by Beth Kephart
For Becca Weust
Full of Shine
Moon’s in bloom,” Hawk says. “Just hanging there. No strings.”
“Big and fat?” I ask. Through the wall that divides us.
“Biggest. Fattest. I’m heading out.”
I hear the springs of Hawk’s mattress creak. I hear him creep across the floor. I hear the screen in his window go up and his one foot crump and his other foot crump down onto the roof that we call our pier.
“Show’s on,” he says.
I push up to my elbows. See Hawk through my window, his pale face and his big eyes. He presses his face up against the screen, and then he turns and puts his arms out for balance. The moon pours its bucket of yellow down.
“Coming?” he says, his voice on the edge, in the dark.
I creak up. Put my feet on the floor. Crouch so my hair won’t snag on the low rafters, so my head won’t scrape. I cross the planked floor and push the screen up and away from the sill. Catch my breath. Swing my daddy long legs and my daddy long arms out into the night, sit down, butt-scoot forward, reach the edge, and throw my legs out into the air beside Hawk’s.
Catch more breath.
Fix my vision.
Hawk kicks his bare feet. I kick mine. The air freckles up with fireflies. The trees wave their hands in the breeze. The baled hay we haven’t barned up yet looks like waves rushing in.
“Lighthouse is full of shine,” Hawk says.
I look where he’s looking—toward the old silo where The Mister lives. It’s round and it’s tall and it’s silver. It’s got a red front door and a band of windows around its top that blinks on and off.
“You think he’s in there?” I ask Hawk, feeling my heart flop around between the bones in my chest.
“Where else would he be?” Hawk whispers, as if The Mister could hear us from all the way here, where we are, which he can’t.
“Mom says—”
“I know—” Hawk pulls a stick of dried hay from his hair. He bends it between his fingers. “Shhhh,” he says, for no good reason, because I’m already shhhh-ing.
The farm noises up. There are cows in the cow barn, goats in the goat barn, cats in their cuddle, and the old horse Moe, who snorts like a warthog. Also there’s Mom and Dad in the kitchen with their decaf, talking low, thinking we can’t hear them. Thinking that I haven’t heard the latest news, but I’ve heard it, I’ve heard it plenty.
Sky is zero clouds and star stuff. It’s August 3 and has not rained for twenty-two days. Morning, noon, night, Dad drives his old Ford to the top of the forest hill to check the water in the cistern. The water that feeds the pipes in the house, the cows in the field, the pigs in the sunflower stalks, the goats and their milk, the seeds in the earth. The water that vanishes inch by inch. When it rains, we pull the pots and pans and buckets to the roof and watch the water in them rise. When it rains, Mom hangs the laundry on the old rope to wash. When it rains, Dad checks the cistern so many times Mom sometimes makes him walk so he’ll save the gas in the truck.
But now we’re on water rations, and here is Hawk and here is me, sitting at the edge of the pier, waiting for our ship to come in.
“Interesting,” Hawk says.
He gets to his feet, sets himself up into a crouching rock, and watches. I think about Dad and Hawk and sometimes me, with my helpful height, building those three rooms into that old silo, a Dad scheme to save the farm—another Dad scheme; he’s had lots. Each round room sits ten feet above the next round room. A spiral staircase dials through the cutout middle of each floor. Sun pours through the top window band and down the spiral steps and ends in a pretty yellow pool on the first floor. The table and the benches and the bed were built round to fit the round. The last time I was there, the place still smelled like sawdust. It smelled like the refrigerator motor, too, and the lavender wreath Mom had hung.
It was Mom who advertised the place. Mom who wrote the words, and they worked: Come. Stay. Sixteen days ago, The Mister drove up the dusty back road in a Cadillac limo so wide and long Hawk gave it a name, and that name is Silver Whale. I’d been down in the garden with my basket and Hawk had been out with the pigs in the stalks and Dad had been up on the hill with the Ford. I’d heard the puttering car, didn’t think much of it.
I didn’t stand up until I heard Hawk running.
“To the pier!” he said, flying past.
