by Jill MacLean
I sit down in the middle of the road again. Another raven swoops into the air, like it’s playing, like it’s having fun.
A bucket-load of tears and I feel worse, not better.
Twenty-Four
to question
At home, I fall into bed and sleep until suppertime. Seal and me eat fish cakes and broccoli casserole, then he leaves right after we do the dishes. “I won’t be late,” he says, like him being home early will fix all our problems. He still hasn’t told me how the threesome went—him, Davina, and my mother.
I can’t settle to anything. It’s one of those evenings when I wish Hanna was here, the music blaring and us dancing until we drop.
The barn. Makes sense that the more I go, the quicker Ghost will get used to me.
Ghost, the cat Hud tried to drown…
There’s a bicycle propped against Abe’s fence. A boy’s bicycle. Abe’s hoeing the garden. He leans on the handle. “Hard for Travis to get a minute to hisself, what with Prinny, Laice, and now you.”
“I want to ask him a question.”
“You go right ahead.” He spits into the little ditch between the rows. “You’re better off chasin’ Travis than the likes of your buddy Hud Quinn.”
So is that what Hud is? My buddy?
I stick my nose in the air and march to the barn. When the door creaks open, Ghost leaps for the loft. Travis looks around. “Hey, Sigrid.”
“Sorry I scared the cat. Are you gonna adopt him?”
“Nah. Just trying to tame him.”
He’s sitting on my bale of straw. I sit on the next one over. “Did you know that Hud tried to drown Ghost in a cage?”
“Where did you hear that?”
“He told me.”
“He did?” Travis tugs his ear. “Yeah, I knew. I was there. It was a while ago—one day last winter when I was at Gulley Cove. He was kicking the cage with the cat inside. Told me he was going to drown Ghost.”
“And you stopped him?”
“Tripped him so he fell into the sea.”
“No wonder he hates you.” I shred an end of straw. “He figures you told everyone.”
Travis shrugs. “He hated me way before that and what’s the good of tattling?”
“I tripped Hud’s dad at Home Hardware. By accident. He took it out on Hud even though Hud had nothing to do with it. Have you ever seen Doyle hit Hud?”
“Twice.”
“You have? Has Prinny? Or Laice?”
“Dunno. You’d have to ask them.”
I wonder if the Herbey girls ever have, or Buck and Cole. Or Tate. “I saw him, too...a few days ago. Do cops listen to kids?”
Travis’s eyes narrow. “What’s up?”
If you want someone to be your friend, you tell them stuff, right? You trust them. I remember the girl in the poster, holding her sword high.
I say slowly, “If I could find other people who saw Doyle hit Hud…if we went to the cops with the names…would that help Hud or would it make it worse? I have to tell you, my record for making things worse stands at 110%.”
“Hard to know with someone like Doyle. I never told anyone I saw him hit Hud.”
“If I ask around, can I talk to you again in a few days?”
“Sure,” he says.
I smile at him, a big smile because it’s good to have an ally. “Thanks, Travis…I’ve been trying to tame Ghost, too.”
“Good luck,” he says, and smiles right back.
I wish Prinny would smile at me like that.
Outside, Abe’s hoeing away. I might as well make a start. “Abe, did you ever see Doyle Quinn hit Hud?”
“Nope. Can’t say I’d get too flustered if I did.”
“Doyle’s real mean and Hud’s not as bad as you think!”
“Hmph,” says Abe.
Discouraged, I trudge down the path. But I stop off at Prinny’s place on the way through Ratchet; she’s Hud’s first cousin. She and Laice are sitting on a new wooden swing beside the house, the two of them chatting away, and I feel a stab of such envy that my steps falter. When they see me, they go quiet.
I say, “Did either of you ever see Doyle Quinn hit Hud?”
Prinny says slowly, “My Uncle Doyle is one mean cuss, and I’ve seen bruises on Hud. But I never actually saw my uncle hitting him. What about you, Laice?”
“No,” Laice says.
“Will you keep your eyes open? And let me know?”
Prinny gives me the same narrow-eyed look as Travis. “Okay,” she says.
