Better With Butter

by Victoria Piontek

  There are not enough words to express my love for my husband, David. He’s built a life for us that I cherish, and I hope he recognizes himself in the pages of this book.

  Victoria Piontek is the author of The Spirit of Cattail County, a Bank Street College of Education’s Best Children’s Book of the Year and a Children’s Sequoyah Masterlist selection. As a kid, she was lucky to have a menagerie of pets, including a goat that liked to follow her to the school bus each morning. When she’s not writing, you can find her hiking in the Bay Area, where she lives with her husband, three children, and a gigantic fluffy dog. Better with Butter is her second novel.

  Keep reading for a special peek at The Spirit of Cattail County by Victoria Piontek!

  “The two of them had always been different.

  She, a girl who looked at death.

  He, a ghost who looked like life.”

  They buried Sparrow Dalton’s mama the day the fortune-teller came. A day so hot, some say the swamp started to bubble. The water of the Everglades rose in the air and hung there, a steaming mist that cloaked the little town of Beulah in a persistent haze.

  Sparrow watched as they lowered Mama’s casket through the lingering precipitation and into the ground. As the casket creaked and swayed on the ropes that held it fast, vapors swirled in a way that had nothing to do with the weather. Among those rising vapors, Sparrow searched for Mama. She felt with deep certainty she would see Mama again, and she had good reason for this conviction.

  Sparrow saw spirits.

  In fact, she had seen one ghost, the Boy, with such lifelong regularity and clarity that he was as sure as the beat of her young heart.

  He was with her even at that moment, as real and as solid as the preacher who presided over Mama’s grave. His features were so unlike the murky wisps of typical spirits that she marveled no one else saw him. Though the two of them had always been different. She, a girl who looked at death. He, a ghost who looked like life.

  For Sparrow, the only reminder that he was a ghost was his impenetrable silence. He was her greatest secret, yet he told no secrets himself.

  She wished he would tell secrets. For if he could talk to her, then it would have been a simple matter to ask after Mama. Sparrow wanted to know where Mama had gone. More important, she wanted to know when Mama would return. Because if the Boy could live side by side with Sparrow, spending long summer days trailing her about the house like a dog, then so could Mama. She knew it wouldn’t be exactly as it was before. Sparrow wasn’t crazy enough to think that. She only wanted to see Mama again so she wouldn’t miss her so much.

  Sparrow was so lonely for Mama that her soul ached like a thumping drum, and without Mama, Sparrow had no one to love her.

  Sparrow had no sisters, no brothers, and no daddy. Truth be told, she had no true friends either. Sparrow had the misfortune of being an anomaly in a town that took offense at difference. Beulah had never forgiven Sparrow for being born on the same night as the great flood. It seemed folks found it hard to separate her arrival with the rise of the swamp waters. It felt like a bad omen.

  To make matters worse, she had the nerve to show up bearing no resemblance to her fair mama. Sparrow had eyes the color of cattails and black hair that twisted like reed grass. Beulah folks joked that Sparrow must be the daughter of the swamp itself to be washed ashore in the flood and so different-looking from Daltons born in generations past. Of course, they wouldn’t have speculated so, if Sparrow had a Beulah-born daddy or Mama had stopped the rumors as fast as they’d started. Mama had a defiant streak, though. She’d refused to talk about Sparrow’s daddy, and the story stuck.

  With Mama gone, Sparrow’s only claim to friendship and family were the ghost of a silent boy and Auntie Geraldine, her only living relative.

  Sparrow liked the idea of having an aunt. She just didn’t like the one she got.

  Auntie Geraldine was a force to be reckoned with. A force she applied liberally and often to Sparrow, as she was doing now. Auntie Geraldine pinched the back of Sparrow’s arm, for the preacher waited for Sparrow to come forward and cast the first handful of dirt on Mama’s grave.

  Sparrow had made it clear before they left the house that morning that she wouldn’t do this. It was one thing to bury Mama, quite another to throw dirt on her.

  Auntie Geraldine smiled up at the preacher and then gave Sparrow another pinch.

  Sparrow clamped her hands on the sides of her chair and looked resolutely at the horizon.

