncle Potluck really, truly needs her.

And there is nothing she can do to help.

 

It is Principal Bonnet who finally helps him. Answers his cell phone call and comes to his rescue. Helps him to his feet and out of the administrative office.

Principal Bonnet who comes back for Mattie, too, knocking gently on her own office door before she opens it.

"I'm sorry," Mattie says.

"He'll be okay," Principal Bonnet says.

Mattie nods. Reaches for the vacuum so she can wrap the cord up like she should have done right off. Like she would have if she was a real custodial apprentice.

"I'll get someone to do that," Principal Bonnet says. "Right now we need to get your uncle to a doctor."

A doctor. Uncle Potluck needs to go to a doctor. Mattie had been picturing him in Authorized Personnel wrapping his traitorous knee with electrical tape. But Uncle Potluck can't fix what Mattie has done to him. He needs a doctor.

Mattie picks up her notebook with one hand. Discovers she is still holding a screwdriver tight in the other.

She could have untwisted the screws.

Could have taken out the doorknob and freed herself and wrapped the vacuum cord up right and saved Uncle Potluck from getting hurt.

She could have fixed everything.

T
HIS IS WHAT
P
RINCIPAL
B
ONNET SAYS.
She says, "You can't have brave without scared."

They are in the Boone County Hospital waiting room. Uncle Potluck is in the exam room. Mama is upstairs at her job on the seventh floor but will come down just as soon as she can. Principal Bonnet is on her cell phone, calling the district office, telling them about Uncle Potluck and how he's scheduled for knee surgery next week and how she'll need a substitute custodian. "Yes, I know this was scheduled for after the holidays. Things got moved around," she says.

And Mattie is sitting there, just sitting there, holding her notebook to her belly, like that might stop the twisting in it.

It is her fault Principal Bonnet needs a substitute.

Her fault Uncle Potluck got hurt.

Her fault, all of it.

Mattie tries not thinking about it, about the crash and the thud. About the hooting sound Uncle Potluck made hopping to the hospital wheelchair. Tries not thinking how she said
Sorry sorry sorry
and Uncle Potluck said
Not to worry
—but how he said that low-quiet, his eyes scrunched and wet.

There's a judge show on the waiting room TV. The sound is off, but words that tell what the judge is saying slip across the bottom of the screen. Sometimes they are spelled wrong, those words. "What were you thikining?" it might say, but then the right word follows after, making the correction.
Thinking
follows
thikining. Consequences
after
confrequences.

Mattie does not want to think about consequences or confrequences. Like how the consequence of worrying all night about somebody reading your notebook might be that you are tired and stupid and make mistakes. Like the consequence of even talking to some teenager-looking girl might be that all your plans get ruined. Like the consequence of being such a baby is that someone you care about—

Mattie looks around the room for something else to think about. Lands her eyes on Principal Bonnet's key chain. There's a picture frame on it with a photo of a lady and a goat inside.

"That's me on Mathews Peak," Principal Bonnet says. She is done with her phone call. "My first serious climb. Four thousand feet up."

Four thousand feet up. Mattie tries imagining herself standing on a cliff four thousand feet up. Tries seeing herself smiling mountaintop-proud like Principal Bonnet in the picture, but she can't.

"You were brave," Mattie says. "I'd be scared."

That's when Principal Bonnet says it. "You can't have brave without scared."

"This guy here?" she says, tapping her fingernail on the goat. "He's not scared, so he's not brave. He's just a goat, going about his goat business."

A boy and his mom come through the waiting room. His arm is pressed tight to his chest, like he knows better than to move it.

"Brave," Mattie whispers.

Principal Bonnet shrugs. "Maybe," she says. "What's scary for one person might be easy for another. Could be that boy is the mountain goat of broken arms."

Mattie wants to laugh. It's funny what Principal Bonnet said. True, too. "If you're scared of hospitals, it is brave to go to one," Mattie whispers to herself, but Principal Bonnet hears. Says, "Otherwise, it's a walk in the park."

"Unless you are afraid of parks," Mattie says.

Principal Bonnet has a tinkly laugh. Like wind chimes. "I guess you're right. If you're scared of parks, it can be brave to walk in one. If you're scared of dogs, it can be brave to pet one. If you're scared of heights, it can be brave to climb." A commercial flashes on the TV, a boy and a girl eating Popsicles, though the screen words say Pompsickles. "If you're afraid of Popsicles, it can be brave to eat one," she says.

"Afraid of Popsicles?" This time Mattie does laugh.

"I'm sure somebody out there in this world is afraid of Popsicles. For her, eating a Popsicle is an act of great courage. For the rest of us? It's just sucking frozen juice." Principal Bonnet holds the key ring up again for Mattie to see. "You know, I didn't just decide that day to go climb a mountain. First I took classes, and then I climbed hills and small peaks and practice runs. Each time, Mattie, I had to do a small brave thing."

The waiting room doors whoosh open, and three plump ladies come in. "She'll be fine, Alice," one of them says. "You'll see."

A small brave thing. Mattie wonders what that would be for a Popsicle person. Looking at a box of Popsicles at the grocery store? Buying it? Opening it up? With mountain climbing there is at least a class to take, a teacher to tell you what to do next.

