But this time Jess and he are armed with sleeping bags, hot milky coffee in a flask and egg sandwiches. They are armed with cameras and Walker’s phone. It is drizzling rain.

  The truck comes at midnight. Walker phones the police and when he feels enough time has passed, when the cops must be on their way, he lets Jess loose. She slips from the safety of the Teacup and flits from tree to tree like some avenging fairy, flashing photographs as the sludge slops from the drum and Carmody’s men yell curses into the night and try to hurry up, and spill goop on their pants and boots, and try to figure out how many assailants they are up against, for they feel utterly surrounded. Jess circles them everywhere, drawing a noose of popping camera flashes around their villainy. They are trapped by her.

  The police arrive. The arrest is made.

  “It’ll be the car-squisher for those guys,” says Jess with evident satisfaction as she and Walker gather up their gear. Walker almost suggests they spend the night in this enchanted place. But they are soaked. And through his elation pokes the bones of a dreadful weariness.

  He scans the ground with his flashlight to see if they’ve forgotten anything. His beam finds its way down to the dragonfly house. He stares at it, tattered a bit around the edges, dented by the rain, but still intact.

  “What?” says Jess.

  Then Walker stares at her with such obvious admiration that even in the dark she can feel it. She blushes, and even in the dark he sees it.

  “What holds it together?” he says.

  Jess smiles. “Just something I found in Mum’s old actor’s make-up kit,” she says. “Spirit gum.”

  Jack

  There was a dead ermine in the bottom of the garbage pail. I didn’t know that’s what it was until Old Man Sunday told me. I picked up its frozen body with my gloved hands. It was so stiff you could hold it by its tail, straight out like a white sword. I put it in a handy berry basket and marched down the drive.

  There’d been a new snowfall. You could see the ermine’s tracks on the driveway right up to the corner of the old outhouse, where we keep the trash. My own tracks led me down the hill and up the next and round the bend to where Sunday lived in a house he had built from scratch out of anything he could find. He was in his workshop when I got there.

  “This here’s an ermine,” he said. “A stoat in its winter coat.”

  There were stoats in The Wind in the Willows. Took over Toad’s place. This one was all in white except for the end of his tail, which was black, as if winter hadn’t quite made it all the way to the end of him.

  “Your cardinals wear ’em,” he said.

  I looked at the little critter. It was about nine inches long from its nose to the black tip of its tail, but there wasn’t much to it, weight-wise. It was slim, lithe — or at least it looked like it would have been when it was alive. I couldn’t quite imagine how a cardinal would wear one. Draped across its shoulders? I sure couldn’t imagine a bird flying very far with an ermine on board.

  Sunday must have seen the look on my face as I tried to work it out. “Not those kind of cardinals. The ones in Rome that flock around the Pope. You ever seen them?”

  This was getting a long way from the creature in the berry basket, its eyes glazed white, its tiny paws curled up. I shook my head and Old Man Sunday chuckled.

  “Well, anyway,” he said. “Them cardinals in Rome, they wear red, see. Red robes. But in winter you’ll see some of ’em wearing a cope of white fur around their neck, on their shoulders. To keep ’em warm, I guess.”

  “It didn’t work for this guy,” I said.

  Sunday shook his head. Picked up the ermine with his bare hand. Strong, knotty hands. “Nope.” He put the ermine down and scratched his bearded chin. “Probably chased a mouse into your garbage can,” he said.

  “Some squirrel chewed a hole in the lid. It wasn’t a very big hole.”

  He nodded, as if he’d seen it all before. “Big enough for a critter to get in, hungry. Too small to get out, full.”

  Old Man Sunday said stuff like that all the time. Stuff you could almost imagine on a bumper sticker.

  “You want it?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “He’s a nice specimen. Thanks.”

  I hadn’t noticed the ermine was a “he.” Seemed easier when it was just an it. I took off my gloves to hang them from the woodstove to dry.

  “That looks nasty,” said Sunday. He was looking at the scratches across the back of my right hand.

  “It doesn’t hurt much,” I said.

  “Looks like a wall ran into you,” he said. Then he looked into my eyes and waited. I looked down at the dead ermine, didn’t say anything.

  He took the berry basket from me and transferred the animal to a plastic freezer bag, then opened up his big old deep freeze. It was one of those king-sized ones and it was chock-full of dead animals and birds. A brown thrasher that had broken its neck flying into a window, a raven that had smacked into a car. A roadkill rabbit, a fox that died of rabies, a skunk who maybe died of his own smell — all kinds of critters. Anyone in the valley who found a dead creature that wasn’t rotting or mangled took it to Sunday. He kept them to use as models for his wood carvings. People said Old Man Sunday brought those animals back to life with his knives and palm chisels, his spoon gouges and V-tools.

  When my grandad died a couple years back, I had this dream where I was carrying him to Sunday, which was pretty funny on account of me being scrawny and only ten back then. That kind of thing happens in dreams. You can carry really heavy things. Anyway, in this dream, I walked all the way over to Sunday’s. I wanted him to bring Grandad back to life.

  When I told Mom about it, she smiled and said, “That’s called magical thinking.”

