“Mr. Krikey,” he said in an accent that could only have been cut from a private school upbringing.
“Yes, sir, please come inside.”
She pointed in the direction of the living room couch. He took off his shoes and set them neatly to the side of the door, near the big freezer in which they kept the meat Dylan and Pa hunted for every fall. Then Mr. Krikey walked through the kitchen over the mud tracked in by Dylan. Mr. Krikey’s eyes seemed to take in everything.
The dishes, thankfully clean, by the sink. The heavy stain of grease on the ceiling over the stove. Curled lips of the linoleum tile floor. And the photo of Mother with the burnt-out bulbs around the frame. His nostrils flared at the aroma of fried chips, and his finger ran along the edge of the kitchen table. She doubted he knew that she noticed, but she did. And it bugged her.
When he sat on the couch, a cloud of dust escaped the cushions and hung in the air between them like so many questions.
“Can I get you a drink of water?” she asked. She would have offered Mr. Krikey a soda too, even though it would’ve upset her father, but after the way the interviewer inspected the kitchen, she wasn’t sure he deserved it. He was judging her.
Mr. Krikey tapped a pen point on his clipboard.
“No water,” he looked down as if to double-check the name, “Limphetta, I won’t take much of your time.”
She sat and smiled at him, her hands clasped before her. Spine straight. His watery eyes swept over the skirt fashioned from drapes, and bunny slippers made from real rabbits.
“So you’ve two older brothers and your mother’s passed on,” he said and followed her eyes to where her mother stared at them through the music room doorway. “I see.” And he made a mark on the page. “And your father works the farm? Does he have any other jobs?”
Limpy shook her head. “Just potatoes.”
“Pot-ta-toes,” he said, as he wrote. “Got it. I’ll be sure to pick up a bag on my way out.”
“Five dollars,” she said and he stared in confusion. “That’s how much it costs. You can leave it in the tin at the Tater Hut.”
His smile, which had somehow remained static, now twitched. “Hmm . . . My job, Limphetta, is twofold. It is to ensure that only students who can demonstrate financial need are selected. You will score well.” His smile stabilized. “The second part is to determine if you’re deserving of exceptional consideration . . . we have many applications.”
Limpy nodded. “I am exceptionally needy. The neediest!”
“Good . . . now to the checklist.” He tapped the paper. “Who do you consider a brilliant artist and why?”
“Uh . . .” Her mind drew a blank. She didn’t know many artists. The wife of Burt, the pig farmer, did some watercolors that had won first prize at the County Fair, but were they brilliant? At the same fair was a chainsaw wood-carving contest and sometimes those sculptures were sold. “I dunno, a lot of it seems pretty good. It’s in the eye of the beholder, right?”
“Beauty, yes,” he droned. It looked like he might have put an X beside the question.
“What artistic skills do you have?”
Grading, sorting, sack sewing, potato picking, cooking . . .
She had no skills! Not a one that didn’t include a potato. She had no work history that didn’t include the farm.
“I can cook, sew, sort . . .”
“Sew . . .” he wrote.
“I like to draw, too.”
He glanced up to inspect the walls, but they were filled with the pictures of her mother—not Limpy’s drawings. He crossed something out.
It was then that she heard the snap of a soda can and glanced over her shoulder to see a can on the kitchen counter tilting away from her. But no one was there.
Mr. Krikey cleared his throat. “Well?” He’d asked something, but she hadn’t heard what. Had been paying attention to the magic, floating can. “What are you learning at school . . .” He looked down at his checklist again. “. . . Limphetta.”
The interview wasn’t going well. She needed to do something. She needed to be exceptional. “Oh, school is wonderful, Mr. Krikey.” She needed to become the person she imagined she could be. A normal kid. An exceptional kid. “I’m learning . . . Latin . . . carpe diem, seize the day and all.” He lifted an eyebrow, but Limpy had long ago learned that the more specific and intricate the lie the more truthful it sounded. “And Greek . . . I’m studying from the great texts of Paradise Lost and The Odyssey. In math I’m learning the mechanics of our potato grader, determining which angles are best for the movement of potatoes and how we might improve harvesting times. For science I’m combining the genes of two different potato strains to create a better quality spud that’s more resistant to blight.”
