The Wish and the Peacock

by Wendy S. Swore

I pucker my lips and make kissy sounds. “Here, pig. Here, pig, pig.”

  The pig’s big ears focus on me, its nose raised and sniffing.

  Mateo lunges, arms reaching, but the pig jumps straight up, tiny hooves kicking grass in Mateo’s face as it bolts toward Mr. Ferro.

  I groan. It’ll take forever to catch it now.

  But Mr. Ferro dives, tackling the pig to the ground and holding on for dear life as its whole body wiggles back and forth, legs kicking.

  “You got it!” Mom laughs, and me and Mateo pounce on the struggle, me grabbing the back legs and Mateo the front.

  Mud smeared up one side of his face, and hair sticking up all over, Mr. Ferro pants from holding on so tight.

  “Alright now,” Grandpa says, “stand up real easy, and don’t let go.”

  It takes some doing, but we get Mr. Ferro up—without losing the pig. We carry it to the truck, where Mr. Rivas and Kimana wait with the others. After bolting the door shut, Mr. Rivas looks Mr. Ferro up and down: his stained pants, and the mud and grass smeared across his face and shirt. “Looks good.”

  Mr. Ferro chuckles and wipes his dirty hands down his shirt, which only makes it worse. “I did say I wanted to get my hands dirty. I like to be thorough in my research.”

  “That was a good catch.” Mateo pats him on the shoulder and grins. “Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  I never thought I’d see a city guy tackle a pig, but I think the dirt stains on his knees suit him better than any fancy clothes.

  “Mateo, ya nos vamos,” Mr. Rivas calls, and they walk to the truck.

  The truck engine growls to life and fills my ears.

  “Honk!” Royal’s warning call sounds from the tree high overhead. “Honk!”

  The tires start to rotate, and I want to run ahead and put my hands out to stop it—a boulder teetering at the edge of a cliff, and there’s no going back.

  I glance at the pigpens: gates open, pasture empty.

  Grunts and squeals echo from inside the metal box trailer instead of from their home where they belong. I see only bits of them peeking through the trailer holes.

  A nose sniffing, an ear, a tail wagging.

  Usually we keep sows and a boar, Dad’s handpicked stock, to make a new start for the next year, but all the pens are empty.

  None are left.

  The truck rolls forward with all of Dad’s pigs, and I ­stumble after it, an invisible force pulling me along, stretching between us like saltwater taffy. It pulls and stretches until it hits the road—and snaps.

  Another piece torn out of me.

  Mr. Rivas swings the truck wide to make the corner, and the trailer snags Dolly’s bundle of pink balloons at the end of our driveway.

  Freed from their tethers, the balloons rise up and away like wishes blown from a dandelion puff.

  Chapter Twenty

  I think I’m probably grounded till I’m dead.

  As far as prisons go, my room is pretty comfy, but still, it’s inside. The gabled windows on the south side of my room tease me with blue sky and open fields, but I’m stuck in here till Mom decides I can come out. In the meantime, Mom’s list of “things I’m not allowed to do” is pretty long. For instance:

  1.No messing with the livestock at all—no paint, no new foods, nothing.

  2.No spiders, beetles, or grasshoppers of any kind.

  3.No changing the electric fence.

  4.No moving poop around to anywhere it shouldn’t be.

  5.No leading city folk into destruction.

  You get the idea. She’s not real happy with me.

  When Grandpa asked for my help this morning, Mom let me out for an hour to get animals fed and watered, and, if I ignored the pigpens, it wasn’t so bad. Then I remembered to check the greenhouse again.

  It frosted last night . . . and I never put Mateo’s plant back inside.

  The plant had perked up after I almost cooked it, but there’s no coming back from being frozen to death. I’ll have to buy him another.

  After chores, I got sent right back to my room.

  I rub my face, flop my hands to the side, and stare at the puzzles on my bedroom walls: framed pictures of farms, mountains, trees, and horses.

  All the things Dad loved.

