The Great Upending

by Beth Kephart

  “Didn’t like the math,” Dad says. “That’s what they said.”

  “Do they think we do?” Mom says, her voice like a glass bowl on its way to breaking. “Like the math?”

  “ ‘Families,’ they said. ‘Neighbors. Friends.’ ”

  “What kind of friends,” Mom says, “do they think we have?”

  Charlotte and Jane, Mac and Mildred, Isaiah, the rest of them. We have friends, plenty. We don’t have twenty grand worth of friends, and twenty grand isn’t even all we need. Twenty grand is what we need for me. Leave the black smolder be. Forget the hay.

  Not even a thousand people in this town. Put them all together, you wouldn’t find twenty grand. Deliver the special delivery to The Mister and that is just a fraction. Twenty grand is twenty grand. The banks said no. Hawk is dreaming.

  “Not remotely acceptable,” Mom says, slamming her glasses back down on her nose and starting to walk the floor, scaring off Scaredy, as if walking the floor with sunglasses on will find her twenty grand. “Not even close.” She’ll make more pies, she’s saying, more cheese. We’ll sell the cows if we have to, also the pigs, but now Dad throws his jacket over the newel post and catches Mom with his big bear hands. Says “Honey,” like he can save her, save us, save all this for later. Like any of us can put it aside until Hawk and I are in bed. Like there aren’t already FOR SALE signs all over this town, lots of people needing to sell, signs that have vines crawling all over them, rust in the letters for all the years they’ve been there, trying. You don’t sell. You leave. Where would we leave to? What would we have if we didn’t have this? Where do you go when you disappear?

  “Honey,” Dad says.

  “Don’t,” Mom says. Looking away and twisting free. The house goes still. Not even Figgis moves.

  “You kids make us some fricassee,” Dad says after a long moment goes by. The five o’clock shadow is creeping up in his eyes. He goes after Mom and the door slams hard. He calls her name, and now he’s running.

  The door slams again. It’s Hawk this time. Running north to the lighthouse, with his special delivery tucked tight against his chest.

  You kids make us some fricassee.

  You kids is me.

  Fryers

  Three pounds of fryers, cutup. One and a half cups of pitted prunes. Two cups of broth and some salt, and some gingerroot, and some brown sugar and cinnamon and water. You coat the chicken. You brown the meat. You fire up the Dutch oven. Everything else is what comes next. Reduce the heat and cover. Keep the gas low until the chicken cuts are tender and stand there, steaming yourself, pretending the tears that you cry are not tears and that your brother isn’t out there believing the impossible is true, and that your mom and dad aren’t down the road talking it out, in anger and in private, and that you alone aren’t the cause of this; you are the cause of it.

  Didn’t like the math, is what the bankers said.

  Math has a name. Math’s name is Sara.

  Awake

  Sara,” Hawk whisper-talks. “You awake?”

  His window scrapes up and back down. He presses his face to my piece of glass. The whole house smells like the fricassee no one wanted and some of the smoke left over from the fire. There’s a nighttime chill in the heat.

  “I’m coming,” I say.

  Get up from the bed. Walk the floor. Climb.

  Hawk’s got his Spyglass out and his feet kicking. The lights of Dad’s Ford are on up on the cistern hill, sending raking yellow beams down and past the pond and across the first hem of the field.

  “I knocked,” Hawk says. I kick my feet too. I kick the night into pure bruising. “I knocked off half my knuckles. No answer from The Mister.”

  Hawk lifts his fist for proof of the hard knocks, and I see the Band-Aids from the fire. I see the roughed-up parts of his knuckles.

  “She said to hand it to him personal,” Hawk continues. “Hand it to him. No tarnish. Quick as you can. But he doesn’t want whatever it is.”

  “What could be so bad that The Mister wouldn’t want it?”

  “Plenty of things.”

  “Any books you ever read that bad, Hawk?”

  “None that I ever finished.”

  He turns to his right, where the envelope sits, and grabs it. He puts it on my lap. It has no more weight than the wing of a small bird. Seems like it could be nothing at all, except for all the glue and plastic.

  “You think this could really be worth something?” I ask.

