Lizzie took two steps back. “Let me get somebody—” Her eyes searched the crowd.
“I don’t need anybody, and I especially don’t need you.” I got up and pushed past her and made my way out into the yard. The chickens were penned up. Feeble attempts had been made to rake the yard where they usually strutted.
“Hey.” A boy’s voice came from the side of the house. “Hey.” It was Bo Dimmens. He was a big lug of a boy, awkwardly stuffed into a too-small suit.
I glared at him. I didn’t feel any obligation to be polite to Bo Dimmens, given the misery he had caused me over the years.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Sorry about what?”
“About, you know—Joe.”
“Why are you sorry about Joe?”
His upper lip curled and he snorted like an old hog. He didn’t reply.
“Where’s that Finn boy?” I asked.
Bo snorted again. “Who?”
“You know who. That Finn boy who’s been staying up at your place with all your—your—people and all those—those—dogs.”
Bo looked at the sky, at the ground, and back at the house. I thought he might be checking for witnesses to the punch he was about to launch at me. He put his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know what you are babbling about, girl. I don’t know why I came here anyways. Joe shot my dog.”
“What? Are you crazy out of your mind?”
“He shot my dog. Ever’body knows that.”
“Well, I don’t know it, and I’m part of ‘ever’body,’ aren’t I?”
“Then you’re plain ignorant.”
“Me? You’re calling me ignorant? Am I the one who flunked two grades in school?”
He reached down and scooped up a clod of dirt. “Not ever’body has the same advantages as you.”
Advantages might be the longest word I ever heard fall out of Bo Dimmens’s mouth.
“What are you talking about? You’re standing there like a big meat carcass telling me I’ve had more advantages than you? Me? The one with no mother and no daddy and a wobbled-up arm and … and … everybody saying Joe is gone? You see those things as advantages, Bo Dimmens?”
The clod of dirt in Bo’s hands crumbled as he squeezed it. Bits dropped to the ground.
“Well, I might have to think about that some more. I was thinking you had some learnin’ advantages, but now I don’t know. If you don’t even know about Joe shootin’ my dog, then you probably don’t know a lot of things.”
I picked up my own clod of dirt. “I do so. Like what?”
“Like I bet you don’t even know why nobody in this little lick town has a dog.” He laughed, bits of spit splattering the air. “Ha, I can tell by the look on your face that it never even occurred to your pea brain—you prob’ly never even noticed that nobody has a dog.”
I longed to fly to the moon. I longed to be far, far away.
“I thought so,” Bo said. “Now who’s the ignorant one? You don’t even know it was my dog that et up your arm and your daddy. You don’t even know that you was so stupid as to whack that dog with a stick in the first place. You don’t even know that Joe shot my dog. You don’t even know that Joe went around to every house in this town and convinced people what a danger dogs were. You don’t even know that’s why we ended up with ever’body’s dogs. You don’t know nothin’, do you? I feel sorry for you, girl, cuz you’re as ignorant as that there dirt clod you’re holdin’.”
I threw it at him. I picked up another and threw it, too, glad that the dirt clung to his suit. “You get out of here, Bo Dimmens. You get out of here right now.”
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and he ambled down the drive as casually as if he were taking a Sunday stroll.
Inside, I bumped straight into a clump of unfortunate souls snatching cookies from the kitchen counter: Mr. Canner, one-armed Farley, Crazy Cora, and Witch Wiggins. The men wore wrinkled suits, Crazy Cora was wrapped in a blue satin robe, and Witch Wiggins looked completely terrifying in a long, black dress.
They were chattering and clucking like chickens.
“I’ll have one of those red cherry ones.”
“Pistachio, pistachio!”
“Those aren’t pistachios.”
“These are too crumbly.”
“Those hurt my teeth.”
Then they spotted me.
Crazy Cora said, “You was at my house with that Mudflap lady, wasn’t you?”
Witch Wiggins corrected her. “Not Mudflap, it’s Mudtop. They tried to get into my house, too.”
“And mine,” Mr. Canner said. “Threw out all my mail.”
