by Pete Hautman
“Lahlia,” he said. “This is our son, Ronald.”
“We have met,” Lia said.
“Ronnie will be staying with us,” said Maria.
Arnold gave Ronnie a measuring look and added, “For a time.”
Ronnie grinned. “Whip this old farm into shape.”
Arnold’s face tightened as Lia tried to puzzle out why Ronnie would want to whip the farm. Another one of those “expressions” these people were so fond of using.
At first, Lia enjoyed having Ronnie around. Unlike his parents, Ronnie was cheerful, funny, and talkative. He told her entertaining stories about his years on the road and helped out when Maria overloaded her with chores. He brought her presents. He bought her a T-shirt, and a necklace with a pendant shaped like the head of a cat, because he knew she liked cats. They played a game called chess, which Lia liked because there were no numbers involved. She was good at it and soon was able to win most of their games. He did not seem to mind losing.
One day, as they were playing chess, Ronnie asked her why she didn’t have any friends.
“I have friends,” Lia said.
“Like who?” Ronnie asked.
“Tucker Feye.”
“The Reverend’s kid? Is he, like, your boyfriend?”
“I know him,” Lia said, although she really didn’t.
“You got a crush on him?”
“No,” Lia said, She wasn’t sure what a “crush” was, but the way Ronnie said it made her uncomfortable. She moved her black bishop. “Check,” she said.
“Ouch,” Ronnie said, frowning at the chessboard.
Ronnie worked hard, helping Arnold with the milking, fence repair, and other tasks. Whatever had happened when he had left home, he seemed intent on making amends. Maria smiled more, Arnold began calling him son, and for a time, life on the Becker farm seemed brighter.
It did not last. Ronnie, Lia soon discovered, had a dark side. Her first intimation of his true nature came one morning when she wandered into the milking barn and saw Ronnie attaching the milking machine to one of the cows, the one Lia had named Mrs. Bulgar. She could see that he was being rough and impatient. When Mrs. Bulgar hunched up and mooed, objecting to his insensitive pawing at her teats, he punched the cow as hard as he could, slamming his fist into her side. The cow made a sound that Lia would never forget — a despairing, agonized moan. Ronnie roughly yanked the cups away and moved on to the next cow. Lia, watching, felt Mrs. Bulgar’s pain. She did not let Ronnie know that she was there. She waited until he was finished milking, then went to Mrs. Bulgar and talked to her softly as she relieved the cow’s distended udder with her hands, giving Bounce a few squirts of warm milk and letting the rest of it spill onto the floor.
Another time, one of the Beckers’ cats — a scrawny calico — bumped up against Ronnie’s leg, begging for food or affection. He kicked her. Not a nudge but a full-out kick that lifted the poor creature high into the air. The cat hit the side of the shed and fell to the ground as Lia stared in horror. A moment later, the cat staggered to its feet and ran off. After that, Lia made sure that Bounce stayed close to her at all times.
When Ronnie knew he was being observed, he remained cheerful and upbeat, but Lia sensed a pressure inside him, a dark thing fighting for release. As the days and weeks passed, his laughs became harsher, and he took to criticizing Arnold’s farming practices. One day Lia watched Arnold trying to start the tractor while Ronnie stood by, shaking his head.
“Pops, we need a new tractor.”
“Works fine,” Arnold said.
“It breaks down every other day. You spend more time working on that engine than you do in the field.”
“God’s will, son. We fix what’s broke.”
“Maybe God wants us to buy a new tractor.”
“Money doesn’t grow on trees.”
“Money grows in the fields. Keeping that old piece of junk going is a waste of time and effort. You’re a fool to keep it.”
Arnold’s face tightened. He pressed the starter. The engine groaned, turned over a few times, and caught. Arnold fiddled with the choke until the engine settled to a choppy idle. He gave Ronnie a triumphant look. “Works fine,” he shouted over the roar of the engine.
The moment Arnold turned away, Ronnie’s face darkened and contorted into a hateful sneer. It frightened Lia to see such raw emotion.
