by Donna Ball
“I haven’t seen him,” Cici said, and admitted, “I’ve been too busy watching Lori.”
“Oh, that poor child.” Lindsay winced as she watched Lori trundle another leaking wheelbarrow full of debris toward the compost pile behind the barn. “I hope she doesn’t get a disease, fooling around in all that muck.”
“It was your idea,” Cici reminded her sternly.
“I know. But maybe we should offer to help.”
“What is it with you and Bridget?” demanded Cici in exasperation. “You never heard of tough love?”
Lindsay gave a shake of her head. “All right, I promise I won’t do your only child any favors. But I think I will go try to find Noah, if you don’t mind. If I’m going to get him whipped into shape by tomorrow, I’d better get started.”
“I thought this was a smoke-free workplace.”
Noah whirled around guiltily to see Lori standing with her hands on her hips. He jerked the iPod earbuds from his ears and scowled, as he casually stubbed out the cigarette on the side of the barn door, then ground it underfoot—making sure that the evidence was buried in the mud. “You gonna tell on me?” he demanded.
Lori shrugged irritably and took up the handles of the empty wheelbarrow. “I’m not your mama. Besides, I’ve got better things to do with my time than babysit you.”
He followed her around the corner of the barn and across the yard, watching as she picked up the shovel and waded back down into the water.
“Any old catfish in that pond?”
“Why don’t you get down in here and see?” She swung a shovel full of debris that barely missed covering his shoes.
Noah pretended nonchalance as he stepped out of the way. “You’re going about it all wrong, you know. You need a pump.”
“You can’t put a pump in here until you clean out all the trash, smarty-pants,” Lori said.
“Shows what a girl knows. You put the pump on a rock or something, pump out all the water, then you scoop out the trash. Farley said he’d rent you one for ten dollars.”
Lori scowled, wondering how he knew these things. “I heard him. But I’m going to buy my own. We’ll need it to run the fountain.”
“What fountain?”
“The fountain that’s in here somewhere beneath all this garbage.”
“What makes you think there’s a fountain?”
She didn’t reply, but the answer dawned on him, anyway. “Because of that picture of mine?”
She couldn’t tell if he was flattered or incredulous, and then it didn’t matter because he let out a whoop of laughter. “That was a hundred years ago!”
She glared at him. “So?”
“So, that’s dumb, is all. Where’re you going to get the money?”
“For what?”
“The pump.”
“My dad’s Am-Ex.”
When he did not respond she looked up and explained patiently, “American Express credit card.”
He scowled at her. “I know what it is. All spoiled rich kids have them.”
Lori returned his scowl fiercely. “Do I look like a spoiled rich kid to you?”
At that moment Lindsay called, “Noah! You’re supposed to be at your desk!”
As Noah turned toward her voice, Lori’s feet slipped on the slimy pond bottom and she splashed backward into the murk.
Lori came up, gasping and sputtering and wiping black goo off her face and out of her hair while Lindsay raced toward her and Noah doubled over with laughter.
“No,” he said, as Lindsay helped Lori out of the pond, “you sure don’t look like a spoiled rich kid to me.”
Three showers and one frizzy-haired blow-dry later, Lori felt clean enough to go into town. Her clothes, on the other hand, would have to be destroyed.
She braided her hair to tame the worst of the flyaways, donned clean jeans and a T-shirt, and borrowed her mother’s car. It occurred to her that the kid might be right: If she elevated the pump above the level of the debris it might actually make the job easier to pump the water out first, and then clean the bottom of the pond. She did, however, hope he would keep his mouth shut about her intent to buy a pump. She had an unspoken agreement with her mom about acceptable uses of the American Express card: emergencies, yes; books and other school supplies, definitely; clothes, music downloads, shoes, makeup, and miscellaneous necessities of life—debatable. Household improvements, never.
But this was different. This was important.
