Grasses brush my sides as I crouch beneath the windowsill, my shoulder braced against the rough wood. A ladybug crawls up my jeans to the hole in my knee, the tiny feet tickling my skin. My little brother, Scotty, could tell me what its scientific name is and its genus and a million other facts he’s stuffed in his nine-year-old brain, but for me, it’s just a nice little ladybug.
It spreads its spotted shell wide, little wings whirring faster than I can see, before it lifts off to the sky.
I grasp the windowsill, the weathered red paint flaking off under my fingers, and peek at Mom again as she stands beside the stalls with her hand on a harness. The horses bend their necks, straining to touch her, but she ignores them and lets the harness fall against the wall.
Our buckskin mare, Queenie, whinnies in frustration and watches Mom with trusting eyes that shine almost as dark as her mane. With a white snip on her nose and tan cheeks, she nickers and talks, expecting Mom to talk right back, let her out, and saddle her up to go somewhere other than the pasture—but Mom doesn’t.
Queenie’s lips flap and wriggle, reaching for Mom’s shirttail to yank her near enough to scratch forelock and ears and make things right again. But Queenie can’t reach, so she tosses her head and snorts.
She doesn’t understand it either.
Brainwashed. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense at all.
Without Mom’s chatter or singing, my ears fill with the quiet rustling of leaves from cottonwoods high overhead, gentle trees towering skyward in our own oasis in the high desert. A breeze rolls off the eastern hills, smelling of juniper and sage, and I breathe it all in. Years past, we’d ride those hills ’most every day, a grand view of the Tyhee Flats stretching out below us to the west all the way to the American Falls reservoir. With Pocatello to the south and Fort Hall to the north, we can see it all since our farm perches on the side of these hills halfway between.
Sometimes kids at school roll their eyes when I say something’s to the north or south ’cause they don’t think that way, but with all the sunrises we see, I don’t remember ever not knowing which way was east. Out here, my skyline is made up of mountains and horizons, not skyscrapers and rooftops.
T-Rex pads up beside me, and I sneak away from the window before he can whine and give me away. He leans against my leg as we walk and lifts his chin so I can scratch him better, which I do without hardly looking. But I have to check again, because something long and blue sticks out the side of his mouth.
“Whatcha got, Rex?” I snatch the slobbered end away from him and hold up the prettiest feather I’ve ever seen. It’s longer than the chickens’ feathers, for sure, and filled with far more colors than a goose could ever hope to have. Just to be sure I’m not dreaming, I touch the gold-and-black eye mark surrounded by electric blue-and-green wisps.
“Paige?” Scotty whispers from the doorway of the chicken barn, his hand beckoning in quick curls. “C’mere!”
I cradle the feather in my hand, careful not to crush it, and slip across the yard with T-Rex on my heels.
Scotty is three years younger than me, but if he has something to show, it’s usually worth a look. After a few blinks in the gloomy dimness of the barn, my eyes start to adjust. Feed sacks line the wall by the coop door, where rustling feathers and soft clucks coo from inside—which is wrong, since the hens should have been let out to pasture by now, but that’s Scotty’s job. A few more steps in, I peer into shadows and search out the corners of the room, but Scotty is nowhere. Not on the equipment, not by the carts, and not by the tool rack.
“Mew.” Our orange cat, Scuzbag, peeks out from his perch atop the wall of straw bales stacked along one side of the barn as far back as the coop—except he’s not alone. A second set of yellow eyes glares from the shadows, the body so black I can barely tell where its fur ends and the shadows begin. Its eyes close, and it disappears, like magic.
T-Rex huffs and sits on his haunches, gazing up at Scuzbag, or maybe looking for the other feline that vanished from one blink to the next. I know all the cats on the farm by name, and that’s not one of ours.
My steps falter and shivers race across my shoulders. “Scotty? Are you in here?”
“Up here!” His blond head pokes over the side of the straw stack by the door, and he’s grinning as wide as a horse. “Wait till you see what I found!”
