Steering Toward Normal

by Rebecca Petruck

  Diggy let himself be shaken. Tears flew off his face. “You had a great mom, and now you have two dads, and both of them want you to stay with them.”

  “But not for the right reasons.”

  “That’s crap! Your dad loves you. He wants you to come home. And that’s big, because technically you’re not even his kid. Why else would he want you back unless he loved you?”

  Wayne pushed Diggy away from him.

  “You’re all interested in finding my mom, but you don’t know why. You don’t get it. You’ve got someone who wants you back. I’ve got someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

  Wayne turned his back, looking out over the fields.

  Diggy wiped a forearm across his eyes. He looked at his injured hands, remembering the night of the dog attack, but he was too far away to get any use out of the tractor’s headlights.

  “My mom was not a liar.”

  Diggy looked up and saw Wayne staring at him, face blank, eyes cold. He scared Diggy a little. He looked like his dad. Like he might do anything.

  “I don’t think she was,” Diggy said. “She was a nice lady, and she loved you.”

  Wayne nodded. “She kept me.”

  It was like a punch to the chest. Diggy breathed it in and couldn’t get it out again. Wayne stared at him with that same hard face.

  Diggy began the walk home.

  Wayne shouted after him, “I’m winning that competition, and then I’m leaving.”

  Diggy walked on.

  Eventually, flashing red and blue lights drew up across the road. Brandon, the cop who had “arrested” them, told him to get in. Diggy was tired enough that he did. Wayne sat at the other side, staring out the window.

  Brandon then drove them home. He talked along the way, but Diggy didn’t pay attention. His head was a cotton ball, full but empty.

  POP HAD A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE TRACTOR INCIDENT, BUT NEITHER BOY DID. All Diggy wanted to do was focus on the fair.

  All Wayne wanted to do was move out.

  He called his grandma to come get him, but when she arrived, Pop convinced her to drive off somewhere with him.

  Wayne had packed all his stuff, and he fumed, waiting in the living room, switching channels too fast to tell what was even on.

  Pop and Mrs. Vogl were gone a long, long time.

  Every now and then, Diggy caught himself at the living room door, staring at the back of Wayne’s head for he didn’t know how long, and made himself move on, only to find some other excuse had taken him back there again without his even realizing it. He hardly felt like he was in his body at all, let alone controlling it. He wondered if this was what people felt when they described out-of-body experiences, surprised they had ended up where they had.

  When Pop and Mrs. Vogl finally came back, they had Graf with them, which made the out-of-body feeling ten times stronger. Mrs. Vogl and Graf together? On purpose?

  When Pop asked Diggy to go up to his room, Diggy didn’t even think to argue. He just went, then wondered how he’d gotten there.

  The hum of voices below rose and fell. Every now and then a phrase floated up: “… can’t run every time life gets …” “… matters how you leave things …” “… deserve better than being left behind …” Diggy didn’t try to think any of it through, to piece together whatever the whole thoughts might have been.

  All he could think about was Wayne’s overstuffed suitcase. And backpack. And two trash bags. And a cardboard box. All his stuff packed up and piled next to him as he sat on the sofa, ready to go.

  Like it was easy.

  WAYNE’S STUFF WAS MOVED BACK TO HIS ROOM.

  Diggy was more than surprised—with both Graf and Mrs. Vogl there and Wayne wanting to go … Though he didn’t particularly want to talk to Wayne, Diggy was curious enough that he had to ask what had happened.

  “My dad convinced Grandma I should stay, because I can’t keep running away from problems, when he was the one who dumped me here in the first place.” Wayne glared at Diggy. “They don’t know anything, do they?”

  But Diggy didn’t have the energy to answer or to think about who was the problem. He decided it must be because he just didn’t care.

  He didn’t have anything to say when Pop tried to talk to him about the tractor incident. At first. But before Pop could leave the room, Diggy blurted, “You said we’re mistakes.”

  Diggy had told himself that Pop hadn’t meant the words the way they sounded, but they rattled in his head whether he believed them or not.