  * * *

  It snowed again that night. Lying in my bed I listened to the quiet. We lived out of town so there was never much noise at night, but there’s nothing quieter than snow. I found myself thinking of that stoat-turned-ermine, the black tip of its tail — no, his tail.

  “You call the male a Jack,” Sunday had said. “The female’s a Jill.”

  If Jack had lived, maybe this snowfall would have been the one to finally turn him white all the way to the tip of his tail.

  I thought of him, sleek and fast, chasing some mouse or shrew into the garbage can through that hole eaten into the plastic top. Then I thought of him not being able to get out. Trapped in there. Freezing to death. I shuddered and pulled my blankets up around me. Outside, the wind picked up and hurled snow at my window. So much for a quiet night. Then again, a snow day would be good.

  * * *

  I didn’t hate seventh grade. I used to like school okay, until Dougal Ashur came along. The thing is, he had always been there, just another nobody special — a town guy who’d won the growth gene pool. He was testing out how big he was on me. Doug the Thug I called him, but not to his face. I couldn’t remember when he’d started hitting me. Steering me into walls, hurling a tennis ball at my back, tripping me, shouldering me extra hard. “Oops, sorry, Mr. Clean. Hope I didn’t put a crease in your shirt.”

  “You are a bit of a neat freak,” said Candace, the girl I always sat with on the bus.

  “Is that what this is all about?”

  She looked sideways at me and smiled. “Maybe you should stop combing your hair.” She reached up to scruffle it and I pushed her hand away. She giggled. “See what I mean?” she said.

  My dad’s a writer. He talks a lot about a character in a story having to have genuine motivation. “You can’t just make your character do something because the story needs him to,” he’d say. “There’s got to be a believable reason your character would act this way or that way.” So when Doug the Thug Ashur started bullying me, I tried to think of why. Because my hair was combed? Really? Because my shirts were ironed?

  “You never know,” said Candace. “Why don’t you try wearing the same black Thor T-shirt five days a week like he does? Maybe you and Dougal could become best friends?”

  I shuddered at the thought.

  * * *

  One thing I wouldn’t do was tell anyone — any adult.

  My parents were cool; we talked all the time. But if I had told them about Doug the Thug, they’d have gone into action mode. They’d have wanted me to go talk to the principal — or worse still, they’d have talked to her themselves. And that would have been disastrous. It would have been all that Doug needed to rearrange my nose, maybe break a few bones. No thanks, Mom and Dad.

  All over the school there were posters saying stuff like, “Our Class is a No Bullying Zone” or “Step Up So Others Don’t Get Stepped On” or “It Isn’t Big to Make Others Feel Small.” Even with all that, I couldn’t imagine going up to Dougal and suggesting we become pals.

  Who were those posters for, anyway? Were bullies expected to see them and have a change of heart? Did it make the administration feel like they were doing something constructive? Was the wimp brigade supposed to be inspired to gang together, somehow, and put up a united front against the goon squad?

  Anyway, school had become a bit of a war zone for me and the snow of that Sunday night wasn’t enough to warrant a snow day.

  * * *

  “Hey, it’s my favorite pansy.” Doug the Thug was waiting at the school door when I got off the bus. “Is that a yellow shirt? Didn’t you get the memo?” he said. “Yellow is for fruit loops.”

  I had been talking to Candace on the bus. Doug swung the door open for her, bowing like a doorman as she went through, then slammed it shut in my face. “Not so fast, gear box.”

  I did a spin move worthy of Steph Curry and headed for the other door, but Doug ducked through the one he’d slammed in my face, met me on the other side and with his chest plowed me into the wall.

  “Ashur, cool it!” The bus monitor had seen Doug corner me. “Now!” he said and with one last shove, Doug pulled away, scowling.

  “Pussy,” he said.

  “Meow,” I said and earned myself a punch in the shoulder the monitor never saw. I rubbed it while Dougal walked backward down the hall, a finger wagging at me. Don’t mess with me, said the finger.

  Ah, Monday.

  * * *

  Maybe those posters do work, sort of. That week Doug the Thug got caught a couple of times for giving me a rough time. In recess a couple of students “stepped up” and reported him for giving me a face wash in the snow. Friday he even got called out of class for pinning me to the wall in the locker room.

  But here’s where the whole anti-bullying crusade falls apart. It became pretty obvious that Doug’s bad week of terrorizing was only going to turn into a way badder week for me. Revenge! Every time he got nabbed, he got more frustrated. Any warning he was given turned into a threat aimed at me, as if I was responsible for all the trouble he was getting into. Every caution upped the ante in his sick mind.

  “He’s not sick,” said Candace. “I think he’s just lonely.”

  “Well, if you think he’s so lonely, why don’t you be his friend?”

  She screwed up her nose. “Not my type,” she said.

  “He’s sure not mine,” I said.

  Friday afternoon, when I thought I was home free, he got in one last assault. He cornered me in the washroom, backed me into the wall, his face right up close to mine. “You do not want to make trouble for me,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass.”

