by Beth Kephart
“Not an animal on this farm that does the shuffle,” Hawk says, his voice getting some life back up into it. “Unless it was those geese.”
“It wasn’t geese. It wasn’t anything but boots. Swear on it.”
“But you didn’t see it.” Hawk lowers his Spyglass.
“Shadows is all I saw.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Hawk says. He kicks his legs into the dark. Lifts his Spyglass. “Only one person it could be on that road at that hour,” he says at last. “Gotta be The Mister.”
“Of course,” I say. “But still. No reason for The Mister to be following me.”
“No reason we know of,” Hawk says.
“He could have said something.”
“Could have.”
“He didn’t.”
It’s the end of a hot day. The night has some chill. The trees will be giving up some of their moisture soon, sending it through their roots into the ground into the cistern, but it won’t be enough; every day now, especially now, we need more.
“You know that part,” Hawk says, “of Treasure Island? Right up front, when the box arrives?”
I know that part because Hawk has told me that part, ever since he was nine years old and Dad found that pile of Scribner Classics at the county fair and brought them home for my brother, a Christmas present in September, worth hundreds and hundreds, Dad said. Hawk is a reader, a freaky good reader, and Treasure Island is the best book, that is what Hawk says. My brother has every word of that book in his head.
He changed his name from Junior to Hawk when he was ten, in honor of the best book in his head.
“You see it, right, Sara? How it is?”
“How what is?”
“There’s a box. There’s a stranger. There’s a story. Gotta be.”
“Hawk.”
“Yeah?”
“How ’bout there’s just a box. How ’bout there’s just a stranger.”
“More than that,” Hawk says.
“Don’t you be getting everything mixed up in your head. Getting everything mixed up is like lying.”
He gives me a hard look.
“What?” I say.
“Who’s lying?”
“I’m just saying.”
“You want to know something?”
“What?”
“I’m not the liar. You think I don’t know what’s going on? You think I don’t hear Mom and Dad talking, and you and Mom talking, and nobody talking to me? You think I don’t know, Sara, about Cleveland? You think I don’t know about Dr. G.?”
I look at him. I look away.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. Soon.”
“Not telling is lying.”
“Only sometimes.”
“Not telling isn’t right.”
“Not telling is not the same as getting everything mixed up on purpose. And what’s the point, anyway, of talking about the doctors?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Right.”
“Bad news is bad news, Hawk. Doesn’t get any better when you tell it.”
He stares at me. He shakes his head.
“What?”
“Let me introduce myself,” he says. “I’m Hawk.” He reaches for my hand. He shakes it. “I am your brother. When something’s wrong, you have to tell me.”
“Talking about my problems doesn’t fix my problems. There’s nothing for it, Hawk. Nothing.” The words come out fast through my crowded mouth. The words are going to choke me.
Hawk lifts his Spyglass.
Sees what I can’t.
Hands me the Spyglass without me grabbing.
Won’t speak.
We sit in the night.
We see how dark it is.
“There’s something going on in that lighthouse,” Hawk says, finally. “Something like a mystery.”
“Man,” I say.
“What?”
“You and your stories.”
“Got something better?”
“I do not.”
“We keep an eye on this, Sara. Things are unfolding.”
We sit. The bales of hay we never stuffed into the hay shed look like waves rolling in. I wonder what we’ll do with them now. No shed for the hay. Not enough hay for the cows. Not enough of anything.
“Hawk?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Forgive me?”
“Maybe. This time.”
He looks at me.
He smiles.
Victory Shelf
Once I was this girl and Hawk was this kid and Mom and Dad were themselves with less worries in their skin. This was before Phooey and after Old Moe. This was before I ever knew what an aortic root was, before I lay, like I am lying now, curled around my heart.