Arnold climbed down and set about hooking up the disk cultivator. The cultivator was heavy and awkward — Arnold gripped the tongue and struggled to drag it the short distance to the power shaft on the back of the tractor. Ronnie did not offer to help, and Arnold was too proud to ask. He dug his feet into the muddy soil and pulled on the tongue, but the disker hardly moved.
Ronnie shook his head in disgust, grabbed the back end of the cultivator, and gave it a hard shove. The machine surged forward, throwing Arnold off balance. He slipped in the mud, and the heavy tongue of the disker came down on his shin.
Lia heard a muffled sound like a wet stick snapping. Arnold gasped. His left leg was pinned to the ground. Ronnie ran around the cultivator, lifted the tongue, and dragged it to the side.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine, no thanks to you,” Arnold said. He tried to stand. His face went dead white, and he fell back into the mud.
“I think it’s broke,” he said.
Ronnie helped Arnold into the back of his pickup, then drove him to the Hopewell County Medical Center, in Chalmers. Maria went with them. When they returned, Arnold was on crutches and his leg was in a cast.
“Six weeks,” he grumbled as he hobbled slowly from the truck to the front porch, Maria on one side of him, Ronnie on the other. “Doesn’t he know I got a farm to run?”
“Harmon Anderson is a good doctor, Arn,” said Maria. “You listen to him. You’re going to be taking it easy for a while. Ronnie can handle things while you’re laid up.”
“That’s right, Pop,” Ronnie said. “I got your back.”
“You got my leg — that’s for darn sure.”
“That’s the thanks I get for trying to help?” Ronnie said.
Arnold snorted. “Some help.”
They lowered him onto the porch swing.
“You want to help,” Arnold said, “go disk that hay field.”
“Fine.” Ronnie stalked off. Shortly, they heard the roar of an engine and saw Ronnie heading down the rutted road, the tractor at full throttle, the cultivator bouncing along behind him.
“The boy drives too fast,” Arnold said.
“Now, Arn,” Maria said.
DETERMINED TO PROVE HIMSELF, RONNIE TOOK ON Arnold’s tasks with tremendous energy. It didn’t last. After the first few days, he began to leave jobs unfinished, using any excuse to jump in his pickup and drive into town, where he would stay for hours, returning home late at night with the sour, yeasty odor of beer on his breath. When he slept through the morning milking, Lia, awakened by the plaintive lowing of the cows, got up and did it for him.
Ronnie did not thank her. Instead, he said, “About time you started helping out more around here. Big girl like you.” The way he looked her up and down made her feel queasy, as if she had eaten animal flesh, or worse.
Arnold, from his perch on the porch, did not help matters. Every time he opened his mouth, it was to criticize Ronnie.
“You don’t like the way I do it, do it yourself,” Ronnie said.
Arnold tried, but with the crutches and his bulky cast, there was little he could accomplish on his own. There was so much bad feeling on the farm that Lia began taking longer, more frequent walks, sometimes shirking her own chores. More often now, she thought about the Gates. For the past year, she had been letting herself sink into this world of numbers and farm life, content to perform her simple chores and sleep safely at night. But this world was not her world. More and more often, she imagined herself back in Romelas. One day, she thought, I will leave this place.
With Ronnie in the picture, that day might be
coming soon.
One late June afternoon, Lia and Bounce were walking near Hardy Lake when she heard voices from the beach below the big cottonwood tree. She heard a shout from above and looked up just as a boy plummeted from one of the branches. Lia gasped, then saw that he was attached to a long rope. The rope tightened, and as he swung out over the lake, Lia recognized Tucker Feye.
She saw something else as well. High above the lake, the Gate had returned. As Tucker reached the top of his swing, a Klaatu emerged from the Gate. Tucker saw it. He twisted his body, trying to look back at the ghostly figure, but set himself spinning. Lia saw what was about to happen and cried out just as Tucker slammed into the massive tree trunk. He bounced off and tumbled down the bank.
