Paintings from the Cave Read online

  ALSO BY GARY PAULSEN

  Alida’s Song • The Amazing Life of Birds • The Beet Fields • The Boy Who Owned the School • The Brian Books: The River, Brian’s Winter, Brian’s Return, and Brian’s Hunt • Canyons • Caught by the Sea: My Life on Boats • The Cookcamp • The Crossing • Danger on Midnight River • Dogsong • Father Water, Mother Woods • Flat Broke • The Glass Café Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books • Harris and Me • Hatchet • The Haymeadow • How Angel Peterson Got His Name • The Island • Lawn Boy • Lawn Boy Returns • The Legend of Bass Reeves • Liar, Liar • Masters of Disaster • Molly McGinty Has a Really Good Day • The Monument • Mudshark • My Life in Dog Years • Nightjohn • The Night the White Deer Died • Notes from the Dog • Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers • The Quilt • The Rifle • Sarny: A Life Remembered • The Schernoff Discoveries • Soldier’s Heart • The Time Hackers • The Transall Saga • Tucket’s Travels (The Tucket’s West series, Books One through Five) • The Voyage of the Frog • The White Fox Chronicles • The Winter Room • Woods Runner

  Picture books, illustrated by Ruth Wright Paulsen

  Canoe Days and Dogteam

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Gary Paulsen

  Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Andy Smith

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, New York.

  Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Paulsen, Gary.

  Paintings from the cave : three novellas / Gary Paulsen. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: “In these three novellas, Gary Paulsen explores how children can survive the most difficult circumstances through art and the love of dogs”—Provided by publisher.

  Contents: Man of the iron heads — Jo-Jo the dog-faced girl — Erik’s rules.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89743-6

  [1. Short stories. 2. Violence—Fiction. 3. Homeless persons—Fiction. 4. Art—Fiction. 5. Dogs—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P2843Pai 2011 [Fic]—dc23 2011016287

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  This book is for

  my friends

  Teri Lesesne and Kylene Beers—

  and every teacher and librarian like them—

  who work tirelessly to put books

  in the hands of young readers.

  Thank you.

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Note from the Author

  Man of the Iron Heads

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Girl

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Erik’s Rules

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  I was one of the kids who slipped through the cracks. I had what is euphemistically referred to as a troubled childhood.

  We were broke, my parents were drunks, they had—another euphemism here—an unhappy marriage. I was an outsider at school and I pretty much raised myself at home. I had nothing and I was going nowhere.

  But then art and dogs saved me.

  First reading, then writing. First friend-pets, then sled dogs. They gave me hope that I wouldn’t always be stuck in the horror of my childhood, made me believe that there could be more to my life.

  Over the years since I’ve been writing books, I’ve met thousands of kids, either in person or by letter, and it’s not uncommon for young people to confide in me about the nightmare of their home lives, because I’ve always been so open about my own.

  One time, though, in Topeka, Kansas, when I was visiting my friend the librarian Mike Printz and talking about my childhood to a bunch of kids in his library, a girl raised her hand and, in a flat, quiet voice, asked me, “But what do you do when it’s bad? When it gets really, really bad?”

  I remember wondering what I could possibly say to her that would make a difference to her right then and there. Because, somehow, “Someday things will get better, someday you’ll be old enough to leave home, someday you can put this behind you, someday all of this will feel like it’s a million miles away …” didn’t seem authentic enough to match the honesty of her question.

  Because someday, to that girl, was a million miles away. She had the here and now to deal with. As so many do. So many heres and nows that are cold and ugly and raw and cruel and vicious, with little to no hope.

  As I looked at her across the library, I saw so many faces of kids who believed themselves to be rejected and abandoned, unloved and unlovable.

  And so to Jake and Jo and Jamie—three kids in (another euphemism here) unstable environments with nothing and no one to protect and raise them. Except for dogs and art and that little hot worm deep inside us all that, no matter how damaged and broken we are, still allows us to respond to the beauty that art provides or the love that a good dog gives.

  Sometimes you move right, sometimes left, in the dark, out of the light, always moving.

  You stop moving, you’re done.

  My name is Jake ’cept they call me just J in the building. My aunt, she lives on eighteen, door 1872. I’ve been with her since my ma … went away when I was three, maybe four. So I guess you could call that home, ’cept she looks right through me most of the time, calls me trouble, nothing but trouble, born trouble, so I haven’t really lived in 1872 since I was seven. She never wanted to get stuck with a kid, she tells me, so everything I do that makes her remember I’m around is trouble in her eyes. So I stay away as much as I can, sleep on the couch at Layla’s every night because her ma’s either sleeping or working. That’s all she does, all she has time to do, she says. Sleep and work, two shifts, every day. I hide in the basement in the day. Stay low.