  He pressed his forehead against mine, forcing my skull back against the tiles. His eyes drilled into my eyes. I could smell his breath and it’s not like it was bad, there was just way too much of it, as if he was getting near the end of some marathon. I turned away, my right cheek against the tiles. They were so cold. I closed my eyes, waiting for what was going to happen next. Steeling myself for the sucker punch, the knee to the groin, and all the time willing the door to open and for some brave kid to come in and shout, “Hey, it isn’t big to make others feel small!”

  Then he suddenly pulled away, swearing under his breath, and left, shaking his head, his hands deep in his pockets. As the door closed after him, I thought I heard him growl with exasperation, as if I just didn’t get it.

  And here’s the truth: I just didn’t get it.

  I didn’t move for a full minute. I’d never been so frightened in my life. I had to figure this out but I didn’t know how. There had been something in his glare that alarmed me more than anything else he’d ever done to me. The bruises, the abrasions, the knuckle rubs … I could handle all of that, but when he glared at me like that, it was as if he had backed me into a deep hole and I’d started falling.

  * * *

  A lot of kids don’t like Sunday evening because it means … well, I don’t need to spell it out. After that week, I was already bemoaning Monday morning on Friday evening! Mom and Dad picked up on it. Each took a turn asking me what was up.

  “The sky,” I told Mom.

  “And what else?” she said.

  “Nothing. Just … nothing.”

  “Is there some problem at school?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “School.”

  “You’re a straight-A student.”

  “Then maybe you should let me get back to my homework.”

  My parents weren’t the type to push too far. Like I said, we talked all the time. If I didn’t want to talk, they weren’t going to force the matter. But after Dad left my room, I didn’t get back to my homework. I kept waiting for them to come storming back into the room and demand to know what was eating me. Pin me to the wall and exact a confession from me. I sat there at my desk and felt myself falling deeper and deeper into that hole Dougal Ashur had pushed me into.

  Saturday night, I even dreamed of falling down into darkness. The entrance to the hole above me grew smaller and smaller until it was no more than a pinprick of light as distant as a star.

  * * *

  Old Man Sunday called.

  “It’s for you,” said Mom, holding out the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “You busy?” he said.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then whyn’t you come on over?”

  I didn’t have time to answer before he hung up.

  “Maybe he needs his walk shoveled,” said Mom.

  There’d been another big snowfall that night and my tracks were the first ones in our driveway. The road had been plowed and was gritty with sand, so it wasn’t hard going and it felt good outside, the air clear and fresh. I breathed deeply, wanting that cold air to swirl away the remnants of my bad dream. The sky screamed blue.

  Sunday’s walk didn’t need shoveling.

  I knocked on his workshop door.

  “When was it ever locked?” he shouted from inside.

  I walked into the warmth of his old woodstove. He was working on a cabinet, which was going to have a mirror, and the sides to hold up that mirror were two blue herons facing one another. They weren’t blue yet, just the warm, yellowy-brown of butternut, but you could almost see the color of the birds, the feathers were so alive.

  He turned from where he was chiseling with something as fine as a surgeon’s scalpel. “You made good time,” he said.

  I shrugged.

  Then he put down his tool and made his way slowly, back bent a bit, across the shop to a work table. “Come and have a look,” he said.

  There on a piece of velvet stood a tiny perfect ermine. He was on his hind paws, his head gazing back over his shoulder; his tail curving around his body seemed to flicker with life. He wasn’t any bigger than the palm of my hand, and when I picked him up, he sat there gazing up at me — smart and ready for anything.

  “Seemed a shame to paint him,” said Sunday. I nodded, feeling the smoothness of the wood with my finger. “So he’s both animals at once,” he said. “A stoat and an ermine.”

  “Right,” I said. And then I thought how the real animal would still be the same whatever he looked like on the outside. I smiled. “He’s amazing,” I said. “You did it again: brought some dead critter back to life.”

  He laughed. “Nonsense,” he said, swatting away my compliment as if it was a pesky fly.

  I put the ermine down gently on the little square of velvet.

  “It’s yours,” he said. I looked at him. “Seriously,” he said. “Take it. Give it a good home.” I’d undone my winter coat when I came in and Sunday picked up the carving and placed it in the breast pocket of my shirt. Turned it so that he faced out. I patted my pocket.

  “Hi, Jack,” I said.

  Sunday smiled. “It’s good to have a second set of eyes,” he said.

  * * *

  That night I placed the ermine on the corner of my desk right near the head of my bed. Every now and then I’d reach out and poke my phone on so that I could see him there in the light, my Jack ermine. In the shadows he looked even realer, somehow, like he had just turned his head to look at me and wasn’t frozen but only standing perfectly still so as not to give himself away.

  When I fell asleep, I dreamed of a real ermine. I dreamed of him full of life again, and climbing back out of that coffin of a garbage pail. I watched him push his head up through the hole in the lid and then squirm with all his might right out the top of that pail and then take off into the wintry night, bounding across the snow, losing himself in the moonlit whiteness.

  * * *

  I took the ermine to school with me. I wanted to show Candace. She loved it so much I almost wanted to give it to her. It would have been nice to see her smile. But I wasn’t ready for that kind of stuff. I wanted Jack all to myself. For now, at least.