“Did you find Dad’s shovel?” Never in a million years would I have thought to look on top of the straw stack. Around it, sure, but on top? I try to think of some reason he’d need it up there, but can’t.
Scotty laughs. “No. This is better. Way better.”
“Says you.” I set my feather on the ground and clamber up the side of the barn using the sideways slats as ladder footholds until I flop over onto the prickly mass of straw, bits of it already slipping inside my torn jeans and jabbing my socks.
“So what’s the big deal—” I suck in a breath at the blue lump lying in front of Scotty’s knees.
The lush blue-and-green tail feathers shimmer in the pale light filtering through the barn wall, and I gasp when a tiny, feather-topped head swivels on its slender neck to stare right back at me.
I always thought owls were the prettiest birds out here, but a peacock? It’s like digging for spuds and finding gold.
“Can we keep it?” Scotty gently strokes the wing.
The bird struggles to rise, but falls still again.
“It’s hurt. The leg, I think. Or maybe a wing. I can’t tell yet. It’s male though, definitely.”
“It’s beautiful,” I murmur. Ducks are like that too, with the boys all gussied up and the girls plain brown and boring. “Where’d it come from?”
“It was here. Right here.” He pats the straw. “He came to us for help.”
“It might be lost.” Could it have flown all this way from the Pocatello zoo? No, I don’t think so. That’s miles away. Clear south of town.
It ruffles its tail and catches a sunbeam, the feathers shining brighter than stained-glass windows.
I almost forget to breathe. Dad always said nature was chuck-full of miracles, and now we’ve got a straight-up miracle sitting right in front of us.
“Mom will know what to do. I’ll go get—”
“Wait.” Scotty grabs my sleeve and holds fast. “I heard them talking today. They’re going to sell the animals. All of them.”
“All the pigs and cows?” That happens every year when we take livestock to the sale.
He shakes his head, his gray eyes serious behind the smattering of freckles across his nose. “Them too, but they meant the chickens and geese. Even the horses.”
“Queenie?” My stomach sinks like it’s being dragged under by the plow. “They wouldn’t. Mom would never—” But I know he’s telling the truth because I know they’re selling the farm, and where would we put the animals even if we did keep them? In one of those tiny postage-stamp-sized yards in town? Maybe on the back porch of some microscopic apartment somewhere? Dad used to say people in towns lived like ants, packed in tight with a million places to go but nowhere to stop and breathe.
My throat chokes right off at the thought of him. If Dad were here, he’d never let this happen. Miss Dolly could say her magic words all day long and he’d just laugh at her. Sell the farm? Not on your life. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out. But he’s not here.
And he won’t be ever again.
Mom and Grandpa aren’t thinking straight, and they haven’t been ever since Dolly came. My lips pinch as I try to think what they might do to our peacock. Sell it? Take it to the zoo? Would Dolly demand roast peafowl for dinner? A fancy meal to go with her fancy outfit. Just thinking it makes me shudder. I shake my head, blink hard, and look Scotty straight in the eye.
“You hold the peacock down, and I’ll check for breaks. We’re gonna do this on our own.”
Chapt
er Three
Gentle as can be, I slide my fingers over the bones in his legs, wings, and ribs. His feathers are soft and silky, like new wheat that’s only ankle-high. They cover my hands as I work. At last I sit back. “No breaks that I can find. That means a tiny fracture, or maybe a sprain, but nothing we can splint. Our best bet is to keep him quiet and fed.”
Scotty and I set about making a cage from the panels of our old rabbit hutch. The cage is partly to keep the peacock quiet and partly to keep him safe in case a raccoon or skunk comes by and decides he wants a tasty treat.
While I tie off the last corner, Scotty brings water and food pans filled with chicken scratch and a little cat food, for good measure. Geese and turkeys need the extra protein, so a real wild bird like this has got to need more than grain for dinner. The peacock doesn’t seem to mind the fuss too much—either because he’s weak and tired, or maybe because he knows we’re trying to help.