I leave them to it. Today seems to have gone on for a very long time, and I want to be home in my own place, with my new bedspread and my two posters on the wall. I bike along the road, sea on one side, barrens on the other, wondering if right now one of those birds called shrikes is jabbing its prey onto a thorn.
Back in Fiddlers Cove, the first person I see is Tate sitting on her front steps, her arms looped around her knees, her gaze fastened on the clipped grass of the lawn. She looks…lonesome.
Am I out of my mind?
Her father reading from his prayer book when he looked as if he’d rather drop it on her head…him and his wife forcing Tate to her knees… I’d like to paint God Isn’t Mean in big red letters on their gray car. But I won’t. Because guess who’d be blamed and it wouldn’t be me.
As I turn into her driveway and drop my bike on the grass, she looks up and springs to her feet. “Tate,” I say, “have you ever seen Doyle Quinn hit Hud?”
Chopping off her words, she says, “Someone fired a rock through our window last night. It was you, wasn’t it? Paying me back for tripping you on the school steps.”
I look puzzled. “Rock? What rock?”
“Ten o’clock last night, you broke our living-room window. With a rock.”
“Any rock-throwing done around here, it’s Mel.”
“It wasn’t Mel!”
“It sure wasn’t me,” I say with just the right touch of impatience. “So tell me—have you ever seen Doyle Quinn hit Hud?”
“Maybe,” she says.
“Yes or no?”
“You got a thing going for Hud?”
“I saw Doyle hit him one day last week. I want to know who else has seen him.”
“Twenty bucks and I might tell you,” she says. “Thirty ups your chances.”
I take a deep breath. “I told Hud he should quit bullying because he’s worth more than that. So are you.”
“Proper little do-gooder, aren’t you?”
“You and me…we could be friends.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
My tongue spouts four small words. “I threw that rock.”
There’s a moment of dead silence. “What did you do that for?”
“I was watching through the window and saw how your parents treat you. Praying that looked like cursing.”
“You spied on me?”
Because she’s standing on the bottom step, she’s taller than me. My sword feels like a big weight but I lift it anyway. “It’s not right, what they were doing. There’s all kinds of mean, and that was the worst I ever saw.”
“I’m gonna make you real sorry you looked through that window.”
“I was trying to help!”
“I don’t need your help! When I’m done with you, you’re the one who’ll need help.”
“You could do with a friend,” I say. Leaning down, I grab my bike and ride home.
The next day’s Sunday, all day. I lie in, gazing at the white cat on my poster, wondering how Hud could kick a cage with a cat inside. Would he have drowned the cat? Could he have been that mean?
I shoved two cats into a nor’easter. Me, Sigrid Sugden, who never had a dad who beat me.
I look at the girl, her silver sword. Maybe a sword’s a bad idea. It’s a weapon, after all. Something you scare people with, like we used to scare kids in school—Mel with her big fists, Tate with her scary voice, me with my smartphone.
My phone stays in my pocket these days;
but the rest of me is a disaster waiting to happen.
In the afternoon, I shovel manure at Abe’s and talk to Ghost. Then I make myself visit the Herbeys, as well as Buck, Cole, and Stevie. None of them ever saw Doyle hit Hud. All of them look at me like I’ve turned into an alien.
If it’s only Travis and me as witnesses, I doubt the cops’ll pay much attention.
I go home and lay the table, using a tablecloth from the linen cupboard, and folding cloth napkins so they stand up in triangles. Lorne phones in our order for Chinese food and goes to pick it up, bringing Sally back with him. She’s real nice, pleased to be with Lorne and pleased to meet us. Seal holds up his end. But he’d be happier if Davina was here, I know he would be.
He can’t ask Davina to supper in a house that belongs to my mother.
At least my mother didn’t sniff out the Chinese food and turn up on the doorstep.
I walk up the road to check the mailbox early Monday morning. Mel’s bike is thrown on the lawn at Tate’s.
How can Tate risk a repeat of that awful praying?
