By A Spider's Thread

SEPTEMBER

They were in one of the "I" states when Zeke told Isaac he had to ride in the trunk for a little while. Zeke announced this new plan in what Isaac thought of as his fakey voice, big and hollow, with too much air in it. This was the voice Zeke used whenever Isaac's mother was nearby. He used a very different one when she couldn't hear.

"You brought this on yourself, buckaroo," Zeke said, securing the suitcases to the roof of the car, then making a nest in the center of the trunk. When Isaac just stared at the space that had been created, not sure what Zeke wanted him to do, Zeke picked him up under the arms, swinging him into the hole as if Isaac weighed nothing at all. "See, plenty of room."

"Put down a blanket," Isaac's mother said, but she didn't object to the trunk idea, didn't say it was wrong or that she wouldn't allow it. She didn't even mind that Zeke had stolen the blanket from the motel room. She just stood there with Penina and Efraim huddled close to her, looking disappointed. That was the last thing Isaac saw before Zeke closed the trunk: his mother's face, sad and stern, as if Isaac were the bad one, as if he had caused all the trouble. So unfair. He was the one who was trying to do the right thing.

The trunk was bigger than Isaac expected, and he was not as frightened as he thought he would be. It was too bad it was such an old car. A new one, like his father's, might have an emergency light inside, or even a way to spring the lock. His father had shown him these features in his car after he found Isaac playing with the buttons on his key ring-popping the trunk, locking and unlocking the Cadillac's doors. Isaac's mother had yelled, saying the key ring wasn't a toy, that he would break it or burn out the batteries, but Isaac's father had shown Isaac everything about his new car, even under the hood. That was his father's way. "Curiosity didn't kill the cat," his father said. "Not getting answers to his questions was what got the cat in trouble." His father had even shut himself in the trunk and shown Isaac how to get out again.

But this car was old, very old, the oldest car Isaac had ever known, probably older than Isaac. It didn't have airbags, or enough seat belts in the backseat. Isaac kept hoping a policeman might pull them over one day because of the seat belts. Or maybe a toll taker would report his mother for holding one of the twins in her lap in the front seat, which she did when they fussed. But there were no tolls here, not on the roads that Zeke drove. Isaac was trying so hard to keep track-they had started out in Indiana, and then they went to Illinois, but Isaac was pretty sure that they had come back to Indiana in the past week. Or they could still be in Illinois, or even as far west as Iowa. It was hard to see differences here in the middle of the country, where everything was yellow and the towns had strange names that were hard to pronounce.

It was hard to tell time, too, without school marking the days off, without a calendar on the kitchen wall, without Shabbat reminding you that another week had ended. Would God understand about missing Shabbat? If God knew everything, did he know it wasn't Isaac's fault that he wasn't going to yeshiva? Or was it up to Isaac to find a way to pray no matter what, the way his father did when he traveled for business? Now, this was the kind of conversation his father loved. He would have started pulling books from the shelves in his study, looking for various rabbis' opinions. And, whatever the answer was, his father would have made Isaac feel okay, would have assured him that he was doing his best, which was all God expected. That was his father's way, to answer Isaac's questions and make him feel better.

His father knew everything, or close enough. He knew history and the Torah, math and science. He knew lots of terrific old war movies and westerns, and the names of all the Orioles, past and present. Best of all, he could talk about the night sky as if it were a story in a book, telling the stories that the Greeks and Indians had told themselves when they looked at the same stars.

"Does Orion ever catch the bull?" Isaac had asked his father once. Of course, that had been when he was little, six or seven. He was nine now, going into the fourth grade, or supposed to be. He wouldn't ask such a question now.

"Not yet," his father had said, "but you never know. After all, if the universe is really shrinking, he may catch up with him still."

That had scared Isaac, the part about the universe shrinking, but his father had said it wasn't something he needed to worry about. But Isaac worried about everything, especially now. He worried about Lyme disease and West Nile virus and whether Washington, D.C., would get a baseball team, which his dad said might not be so good for the Orioles. He worried about the twins, who had started talking this weird not-quite-English to each other.