  Sometimes Royal calls from the trees overhead. “Ha! Ha! Heyo! Heyo!” And I smile to know he’s still here, somewhere, even if I can’t see him. Once, I think I hear an owl too, but it’s too soft to be sure.

  Lying across my bed on my quilted comforter, I tap the dream catcher Kimana hung on my brass bed frame when we were eight years old and watch the feathers rock back and forth. Dream catchers are supposed to guard against nightmares, but when the worst has already happened, what else is there to be afraid of?

  My social studies book lies upside down at the foot of the bed, where I dumped it after wasting an hour trying to find someone from history whose life has anything to do with mine. Mr. Collier claims our lives are threaded together, each of us tethered to the contributions of people who came before us, but all I keep finding are loose ends.

  Something taps against a window, and I sit up.

  The short hallway between my room and Scotty’s room is empty, his room dark except for what light slips past the solar system stickers on his window.

  What was it? Did a cat get in?

  The tapping comes again, and a quick shadow flits across the south gable window as Mateo waves from his perch on the roof, his finger against the glass.

  Floorboards squeak under my feet as I rush to lift the window open. “What are you doing?”

  “You weren’t doing chores. Are you still grounded?”

  “Is the sun still shining?”

  He laughs as I close my social studies book and set it on my old wood desk.

  I sink onto the head of my bed. “Mom had me do chores early so I would be”—my fingers crook into air quotes—“‘out of the way,’ and back where she can keep an eye on me. Except she’s in her room, so what does it matter?”

  “So what do you think? Did our plan help at all?”

  I shake my head. “They didn’t even see what we did. Only Mom and Mr. Ferro. Those other guys? We could have covered the whole farm in spiders and they wouldn’t have cared. All they wanted was the land to build on.”

  “I’m sorry it didn’t work like you wanted.” He stares at the only poster on my wall, a silhouette of a girl and her horse, and rubs the back of his neck.

  I almost tell him about the plant, but I know how disappointed he’ll be. Better to get a replacement first, then tell him. Sorry about the old one, but here’s a new one. Ta-da! My bad.

  “So, I found something.” He sits at the foot of the bed.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, we were digging a fence post, and it turned up.” He pulls something out of his pocket and cradles it in his hand for me to see.

  An arrowhead.

  “Oh, that’s cool.” Plucking it up, I hold it to the light. “Can I keep it?”

  He tugs on my fingertips. “No. You have to give it back—even though you’ve collected things like this your whole life. It’s totally normal that I’d climb up the tree, jump onto your roof, and crawl through your window to show you the thing that I’m not giving you.”

  “Jerk.” I laugh and stand up to place the arrowhead on my shelf beside the row of other arrowheads, unique stones, feathers, shells, and a tiny sugar skull that Mateo gave me. I still remember where he found each one. In fact, there’s nothing in my collection that he didn’t give me. So does that make it my collection, or Mateo’s?

  The shelf below it holds solved Rubik’s Cubes, wooden and metal 3-D brain twisters, and a few boxes of my favorite jigsaw puzzles from when Dad and me used to solve them on my desk. Some of my old robots sit there too. I haven’t dec
ided if I’m going to keep them or not. Mostly I pretend not to see them.

  “You didn’t have to climb in the window.” I lean against my doorjamb. “Mom would’ve let you in.”

  “And you didn’t have to ignore my texts this morning.”

  I shrug. “The phone is downstairs.”

  “So is your mom.” He gets up from the bed and waves me closer to the window. “Come see this.”

  The yard seems the same. Grass, trees, a half-fallen-down wood fence. “What am I looking for?”

  “Look right there.” He points to a high branch of a pine tree, where a slice of blue stands out against the forest green.

  “Royal! He stayed!”

  “Look behind him and up a branch.”

  I squint, but can’t see anything until a barn owl swivels its head.

  “They’re so close,” I say. “Both of them together.”

  “I thought you’d like that. Owls are one thing, but how often do you see a peacock from your bedroom window?”

  “Thank you for showing me.”