Snowed-in days were soup-making days—Dad in charge. Autumn days were pumpkin days—pumpkin pie and pumpkin seeds and pumpkin faces on the porch. Saturdays were library days—Dad, Hawk, and me in the front of the truck and up the road to County Free Library, where Mrs. Kalin lives and works, and the old newspapers and the new newspapers and the microfiche live. “Past, Present, Future at your service,” she’d say, whenever we’d come in, and she’d send us home with books to read again—classics, which were Dad’s style.
Once I didn’t have to lie to Hawk and he didn’t have to get mad at me.
I didn’t have to get mad at me for not being who I want to be.
Once is a long time ago. A long time ago is long.
There’s a low glow in my room, thanks to the magnitude of stars out there in the sky. The glow shines up the tractor bolts and peacock feathers on my victory shelf, the snapped half of Phooey’s best egg, the clapper of the bell Dad used to ring until the whole bell cracked, an old cigar box that I once found while shoveling garden dirt. “Good as antique,” Hawk said, and Mrs. Kalin, too, when we took it to her for help to guess its story.
I put our best family portraits in a box on my victory shelf—twelve of them total, one for each year of my life. The portraits are county fair work, Mabel Token in charge. She’s got an old Polaroid and film, a curtain for a backdrop, a cardboard table booth, and for five dollars you can buy yourself an eternity pose; that’s what she calls it. Every year since I was born the Scholls have gone to Mabel with a pose. One year just Mom and Dad and me. Every year after with Hawk.
I keep the eternity inside my box. I name each year the Year of Something. The Year of the Herd, when Dad spent his extra time on the watering trough in the cow barn. The Year of the Pigs, when Dad built the third little shack with the wood that he stripped off a cabin deep in the woods. The Year of the Goats, when Mom figured out how to make sweeter goat cheese and better goat soap and ice cream powered by Molly. The Year of Old Moe, when he caught the equine flu so bad that Hawk and I slept out in the barn beside him every night for ten straight days until he stopped coughing and kick dreaming. The Year of Mom’s Apricot Meringue Pie winning the state-fair prize. Twenty-five dollars and a ribbon.
Every year is the Year of Something, the words written down on the back of the pictures Mabel took.
Dr. G. is talking to Cleveland, Mom said. Dad is talking to the banks.
Tomorrow, she meant. Dad will be talking to the banks tomorrow, during their Saturday hours. Which actually means later this afternoon, when the sun’s so hot, when the cows will need some tending to, when the goats will need their second round of milking, Dad will come back home with news nobody wants. The banks never give Dad the news we want.
I hear Hawk slide his book beneath the bed. I hear the off-on on his flashlight click. I hear him puff out his pillow, and I don’t move, I stay right here, curled around my heart.
“You sleeping?” Hawk asks, through the wall.
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” I say.
The only rain that’s anywhere is the rain that rains eyes to chin, over the long stretching stretch of my thinkin
g, and now, downstairs, I hear Mom and Dad talking. I hear the number that we need: twenty grand for Sara’s surgery. For the trip to Cleveland. For the family hotel stay. For the keep-it-clean stuff we’d have to buy for the house when we got home. For the parts that insurance won’t pay and for the parts of the farm we’d have to pay other people to take care of when we were gone. I get up quiet, go downstairs quiet, grab the biggest flashlight from the hook on the wall, and head downstairs, into the cellar, where, if I want to cry, I can cry and nobody can hear me. If I want to pound my fists. If I want to scream.
The Seed Museum in the Cellar Might Need a Little Explaining
The cellar steps are thick with splinters and creak, but I know where to step.
The cellar is square in every direction, built like one of the cubes I learned about in my homeschool textbook. The volume of a cube is found by multiplying the length of any edge by itself twice, which means V = a to the third. And I do want to cry. And I don’t pound my fists.
The cellar is a cellar of preservation: one wall of jam and tomato sauce, one wall of canned peppers, peas, beans, and corn, one wall of pickled onions and cucumbers and also cabbage, and then there’s my wall: Sara’s Museum of Seeds.
My wall is the best wall. I take a deep breath. I take a good long look. I am not screaming.