“Tried to make me go for a walk,” Mr. Farley added.
“Joe stole my dog, you know,” Crazy Cora said to no one in particular. Then she turned to me. “Joe stole my dog. Hers, too.” She pointed to Witch Wiggins.
“Took ’em in the dead of night. Said they was kid-eaters.”
By this time, they were inching toward me like a pack of hungry wolves, and I was backed up against the door.
Crazy Cora waved a cookie at me. “Believed him at the time.”
“Felt sorry for him,” Witch Wiggins said.
One-armed Farley said, “Enough to make a grown man cry, what with all that blood and wailing going on.”
Mr. Canner was holding on to the back of a chair for support. He closed his eyes. “I don’t want to think about it. It was awful.”
The long, thin hand on the long, thin arm of Witch Wiggins reached toward me and smoothed my hair. “But you were there, you know.”
I stared at each of those faces. Had they all seen it? Had the whole town seen it?
“But I don’t know,” I whispered, backing out of the room.
CHAPTER 32
A PATCH OF DIRT
Where I wanted to go was the moon, as far, as far away as I could go. There I would not be able to hear chatter about blood and death. There I would be able to see all the larger world beyond our place, beyond Blackbird Tree, beyond our whole country, beyond our earth.
I fled to the barn and clambered up into the loft. The late-afternoon sun streaked through cracks between the boards, filling the loft with stripes of thick, dancing dust. A layer of hay covered the floor. A mouse dashed across a rafter.
Old egg crates were sloppily stacked along one side of the loft, a pile of ropes and rags slumped near the window, and on the far wall loomed the trunks. They were large, sturdy wooden trunks with heavy brass hinges and locks. When I used to play up here, I rode the rounded-top one like a horse. The two flat-topped ones were, variously, chow wagons, hay wagons, train cars, houses, even islands. I’d never seen the contents of the trunks, but according to Joe and Nula, one contained my father’s things, one my mother’s, and one Nula’s.
When I’d asked Joe why he and I didn’t have trunks, he replied, “We don’t have any junk worth saving, Naomi.”
I probably assumed the trunks were full of old clothes and blankets, nothing of interest to me. Until, that is, the day I heard Joe say to Nula, “When are you going to get rid of those trunks?”
“Why, I can’t do that,” she said.
“Don’t see why not. They’re just full of dead … things.”
“They are not dead. You leave those trunks alone, Joe.”
And somehow, my young mind took that to mean there was something living in the trunks. That night I dreamed it was my parents in the trunks, shrunken and clawing to get out. They called to me, “Naomi, Naomi, let us out—”
Nula tried to comfort me. “Shh, shh,” she said. “Just by living, just by being Naomi, you are letting them out.”
Although I did not know what she meant, it must have reassured me that night, but I avoided the trunks from that day on.
Now, in the loft, fleeing the funeral crowd, I heard, “Naomi.” The voice was soft, whispered. “Naomi.”
I stepped away from the trunks.
“Naomi, it’s me.”
There was Finn, at the loft lad
der.
“You scared me,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“You never hear me … until I’m here.”
I was happy to see Finn, but I felt awkward, so troubled by the day and the talk of dogs and of Joe.
“What’s in those?” Finn asked, gesturing toward the trunks.
“Stuff.”
Finn looked different, but I wasn’t sure how exactly. He wasn’t dressed up like everyone else, and there was dust in his hair, as if he’d been sleeping in the loft. He moved to the round-topped trunk, Nula’s. “This one’s really old, isn’t it? Now, that’s the one I’d like to open.”
“Naomi, Naomi!” It was Nula, calling from the yard
I went to the loft window. “Up here, Nula.”
She cocked her head, crossed her arms, and stared up at me for a good long minute. She glanced back at the house and then up at the barn loft again. “I’d be up there, too, if I could. Anyone up there with you?”
“No.”
“Come on down soon, you hear?”
“I will.”