Mostly, though, he worried about Zeke and how to get away from him.

Despite being locked in the trunk, bouncing and bumping down the road, Isaac wasn't sorry that he had tried to talk to the guard man. His only mistake was letting his mother see him do it. If the line in the bank had been longer, if it hadn't moved so fast, he might have had time to explain himself. Why did lines move fast only when you didn't want them to?

The guard was in a corner. He was old, really old, and he didn't look very strong, but he had a gun. Glancing around, Isaac had sidled over to him and tugged at the man's sleeve. But when the man looked at him, Isaac's mind went blank. He had no idea what to say. It was complicated, what had happened. He wasn't even sure exactly what had happened. His mother said it was okay, to trust her, that everything was going to be wonderful pretty soon. She had a reason for doing what she did. He was just too young to understand. He had to trust her, he had to be patient. She said this over and over and over again.

Zeke said Isaac should just be quiet and do what he was told.

"Mister…"

"Yeah?" The guard's eyes met Isaac's only for a second, then returned to studying the bank lobby.

"My mother… the woman in the blue scarf?"

"Uh-huh."

He was not sure what the guard was agreeing to-that he had a mother, that she wore a blue scarf-so he plunged ahead, his words coming fast, probably too fast. "She took us. She stole us. We don't live here. We live at 341 Cedar Court in Pikesville, Maryland, near the Suburban Club golf course, 212-"

"But she's your mother?"

"Yes."

"That's your mother?"

"Yes."

"And she's married to your father?"

This question tripped Isaac up, because he was no longer sure of the answer and he liked to be correct whenever possible. It had been two weeks, maybe more, maybe less, since his mother had told Isaac to pack his bag for a weekend trip. He had not seen his father or talked to him since that day. Did that make his parents divorced? No, divorce was much more complicated, he was sure of that much. It didn't happen just because somebody left. His father went on business trips all the time, and that hadn't made them divorced, so his mother's packing up suitcases and taking them away couldn't make them divorced either.

"Yes, we're a family, the Rubin family, but my father is back in Baltimore-"

"Are you telling stories, little boy? Have you ever heard about the little boy who cried wolf?"

His mother had gotten to the head of the line faster than Isaac thought she would. She was going to be the next one called. When she saw Isaac talking to the guard, she let out a screechy sound, gave up her place, and ran over, the twins stumbling as they tried to keep up with her.

"I'm sorry if he was bothering you," she said to the guard, finding her usual voice, which wasn't at all like her screaming one. Men always smiled when Isaac's mother spoke, and sometimes even when she didn't. Something about his mother made men act weird, which Isaac didn't understand. She wasn't clever, like his father, she didn't know lots of interesting things. But just by smiling and looking at men, nodding at anything they said, she got whatever she wanted. Something about her made people anxious to see her happy. Even Isaac felt that way. At least he had felt like that back in Baltimore, back when his mother and he had agreed on what happy was.

"Not at all, ma'am. But he was saying that you had left his father-"

"Oh, Isaac," she said with a sigh, hugging him close to her, her arms hard across his back. She stroked his hair but pulled it a little, too, a warning to be quiet and still, a reminder that Zeke was not far away even if Isaac couldn't see him. Zeke was never far away. "How often have I told you that you mustn't tease people like this? Telling stories to strangers is just as bad as making jokes at an airport. You know that."

Isaac's mom looked into the guard's face. "We're on our way to see my family, outside Chicago. But this is a busy season in my husband's business, and he couldn't come with us. We're traveling with my cousin." She tilted her head toward the old green car parked in front of the bank, although Isaac knew that Zeke wasn't in it, and he definitely wasn't a cousin, no matter where he was. He better not be a cousin. Isaac didn't want to be related to Zeke at all. And there was no family in Chicago, not that he had ever heard of, and although his father's business picked up in September, it didn't really get busy until later in the fall. Lie, lie, lie. A mother shouldn't tell so many lies.

