by Nikki Loftin
Maybe she had a mom or dad with hard hands. Maybe there was a reason she had climbed that tree, built that big pile of sticks to hide in.
“Where’s your parents, Gayle?” I asked, before I thought better of it.
Her hands stilled. “They flew away,” she said softly. Then she leaned up against me, wrapping her arms around my legs like she had with that stupid sycamore.
“Flew away?” I repeated, before I realized. She meant they had died. She was an orphan. “Are the Cutlins fostering you, then?” I asked.
She shivered.
Suddenly, I knew who had left those marks on her arms. Jebediah Cutlin, the kid who had beat on me every year until this one, when I grew tall enough to make him think twice about it.
“Is it just you?” I asked. Maybe she had someone else there, another little girl. A sister, or a brother. Someone to protect her from Jeb. It sure wouldn’t be his momma, I knew. She let him get away with anything. The last week of school, he’d stolen twenty dollars right out of our homeroom teacher’s purse, and got caught. Our classroom shared a wall with the principal’s office, so we’d all heard his mom yelling, blaming our teacher for leaving money out where it was tempting to “rambunctious boys.” I’m not sure Jeb even ended up going to detention.
I hated the thought of Gayle alone with the Cutlins, especially Jeb. But sometimes they fostered more than one kid at a time . . .
Gayle shook her head. “Just me,” she said, her eyes darting over to the fence.
As if her glance had caused it, a voice called out from the Cutlins’ house. “Girl, where you at?” It was Mrs. Cutlin’s voice, sharp as a whip crack. Gayle flinched like she had been slapped. “Girl?”
“You better get back home,” I whispered, trying to pry the girl off my leg. My fingers got tangled in her hair, and I picked out the twig that had caught my hand. Her hair was soft, softer than any hair I’d ever felt. Familiar, though. I rubbed my fingers through a small lock of it again, wondering where I remembered that texture from.
“Girlie? Get your tail back here!” Mrs. Cutlin’s voice was two whip cracks worth of mad now, and Gayle let go of my leg. I could hear a radio blaring out some rock music from inside the house. Mrs. Cutlin had to be standing outside on her porch, but she couldn’t see us through the wooden fence. For a second, I thought about grabbing Gayle’s hand and running away with her.
Gayle chewed her lower lip as she stared at the fence, then at me. Maybe she was having the same thought. I shook my head at her.
“You gotta go. I’ll give you a boost,” I said. “One two three?”
“One two three,” she agreed. She stepped one bare foot into my cradled hands, and I lifted her.
“One . . . two . . . !” She had sailed halfway up the fence before I got the last word out.
Either I had gotten a lot stronger in the last few weeks of doing tree work, or she was lighter than any kid should be. “All right, bird bones,” I joked. “Stay out of trees from now on. Promise?”
Gayle shook her head, perched on the top of the fence like a chickadee. “I can’t. My mom and dad will try to find me. I’m supposed to stay in the nest until they do.”
“That nest?” I pointed to the messy pile of twigs and wire.
“Well, it’s all I’ve got. For now.” She shrugged and dropped down, disappearing on the other side. I heard her voice as she ran. “Gotta go. But I’ll come back and sing for you, Tree—I mean, Little John.”
She hummed some tune as she ran, until Mrs. Cutlin’s voice cut it short. “Didn’t I tell you to stop making that racket?”
A door slammed behind me, and I turned, remembering the Emperor. Had he been outside listening, watching, the whole time? If he had been, he was gone now. I wondered, for a second, how much he could have overheard from where he’d stood.
My dad’s chain saw roared again, from the orchard at the side of the house. “Burn pile,” I muttered, gathering up the branches I’d dropped. I needed to get my head together; the later it got, the hotter it was going to be for burning brush. But I couldn’t stop wondering why that little girl had called me Tree. Couldn’t stop thinking about how close she’d come to dying.
And as I picked up the rough, scratching sticks and settled them into a pyramid for a bonfire, I couldn’t stop trying to remember where I’d felt anything as soft as her hair.