My wall is the shelves Mom and I built when I was six. My wall is the periwinkle blue I painted when I was eight—a couple of cloud puffs painted over the blue, and a little ray of ceiling sun, just on my wall, just on my part, which Mom said was a most inspired touch. My wall is everything I’ve bought or found or borrowed, in my own Sara way. I got the mason jars secondhand at the county fair for a good old-fashioned steal. I got the waxy sleeves through the mail. I used to use silica-gel desiccant to help keep the seeds decent dry, but powdered milk does an excellent job, and powdered milk is cheaper. Two tablespoons of the stuff wadded up in tissue and jammed into the seed jars will do the trick; just don’t forget to swap out new powdered milk for old powdered milk twice or so each year.
Don’t forget a thing.
My wall is seeds—threshed and sorted, named and dated, the older seeds lined up to be planted first, because my seeds have expiration dates. Nothing lives forever.
Nothing. Nobody. Don’t cry, Sara.
Seed types? You name them. I’ve got my self-pollinators (tomatoes and peas, especially). I’ve got my cross-pollinators (melons and pumpkins and squash). I’ve got my open-pollinators, which is mostly heirloom stuff. I’ve got my hybrids, which Dad calls my Grand Experiments, and which Hawk doesn’t understand at all, and which, to tell the truth, are hard. I don’t have a lot of hybrids, but everything deserves a chance, like one of the sayings says.
Everything. And everyone.
I keep the overhead light off and beam the flashlight on and point it to my wall. You should see my seed jars shine. You should see the peaceful quiet of seeds when they’re asleep.
I wish I could sleep.
Nobody hears me crying.
Everything I Love
Sara!” I hear Mom. “Hawk?”
Not even dawn, and I’m waiting for my dream to end, waiting for Hawk to answer Mom, but there’s no sound next door. No roll out of bed, bang into clothes, click down the hallway in half-tied Docs. There’s a crust of tears on the pillow beneath my cheek. Another bad dream, a bad dream that didn’t end.
Doesn’t end.
“Hawk?” Mom calls. “Sara!” Her voice moves from the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs. It climbs. Her flip-flops slap. Up the stairs, then down the hall. My room is first. Mom knocking. Hawk, I think. Get up. Come on. But now my doorknob turns.
“Sara,” Mom says. “Breakfast.”
I curl around my heart, my back to Mom. I fold my pillow to hide my tears. I tell her I’m still sleeping.
“Is that right?” she says.
“Ummm-hmmmm.”
She takes a seat on the edge of my bed. I slide toward her. Don’t turn.
“Sweetie,” she says.
Won’t open my eyes. Won’t look into hers.
“I had a dream,” I say. “I’m still having it.”
“Who’s in the dream?” she asks.
“Cleveland’s in the dream. Knives. The David procedure, whoever David is.”
“I know it’s hard, Sara,” she says. “I know it is. And I’m so sorry.”
I’m scared of trying, I’m scared of not trying, I’m scared of how scared I am, I’m scared of how I didn’t tell my brother the most important news there is, which is kind of a lie, and why did I lie, and why can’t I just roll over and look at Mom? Why can’t I ask her what will happen to the seeds I’ve grown and cut and threshed and jarred? Why can’t I say, Whose museum will my museum of seeds be, if we go to Cleveland, if we don’t? What if—I can’t say it. I can hardly think it. What if we can’t save me? What if it all comes down to the money not in the bank? The chances you don’t get on a farm in drought season?
Mom digs into my covers for my hand. She puts her fingers between mine and squeezes hard.
“You know how much we love you, right?” she says. “How much I do?”
I nod.
“You know that Dr. G. is on our side.”
I nod again.
“And that he’s very smart.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“You leave the worrying to Dad and me. You leave Dr. G. to his medicine. He’s making calls, Sara. He wants to help. He knows what he’s doing.”
She unsqueezes my hand and combs her fingers through my hair. She sits here for a long time, then bends in close, kisses my cheek. “I’ll bring you breakfast,” she says. “In a little bit. Breakfast in bed. Not like we’ll make that a habit.”
