“A girl? You’re a little girl!” Piper cooed. The baby was strangely compact but heavy. Her hands were grasping and opening, reaching out to life. She grabbed Piper’s braid and pulled on it. Piper nearly melted on the spot. “Oh. She’s so strong.”
“Your pa and I are thinking of calling her Jane. Jane McCloud. Plain and simple and nothing fancy.”
“Jane,” Piper repeated.
Dottie Dutton came bustling into the room with an envelope that she handed to Joe. “Doc Bell had me call ahead, and they’re expecting you down at the hospital in Cloverfield. Here’s all the information they’ll need.”
“The hospital?” Piper’s head jerked up. “Why the hospital?”
“I’m fine, child. Don’t get that look on your face. They just need to check things out.”
Dottie Dutton made a tsking noise as she packed up Betty’s chart. “You should always prepare yourself for the worst.”
With those happy words, Dottie bustled out of the room, leaving the door open so that Millie Mae could come bursting in. She presented herself at the foot of the examining table like she’d happened upon a party that she should have gotten an invitation to but hadn’t. Placing her hands on her hips, she surveyed the scene with contempt.
“Well, you could knock me over with a feather, Betty McCloud,” she sniffed. “Dottie Dutton just told me what you got up to in here, and I couldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. What were you thinking, going off and having another baby for? And at your age too?” Millie Mae swooped forward and plucked the baby out of Piper’s hands before she could protest.
“Well, this one don’t look strange. Not like what you got now. That’s a blessing anyway.” Mille Mae looked closer. “She don’t have the color I like to see in a newborn, though. Had six of my own, so I know about these things.”
Betty reached out to the baby anxiously. “We’re going off to the hospital in Cloverfield, and she’ll be checked out good.”
“Just as well. You can’t be too careful. No telling what can go wrong when a woman of your age goes around having babies unexpected-like.” Millie Mae shrugged as though to say that Betty deserved what she got for what was an obvious lack of common sense.
“Your boy has a nasty cut,” Doc Bell said, bumbling back into the room with Dottie Dutton at his side. “Nothing much wrong with him besides. I bandaged it up so that it’ll hold the night, but you best bring him back first thing in the morning so I can take another look at it.”
This came as no surprise to Millie Mae. “I suspected as much.”
All business, Doc Bell scooped the baby out of Betty’s arms and handed her to Joe. With Dottie Dutton on one side of Betty and him on the other, they began to hoist her off the examining table. “We’ll need to get you loaded up and on the road over to Cloverfield. They’re expecting you before night, and it’s a long drive. Best get a move on.”
Piper wanted to help her mother, but there were too many people, and she was pushed aside and out of the way.
“Careful, now,” Millie Mae clucked. “For heaven’s sake, don’t drop her.”
In no time flat, Betty was loaded up into the back of Doc Bell’s large station wagon, and Joe and the baby were settled into the backseat. Piper ran around to the passenger side and grabbed hold of the door to get in.
“Well, heavens sake, where do you think you’re going?” Millie Mae spat, eyeing Piper. “They don’t want you cluttering up the hospital, and your parents don’t got time for you now that they got this brand-new baby.”
Piper’s mouth fell open. “But…”
“Hospitals are no place for a youngen,” Doc Bell agreed.
“She’s not old enough to stay by herself at the farm. There’s no telling what she’ll get up to,” Betty called out from the back of the station wagon.
Piper’s cheeks colored up. The Stark Raven incident was obviously still fresh in Betty’s mind. “I’ll be fine, Ma. I won’t get up to trouble.”
“I won’t be able to rest at the hospital for worrying about you. Millie Mae’s right.” It was a rare occasion for Betty and Millie Mae to be on the same page. “Thanks for offering to look after her, Millie Mae.”
Millie Mae’s mouth flew open. “I never—”
Doc Bell started the engine.
“I expect you to be on your best behavior, Piper McCloud,” Betty called out as the car started to pull away.
“But, Ma…”
“Promise me you’ll do your best to fit in, Piper.”