  A few awkward seconds passed, during which the preacher mopped the sweat from his brow with a hanky and Auntie Geraldine looked around with a forced smile.

  Finally, the preacher said, in an overly indulgent and patient way, “Perhaps, sister, you can take her place.”

  Auntie Geraldine gave an assuring nod and rose, her thin, bony body as strong as steel. She straightened her starched skirt. Paused. Then looked at Sparrow.

  She reached out, cupped Sparrow’s chin in her hand, and pressed her nails into the tender skin of Sparrow’s cheeks before turning to do the preacher’s bidding. Auntie Geraldine was good at many things, but was at her best when keeping up appearances.

  Auntie Geraldine grabbed a handful of freshly turned soil and held it in her palm. The Boy moved so close to Auntie Geraldine that they were almost touching, and bent down. He put his mouth right next to her palm, as if he would kiss it, and blew. The soil lifted on a ghostly breeze, swirled playfully in the air, and fell like raindrops to the ground.

  Auntie Geraldine glared at Sparrow.

  It was almost as if she suspected it was Sparrow’s fault.

  Sparrow glared back, unjustly accused.

  She no more controlled the Boy than she did the weather, although she was grateful to him. She hadn’t wanted to throw dirt on top of Mama, and now she realized she hadn’t wanted anyone else to do it either. Somehow, the Boy knew it. So maybe, in a way, she did control him.

  Most likely not. Spirits are fickle things.

  Midday faded into twilight and Beulah said goodbye to Mama, though no one but Mama remained at the little roadside cemetery anymore. The funeral party had progressed from graveside to Sparrow’s family home.

  Sparrow lived in a ramshackle, two-story house the Daltons had owned for more generations than she could count. It sat at the edge of the wetlands, and despite the family’s attempts at upkeep, its white paint had a perpetual gray tint that flaked at the edges. Every spring they slapped a fresh coat of white paint on the house, but by midsummer, the salt from the nearby brackish water wore it right off. That’s how life was near the wetlands, a continuous cycle of corrosion and renewal.

  Sparrow never minded about the color. She liked the way the gray boards peeked out from under the white. It looked better to her like that. It looked lived in and well loved, and Sparrow sure did love her house. She loved everything about it. She loved the way the tin roof clanged during thunderstorms, the thumping rain so loud it sounded like angels tap-dancing overhead. She loved the way the porch encircled the house, wrapping it tight with a screen like a protective cocoon to keep out the mosquitoes and the gnats that infested the marsh. She even liked the way the screen door slammed shut, lumber slapping loudly against lumber, but she reserved her deepest affection for the creaky porch swing. Crafted from cypress wood so old it was practically petrified, it hung from the rafters by braided rope as thick as a man’s fist.

  Sparrow sat on her petrified porch swing in black mourning clothes bought for the funeral. The swing swayed gently, propelled into motion by the Boy’s ghostly magic. More a familiar than a ghost, he lounged beside her on the swing, and together, they watched the mourners, two souls set apart from the rest.

  All of Beulah, it seemed, turned out for Mama’s funeral. On this day, the Monroes, the Castos, and the Daltons commingled in a way that wouldn’t happen under other circumstances. Death brought Beulah’s founding families together in a way that births and marriages did not.

  If there had been fewer
people crammed into the confines of Dalton House, and less chatter, Sparrow would have heard the telltale clicking of Auntie Geraldine’s heels as she searched for her errant niece. Sparrow was supposed to be accepting condolences and nodding politely. Instead, she was hiding in plain sight to avoid talking to folks about Mama because it made a lump rise in her throat and tears sting her eyes despite her belief that she would see Mama again.

  If she’d heard the sound of those heels, she would have gone somewhere else, but as it happened, she did not, and Auntie Geraldine caught her like a fish on a line.

  “Sparrow Dalton!” Auntie Geraldine said.

  Sparrow stiffened. The sound of Auntie Geraldine’s voice dragged down her spine like nails on a chalkboard.

