“Hah, good luck with that.” Maura would be fine, as usual, but Hannah could go either way. She didn’t mind the dental instruments; it was the assistant having their hands crammed in her mouth for more than a few seconds that could set her off. Checking his watch, Hunter realized he had a quick farm call to make that afternoon and needed to be on his way. He trotted over to the tree where Hannah was. She was gazing up into the branches.
“What are you —?”
She pressed a finger to her lips.
For a good long minute, Hunter searched among the leaves. He saw a couple of birds there, robins maybe, but nothing else. Crouching down to scratch Echo behind the ears, he waited for a couple more minutes. Every time he looked into that dog’s eyes, he couldn’t help but think he’d known him for a long time already.
He glanced at his daughter. Hannah hadn’t changed positions. He wasn’t even sure she’d blinked since he came over.
“Honey, I really need to —”
“Shhh!” She flapped a hand at him. “Listen,” she whispered.
He did. All he heard was an occasional chirp from overhead. Somewhere in the distance a tractor hummed. Another hay cutting. It had been a dry year. They’d be lucky to get a third. Farther away, cars zoomed along the state highway.
“Hannah, I have to go. And Mommy wants you to come inside to get ready to go. Is it something important?”
Finally, she looked at him, the narrow space between her eyebrows creased as if she were angry with him for breaking the silence. She pointed somewhere up in the tree. “The baby. It’s going to try to fly, but the mom and dad are worried. They don’t think he’s ready.”
“Ah, I see. All parents feel like that when their kids leave home for the first time. Come on. We need to go. Mommy’s taking you to get your teeth checked. There’s a new toothbrush in it for you if you’re good.” He lifted an arm toward the house in encouragement. It could be hard to redirect Hannah when she had her mind fixed on something even as simple as this. She couldn’t leave one thing and come back to it later without some kind of closure. “Tell you what — I should be back before you. I’ll check for the baby bird then. If he’s sitting on the ground, I’ll put him back in the nest, okay?”
He didn’t even know where the nest was, but he had to say something to get her moving.
Although she didn’t seem entirely convinced, Hunter was able to get her away from the tree and see her off with Jenn. After that, he drove to the east side of Adair County to Tommy and Beth Appleton’s farm to tend to their goats. Tommy used to do all of the hoof trimming, worming, and vaccinating himself, but at eighty-two he was too stiff in the joints to manage it by himself anymore. So nowadays he just called on Hunter to do the brunt of the work while he handed him the hoof nippers, paste, and syringes.
When Hunter returned home, he let Echo out of his kennel to do his business while he watered the tomato plants. As Australian Shepherds went, Echo was pretty typical: mentally and physically active, a decent watchdog, and a little on the quirky side. He was black and white, which was a less common color combination for the breed, but everything else about him was Aussie, right down to his bobtail. The one trait he seemed to lack was any working instinct. Hunter had introduced him to his mother’s sheep on three occasions so far and the dog hadn’t displayed a lick of interest. In Hunter’s eyes, it wasn’t critical, but it would have been nice to have a dog that could have helped with livestock when needed. At any rate, he was a good companion for Hannah, and that was even more important.
A strange scrabbling noise drew Hunter’s attention and he went around the corner of the garage to find Echo pawing at the bottom of Hannah’s empty kiddy pool. Hunter pressed the lever on the hose nozzle and shot a stream of water in Echo’s direction. The dog snapped at the water playfully. It took a good five minutes, but Hunter was able to fill the pool up. While he finished watering the garden, Echo dunked his head into the pool water and snorted bubbles. Eventually, the dog lowered himself fully into the water to lay in it. He didn’t leave the pool until Hunter began walking toward the Crooked Tree.
As Hunter stopped to inspect the ground near the tree, Echo rolled his shoulders in a giant shake, flinging water over Hunter’s front.
“Hey!” Hunter turned his face away until Echo was done. “A little warning next time, okay? Crazy Aussie.”