  He waves that off. “Have you put food and water back in his cage?”

  “Yeah. We filled it right before he got away.”

  “Keep it filled. If he’s hanging around, maybe he’ll remember where to go when he’s hungry.”

  Below us, Mr. Ferro walks across the yard, a long fishnet over his shoulder. He gazes up at the cottonwood where Royal was yesterday and stares for a long time. At last, he sinks to the ground, drops his pole in the grass, and sits with his legs stretched out in front of him.

  Mateo nudges my elbow as an orange furball creeps onto the lawn. “Looks like he’s been spotted.”

  “Get him, Scuzbag,” I whisper. “Attack of the kitty!”

  Scuzbag winds through the grass, ears pricked and tail straight.

  “Collision in five, four, three,” Mateo counts down, “two, and . . . boom!”

  Scuzbag slides under Mr. Ferro’s arm and crawls onto his lap.

  With a quick glance down, Mr. Ferro runs a hand down Scuzbag’s back, petting him from the hollow between his ears to the tip of his tail.

  “Well, Scuzbag likes him,” Mateo says. “He must not be all bad.”

  “Scuzbag likes everybody. Doesn’t Mr. Ferro have a job or something?”

  “I think this is his job. Research and experience and writing the story.”

  “I don’t want to be his story.” I walk to my desk and pull out Dad’s calendar. His handwritten notes fill every square.

  Today’s square says: Cut asparagus. Lay pipe to north field, east pasture, garden, and corn.

  “Have you seen Grandpa today?” I check which week we’re in. The dates always change, but it’s easy to tell what needs to be done by counting which week of the month we’re in.

  “No.” His phone buzzes, and he glances at the screen. “My dad needs me. I gotta go. Don’t do anything stupid without me.”

  I laugh and pull him away from the window. “It’s a deal. C’mon, you can go down the stairs.”

  We traipse down the stairs and out the door.

  “See ya.” Mateo waves and goes to his bike.

  “Bye.” I walk from one side of the porch to the other, scanning the fields for a tractor or anything moving.

  A lone man stands in the wheat field to the east. He’s too far to see clearly, but even tiny, I’d know that old cowboy hat and overalls anywhere. I trot down the stairs and start after him.

  “Paige?” Mr. Ferro calls. “Have you seen Royal today?”

  “Up there!” I point to the top of the pine, but don’t slow down.

  In the pasture beside the grain, Milkshake munches grass while her calf sprints with the others, in spurts and stops, his little red tail flying straight up like the antennae on a dune buggy. They probably don’t even remember the scary parts of the birth, though I don’t think I’ll ever forget.

  The grain is past my ankles, the ground rich and thawed. Water runs in the canals. Everything’s ready for us to put pipe out on the field. All I need is Grandpa’s go-ahead and we’ll be good to go.

  “Grandpa, can we lay pipe out today?”

  “I thought you were grounded.”

  “I am, but I’m sure Mom would let me work with you.”

  “It may be best if we hold off and see how the next few weeks go.” He scratches the wire-brush whiskers on his chin as we start to walk through the wheat field. “No sense laying pipe if’n we have to pick it right back up again.”

  Grandpa was born to farming like a horse was born to run. Watching him hesitate and second-guess himself is as alien as a horse shying from pasture for fear of squishing the grass.

  Since when do we farm based on what ifs? Farming is full of them. It’s the greatest gamble there is. What if the sun don’t shine? What if a killing frost wipes us out, or a hailstorm pounds our crops into dust? None of that matters. When there’s work to do, we do it.

  “Sometimes you get the job you want to do, and other times you get the job you have to do. This is a have-to-do kind of job. It needs to be done,” I say.

  “Who told you that?”

  “You did! Same as ‘Hoe to the end of the row’ and ‘Put your shoulder to the wheel’ and all that.” I think he’ll laugh, ’cause he always does when I give his advice back to him, but he doesn’t.

