“Done with what?” Dad asked.
“With this. I want to go home.”
Dad took wide steps until he stood a foot from me. “This is your home.”
“No, it’s not!” I screamed, making him jump. I didn’t care that I was being filmed for television. I didn’t care that everyone was watching me, judging me. I didn’t know these people. I didn’t owe them anything. “This is not my home!” I turned to the townspeople who weren’t my real neighbors at all, and shouted, “How can this be worth it to you people? My sister almost lost her leg for ratings!”
Dad stepped closer until the tips of his boots nearly touched my bare toes. “You are going to get us kicked out.”
“Perfect.”
“If we get kicked out, we forfeit everything.”
“I don’t care.”
All the families stood in our yard now. Prudence made her way to the front of the spectators who carried linen-covered dishes or crocks in their hands. Everyone stared at me like I was the number one attraction in a freak show.
I gazed over the crowd with their perfect nineteenth-century outfits and hairdos, carrying their Early American covered dishes. There were the Murphys, Wendell included, the Millers, and all the other people handpicked to come out here. I wondered, how could they all be so good at this? And why in heaven’s name was this venture so important to everyone but me? Was this was a case of mass hysteria? If it was, why hadn’t I caught it yet?
I thought about holding up my iPod high in the air; to turn it back on and let my music blare from the tiny ear buds. How would they respond to seeing an actual gadget from more than a hundred and fifty years in the future? Would they deem me a witch? Let’s find out. I touched my iPod. Wrapped my hand more tightly around it. Started to raise it into the air.
Wendell’s face seemed to wonder if I’d be more comfortable in a straight jacket. Then he turned away, as if by embarrassing myself I was embarrassing the whole town.
My eyes connected with Dad’s. He no longer looked angry. He looked frightened. Streams of sweat dripped from his uneven sideburns onto his shirt. He said, speaking methodically like he had just learned English, “If we get kicked out, we forfeit the money.”
At first I believed I had misunderstood him. That he’d said “bunny” or “honey” and I couldn’t imagine what he meant by either of those words. Then he grabbed me by the wrists like he was drowning and I was his life preserver.
“There is a million dollars at stake here.” His jaw was clenched like he suffered from Tetanus. “Do you understand?”
“What—”
“If we go home, we get nothing.” He took a step back, his face the color of a ripened purple grape. “Not one red cent!”
“I didn’t know about any money,” I told him, told the crowd. I waited for someone, anyone, to offer an explanation. But no one said a word. “Dad, you never told me.”
“Well, now you know.”
“You should have told me.”
“It shouldn’t take a bribe to make you want to work hard, Brooke. To make you want to be a great person.”
My eyes moved from his heated face to the crowd standing behind him. I felt like I was surrounded by zombies, staring at me like they were debating whether to eat my brains or not. Except they weren’t only looking at my head, which was covered with a rat’s nest of hair. They were staring at my dirty bare feet; the modern makeup decorating my face; the hoop earring in my brow; my clothes which, back in the 1800s, were probably equivalent to being naked in today’s world.
Surrounded by all these perfect replicas of another century, I stood out like a giant whitehead on a clear-skinned face. I may as well have brought smallpox to the tiny town of Sweet Sugar Gap.
Only a few minutes before, I was brave. I was modern and free and thrilled to have my crazy hair and lack of clothing. But now, with Dad breathing like an angry ox, the townspeople kicking uncomfortably at the dirt, and a collection of movie cameras scanning my underpinnings…
“I…I…”
“I’ll take her inside,” Prudence said as she grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward the cabin. “It’s the neighborly thing to do.” She brought me into the cabin and pushed me up the ladder. I couldn’t feel my legs.
Prudence said nothing as she watched me wrap the cord around the iPod and tuck the bundle up in the eaves. In silence, she held up the tiny mirror as I pulled the hoop from my eyebrow. This too, I put back on the beam.
