by Gina Linko
Even if my blood boiled at the thought of her.
Poor Pork Chop jerked in my lap then, a full-body cringe, bringing himself to a sitting position. Then he retched once, twice, finally throwing up some kind of greenish substance in the hay next to us.
“Ooh, boy,” Molly-Mae said. “I was hoping he was over the worst of it.”
I stroked Pork Chop from head to tail, comforting him, dipping my hand into the water dish and offering him my fingers to lick. He did, which I thought was a good sign. “You can go, Molly-Mae. I’ll take care of him. Digger’ll be back right quick.”
She pressed a hand all tender-like to the crown of my head. Then she left.
Soon, poor Pork Chop wouldn’t be comforted. He left my lap, and all he would do was hide behind his water dish and whimper. He wouldn’t let me near him again, and every few minutes, he would brace himself, stiff and stilted, holding real still, like he was fighting against some unknown pain. He couldn’t even be distracted from his suffering with a bite of Molly-Mae’s chicken.
Pork Chop’s brothers and sister tried to nose their way around him a few times, tried to hop and jump, nip and snarl at him, even howl toward the evening moon—anything to get him to chase, to play.
They whimpered too, when Pork Chop wouldn’t join in. They were worried about their sibling.
Didn’t I know how that felt?
The noises of the carnival went on outside the tent: all the muted voices and jingling-jangling carnival bells, but what I was really listening to was Pork Chop’s labored breathing. Every difficult inhale, every weak exhale, slow and uneven, as he lay listless behind his water bowl.
I reached out, trying to pet the poor pup between the ears or coax him from his hiding spot, but he growled and sank his teeth into my fingers, drawing a bit of blood from my thumb. So instead I watched him stand up on shaky legs and circle and circle his area behind the water dish, sniffing here and there at a piece of hay, and whimpering.
But then, as he crossed next to the hay bale, he tottered on his legs, and then they gave out from under him. He fell, suddenly too weak to hold himself up or to fight me holding him. He let me take him into my lap, and I admitted to myself that I was very, very scared.
Pork Chop was hot as the Georgia asphalt in July.
“Digger!” I called, trying not to let the terror show in my voice, trying not to scream too loud and scare the wolf pup.
Digger came running. “Get your dad,” I told him.
When Fat Sam came in, he took one look at the poor little pup in my lap and asked, “Tally, is he breathing still?”
“Yes. But he’s burning up.” Pork Chop’s eyes were sunken, glazed over.
After a quick examination, Fat Sam sighed heavy and deep. “There’s nothing to be done, that I can tell. We can go to the vet in the morning, but I think all we can do now, Tally Jo … I mean, he was the runt. Maybe he wasn’t healthy to begin with and—”
“Don’t say it,” I said. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“We can make him comfortable. That’s all.”
“Leave us alone,” I barked at Fat Sam.
“I’ll stay with you—” Digger started.
“No.” I blinked back the tears.
“Tally,” Digger said. “I can—”
“No, please. Just go.”
I knew they were looking at each other, deciding what to do, but they did end up leaving me with Pork Chop. His breath was starting to slow, turn more shallow, his eyes glassy and heavy-lidded.
His tense muscles seemed to relax a bit though. I hoped he could get some sleep. Maybe that would be enough to help him fight off whatever this was. I stroked the curve of his backbone, and I sang to him, soft, happy songs. I didn’t give up.
I racked my brain trying to think what Dr. Fran might tell me to do, what idea I might have missed. This time when I dribbled some water from my fingertips onto his muzzle, he didn’t stir.
I didn’t realize I was falling asleep, but I woke to the worried whinnying of Antique as he looked on from his stall.
“It’ll be all right,” I told Antique. “It’ll be all right.” I wished I believed it.
The pup, his little ribs barely rose and fell now. It wasn’t going to be long.
I stilled my own breathing, slowed it to match his. I let myself fall into that pup’s groove. “What is wrong, little one?”