Mr. Krikey smiled for real now and checked off a series of boxes in one stroke of his pen. “Good, good, Limphetta, I’m glad to hear. Exceptional.”
And as she told her lies she found herself believing them, or at least wondering why she’d never actually tried to cross two potato strains, which seemed like a good idea.
“Oh, but I must give credit to my father and his keen interest in classic literature.”
Mr. Krikey cast his gaze about the room as if in search of evidence of her father’s interest, jerking away when he met her mother’s ever-focused stare.
“Would you believe my father can recite classics word for word,” Limpy added, to which Mr. Krikey raised his other bushy eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t have believed a young woman could learn anything more than how to peel a potato here!” He laughed as if they shared a joke, and Limpy joked along even though she was hurting so much. But the more she hurt, the more she lied.
And so it continued until Limpy had convinced the man that not only had she spent her life hard at the books, rather than the grader, but that she would soon be ready for college admission. Exceptional indeed. Two times she heard a soda can tab snap. And two times she ignored it. At a third she frowned.
“Would you excuse me for a minute?” She didn’t wait for the answer and rushed into the kitchen. Chup lowered a can gripped by its tiny talons. Two empty cans rolled on the counter. Her father’s treasured supply of soda had dwindled by half.
“Chup,” she hissed. It shied away from her and gave a look of such wide-eyed fear that Limpy’s frustration evaporated. “Oh, Chup, where do you even put all of it?”
But at least she discovered something it drank: Coca-Cola.
Chup vibrated with sugar, eyes shining.
“Settle down, Chup, this is really important.”
Chup clucked and bounded high into the air before landing and letting loose a gigantic burp that reverberated throughout the house. Mr. Krikey leaned forward and stared at her through the kitchen doorway.
“Excuse me?” Limpy said, covering her mouth.
When she looked back Chup was gone. Fear at what her pet might do twisted in her stomach. She pushed away from the counter and returned to Mr. Krikey. “Sorry about that. Better out than in, right?”
“Indeed.” He made another mark on the page and frowned once more at the decor of the room. It seemed to Limpy that the spell of her exceptionality had broken.
“Have you ever sold any artwork?” he asked.
She shook her head. An “X.”
“Has any gallery displayed your work?”
Another “X.”
“Won any prizes?”
X.
“No, but I’ve never—” she began.
“No?”
“No.”
X.
She rolled her eyes and froze. Chup hung from the living room chandelier. The lights swung back and forth. With each swing the fixture creaked. Soda burbled in Chup’s belly. She lowered her eyes so as not to draw attention. If Mr. Krikey glanced up her secret would be out.
“Mice in the attic,” she said to explain the squeaks, but Chup was just starting its routine.
Yip, yip! Chup sprang like a gymnast on the parallel bars,
flipping and swinging. Limpy shuffled her bunny slippers on the floor to cover its noises.
“Feet are so cold,” she said.
Mr. Krikey turned the page and opened his mouth to ask another question, when Chup gave a tiny squeal that sounded a bit too gleeful. It shot through the air. Limpy lunged to catch it, but she was too late.
For a second Limpy thought Chup had disappeared. But then Mr. Krikey made a strangled sound and clutched at his throat. His face turned from pink to red and darkened to purple before she realized what had happened. He’d swallowed Chup.
“Oh, no,” she said, betting this didn’t happen at most interviews. Mr. Krikey began to jerk.
Climbing onto the couch, she brought both her fists down on the small of his back. Mr. Krikey’s arms flailed. With a second hit, he coughed Chup out, sending it flying across the floor, where it rolled into the wall before scurrying into the music room.
Gawp! Gawp, gawp. Mr. Krikey sucked air like a fish on a dock. Finally he staggered to his feet and pointed into the music room.
“What was that?” he cried.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Krikey, that . . . that was a mouse. We have jumpy ones.”