  “I’m sorry,” Pop said. “It came out wrong. I love you and am so grateful that you were born.” Pop took a shaky breath, then made a point of looking him in the eye. “As glad as I am to have you in my life, I also wish I had been more careful with Sarah, for her sake.”

  “But she was pregnant for nine months.” That was the thing Diggy had figured out, the sticking point. His mom would have been pregnant for nine months just like any pregnant woman. And Pop had to have heard about it. So what had Pop done in that time in between, before Diggy’s mom left him on Pop’s doorstep?

  Pop ran a hand down his face, then sat next to Diggy on his bed. “Diggy, there are some things a parent doesn’t discuss with his child—”

  “I’m almost fourteen!” Diggy interrupted. “I don’t know anything about her, and she’s my mom! I deserve to know everything you know.”

  “She was a good person, Diggy,” Pop said. “But she was angry. Her parents have never tried to be in your life, so that tells you a little about what her life was like.”

  “Which makes it worse,” Diggy argued. “She was pregnant and alone.”

  Pop paused long enough that Diggy thought he wouldn’t say any more, but then he admitted, “She wasn’t alone.”

  Diggy frowned, confused. “You—”

  “Not me, Diggy.”

  It took a few seconds for the meaning to sink in, but then it was like a whirlpool drilling into his brain.

  When she had broken up with Pop, she started dating someone else. She had been with someone else when she was pregnant with Diggy. Pop had left her alone, even after he heard she was pregnant, because she let him. She didn’t think the baby was his.

  Not until she saw Diggy’s orange hair.

  Diggy put his head between his knees.

  “Your mom was a good person,” Pop repeated. “She was young and angry and looking for …” He shook his head. “I was too young to understand what she was looking for or how to give it to her. But I wish I could have, Diggy,” Pop said. “I really wish I could have.”

  Diggy hardly knew what to think, but Wayne’s question floated up in his brain. “Did you look for her? After?”

  Pop nodded.

  “And?” Diggy asked.

  “I found her.” Pop sighed.

  It felt like Diggy’s head exploded. Pop had gone looking for Diggy’s mom, and he had found her?

  “She was angry. And I was too angry to see that the reason she was angry was because she was upset and scared. We were both just so young,” Pop said.

  “Why were you angry?” Diggy whispered.

  Pop gently squeezed the back of Diggy’s neck. “Having you in my life changed mine for the better. But I was scared to death those first few months, and I hadn’t had any warning.”

  Diggy could kind of understand that. And he had nearly fourteen years with Pop to know that Pop had gotten over it, whatever he had felt back then.

  “What did she say?” Diggy asked. “How did she—What did she—” How did she explain that she could leave him, before she’d gotten to know him at all? How did she explain that she was leaving and wouldn’t ever come back?

  “At the time, I thought she said what she wanted to hear in order to make herself feel better, but looking back I get that she was right and she knew it. She knew you and I would make it.” He smiled sadly. “I wish I had had her conviction, but I truly believe that she thought leaving you with me was the most loving thing she could do for you.” />
  Diggy started crying then. Some reflex in his brain wanted to make him embarrassed about it, but he didn’t care. His mom had left him on a doorstep and run away on a tractor, but maybe she had loved him a little bit, too.

  After Pop left, Diggy went into Wayne’s room and found the yearbooks. He looked at pictures of his mom and just felt so sorry for her. In the pictures, she looked like she had a future, a bright one. But something had fizzled.

  When Wayne first moved in, Diggy remembered figuring out that Wayne was trying to save himself. Maybe Diggy’s mom had been trying to save herself, too. A drowning person couldn’t keep another person afloat.

  He was looking at the yearbooks, hardly aware that he had sat on Wayne’s bed to do so, when Wayne came in and asked what Diggy was doing in his room, messing with his stuff. Diggy didn’t have it in him to argue, and knew he didn’t need the pictures anymore anyway.

  After their talk, Diggy felt older, but he was still Pop’s kid. It wasn’t long before Pop got around to assigning them their punishment for the tractor incident.