Nula had not been back to Ireland since she came to America when she was twelve. She did not often talk about her family, but this much I knew: that she didn’t think any of her six siblings were still alive and that her parents were long since dead. Sometimes she sang fragments of songs from when she was young; sometimes she told stories of a boy she had adored, but always these stories ended abruptly with, “Ach, the boy who broke hearts, may you never meet such a lad, Naomi.”
But neither Nula nor Joe were dwellers in the past. Joe’s youth must have been hard, too, for he would say, “Then was then, and now is now, and why would I want to bring back that hardscrabble life and always a hungry belly?” Nula would add, “Aye, aye, and the cold hands and the cold feet and the crying in the night.”
After Joe’s funeral and after the last of the visitors had left the house, Nula sat on the back porch, looking out across the fields. When I asked what she was thinking, she said, “Ah, Naomi, ah. I am thinking about all the years Joe and I worked together and how much time and energy and effort we put in—ah, never mind—it all—it all—goes away.” She waved her hand in front of her as if she were scattering seed to the wind. “Nothing left but a patch of dirt and a crooked house.”
CHAPTER 33
ACROSS THE OCEAN: A VISITOR RETURNS
MRS. KAVANAGH
“He’s here, Sybil, your Dingle fellow. I’ll show him in and leave you two alone.” Pilpenny wheeled Mrs. Kavanagh closer to the fireplace and kneeled to stoke the logs. The day had been balmy, but once the sun had set, a chill descended on the massive stone house.
“Pilpenny, I’d rather you stay. We will need your help. And please bring my two lovies.”
Mrs. Kavanagh had not slept well the past few nights, and the fatigue lay heavily on her shoulders. She wore a long, deep blue dress of the finest wool, matching heels that were sensible yet stylish, a long string of pearls, and a finely wrought gold bracelet with a single charm attached. Her hair was true silver, neither gray nor white, and gathered in soft puffs around her face.
“Ah, Sybil!” Mr. Dingle said, bowing elegantly before Mrs. Kavanagh. “You are always the epitome of refinement.”
“Is that so? It is you, Dingle, whom I think of as the epitome of refinement. Not me, with my coarse upbringing, surely.”
“One can always polish coarseness, as you so well have shown, Sybil.”
Mr. Dingle seated himself across from Mrs. Kavanagh. Pilpenny pulled a chair to one side of Mrs. Kavanagh, and the elegant white foxhounds, Sadie and Maddie, folded themselves at their owner’s feet.
“Now, Dingle, let’s get right down to business. Is the plan in jeopardy? I haven’t slept a wink since you phoned from America. Thank you for coming directly back.”
“I’m so sorry, Sybil, that you have been troubled. I have done some further thinking and perhaps what I have to tell you will be reassuring. Let me fill you in on what I have learned. There is much to tell, but first I must tell you this: the girls talked of a boy named Finn.”
Mrs. Kavanagh leaned forward. “What did you say? Finn?”
“Yes, Finn.”
“How odd. Odd, but … somehow … perfect. Don’t you think that’s perfect, Pilpenny?”
Pilpenny put her hand to her throat. “Mm.”
The dogs stretched and yawned and rolled onto their sides.
“Everything is pretty much in place, Sybil. Joe’s dying was sad, of course, but in the end, it makes things easier.”
“Brilliant,” Mrs. Kavanagh said. “Absolutely brilliant!” She lifted her arm, beckoning the rook. “Rook, listen to this.”
CHAPTER 34
TWO TRUNKS
The next morning, I felt as if I’d been trampled by a herd of cows. Outside, Nula was standing in the yard, surrounded by clucking chickens. Miss Johnny was having a fit. Ooka, ooka, ooka! Ooka! Nula held a feed bucket in one hand. Her other hand was suspended in midair.
“Nula?”
She turned slowly, as if in a trance.
I took the bucket and scattered feed to the chickens.
Nula flailed her arms at them. “These—these—silly chickens! Stop that stupid clucking!”
“Nula?”
“Everything’s so—so—messy.” She turned this way and that. “So very messy. We’ll have to sell the place. We’ll have to move.”
I watched the chickens scurrying and pecking, oblivious to us.
The following day, Lizzie appeared at our door after breakfast. Her eyelids were swollen, her face puffy and pale.