I was still thinking about Gayle at breakfast the next morning. Where had she come from? How had her parents died? And how had she jumped that far, so that I could catch her?
“Little John?” I jerked my head up at the sharpness in my mother’s voice. “Have you heard a single word I said?”
“No, ma’am,” I admitted, glad my dad had gone outside to load up the truck for the day’s work. He’d have smacked me for sure, if not for ignoring her, then for being overly honest about it. Mom? She just shook her head. It made the bangs on her forehead fly into her eyes, and she brushed them away with her fork.
I apologized. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Would you pick up the dead bird outside the garage?’ I need you to get rid of it before the cat drags it inside and hides it under the sofa like that last one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, pushing away from my plate, even though there was still food on it. I couldn’t make myself eat it all. The bacon was overcooked again, and Mom had forgotten to put any salt or sugar in the oatmeal. I didn’t say anything, though; bad cooking was the least of the problems we’d had since my sister died. At least this morning, Mom had gotten up and made breakfast, instead of staying in bed until dinnertime, crying and calling out for Raelynn every few seconds.
It was progress, and if it meant I had to choke down some bad food, I’d do it. I’d eat glass if it would make Mom more like herself.
Of course, every time she looked at me, she remembered. She had seemed better during the spring, with me gone every day to school. Now that I was home all the time . . . Maybe I just needed to get gone.
“Mom?” I said, reaching for my work gloves by the back door. “Did you hear about Mrs. Cutlin fostering a girl? I think I saw one over there yesterday.”
“I believe I did,” Mom said after a few seconds. “At the store, Natalie Mahany said something about a new girl. She said Verlie wasn’t sure she could keep this one long—something about her climbing trees and making noise at all hours.”
Noise? Was she talking about Gayle’s singing, or something else?
Mom went on. “That poor Verlie Cutlin. She’s a Christian if I ever saw one. Taking in all those poor little children.”
“Verlie Cutlin’s not that nice,” I said, wondering why all the ladies in the town seemed to think Mrs. Cutlin was some sort of saint for taking in kids. I guess she put on a good act in public. As far as I could tell, when she was alone at home, she hated kids—even her own.
“I’ve been in prayer circle with her for years, Little John Fischer. That woman has worn her knees out praying for all those foster kids.”
I still couldn’t see it, but Mom sounded kind of ticked again. Time to change the subject. “I was wondering,” I said, “if you’d heard what happened to the girl’s parents.”
“I can ask. Now you go get that bird before it gets hot and starts to stink.” She got up to wash dishes.
I stood there for a second longer. Before Raelynn had died, Mom had always said good-bye with a kiss on my nose. Now I was lucky to get a nod.
Of course, it could have been because I’d grown so tall. She probably couldn’t reach my nose anymore.
“I’ll see you tonight,” I said. “Love you, Mom.”
Mom didn’t answer. Her back was to me, and she was scrubbing at the skillet like it was stained with something worse than bacon grease.
I went out to get rid of the dead bird.
I didn’t mind dealing with birds, alive or dead. I’d sp
ent a long time reading about the kinds of birds that lived in our area. When I was little, I’d wanted to grow up to be a bird scientist. My grandma told me the word was ornithologist and said I could be anything I wanted to be. I think she might even have believed it.
Three years ago, before she died, she had bought me four different bird books for my birthday. The Audubon and Peterson guides were my favorites; they were really expensive ones with color pictures and hard covers. She’d written inside the flaps, “Love you forever.—Grandma.” Reading them made me feel closer to her, and I took good care of them. Since she was the only grandparent I’d ever known—the rest had died a long time before I was born—I knew I wasn’t going to be getting any more bird books. Or anything much else, for that matter.
I’d practically memorized some of them. At first, I’d read so I could answer Raelynn’s constant questions about what kind of birds she saw in our backyard. But then it had gotten fun, just to know so much about something nobody else around me did. To be able to listen to a bird sing and recognize its call? To know, from the colors and shape of its wings when it was flying, what kind of bird it was? It made me feel smart.