Two bills are in the box along with a letter from my dad, his scrawly handwriting on the envelope. I open it in my room with the door shut even though no one’s home but me. A photo of him in a suit and tie with a tall, dark-haired woman in a flowered dress. Barb. She’s laughing, her hand tucked into his elbow, him smiling down at her. In the second photo, my dad’s holding two tow-headed little boys, one on each arm. All three of them laughing.
I read the letter, once, twice, although it doesn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. In the envelope, there’s a fifty-dollar bill.
One of the new ones, with a Coast Guard boat chugging through chunks of ice.
Twenty-Five
to trample
Mel’s bike is still outside Tate’s when I leave for Ratchet, where I plan to ask Hector Baldwin if he’s ever seen Doyle in action. Doing something—anything—is better than sitting around feeling sorry for myself. I’ll check Danny Grimsby later on. Not that he’d be much use when it comes to cops, him being plastered most of the time.
I should be asking Mel. She used to come to Fiddlers Cove a fair bit when the three of us were a team.
Thinking about the Shrikes, the team of three, makes me shrivel with shame.
Hector’s mom answers the door, nattering on like she hasn’t spoken to another living soul in weeks. Hector comes out on their front step and shuts her off by closing the door. I ask my usual question.
“Yeah,” he says.
“Yeah? You mean you saw Doyle hit Hud?”
“Mom was driving me to the dentist.” He frowns in thought. “September. Before Travis arrived.”
“Did she see?”
He shakes his head.
I tell him my plan about the cops, and he says he’d go if we did. “Thanks, Hector, that’s great,” I say, smile at him, and get a grunt in return.
I’m back on the road, wondering what to do next, when Davina’s car passes me and turns up her driveway. My heart starts thumping away.
She carries three bags of groceries into the house. Car door still open. I push my bike up her driveway. Early roses in the garden. Bees circling some spiky pink flowers. Pretty lace curtains in the windows.
She comes out of the house again. She’s wearing a flowered skirt with a pink top, not a rhinestone or sequin in sight. She’s not pretty until she smiles, then it’s like the sun came out. “Hello,” she says. “You’re Sigrid, aren’t you?”
“How’d you know?”
“Seal showed me pictures. Want to give me a hand with the groceries?”
Her kitchen is sparkling clean, needlepoint pictures on the walls, herbs growing in pots on the windowsill. She says, “I’ll pour some iced tea once I’ve put the groceries away.”
“Was my mother really awful the day she came here?” I blurt.
“She wasn’t very pleasant. But, you know, it’s obvious she stopped loving Seal a long time ago.”
There’s something about her face, it makes you trust her right away. “Seal’s a great stepdad. He told me he wants to marry you. But my mother is scarcely ever home and he can’t leave me alone in the house at night.”
She stops on her way to the pantry, a package of Tostitos—Seal’s favorite—in her hand. “Don’t worry about it, Sigrid. We’ll work something out.”
“But—”
“Seal loves you. Seal and me love each other. I don’t know about love moving mountains, but it can move you, me, and Seal, sure.”
The thing is, I believe her.
She finds out I haven’t had lunch yet. We have ham sandwiches, iced tea, sliced apple, and sugar cookies, and we talk like we’ve known each other a long time. She tells me about Barley, her first husband—I missed him sore when he died—and I tell her how I’m trying to change my ways and how difficult it is. She listens, taking it all in, and I wish with all my heart she could be my stepmother even though I know my own mother would throw a hissy fit at the thought.
She hugs me when I leave, and I hug her back. I’m near to crying, I feel so happy, so hopeful. My feet dance themselves down her driveway.
It’s time to do my barn chores. Seal won’t be back for a couple of hours, and there’s leftover Chinese for supper.
Maybe my happiness will rub off on Ghost, and he’ll sit in my lap and purr because he’s happy, too. Dream big. Why not?
Abe’s truck is gone. I leave my bike by the fence. In the barn, Ghost is sitting near the pen where the hens come in and out. He tenses when he sees me, his haunches bunched to make a leap for the loft. I stop by the door, speaking to him real soft, not moving a muscle. He sticks out one back leg and lashes it with his tongue, like being clean is all that’s on his mind. Then he goes back to watching the hens.