Lia ran to the edge and looked down the steep slope. Tucker was sprawled on his back on the narrow beach. He was not moving. Some other boys — she recognized the Krause brothers — ran over to him. Lia clambered down the bank to join them. Tucker lay senseless on the sand, his eyes half open and unfocused.
“Is he dead?” Will was saying.
“I don’t know. He’s not moving,” Tom said.
“What if he’s dead?”
“He is not dead,” Lia said. She hoped it was true.
The boys looked at her, surprised.
“What if he’s paralyzed?” Will said.
“He is not paralyzed,” said Lia. He could not be dead or paralyzed. She had seen him on the pyramid fighting with the priests. But a part of her was not sure. The boy on the frustum had looked older, and his hair had been longer.
Tucker’s eyes opened.
“You see?” said Lia, secretly relieved. “He is alive.”
“Are you okay?” Tom asked him.
“It hurts,” Tucker said.
His voice was deeper than Lia remembered it — she felt it as much as heard it, along with that same loosening in her chest she had felt when she had seen him in church, that same urge to touch his hair, to gaze into those clear blue eyes.
Tucker climbed to his feet. To Lia’s confusion, the boys seemed to go within a heartbeat from scared and worried to laughing and kidding each other, as if Tucker’s near death had energized them. For some reason they thought it was funny that Tucker had crashed into the tree. Tucker said he’d seen a ghost, but the Gate was gone, and neither Tom nor Will had seen anything.
“You saw a Klaatu,” Lia said.
For some reason, that made Tucker ask her if she was from a place called Bulgaria. She told him she was from Romelas, but neither he nor the Krause boys had heard of Romelas. They asked her more questions, which she attempted to answer, and suddenly they were telling her she was “weird” because she did not eat animal flesh. Then Will, for no reason at all, started making grunting noises. Tom said he was pretending to be a caveman.
“Ork eat meat!” he said, and came at her with his arms outstretched. “Ork barbarian! Ork throw girl in lake!”
Lia didn’t have time to think. Using a maneuver she had performed dozens of times in the dojo, she ducked under his arms, drove her shoulder into his midsection, and used his forward momentum to fling him up over her head.
Unlike Yar Song, who always recovered from such exercises gracefully, Will did not land on his feet. He landed flat on his back in the lake with a tremendous splash. She braced herself for another assault, but as Will waded back to shore, it was clear that all the fight had gone out of him.
Tucker and Tom were staring at her in shock. Will, scraping bits of pond scum from his sodden T-shirt, claimed he hadn’t really been going to throw her in the lake. Lia did not want the boys to fear her or dislike her — especially Tucker — but Yar Song had taught Lia to meet aggression with aggression. You can always apologize later, Yar Song had once told her.
She was about to apologize even though she wasn’t all that sorry, but before she could do so, Tucker announced that he was going to use the swing again. Lia watched him climb back up the tree and wondered if he was doing it out of courage or sheer recklessness. The concepts did not seem so far apart as she had once thought. As he pushed himself off the branch, Lia held her breath. Just because he would not die did not mean he might not be injured. But this time, he missed the trunk and swung back and forth, grinning triumphantly.
Bounce, who had made his way down the bank and into Lia’s arms, yowled. She followed his yellow eyes and saw a figure standing at the top of the bank.
Ronnie. Had he followed her? He motioned for her to join him. Lia climbed up the bank.
“Maria’s looking for you,” he said. “There are chores to do.”
“Why are you not doing them?” Lia asked.
“My chore’s to find you.” He grinned. Lia had once thought his broad smile was charming, but that was before she’d gotten to know him. Now it looked predatory and cruel.
Tucker hopped off the rope onto the shore.
“Nice one,” Ronnie yelled.
Tucker looked up with a puzzled smile.
“That your boyfriend?” Ronnie asked Lia.
“He is Tucker Feye,” Lia said.
“The Feye kid, huh?” Ronnie shook his head, smiling at some secret joke. “Let’s go, kiddo. Time to ‘milk the slaves.’”
Ronnie’s pickup truck was parked alongside a nearby road.
“Your carriage awaits,” he said as they approached the vehicle.