By the time I got in the house and up the stairs and out of my window and onto the pier beside Hawk, The Mister had arrived. He wore a blue coat, Hawk said, narrating, on account of my eyes. He carted his things from the trunk of the limo through the red of the door by way of the rusty wheelbarrow Dad had left there once the work on the lighthouse was done. He opened the door with the key Mom had left hanging the night before from a little outdoor hook. He was a small man with a hunched back, Hawk said, or maybe he was just hunching under the weight of things. “How many things?” I asked. “Lots,” Hawk said.
Come.
Stay.
That was two weeks and two days ago—and all we’ve figured out since is that The Mister came from far away. He wants his privacy, Mom says. No fresh tomatoes, no slice of pie, no two kids named Hawk and Sara showing up at his front door.
“No prying eyes,” Mom said. “Okay? Nobody spying on The Mister.”
“Can’t help what I see,” Hawk said. Mom shook her head.
Now, past the bales of hay that Dad cut and raked and bound, the bales he hasn’t loaded yet into the old hay shed, I squint. All I can see through the windows of the lighthouse is a white streak, like a cloud tied to a string.
“Can’t figure this,” Hawk says, rocking and rocking.
“Can’t figure what?”
Hawk rocks. Keeps his figuring to himself, which drives me just about nuts. “Whoa,” he finally whispers. “Like a circus act. The guy’s wheeling around on a unicycle! Rounder and faster by the minute.”
“Unicycle?”
“Serious.”
“The old man?”
“Give me a sec.”
I wait. Across the dark, under the stars, all I see is that puff of cloud being yanked around by a string. The Mister’s hair, it’s got to be.
“You rock any harder, you’ll fall,” I say, because Hawk has stopped reporting again and sometimes it’s just too lousy to get your news secondhand, to not see what you want to see, to be relying on your best friend who is your brother. Sometimes I just can’t stand that what I see best is my own imagination and not what’s out there, in front of me. So that right now I’m seeing with my mind’s eye, and what I’m seeing is a figment of thought, by which I mean I half see, half imagine Hawk spying so hard that he tips and he falls into the crunch of apple trees. I half see and half imagine me scrambling through the window and down the stairs and running and Dad calling after me and Mom crying and two kids out of two kids in the Scholl family needing doctors the Scholls can’t afford. That’s what I see, while Hawk gets to see the actual unicycling Mister.
I catch Hawk’s arm in the hook of my own. I yank him back. He falls flat on the roof and looks up and I lie back and something blinks.
“He knows we’re here,” Hawk whispers, even quieter now. “The Mister.”
“You got proof?” I say, my heart flopping hard.
“He turned off the light. Just this second, now. It was on and now it’s off and that means that he’s seen us.”
“Seen you, maybe. Not seen me.”
“Like you’re not here?” Hawk says. “Like you wouldn’t be the easiest of us to see?”
“Stop it,” I whisper, louder than him. “Just—”
“Mom can’t know, right?” Hawk says. “Mom can’t know, and we’re not telling.”
“You don�
��t tell, I won’t tell,” I say, and breathe. More trouble is the last thing we Scholls need.
Yellow Orange Red
Living in the lap of luxury,” Dad says.
It’s morning, and he’s got flapjacks on. They bubble in the skillet. They crisp. He stacks three to a plate and slabs a square of butter up top. Sets out honey from Mom’s bees and berries from the berry season, gets our freshly squeezed OJ, gives Mom a kiss. He pulls his black cap down over his red-brown curls and wipes his hands on his jeans, and now we sit like we’ve got everything we need.
Couldn’t raise enough cows, milk enough goats, honey enough bees, thresh enough seeds, crust enough pies to pay for all we Scholls need.
Outside, above the rotten smoosh of the plunked-down apples too small and bitter to eat, the blackflies sing.
“Good ones,” Mom says, in compliment of Dad’s flapjacks.
“Best of the season,” Dad says. Digs in.
Hawk looks at me.
I don’t look at Hawk.
We’ve got our secrets to keep.
We eat.
We eat.
We eat.
“Hear that?” Mom says now.
Dad swipes his cap off, tilts his head. “That Old Moe?” he says.
“Old Moe,” Mom says, pulling her hair from her neck on account of the heat. “And the goats.”
