Brave Like That Read online

  Dedication

  For Miles and Paige

  May you always listen to what’s deep down in you.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Doorstep

  Chapter 2: Touch and Go

  Chapter 3: Tryouts

  Chapter 4: Olson Gene

  Chapter 5: Huh Huh Graaa

  Chapter 6: New Guy

  Chapter 7: The 7

  Chapter 8: Smoke

  Chapter 9: Eating Lefty

  Chapter 10: First Day

  Chapter 11: Attached

  Chapter 12: Team Spirit

  Chapter 13: Finding X

  Chapter 14: Sissy

  Chapter 15: Type O

  Chapter 16: Mislabeled

  Chapter 17: NO

  Chapter 18: Flames

  Chapter 19: One-and-Two-and-Three-and-Four-and

  Chapter 20: Reenactment

  Chapter 21: An Olson

  Chapter 22: Right Where I Belong

  Chapter 23: So What?

  Chapter 24: First Book

  Chapter 25: Kindness

  Chapter 26: Standing Ovation

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Lindsey Stoddard

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Doorstep

  Parker comes to us on my birthday. The end of summer. The night before football tryouts.

  When we hear him whimper and whine at the firehouse front door, all the guys stop what they’re doing. Roger puts down the kitchen knife. Leo drops a last potato in the big pot. Mike quits his story midsentence. Dad sits up straight. And I know what they’re all thinking because I know the guys. They’re thinking about August twenty-seventh eleven years ago. When I showed up at the firehouse doorstep as a screaming, crying baby.

  It might not have been my actual birthday, but when the guys from the firehouse found me outside their door and rushed me to the hospital eleven years ago with sirens blaring, the doctor said it was as good a guess as any.

  That’s how I got August twenty-seventh.

  When we let Parker inside, he’s skittish around all the guys, with their big boots and heavy fireman’s pants. He tucks his tail between his legs and his bones shake like it’s the twenty-seventh of January. His wiry coat is brown except for two white patches, one over his left eye and one covering the tip of his tail as if he dipped it in paint. And his paws look too big for his body, like he might have more growing to do too.

  Each guy takes a turn, saying, “It’s OK. Here, boy.” But the dog cowers and backs farther away from them the closer they get.

  Not me, though. I get low and put my hand out slowly so he can smell. I look down his spine and count his ribs and watch him pull his ears back. His eyes are dark and scared. I rub my fingers together and just stay quiet like that until he moves one paw, and another, and then he walks up to me, parks his head on my left shoulder, and whimpers.

  That’s how I give him his name. Parker.

  I was the same way, the guys tell me. When they heard my cries outside the firehouse door, they picked me up and brought me inside. I was skittish and scared and wouldn’t stay parked on anyone’s shoulder either. I wailed, red-faced, my little hands in tight fists. They say my cries were louder than the sirens of a five-alarm fire.

  That’s how they gave me my name. Cyrus.

  Brooks, who likes to tell the others that he’s been at that firehouse longer than they’ve been alive, said he wasn’t one for holding babies and he’d pass. He held up his thick, calloused hands, shook his head, and pursed his lips to say no thanks. But they handed me to him anyway while they hopped in the truck and started the engine, and somewhere on his navy-blue firehouse T-shirt and suspender strap I found a place to be quiet and I slept there the whole ride as they tore through intersections all the way to the hospital.

  As soon as Brooks handed me to the doctor, I started up again, crying and screaming, my gummy mouth open wide and my little chest heaving. They say the doctor tried all sorts of tricks to get me to calm down—different positions, a bottle of formula, a warm washcloth, a new diaper. But it wasn’t until they handed me back to Brooks, my face on his T-shirt and suspender strap, that I stopped again and breathed.

  The doctor took my temperature and squeezed my belly and looked in my ears and examined my skin, all while I was safe on Brooks’s left shoulder. And I didn’t cry again until he laid me down on the little plastic scale and the numbers popped up. Seven pounds, four ounces.