“Naomi, Naomi, it’s the most awful thing. I have to talk to you or I will die. I’m not wanted.” Lizzie sobbed on my shoulder. “Not wanted!”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Of course you’re wanted.”
“No, listen, it’s truly tragic.” She sniffed and choked on her sobs. “The Cupwrights—the Cupwrights—”
“Spit it out, Lizzie.”
“The Cupwrights simply do not want me. They are not going to adopt me.” Loud wailing followed.
“How do you know that?”
“They told me, Naomi. They told me! I don’t think I will live!” She sobbed loud, gulping sobs.
Nula found me and Lizzie in the loft, our backs against the trunks, lost in thought.
“Girls, you need to move. We’re going to deal with these trunks today. Sit up! Step back! We may have some ghosts flying around here.”
I think I may have whimpered. “Now? Why now?”
“Because it’s about time,” Nula said. Something had come over her; she was determined. “It will be good for us. Which one first, Naomi? You choose.”
We started with my father’s trunk, which took a key, hammer, and screwdriver to open. On top were several issues of The Ravensworth Times. The newspapers contained, in succession, these headlines:
DOG ATTACKS CHILD
BLACKBIRD TREE MAN SAVES DAUGHTER FROM VICIOUS DOG
CHILD IN CRITICAL CONDITION FROM DOG ATTACK
BLACKBIRD TREE MAN DIES FROM DOG ATTACK
VICIOUS DOG SHOT
“Gosh,” Lizzie said, “these are purely terrifying. Look at these pictures—”
There were only two photos: one of my father in the hospital, wrapped in gauze from head to foot, and one of me in the hospital, my head looking so small against a pillow, my arm and leg bandaged. I could not connect that that was my face. That Naomi looked so frightened and lost.
“I don’t want to read these,” I said.
“Should we toss them?” Nula asked.
“Yes.” My answer came so quickly it surprised me. I felt as if that father and that little girl had been stuffed in a trunk far too long.
Nula put the papers to one side and retrieved a box of photographs. I lifted the lid, feeling as if I were prying. Who were these people? Was that my father? Was that another Naomi? That woman with him—I knew she was my mother, but I did not feel any connection with these people.
/> A uniform, boots, and a dog tag told me that my father had been in the army. Should I have known this? Two musty high school yearbooks lay on the bottom of the trunk. We found photos of him in each. He’d played basketball and baseball. That father might be disappointed to see that I would never play either one of those sports well.
And all the while, I felt relieved that Joe had not left a trunk. I didn’t need dead trunk things. If I closed my eyes, I would see Joe down below at his workbench. I would hear him tapping a screwdriver against a can.
Nula set aside items to be thrown away or donated and began returning the rest to the trunk. As Lizzie was stacking the newspapers, she put her hand out to us and said, “What? Is this—? What? Look at this! I can hardly believe—”
She was looking at the photograph again, the one of me in the hospital bed.
“Lizzie, I said I don’t want those.”
“Yes, you do. You won’t believe”—she flapped the paper in front of my face—“this! Look here.”
“What?” I said, annoyed. “I’ve seen it already.”
“No, here,” she said, tapping the photo of me, bandaged, in the bed. “Who is this?”
“For heaven’s sake, Lizzie. It’s that other Naomi.”
Nula was now studying the photo. “You mean the nurse?”
I hadn’t even noticed the nurse standing beside the bed.
“Yes!” Lizzie said. Her face was flushed, her hands trembling. “This is not just any nurse. This is my mother. My very own mother. Look at this, Naomi. You met her. She probably saved your life! I knew we were connected. I knew it.”
Lizzie pressed the photo to her, released it, studied it, kissed the photo, and pressed it to her again. “May I keep this, oh, please, may I?”
Both Nula and I were stunned into silence.
“I just cannot believe this, Naomi. It’s like—it’s like—the universe spun us together on purpose.”
“Yes,” Nula said quietly. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it?”
What was Nula thinking? Was she wondering why the universe had spun Joe out of her life? Or why I was spun into her life?
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