Jane Smiley - Early Warning

“Okay!” said Frank. “That was the warm-up!”

He walked them back to the base of the bookcase and stood them about a foot apart, both facing ahead. Now he whispered in Michael’s ear, “Keep your feet — you can beat him easy! Got me?” He backed away, made eye contact, and stared at Michael until Michael nodded. Then he whispered in Richie’s ear, “If he stumbles, Rich, you just keep going. Slow and steady wins the race. You listening?” Richie nodded.

Frank stepped back and held out his arm, then he said, “Ready? Set? Go!” He dropped his arm, and the two boys took off. Richie understood the course better than Michael — he did make the right turn and head into the dining room while Michael was still wondering what to do — but then Michael spun around and overtook him at the chair in the kitchen, and, in fact, poked him in the side with his elbow, causing Richie to stumble. When they got to the finish line, they were about a step apart, Michael in the lead. Frank stood in the middle of the living room, scowling and shaking his head. He said, “What a pair of slowpokes! This race is going to have three heats. That was number one. Go back to the start.” He pointed to the bookcase.

He sent them off again. This time, Michael had learned something — he turned at the proper spot and headed for the kitchen with Richie on his heels. But Richie had learned something, too, and when they came to the chair, he turned his hip and popped Michael, sending him sprawling. He crossed the threshold by himself, grinning, and said, “I won! I won!”

“You did!” said Frank. “You won! Can you beat him again?”

Richie nodded emphatically.

Frank said, “Okay, then. You each had one win. Richard, you go stand by the bookcase and wait.”

He went into the kitchen, where Michael was sitting on the floor, his face hot and flushed. Frank squatted down and said, “Michael? You mad?”

Michael nodded.

“Are you really, really mad?”

Michael nodded again.

Frank said, “Okay, then, you go beat him. You are faster, and you can do it. You got that?”

Michael nodded and clambered to his feet. When he arrived at the bookcase, he stuck his tongue out at Richie, who responded in kind. Frank said, “Save it, boys. Just run fast!” Then, “Ready? Set? Go!” This time, the squabbling commenced almost immediately — Michael bounced Richie into the green chair, but Richie kept his feet, followed Michael, and grabbed his shirt. Frank said nothing. Michael smacked Richie on the arm and then pushed him, but they both kept running through the dining room and into the kitchen. At the kitchen chair, Richie did a smart thing — he pushed the chair a couple of inches, so that Michael had to duck to one side to avoid it. In the meantime, Richie, having shortened his own course, was two steps into the dining room while Michael was still going around the chair. But Michael was faster, and when he caught up to Richie, he reached out and grabbed his hair and pulled him down. Frank barked out a single laugh. He had to give Richie credit, though — instead of crying, he crawled forward as fast as he could and grabbed Michael’s pant leg and brought him down. Then he crawled over the finish line first. Frank now laughed out loud, and both boys turned and stared up at him. Frank said, “I guess Richie wins. Richie wins by a neck.” Richie started laughing, too, but Michael’s face began to crumple, so Frank said, “What’s the prize, boys? What does the winner get?” Both boys looked at him. He said, “The winner gets tickled!” He fell upon Richie and played his fingers over the tiny ribs until Richie was squirming away and laughing. After a moment, Frank stood them up. He wiped tears off Richie’s face with the tail of his shirt — he didn’t want Andy to see those — and then he got a Kleenex and wiped both their noses. “You boys tough?”

Both boys nodded.

“Are you really tough?”

They nodded again.

“All right!”

But they were still angry at one another; when they went back to watching TV, Frank had to sit them on cushions a couple of feet apart so they wouldn’t continue the argument. By the time Janny walked in, and then Andy, they were quiet enough. Andy said, “Whew! It’s nice and shady in here. We could have stayed home, it’s so hot. You guys have a nice afternoon?”

“We did,” said Frank. The boys nodded; undoubtedly, “nice” was not the word to describe the particular pleasures of their time together. But “nice” was not for boys, Frank thought. “Educational,” “stimulating,” “active.” Right out of Dr. Spock, Frank was sure.

GRANNY ELIZABETH WAS BOUND and determined to go visit Henry in California (and Eloise, too — ever since Eloise had lived with Rosanna and Walter back in the old days, helping with Frank and Joe, Granny Elizabeth had had a special fondness for her), and so Claire found herself on New Year’s Day, her seventeenth birthday, helping Granny down the steps at the station in Oakland or Berkeley or somewhere damp, dark, and chilly. Granny had on her furs — a set of four minks with heads and tails, biting each other around her neck. The thing was ten years out of style, but she was enormously proud of it—“It’s the dog she never got to have,” said Joe. Claire, carrying both the suitcases, had to hurry to keep up with her grandmother as she clicked down the platform toward the waiting room. “California!” she exclaimed. “You know, Claire, in a day or two, I will stand on these eighty-year-old feet and stare out over the Pacific Ocean, and that is a thing no Chick or Cheek has ever seen before! Stuck in the mud as always, just like hornbeams on the riverbank, looking at the lucky creatures drifting by! There he is!”

The Chicks and the Cheeks were Granny’s ancestors back in England. Secretly, Claire always thought maybe the names were a joke, that they were really “Smiths” and “Johnsons.”

Henry was laughing as he took the bags from Claire. Then Eloise was hugging her, and Rosa kissing her, and Henry was saying, “How was your trip, Granny?”

“Not long enough by half,” she said, “but I hear this is as far as you can go.”

The next morning, Henry showed up at Eloise’s. As soon as they finished their coffee, they piled into Eloise’s car, and Henry exclaimed, “Westward ho!” Two hours later, they were standing in the brilliant sunshine, at a place called Drakes Bay. The weather was not hot but, compared with Oakland, almost heavenly.

Claire kept her eye on Rosa, who slipped off her shoes and socks and set them beside an oddly shaped rock — they would pass it going back to the car. They were the only people on the beach. Rosa was five months younger than Henry, almost twenty-three, but years more mature. “Ah, the beach!” exclaimed Granny, with joy. But to Claire it was a stark, strange thing: flat, cool sand running under flat, cold water, the brilliance of the clouds and the sea and the sun almost too much to look at. Granny Elizabeth stood up straight, her arms thrown in the air. Henry touched something in the sand with his toe and bent down. It was a shell — concave, pearly on the inside, and rough gray on the outside. Claire said, “What’s that?”

“Only an oyster shell. But you know how they know that Francis Drake stopped here? Shards of broken porcelain from vessels he would have been carrying on the ship. By the time he got here, he had one ship, the Golden Hind. He started out with five. These cliffs here”—he swept his arm around, and Claire noticed the tall, pale cliffs looming over the grayish-yellow sand—“reminded him of Dover, England, where there are also cliffs, so he called this ‘Nova Albion,’ which basically means ‘New England,’ and claimed all this coast for Queen Elizabeth.”