As far as Hunter could see, there was no baby bird beneath the Crooked Tree. Craning his neck, he looked up into the tangle of branches. It took some time, but he finally spied the robins’ nest. Both parents were sitting beside it, cocking their heads at him. He surveyed the area one more time. No sign of any baby bird.
Hunter was about to head on inside to see what he could make for dinner when he noticed Echo sitting on the far side of the tree near a clump of grass. Echo tipped his head side to side, his ears cocked as if listening. Hunter had an idea about what had his attention.
More down than feathers, the baby bird rested between Echo’s paws. Hunter nudged Echo away and looked more closely. The eyes were closed, the mouth fixed open in a last gasp. He poked it with a finger. The body was cold, already stiffening. It was dry, so Echo hadn’t had the poor thing in his mouth. No, the little bird had fallen. Not ready to fly, just like Hannah had said.
He fetched a shovel from the garage and scooped up the little body, then buried it in the garden next to a pepper plant as Echo looked on. To make it less obvious, he retrieved the rake next and smoothed the freshly upturned dirt, then scratched at a broader area down the row of peppers. Not that Hannah would have a clue there was anything buried belowground, but she often took notice of the oddest details, so Hunter wasn’t taking any chances.
Together, he and Echo went in the house. Just as he opened the refrigerator door to peer inside, a text from Jenn came through:
On our way home soon. Burgers on plate, middle shelf, fridge. Tater tots and corn in freezer.
It was Tuesday. How could he forget? Hannah had to have tater tots on Tuesdays.
After preheating the oven and putting the burgers on, Hunter set the table and put out the condiments, placing the ketchup bottle squarely in front of Hannah’s plate. The whole time, Echo watched him astutely, golden-brown eyes following Hunter’s every movement as he spoke to the dog. Hunter often talked to the animals he was treating in a low, calm voice as a way of soothing their nerves, but with Echo it almost seemed like he understood every word and that, if he could, he’d talk back. The dog already had an impressive arsenal of commands that he followed: sit, down, stay, come, off ... All the usual. But almost daily, Hunter would take one object, repeat its name, then mix it in a pile of other things and ask Echo to bring it.
“Bring me the Frisbee,” he’d say, and Echo would flip through the pile until he found it, then drop it at Hunter’s feet.
To test him, Hunter would go through a list of items. Eleven straight was the record so far. When Echo tired of the game or got confused, he would resort to fetching his favorite toy — a squeaky giraffe, similar to the stuffed one called Faustine that Hannah still slept with.
Echo was easily the smartest dog Hunter had ever known. Since Halo, that was.
Car tires crunched on gravel. Jenn was home with the girls. Hunter mussed the hair on top of Echo’s head fondly, then poured the drinks, put the food on the table, and sat down to wait.
Jenn and Maura tromped through the door wearily, stopping at the sink to wash their hands.
“Hey,” Hunter hailed, “how’d it go, sport?”
Maura twisted her face, her lower lip drooping noticeably on one side. “Can’t feel my tongue.”
“Cavity.” Jenn slid into her chair and arranged pickle slices on her burger. “Her first and only so far, though.”
“Well, that’s not so bad, then,” Hunter consoled. “In our day, back when we drank Kool-Aid by the gallon with every meal, most every kid had a mouthful of silver-filled molars. Kids these days aren’t going to know what dentures are.” He scooped a ladl
e-full of corn onto his plate. “Where’s Hannah?”
“She insisted on checking under the Crooked Tree for some baby bird,” Jenn said. “If she doesn’t come inside soon, I’ll go get her.”
Hunter cringed. Hopefully, once she didn’t find anything, she’d be satisfied that all had gone well and let the whole episode go. He slid twelve tater tots onto her plate and then took some for himself.
Two minutes later, she plodded through the back door and plopped down in her chair, staring sullenly at the tater tots. She didn’t even bother to arrange them in three rows of four — or maybe it was four rows of three. There was a difference.
“What’s up, sweet pea?” Hunter was prepared for this. He’d dealt with two deceased hamsters when Maura was little, before Hannah came along. “You look a little sad.”
