white. I seen him that time my mother and me drove out to your farm for cider. Maybe if Dirty Boy tells certain secrets, his dog will get the Stan Zadzilko rope treatment.”
“How come you have a mother but no wife?” I said, and he got all red, and told me that was his business.
I DUCK UNDER THE KEEP-OUT rope and take the shortcut to the middle of the maze. That’s where Daddy meets me. His tent’s somewhere in the woods, past the gravel pit. Sometimes he’s by himself and sometimes he’s with that kerchief lady who always stares at me and smiles. He’s trespassing.
I hide the ham and the cookies and potatoes in the baby carriage, under the Quirk baby, the way he says to do when he’s not here. I’m glad he’s not here this morning—him, and that lady, and his stupid jack-o-lantern missing teeth.
Back at the farm, there’s trouble: a big fight, Hennie and Aunt Lolly on one side, and Zinnia and Chicago on the other. “One little raggedy-ass jug of cider—that’s all I ever snitched from here, so help me Jesus!” Zinnia says. “So that later on down the line, I could sip me a little applejack.”
“Then why’s half a ham missing?” Hennie says. “Why is it that this morning a package of icebox cookies was unopened, and now it’s half-gone?”
“I don’t know about no icebox cookies!” Zinnia says. “Ax him!” Her finger’s pointing at me.
“Caelum?” Aunt Lolly says. “Did you eat some of the cookies that were in the pantry?” I shake my head. And I’m not lying, either. I took them but I didn’t eat them.
“Come on, Zinnia,” Aunt Lolly says. “I’m escorting you back. You’ve broken a trust, so I can’t have you working here anymore.”
“Then take me back, too!” Chicago chimes in. “You can crank your own damn apples. Haul your own damn slop barrel down that hill.”
“Don’t you realize that it’s a privilege to work here?” Hennie says.
“Privilege my black be-hind!” Chicago says. “What’s so ‘privilege’ about me breaking my back all day for no pay?”
I can’t tell Lolly and Hennie that it was me who took the food, because then Grandpa will find out Daddy’s trespassing and get him arrested. And it’s a secret. I promised him I wouldn’t tell. And you know what? I think Lolly’s wrong. I think I can love and hate Daddy. Because now Zinnia and Chicago are in trouble, just like Thomas Birdsey got in trouble that time when it was me who was the secret spitter. And tonight, if I die in my sleep like the prayer says, I’m probably going to hell because getting other people in trouble for something you did is, I think, a mortal sin, not a venial sin, and probably hell is going to have a hundred million Mr. Zadzilkos with devil horns.
BUT THAT NIGHT? WHEN I’M lying in bed, thinking about Mr. Zadzilko and getting scared again? I put my light on, and take my pen, and do what Zinnia did: I write “Jesus” on the palm of my hand, and the S in the middle of Jesus becomes the first S in “saves.” It’s not a tattoo, but maybe it’ll work. I kept staring at it and staring at it, and saying, “Jesus…Jesus.” I don’t feel his arms around me, though; I don’t feel anything. Maybe it’s because I didn’t prick myself with a pin, or because every time I say “Jesus,” all’s I can see is Mr. Mpipi, up on the stage, dancing his crazy dance.
On Monday morning, Miss Hogan makes an announcement. “We have to be extra tidy for the next several days,” she says. “Poor Mr. Zadzilko’s mother died over the weekend. He’s going to be absent all week.”
She shows us the sympathy card she’s going to pass around and says to make sure we sign in cursive, in pen not pencil, and neat not sloppy. When the card gets to me, I write “Caelum Quirk,” but Mr. Big Fat Glasses Face probably doesn’t even know my name. All’s he ever calls me is “Dirty Boy.”
All day, I keep thinking about Mr. Zadzilko being absent. And after school—after I empty our wastebasket and wash our board and I’m still waiting for Mother—I go up to Miss Hogan’s desk. “What is it, Caelum?” she says.
“I’ve got a secret.”
“You do, do you? Would you like to tell me what it is?”
“Miss Anderson smokes,” I say. “When she sits on the toilet. I seen her from Mr. Zadzilko’s peeking hole.”
For a long time she just looks at me—like I said it in Japanese or something. Then she gets up, takes my hand, and has me show her.
And you know what? The next morning, when I wake up? The egg case on my windowsill has hatched. There’s tiny little praying mantises scrambling all over the sill, and on the floor, and even in my bed.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Millions, maybe.
Chapter Five
LOLLY’S CAT WAS CAUTIOUS AT first, watching me from doorways, scooting from the rooms I entered. But half an hour into my homecoming, she sidled up to me, brushing against my pant leg. My aunt had given her some goofy name I couldn’t remember. “Where is she, huh?” I said. “Is that what you’re asking?”
In the pantry, I found a litter box in need of emptying, an empty bag of Meow Mix, and a note in Lolly’s handwriting: “Get cat food.” There were a couple of tins of tuna in the cupboard. “Well, whatever your name is, you’re in luck,” I told the cat. With the first twist of the can opener, she began bellowing. We were probably going to be friends for life.
Thinking I should call Maureen, I flopped down on Lolly’s sofa and grabbed the remote. The Practice was on. Okay, I thought. Not my favorite, but watchable. I stood up and brushed the grit off the sofa, sending cat fur flying. My aunt had many talents, but housekeeping wasn’t one of them; that had always been Hennie’s department. I pried off my shoes and put my feet up. Lolly’s cat hopped aboard, walked up my leg, and nestled against my hipbone. Gotta call Maureen, I thought. Soon as the commercial comes on….
WHAT? WHERE…? I stumbled toward the ringing telephone, realizing where I was: back in Three Rivers, back at the farmhouse.
“Hey,” I said. “I was going to call you. I must have conked out.”
Except it wasn’t Maureen. It was some doctor, talking about my aunt’s stroke. Yeah, I know all this, I remember thinking. That’s why I’ve come back. But somewhere in the middle of his monologue, it dawned on me that he was talking about a second stroke. Lolly hadn’t survived this one, he said. They’d pronounced her dead ten minutes earlier.
I went outside. Sat on the cold stone porch step. The sun was rising, coral-colored, over the treeline. Higher in the sky, the moon was fading away.
I went back inside. Called Maureen and woke her out of a sound sleep.
“Caelum? What time is it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s sunrise here…. She died, Mo.”
I waited out the silence, the sigh. “How?”
“Another stroke.”
“Oh, Cae. I’m so sorry. Are you