  “Worth hoping for,” Hawk says. “Isn’t it? And it’s simple enough, or it should be, anyhow: Get the letter into his hands, untarnished. Get the reward.”

  “I guess yes. If the lady is serious.”

  “If you’d have seen her, you’d have seen: she was serious.”

  “Okay.”

  Hawk waits a beat. Then: “There’s more.”

  “What’s more?”

  “This.” Hawk reaches to his right again, rustles something new onto his lap. Not enough stars to see it by, but I smell the vague whiff of dark smoke. Hawk passes it to me. A piece of paper.

  Three pieces. Three pieces of thick paper, with torn, rough edges.

  “Found them floating around,” Hawk says. “By the lighthouse. When I went to knock. Maybe they flew away before he bonfired the rest. Or”—and now he drops his voice low—“maybe he left them out on purpose.”

  “I don’t—” I stop. Something shivers up through me. Like it’s brittle cold out here, but it’s not like that. I see Dad’s headlights glow out there in the woods. I feel it, more than see it.

  “Pieces of paper with words on them, more like,” Hawk says, still whispering. “Instructions, it seems. Handwritten. ‘Retreat,’ is what it says on one. ‘Relinquish.’ ‘Surrender.’ Each piece with one word on it.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Heck if I know.”

  “What would it mean if it were in one of your books?”

  “It’s never been in one of my books.”

  I fix the old facts in with the new ones. I put them into order. A man shows up. A woman follows. A box is smashed. A bonfire flames. There’s a letter wrapped in plastic that the man it’s for won’t read. There are three white flags with words on them. Retreat. Relinquish. Surrender.

  “This story is a classic,” Hawk says, nodding. “Classic stuff.”

  “But what’s it mean?” I’m rocking forward now, edge of this roof. I’m rocking and Hawk catches me, and we’ve got no good answers, neither one of us. All we’ve got is questions: Who is The Mister? Who is Ilke Vanderveer? What is Bright Star Publishing? What is the size of the reward? Why would she even pretend there is a reward? Why would she give some Topflight Secret Mission to my brother, a perfect stranger so far as Ilke is concerned? Now on the hill, Dad’s truck is coming back. He cuts the engine. The world is dark except for firefly freckles, and everything is silent.

  “We need more facts,” Hawk says, and I can barely hear him now. “There’s something The Mister’s afraid of, for sure.”

  “Can’t be afraid of you, Hawk. Nobody’s afraid of you.”

  “Maybe,” he says, lying back under the stars.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe we take the facts to Mrs. Kalin at the library. We tell her what we know.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But then—” Privacy, I think. Mom’s rules. Making trouble where we don’t need more trouble.

  “You have a better plan?”

  I shake my head.

  “You think we have time to lose?”

  “I don’t.”

  “All we do is go to the library,” Hawk says. Shooting up now, sitting straight, his eyes huge and happy with his plan. “All we do is say, ‘Hey, Mrs. Kalin.’ No harm in it. Can’t be.” He lifts his knocked-raw knuckles with his fire Band-Aids for a high five and I high-five. Across the field, the lighthouse suddenly beams. Turns itself on like it has been listening.

  “Hello, Mister,” Hawk says, training his Spyglass on the
spectacle. He doesn’t move. I barely hear him breathe.

  “Anything?” I finally ask.

  He hands me the Spyglass. He waits. I dial in and out. Refine my seeing through my glasses through the two brass barrels. Find The Mister going round and round on the top floor of the lighthouse, his white hair like dandelion gone to seed.

  “Why does he do that?” I ask.

  “Why would anyone?”

  “Like something’s chasing him. But what? Who?”

  I hand the Spyglass back to Hawk. I watch the white head blur and whirl.

  “We’ll tell it to Mrs. Kalin,” I say.

  “Some of it,” Hawk says. “Not all.”

  “Enough of it,” I say, “to get good answers.”