When she finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “Your dad is really pissed.”
“I’m the one who should be pissed. He never told me about the money.”
I tied up my corset and slipped my dress over my head. I sat on the bed and pulled on my socks.
“I don’t think it’s so bad out here,” Prudence said, sitting on Dad’s bed as I got dressed.
“Why would you, when your family gets to live in a mansion and your playroom is larger than my whole cabin? It’s easy for you with a bunch of slaves waiting on you hand and foot, and your beautiful dresses. Try living in this shack for a while. Try milking a cow and feeding a filthy pig and washing your private parts in a freezing stream. Let’s see how well you play along.”
“Don’t be jealous.”
“I’m not—”
“This is about Wendell, isn’t it?”
“What? No.”
“I see the way you eye him.”
“So? He’s not so bad to look at. He also happens to be the only guy around.”
“He’s not interested in you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell by the way he looks at me,” she said.
“He’d look at anyone if it meant winning a million dollars.”
“Including you?”
I put on my apron and tied it. I was suddenly tired and sad. If everyone else was out here to win money, then Wendell was, too. Even so, I wanted to put Prudence in her place. “FYI,” I said. “Wearing a hoop skirt and waving a fan doesn’t make a boy want you. Boys like girls who are real. Money or not. I know your type, in any era. You’re the snotty type who thinks every guy likes her, like you’re entitled to be liked, even though you haven’t earned it. You have no idea what it means to work hard, or to suffer.”
“You want to borrow one of my slaves? Nanny can do your chores while you run around in your underpinnings.”
“She’s not a real slave.”
“For the sake of this show she is.”
“Whatever. I don’t want any slaves, real or not.”
“Fine. That’s the last time I make the offer.”
“You know, you’re twice the beeotch when the cameras aren’t around.”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” she said. “You can stay up here the rest of the day for all I care. I, however, plan to have a wonderful time at our old-fashioned picnic. I’m going to perfect the part of the Southern rich girl from 1861 who pretty much gets everything she wants and doesn’t have to apologize for her good fortune.”
She headed down the ladder, leaving me in the hot stuffy attic. Slowly, I laced up my shoes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I watched the women as they worked together in my tiny kitchen, preparing the Sunday meal like it was the most important thing on their minds. But the only thing on my mind was the money, and the fact that Dad had lied. Not lied outright, but lied by omission. A trick I had perfected.
Dad ignored me as we prepared the picnic, turning his head in the other direction when I walked by him with one plate or another. Blankets were placed on the low grassy hill near the springhouse. Rebecca Lynn hung out with the younger kids, and Prudence followed Wendell around like a shelter puppy as he readied the fire with the men. We ate while the sun was still high in the sky, the breeze just enough to help stave off the thick humidity hanging over the property. There was ham and wild turkey and cornbread stuffing and gravy; fresh lemonade and tea; homemade biscuits and pies and gingersnaps topped with powdered suga
r. After dessert, Dad took the men around to show off the farm while the women cleaned up.
It was business as usual when the picnic was over. I was asked to fetch water from the springhouse. The camera people were busy filming a multitude of scenes, so I took off across the lawn before they had a chance to follow. I entered the stone building, needing some peace and quiet and no longer afraid of ghosts, and sat cross-legged on the cool cement floor. I breathed in the damp smell of earth and thought about what Prudence had said…about me being jealous.
Was I? And if so, of who, or what? Of Wendell? Of Prudence’s big house and easy life and pretty things?
Of the fact that she still had a mother?
My hands went to my wet cheeks. It seemed as though tears were always sitting close to the surface, ready to let loose without my say-so. I wondered if other girls who had lived out here a hundred years ago sat in this very springhouse, sobbing over their circumstances.
And why was I crying, really? Was it because I would have traded in a million dollar prize for a chance to spray stinky bowling shoes for the summer? Was it because my dad was angry? Disappointed? Because I had embarrassed myself in front of the whole town? In front of Wendell?