Doc Bell stepped on the gas, and the old station wagon rocketed down the dirt road, leaving Piper and Millie Mae in a cloud of dust.
Millie Mae opened and closed her mouth several times trying to get over the shock of what had just happened. “I never said no such thing! I never!” Millie Mae clucked to herself. “I think having that baby addled your mama’s brain and she was hearing things that weren’t said.”
“Yes, ma’am!” A temporary case of insanity on her mama’s part was the only explanation Piper could think of as to why she was suddenly in the custody of Millie Mae Miller. The whole situation was inexplicable! Not to mention horrifying.
Millie Mae turned on Piper like it was her fault. “I don’t take any nonsense from youngens. You best watch yourself and mind you don’t get my temper riled.”
Millie Mae turned on her heel to fetch Jimmy Joe.
Piper stood like a statue, watching Millie Mae walk away. She considered disobeying her mother, running away, walking to the hospital in Cloverfield, or anything that didn’t involve going with Millie Mae and staying at the Miller house. Anything.
“Well, c’mon,” Millie Mae snapped irritably. “I don’t got all day.”
Pursing her lips, Piper held her breath and followed after Millie Mae like a dog with its tail between its legs.
CHAPTER
18
“There’s no point showing you around, ’cause you won’t be here long enough to get settled” was the first thing out of Millie Mae’s lips when they returned to the Miller farm. “Still and all, since you’re here, you might as well make yourself useful.”
With that, Millie Mae draped Piper in a frilly apron covered with impossibly large flowers, sealed her into it with a tight bow at the back, sat her down with a bag of potatoes, and ordered her to start peeling.
Even though Piper had lived a stone’s throw away her whole life, this was the first time she had ever actually set foot on the Miller property. The house was a perfect square, made of solid stone, and sported flower boxes on each window with fluttering lace curtains. There was a pretense of orderliness that was successfully upheld from a distance, but upon closer inspection, it was clear to Piper that the entire place was one dirty sock away from absolute chaos. With five active boys between the ages of thirteen (Jimmy Joe) and eighteen (Rory Ray), things were bursting at the seams. Millie Mae was fastidious by nature, but the woman was clearly overwhelmed by the baseball bats, pinewood boxcars, roller skates, hockey sticks, and dirty socks—mainly it was the dirty, stinky socks.
When they’d first driven up the driveway, they came upon the boys beating each other over the head with sticks and hollering at the top of their lungs. Millie Mae effectively put a stop to that by snatching up their sticks and beating them over their heads while hollering at the top of her lungs to “quit acting like numbskulls.”
Next they discovered Sally Sue skulking in the house, gently crying over her most precious doll, which the boys had used for target practice. She held the limp doll in her hand, pointing to the holes and tears in her. Millie Mae took up the injured friend and tossed her in the trash.
“Boys will be boys, Sally Sue,” Millie Mae said. “You know that. It’s up to you to take better care of your things.”
“But, Ma,” Sally Sue wailed, her eyes erupting in real fountains of tears now, “they’re stronger than I am, and they just held me down and took her…” And the tears overtook Sally Sue altogether, and Millie Mae put a potato
peeler into her hand and put her to work too.
“I’m sorry about your doll, Sally Sue,” Piper offered quietly when they were well into the mound of potatoes and Sally Sue’s tears had remained steady.
“She was my best one,” Sally Sue mourned. “I told her all my secrets. I don’t have no one else.”
Before, when Piper had only been able to float and her parents had kept her home alone, she had gazed at the Miller children’s daily trek past her farm to school with longing. In her fantasies she had settled upon Sally Sue as her best friend and had imagined their lifelong friendship together. Piper had lots of friends now, or at least she used to. She didn’t have any normal friends, though.
“You can talk to me,” Piper said.
“You?”
“Why not? I don’t live that far away,” Piper pointed out. “We’re the same age, and I’d listen; I’d understand.”
Sally Sue’s face snapped into an expression other than grief, and it looked suspiciously like shock. “Me come see you? At your farm? But you’re…” She didn’t use the words “strange,” “weird,” “freak,” but her lips formed each one before she finally gave up and said, “I don’t think I could do that, Piper. My pa would never let me. You know that.”