Walking into Family Hardware was like walking back in time. The town of Blue Valley, a thirty-minute drive from Ladybug Farm, was little more than a village presided over by two tall-steepled churches, Methodist on one corner and Baptist on the other. Smack in the middle of the two of them was Family Hardware and Sundries, where you could buy anything from a penny nail, which actually cost a penny, to an antique chif forobe. In between were lightbulbs, cinnamon sticks in big jars, insect repellents, camping equipment, garden hoses, Norman Rockwell prints, dog collars, baby diapers, and scented candles—and that was just on the front display.
“Good afternoon, Miss Lori,” Jonesie, the proprietor, greeted her as she came in. “Don’t you look like sunshine today? Everything okay out at your place?”
Lori beamed. She loved the way he always remembered her name, even though she’d only been in a few times before with her mom or Bridget. And she loved the way he said, “your place,” as though she belonged there. “Hi, Jonesie. I’m looking for a . . . oh my goodness!”
She just then noticed a wire cage near the window whose floor was lined with sweet-smelling cedar chips and which contained an adorable assortment of baby bunnies in Easter-egg shades of pale pink, blue, and green. She dropped to her knees, cooing with delight, and poked her fingers through the wire. Several bunnies hopped over to investigate.
“They’re for Easter, don’t you know,” he said, coming over to her. “Kids snap them up this time of year. Here, you can hold one.” He reached inside, grabbed one of the bunnies by the scruff, and plopped it into her arms.
Lori buried her face in the cedar-scented, bunny-musky fur. “Oh, you’re just too cute. Aren’t you the sweetest thing?” She looked up at Jonesie. “Why is their fur pink, blue, and green?”
“It’s just food coloring. Won’t hurt them, and it grows out.”
She nuzzled the little ball of fluff one more time. “Why are they making that chirping sound?”
He laughed. “That’s not the rabbits. That’s the baby chicks. We just got a shipment in this morning.”
He gestured toward the opposite window where, amidst an assortment of toasters, hunting jackets, potpourri, and vacuum cleaners, another wire enclosure had been set up. This one was lined with newspaper, and filled with tiny chirping yellow chicks.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, holding on to the bunny as she went to investigate. “Oh, how cute! Why aren’t they colored, too?”
“These are Rhode Island Reds,” he told her, “prize-winning chickens. Most folks don’t put them in Easter baskets . . . although some do, I reckon,” he admitted.
She examined the trilling little chickens with greater interest. “Prize-winning, huh? Do they really have shows for chickens?”
“Sure. That’s how farmers know what to buy every year. Which chickens produce the most eggs, the best meat, that kind of thing. Now, then”—he smiled at her—“can I wrap up that bunny rabbit for you? He sure does look like he could use a good home with a pretty little thing like you.”
“Oh . . .” Reluctantly, she returned the pink bunny to him. “No, I guess not. What I’m looking for is a water pump. And do you know anything about building a fountain?”
“This is stupid,” Noah grumbled, not looking up from the answer sheet he was marking. “Taking a test to practice for a test.”
“It will help us both know what you need to work harder on for the real placement test,” Lindsay explained. “People do it all the time.”
While Noah marked his sheet, Lindsay was usin
g a tool to stretch preprimed canvas over a four-foot by four-foot frame. Though she didn’t like to admit it, Derrick’s comments about her art had stung, and she was determined to rise to the challenge—just as soon as she found something she was passionate enough about to paint. While she waited for inspiration, she stretched canvases. It was a slow and laborious process, as she knelt on the brick floor and pulled the canvas one corner at a time, stapled it, turned the frame, and repeated the process. It occurred to her this might be a good time to let Noah get some practice at stretching canvases.
“Oh yeah? Name one.”
“The PSAT, for one.” She set her teeth and put all her strength into pulling another inch of fabric across the frame.
“What’s that?”
“It’s a practice test for the college boards. You’ll be eligible to take it next year.”
He grunted. “No I won’t.”
She finished securing another section with a pop of the staple gun and looked up. “Why not?”