"I know how it is," the guard said. He pointed his finger at Isaac, placing it on the tip of Isaac's nose and bouncing it for emphasis, which made Isaac want to scratch and rub, as if a mosquito had landed there. "Now, you be good. No more stories."

"No more stories," Isaac repeated, and he knew what it meant when books said someone's heart was heavy. His heart felt as if it had fallen to the bottom of his stomach and kept going, ending up in his shoes. He was so sad that being put in the trunk by Zeke seemed a small thing, almost. What did it matter if they put him in a trunk? No one would ever believe a little kid over a grown-up. His dad had told him it was silly to say the world was unfair, but it was, it definitely was.

"I have enough to worry about, doing my job, without a wild card like you," Zeke had said. What job? Zeke never went to work that Isaac could see. That was the problem: Zeke never went away at all. If he went away, then Isaac could run away, or call home on the phone.

Isaac counted backward in his head. He had talked to the guard two days ago, a Friday or maybe even a Saturday. Were banks open on the Sabbath? Was going to a bank work? But Zeke didn't worry about such things. One of the first things he had done, upon meeting Isaac and Efraim in the motel room, was take the yarmulkes from their heads and hand them to their mother, instructing her to pack them away for good. "One less thing to notice," he had said.

That had been almost two weeks ago, and Isaac could not get used to the feel of his crown being exposed. The yarmulke was there to remind him that God was above, always, and now it was gone. Did that mean God was gone? Would God understand that the missing yarmulke, too, was beyond his control? His bare head, the unkosher meals. Efraim had eaten bacon at breakfast the other day, even after Isaac told him not to, and Zeke had laughed and laughed, as if it were all a joke. "It's so good, isn't it, little man?" Zeke had said, giving Efraim another piece. "Once you've had bacon, you'll never go back. Maybe I'll get you a lobster when our ship comes in."

Isaac had filed this piece of information away: Lobsters were from Maine. Ships sailed on big oceans, and they needed ports if they were going to come in, although maybe some of the Great Lakes were big enough, too. Still, he was pretty sure that the ships that carried people were all on the oceans. Did this mean they were going east, which was where they had started? Wherever they were going, they weren't going very fast. They were in the car all day, it seemed, yet the countryside never changed and the towns all looked alike.

The car stopped, and he heard the doors slam. He counted in his head, because Zeke had taken his watch from him, too. One, one thousand, two, one thousand-all the way up to two hundred, one thousand, more than three minutes. And then they were off again, the tires making a great squealing noise, the car surging, then settling down. He wondered how long Zeke would drive before he let Isaac out. What if Zeke forgot? But his mother would never forget that he was back here. She would make Zeke take him out as soon as possible.

He touched his head, found that it was still covered by a thick mat of bristly hair, then reached his arm up to the lid of the trunk and pressed on it, as if he might be able to pop it through sheer will. He decided to pretend the trunk was the sky, placing the stars that he knew best. Sirius, Orion. The North Star. If you can find the North Star, his father had told him, you can navigate by night, find your way. You will never be lost if you can find the North Star. Or, better yet, Isaac could be Jonah, in the belly of the whale. Which may not have been a whale, according to Isaac's dad, but just a very big fish instead.

Only Isaac's situation was not the same as Jonah's. Jonah got swallowed by the whale because he didn't want to do God's will. Isaac was in the trunk because he was trying to do what God wanted. At least, he was pretty sure that God wanted his family to go back to their old life. The story of Jonah was told at Yom Kippur-which was no more than a month away, Isaac realized. There was something about a plant, which Jonah loved, and the worm that God sent to kill it, which made Jonah angry at God. Of course, God had sent the worm, so it was really God who'd made the plant die, to teach Jonah a lesson. Perhaps Zeke was the worm in Isaac's life, and there was a lesson to be learned here, too. Well, Isaac was good at lessons. He'd figure out what God wanted him to do, and he'd do it. His family would be home again, and everything would be the way it was before Zeke-the-worm came along.