“You better not try catching one of them,” I say, stepping slow and careful toward my bale of straw. “Abe won’t give you any more cow milk if you do, and are you ever going to let me pick you up?”
Ghost washes his other back foot. I scratch the pig between the ears, then I sit down, leaning my head back. Davina’s kitchen settles into my mind, her so friendly and nice, how easy she was to talk to.…
The barn door creaks open. Hoping it’s Travis, I open my eyes.
“Hello, Sigrid,” Tate says.
Mel fires a stone at Ghost, hitting him on the shoulder. He screeches, short and sharp. As she runs at him, shouting and waving her arms, he streaks out his little door. I’m on my feet. I dart past Tate. Mel seizes me by the arm and swings me around. I kick her shin, all the fury from that screech behind my muscles.
“Hold onto her, Mel!” Tate cries.
Mel hauls my arm up my back. I struggle anyway, drowning pain in rage. “How’d you know where to find me?”
“We been following you on Mel’s bike. Took your time at Davina’s, didn’t you?”
She marches to the chickens’ pen, kicks at the wooden struts, and drags on the wire. The hens flap their wings and rush outside, squawking. Holding one end of a strut, she brings her heel down on it. It breaks in two. She tramples the wire to the ground, then overturns the food and water dishes.
I croak, “Are you crazy?”
“I told you I’d make you pay for spying on me,” she says, smashing another strut.
“Abe will be home any minute.”
“No, he won’t. He’s at Danny Grimsby’s. They’ll crack open the rum and that’s them done.”
With a sweep of her hand, she knocks the plastic bottle of treats off the shelf. The pantry, bottles of ketchup and mustard crashing to the floor…
She opens the barn door wide. She opens the pig’s wooden gate. Then she climbs his fence and kicks him once, twice. He oinks, turning his head, and if a pig can show disbelief, this pig does. I go limp in Mel’s grip, like I’ve given up, like it’s all over.
Instead of falling for it, she pulls my arm higher. Pain screams from my shoulder. She says, “I’m here because I didn’t like your present.”
There’s an old stick leaning against one of the beams. Tate picks it up and wallops the pig across the backside. With a sound between a snort and a bleat, he runs through the open door of his pen to the big rectangle of light that’s the barn door. His hoofs scrabble across the wooden floor, and he’s gone.
Tate does her best to overturn the feed barrel, gasping with effort.
As Mel’s hands slacken for a moment, I elbow her in the gut and throw myself forward and I almost make it, I’m almost free. She stomps her big foot on mine, anchoring me, then locks her arms around my waist. I’m helpless as a hen and so furious I’m surprised the whole barn doesn’t burst into flames.
“Outside,” Tate says, abandoning the barrel.
Mel half-lifts, half-hauls me over the threshold, me fighting her every inch of the way. The pig is rooting in the garden. Tate starts stamping on the row of beans, their little green leaves so new and fresh.
“Don’t, Tate!”
Mel drags me closer to the garden. No one around, no use yelling for help. When Tate starts on the potatoes, kicking at the clusters of green leaves, so carefully hilled, the pig runs for cover into the tall grass on the far side of the garden. She yanks on the wire holding the pea stems with their curls of green, rips the plants out of the ground, and flings them to one side.
Mel says, “Learning your lesson, Sigrid?”
The long row of beet greens with their dark pink stems get trampled under Tate’s feet, then the feathery carrot leaves. Mud’s clinging to her sneakers. Abe must have watered the garden this morning, and somehow this makes it worse.
Abe trusted me. Tate and Mel wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t interfered in their lives.
The garden’s a wreck, crushed leaves, stems broken and already wilting. Then Tate runs to the gate that opens onto the road and shoves it wide open. Back up the hill, she unties the cow from the post and leads her down the slope. The cow plods after her, her udder swaying, her long tail switching the flies.
I twist and squirm. “Stop it, Tate! You can’t do that, you mustn’t—it’s dangerous.”