by Rosa Jordan
It was Justin’s night to wash. He squirted detergent into the dishpan and turned on the hot water. Chip climbed up on the stool beside him to dry.
Kate cleared off the table, then tapped on the bathroom door. “May I come in?”
She knew from the soapy smell coming through the door that Mom would be up to her armpits in a tub filled with bubbles. Kate had given her the bubble bath for her birthday. “Sure,” Mom said.
Her eyes were closed. Her long blonde hair was pinned up on top of her head to keep it from getting wet. Kate had seen pictures of Mom when she was a teenager. Her hair was in a ponytail that came halfway down her back. In other grown-up pictures of her, Mom had her hair in long braids wound around her head like a crown. She still fixed it like that sometimes, but mostly she wore it just like it was now, pinned up on her head with bits straggling out all around. Her hair was damp from the steam of the bath water, causing little strands to curl around her face.
Kate tried to remember the last time she saw Mom with her hair fixed up in any particular way. Probably not since Dad left, which was more than three years ago. Thinking about Dad made Kate think about Justin and his talk about going away. Kate squeezed some toothpaste onto her brush. “Mom? How come families don’t always stick together?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
“Do you think some people leave just because they get mad at somebody?”
Mom sighed. “I expect there’s more to it than that.”
Kate brushed her teeth and rinsed her mouth out.
“Mom? Do you have to work every day?”
“It’s that or lose the farm,” her mother replied.
“Are we going to?”
“What?”
“Lose the farm?”
“No.” Mom wrung out the washcloth and began scrubbing her face, hard.
It was easy to tell when Mom was worried, because with her, the worse things got, the less she said. She used to be a real chatterbox, but after Dad left, and especially when she found out he wasn’t coming back, she got quieter and quieter.
At first it hadn’t been that bad. Kate sometimes heard her crying at night, but in the daytime her mother was all smiles. “Never mind,” Mom had said, making her bright smile even brighter than usual. “We’ve still got each other.” At least once a week she’d taken them to the movies, or roller-skating, or swimming. Mom loved those things as much as they did, and she was great at making up games to play when they were driving somewhere. But that was last year, before she got the job at the dairy. Now, working every single day, she never had time to take them anywhere, or any energy to make up games when they were home.
When school had let out, Kate had asked if they could go camping at the beach this summer. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I can’t take the time off work,” Mom had said. “And we can’t afford it. You kids are going to have to find your own fun this summer.”
She did drive them to the shore of Lake Okeechobee on the night of the Fourth of July so they could watch fireworks out over the water, but that wasn’t really doing something; it was just watching other people do something. That was why this was turning out to be the most boring summer in history, and why they’d started hanging around the big canal.
The very next day Kate, Justin, Chip, and Go-Boy were back at the big canal. This time they were downstream from the alligator lair, under a big shade tree. It was almost too hot to breathe.
“Wish it would rain,” Kate said, using the tail of her T-shirt to wipe away the sweat.
“Wish I had some ice cream,” Chip said. He lay on his stomach facing Go-Boy. The dog was on his belly with his little black legs stuck out behind. Chip smiled at the dog. “I’d give you some.”
Go-Boy wagged his tail as if he understood exactly what Chip said.
Justin said, “If I had money I wouldn’t waste it on ice cream.”
“What would you buy?” Kate asked.
“A bus ticket.” Justin was lying on his back, looking up at the sky. A plane flew overhead, so high it looked like a silver toy. “No, not a bus ticket, a plane ticket,” Justin said dreamily. “I’d go to Miami and take a plane.”
“Where to?” Kate asked.
“Somewhere where something’s happening.”
Kate’s stomach knotted up the way it always did when Justin talked like that. She used to think that she felt the same, but that was before she understood what Justin really meant. Now when he talked about leaving, he seemed to be thinking about going for good, the way their dad had. She would never want to do that. Her idea of leaving was to go somewhere for a few days, or a week maybe, just for a change.
Camping trips and things like that not only made life more interesting but also gave her something to talk about at school when the other kids were bragging about where they’d been and what they’d done. Kate’s favorite place was the beach, which was no more than a two-hour drive. But it might as well be on the moon if you weren’t old enough to drive and your mom was working all the time.
“I bet this is the hottest July on record,” Kate said.
It was so hot that neither Justin nor Chip bothered to answer. The worst thing about this kind of heat was that it took all your energy. All you felt like doing was lying around. And the more you lay around, the more bored you got. Kate thought of what Mom said about how they had to make their own fun and stretched her mind to think of something.
“I know where some huckleberries are,” she said finally, pointing across the canal. “They might be ripe.”
“Too far to the bridge,” Chip said.
Justin nodded toward the big pipe that ran across the canal. “We could cross there.”
Kate snorted. “Nobody in their right mind would try to walk that pipe. What if you fell?”
It wasn’t that far from the pipe to the water and all of them could swim. But from where they were sitting they could see the alligators snoozing in the mud. Alligators move fast on land and way faster in the water, especially if they’re after something.
“No reason to fall,” Justin said. “Anybody could do it.”
“You’d be chicken!” Kate scoffed.
“You’re the chicken,” Justin shot back.