  Through my siren cries, the doctor declared me healthy and lucky and said that he would take it from there.

  The guys all sighed in relief and turned and slapped one another on the back, but when they noticed old Brooks wasn’t with them they turned around. They could barely hear him through my red-faced wailing when he reached out and said to the doctor, “Maybe I should hold him just a little bit longer.”

  And that’s how he became my dad.

  When Parker puts his head on my left shoulder in the firehouse, the guys do the same thing they did on August twenty-seventh eleven years ago. They hop in the truck and start the engine, except this time they leave Leo behind to watch the potatoes boiling on the stove, they don’t sound the sirens, and they drive the speed limit to the animal hospital instead of zooming through red lights to the emergency room.

  They don’t usually let me ride along in the truck. Instead, if there’s an emergency while I’m there, I leave fast and walk up the street and over to my grandma’s apartment in the assisted-living development, and I wait until my dad comes to pick me up. And that’s fine by me, because I’m not brave like that. Brave like running- into-burning-buildings brave. Brave like my dad.

  But when Mike claps me on the shoulder and says, “I think we’re going to need you for this one,” I climb right up in the truck and let Parker sit on my lap and stick his nose back on my shoulder. His hips are bony and dig into my thighs, but I don’t let go of him the whole way.

  When we get there, the vet examines him on a tall metal table, and Parker keeps his nose right beneath my ear, panting hot breath down my neck.

  She peers in his eyes and squeezes his belly. “Malnourished.”

  I look up at my dad. “Hasn’t eaten enough,” he explains.

  The vet parts his hair and examines his skin.

  Parker yawns and whimpers and I hug him closer. My fingers fit in the grooves of his ribs the same way my dad taught me to slide my fingers between the laces of a football. But my hands feel more right where they belong holding Parker than they do around the leather of a ball.

  “He’ll stay here overnight,” she says, massaging Parker’s neck. “We’ll scan for a microchip, try to find his owners, and hydrate and feed him slowly to see how he reacts.”

  Mike and Roger tuck their thumbs under the suspenders holding up their bulky fireman’s pants, nod at the vet, say thank you, and turn their backs to leave.

  “C’mon,” my dad says and puts his arm around me.

  But when I move my shoulder from under Parker’s nose, he whines and claws at the metal table.

  “Maybe I should hold him just a little longer?” I ask my dad.

  But he shakes his head no. “They can take it from here.”

  Tears burn behind my eyes because it doesn’t feel right to just leave him here. It’s not where he belongs.

  So I take off my T-shirt and give it a good rub against my skin, especially over my left shoulder and behind my ear, then put it down on the metal table and watch as he sniffs and sniffs, parks his nose into the fabric, and stops whimpering.

  When I’m bare-chest
ed like this, you can see my ribs too, but it’s not because I’m malnourished. I definitely eat enough. I’m just built small. My dad assures me I’ll fill out and be the best wide receiver in the league. I don’t tell him that I don’t want to be a wide receiver at all.

  The vet smiles and my dad gives me his heavy canvas fireman’s jacket. It reaches past my knees and is rough on my bare skin, but the weight of it feels good.

  As we catch up with Mike and Roger outside, the vet comes through the front door.

  “Before you go,” she hollers, “is there a name you want us to call him?”

  “Parker,” I answer.

  My dad looks down at me. His six feet four inches feel taller when I’m buried beneath his big jacket, the sleeves falling far below my hands even when I stretch my fingers straight out. He purses his lips and scrunches his brow into three big wrinkles. And I know what he’s saying because I know my dad. He’s saying I shouldn’t give him a name, because we’re not keeping him. He’s not our dog.

  On the drive back to the firehouse, the guys are laughing and joking and saying, “What is it about August twenty-seventh and our doorstep?” and I lean on my elbow out the fire truck window. It’s getting dark and the air that finds its way through my dad’s big jacket is cool against my skin, and I wonder how long Parker’s been on his own, and I wonder if anyone is out there looking for him.

