Family
A chill creeps up my back. I swear, when I walked into this shed half an hour ago, there were muddy footprints on the dock. They aren't there now.
Grandmother's steel gray eyes flickered past me.
She saw the rows and rows of black stumps. She stared at them for a long time. Then she shuddered and said, "It's worse, much worse, than I ever imagined."
Was this supposed to be a change? No way. We lived here every day of the year. I knew every detail by heart. I knew the neighbor across the street would come out the next minute to water his lawn. And he did.
This wasn’t going to be a vacation at all. A vacation is when you go somewhere special and see new things and do stuff you’ve never done before. A vacation means going, not staying . . .
“A stay-cation,” I said to Max. “I wonder where Dad got that one.”
“I’d rather go on a go-cation.”
Then he laughed his head off.
* * *
“See that orange truck?” Max whispered. “The guy inside it is an ax murderer.” He ducked his head. “Here he comes. Stay down!”
An ax murderer? What was Max talking about?
The next minute, an ancient truck moved past our house, so slowly I could have beaten it in a foot race. The truck didn’t have any doors, and standing at the steering wheel was a man even more ancient than the truck. The lines on his face were so deep you could have drowned in them. He was steering with one hand and ringing a bell with the other.
The truck was covered with drawings of knives, scissors and axes.
“Look – knives!” Max whispered. “I told you so.”
The truck stopped right in front of our house. I could have explained to Max that it was Tony the Knife Sharpener and not Tony the Bloodthirsty Criminal, but why not have a little fun? After all, there wasn’t anything else to do.
“You’re right,” I said to Max. “We’d better go investigate.”
Max put his hand on Sam's shoulder. "C'mon. You're not giving up already, are you?"
"Already?" said Sam. "I've tried everything! It's hopeless."
"You haven't tried everything. Have you talked to the clowns yet? You'd be a natural with them."
"Thanks a lot."
If Burlington Northern were tied up outside, Knuckles McGraw could leap through the window right onto his back and gallop away before anyone knew he was gone. But for now he has to creep down the stairs, avoiding the creaky ones, carrying his shoes in one hand and his lunch kit in the other. He shoves his shoes under his arm so he can turn the front-door handle. It opens without making a sound.
Eddie is adjusting to his own hat when he gets a hit. A bit of a tug and a moment of slack, and then the fish strikes again. In a matter of seconds the line is taut. Eddie allows a little more line to peel off. He doesn't pull too hard, or too fast—in fact, the fish quickly uses up the extra line he gives it, and it's all he can do to hold on to it. "Granddad, you'd better wake up."