I couldn’t bear if he died, not today. Not now. Not when so much else was going on around us.
Selfishly, I told him, It’s not a good time. I need you.
And then I thought of what Tempest had told me:
You’ve got something too.
And the pup squirmed under my chin, his scruff soft and fine next to the sensitive skin of my neck, and I felt something. A bristly warmth, coming from the pup himself, quivering off him.
Was it his hurt?
It had an odd, uncomfortable undercurrent that settled at the base of my skull and ached. Something in me wanted to run out of the animal tent, get Digger to watch Pork Chop, and never look back. But I knew I couldn’t do that. No.
I wasn’t going to bail.
Instead, I opened myself up to Pork Chop. I listened, with all of my power, my hopes, and my strength. I listened with my heart, with all that I had in me.
Whatever was coming from him, it radiated toward me with more force now. From his heart to mine. He was speaking.
I just had to know how to listen.
And instantly I knew what had happened.
I saw it, exactly how it had played out. It had been hidden in the straw on the ground, no bigger than a quarter. But too big, too sharp, rusty at one end.
Pork Chop had swallowed a roofing nail. It was caught in his insides, past his belly, but not far enough past, and if left there, it would be the end of him.
I sat up straight, gently trying to rearrange Pork Chop in my arms as I stood. I turned toward the door of the tent, the quiet darkness of the night around me, the straw crunching under my feet, and I stopped short when I saw that there, curled up near the door, was Digger Swanson himself.
“Digger,” I said, my voice crackling with sleep, with fear. “We need to get your daddy and call an all-night vet. I know what’s wrong.”
14
I woke to the noise of someone turning the handle on the pod’s flimsy aluminum door. I jumped right out of the bed, confused and bleary-eyed, and grabbed the baseball bat that I always kept propped in the corner. I kicked the door wide open and darn near clocked Digger Swanson in his mouth with the Louisville Slugger.
“Digger, you dumb cluck!” I hissed at him, lowering the bat. “You want to get yourself killed?”
“He’s fine. He made it,” Digger said, his face split into a grin. “He made it through surgery like a champ.”
I caught up to what he was saying. “Pork Chop?”
“The vet says he’s going to be fine. You saved him, Tally Jo.”
I let out a little surprised laugh, tears prickling at my eyes. I looked beyond Digger standing outside my trailer door, and took in the lavender light growing near the horizon. It wasn’t even dawn yet. Fat Sam had made me come home from the vet’s office once we’d dropped Pork Chop off, near midnight. “You gotta get some sleep, Tally Jo, or your grandpa will hide me,” he’d said.
I grabbed Digger in a hug, and he pulled me out of the trailer, swung me around. “Pork Chop’s okay! Can we go see him?”
Digger set me down. “Keep your voice down, Tally. Now go get changed. You have to come with me out to Fort Frederica. We’ll take a couple of the old bikes Fat Sam’s fixed up.”
“Can’t we go see Pork Chop?”
Digger shook his head. “Not until afternoon. Doctor’s orders.”
“So you want to go to the graveyard?” I rolled my eyes at Digger.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“What is it with you and that place?”
“Come on. We just cheated death for that little wolf pup. We need to
celebrate. Or are you too chicken?” He narrowed his eyes at me, and I knew I would go.
“All right. Wait here,” I said. “Let me throw some clothes on.”
“I knew you’d say yes,” Digger said. “I’m irresistible.”
“Is that right?”
“The ladies love the gap in my teeth,” he said, whistling through it while he shut the door to the trailer behind him.
I eyed Tempest, still sleeping despite all the commotion, and I thought about waking her to come along. But then I didn’t do it. Not because I didn’t want her there; it wasn’t that. I just didn’t want to face … us right now. I felt strangely optimistic. I didn’t want reality to squash it just yet.
I put my hair into a ponytail, pulled on my shorts and T-shirt, and searched under my bed for my gym shoes.