Hannah didn’t even look up from her plate when Echo rested his chin on her knee. “It’s gone.”
“What is?”
“The baby bird.”
“Ah, right. Maybe it flew away? I think I saw a small robin over in the hedge row when I came home. It took off across the field.” Sometimes little white lies were necessary, he reasoned.
Hannah’s face hardened as she turned her gaze on him. Her breathing grew more audible as she forced breaths through pinched nostrils. “It died.”
“Why do you say that?” Hunter bit into his hamburger. She was only guessing.
“You buried it in the garden, Daddy.”
He stopped in mid-chew, suddenly aware of the sinking feeling in his stomach. How could she possibly —?
“They told me so,” Hannah added before he could ask. Not that he was going to, although he did wonder how she’d come to that conclusion.
Finishing his bite, he washed it down with a swallow of almond milk. “Who told you?”
“The mommy and daddy. They saw you pick it up with a shovel and carry it to the garden and put dirt on top of it.”
Stunned, he set his glass down. Jenn and Maura had stopped eating and were staring at Hunter like he’d just been caught stealing the Halloween candy early. Hannah glowered at him. Even Echo had his intense golden eyes fixed accusingly on Hunter.
There was no way out of this, except to tell her the truth. “Okay, yeah, I, uh ... I found him, actually Echo found him. He was already dead. So I gave him a proper burial.” He reached his fingers across the table toward Hannah’s, then turned his hand over. “I’m sorry, sweet pea. I didn’t want to upset you. It happens to a lot of baby animals in the wild.”
Ignoring his apology, she pushed her plate back, got up, and trudged out the door. The screen door banged behind her. Jenn got up and watched her through the kitchen window.
“She’s sitting under her tree, again,” she said. She opened the door and ushered Echo out to look over her. “Wonder how many meals she’ll miss before she breaks down and eats something?”
“Could be days,” Maura muttered. “If I did that, you’d —”
“Don’t,” Jenn warned. “Hannah’s not like you. You’re a whole lot easier to reason with.” Sitting back down at the table, she said, “How did she know that?”
Hunter knew. He was convinced of it now. Yet there was no way he was going to say it out loud. Just like he didn’t tell people certain things about himself, like passing through a long tunnel toward a white light or seeing dead people. He cornered a spoonful of corn and munched it down. “Lucky guess, I suppose.”
But one glance at Jenn told him even she had her suspicions.
—o00o—
Later that night, when Hunter found Hannah asleep under the Crooked Tree and carried her to her bed, her lashes fluttered in half-wakefulness. He put Faustine on her tummy. She folded an arm around the giraffe in a light hug and he pulled the blanket up to tuck her in.
“Hannah, I don’t want you to ever be sad. You understand?”
Her blond locks rustled against the pillowcase as she nodded. “But you lied. You and Mommy always tell me it’s bad to tell lies.”
“You’re right. I did and I shouldn’t have.” He tapped the button on her alarm clock and the sound of a babbling brook came from it. The thing had two dozen different white noises on it and for whatever reason Hannah found this sound calming. It helped her fall asleep. Hunter would have thought, given her experience nearly drowning, that it would be the last thing she’d want to hear, but whenever he tried changing it to something else, like birds chirping or falling rain, Hannah clamped her hands over her ears and started making a noise that was half shriek, half moan.
Anger and blame were gone from her face. She gazed at him softly, relaxed but fighting the pull of sleep. There was something he had to say to her before she drifted off. Something she had to understand.
“You remember when you told me after you fell in the river how you heard the bluebird and the fish talk to you?”
Her eyelids snapped open briefly as she nodded.
“Well, each of us has something very special about us. Something different. And sometimes we’re so different that it’s hard for other people to understand us.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. Clearly, she didn’t understand him right now. He may as well have been speaking Mandarin. She wasn’t good at catching implications. He needed to be more direct.
