Unspeakable Things(31)
Dad leaned over to kiss her, in full preparty mode, a regular Richard Dawson striding onto the Family Feud set, ready to charm the ladies and wink knowingly at the men.
I stink-eyed him and Sephie’s back as they walked away, toward the van that would take them to freedom and town. “That’s not fair,” I said.
Mom wiped a bug off her arm. “Life isn’t fair. If it was, I’d make a million bucks for teaching.”
“But why does Sephie get off and I have to do chores?”
Mom started walking toward the garden. “The school called. We know Seph has to go to summer school. Your dad wanted to talk to her. If that sounds like a good time to you, we could arrange it.”
I slammed my mouth closed. That was not my idea of fun. I wondered if Mom had received the call about Sephie while she was at work. “How did you get home before us today?”
She handed me a pack of seeds. Garden Sweet Burpless Cucumber. “I left the same time as my students,” she said. “I have a pile of grading to do, and I can work faster here.”
I nodded, mulling things over. “Are you guys mad at Sephie?”
“Disappointed.” She reached for a hoe and handed it to me.
I sank it into the mucky dirt, building a hill before slicing a divot across the top. “Have you heard anything more about Lilydale kids getting taken?”
She’d been ripping a sprig of apple grass out of her spinach bed. She stopped weeding but didn’t turn. “Not much more. The boy who went to the police, Mark Clamchik? He says he was taken by a man wearing a mask.”
My chest grew hot. The agony of it, of being grabbed by a faceless man, the white terror of feeling so powerless. I felt it every time Dad clipped his nails. “A mask?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “Poor boy. You said you know him?”
I nodded mutely. She couldn’t have seen it, but she went on talking. “We’re safe out here, in the country. The police are focusing on the Hollow area on the edge of town.”
I heard the distaste in her voice, the disdain for people who lived in trailers. She wouldn’t say it out loud, but there it was. I wanted to ask her what she thought of people who lived in houses with scary drunks, but I didn’t. Those sorts of questions only made her angry.
She rubbed her hands on her pants, leaving streaks of mud, and turned, her mouth in an O like she’d just remembered something neat. “How’d you enjoy your lunch surprise?”
For a second I thought she knew about free lunch, but that seemed unlikely. “What?”
“The Girl Scout Thin Mints I stashed in there. I know they’re your favorite. I bought a box last February and was saving it for today.”
My chest stuffed with emotion. I’d thrown away Girl Scout Cookies. Mom would be devastated if she discovered that I’d wasted her thoughtfulness. “Thanks.”
She smiled but didn’t hug me. She’d never hugged Sephie or me, not that I could remember. But the thought of her saving cookies for me was as good as any embrace.
CHAPTER 18
The late afternoon smelled like purple clover and then, as I ducked my head to enter the chicken coop, like smut, feathers, and the acrid paste smell of bird poop. The chicken house used to be a storage shed, three rooms long, and briefly a glorious playhouse for me and Sephie. Now the three rooms were divided into laying hens in the far west room, with off-the-ground nesting boxes to choose from so the skunks didn’t eat their brains at night; a middle room for eating hens; and in the east room, a storage space that housed chopped corn the color of lemons and oranges, oyster shells for grit, and spare waterers and food troughs.
We would butcher most of the eating chickens tomorrow morning. For now, I placed the halved plastic milk jug over the heads of the nesting chickens to calm them before slipping my hand under them to remove their warm, smooth eggs. The chickens warbled suspiciously, a heyyyybroody, heyyyybroody, but with their heads covered, they let me slide out their cackleberries. We used to own Araucanas. Their eggs were pastel greens, blues, and pinks, ready-made for Easter. Now we had plain old rust-colored hens, with boring brown eggs.
The egg-gathering rhythm soothed me. I thought about Clam, how frightened he must have been when the masked man took him, and Wayne’s face—angry and broken—when I’d asked him about it on the bus. What had Wayne meant by it was Clam’s own fault he’d gotten attacked? If Dad really knew the details, he wasn’t telling. Him and Sephie had been extra quiet since they’d returned from town, Sephie’s face red and puffy as if she’d been crying. Mom put her straight to work while she made supper. Me, I hadn’t stopped working since Sephie and I’d run home from Goblin’s place.
A swarm of gnats buzzed near my face, trying to drink the water off my eyes. I swatted at them as I returned the egg-picking jug to its nail and unlatched the wire door before stepping outside. My skin lapped up the fresh air. It was cool now—late May chilly—but the stillness told me tomorrow was going to be a scorcher.
Dad appeared from behind the chicken coop, rolling the butchering stump in front of him. Apparently we were returning to chopping off heads. That’s how we killed them the first year. Sephie would hold them by the beak, pinching it between chubby girl fingers, and Dad would hold the legs with his left hand and swing the hatchet with his right.
Chop.