I was officially avoiding my sister. And everything we needed to face.
But Pork Chop was okay; that little wisp of an animal who weighed no more than a particularly large melon had stared into the great abyss and had come back. He’d beaten it. I’d helped him beat it, some magical, weirdo way, and that wasn’t nothing.
I shoved my feet into my beat-up sneakers, and I thought of Pork Chop’s little ears, the soft, silky fluff just around the inside edge. My throat tightened, and I felt a thrill of shaky, uncertain hope toward … everything. If I didn’t look right into the bare reality of what Tempest and I had going on between us … if I looked at it only out of the corner of my eye, then I could even feel a little hopeful about it too. I wasn’t helpless.
I felt powerful.
Fort Frederica was an old army deal, with lots of bricks lying around that you were supposed to care about, showing you where houses used to be way back even before America was America. It was kind of interesting, with the ruins of a whole little town, an old fortress, and a hand-mortared stone wall, plus a couple of real ancient cannons. But the best thing to see was the graveyard. It sat down in a shaded gulley surrounded by stands of white birches that held wisps of Spanish moss and kudzu. The tombstones were barely more than flat rocks, with hand-carved names and dates in them. Death seemed to be all around this place, and the gravestones told the stories. Children and soldiers, whole families, buried with these sad and patriotic sayings.
The gulley was unexpectedly chilly as Digger and I roamed around the cemetery itself, reading the epitaphs, thinking our own thoughts. Then Digger tripped over something and fell rear end over elbow right into my path.
“What are you doing?” I said, giving him a little kick in his backside.
“Thought I was gonna die for a second,” he said, laughing. “Almost hit my head on that gravestone.”
“Your hard head wouldn’t have minded,” I told him. But then I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. “Something’s coming,” I said, pulling Digger down to a kneeling position like me. I pointed over toward the stand of birches across the cemetery.
“Look, there,” I whispered.
The air shimmered and moved in a surprising way. It was there, then gone, just a wavy trick of the light, radiating the way campfire flames or hot sun on the concrete like to play with your vision. Goose bumps raised on my arms and the back of my neck.
“What the heck is that?” Digger asked.
“Just the fog,” I answered, both relieved and disappointed. “Early morning fog.” I saw it coming, just a hint of it at first, appearing out of nowhere, hovering above the ground. Then the birch branches swayed, and sure as rhubarb pie, a fine mist rolled quietly over the ground like a blanket.
Digger began walking over there and I followed. The fog thickened, making it difficult to see below our ankles.
“You believe in ghosts and stuff, Tally?” Digger asked, using the heel of his hand to rub the dirt off a cupid’s face on one of the fancier carved headstones.
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“Most stuff usually has a good explanation. Science. Like how this was just fog.”
“What about what’s going on with you and your sister?” Digger said.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Sometimes impossible things are true things.”
I thought again of what Tempest had called magic: science we don’t have the words for yet. I didn’t feel like having this conversation with Digger though, so I just said, “You know what I think is truly impossible? Believing a word you have to say.”
Digger laughed, loud and clear. It made me smile. And then he plopped down and sat cross-legged on the ground, swirling his hand through the fog. I settled down next to him and did the same.
“People are starting to notice,” Digger said. “Not just me.”
“Yeah.” I knew he meant what was between Tempest and me. Yesterday, I’d seen how Arnie Schutes looked at the two of us out near the game alley, when something had erupted between us hard and strong, a burst of pressure that nearly sent me backwards onto my butt.
“You gotta fight it, Tally Jo. Dig in.”
“I know, Digger. I do.” I swallowed around something then. “But how exactly am I supposed to fight it?”
“It’s like you’ve got something, Tally. Just like Tempest told you.”
This seemed unbelievable, at least when I heard the words said out loud. I shook my head, doubting my optimism from earlier. “I don’t have anything, Digger. Tempest’s the one. She’s the magic.”
“I don’t know if that’s true. You saved Pork Chop.”