“Washroom, washroom, disease, pestilence, plague!” He scraped at his tongue with his fingertips.
She pointed. And before she could stop him he went through the wrong door. “The other door,” she said as he stumbled into her bedroom. She buried her head in her hands.
After a moment of silence he dashed to the washroom. Water ran in the sink. When the taps groaned off, rather than return to the living room, Mr. Krikey wandered back into her bedroom.
“This is your room?” he called.
“Yes, sir,” she replied, trying to remember how much of a mess she’d left it.
When he returned, his face had gone deadly serious. “That will be all, Miss O’Malley. We will look forward to your artist statement and submission. Good luck with their completion.”
She nodded and saw him to the door. “Did I do okay? The interview, I mean?”
He didn’t look up as he slipped on his shoes, but replied, “As I said, we look forward to your statement and your work.”
“I’m sorry about the mouse,” she said as he stepped through the door.
He lifted his hand and gave another tug at his tongue.
On the path, Mr. Sotheby was speaking with a man in a shiny silk suit who turned at Mr. Krikey’s approach. Her father watched as he leaned over a pitchfork.
“Excuse me,” the silk-suited man asked Mr. Krikey. “Don’t you think this would make a great location for a spa?” Mr. Krikey pulled up short and muttered something about rodent infestations. But the silk-suited man’s eyes gleamed as he went on to point out the location for the pools, another for a sauna and steam bath. “All of this would, of course, have to go.” His hand swept over the farmhouse and barn.
Limpy eased the door shut. She stared at the fridge and stole a large can of Coke. She drained it in six swallows. The way Mr. Krikey had said that they looked forward to her submission—that had sounded good, hadn’t it? If not for Chup, everything might have gone well.
Her father burst in through the door. “So?” he asked.
Although she’d almost killed the poor interviewer, Limpy shrugged, holding back a burp that had taken up residence halfway down her throat. “I won’t know until after I send my work.”
He shook his head and seemed about to say something before frowning at the empty cans. “I don’t trust a man who drinks so much of another man’s soda,” her father said. Visible through the window, Mr. Krikey bumped in his car down the rutted drive.
Limpy loosed a fantastic croak that made her feel a little better. Her pops stared at her with suspicion.
“Can I work on my art now?” she asked.
A vein swelled on her father’s forehead, snaking from the corner of his eye, along his temple, and up into his dark hair.
“You’ve got work from yesterday to do and then the eggs need collecting. Your art won’t sink into a swamp.” His eyes flicked back to the disappearing Mr. Krikey, the enthusiastic gestures of the silk-suited man, and then to Limpy.
Her lip trembled. “You don’t want anything good for me, do you?” she asked.
He paled and shook as if he wrestled with something deep inside of himself. “It’s not that, Limp. I . . . I need you here. We all do.”
Quit your dreams, Limphetta, ghost mother said. Be a help and not a hindrance, my good potato skin.
Limpy’s head drooped to her chest as she headed into her room to change. When she opened the door, Chup bounced on her bed, its fur oiled to a lustrous sheen, mouth open so wide she could have fit her fist inside. It flipped and spun.
“Chup, shh,” she said and shooed it into the hope chest.
Limpy patted Chup and it nuzzled her fingers. The fine down of its fur dusted the gray woolen blanket as if it molted.
“What’s made you stronger, Chup? Tell me so I can give you more of it. Soda? Too much is bad for you.” Her friend had grown. Chup scratched at the woolen blanket, raking tufts of it with its claws until it had created a warm nest.
Then came the roar of her father. Why wouldn’t he let her even try for the scholarship? Limpy didn’t understand.
“You stay right here,” she told Chup and shut the lid. It bonked against the bottom, but the sound was muffled and soon stopped. On top of her dresser, along with the letter she had started for the scholarship committee, were a pencil and sheets of blank paper. The paper she folded and slid into her apron pocket with the pencil. Today she would take her rubbing of the box.