  “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Real gentle, I try reasoning. “You don’t have to help if you don’t want to. I can have Scotty drive the pipe wagon and lay it down myself. I know what to do, and I can help him corner if he has trouble.”

  “Let it rest, Paige. I said not today.”

  “No sense in waiting.” I keep my voice all cheerful, like it’s no big deal, even though it is. I promised I’d take care of things, and no pipe means plants will thirst to death. “You can go do whatever you need to. I can take care of this.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Well, isn’t that like choking down a hot poker? Don’t worry about it? I have to worry about it. No one else is. “I can do it. I really can. You don’t have to listen to Miss Dolly. You can change your mind if you want to.”

  Fight it. I will the words to him. Pull Miss Dolly’s lies out by the root.

  His face softens, and I almost hope, but then he shakes his head. “No dice.”

  The words are quiet, but final, and ring with an emptiness that slices straight through me.

  What else is there to say? I drop my gaze to the scuffed toes and stains on Grandpa’s leather boots, because it’s easier than looking him in the eye when all he wants to do is give up. It’s rooted so deep I can’t even touch it.

  Grandpa pats my back and kisses the top of my head, and I almost drown in all the words I don’t dare say. I should know by now that I can’t count on anyone—especially grown-ups.

  I walk away a few steps, and the wishstone bumps against my thigh. I pull it out and roll the smooth stone in my palm, flipping it end over end.

  This is not how this is supposed to end.

  Holding my wishstone tight in my fist, I stand in front of him where he can’t help but see me. “Grandpa?”

  His gaze flicks to mine.

  “I need this.”

  “You heard Miss Dolly. If she doesn’t sell to them developers, like as not, the bank will take our land and turn it into houses or a mall or something anyway.”

  “But they don’t have it yet.”

  “I’m tired, Paige. A man can work a lifetime, and what do we have in the end?”

  I tug his sleeve. “But that’s just it, Grandpa. This isn’t the end. Dad always said there was no quit in you, but all I hear is quit. I already lost my Dad. Don’t make me lose you too.”

  He drops to a knee and takes my chin in his hand. “I’m not lost. I’m right here.”

 
“But I’m lost.” I wipe my sleeve across my nose. “If we leave, you can say you grew crops all on your own, that you did your best all the time. What can I say if I never even get the chance to try? My whole life I’m gonna remember this. That I coulda tried to grow things and make Dad proud, but I didn’t.”

  “Darlin’, I—”

  “Please, Grandpa? Please? If you don’t want to, that’s okay, but I need to try. I can do it on my own. Let me try, please.”

  He pulls me in close and oil, dust, sweat, and peppermint fill my nose.

  “Hush. Sweet pea, your daddy is already proud of you. And so am I.”

  For the rest of the evening, we lay out three-inch pipe.

  Grandpa drives the tractor with the spare pipe wagon behind it real slow, so I can lift each forty-foot section off the trailer, carry it to the row, and slide the ends together, one inside the other, always making sure they latch. Hollow, aluminum lines stretch out behind me in silver ribbons.

  They don’t fit together as good as Legos, or tractor parts, but when the water pressure comes up, the seals close, and water soars out of the Rain Bird sprinklers.

  We don’t get all the fields done, but we finish one and get a good start on another. All the while, Grandpa sits sideways, driving with one hand on the wheel and an elbow on the seat back behind him, so he can look ahead to watch where he’s going, but never lose track of me and where we’ve been.

  When we come in for the night, the stars are just starting to show, but I still check on Milkshake, her calf, and the herd. When I check the chickens, a soft rattle comes from Royal’s open cage, and I smile to see him perched on his sawhorse with his head pillowed against his chest.

  Scotty will be beside himself when I tell him Royal came home.

  Carefully, I close our peacock’s door and promise to let him out again soon.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  On our afternoon bus ride home, Mateo, Kimana, and I each sit on individual seats with our backs to the windows and our legs stretched out. Like always, we’re almost the last ones home.

  I flip through a biography about Henry Ford and half-­listen while Kimana drills Mateo with study cards for their English test.