  Diggy and Wayne got stuck with finally painting the kitchen with gallons of light yellow paint. Diggy figured the work was supposed to make him and Wayne friendly again.

  They managed to paint the entire room twice without ever saying one word to each other.

  Diggy was too busy thinking about everything he had learned about his mom to care. He knew he kind of had to tuck it away for now—he needed to focus on the fair—but it wasn’t easy.

  He spent hours and hours with Joker, grooming him, practicing setups, grooming him some more. Even when Wayne came into the barn to work with Fang, Diggy didn’t care. Being around Joker was the important thing. Being with Joker was always the best part of Diggy’s day, making him feel like the person he wanted to be all the time.

  Then a week before the county fair, July talked the local paper into a front-page story about the 4-H students competing for a trip to State. One of the horses and Diggy and Wayne’s two steers were the biggest part of the story and got full-color photos. People wished him luck but said it like he didn’t really need it. Since he’d been coached by a two-time winner, everyone expected him to make a good showing. Nobody really said so, and definitely not in front of Wayne, but Diggy knew the town expected another win, and they expected it from him.

  The daze he’d been in since the tractor incident and his talk with Pop vanished.

  Overnight, he became a full-fledged fidgeter.

  Diggy told himself over and over it was ridiculous to get so worked up about a county fair. He would earn a trip to State—he always had before, and Joker was his best steer yet. Plus, his worry was starting to affect Joker.

  Joker acted out, digging in his hooves, setting up at four corners when Diggy was going for staggered, trying to drop his head and sidling away every chance he got.

  Bad. Made worse by Fang, who acted like the most perfect show steer ever. The hair had grown around the scar in the wrong direction, but the spray adhesive held it in place fine, and the calf did exactly what he was supposed to with Wayne hardly doing anything. An outsider looking in would think Wayne was the one with three shows under his belt and Diggy the beginner.

  Bad, bad. Telling himself to get a grip only made it worse. He didn’t sleep the night before the fair. It was hot, even at dawn, so Diggy went ahead and shampooed and blow-dried Joker one last time, even though it was pointless, since after the ride to the fairgrounds he’d have to do it all over again.

  “I thought we weren’t doing this until we got to the fair,” Wayne said.

  Diggy glared at him.

  Wayne shrugged and took Fang through the usual routine, both seemingly unworried, until Lenz pulled in with the trailer. The screech of the ramp sliding out might as well have been an electric prod. Wayne jumped three feet, then froze. He stared and stared at the truck, glanced at Fang, stared more at the truck. If he blinked at all, Diggy never saw it.

  As simply as that, Diggy’s nerves fell away. He was the experienced one. He’d let the last couple of weeks make him wacko, but that had to be put behind him now. He had a job to do, for himself and for Joker.

  First, he made lavish, heartfelt apologies to Joker, who took them in stride and soon became his usual, straight-man self. Then, even though he felt like it was almost the last thing he wanted to do, Diggy took a stab at calming down Wayne. Diggy was still mad at him and … whatever else, and Wayne was still stupid, but Wayne had worked hard all year, and Fang was a good steer who deserved to be shown well.

  Diggy’s efforts had the opposite effect. By the time they pulled into the fairgrounds, Wayne was a fidgety mess, and Diggy wondered how Wayne and Pop had put up with him when he was the one acting loony. Fortunately, Fang took his cues from Joker rather than his handler.

  Diggy liked the county fairs. It was important to take them seriously, but they were more informal than the State Fair, with more time to greet friends from all the other 4-H clubs throughout the county, catch up on the past year, and talk livestock with no one’s eyes glazing over. His fair friendships were as real to him as his friendship with Crystal and Jason. Seeing one another only once a year didn’t matter, because they all had the shared experiences of 4-H and the fun, work, and intense emotions of raising, competing, and selling animals they loved. It was always a little weird to see how much older everyone looked, especially the girls, but the strangeness lasted about five minutes, and then it was like no time had passed at all.