What if what you were afraid of didn't have a class for it?

What if you weren't even sure exactly what you were afraid of?

How would you know what small brave thing to do first?

I
T
IS
RASPBERRY,
Mattie's Popsicle.

Mama got it at Biggie's Mini Mart on the way home from the hospital. Uncle Potluck had said they should go on with the corn feast, and Mama needed a few things for supper, and had asked Mattie if there was anything she wanted.

For Uncle Potluck to be okay and me to be a custodial apprentice and Quincy Sweet to disappear off the face of the earth,
Mattie thought.

"Popsicles," she said.

Mattie's Popsicle is the kind with two sticks, the kind you can break in half and share with somebody else. But Uncle Potluck is hat-down asleep in the back seat now, and Mama says
No, thanks,
so all the way home Mattie sucks on her two-handled Popsicle. Wonders what it would be like to be brave.

"You're dripping," Mama says.

Mattie grabs a tissue from the glove box. "Sorry," she says to the car seat. There is Popsicle juice on her fingers and she wipes that, too, but the raspberry color stays on.

"Is there something you want to talk about?"

There is not.

Mama turns the car up the long gravel drive, and Mattie keeps her eyes on Crystal Sweet's house, watching the windows, watching the curtains, watching all the way up the driveway. Nobody peeks through the window.

"Looks like somebody's been waiting for you," says Mama.

Up on the rise in the shade of the apple tree, Quincy Sweet is sitting at the rock, drawing. Her bag papers are spread out; her toolbox is open. Like the rock is hers. Like she is taking over.

Mattie drops her Popsicle sticks in the grocery bag. Pushes the car door wide.

"Want to bring Quincy a Popsicle?" asks Mama, but Mattie pretends she does not hear.

She will be brave.

She will be brave and she will tell Quincy that rock is hers. She will tell Quincy Sweet to move.

Through the grass and around the garden and past the stone rabbit.
This is my place.
In her head, her voice is strong.
This is my place.
Up the rise and past the friend tent and to the rock ledge where Quincy had taken up every bit of room with her papers and her pastels and her wide-open toolbox.
This is my place.

"You are in my place," Mattie says. Comes out so loud, it surprises her.

Quincy looks up. Squints.

Mattie squints back.
Move,
she thinks to say. But she doesn't need to say it. Quincy is already stacking her papers, sliding her toolbox over to the far side of the rock.

"That enough room?" Quincy asks. "You going to write some stories?"

"I'm just..." Mattie feels whatever brave she had sliding out the bottom of her shoes. "Yeah, I guess. Maybe."

Down at the house Mama is calling. "Quincy? You want a Popsicle?"

Quincy stands. "Sure," she calls back. "You want one?" she asks Mattie. Quincy is plunky-calm as ever.
Like sucking frozen juice.

"No," says Mattie. "I'm fine."

 

And Mattie is fine. She tells herself so. She is fine. Maybe not brave and maybe not mountaintoppy, but fine.

And she stays fine until Quincy comes back up the hill, Popsicle in one hand, Mattie's notebook in the other. "Your mom gave me this to bring to you."

Quincy drops the notebook to the rock, where it falls open. A breeze pushes the pages over, one after another. Mattie sees her words. Wipe clean. Hazard. Couldn't. Alone. Moe.

There is a crashing sound in Mattie's ears. Crashing like Uncle Potluck crashing, falling. Alone. Dark. Moe. Quincy puts her hand down on a page, looks at what's there. Pretends, Mattie thinks, like she has not read it before.

"How come you wrote Moe all sad like that?" Quincy asks.

How come you read my notebook?
Mattie wants to say. But those are not the words that come. "Because it is true."

"It's not true. A button isn't scared in real life. It's plastic. It doesn't have feelings."

Mattie wants to say,
I know.
She wants to say,
I know
and
I have to go now
and
Goodbye.

But she says none of those things. And she does not leave.

Quincy bites the top off her Popsicle. "I mean, you made it up. You made Moe feel all scared. How come he's not fighting monsters or having adventures or something? You should write that."
Plunk plunk plunk.
"It'd be better."

Quincy keeps talking. Keeps plunking out about how if she were a writer that's what she'd do. She'd write Moe a big brave adventure. Mattie watches Quincy scrape the last lump of Popsicle off its stick. "But I'm not a writer. I'm an artist."
Plunk.

Draw it, then,
thinks Mattie. And the words come out. "Draw it, then."

"I can't," says Quincy. "I only draw real stuff." She sounds less plunky. Disappointed, maybe. "I have to see it to draw it."

"You could try," says Mattie. "So could you."

I know. I have to go now. Goodbye.
Mattie sees the empty Popsicle sticks in Quincy's hand. "Okay," she says.

"Okay?"

Mattie nods. Opens her notebook to the doorknob page. Flips it. "Okay."

Quincy opens her toolbox, pinches out a pencil. She kneels on the grass, stacking her pages on her lap. She looks all crunched up, like a ball of trash paper.

"You can put your papers up here. There is room for both of us," says Mattie. "Yeah?" "Yeah."

Quincy sets her pages on the rock.