Of course, I knew I wasn’t smart—my report cards from school told the whole world that. And when I’d taken my bird books to show-and-tell, my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Norman, made sure I knew I wasn’t ever going to be an ornithologist. “You can’t even spell it, can you, boy?” she’d said. “Be realistic. It takes superior intelligence to pursue that sort of occupation.” She’d liked to use big words; I thought she did it to make me feel dumber.
It worked.
Maybe knowing kinds of birds wouldn’t matter to almost anyone—it seemed a sure thing no teacher would ever care. But it had mattered to Raelynn. She’d thought I was the smartest big brother in the world.
The bird Mom sent me to pick up was a barn swallow chick that had fallen from the nest near the corner of the garage. It was small, still covered with downy fluff on its belly. It had to have died that morning; there weren’t any ants on it, and it was still warm from the nest. I put my work gloves down and picked it up with one hand, feeling the little neck flop against my thumb. I carried it over to the grass, wondering what to do with it. A year before, I’d have known. Raelynn and I had buried every dead bird and lizard I found with a full ceremony, flowers and a eulogy and all. My next-door neighbor, Ernest, and his little sister, Isabelle, had helped.
Maybe . . . maybe. I could hear the sounds of a car racing game being played inside Ernest’s house. I hesitated. Ernest had been my best friend since we were three. But he hadn’t come over in months. Not after I’d told him I wasn’t interested in playing video games.
It wasn’t true. The truth was worse, though. Dad had pawned my game system four months before to cover the light bill. I figured it was better for Ernest to think I was acting mean than to know the truth about how broke we were. And, I mean, what kind of dad sells his kid’s Christmas present?
Lots of things like that happened now. It was no use complaining. And it was for the best, I supposed. Isabelle followed Ernest everywhere, now that she didn’t have Raelynn.
Isabelle had been Raelynn’s best friend, more like a long-lost twin. The two of them had done everything together. Raelynn would even sit in time-out when Isabelle got in trouble, right next to her, just to keep her company. They did their hair the same, wore the same kind of clothes, played the same games. Seeing Isabelle these days always made Mom a little worse.
Even worse than having me around all the time.
I heard Isabelle yelling inside her house. “Turn that off and play Barbies with me, Ernest Wade! I’m gonna tell Mom you’re not babysitting me right.”
I held back a laugh. Isabelle was the little general of the house, with her momma and daddy wrapped tight as rubber bands around her finger. No matter how Ernest complained, his folks believed every made-up thing his little sister said.
If I didn’t do something, Ernest would be playing dolls for a week, no video games at all. I knew just how to save him.
I held one hand up to my mouth and made a loud siren sound, just like an ambulance. I knew how to copy them all—fire trucks, police cars, too. Ernest and I had played this game a lot for the girls, finding sick or hurt animals in the neighborhood. Ernest had wanted to grow up to be a real driver, ambulance or at least UPS, since he was four. Once I gave up on being an ornithologist, I’d decided I might as well be a driver, too. It was fun to imagine Ernest and me, driving around Mills County together for our whole lives. We used to pretend a lot. Ambulance was our favorite game.
We let the girls be the doctors, if it was just a lizard with a tail fallen off or something. But sometimes . . . I peeked through the chain-link fence at Isabelle’s graveyard: a dozen or so Popsicle-stick crosses colored with markers and faded glitter glue. My dad had always said Isabelle was “a morbid little thing.” She was going to love this.
I let the sound die off with a mournful wail. The coroner’s siren. That was our signal for a critter that didn’t make it.
“A funeral!” Isabelle screeched like she’d just heard the ice cream truck. “Ernest! Little John’s got something dead. Let’s go!” There were some crashing noises, and a few screamed words—“Where’s my Bible? I can’t do it right without a Bible!”—and quick footsteps.
My heart sped up. Maybe I would have time to do the funeral with them. I could gather up some daisies . . . apologize to Ernest somehow for acting so mean. I missed him, bad.
