“Only police officers are allowed to do it,” Franny said. “And their children. Otherwise you’re a criminal.”
“I’d be a criminal,” Cal said. He slid into the front seat of the station wagon, opened the glove compartment. He took out a gun and a fifth of gin, the seal still on.
No one was surprised that there was a gun in the car, even though Cal was the only one who’d known it was there, and he only knew about it because he’d been nosing around in the glove compartment a few days before while Beverly was in the grocery store and he’d found it, proving yet again that sometimes a person just has to look. What surprised all of them though, Cal included, was that Bert had left it in the car. It made them think he must have another gun in his motel room. Bert liked a gun in his briefcase, in the nightstand, in the drawer of his office desk. He liked to talk about the criminals he had put away, and how a person never knew, and how he had to protect his family, and how he wasn’t going to let the other guy make the first move, but really it was just that Bert liked guns.
The mesmerizing item was the gin. The parents might enjoy a drink every now and then but it wasn’t like they had to take it with them. They had never seen gin in the car before. That was something special.
“You know you can’t take it,” Holly said, looking back to the door of the parents’ room. She was talking about both the gun and the gin.
“Just in case something happens,” Cal said. He put the gun in the brown paper sack along with the candy bars and Cokes. Jeanette had taken her Coke and two candy bars out of the bag already and put them in her purse. She took the bottle from her brother and started working on the seal, teasing it loose so gently that it finally gave itself up to her little fingernails in a single, replaceable piece. She put the seal in her coin purse and gave the bottle back to her brother. Then they set out for the lake, Caroline carrying the map.
It was hotter than they expected it to be, though no hotter than it had been the day before or the day before that. The sky was already turning white, clamping a pervasive dullness onto the landscape. Holly scratched at her arms and complained about the mosquitoes. Like her stepmother, she was particularly sensitive to mosquitoes. The grass in the field across from the motel, the field that the waitress had told them to cut through, came up to their waists and was as high as Albie’s chest, but being right up in it they could see the tiny flecks of yellow flowers blooming on the stalks. “Can you see the lake?” Albie asked. He had ketchup smeared across the blue-and-yellow-striped shirt that Beverly had bought for him. His hands were sticky.
“Stop,” Cal said, and put up his hand flat to the sky. They stopped like soldiers, all at once. “Turn around,” he said, and they turned around.
“What’s that building right there?” Cal was talking to his brother, pointing just across the street.
“The Pinecone,” Albie said.
“How far did she say it was from the Pinecone to the lake?”
In the quiet they could hear the cars whizzing past. Deep in the grass the crickets rubbed their wings together, the birds called out overhead. “Two miles, maybe a little less,” Franny said. She knew it wasn’t her question to answer but she couldn’t stop herself. There was something about standing there that was making her uneasy, the dry weeds pricking at her shins. There was no path through the field.
Cal pointed at his brother. It was funny the way he could be so much like his father while being nothing like him at all. “Albie?”
“Two miles,” Albie said. He started chopping at the grass with his open hand, and then began swinging his arm back and forth like a scythe.
“So now you know we’re not there and you know I can’t see the lake.” Cal started walking again and the rest of them pushed ahead. The field was bigger than it had looked from a distance, and after a while they couldn’t see the Pinecone anymore and they couldn’t see anything else either, just the grass and the washed-out sky. Several members of the party wondered if they were still going in the right direction.
“Are we there now?” Albie said.
“Shut up,” Holly said. A grasshopper the size of a baby’s fist jumped up from the dry grass and attached itself to her shirt and she screamed. Franny and Jeanette moved to the left of the pack, and when they ducked down they were pretty sure no one could see them. They were very close, almost nose to nose, and Jeanette smiled at her before they popped back up again.
“Noware we there?” Albie hopped forward, both feet together, but his progress was thwarted by the density of the grass. He looked back at his brother. “Noware we there?”
Cal stopped again. “I can send you back.” He looked behind them. There was still the beaten-down vestige of the trail they had made in the grass.
“Where are we?” Albie asked.
“Virginia,” Cal said, his voice as tired as an adult’s. “Shut up.”
“I want to carry the gun,” Albie said.
“People in hell want ice water,” Caroline said. It was an expression of her father’s.
“Cal’s got a gun,” Albie sang, his voice surprisingly loud in the open landscape.“Cal’s got a gun!”
They stopped again. Cal moved the brown bag higher up under his arm. Two swallows came from nowhere and shot past them. Albie wouldn’t stop singing. Jeanette pulled the can of Coke out of her purse.
“It’s too early to drink it,” Holly said. She was in her first year of Girl Scouts and she had read the chapter about survival tactics in the handbook. “You have to make it last.”
Jeanette cracked the can open anyway. Watching her drink, they all decided they were thirsty. There would be more Cokes once they got to the lake.
“Cal’s got a gun,” Albie called, though with less interest.
Holly looked up at the sky. It was a complete blank. There wasn’t a single cloud to offer them protection. “I wish I had a Tic Tac,” she said.
Cal thought for a minute and then nodded his head. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a tiny plastic bag about the size of three postage stamps where he kept the Benadryl tablets his mother made him carry for his allergy. They all sat down, pushing back the grass, and Caroline opened up the brown bag. She was very formal about the way she picked up the gun and set it beside her, and then she handed out the Cokes. Cal came behind her and gave everyone two garish pink pills. “I shouldn’t give you any,” he said to Albie. “You’re annoying the hell out of me today.”