“Waste of time. I ain’t going to college.”
Lindsay sat back on her heels, flexing her hands, and said firmly, “Noah, you’re one of the brightest students I’ve ever had. There’s not a reason in the world that you can’t go to college.”
“Yeah, there is.” He continued to study the questions, and mark the answers, as though the subject under discussion were only of the slightest interest to him. “College is for rich kids.” And before she could even protest that, he added, “Kids with folks to take care of them.”
The speech she had been about to make about scholarships and grants seemed a little hollow at that point and so, in some confusion, she picked up her tools again. “By the way, the Reverend and Mrs. Holland are coming to Easter dinner tomorrow, so I want you to be on your best behavior. And wear a tie.”
He didn’t answer.
She looked up at him.
“Noah?”
He gave her a brief glance, then looked back to his paper. “What for?”
“What for what?”
“Do I have to be nice to them?”
“In the first place,” Lindsay explained patiently, “because they’ve been nothing but nice to you, as you know perfectly well. And in the second place, because if you want to stay here—and you said you did—we need them to put in a good word for us.”
Noah slumped down lower over his paper. “Won’t do no good,” he mumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it ain’t up to them whether I stay or go.” He continued to look down at his paper. “And it ain’t up to you and it for damn sure ain’t up to me. So it don’t matter whether I’m nice to them or not.”
For a moment Lindsay was taken aback. “But you will be nice,” she said, and made her voice stern, even though stern was the last thing she felt.
Noah thrust the answer sheet out to her. “Can I go now?”
She got to her feet and took the paper from him, glancing over it as he stood. “If you’re sure these are the answers you want to stick with. Remember, you’ll have extra homework to do on anything you get wrong, and you still have an hour left. Maybe you’d like to take a little time to look over your work?”
Scowling, he sank back into his chair, and she returned his paper to him.
Slumped down in the chair, one arm over his head and his chin practically resting on the desk, he frowned over the paper for a time. Then he looked up. “I want to ask you something.”
“As long as it’s not the answer to one of the test questions.”
“It’s about that ole deer.”
Lindsay sighed. “Noah, we’ve explained that to you. There are laws against keeping wild animals. If we don’t find a petting zoo or a game ranch to take him we’re going to have to pay a big fine—and the fish and game people will still take him away from us.”
He slanted a glance toward her, his eyes only barely visible between the fall of his hair and the curve of his elbow. “Not if you have a license.”
Lindsay, turning back to her canvas, glanced at him. “What?”
“That’s what the fellow said, isn’t it? He was giving you a ticket for keeping wildlife without a license?”
Lindsay shook her head and popped another staple into the canvas. “We’re not a zoo, Noah.”
“Maybe you could be.”
“Maybe you could focus on your work.”
“You could at least look it up. You’re all the time telling me to look stuff up.”
“All right,” she said, pulling out the last wrinkle in the canvas and holding it taut as she placed the staple. “I’ll look it up. There,” she added with satisfaction as she stood the canvas upright and admired her work. “As soon as you finish your practice test, I’ll show you how to do this.”
He gave another grunt. “Just more work for me to do that I don’t get paid for.”
“Every artist needs to know how to stretch his own canvases.”
“I’m not an artist. I’m never going to be an artist. It’s all just a big old waste of time, anyway. Just like this test. Here.” He grabbed the paper and once again thrust it at her. “I’m done.”
As he pushed up out of his chair she said, “Sit down.” She stared at him. “Now, suppose you tell me what this is all about. What do you mean you’re not going to be an artist?”
He glared back at her. “I mean you’re wasting my time with all of this isosceles triangle crap, and nobody gives a rat’s ass about the French Revolution, and by the time I learn how to stretch canvases that social worker lady will have me living somewheres else and they don’t teach art in public school. It’s stupid. It’s all just a big fat stupid waste of time.”