  Auntie Geraldine approached Sparrow and peered down at her from her lofty height. Auntie Geraldine was a tall woman. She rose to an impressive height of five feet ten inches without heels. In them, she reached six feet or more, depending on the shoe. In Sparrow’s opinion, Auntie Geraldine was too tall to wear heels, but she wore them all the time anyway.

  “We discussed this,” Auntie Geraldine said. “You can’t mope around. It makes people uncomfortable.” Manners and appearances were of utmost importance to Auntie Geraldine.

  “I don’t feel like talking,” Sparrow answered, matching her aunt’s terse tone. Though small-boned and delicately made, Sparrow resembled her namesake in more than just build. Like the hearty brown birds that flitted in and about the house eaves, Sparrow’s grit surpassed her size, a trait that annoyed Auntie Geraldine to no end.

  “Stop that infernal swinging,” Auntie Geraldine said.

  Sparrow used her foot to stop the swing’s ghostly sway.

  The Boy cast her a petulant look.

  She ignored him.

  Auntie Geraldine sighed impatiently. “As hosts, we have a responsibility to our guests. To their comfort while in our home.”

  The use of the word our in reference to Sparrow’s home irked her. Auntie Geraldine had moved back into Dalton House the last weeks of Mama’s sickness and had been lording over it ever since. Dalton House belonged to them, Sparrow and Mama, not Auntie Geraldine. It was like the worst kind of take-backsies, and in her meaner moments, Auntie Geraldine threatened to sell Dalton House to the highest bidder.

  Mama’s leaving had turned Sparrow’s whole world upside down in more ways than one, and the only way it’d ever be set right again was with her return.

  “I’ll go to my room,” Sparrow said.

  “Absolutely not. People will think you are hiding.”

  Sparrow was trying to hide, but she didn’t say this to Auntie Geraldine. Instead, she struggled to hold the swing still and to keep her efforts from showing in her expression. The force of the swing pulled at her ankles like the outgoing tide. The Boy liked to tease Auntie Geraldine, making things move when they should stay still, and his antics made Auntie Geraldine mad at Sparrow.

  “Appearances matter, Sparrow. Your mama’s passing has brought up the old gossip, and I’ll not have the Daltons being the talk of the town. It’s hard enough living in this house again without having to listen to that ridiculous story.” Unlike Sparrow, Beulah loved to ponder the identity of her father. Sparrow felt it smacked of disloyalty to Mama to think on it too hard. She wouldn’t mind knowing, she supposed, but if Mama didn’t care to discuss it, then Sparrow didn’t either.

  “I’ve already spoken to every—” Sparrow lost control of the swing. It swung backward and rocketed forward toward Auntie Geraldine. It hurled into her, nearly knocking her off her feet.

  Auntie Geraldine caught the rope and jerked the swing to a stop. She was a formidable woman, carved from stone, and the hit wasn’t enough to topple her. Auntie Geraldine looked around to see if anyone noticed. Several people dropped their eyes when her exacting gaze veered their way. In Beulah, someone was always watching.

  “Why must you make everything so difficult?” Auntie Geraldine hissed. “If you refuse to do what’s expected of you, then go into the yard with the kids. At least that way, you won’t be moping on this swing, making people feel sorry for you.”

  “Fine.” Frustration tainted Sparrow’s response. She didn’t want to go into the yard with the kids or wander the house talking to the adults. She wanted to sit quietly on her swing and let her thoughts drift toward Mama. She expected Mama to appear at any moment now and wanted to be waiting when she did.

  Auntie Geraldine cleared her throat and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sparrow corrected herself. Auntie Geraldine reminded Sparrow of a rattler. She warned before striking, and Sparrow knew when to withdraw. The prudent walked around a coiled snake rather than step over it.

  “Good,” Auntie Geraldine said, going to the screen door. She held it open and seared Sparrow with her glare.

  The Boy dissolved like mist in the midday sun.

  Coward, Sparrow thought as she watched him go. He never stuck around to witness the fallout of his pranks.

  Auntie Geraldine tapped her foot impatiently.

  Sparrow rose from her swing. From the frying pan into the fire, she thought begrudgingly as she walked into the yard where the Beulah kids waited.