  Good Day for a Getaway

  I don’t know if Hawk slept. I sure as anything didn’t. I’ve been lying here and now I’m up listening to Hawk tiptoeing downstairs with his industrial-size flashlight. He’ll take care of the pigs before the sun comes up. I’ll work the garden, too—my Pathfinder beanie throwing yellow cones across the rows like a Hollywood set. Moisture creeps up from the earth at this hour. Spiders web to catch the dew. I’ll pull the weeds, I’ll pluck the bugs, I’ll fill my basket with the ripe stuff, I’ll set the mesh fences back into their proper attitudes to stop the coons that would otherwise come scratching.

  I’m up.

  I go down.

  I head outside.

  I work.

  Phooey keeps her distance. The peahens are white lights.

  “Everything early,” Hawk had said through the wall last night. “Morning chores done before morning.”

  It’s a good day for a getaway. Mom and Dad have plans of their own. Neighbors they’ll go to see. Friends like Charlotte and Jane and Mac and Mildred and the ones who live close and the ones who live far and some people in the fire brigade. I heard them talking. “No harm in asking,” Mom said, and Dad said, “You know they would help if they could, but honey: they’re stuck in this drought same as us.”

  You can put your cows up for sale, your pigs, your goats, your land, even, the house you built out of a barn, the double-wide oven where your pies fluff up, but if nobody is buying, what good is the sale? If nobody has, what good is asking? “Honey,” Dad kept saying, but Mom wasn’t listening. Mom can’t.

  Hawk got his stories from Dad. He got his stubborn from Mom.

  I got my Marfan from nobody.

  I’m so mad at my Marfan. I’m just so mad.

  Dad’s on his early chores. He sees my lit-up beanie. He pulls his Ford to the end of my row. He cuts the beams, but leaves the engine running.

  “Early bird catching the worms?” he asks, leaning out of the pickup window.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I tell him, standing up out of my crouch and watching my shadow run its length down the row beneath the twin lights on my beanie, toward the place the hay shed was.

  “Your brother got a case of the couldn’t sleeps too? Mighty early for pigs, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Maybe,” I tell him.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” Dad says. Scratching the beard he didn’t shave.

  He looks up at the sky, where the moon still shines, though the night is growing more pale. I can feel him looking for words to say that I wish he didn’t have to look for.

  “Dad?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “What’s the story on The Mister?”

  “The Mister’s our tenant,” he says. Matter-of-fact. “Two months’ rent up front. Five hundred dollars each month after. Best crop we have.”

  “But the secrets,” I say. “What’s with that?”

  “What kind of secrets?”

  “The don’t-talk-to-him-unless-he-talks-to-us parts. The don’t-even-take-him-a-slice-of-Peach-Marshmallow parts. Seems to me he’s missing out.”

  “You’re all lit up with shine,” Dad says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That hat, for one thing. That concern for The Mister.”

  “Just asking, Dad.”

  “Lots to be asking after,” Dad says. “Like you out here in the dark with your greens. And Hawk up the road with the pigs. Not even a crack of sun out here.”

  Desperate times call for desperate measures, I almost say, quoting Dad from the framed words, but I hold my tongue. I don’t need to be raising any suspicions, don’t need Dad asking questions, don’t need him worrying any more than he is. Hawk and I have our plan, and if I told Dad now about the box, the smash, the fire, the letter, the Ilke from New York City, the letters M and B—if I told Dad about our spying at night, Dad could shut us down.

  Mess up The Mister’s trust, we lose the crop we have.

  Mess up Hawk’s plan for the big reward that may not be big, but it could, and we won’t have a single hope at paying for the David.

  “Eggplants have come in nice,” I say. “Plenty of plump to them.”

  “Welcome news.”

  “Saw a cloud,” I said. “Last night. Over the moon.”

  Dad looks up toward the sky, which is growing grayer now. All the wisps are gone.

  “Could be a sign,” Dad says, but he doesn’t mean it. He turns the headlights back on. He three-point turns. He stops. Sits in the cab of his Ford, deciding.

  “You up to something, Sara?” he asks.

  “Just picking,” I say, which isn’t a lie because right this minute that’s what I’m doing. Through the dawn, with the beams, I see him watching. I know he wants to ask me more. I know that he won’t. Hard enough being me, with this news. Why make it even worse, with questions?

  “Breakfast at seven,” he says. “Sharp. You make sure to tell your brother.”

  “Sir,” I say.