  Chapter 2

  Touch and Go

  It’s Dad’s night to stay in the firehouse. I usually sleep on my grandma’s pullout couch during his twenty-four-hour shifts, but it’s my birthday and we always have my birthday dinner at the firehouse, plus it’s Mike’s last night before he retires, so Dad says I can stay with him in the bunks tonight. And even though I love my overnights with Grandma, the only other place I’d rather stay than the firehouse on my birthday is on the veterinarian’s floor curled up with Parker, his nose on my left shoulder. And I know that’s not going to happen.

  When I sleep here, I’m on the top bunk right above Dad, and I’m locker number three, because besides Dad and Mike, I’ve been around the firehouse the longest. Roger joined the summer I turned five, and Leo was new last fall. After Mike retires, I’ll move my stuff into locker number two, right next to Dad’s.

  My dad says even though he’s older than Mike, there’s no way he’s going to retire any time soon. Not until he’s old enough that he can’t slide down the fireman’s pole without busting his knees at the bottom, or until I’m old enough to take over locker number one. He says that this is right where he belongs.

  I don’t tell him that when he leaves the firehouse, I don’t want to take over locker number one. That I want to leave with him and go do something else. That I love the firehouse when we’re cooking dinner and hanging out around the table, or when we park on the street during Defeat of Jesse James Days and watch the botched bank robbery reenactment from the top of the truck, or when I’m holding Leo’s feet on the gym mat while he does sit-ups, or if it’s one of those times that Dad lets me stay for an overnight, when we eat popcorn and watch the Vikings game with our feet up.

  But when the warning sirens blare and the guys start moving double time and speaking in code and the lights start flashing, then I don’t like it anymore, and I’m happy to run to my grandma’s apartment up the street, where it’s quiet and safe. I don’t tell him that I’m not brave like that. Brave like sliding-down-a-pole-and-landing-on-my-feet brave.

  I run upstairs to the lockers, but before I can shake out of Dad’s big jacket and pull on my own navy-blue fireman’s T-shirt, I get an uneasy feeling in my belly because it doesn’t really feel right, my grandma staying by herself on our usual sleepover days, even if my favorite nurse, Milly, is on tonight, and checks in extra on my grandma and fills up her candy dish with Werther’s Originals when she’s running low.

  Ever since Grandma’s stroke last year, things have been different. She can’t move her right side the way she used to. Her foot drags when she walks, her arm stays tucked in tight to her side, her fist never opens, and her mouth droops a little, even when the rest of her is smiling.

  And the worst of it all is that she can’t talk. She tries and tries, but all that comes out are syllables. Na na na na. She points with her left hand and gets frustrated when I can’t guess right and then just pinches her eyes closed tight and shakes her head like she’s trying to tell me Never mind and It’s OK. But she always opens her eyes and sees me there next to her and straightens up and smiles with her whole body. And then it feels good again, like that is right where I belong.

  I pull on a T-shirt from my locker and head back downstairs. The guys are all clamoring in the kitchen to finish dinner. My dad is opening the cabinets and clanging pans, and Leo is mashing the potatoes, his muscles bulging with each smash. We have the same meal every August twenty-seventh—my special birthday meal.

  Dad is pressing the ground beef into hamburger patties and Roger adds butter to the bowl of steaming potatoes.

  “There’s the birthday boy,” Dad says.

  “I still remember your first real meal with the guys, Cy . . .” Mike starts. This is the story he was telling a couple hours ago when we heard the whines at the front door, and it makes me wonder if Parker’s had anything to eat yet.

  Mike loves to tell this story every year on my birthday, and I think he loves it even more because Roger and Leo weren’t there when it happened. They weren’t part of the crew yet. “You should have seen it,” he says to them. “Brooks came in with all these jars of baby food. Sloppy creamed spinach and mashed-up peas.”

  “That’s what the book said to do,” my dad interrupts. “Purees at six months.”

  “So on exactly February twenty-seventh,” Mike continues, “Brooks opens these baby food jars and sits Cy right here on this very table and airplanes a spoon of green slop toward his lips. But Cy won’t open.”