Chapter 10
Heat shimmered from the tractor hood. Dylan growled at Limpy as she passed the potato grader and trudged to where over two dozen bags waited to be stitched. She sat on her stool, saw that her father hadn’t fixed the stitcher from yesterday, and set about sealing the bags with needle and twine. Her fingers would be bleeding by the day’s end, but she knew better than to complain. Her father was especially scowly. Limpy didn’t know if it was due to the luxury spa man, or Mr. Krikey’s visit.
Determined to make the rubbing and reach the library to research its meaning, Limpy skipped lunch and kept at stitching, threading twine through the heavy bags. When half the sacks were sealed, she dragged the bags to the ladder and lowered each down, not even glancing at the windowsill for fear of distraction, not until the last bag was piled high. Then she dared risk a look at the box.
The box lid lay open. Her heart beat a little quicker. Inside, the red egg was cracked and the shell empty. Perhaps it had been the rats. But rats wouldn’t have left the two remaining eggs. Would they? No, more likely the egg had hatched. She searched to see where the hatchling might have fallen, scanned for the tracks of cats, or signs of a struggle all too common in the dog-eat-dog world of the farm. But there was nothing, nothing except the sense of eyes watching . . . staring.
She peered at the surface of the lid, trying to decipher the strange words, only to be frustrated that she didn’t have a clue what they meant. Placing the sheet of paper overtop, she used the pencil to transfer a copy of the carving. When she was done she folded the paper and shoved it back into her pocket. Two eggs remained: the blue egg and the white egg. These she needed to keep safe from predators.
And just as the thought came to her, the white egg rattled. Limpy clapped her hand across her mouth to keep from crying out and stepped back. Something in the corner of the cellar scurried away and she whirled, hunting with her eyes, but the shadows were too deep. Was it the other hatchling, or a predator eager for another meal?
“Shoo,” she said to the gloom.
The knocking of the white ball grew louder and she turned back. A small, hooked talon pierced the shell. A loud chirp reverberated from deep in the cellar shadows. Somewhere in the gloom scurried another Chup. Soon she might have a litter of them. The talon disappeared back inside and then pierced the shell again half an inch farther along. Then again. The pe
rforations were equally spaced and near perfectly straight. When the line reached halfway around, the talon disappeared entirely. Limpy held her breath.
Outside her father shouted, “A spa! A spa! You hear that, boys? We should’ve been feeding city folk potato chips while they soaked in stinking mud. We’d be rich.” Then he went silent.
After a long moment, the creature inside jumped and struck the top of the egg. On its third attempt the shell split, and sitting in the empty casing was a creature about twice the size of Chup when it had first hatched.
Enormous eyes were set well to the sides of its head near two large ears. The ears slanted upward toward a fuzzy mane of white hair smeared back by the birth gel. While Limpy watched, the creature twisted to peer out the window and then curled inward to form a furry, white ball that twisted back slowly, opening again like a flower blooming.
The blue egg began to rock back and forth. What to do? She needed to keep these ones safe from her father and brothers and whatever else might prowl the barn. But she had to hurry. She spotted some old potato sacks and had an idea. She would stitch the creatures inside a sack. A chill swept over her. Just like her mother had trapped Limpy in her dreams, she’d capture these poor creatures? No, this was different. She was protecting her friends, not jailing them.
Within a few minutes, the box with the eggshells, egg, and her hatchling were safely stitched inside with a few potatoes she hoped might still serve as food.
“I’ll be back,” she explained. “And I’ll bring you something good to eat.”
By the time she climbed the ladder, another six bags waited to be stitched and she set to work without a word, thinking about her charges below. The skin on her thumb was first to split, and by the time she’d sewn the final stitch in the last bag all her fingers were sticky with blood.
She pulled the sacks over to the cellar and, as she turned to descend the ladder, excited chittering burst out below. The noise raked gooseflesh over her arms. It sounded . . . hungry.
“Eggs, Limp—go fetch eggs for dinner,” her father shouted. He and her brothers had shut down the tractor and grader, done for the day, and pushed the equipment back into the barn.
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