  Crystal and Jason came by the stall to help set up all the gear Diggy had brought along, which was especially great, since Diggy got stuck introducing Wayne around. But if the guy remembered even one name, Diggy would have fallen over. No one minded, and everyone tried to help in different ways, some by leaving Wayne alone, others by passing on tips, and a few by talking about random stuff to distract him. July kept brushing his hair back from his forehead, then hugging him, then brushing his hair back again. Diggy thought she was making things worse, but it seemed to help Wayne after all. By weigh-in, he didn’t look quite so shocked anymore.

  Then Graf and pretty much every single Vogl in the county showed up.

  Diggy should have figured they would come, but he was so caught up in his own worries, he hadn’t really thought about it. Seeing Graf reminded Diggy of why Wayne had entered the Junior Market Steer competition in the first place. So he could leave town. Even though it was ridiculous for a fourteen-year-old kid to think he could win some money and take off—and it would never happen, because he would be tracked down faster than Ole Jib’s wife could dig up gossip—the wanting to leave was what mattered.

  Diggy watched Wayne with his dad, and it was almost like watching any kid with his dad. If Wayne still thought about why he’d entered the fair, he didn’t show it.

  The Vogls acted like every second was a photo op. They took pictures of Wayne and his dad, Wayne and his steer, Wayne shoveling poop—which made everyone laugh like crazy people. They even made Wayne and Diggy stand together forever while every female in the family took her own personal photo ten times over. Diggy had never had ghost spots as bad as he did after all those flashes went off in his face.

  Pop stood around talking with everybody and answered questions about the fair—letting Graf explain some of the rules about showing steers—and generally trying to keep the mayhem down to a minimum.

  Diggy barely trusted his flash-spotted eyes. It wasn’t long ago that Mrs. Vogl had acted like both Pop and Wayne’s dad were devils on earth and Diggy a madman. Wayne didn’t seem as surprised by everyone’s apparent friendliness. The fact that Harold Graf had somehow convinced Mrs. Vogl that Wayne should stay with Pop and Diggy was hard enough to believe, but to actually make her like them? Not only had Wayne not gone home with anybody who had wanted him to for months, but also they had all decided to be friends?

  It had really, finally happened. Diggy had traveled to a parallel universe.

  Then things got that little bit weirder.<
br />
  Crystal announced that Jason had asked her out. And she’d said no.

  Which apparently meant she had to drag Diggy into the girls’ bathroom so she could cry on his shoulder. Not only did it totally spook him that Crystal was crying, but he had no idea why she thought he could help her, when there were a ton of other girls around. He didn’t know what to do, actively wanted to get away, and could only think to pat her the way he would Joker.

  She pulled away and grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser to wipe her eyes. “I’m not a steer, Diggy.”

  “I’m not a girl, Crystal,” he said pointedly. “Why didn’t you say yes anyway? You got what you wanted. That’s supposed to be a good thing.”

  “He only asked because he found out I wanted him to.”

  “So?”

  “We’ve talked about this before,” Crystal grouched. “I want him to want to ask me out because he wants to, not because I want him to.”

  He squinted at her. “You know you’re crazy, right?”

  “I am not!” she said, and started crying again.

  Diggy patted her again. “This isn’t hard. You like Jason. He likes you. You guys hang out together all the time with the sheep and stuff.”

  “But—”

  “Nope,” Diggy interrupted. “Jason might have gone out with Darla just to go along and see. But he asked you. He didn’t have to, but he did. And now you get to be happy. The end.”

  Diggy would love to ask July out and have her say yes and be happy, the end, but that would never happen. Crystal was getting her chance and throwing it away. She had always seemed so normal, but sometime during the school year she had lost her mind.

  She studied him in that way that creeped him out, like she was reading his thoughts, and he really didn’t want her to see how he felt about July—had felt about her; he knew it was time to move on. But still. He walked to the door, but Crystal stopped him.

  “Love isn’t that simple, Diggy.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Jason waited outside. Diggy said, “Your turn,” and held the door for him. It was maybe the first time Diggy had seen Jason not mellow but more like a wide-eyed lamb at its first shearing. Diggy gave his friend credit for going in even though he had no idea what he was about to face.