The graceful neck extends as the peacock pecks at the feed, his tiny black crown of feathers bobbing. I could watch him all day, but the chickens cluck louder and a couple of the hens squawk like all this waiting is the rudest thing ever. All their fuss breaks the spell, and miracle or no, chores are waiting.
“C’mon, let’s let the chickens out. We can come right back when we’re done.”
Scotty lingers by the cage. “Remember when we nursed the goose back to health with Mom?” He tugs on his collar like he does when he’s nervous.
“I remember.” Outside of horses, the birds have always been Mom’s favorites.
“That took weeks. Maybe a month before it could walk again.”
“Yeah, but he got better, didn’t he?”
“What if we don’t have enough time to make him better?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Maybe we can stall—or change their minds.” But I don’t believe it, ’cause I already tried, and it was as much use as standing in a creek, telling the water to go back up the hill.
“Have you seen Momma? Is she making lunch at the house?” Scotty’s eyes drift past mine.
“Maybe. She was at the horse barn before. Let’s get the chores done quick and see. The best thing for a stressed animal is to let it be. We don’t know what he’s been through, but it’s gotta be somethin’ big for him to end up here. We’ll check back later.”
We scuttle back from the peacock and climb down to let the hens out of the coop. I don’t have to look to know the whole flock stands by the door, their pea-sized brains almost overloaded with excitement for the pasture waiting on the other side.
When I pull the sliding door up, an explosion of feathers erupts from inside, and I can’t help but smile at the way the girls come charging out into the sunshine, their wings beating like crazy. None of them really fly, but they hop and run around flapping their wings, pretending as hard as they can. It’s all happy coos and clucks until a Rhode Island Red scratches up a worm—then they’re after her faster than hawks on a hare.
She dashes to the far side of the pasture, worm flapping like a tiny pink flag out the side of her beak. But White Leghorns are faster, and one snatches half the worm right out of the red’s mouth. The rest of the girls switch from chasing the red to the white, and off they go until another one finds a bug and it starts all over again.
Mom calls them characters, but I think they’re more like drama queens. Always preening, squawking, and strutting around. I admit, chickens may be cute, but they’re terrible at sharing.
When we get our chores done, we hunt around for Mom.
T-Rex helps too, sort of. He follows and finds good piles of straw and grass to lie on, watching us with droopy eyes while we look. He’s supposed to guard the whole farm, but I think he decided pups like us need more looking after than most. Difference is, now we watch out for him too.
We find Mom standing between stacks of empty pots with her back against the horse barn wall, eyes closed. Under her freckles, she’s as pale as Grandma’s porcelain dolls—this year more than normal. Her ponytail is loose, having given up for the day trying to hold her strawberry blonde hair up off her shoulders. She’s real pretty, even times like now when she doesn’t care how she looks.
Mom and me have got two skin tones: white with freckles, or burned with more freckles. That’s why we wear long sleeves and the widest cowboy hats we can find all summer. We’ve even got matching sombreros if the wind would ever quit.
Scotty’s the lucky one. He can tan some if he wants—not as much as Dad, but still. Even a little tan is better than none. All Dad ever had to do was think about sunshine and he’d wake up three shades darker.
I open my mouth, but close it again, ’cause I don’t know how to say the things I need to say:
Are you really gonna let Dolly sell the horses? Do you know the thought of losing Queenie—or anyone else—feels like jamming a crowbar in my chest and prying up my heart?
Even if I did figure out how to say everything all knotted up inside me, I’m not sure she’d hear me. Not really.
Her eyes flutter open, and she smiles at us like she’s waking from a dream. “Hey, darlin’. What’s going on?” She pulls us into a hug, each of us tucked under a wing.
I point at the upturned pots. “Calendar says we’re supposed to transplant tomatoes this week. Can we get some starts from McKee’s?”
Scotty nods. “They have baby goats in the petting zoo there. We should go.”
“We’re not getting goats.” Mom kisses the top of his head, then leans in to kiss mine, but I pull back.
