by Lisa Rusczyk
CHAPTER EIGHT
Maybe they thought I’d get pregnant. They were married over a year before I came along, so it wasn’t that they had married in shotgun style. It takes so long for things to be revealed, and they are almost always found out from your own imagination plundering the treasure chests of memory randomly tossed around the brain.
On Monday night, Mother asked me to find Fidore, who hadn’t been around the house in three days. It was unusual for him to not scratch at the door for Mother’s attentions, but his food bowl was always licked clean.
Fidore liked the barn, so that’s the first place I looked. I dreaded finding a lifeless pet’s body in the straw, as there could be plenty of stray critters feeding from his bowl.
At one time, our barn had been an active one, complete with dairy cows in the stables. However, our family lived on the land around the barn and farmhouse. Dad sold the crop fields and all but two cows long ago to our neighbors, who kept the land fertile. I might mention that the smell of organic fertilizer was as homey as perhaps car exhaust is to you, reporter.
I went into the barn and called to Fidore, but it was Patrick who poked his head out of the hayloft.
“Cleo, hey, Cleo,” he whispered.
“Patrick! What are you doing up there?” The hurt feeling from not seeing or hearing from him in four days was banked at the sight of him.
He smiled down at me and said, “Nice place you’ve got here.”
I climbed the ladder as fast as a squirrel up a tree full of nuts. It was shadowy and the one naked barn light below the loft did not let me see him clearly.
“What is going on?” I tried to sound disturbed, but I couldn’t hide my joy at the sight of his darkened eyes.
He said, “Your barn looked so cozy when I dropped you off that I decided to stay a while.”
I asked him why he hadn’t been at school.
“My new friend hates to see me go,” he said. Fidore crept out of the hay, stretched, yawned, and rubbed his cheek against Patrick’s side.
“There you are,” I said to the cat. “Mother’s been worried to death about you.” To Patrick, I said, “I think Fidore is Mother’s best friend.”
He petted the cat’s arched back and my eyes became more comfortable in the thin light. The shadows fell darker on the left side of his face, particularly around the eye. He looked up and saw my expression.
He shook his head and scratched Fidore’s neck. “I fell off my bike.” He touched his cheek. “Boom,” he said, “Right in the middle of a shortcut between those two fields by the creek. You know what I’m talking about?”
I did. “You’ve been here since Friday?”
He said, “Actually, probably late Thursday night. I’ve been staying out of sight. I didn’t think your parents would be too thrilled with my new homestead after I brought you home so late.”
I said, “Aren’t you starving?”
He licked his lips. “A little hungry.”
“Fidore, come.” I wrapped the cat in my arm. “I’ll be back later,” I started whispering. “I’m taking him to Mother.”
“Cleo,” he said as I descended the ladder. The cat went limp. We both looked up at him.
“You’re not mad, are you?”
I didn’t say anything, but only smiled and breathed so deeply I almost dropped Fidore.
I sneaked out leftover roast and potatoes in Tupperware after everyone had gone to sleep. My white nighty under my robe tugged on the wooden ladder as I climbed up to him and he held out his hand. We lit a small pink candle I brought with me.
He ate the food faster than any beggar I’ve known, and drank all the tea when he was finished. “Is this tea?” he asked.
“Sweetened tea,” I said, “It’s how Mother likes it.”
“Mother has good taste,” he said. “Thanks, Cleo,” but the expression in his eyes said he was still hungry. The hay in his hair looked like gold in the candlelight.
One of the cows below mooed and chewed its food stored from the afternoon. We didn’t need music.
“I brought you this, too,” I said, and handed him a book of poetry my father had given me when I’d turned fourteen. “It’s eighteenth century.”
He ran his thumb over the bind and a strange thought occurred to me that I’d like my spine to be that of the book. He said, “You didn’t tell them I’m here?”
“Stay as long as you want,” I told him.
He looked up at me. “And what if that’s forever?”
I swatted his knee and said something about how bored he’d get. He kept looking me without blinking.
I told him I had to go. He whispered goodnight and I ran all the way back to the house, my heartbeat shaking my whole body. Breathing had never been easier.
I ate lunch with Cecil the next day, and I didn’t need to get up the nerve to ask him if he’d heard any gossip about Patrick’s family. Cecil was brooding and his skinny body hunkered over his cafeteria tray more than usual. I asked what was wrong, and he talked about the war for twenty minutes, more of a monologue and I was the audience. He thought it was a waste of lives, but that the young men should do their duty for America. Both sides of his argument bucked each other like flaming horses in a barn fire. “But the fathers shouldn’t tell us what to do!” he said so loudly that a cheerleader in uniform at the end of the table gave him a dirty look. “My father, trying to tell me it’s what we sons should do. And that Catholic boy you make eyes at - even him I feel some form of pity for.”
I let my homemade sandwich slip to my plate. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the one with the muscles and the eyes as sparkly as a wood troll’s.”
“No,” I said, bypassing my surprise for his observational nature. “Why do you pity him?”
“I heard from his brother last period that his dad’s making him go to war. He’s eighteen, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” I said.
“Huh,” he choked down some beans. “I thought you’d have a case file on him by now.”
“But he’s not going to war. He’s in -” I almost said my barn, but Cecil was still in lecture stance.
“Of course he is. That family’s as broke as any Catholic family comes. But I still feel like if he’s old enough to be drafted, he should let the country or himself decide, not big daddy.”
I couldn’t eat anymore.
Cecil continued. “But who wants to go fight that war? Only ignorant people who can’t read. I mean, really? Who would want to go to war of their own choice? I wouldn’t. Well, maybe if I were saving my children or wife.” He looked at me and continued on. “But is it really like that? Or are we really saving people over there? I’d think not, after some of the slaughter stories about soldiers massacring villagers I’ve heard. Our country is none-too selective, but how else can it be, really, Cleo?” And on he went.