  I’m either eleven or twelve years old now; I lost track and my aunt doesn’t care enough to keep it straight. The school probably has papers on me, they’re big on forms and being official, but it doesn’t really matter how old I am. I learned a long time ago that the only thing that matters is that I gotta keep moving.

  You stop, you’re done.

  You stop, Blade gets you.

  They call him Blade because he used a knife on a boy one time—cut a notch in his tongue—marked him so everybody knows he talked back to Blade one too many times. But he doesn’t use a knife anymore. Not since he got a Glock Nine wit
h a staggered clip, holds more bullets than God made.

  They say he busted a cap in Fat Charlie’s gut just to see what would happen.

  Made a big hole, that’s what happened.

  They say Charlie didn’t do nothing but laugh at the wrong time, but I think there’s more to it than that. Doesn’t matter the reason, though, ’cause—bang—Charlie’s shot. They say Blade watched Charlie bleed, just stood there, watching, didn’t leave until he heard the sirens coming.

  Blade stays clear of sirens because he’s in business.

  Blade sells it all, highs and lows, weed and pills and powder, sells guns, sells people if they don’t keep moving.

  So I move left, right, in the dark, out of the light, moving.

  I was moving away from Blade when I found the man with the iron heads.

  Blade’s boys are always on the street in front of the apartment building and hanging around the front door because Blade is in 1604 selling through a little hole in a steel door. His boys watch for the cops.

  I watch for them. I watch for Blade’s boys every waking minute of every day. I open my eyes in the morning, I look for Blade’s boys. I close my eyes at night, last thing I look for is Blade’s boys.

  When I see them run up the front stairs, where they trade Blade a wad of cash for what he sells, then I make my move.

  Just inside the building, next to the old chipped back door, is the super’s door to the basement. But the super doesn’t come around much anymore, not since Blade started running the building. And the super never goes in the basement, not since Blade got his Glock.

  The lock to the basement door doesn’t work, even though the door sticks, so I lift the handle, kick the bottom, push the door open. Then I slip down the stairwell to the warm and dirty furnace room.

  I hear rats as big as ponies moving in the far corners, but they run away as I creep the length of the basement to a window. Then I climb up and out into the empty lot in the back where it’s dark, no streetlights shine back there.

  Forty steps and I’m at the basement window of the next building.

  Empty now because they say they’re gonna do something called urban renewal. Never happens, though, and now the building stinks from the winos and the junkies. They’re no worry to me—they stay in the front of the building where the sun sometimes shines and warms them, because it’s January, ice everywhere. There are rats running around, hiding in the piles of garbage that were left behind when everyone moved out and left the building to fall apart, but I got a stick if they get too close. Big stick.

  But the back of the building is where I’ve got my place to be when I’m too tired or cold to keep moving. I look out those back windows, or holes where the windows were, and I can see into the building on the other side of the alley.

  Clean.

  Warm.

  Light.

  Bright.

  New.

  Rich.

  Just ten steps away, the good life. No rats, no Glock Nines, no druggies shaking and crying and puking. Just ten steps away, but it might as well be a whole ’nother world.

  Layla didn’t believe me when I first told her about this place. She could still get around then, back when she wasn’t so far along like she is now, so I brought her here.

  She was fourteen, not quite fifteen, when one of Blade’s men caught her. Around here, like I said, you gotta keep moving.

  But Layla didn’t keep moving.

  We don’t talk about that, I probably wouldn’t have even known if she hadn’t started getting big.

  A few months ago, when the construction noise ended and the tenants moved into the apartments, I brought her into this building to look across the alley at the new-old building.

  “See?” I pointed.

  Rich folks buy old buildings, fix them up, make apartments they call lofts. Then they put up a fence to keep us out. Wire leans our way at the top, razor rippers so we can’t get over them.

  We can see through the fence, though.

  Layla and I could see the people through the windows. We watched a party in one apartment. Counted the people who came with packages, shiny paper on big-ass boxes. Saw the cake and the candles. Heard the singing.

  No one ever sang to me or Layla.

  I just brought Layla the one time because pretty soon she was too far along that she couldn’t get through the basement window anymore.

  I still come because I’ve got to have my place to be and none of Blade’s boys think to come back here. No business, no reason for them to be here.

  I sit in the basement and look out the windows. It’s freezing cold, not like the furnace room in my building, where it’s warm. That’s where I used to spend most days, but I couldn’t see anything in the furnace room ’cept rats and shadows. Here I can see into six apartments across the alley.