“But we can get tomatoes, right? We need seeds and stuff, too. Radishes need to go in, and beets, carrots, peas. . . . It’s time to plant.”
The longer she waits before answering, the harder it is to breathe, like my lungs can’t work without the right answer.
“I don’t know, honey. Maybe we don’t need a garden this year.”
I wave my hand like it’s no big deal. Except it is a big deal. “Don’t worry. Me and Scotty can plant it ourselves. Maybe Dad left some seeds from last year. We can check. You don’t have to help if you don’t want to. I know what to do.”
Gardens are a promise. With planting comes harvest—but you gotta be around to do the work. The calendar says radishes take twenty-two days to grow. Less than a month. What does it mean if Mom doesn’t even want to plant those?
“How about we go for a walk instead?” Mom says. “The three of us. We haven’t been up to the hills yet this spring.”
That’s not the answer I wanted, but at least she wants to do something other than study for her nursing school or hide in her room. Heck, I’m excited she wants to do anything at all.
“Can we take the horses?” Scotty asks. “You could ride Queenie.”
She shakes her head before he finishes speaking. “I can’t. Not today.”
But she could, if she wanted to. “You wouldn’t have to ride,” I say. “We could walk them with their lead ropes. They haven’t been anywhere but pasture and barn since—”
Mom pushes away from the wall. “I need to work on something in the house. You both see if your grandpa needs help. Okay?”
She doesn’t wave, or look back, or say goodbye. Standing together, we watch Mom disappear into the house.
“Paige, why does Mom hate the horses now? Did Queenie do something bad?”
“No, Queenie didn’t do anything.”
His fingers twist, and he drops his gaze to the ground. “Did we?”
“What?”
“Did we . . . do something? Is that why?”
“No. It’s not your fault. C’mon. Let’s go check our peacock.”
His question rings in my head as we walk to the barn, even though I try to ignore it. I already know the real answer.
If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.
An hour later, a car engine purrs up the lane, and T-Rex growl
s.
The Cadillac is back, and I glare at it. No one will talk to me about what’s going on, and I can’t fix it until I know what’s broke. I’m done with being in the dark. I tug Scotty’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
Dolly’s up the stairs and inside before we can get to the house, so I pull Scotty down beside me to huddle against the wall under the open dining room window. The grown-ups have already started talking, Grandpa with his garbled voice, like he’s holding a mouthful of chick feed in his cheeks and has to talk through the crumbs. Then my mom’s sweet voice—too quiet and hollow without the music that should be there.
Drowning them both out is Dolly with her list of must-do’s, and you’ll-see-I’m-right’s, and trust-me-I-know-what-I’m-talking-about’s. I swear it’s like the snake on that jungle movie saying “Trust in me” all the time with its eyeballs full of swirls and colors. Maybe that’s how hypnotizing works—just say “trust me” a hundred thousand times till people’s brains turn to mush and they give in.
Miss Dolly says she moved here because her husband is a professor at ISU. I’m not sure exactly what a psychology professor teaches, but it sounds awful sneaky, and I bet he taught her everything he knows.
“How soon can you empty out the barns?” Dolly asks, and something clinks—maybe Mom’s china tea set. The thought of Dolly’s poisoned lips touching those special cups makes me sick. We’ll have to wash them with turpentine to get all the lipstick off.
“You want the equipment out?” asks Mom.
“Of course. And everything else as well. They must be vacant to show properly, trust me. The animals have got to go. The smell alone would turn prospective buyers away.”
“But it’s a farm.” Grandpa clears his throat. “Wouldn’t they expect it to smell like one?”
Dolly laughs. “No. Buyers want the ambiance of the country but none of the distasteful reality. You’ll need to remove the manure and replace it with fresh straw, of course. We want those barns smelling sweet! By the time I’m done, this’ll be the prettiest farm in Idaho. Of course, if we get lucky and have a developer take interest, all that wouldn’t matter, and the payoff would be far larger.”
The Wish and the Peacock Page 2