I put my fork down, swallow hard, listen. That’s not just Old Moe. That’s not just goats.
“That’s the breeders,” Hawk says. “The chickens, crying.”
“Bear come down from the woods,” Mom says. “Must be.”
“Couldn’t be,” Dad says. Mom always thinks of bear first, because bear’s her biggest worry. Dad always says whatever he can say so that Mom won’t worry. It only works sometimes.
“Snake?” That’s Hawk. He hates the squirmy things.
Mom stands, her face full of worry. Dad stands too, and now they crowd in at the kitchen sink and lean toward the window and another of those breeders screams. We hurry to our feet, and because I’m so tall, I see. Over Mom and Dad and through my glasses and through the window: smoke like wisp clouds floating across the roof, too close. Smoke getting grayer. Smoke puffing from behind the house, around the corner, and my heart starts to pound and pound.
“Sara,” Mom says now, her voice too calm, scary calm. “Dial 911.”
“Mom?”
“Just like we’ve practiced, Sara. Hawk, you know your part.”
We see the smoke. We smell the smoke. We don’t see the flames. We stand like we’re glued to the floor, too scared to be anything but stuck, and then we’re running—through the kitchen and out the back door. Dad to the pond and Hawk to Old Moe and Mom to the shed where we keep our ten-pound ABC extinguisher, the dry-chemical kind, best there is, Dad always says, like buying the right ABC is our best chance of surviving. Maybe it is. I rush for the phone, and the 911 lady picks up and I talk like Mom would want me to. I ask for help, precise and calm. I tell them Scholl farm twice, precise and calm, loud and clear. Saying twice might save us.
“On their way,” the lady says, but I know where the engines live, ten miles down the road. I know we’re all volunteer out here, and between everything there are miles and hills and the time it takes for people to go running, to go driving, to hop the engine and drive more hills. I know we’re in high summer in drought season and the pond is low. I know we can’t afford this, but this is happening.
The air so heavy when I open the door, and Hawk running Old Moe out of the shed, and the peacocks sloppy and squalling, and Dad calling to Mom and me calling to them—brigade is coming—but now I see where the flames are jumping from, I see where the fire got its start: in the shed where we keep the other half of our hay, which can mean only this one thing: mold heat, spontaneous combustion. Never bale hay too moist, the farm rule goes. Moist makes mold and mold makes heat and heat makes fire in drought season in a barn where everything is dry already, and the hay is half the hay we’re counting on to feed all the hay eaters we’ve got. A jump of fire tries to touch the sun. Another jump, another—through the roof and out the one square window, which isn’t white anymore, which is the colors yellow, orange, red, and the fire crackles, it burns, and we’d never bale the hay too soon, but we baled it too soon, must have.
The hay shed is beside the goat shack. The goat shack is beside the breeder birds. The breeder birds are beside the tractor shed. The tractor shed is beside the forest. The house is right here, on the other side of a thin dirt drive—the house with our lives in it, the cellar with my seeds in it, the garage with the machines Dad isn’t finished paying for.
Please please please, and the fire burns.
“The goats,” Mom calls, working the extinguisher.
“The birds,” she calls, and now Hawk is back from parking Old Moe down the long drive, by the Pig Village. He’s setting more birds free and running after them, chasing them out of the smoke, and Mom keeps working the extinguisher and her tears burn down her face.
Dad is back and forth, pond to flames, two sloshing buckets in each hand. He’s out of breath, but he keeps on running, and the fire is about a thousand licks of flame; it burns brighter and higher with every minute gone. I turn and look down the road for the volunteer brigade, but they’re not here yet, and if the siren’s screaming, I can’t hear it over the sounds of the birds and the goats and the flames. We need the proper hose, the tank of water, the volunteers and their ladders and flameproof boots, and the goats need me, and I turn and run.
“Faster we go, easier we make this,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady, trying to persuade Molly, Polly, Jolly, and Jo out of the dark corner of their own shed, where they’re stuck together in a pack—all of them bleating and butting and kicking the hay at their own hooves, feeling the doubled-up heat of the smoke.