“After you!” Kate laughed, knowing he’d never do something that stupid.
Justin got to his feet and strolled down the bank. Kate stopped laughing when he stepped onto the pipe. Hands in his pockets, Justin walked the length of the pipe as casually as if he were on a sidewalk.
He stepped off on the opposite bank and called back, “Now who’s chicken?”
“Stay here,” Kate said to Chip. She walked down to the canal. Looking upstream, she could see the alligators. They looked like big logs half-buried in the mud. They weren’t all that close. They must have gotten used to the kids hanging around and weren’t concerned about them anymore. Anyway, they were asleep.
Kate stepped onto the pipe. It was wider than her foot; balancing there wasn’t hard at all. She wouldn’t think about falling, only about how easy it was.
She walked across, jumped off on the other bank, and gave Justin a shove. “Think you’re so smart!”
“How far is it to the huckleberry patch?” he asked.
She was about to answer when they heard Go-Boy barking. Go-Boy wasn’t a yappy dog. And this was a nonstop yap-yap-yap-yap-yap that said something was seriously wrong. They saw him running back and forth on the opposite bank. Then they saw why. Chip was on the pipe, halfway across the canal.
He stopped and yelled back at the dog, “Stay, Go-Boy!”
Chip made a stay-there motion. He came so close to losing his balance that Kate could almost hear the splash of his body hitting the water. She shuddered. He looked down at the black water below. His face turned pale. Kate knew he was thinking about falling. If he kept thinking about it, it would happen.
“Go back!” Kate yelled.
“Come on!” Justin yelled. “You can make it.”
Chip steadied himself and tottered on across, slow at
first, and then almost running. Justin held out his hand. Chip grabbed it and leapt to the ground.
“I told you to stay there!” Kate wanted to smack him for scaring them.
Chip stuck out his tongue at Kate, and looked back to make sure Go-Boy had stayed on the other bank. He hadn’t. He was in the water, swimming toward them. His little black paws paddled frantically, followed by his curly black head, which barely showed above the water. “Go back, Go-Boy, go back!” Chip screamed.
Go-Boy was a well-trained dog and would do just about anything Chip told him to do. Anything, that is, except stay behind. He kept dog-paddling toward them as fast as he could.
Chip plunged down the bank and straight into the canal. He was up to his waist in the water when Justin caught him.
“Go back, Go-Boy, go back!” Chip screamed again, struggling to get free.
It took Justin and Kate both to drag Chip out of the canal. When they finally got him onto the bank, Justin flung Chip down on the ground and sat on him so he couldn’t get away. By that time they were all soaking wet. Chip stopped screaming and lay there with his face in the mud, sobbing.
Kate looked upstream where the alligators had been sleeping. The two little ones were still there. But the big one was gone.
“Justin,” she whispered. “Look. The big gator …”
They all looked, first for the alligator, then for Go-Boy. They all saw the same thing. The big gator wasn’t there. Go-Boy wasn’t there.
Where Go-Boy had been swimming, they saw only still black water with a few bubbles coming up to the surface.
2
Goat Love
Chip sobbed all the way home. They practically had to carry him, because he kept stumbling and falling down. Kate saw Mom waiting for them. She would know something was wrong, because Chip never cried unless he was really hurt. Mom came down the porch steps to meet them. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “Chip, what is it?
Chip collapsed against Mom’s legs and blubbered, “Go-Boy!”
Mom looked Chip over real good. Not seeing blood or anything, she finally turned to Kate and Justin and asked, “Where is Go-Boy?”
When they told Mom that Go-Boy had been eaten by an alligator, a look of horror came over her face. They didn’t tell her about how Chip would have drowned himself trying to get to Go-Boy if it hadn’t been for them, or how it took about an hour to get him to leave the canal because he kept saying maybe Go-Boy got away. They didn’t tell her how they only got him to leave by explaining that when an alligator catches an animal swimming in the water, it holds it under till it drowns, and that those bubbles had been Go-Boy’s last breath coming up to the surface. Kate didn’t mention how hard it had been to explain all that to Chip when she was crying as hard as he was, and when even Justin had tears running down his cheeks and was so choked up he couldn’t talk. Kate didn’t try to tell Mom any of that because Mom’s face had already gone pale, which in itself was a really scary thing.
Once Mom got the gist of what had happened, she sat down on the steps and pulled Chip into her lap. She held his head against her chest and rocked him while he cried and cried.
Kate would have started crying again herself except that she had already cried herself dry down by the canal. And she knew it wasn’t over yet. And she and Justin were probably going to get the worst punishment of their lives for this.
For what seemed like a long time Mom didn’t even look at Kate and Justin; she just put her face in Chip’s hair and kept rocking him till his sobs quieted down. When she finally did look up at Kate and Justin, there were tears in her eyes and her voice was a whisper. “I thought I could trust you.”
It was worse than a punishment.