  I see two men who live in the same apartment on the fourth floor yelling at each other. One of them throws a plate at the wall and the other one slams a door. Just like our side of the block. Only, later I see them laughing when they sweep up the broken plate together.

  Fifth floor, a mother and her daughter, she looks about Layla’s age. They hug a lot—hello, goodbye, good night—laugh, eat breakfast and supper together. It’s sweet. Things’d be different if Layla’s ma had time to treat her like that.

  Then I see the man with the iron heads.

  Middle right, over to the side, closest to where I watch, and he has four windows so I can see his loft the best. It’s smaller than the others. He wears old clothes and he seems young, too young to have a place like that, on his own even, but rich people are different. One window is the kitchen and he stands over the sink and eats fast out of a pot like he doesn’t care what he’s eating. He’s looking into the other room the whole time he eats.

  I can see better if I move and so I go into the next room and look out the window into his other room.

  I see heads.

  Not real ones, but three, no four, made of something gray, like mud, placed on skinny little tall tables around the room.

  He’s making heads.

  When I get cold, it’s time to go back up to Layla’s. I don’t like her to be on her own for too long these days. And I never want her to be alone when it gets dark and her ma’s working night shifts.

  But I don’t move.

  Not sure why. My knees are stiff with the cold and even my Eskimo coat with the fur around my face can’t keep me warm. Course, it’s got holes, from before I found it in the Dumpster.

  My coat keeps me pretty warm even though it gets so cold that steam comes from the grates. When the steam comes up into the street, there could be bodies in the morning. The worst night, three dead winos were froze so stiff the emergency guys couldn’t unbend them. They took the bodies away still crooked.

  I should go, but I don’t.

  There’s something about the heads.

  They look alive.

  The man sets the pot in the sink and moves into the room with the heads. As he starts working on one with his hands, pushing the mud this way and that, it looks even more alive.

  He keeps looking back in a corner where I can’t see unless I go up a floor but that’s too far because I’d have to go toward the front of the building, then up, then back. The crackheads are there. It’s not so hard to get past them, but it takes time, and you never know, one of Blade’s people might be there so it’s not worth the risk.

  But still, I don’t leave.

  I can’t see what he’s looking at but I watch his hands and the way he keeps looking up and then back at the head. He’s frowning but somehow he’s happy, too. I don’t know how I know that, I just know.

  Finally I can’t stand the cold and, just as I get up to go, he bumps one of the stands and a head falls to the floor.

  Clunk.

  I can hear the sound through his closed window, ten feet across the alley, and through the broken window where I’m crouching.

  That head isn’t made of mud, but of something
metal.

  He makes iron heads, he sits in his kitchen eating from a pot staring at heads he makes of mud and iron.

  I’m so cold now my teeth are chattering. It’s late, too. If I don’t get back up to Layla’s apartment soon, I’ll run into Blade’s people. If they’re out and about, I’m in. Somewhere, anywhere, doesn’t matter, just so that I’m not where they can see me.

  Still, it’s hard to leave and I lean closer to see a little more before I have to go.

  The man sees me.

  He turns, and there we are.

  Eye to eye. Ten steps away.

  And he smiles. Nods and smiles to say hi, so I raise my hand, kinda wave back at him.

  Then I turn away to go tell Layla about the man with the iron heads.

  We talk about everything together. Everything except how she got that big belly. And I know she’ll think I’m making this up. Sometimes I do make things up, to get her to laugh, so I gotta make sure I tell this straight so she understands, so she knows, so she can see what I see—a man across the alley making metal heads out of mud in his living room.

  But first, I got to get to the other side of the basement, across the alley, through the other window, past the furnace, then wait, wait, wait …

  Okay. Now up the back stairs that smell like pee so bad you can’t breathe. Fast. Quiet. Looking around the whole time. No one sees me. I don’t see no one. I like it that way.

  Finally to Layla’s door on the twelfth floor. Door 1240.

  I gotta keep moving.

  ’Cause you stop, you’re done.

  A man came to school once, back when I still went to school kind of regular. Now I hardly go at all. ’Cause I got to keep moving and they don’t go for that in school, they make you stay put.

  So this guy, he wrote a book and he talked like we read books.

  Like we got books.

  He talked about chapters and what he did to tell the story and then he asked if there were any questions. What were we gonna ask him? Nobody stuck their hand up but me.

  I put up my hand because I had two things I wanted to know about this man who wrote books and thought we should read them and talk with him about them.