He bolted up from his chair and swung toward the door, and before Lindsay could draw a breath to try to stop him, he turned reluctantly back. His face was still tight, but some of the heat had gone out of his eyes, and he spoke as though the words were being dragged out of him. “Look,” he said. “I don’t mean to make you feel bad. You’ve been real nice to me—you all have. But it was never permanent. And I don’t mean to hurt your feelings or nothing, but folks like you—well, you just don’t get it. You think if you’re nice to people they’ll be nice back, and if you do the right thing good stuff happens, and all you need to get by in the world is a good education and maybe where you come from that’s so. I ain’t saying it’s not. But for kids like me that’s not the way things work, don’t you get it? Kids like me don’t need to know algebra. We don’t grow up to paint pictures that hang in fancy city store windows and we don’t wear ties and we don’t go to college. I’ve been going along with it the best I could, but it’s time to get serious. What you’re offering, it ain’t for the likes of me. And that’s all there is to it.”
When he was gone Lindsay felt tears of anger sting her eyes, and she brushed them away impatiently. “Damn it,” she whispered. “Damn it.”
She wandered around the studio for a moment, kicking a chair leg, balling up a scrap of paper and flinging it into the trashcan. And then she turned to her newly stretched canvas.
Barely thinking about what she was doing, she took it to an easel and sat down at her work space. She squeezed colors at random onto her palette and in big, bold strokes transferred them to the canvas. Cobalt blue, rich scarlet, deep sienna, pthalo green. And now an upward curve of ochre, a slash of sap green, a shadow of umber. Gradually, the face of a boy began to emerge. His hair was dark, his face was intent, and his eyes were filled with passion. She worked until it was almost too dark to see.
13
Easter
The town of Blue Valley, Virginia, was strictly divided along two lines: the Methodist side, and the Baptist side. The division was physical as well as spiritual, since the two churches dominated the main intersection of town, with the Methodist on the right and the Baptist on the left. Twice a year—at Christmas and Easter—the churches joined forces in one grand ceremony for the good of the community.
Soon after they arrived
at Ladybug Farm, the ladies had understood the social necessity of developing a nonpartisan alliance, so they had promptly joined both churches. After all, their banker was on the Methodist side, their plumber on the Baptist; their heating and air man was a Methodist, their wood supplier a Baptist, and they couldn’t afford to offend any of them. So at five o’clock on Sunday morning, every member of the Ladybug Farm household was dressed in his or her Easter finery and each of them stumbled, bleary-eyed, down the stairs and into the vehicle that would transport them to the site of the original Blue Valley Settler’s House of Worship, established 1786—the debate still raged as to whether the settlers had been Baptist or Methodist—where the two churches joined together to conduct Easter sunrise services.
A low, chill mist lay over the gray landscape as Cici pulled her SUV onto the wide field beside the rows of other, already parked cars. Hundreds of folding chairs had been lined up in front of a twelve- by twelve-foot rock foundation, which was all that remained of the original Blue Valley church. Just inside the square of rocks was a pulpit draped with a white cloth, and behind that, a white-robed choir. In the distance a haze of mountains overlooked the dramatic folds and shadows of the valley. Even in the predawn light, it was breathtaking.
Cici wore a new ivory suit with a flared skirt and a pale blue silk scarf artfully draped into her cleavage, with matching pale blue pumps and a blue linen hat worn low over her brow. Lindsay said she looked like she was going to the Kentucky Derby, but Cici just tossed her head and admired the effect of the hat in the mirror one last time before they left the house. She liked hats, and one of the great things about living in a small town was that everyone dressed up for Easter.
Lindsay herself wore a multilayered skirt of lilac georgette paired with a lace blouse and a spray of artificial lilacs at her throat. Her hair was pulled up into a twist, and although no one could talk her into a hat, she had added ornamental pearl combs. Bridget wore pink, and Lori, with her usual vintage flair, looked like something out of a Renaissance painting. Even Ida Mae honored the occasion with a dress—worn over black stockings and sturdy Oxfords—and Noah had been wrestled into a tie.