“For your own good,” I tell those goats. “Come here.” If they hear the fear in me, there’ll be fear in them. I try for steady, I try for in command. I’ve got ropes and they’ve got collars, and I fit them on and tug. It shouldn’t be this hard. It is.
“Sara!” Mom calls. “Be careful in there! Be quick!”
I’m careful. I’m as careful as the goats will let me be careful. I’m talking to them, stroking their egos, promising a pig visit—a little grazing between trees. But smoke is in the air that I breathe, and so it’s the air they breathe and they resist.
“Come on!” I tug all four at once. “Just! Please!” But they won’t budge, and I hear the second-story timbers of the big shed fall, and now maybe parts of the roof, and I hear Dad calling Mom to step away. “You can’t save it, love, save yourself.”
“I need some help!” I hear Hawk now, chasing the birds. “I need—somebody. Help.” I need help too because Molly, Polly, Jolly, and Jo are full of screams.
The smell is hurt in the nose, burn in the eyes. The sound is Dad calling Mom and Mom calling Hawk and the birds screaming. The engines are still down the road—five miles now? three?—and Dad is calling that the pond is too low and that there’s not much more water he can dig out with his buckets, and Mom is saying that the ten-pound is empty, gone, no more chemicals, and finally Molly starts to listen to me, stops kicking the floor and tugging away from her rope. She trots in my direction, her deciding done, her better sense succeeding past her scaredness.
“You good girl,” I say, hugging her hard, and now, like Molly’s the president of the Scholl goats, the others start trotting too, following her lead. I’m out of the goat shed and onto the dusty dirt road, past the ugly black half of the white hay shed, which has no roof now, no window, no second floor, no hay, and I can’t stop to look for what is left because if I do, I won’t be able to run again. I make it all the way to Pig Village, where Old Moe is tied up to a tree. I loop the goats onto the hooks on the pig shed, check the knots. I tell them, “Listen to Old Moe and the pigs.”
“I’ll be back,” I promise. Turn. Press my hand to my heart and see, down the drive, the flames
above the half of the shed that is barely standing there. The hay in the shed is gone and soon the shed will be gone and the fire could keep jumping from dry thing to dry thing, it could take every Scholl thing except the Scholls, and now the earth is trembling beneath my feet, like an earthquake. I turn in the other direction, toward Mountain Dale Road, and even if most of what I see is blur, I know what’s coming. I start running, even if I’m not supposed to run, even if I can feel the stretch and pull of the beating heart of me, because it’s Charlotte and Jane with their twin pink tractors, coming. It’s Mac King with his red slurry tanker. It’s Ruth and Michael in their dusty pickup. It’s Isaiah in his horse-drawn carriage. The pigs turn like a salute. Old Moe and Molly and Polly and Jolly and Jo hoof at the dirt. I wave my long, long arms, shouting. “Started at the hay shed! We’re running out of juice!”
They can’t hear me, and it doesn’t matter because they know what to do, they have smelled the smoke, they have seen it rise, they have called to each other: Go. The earth quakes harder as they tractor past, truck past, gallop past, get farther down the drive toward Mom, who is running now, toward Dad, who throws the buckets down, and Hawk, who knows how to work a slurry, how to get the water spitting out. Charlotte and Jane have brought their own ABCs. Isaiah’s got one too. Ruth and Michael have water tanks in the back of their truck, and now, at last, the yellow truck with its pumps and water is coming.
“Sara,” Mom says when I get back down the road. “Take over on the birds.” Charlotte throws her wide arm across Mom’s thin back. Isaiah is helping with the slurry. It’s my job to catch the birds that Hawk set free to save.
We need those birds.
We need everything.
Catch a Bird
Catch a bird, catch a beating heart.
Catch a bird, catch another day’s eggs.
Catch a bird, catch a friend, catch a squawk.
Catch a bird, and the fire burns, but it burns less now. The air is singed. When I look back, over my shoulder, from the hill where I’ve gone, into the trees, where the breeder birds part ran part flew part blew, I see the fire going out and the Scholl farm saved and the brigade and the neighbors and the things they brought because no farm can ever be a lonesome thing. I see Mom and Dad and Hawk inside a circle hug. I see what it looks like when I’m not there, what it might look like, someday. If.