Walk Two Moons

40 THE GIFTS

It seemed fitting that at this point in my story of Phoebe, Gramps called out, “I-dee-ho!” We were high in the mountains and had just crossed the Montana border into Idaho. For the first time, I believed we were going to make it to Lewiston by the next day, the twentieth of August, my mother’s birthday.

Gramps suggested we press on to Coeur d’Alene, about an hour away, where we could spend the night. From there, Lewiston was about a hundred miles due south, an easy morning’s journey. “How does that sound to you, gooseberry?” Gram was still, her head pressed against the back of the seat and her hands folded in her lap. “Gooseberry?”

When Gram spoke, you could hear the rattle in her chest. “Oh, that’s fine,” she said.

“Gooseberry, are you feeling okay?”

“I’m a little tired,” she said.

“We’ll get you to a bed real soon.” Gramps glanced back at me, troubled.

“Gram, if you want to stop now, that would be okay,” I said.

“Oh no,” she said. “I’d like to sleep in Coeur d’Alene tonight. Your momma sent us a postcard from Coeur d’Alene, and on it was a bountiful blue lake.” She coughed a long, rattly cough.

Gramps said, “Okay then, bountiful blue lake, here we come.”

Gram said, “I’m so glad Peeby’s momma came home. I wish your momma could come home too.”

Gramps nodded his head for about five minutes. Then he handed me a tissue and said, “Tell us about Mrs. Partridge. What was she doing leaving a gol-dang envelope on Peeby’s porch?”

That’s what Phoebe and I wanted to know. “Did you want something, Mrs. Partridge?” I asked.

She put her hand to her lips. “Hmm,” she said.

Phoebe snatched the envelope and ripped it open. She read the message aloud: “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.”

Mrs. Partridge turned to go. “Bye-bye,” she said.

“Mrs. Partridge,” Phoebe called. “We’ve already had this one.”

“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Partridge said.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Phoebe said. “You’ve been creeping around leaving these things, haven’t you?”

“Did you like them?” Mrs. Partridge said. As she stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, with her head tilted up at us, and that quizzical look on her face, she looked like a mischievous child. “Margaret reads them to me from the paper each day, and when there’s a nice one, I ask her to copy it down. I’m sorry I gave you that one about the moccasins already. My noggin forgot.”

“But why did you bring them here?” Phoebe said.

“I thought they would be grandiful surprises for you—like fortune cookies, only I didn’t have any cookies to put them in. Did you like them anyway?”

Phoebe looked at me for a long minute. Then she went down the steps and said, “Mrs. Partridge, when was it you met my brother?”

“You said you didn’t have a brother,” Mrs. Partridge said.

“I know, but you said you met him. When was that?”

She tapped her head. “Noggin, remember. Let’s see. Some time ago. A week? Two weeks? He came to my house by mistake. He let me feel his face. That’s why I thought he was your brother. He has a similar face. Isn’t that peculible?”

Phoebe said, “No more peculible than most things lately.” As Mrs. Partridge tottered back to her house, Phoebe said, “It’s a peculible world, Sal.” She walked across the grass and spit into the street. She said, “Come on, try it.” I spit into the street. “What do you think?” Phoebe said. We spit again.

It might sound disgusting, but to tell the truth, we got a great deal of pleasure from those spits. I doubt if I ever could explain why that was, but for some reason it seemed the perfect thing to do, and when Phoebe turned around and went into the house, I knew that was the right thing for her to do too.

With the courage of that spit in me, I went to see Margaret Cadaver, and we had a long talk, and that’s when I found out how she met my father. It was painful to talk with her, and I even cried in front of her, but afterward I understood why my father liked to be with her.

Ben was sitting on my front steps when I got home. He said, “I brought you something. It’s out back.” He led me around the side of the house and there, strutting across that little patch of grass, was a chicken. I was never in my life so happy to see a chicken.

Ben said, “I named it, but you can change the name if you want.”

When I asked him what its name was, he leaned forward, and I leaned forward and another kiss happened, a spectacular kiss, a perfect kiss, and Ben said, “Its name is Blackberry.”

“Oh,” Gram said, “is that the end of the Peeby story?”

“Yes,” I said. That wasn’t quite true, I suppose, as I could have told more. I could have told about Phoebe getting adjusted to having a brother, and to her “new” mother, and all of that, but that part was still going on, even as we traveled through the mountains. It was a whole different story.

“I liked that story about Peeby, and I’m glad it wasn’t too awfully sad.”

Gram closed her eyes and for the next hour as Gramps drove toward Coeur d’Alene, he and I listened to her rattly breathing. I watched her lying there so still, so calm. “Gramps,” I whispered. “She looks a little gray, doesn’t she?”

“Yes she does, chickabiddy, yes she does.” He stepped on the gas and we raced toward Coeur d’Alene.