Piper did know. She knew it in the same way that she knew that no one would ever sit next to her in church, even if there was standing room only. The same way she’d never come calling to the Miller farm, even though she’d lived by it her whole life. The lines in Lowland County were not on the soil but in folks’ hearts.
Piper had always been an optimist, though, and a great believer in change. “Well, I’m not the same as I was before,” she said, “so maybe things can be different for us, too.”
“Maybe,” Sally Sue murmured halfheartedly.
After they’d finished the potatoes, there was corn to shuck, apples to slice, and the table to set. In the midst of their work, Bobby Boo and Jo-Jo James, the middle boys, took it into their heads to blow up the manure pile using a combination of Millie Mae’s laundry detergent and baking powder. The manure pile was scattered for miles, and the boys were covered in dung. They celebrated this achievement by giving each other rousing high fives.
“Bobby Jo, you’re a mess, and look at the mess you made,” Millie Mae spat.
Bobby Boo and Jo-Jo James were born less than a year apart and spent all their time plotting and scheming, mainly with explosives. They were known within the family as Bobby Jo because it just saved time.
“I told you boys to stay outside and play quiet, and look at this.” Millie Mae threw up her hands and then dispatched them to the pond to wash up and not come back until they didn’t stink. Then she told Piper and Sally Sue off for idling around when there was work to be done and to get back in the house where they belonged.
Back in the kitchen Piper looked at the phone, willing it to ring with news of baby Jane.
“I got a new baby sister,” she told Sally Sue. “Her name is Jane. Jane McCloud. I got to hold her, and she felt like…” Piper paused to put the feeling into words. “She felt better than flying.”
“A sister!” Sally Sue said the word “sister” in the same voice she’d utter the words “cotton candy” or “ice cream” or “heaven.”
“She’s at the hospital with my ma, but they’ll be fine. They’ll be home tonight. Probably call and say they’re coming to get me any minute.” Piper looked back at the phone. “Or maybe they’ll just stop by without calling. Could be any minute.”
Piper looked out the window and waited and waited.
CHAPTER
19
To Piper’s great disappointment, only one car came up the Miller driveway that day, and it belonged to Dick Miller, who had spent the day at the seed co-op over in Shankville. Dick Miller had the face of a boiled lobster and the body of a gnarled tree trunk.
As soon as she saw her husband, Millie Mae sounded the dinner bell, which brought a stampede of feet from every corner of the farm. In the midst of hand washing, Piper was instructed to carry bowls of steaming potatoes, corn, hot biscuits, and fried chicken to the table. There was jostling for seats and scraping of chairs, but when Dick Miller set himself down and bowed his head for grace, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.
With the blessing out of the way, Piper grabbed a biscuit from the plate directly in front of her. It had been a long day, and she hadn’t eaten in hours. It was only when her mouth was full to bursting that she realized no one else was eating. Instead, every Miller was looking at her with reproach.
Dick Miller’s jaw clenched and unclenched as he waited, his face growing ever redder. Piper painfully swallowed her mouthful of bread. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
Mr. Miller did not accept her apology but burned her with his silence. He picked up the plate of fried chicken and stabbed the best pieces for himself, keeping his eyes on Piper the whole time. Next, he handed the plate to Rory Ray, who, likewise, took as much as he wanted.
Piper watched as Mr. Miller went through dish after dish. By the time Sally Sue was given the chicken plate, only one measly piece remained. When all was said and done, Piper’s meal consisted of one potato and a tablespoon of corn.
“What’s that?” Mr. Miller flicked his head at “that”—“that” being Piper.
“Oh, Dick, her ma went and had a baby today for no good reason. They took her off to the hospital, and there wasn’t anyone else who could look after the youngen. I didn’t have no choice—I had to take her.” Millie Mae spoke quickly, as though anticipating a problem. “She’ll go home soon. Probably right after dinner they’ll come get her. Maybe before then.”
“Don’t need any of her hijinks around here.”