My head jerked at the sound of approaching feet. Wendell ducked his head under the springhouse doorway and stepped inside. I stooped over and filled the bucket, keeping my head down, hiding my red eyes beneath my bonnet.
“You alright?” he asked. He took off his hat and hunched his shoulders to fit beneath the low dirt ceiling.
“I’m fine.”
“If it means anything, you look cute in a slip.”
I tried to laugh, but only a little snort came out.
“You know, Brooke, I’m homesick, too.”
I faced him. “You are?”
“Sure.” His voice was softer in here, like we were standing in a confessional together. “I know what you’re going through.”
I don’t want to like you Wendell. Please stop looking at me that way. Stop having pretty green eyes with long dark lashes. Stop pushing your thick hair off your forehead. Stop being more than what you’re meant to be: a diversion from this hellhole.
“I don’t think living out here for four months is worth any amount of money,” I said. “Do you?”
“I’m not out here for the money.”
“You’re not?”
“My dad thought it would bring us boys down to earth, getting back to basics. As it turns out, things are pretty rad.”
“Rad? What are you, a backcountry surfer dude?”
“I mean, splendid.”
We laughed.
Knowing Wendell was also homesick made me feel less lonely, less like an outsider, and less like there was something out there in Modern Land I was missing by being trapped here in the olden days. And the fact that the money didn’t matter to him made me feel an even deeper connection. I wondered, as my stomach fluttered, if he felt it, too.
He glanced behind him through the miniature doorway. Carl was heading up the path toward the springhouse. “Listen,” Wendell said. “We really can’t talk about these things, okay? Just play along. Nobody wants to get kicked out.”
“I do.”
“Well, your dad doesn’t.”
“I don’t have a problem with him staying.”
“But if you go…if your family breaks up…well…that would suck.”
“It would?”
“Totally.” He smiled, and I nearly melted into the springhouse floor. “Just do what I do. Try to get into the rhythm of things. Like you do when you’re on vacation.”
“I don’t consider working ten hours a day much of a vacation.”
“What if I could make things better for you?”
“Better? How?”
“I’ll think of something…” He blushed. It was a real blush, the kind that starts at the collar and crawls across the cheeks and along the tops of the ears.
I grabbed the bucket of water and Wendell shut the springhouse door behind us. Carl filmed us as we moved along the path.
“The men are going to shoot targets over at the Millers’ place,” Wendell said. “The winner gets a turkey.”
“Can girls come?”
“Who else will cheer on the men?” A yard down the path, he said, “I like your dress.”
“Thanks. Prudence gave it to me.”
As if she were a dog with bionic ears, Prudence was suddenly strolling up the path, her hoop skirt forcing her dress to sway back and forth, her curls bouncing up and down against the back of her neck.
“There you are, Wendell Murphy. I thought a bear had come and stolen you.”
“He was just helping me with the water bucket,” I said, handing it to him. We shared a smile.
“I hope you two haven’t been telling each other secrets,” Prudence said.
Neither Wendell nor I responded as the three of us walked along the path toward the cabin.
“I can’t wait to see you shoot, Wendell,” Prudence said as she tried to hook her arm in his, but he switched the bucket to his other hand, separating them. She ignored his disregard and said, “Brooke can take the bucket the rest of the way, can’t you Brooke? She’s strong. Like an ox.”
Wendell said, “But I don’t mind—”
“I have no problem carrying my own bucket,” I said. “It says a lot about a girl who does her own chores and doesn’t rely on free help to do them for her.”
Wendell grinned. So did Carl. If the camera had owned a mouth, it probably would have grinned as well.
“Oh, Brooke,” Prudence said, offering a fake laugh. “Go along now.” She fanned her fingers.
I grabbed the bucket from Wendell’s hands. As I trudged along the path ahead of them, I could feel them both staring after me. But I was praying that Wendell was staring harder.