  Sparrow leaned against one of the giant oak trees that shaded her yard. The leafy canopy of the ancient trees grew thick near the house and dripped with Spanish moss. Over the centuries, their wandering roots had snaked toward the marsh, gradually claiming the land for their own and creating Dalton dirt. Dalton dirt was a salt-and-pepper mixture of soil and sand, suitable for only the hardiest of trees and random tufts of crabgrass.

  On this flecked terrain, the kids of Beulah played a game of baseball beneath the oaks’ protective shade, but Sparrow had no intention of joining them. She knew without asking that she wasn’t invited.

  Instead, she looked past them to the marsh. Flat and wide, it stretched deep into the horizon and buzzed with life. Birds and insects, gators and snakes, reed grasses and fishes all thrived in their marsh. The Daltons owned it all, as far as the eye could see, but Florida swampland held no monetary value. Sparrow kept its only worth locked up in her heart, and with it, the hope that Auntie Geraldine’s threats to sell the house would wilt like hydrangea in the midday heat. Sparrow couldn’t even consider the idea of living anyplace other than Dalton House—her home, the Boy’s home, Mama’s home.

  The sound of a bat hitting a ball drew Sparrow’s attention away from the marsh to the kids. The game they played had been going on for a while, long enough that most of them had likely forgotten the reason they were at her house in the first place.

  As night moseyed toward Beulah, the sun slunk slowly down the sky, but enough light lingered for them to play ball and the choking heat didn’t matter. These kids were Beulah raised. The effects of fevered temperatures and strangling humidity hardly bothered them.

  She lifted her mass of black hair off her neck, releasing the heat trapped beneath as she watched Johnny Casto step up to home plate.

  Johnny took his place under the oak tree that served as home base in their makeshift game. He hoisted an old board over his shoulder and nodded to his sister, Maeve, who waited on third. They both had the Casto red hair, and it flamed in the glow of the setting sun.

  Andrew Monroe claimed the pitcher position and readied his throw. He drew his arm back and raised his knee. He took a focusing breath and his face turned grave with a seriousness unwarranted for a friendly game of ball, but then, the divides separating the folks of Beulah chafed like chiggers.

  Like their parents, the kids were split into two groups. The first group was the Castos, a sprawling, half-wild clan of redheaded siblings and cousins that no one could ever keep straight. The second was everyone else.

  Unlike most of Beulah, Sparrow liked the Castos. She didn’t care that they went almost everywhere barefoot and had a reputation for fighting. She understood how it felt to be outside of a circle she should have been in.

  As a Dalton, Spa
rrow’s place in the world should have been secured, but Beulah liked sameness. Sparrow reeked of difference. For starters, she had picked an unlucky night to be born. Then she’d had the nerve to look different than expected. Two transgressions that likely would have been forgiven in time if it hadn’t been for the Boy.

  She walked with him, and he left his mark on her. Even when the Boy left her, his presence lingered like a scent. Sparrow carried the faintest whiff of death, a peculiarity that made people uncomfortable even if they blamed other factors for the cause. For this reason, Beulah kept its distance from Sparrow, and Sparrow had grown accustomed to life on the sidelines.

  Maeve Casto shouted, “Bring me home, brother,” and scooted off third in an attempt to steal home.

  Andrew swung around and threw the ball to his twin sister, Ansley, who manned third base. Ansley leaped in the air, easily snatching the ball. Both the twins were athletic and had the honey-blond hair and blue eyes that Beulah prized. They were the perfect examples of Beulah pedigree—polite, golden, and old-money wealthy. Too bad they were also snarky, sneaky, and gossipy.

  Maeve dashed back to third before Ansley could tag her out.

  Ansley huffed and tossed the ball back to her brother.

  Maeve smirked devilishly and wiped the black eyeliner that always rimmed her eyes even on the hottest days. Maeve had five older sisters and was privy to secrets most girls Sparrow’s age didn’t know.

  Sparrow considered clapping to show her support for the Castos but then thought better of it. Even though she felt a kinship with them, they felt no allegiance to her. Only Castos belonged to Castos. Just because they weren’t enemies didn’t mean they were friends.