  The Ford shifts.

  Farmer Speed

  The air is the color of an old sock. We walk. Hawk and me, with our farmer speed, and our eyes checking over our shoulders for shadows. Ruckus, Mac’s dog, has chased Mom and Dad in their truck, barking a storm up the yellow divider line. He’ll follow them halfway, and then he’ll quit—lope back home down the middle of the road with his tongue hanging out. He’ll lie in the shade waiting for them to return.

  “You’re on your own for lunch,” they said, Mom all dressed up, her best boots on, an iron crease in each cotton sleeve. Dad wearing that denim jacket and jeans, no Santa Claus tie, no cap.

  They had their worry on.

  They waved goodbye.

  I held Scaredy and Figgis, one in each arm, but now they’re gone, and Hawk and I have the morning. Plus.

  Through the shade of the green trees, we walk. Past the cows to our right and the pigs to our left. At the curve in the road, Hawk pulls his whistle from his pocket and blows. The pigs all turn to squealers and Hawk laughs, first time I’ve heard him laugh in a really long time now. By the time we reach the start of Mountain Dale, Isaiah is there with his horse and buggy. That horse, by the way, is Spots.

  “I’m calling in favors,” Hawk says. He hollers Isaiah’s name. He runs.

  Hawk makes room for me on the buggy’s back ledge. I fold myself in and sit, my knees up to my chin.

  “And a good morning to you,” Isaiah says, exaggerating his civility, like he does, not asking about the fire because that’s also protocol. Help where help is needed. Don’t rub the bad news into anybody’s eyes. If we want to talk fire, Hawk and I will talk fire. We don’t want to, so we don’t.

  Isaiah tips his hat and talks to Spots. We head off to what some people around here call a town, and what Hawk calls a hamlet, and what I say is a couple of buildings and a playground and a big patch of dried-up earth where they run the Bean Festival and County Fair every year, come September. Also a pool for the veterans’ crowd, but there being a drought, the pool’s closed. We hit the intersection where the Minute Market is, and pick up speed on the down part of the hill where, early in June, a semi lost control of itself and took out the Pizza Palace, and all this time Hawk is leaning close to the brim of Isaiah’s hat, getting news
from Isaiah’s lay of the land.

  Lost a cow to cancer eye.

  Lost a pair of ducks to a fox.

  Horse got loose, but then it came back, hungry for hay and attention.

  Father Cole is bent on a new crop of pumpkins.

  “What do you need the library for?” I hear Isaiah ask now. “Don’t you have all those Scribners?”

  Everybody who is a friend of Hawk’s knows something about those Scribners.

  “Family business,” Hawk says.

  Isaiah whistles. A semi whishes by. Spots canters off to one side, tips his head like he does to the rude ones. When the dust settles, Spots starts trotting again. When we get to the main highway, which is just a two-lane highway, he waits to cross until Isaiah gives him the sign. We buggy into town behind a silver Prius that looks a little dazed; must be a tourist driving that thing.

  There’s a redbrick rancher beside the white post office. The two things share a droopy flag. We stop. This is it. Our library. One room for books. One room for Mrs. Kalin. Her housing comes with the job.

  Spots gets a good giddy-ho from Isaiah. Hawk hops out. I follow, but not as fast. Both feet on the ground, I let a case of dizziness pass. Hawk promises Isaiah a slice of future pie.

  “You tell Rayuda it’s on me,” Hawk says.

  “Planning to,” Isaiah says.

  The painted sign on the screen door says the library opens at ten, but Mrs. Kalin keeps farmer hours. She’s out watering the window boxes when we arrive. Sets her can down near the stone wargs and orcs and Elven-birds that gather round on the burnt-out lawn. Direct descendents of J. R. R. Tolkien, she’ll tell anyone, and not a buccaneer in the bunch.

  Hawk likes her despite.

  She’s wearing a flowered dress with a wide black belt and little slipper shoes. Every year at the fair parade, Best Dressed goes to her, partly on account of the hats she builds out of the pages of recycled books. Even people who don’t read come to the library to see those hats, which she hangs from hooks and invisible strings from the library’s two crisscrossing wooden beams.