“It’s okay if you tell me, or maybe even Mommy. But when animals talk to you, Hannah, you probably shouldn’t tell anyone else, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because other people can’t hear them, sweet pea. They’ll think you’re making it up.”
“But I’m not.” She dangled her hand over the edge of the bed. Echo licked her fingers, as if to remind her he was there, then he lay down in his usual spot on the braided rug.
“I know, I know. It’s just ... Just don’t, okay? You’ll understand why when you’re older.” A thought flickered through his mind. What if he got Hannah a book about Dr. Doolittle? On second thought, he decided against it. It would only encourage her to cultivate her ability.
For now, the more she kept this special talent under her hat the better. Especially since she was starting kindergarten in two weeks. That alone was bound to be traumatic for the entire family.
And to think, he’d been the one to talk Jenn out of homeschooling her. Maybe that was one argument he should’ve let her win.
chapter 16: Hunter
Moonlight flooded the room in a silver haze and the lightest of breezes parted the curtains. Hunter lay in bed, his back to his wife, listening to the rustle of sheets. She couldn’t sleep either, apparently.
A week had gone by since the baby bird incident. That meant they were a week closer to Hannah heading off to school. Jenn had tried to be strong about it, but Hunter could sense her anxiety. Working with Hannah had been her life for the past several years. It was hard to hand that responsibility over to someone else.
Meanwhile, Echo’s presence had been a godsend. With that dog at her side, Hannah was the confident little girl she’d been developing into before the accident. Away from the dog, she was once again the little girl afraid of her own voice. If anything ever happened to Echo ...
Turning over, he ran a hand from Jenn’s shoulder to her elbow, then slipped his arm around her waist. “I know you’re worried, honey. And it may not go perfectly, but if we don’t do this —”
“She’s come a long way, Hunter.” Jenn rolled onto her back to stare up at the ceiling. “I remember when they told us she might never talk.” She scoffed. “They were so wrong.”
He traced a finger over her collarbone, resisting the urge to plant a kiss at the base of her throat. She was beautiful. Still. Even after fifteen years he never got tired of waking up next to her. But now wasn’t the time for passionate overtures. She needed reassurance. “You’ve done a great job with her, Jenn.”
“Not me. She’s done a great job. She’s special, Hunter. And I don’t mean that in a backhanded compliment kind of way.”
“What do you mean?”
For s
everal moments she didn’t answer. “After the accident, I kept thinking she’d never catch up to where she was before that, but look at her now. She’s changed so much. She wasn’t even home a week when she started reading on her own. Reading, Hunter. Not just sounding things out, but saying whole words on sight. She’s ahead of where she should be at this age, but whenever I take her to have her tested, it’s like this door closes and they can’t get anything out of her.”
While Jenn had had great success teaching Hannah to read, write, and do basic math, getting her to connect socially was another matter entirely, and one that frustrated her to no end.
“I don’t know what to do to change that,” she continued. “It doesn’t matter how smart she is. God, she could be a savant, for all we know. I’m starting to think she is. But if she won’t talk to anyone besides us ...” She grabbed the pillow from behind her head and screamed into it. “Arrrrgh!”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Hunter pushed the pillow away and brushed the hair from her face. “We have to be patient, all right?”
She slapped both hands to either side of her head. “At first they were saying mild autism, and then sensory processing disorder, but every once in a while they throw out Asperger’s syndrome , which lately they’ve latched onto ... I mean, how am I supposed to deal with her if I don’t know what her problem is?” Both hands flew up to cover her mouth. Slowly, she lowered them. “Ohhh, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant —”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Jenn. I get it. But maybe we need to stop looking at what she isn’t and accept her for what she is. It could be a whole lot worse, you know. Every time I see a parent pushing a kid with severe disabilities around in a wheelchair, it hits me just how lucky we are. Hannah’s healthy. She’s highly functioning. She’s smart. She can do anything a normal kid can do. She just doesn’t know how to handle herself socially. She’ll learn how, but it’s going to take time. Anyway, a lot of famous people have had Asperger’s.”
Say That Again Page 12