to buy a different car.” “Goddamn that wrench if it didn’t walk off.” Ernie still went to the Brethren church every Sunday. He still believed.
But what did Will want? To work at Esso all of his life? Or work for Ernie? Or maybe have his own garage, like Ernie’s? He’d heard about being an airplane mechanic—that sounded good too. Better money and the chance to learn how to fly. That sounded even better. The air force seemed like a good place to learn. But there was a big difference between a gun and a wrench.
They drove up the valley, through Spring Run, Doylesburg, Dry Run, the little pebbles of villages strung along the Conococheague and Burns Valley Creeks. Will had lived his whole life in this long, narrow fold, on his father’s farm, in his aunt’s house, and now in his own small apartment above Ernie’s Garage. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Cicero
I loved looking out from that nest. When the gutbags still weren’t hatched, I’d sit on those eggs and just have a gander. (Yeah, I know, gander—a bird or a look—sometimes the same thing—big and fat.) Leaves covered most of the view but for a gap you could see through, and it was like the whole world lay before you. Way out stood another mountain. Closer in, farms and fields and strings of trees along streams. Even closer, that long strip of concrete covered with trucks and cars and all the glorious roadkill they could offer.
The day before the storm, a barred owl got me and Loot riled. We were out foraging, as usual, and I saw that silent bastard first. From high above, I gave the warning call. The gutbags hunkered down as low as they could. They probably even fell asleep. That owl tried to sneak closer, flying from one tree to the next. By the time I came diving down at the big-eyed rat, Loot was right on him, too. By god of all runts and riffraff if that owl didn’t lose a feather before he got away.
One of the gutbags—Cleo, probably—stood higher in the nest to watch, just wanting to have a look, but I gave the warning call again. That owl was not our only problem. This man in a red hat stood right below the nest. Where the hell did he come from? He kept searching the cliff, and I could tell he wanted to have a look. Loot and I both stayed close. Neither of us had ever attacked a human, but I thought about it right then.
That man spoke to us. He said something in an easy voice, something I didn’t understand but for the tone—calm and excited at the same time. And all of a sudden, I understood words—not the specifics, but the idea of them. How they’re magical little vessels, letters strung together like rafts on the river of a sentence, the ocean of a story. The view from that nest suddenly seemed smaller, the world at once larger. All I wanted to do was listen.
Of course, it was Will. That flat-faced owl had led him right to our nest. Lucky for me, I guess.
9
Ada wanted to take her time with breakfast. Her mother sat at the table, her hands still in bandages, but her face wearing a smile. And her father was in better spirits, too. Nathan had called last night at nearly midnight, startling everyone awake. He’d arrived safely in Germany, he said, the call staticky and short. Ada went back to bed holding onto her father’s last words: “Well, you take care, son, and know we all love you.”
“At least he’s in Germany and not Korea,” her mother repeated. As on all mornings, they read the paper. And every evening after supper, they listened to the radio. They knew the intense battles, the mass of Chinamen coming down from the north. Or at least they knew as much as the reporters told them. Their imaginations did the rest.
Ada lifted the bacon and flinched as grease sizzled and spatters burned her arm. She checked the biscuits and started cracking eggs. At the table, her mother pretended to read the morning paper. Ada knew she watched, but Ada held her tongue. Her mother would just say, “But I like watching you work, Ada.” Besides, this was her first breakfast at the table since the fire. Her father had helped her with the chair, her mother complaining, “It’s just my hands, Peter, not my feet.” It was good to see her at her seat.
They talked about the storm that swept through in the night. Her father rubbed his mustache and said he saw a hickory blown down in the meadow. “And another tree, an oak, I think, back of the orchard, looks like it got struck.” Ada didn’t say how little she’d slept because of the lightning.
She set the platters on the table, and her father said grace.
“Not too much now,” her mother said as Ada served her plate. “And don’t watch me make a mess.”
Both Peter and Ada glanced at her just to check. She pinched her fork at an awkward angle, and some of the eggs fell off.
“I said don’t watch.”
The room was quiet as they stared at their plates and ate.
“I’m getting the building crew lined up,” her father said. “And the materials should get shipped in two days.” He talked with his mouth full, a piece of biscuit stuck to his moustache. “Just wish Nathan could be here.” Then, under his breath, “Just wish I hadn’t put up that wet alfalfa.”
“You just leave it there,” her mother said. “No need to feel guilty for things done and out of your control.”
Her father didn’t look up from his plate.
Out of the corner of her eye, Ada watched him. He ate slowly, moving his jaw sideways like a cow. On his forehead, the thin line of scar reminded her of when she was eight. They’d been skipping stones at the pond. Somehow her father had stepped in front of her just as she slung a rock, and that shale hit him right on the forehead, slashing a bloody gash three inches long. She wished she had known how to heal then, to stop the blood. She wished she knew how to now.
Ellie’s car horn sounded as Ada put her dishes in the sink. Lucky barked his greeting. “Don’t you touch these,” she warned her mother. “Daddy can do them, or I’ll do them tonight.”
“Yes, dear.” Her mother closed her eyes when Ada kissed her on the forehead. She kissed her father and hurried out the door.
Ellie and Ada said hello and fell into a comfortable quiet. Ada liked this early hour, the half-light of dawn, the receding darkness shrouding the land. It reminded her of all those years of morning treks to tend the cows. In a barn that no longer stood.
Ada focused on the road and her day ahead. She liked her job—the time with Ellie and Aunt Amanda, the bustle of people. She’d started two years ago, during her last year of high school, with the goal of saving up money for college. Her parents had offered to help, but she’d wanted to do this on her own, that sense of pride. By her figuring, she would have enough to cover tuition by the end of this summer. Just last week, she had mailed her application to the nursing school in Harrisburg.