Then Dad’s truck horn honked three times in a row, fast and loud. No time. I tossed the bird over Ernest’s fence, almost up onto his back porch. I felt bad for a second, just leaving it there. I knew Isabelle would be disappointed I’d taken off. And I sort of hoped Ernest would be, too. Did he miss me? Miss hanging out, talking about video games and NASCAR, school and teachers and normal stuff? I wished I knew. I wished we could go back to what we were like before.
But I took a breath, knowing that wasn’t going to happen. At least they would be happy for a while, with or without me. They’d find the bird, Isabelle would keep occupied, and Ernest wouldn’t have to play Barbies.
I didn’t have time for friends anymore, anyway. I had work to do.
“Are you ready to learn how to seal a cut limb?” Dad asked as we drove to the Emperor’s house. He pulled a silver-wrapped candy out of the ashtray and popped it in his mouth, then handed one to me. The cab filled with the smell of Dad’s butterscotch. I slipped mine in my pocket for Gayle.
“Sure,” I said over the country song wailing out of the truck’s speakers. “What kind of tree are we cutting?”
“Sycamore,” he said. “It’s a weed tree anyway, so it won’t matter if you mess it up. The idiot”—by this he meant Mr. King—“had asked me to talk to Mrs. Cutlin about taking it out entirely, but he changed his mind yesterday.” He spat out the window; a little of it flew back in the truck and landed on the dashboard. “Probably afraid it’d cost him more.”
I didn’t answer, just stared out my window, thinking about money, and the Emperor, and how poor everybody else in our town was.
Hilsabeck wasn’t the smallest town in the county, but it shrank every year, with most of the young people leaving as soon as they could. It was all older folks’ houses on the streets we took on the drive from our place to the Emperor’s. The homes were mainly one-story, red or gray brick squares with plastic flowers in the yards, or birdbaths. There were two churches on the route, a Brookshire Brothers grocery store, and a feed store and tractor supply with a giant sign advertising a deer corn special “this week only.” I laughed; it had said that for at least three years.
The air conditioner in the truck didn’t work, so I kept my window down, soaking in the morning cool and the wild verbena–scented wind, until we got to the Emperor’s. Dad got out and pointed to the sycamore he wanted trimmed. “That’s today’s job,” he s
aid. It was the one Gayle had built her nest in. Good, I thought. That tree was a menace.
Mr. King was waiting for us at his front door. His face was reddish, like he was out of breath. Or maybe it was just the reflection of light from the towering walls of red brick behind him. The two-story house was almost like the nicest ones in town, brick on all sides and a porch to sit on. Bigger, of course, and cleaner. He had a cleaning lady who did everything, even windows, or so Mom had heard. But the Emperor’s house had tall white columns on the front porch that didn’t go with the brick, and fancy white woodwork around all the windows. Like somebody had taken the front of a Southern plantation and plunked it on the front of a normal house. No amount of cleaning could make all the parts match, I thought. But it sure did make an impression.
The Emperor wasn’t in his dressing gown today; he was wearing a three-piece suit, dark charcoal gray. Something flashed at his wrists as he raised a hand to greet us. Diamond cuff links, probably. I’d heard he even had diamond buttons on his tuxedo. “John,” he said to my dad, and nodded. “Are you planning on working the south side today?”
Dad forced a smile and nodded back deeply—more or less bowing. “Yes, sir, Mr. King,” he said. “That was the plan.”
I couldn’t watch. I swallowed and turned away, studying the small blue flowers that lined the path. They were perfectly placed, each one six inches from the next. They’ll be too close when they mature, I thought. But the Emperor probably wouldn’t have to worry about that. When they got too crowded, he’d just have his regular gardener dig them up and throw them out. Then they’d put in a batch of something else new and showy.
“Is there any chance I could borrow your son this morning?”
The Emperor’s words drew my attention away from the flowers. “What?” I said before I could think better of it. “What for?”
My dad rested his hand on my arm and squeezed tight. I tried not to flinch; the Emperor was looking at me expectantly.