  My dad and Mike are laughing, and Leo says, “Smart kid! I wouldn’t open for green slop either!”

  “Then Cy grabbed the spoon,” my dad says, “and flung a green glob across the kitchen. But he still wouldn’t open his mouth.” His voice is gruff and matter-of-fact, and I like imagining him trying to feed little baby me with his big hand around a tiny spoon.

  “Until we sat down with our burgers and mashed potatoes.” Mike laughs.

  I know this story by heart, and so do all the guys. They know that I cried and reached toward their dinner plates until Mike gave me a bite of his buttery, lumpy mashed potatoes, and my dad, who never gets loud or upset, grabbed a fistful of Mike’s T-shirt and nearly punched his lights out because he thought I would choke. He kept shaking Mike and saying, “The book says purees!”

  “No one had ever seen that side of your dad,” Mike says. I smile because for some reason that feels like winning an MVP trophy.

  I swallowed the potatoes just fine and kept pointing for more, more, until my dad gave in and I got another bite. Then another. And before the night was over I was eating bits of hamburger from between their fingers too.

  “Cy was one of the guys from the beginning,” Mike says. He starts scooping mashed potatoes on our plates, and Dad is sliding burgers onto buns.

  We sit, all five of us, around the table, and Dad says the same thing he says every birthday dinner at the firehouse. “Thankful Cyrus cried at our door all those years ago.”

  And then Mike says the same thing he always says. “And may this August twenty-seventh be less eventful for Northfield, and its firemen.” Everyone laughs, and Roger says something about “that dog showing up,” and Mike says something about “not nearly as exciting as when Cy came.”

  “And here’s to Mike’s last night on the job,” Dad adds.

  We say cheers and clink our bottles of root beer and bite into our burgers. They’re better off our grill in the backyard, but even here in the tiny firehouse kitchen, my dad makes the best burgers, and everyone agrees.

  “When you retire, Brooks, you have to come back just to cook t
he burgers,” Roger says.

  “Don’t be worrying about that any time soon.” Dad runs his hand through his thick, graying hair.

  I help myself to a second scoop of mashed potatoes, and Mike takes the ice cream out of the freezer to start thawing. This is another birthday tradition because what my dad still doesn’t know is that after I ate potatoes and burger, when my dad turned his back to wash dishes, Mike spooned me my first bite of ice cream too.

  When Mike told me that part of the story on my seventh birthday, we agreed to let it be our little secret, because my dad, who wasn’t one for babies and didn’t know a thing about raising an infant, was following every word of this parenting book, and it said no sugar until one year. If he almost decked Mike over mashed potatoes, he definitely would have over chocolate ice cream.

  Mike takes out five spoons and gives me a wink and a smile.

  We scoop ice cream into mismatched mugs, and Roger sticks a candle in mine and lights a match. They sing “Happy Birthday,” and I blow out the candle before the wax drips down to the chocolate.

  “What a natural.” Mike tousles my hair. “Firefighting is in your blood.”

  I smile, and I don’t say that no one actually knows what’s in my blood, but I know what he means. And I don’t say that I didn’t wish to be a fireman. I wished for Parker. I wished that the vet could get him to eat and drink and that Dad would soften the creases in his forehead and give up on his no-pet-no-way policy.

  The guys disappear for a minute and come back out with two presents. One is wrapped in newspaper and duct tape, and the other is a plain white envelope. I already know what the first one is. A football. A junior size six, not the pee-wee ball we have at home, the one that Dad taught me how to throw a spiral with when I was five. I smile big even though I don’t want it and I rip it open like I can’t wait to put my fingers between the laces.

  “This is a big year,” Leo says.

  And I know what he means. Sixth grade. Middle school. This is the first year I have tryouts, and this is the first year there isn’t equal playing time, so the best kids on the team play the most. No one knows that I’m hoping I don’t make the A Team because they have more practices, more games, and harder hits. No one knows that I hope I’m the last possible substitute on the very end of the B Team bench.