We followed Uncle as he walked to the bird. We all stood around while he touched his head in wonder. "That could be my head," he finally said. "That could be my brains."
"I'm sony," said Amber, which didn't seem quite enough.
For some reason the boys seemed pretty impressed with Amber's display. They invited Lynn and Amber to eat dinner at their camp-fire. Lynn asked me if I wanted to come, but I said no. My sister and her silly friend left. I immediately felt lonely.
David, Sammy, and I buried the bird and headed quietly back to camp to eat rabbit. The rabbit tasted kind of like chicken, except more like . . . rabbit. I didn't like it much but didn't say so. David said that if you ate too much rabbit, your ears would grow longer and fur would grow on your butt where a tail might be. Sammy didn't seem to notice anything special about it.
Uncle was a good talker, and Auntie was a good listener. So as we sat around the campfire later Uncle talked while Auntie nodded as if he were telling fascinating stories. Sometimes I wondered what Lynnie and Amber were doing. Actually, Lynnie didn't like me to call her "Lynnie" anymore, but I did anyway. She thought "Lynn" was more grown up.
I tried to concentrate on what Uncle was saying. The thing is, Uncle's stories never seemed to come to a point. For instance, that night he told us about the time he and his first wife almost saw a legendary tornado. But they didn't actually see it. They just happened to pass through a town the day before a tornado came through and ripped the town to shreds. The interesting part of this story to me was that he mentioned his first wife. My parents spoke only in hushed tones of Uncle's first wife. Apparently, Uncle had loved this woman very much, but in a different way than he loved Auntie. I didn't know what the difference was, but I knew that Auntie knew. I could tell by the way she grew irate whenever this ex-wife was mentioned. But she never said anything about it.
Then Uncle spent about twenty minutes telling us about the time when he was young and he and a friend decided to practice target shooting with some cans. They didn't hit anything, even after they moved to two feet away. Again, that didn't seem like much of a story to me, but Auntie laughed appreciatively as Uncle described missing the cans, and missing them, and missing them again.
Then he told us about the time a friend of his found a bag containing twenty thousand dollars. The owner of the bag claimed the money before the friend could "make off" Now, the interesting thing about this story to me was that Uncle seemed a little disappointed that his friend hadn't "made off" Uncle was a very honest man and would never steal anything himself, but he seemed to admire people who did. He kept a lot of books at his house about famous criminals from history.
Most of the story about the twenty thousand dollars consisted of Uncle coming up with ideas about how his friend could have ended up with this money, how he could have spent the money, and how Uncle himself would have spent this money had he been the one to find it. In this last version of the story no one ever claimed the money, so Uncle wasn't stealing anything. Even in his imagination, it was impossible for him to steal anything or do anything really bad. I guess that was one reason why Auntie loved him so much.
Uncle kept talking. The fire warmed my face. I wondered where Lynn and Amber were. When Lynn first became friends with Amber, she told me a lot of stuff, including that some girls did something called French kissing with boys—something to do with tongues. It sounded a little complicated to kiss with your lips and your tongue. I was not good at doing two things at once. I wondered whether Lynn might now be French kissing with these cute boys. Someday when I was older, I might try French kissing, but only with my true love, Joe-John Abondondalarama. One reason I didn't do so well in school was because many times I was up half the night enjoying my active dream life with Joe-John Abondondalarama. He would have two first names because his father was named Joe and his grandfather was named John, so his parents decided on Joe-John. We would get married, and I would be Katie Natsuko Takeshima Abondondalarama. Here is our story:
We would meet at the Grand Canyon when I was seventeen. I would be gazing at the awe-inspiring chasm when a freak gust of wind would lift me up and fling me over the rail. I would hang in the wind over the Grand Canyon, moments from certain death. My life would flash before me. I would regret so many things. I would wish I hadn't talked back so much to my parents. I would wish I had kept my part of the bedroom cleaner. I would wish I could have gotten at least one A in school. My screams would pierce the air. And suddenly, a strong arm would reach out and catch me. At the end of this strong arm would be Joe-John Abondondalarama. The sun would glisten off his black hair. His eyes would shine like the sun. Thunder would sound in my heart! Lightning! Eventually, we would have seven children.
Even Lynn did not know about Joe-John, although someday she would be my maid of honor.
Once in awhile I preferred to tell myself alternate versions of how I would meet Joe-John. For instance, I was working on a new story in my head. It was called "The Bathroom Story." It went like this:
Joe-John and I would be at a birthday party. We would never have met. Somehow or other (I was still figuring out the details), we would both end up in the bathroom together. Maybe I was admiring the shower curtain, and he came in because he spotted me from behind and liked my sweater. The door accidentally locked behind him, and we couldn't get out. The party was so noisy that no one could hear us shouting. The window was stuck. We were in a back bathroom that rarely got used. Time passed. We talked until midnight, and then we had no choice but to sleep in the bathtub together. All night we would tell each other secrets, and then by morning we would be in love. As I said, I was still working on the details, but that's the gist.
That night, when my sister and Amber returned, they set their sleeping bags next to each other and lay whispering away from the rest of us. Then Lynn remembered me and called out, "Katie, come bring your sleeping bag!" I thought about shunning her for temporarily forgetting about me, but what good would that do? I dragged my sleeping bag over, and they started to tell me about their evening: how Lynn had kissed Gregg, and how Amber had almost kissed the other boy, and how they were the cutest boys in the class. Even Amber acted as if I were her good friend. Then Amber asked me whether I liked any special boys at school. At that moment I felt very close to my sister, and even to Amber. And how I loved camping! Moss hung off the tall pines around us, and the full moon shone through the moss. I remembered how all during my childhood, whenever the moon was full, Lynn used to sing me the "Rabbit on the Moon" song:
I told Lynn and Amber my Joe-John stories. I was pretty pleased about my future with him. Lynn and Amber laughed and laughed at me! They didn't even pretend not to laugh! They didn't even laugh really, they kind of honked and tried to get their breath. They became so hysterical, they seemed to be in danger of choking. Frankly, I thought all that honking sounded pretty unladylike, but I was too nice to say so.
When they finished laughing, I realized they weren't laughing at me—they thought they were laughing with me. They had thought I was just joking about Joe-John Abondondalarama. Lynn hugged me and exclaimed, "I love you, Katie!"