During the next couple of weeks, Mom hardly said a word to Kate and Justin. Justin was as quiet as Mom, and Chip, who had almost always been cheerful, found something to cry about every single day. Kate cried, too, when she was by herself in the milking shed. She kept thinking of Chip tottering on the pipe and Go-Boy paddling over to them. It seemed that as soon as she laid her head against Sugar’s soft warm side and started milking, the tears came. Sometimes Sugar looked around from her hay and made a soft ma-a-a-a. Kate knew Sugar was trying to make her feel better but it didn’t help. Nothing was going to make her feel better because nothing was going to bring Go-Boy back.
They didn’t go to the big canal anymore. They didn’t go anywhere. They just hung around the house or the yard waiting till it was time for Mom to get home from the dairy. Only Chip went off by himself sometimes. Once he was gone for a long time. Kate figured he was in the duck shed, sitting in there by himself and crying for Go-Boy.
Sometimes Kate could distract herself with reading and forget for a while what an awful summer this was. But not today, because the book she’d checked out from the library was about some stupid girls chasing some stupid boys. Maybe she’d walk into town in the afternoon and see if she could find a better one. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Considering how hot it was and it wasn’t even noon yet, she knew that by afternoon it would be too hot to breathe.
Not only was it going to be a scorcher day, it was going to feel like a long one. Usually Mom came home after the morning milking and worked around the house until time to go back for the afternoon milking. But today she had to vaccinate the calves. She wouldn’t be getting home from the dairy till after dark.
Kate gave up trying to read and used the paperback book to fan herself. She looked over at Justin, who had stopped sorting through his baseball cards and was staring out the window at Lost Goat Lane, which led to the highway. Kate figured he was thinking about leaving again. Thinking like that was catching, like a cold. As soon as he started getting restless, she started getting restless—not to leave but, well, to do something.
If the TV wasn’t broken and if Mom hadn’t canceled the cable, Justin probably would have been watching a baseball game, because that was his thing. If you had asked Justin whether he’d rather play baseball or breathe, he probably would have said play baseball.
Kate got up and went into the kitchen, but there wasn’t anything to do there either—nothing to snack on and no ingredients to make cookies. Kate liked baking. Her mom had even taught her how to make pies. But when they had started running low on money, she said desserts were “non-essentials” and stopped buying chocolate chips and the special stuff you need for baking. There wasn’t even enough sugar in the canister to make one batch of cookies.
Kate glanced out the kitchen window and noticed that the gate to Sugar’s pen was open. She went out to find the goat and put her back in her pen. She looked behind the goat shed and behind the duck coop, and then walked around the house to the front, where she looked in the calf pasture and in the tall grass by the ditch. Sugar wasn’t in any of those places. Neither was Chip. Kate called Chip but got no answer, which made her mad. As small as the farm was, she knew he could hear her calling.
Kate went back to the house and told Justin that Chip and Sugar had disappeared. He was pitching a baseball against the front steps and fielding grounders. He acted like he hadn’t heard her.
“Justin!” Kate said loudly. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Yep,” he said, throwing the baseball again.
“Well, come on. Help me look for them.”
Justin retrieved the ball on the second bounce and stood there for a minute. Then he went inside the house.
Kate found him in the kitchen, drinking a glass of water.
“Justin?” she said again. “Will you please help?
He put down his glass and went back outside, letting the screen door bang in Kate’s face.
They walked all the way around the house, looking again in and around the sheds in the back and by the ditch and in the calf pasture out front. They even looked up in the two big shade trees, because Kate was still thinking that Chip was just hiding somewhere, refusing to answer. But there was no sign of him or of Sugar. Then they saw Chip coming up the driveway.
The f
ront of Chip’s T-shirt was stained, like he’d been lying in the grass. For a second Kate was reminded of how they’d all crouched in the grass watching the alligators. But Chip had never gone there alone, and she was sure he wouldn’t after what happened to Go-Boy. He’d probably gotten the stains from playing by one of the drainage ditches that ran along Lost Goat Lane. He spent a lot of time there catching minnows and looking for turtles. Still, he should’ve told her and not just wandered off like that.
“Where have you been?” Kate yelled. “And where’s Sugar?”
“How do I know?” Chip’s eyes were red and his nose was running. “She’s your goat.”
“Have you seen her?” Kate asked.
“No.”
“Then she must’ve run away,” said Justin.
Chip kicked at the dirt with his toes. “I don’t care.”
Kate hated crying in front of people, especially her big brother, who always teased her. But she couldn’t help it. First Go-Boy and now Sugar. She started sobbing.
Justin rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Kate, don’t start bawling. Just think like a goat.”
Kate wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “What do you mean?”
“Think what you’d do if you were a goat,” Justin repeated.
“Eat,” said Chip.
“Look for grass,” Kate said.
“So where’s the best grass?” Justin asked.
“By the ditches along the road, I guess.”
“So let’s look there.”
They walked to the end of the driveway and looked up and down Lost Goat Lane. In one direction it went only as far as the highway. In the other direction it went so far you couldn’t see to the end of it. On both sides of the road were drainage ditches with grassy banks, and beyond the ditches were cornfields with stalks as high as Justin’s head.
“Sugar wouldn’t go toward the highway,” Kate said. “She’s afraid of cars.”
“Then she must’ve gone this way,” said Justin. He started walking down the lane, away from the highway. Kate and Chip followed.