“Oh there won’t be no hijinks,” Millie Mae sniffed. “She can’t do that flying no more.”
Dick’s face screwed up. “What’s that you say?”
“She grew out of it. She’s no different than the rest of us now.” Millie Mae bit off a large chunk of chicken, grease running out of the corners of her mouth. “That’s why she ain’t with them others now. They don’t want her no more.”
“Is that right?” Dick fixed Piper with a satisfied stare, his lips curling into a smug grin.
Piper’s cheeks burned with a hot shame, and she lost what little appetite she had left. Mr. Miller grunted and ate his food like it was putting up a fight.
“Billy Bean over at the seed co-op had a head full of steam today,” Dick Miller chuckled. “Came in telling a tall tale of a giant cockroach climbing out of his field. Said it was bigger than a bale of hay and louder than ten cows.” Dick shook his head over the craziness of the story. “We told him we wanted to see it, but he says it flew away. We laughed ourselves silly. I tol’ him, ‘Cockroaches can’t fly, you fool,’ and he got madder than a wet hen. Claims he’s got a hole the size of a wheelbarrow in his wheat field to prove it.”
Millie Mae snorted like a pig. “Sounds to me like Billy Bean’s been at his moonshine again.”
“Ha!” Dick Miller pointed his fork at Millie Mae. “You got that right.”
The two of them laughed and ate their chicken legs.
Piper cleared her throat. “Actually,” she offered politely, “Billy Bean was mistaken on only one point: it’s not a cockroach. It is a large bug, though, and it could have made a hole in his wheat field the size of a wheelbarrow. Bigger even.”
“What’s this?” Dick Miller put down his food and wiped his face in a rough, sweeping motion. “Who asked you?”
“No one,” Piper admitted. “I just thought you’d want to know the truth—”
“I know what’s true and what’s fake, and there’s no such thing as giant bugs coming out of wheat fields.”
“She ain’t right in the head, Dick. She probably can’t understand what you’re saying.” Millie Mae sucked a chicken bone like a lollipop.
“While you’re under my roof, I’ll thank you to keep your lies to yourself,” he said to Piper.
Piper ope
ned her mouth, but Jimmy Joe, who was sitting across from her, gave her a good swift kick under the table. When she looked up at him, he had warning in his eye, and she shut her mouth. Sitting quietly, Piper watched the Miller family clean their plates.
“Pa,” Rory Ray said tentatively, having waited for just the right opportunity. There were few better moments than when his father had a full belly. “That recruiter called again today. He said they got a spot open for me in training camp this summer if I sign up.”
Rory Ray held out a shiny pamphlet. On the front it said MARINES, and it showed men in uniform, covered in muck, looking strong and brave.
Mr. Miller grabbed the pamphlet. “Marines! Ha! You think you got the smarts to be one of them?”
Rory Ray leaned forward, his eyes shining, his face flushed. “The recruiter said I’m a good candidate, and they’re looking for men like me. He said—”
“Men? You ain’t a man, boy. You dig those fence posts like I told you?”
“Well, Pa, I was…”
“Didn’t think so. If you can’t dig a fence post, how you gonna do this?” Mr. Miller crumpled the pamphlet and tossed it away. “Honest farmwork is all you need. We’re not gonna talk about this again. You don’t got it in you.”
Rory Ray bit his lip and salvaged his Marine pamphlet from the chicken grease it had landed in. With great care he wiped it clean on his shirt and then folded it into his pocket.
Dick Miller leaned back in his chair and dared anyone else to make fool-headed requests. No one did.
The sharp ringing of the telephone in the hallway jolted every single person at the table. Piper jumped to her feet like she’d been shot.
Dick Miller’s fist came down on the table, reestablishing order. “We don’t answer the phone during dinner!” he thundered. “SIT DOWN!”
“But…” Piper pointed to the ringing phone, edging her body over to it. “My ma’s in the hospital. The baby … They said they were going to call.”
“Then they’ll call back.”
“Mr. Miller, please. My ma might need me.”
The Girl Who Fell Out of the Sky Page 10