Prudence sat on a blanket on the hill next to her house. Beside her sat her mother, who held her hands against her baby belly. A few yards away, Rebecca Lynn and I sat on one of our bed quilts and watched as the men took turns firing at clay pieces sitting on a large tree stump. Third in line was Wendell. He placed the rifle against his shoulder, aimed, and fired. The clay piece on the stump flew into bits and he lowered the gun. Prudence clapped and giggled like an idiot, and Mrs. Miller patted her daughter on the back as though she were the one who’d made the shot.
Dad stepped up to the line holding the gun from over our fireplace. Mr. Murphy showed him what to do and stepped back as Dad took aim. Another blast reverberated through the air. The bullet didn’t go anywhere near the target, but the crowd cheered like he’d blown up the entire stump.
By the time the sun had moved into the western half of the sky, the shooting competition was over, and Wendell and Mr. Duffy had tied for first place. They were each given a live turkey for their winnings, and bowed for the crowd and the invisible cameras.
The families folded up their blankets and put their crocks and baskets back into the wagons. My dad shook hands with those who were leaving, and I thanked the women who had shared their food with us, meaning every word.
“My wife’s feeling tired,” Mr. Miller said. “I need to get her home.” He patted Rebecca Lynn on the head. “Sorry about your leg, but it sure did bring on a nice picnic.”
Prudence batted her eyelashes as she said goodbye to Wendell, ignored me completely, and stepped into the carriage with her mother and Carl, following the other wagon holding her brothers and father. They disappeared up the hill.
Wendell’s brothers played with Sully in the yard, and Wendell sat with me on the front porch steps while his parents visited with Dad inside. Rusty leaned against the porch rail, his camera on the two of us. Wendell looked toward the camera and brought his eyes back to my face. He licked his lips. I noticed how thick they were. My stomach folded inside out.
“You aren’t anything like her,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Prudence.”
“Oh.”
Wendell
’s Adam’s apple moved up and down as he cleared his throat. “I’d like to talk to your father.”
“Right now?”
He nodded.
Rusty followed us as we stepped into the cabin. Dad was pouring coffee for himself and Mr. Murphy, who sat at the table. By the fireplace, Mrs. Murphy was helping Rebecca Lynn change her bandage.
“Mr. Decker?” Wendell said, taking off his hat. “Could I speak with you, sir?” Wendell made his way to the table. Mr. Murphy glanced over to where I stood in the doorway. “Mr. Decker, sir, I would like to call on your daughter.”
“Call on?” Dad said. “Oh. Call on. Well. I suppose…”
“Thank you, sir.” Wendell ran back to me, grabbed my arm, and pulled me back outside.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What do you think it was?”
I was too nervous to respond. With the camera zoomed in on us, I felt like I was one of the women on The Bachelor. I almost laughed out loud, picturing Wendell down on one knee, handing me the final rose, violin music playing in the background. I saw our photo on the cover of People, our nuptials announced on Ellen, like Prince William and Princess Kate.
As we stood on the porch, Wendell said, taking my hands in his, “Told you I’d make things better.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Dad hadn’t said one word to me since my meltdown, and sharing a bedroom didn’t make it easy to ignore one another. By the time he’d made sure Rebecca Lynn was asleep on her temporary bed downstairs, I was already under the covers. Now we lay on our beds in the stuffy attic as my sister’s light snore drifted up the ladder. The moonlight sent a stream of yellow across the eaves as my eyes adjusted to the dark. Wendell’s sweet smile floated in front of me, helping me relax a little.
I whispered to Dad, sure he was still awake, that he would want to talk about what had happened. “Today didn’t turn out so bad. I mean, it kind of turned out okay.” After a moment, I added, “I’m really sorry, Dad.”
“For what?” he asked in a monotone voice. “The iPod? Your underwear exhibition?”
“You should have told me about the money.”
Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town Page 16