I turn and see Mom through the blur of my tears, through the blur of hers. She looks at me for a long time, then knocks on the wall between Hawk’s room and mine.
“Hawk?” she asks.
Nothing.
She knocks again.
I push myself up. The world is gooey. I look past Mom, across the room, through the window, but in the blur I don’t see Hawk sitting on the pier.
“Funny,” Mom says.
She leans again, knocks again, waits. She kisses me a second time and stands. She leaves my room and flip-flops down the hall to Hawk’s room. Nothing. She heads back down the hall, toward my room and past it, to the stairs.
“You okay for a little bit?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She smiles thin. Flip-flops down the stairs to the door, her polka-dotted toenails vanishing. Opens the front screen door and steps onto the porch, down the plank steps. I hear her head around toward the back of the house and the tractor shed, until I can’t hear her anymore.
I climb out of bed—one daddy long leg after the other.
I pull into my jeans, my yesterday shirt.
I walk in my socks to my brother’s room. His Treasure Island is a tepee on the floor. There’s a hook by the window where he hangs his Spyglass, but the Spyglass isn’t there.
I grab my boots.
I wash my face.
I go flying, which for me, most of the time, when I’m not saving birds from the smoke of a fire, looks like another person walking.
Curvy Early Air
Dad’s on the porch when I open the door—an egg in one hand and a hammer in his pocket. His bright-sky eyes are even more bright sky because he’s standing in the sun.
He rubs the wrinkles in his brow.
I feel the curve of the early air. I feel the dream, like a wisp of smoke, inside me.
“You know what your brother’s up to?” Dad asks.
I don’t pretend I do. Or don’t.
“Tractor’s still in the shed. Goats are lonely. Cows are out on their own.”
“Pigs?” I say.
“Could be the pigs. Mom’s checking.”
He turns to look out over the parts of the farm we can see from the porch: the dry well with the wooden bucket that Mom
has planted lilacs in, the apple trees that drop their fruit, the pebble road that goes in two directions.
“I’ll be back,” I tell him. I clomp down the porch steps and turn up the pebbled road, and five minutes later I’m cruising around the algae pond, keeping my eye on the peahens on the deck, which are wobbling the snowflake feathers on their heads.
Beneath my feet the pebbles crunch. My boots get smoked with pebble dust.
I hike the rise to the cistern, which is like a swimming pool with a cement roof and a hatch and an aluminum ladder and a deep, deep well, and instead of decorations on the outside, there’s the Magic Marker graffiti Dad wrote at the start of this drought, to remind him to remind us of the cost of doing water business:
One minute of washed hands = four gallons.
Teeth brushed with the spigot on = five gallons.
Shower longer than a song = fifty gallons.
Past the cistern is the shack, and past the shack is a buckle in the road where we sometimes find the skin of snakes left off like shiny coats. At the buckle, there’s a cutaway road that slices through the woods. Up ahead there’s a big square of dust and a single tree that we call the Hispaniola, and that’s where Hawk is. I can see the loose laces of his boots swinging.
He’s breathing loud. He isn’t talking.
“You’re missing breakfast,” I tell him.
No answer.
“I could have had breakfast in bed.”
Nothing.
“Mom’s looking for you. Dad’s looking for you. I hiked this whole hill looking for you.”
“Shhhh,” he says.
“What?”
“Stop talking. Climb.”
I fit my feet into the crusty bark and climb. Hawk pushes the Spyglass at me before I can grab it. I dial in, and through the trees, down the hill, I see: the snow snow snow of The Mister and a big wood box busted open at his feet. There are ropes like laundry ropes crossing above his head—running from the lighthouse to a tree—and clipped to the ropes are white rectangle sheets, not sheets like bedsheets, but sheets like paper. The Mister’s got a bucket in one hand, a heavy bucket, from what I see, a feed bucket, maybe, maybe a bucket from Old Moe.