I lifted my hand through the fog, tried to catch it in between my fingertips. It was elusive, like so many things.
“I did save Pork Chop.” I smiled. We sat there for a while, thinking our own thoughts, listening to the crickets.
“Fog’s weird,” I said. “There, but not there.”
“Like chiffon.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a fabric. I went to the seventh-grade dance with this girl named Erika, and she wore a dress made out of chiffon. Turquoise. The fog reminds me of it.”
I stiffened at this. Digger at a dance? With a girl? “There’s a kid at school who likes me,” I blurted out.
“Yeah?” Digger said, and I tried not to be pleased at how Digger seemed a little ruffled, scratching at his neck, looking everywhere but at me. “What’s his name?”
“Seth. Seth Bowers. Follows me around, always asking me to go to Reed’s and get ice cream after school.”
“Is he a dork?”
“No, he’s all right.”
Digger nodded, and I cleared my throat, wondering what in the world had made me bring up Seth Bowers. Digger changed the subject, thank the high heavens.
“You don’t like your aunt too much, huh?”
“I don’t know.” I couldn’t quit thinking about that stupid turquoise dress. Chiffon. That was a weird word.
“You’re blaming your aunt for … whatever.”
“I’m not blaming her. I just think maybe she could be more honest with us, and maybe they gave up too soon and—”
“You should give her a chance, Tally. I see the way you look at her like she peed in your Kool-Aid.”
That got a laugh out of me.
Then Digger got all serious on me. “Maybe she’s just doing what she thinks is best, and this whole wacky situation isn’t anyone’s—”
Suddenly, I didn’t like how he was telling me what to do, as if I wasn’t worried enough about this. As if I wasn’t taking seriously what was going on between Tempest and me, what had been handed down to us from my mother and Aunt Grania. “Digger, maybe you don’t know a lick of what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe I do. With my parents’ divorce, I guess … things happen. Sometimes there are sides, blame to be put on people. But sometimes, I don’t know. Bad things just happen. And then you’re just left with what is … and you have to find something inside your own self to set things right.”
I remembered Digger’s mother’s fiery red hair, the way
she burned in the summer sun. She always loved me, sneaking me my favorite potato chips from the Candy Wagon and telling me I was a good friend to Digger.
I watched Digger watching me, and I saw a change in his face then, like something had cracked wide open and I was getting to see the real Digger, the inside of him.
And I felt rotten and guilty for not comforting him one lick over his parents’ divorce this whole time. I was so wrapped up in my own business lately, wasn’t I?
It was on the tip of my tongue to apologize to Digger, for being so prickly, for never listening … I don’t know, for just in general being a bad friend who never really gave him the time of day. But I couldn’t do it. The words just sort of dried up on my tongue.
I didn’t know why I found it so hard to be nice and say sorry to Digger, but I did. So instead of saying something he needed to hear, instead of being the friend I knew I should be, I swatted a mosquito off his cheek, darn near slapping him in the face.
“You’re welcome,” I said, and I took off back toward the carnival, fighting tears all the way.
15
When I returned from the graveyard I snuggled back into bed, determined to sleep, even though it was late in the morning. But the chirping birds outside our pod window had other ideas. Soon, I heard Tempest come in, along with the clink-clank of her box of junk.
I pulled the bedspread over my head and tried to ignore her. I felt her there though, in my molars and in the pressure behind my eyes. I hated this thing between us, hated it worse than a million Bradley Ballards.
“Did you have fun with Digger this morning?” she said, an edge in her voice.
“I guess,” I mumbled, sticking my head out from under the blanket. “What are you up to?”
“Clock’s ticking.” She paused. “You didn’t ask me to come with you.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Oh, right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t make excuses for not wanting me around.”
“Tempest.” Suddenly, I was just so exhausted. So much had happened. I was tired from the night with Pork Chop, but I also realized that I was tired from constantly fighting this growing push between Tempest and me. When we were around each other, it was work.