Lia felt uneasy about getting into Ronnie’s truck. It reminded her of getting onto Artur’s cart. But it was a long walk home, and it would be impolite for her to refuse, so she climbed into the passenger seat, hugging Bounce tight to her chest. Inside, the truck smelled like smoke, as if he had been burning weeds. There was also the yeasty smell of fermentation that Lia had learned to associate with beer. She noticed an empty can on the floor. The label on it read Colt .45. These people even added numbers to their beverage names.
Bounce did not like being in the truck, either — his eyes were huge, and he struggled in her arms. Ronnie hopped in behind the steering wheel. The beer smell became stronger as his breath filled the cab. Lia rolled down her window and held tightly on to Bounce as Ronnie started the engine and pulled onto the road.
“That Feye kid, I used to know his uncle,” Ronnie said. “He was a pistol, just like you.” He reached over with his right hand and rested it on her knee. Lia froze. She did not like him touching her, but she was not sure what to do. When he removed his hand to change gears, she slid closer to the door.
“What’s the matter?” Ronnie said. “I was just being friendly.” As he reached toward her leg again, Bounce exploded from her arms with a horrific screech and attached himself to Ronnie’s face.
Ronnie screamed and took his hands off the wheel. The truck swerved across both lanes toward the ditch. Ronnie tore the cat off his head, grabbed the wheel, and cranked it to the right. The truck skidded and tilted, rising up onto its driver side wheels. Lia was sure they were about to roll, but after a moment that felt like an eternity, the truck plopped back down. Bounce launched himself out the open window.
“You trying to get us killed?” Ronnie yelled.
Lia shouldered open the door and jumped out. She saw Bounce disappear into a cornfield. She looked back at Ronnie. His face was bleeding from several claw marks.
“That cat is a menace!”
“Bounce does not like you touching me,” Lia said. She turned her back and walked away.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it!” he yelled after her as she followed Bounce into the field.
AT SUPPER THAT NIGHT, MARIA ASKED RONNIE HOW HIS face had gotten all scratched up.
Ronnie shot Lia a look, waited a second to see if she would say anything, then told Maria that he had been clearing prickly ash away from the north fence line.
“Waste of time,” Arnold said grumpily. “You get anything else done today?”
“Yeah — all your damn work,” Ronnie said.
“Ronnie! Language!” said Maria.
“Pardon my French,” Ronnie said with
a smile that was not really a smile.
“Did you bring those hay bales up from the south field?”
“They can wait,” Ronnie grumbled.
“If you want to live here with us, you have to pull your weight, son,” Arnold said. There was a plaintive note in his voice that Lia had not heard before.
“I pull plenty of weight,” Ronnie said.
“He does work hard, Arn,” said Maria.
“When he works,” Arnold muttered.
Ronnie threw his knife and fork down, shoved his chair back, and stalked out.
“Now see what you’ve gone and done,” Maria said.
“He needs a firm hand,” Arnold said.
“He’s a good boy.”
“He’s a grown man. I won’t have him freeloading off us.”
“He’s not freeloading. With your leg, what would we do without him?”
“My leg will mend. I’ve got half a mind to take this cast off right here and now.”
“Arn, the doctor says you need to keep it on four more weeks. Even then, you’ll have to take it easy.”
They heard the sound of Ronnie’s truck starting, the rattle of gravel spitting from the rear tires as he spun out of the driveway.
“How can I take it easy with that boy driving us to wrack and ruin?”
Maria bowed her head and pressed her lips together. Lia pushed her food around on her plate. Her appetite had deserted her.
Later, after finishing the dishes, Lia went outside. Maria was weeding her flower garden. Arnold had hobbled out to his shop and was hammering on something. Lia sat on the steps with Bounce, feeling empty and afraid.
“I am not of this world,” she said to the cat.
Bounce licked his paw and used it to scrub his face. Lia thought about the boys by the lake, and their swing. She imagined herself arcing high above the water. She imagined the Gate appearing before her, imagined letting go of the rope and sailing into the unknown.
