No worries, now, you hear?”
“Okay.”
“You get better fast, Hol. Love you.”
“Bye.”
He wasn’t a particularly demonstrative man. Wasn’t the hugging kind. But when his children were under his roof there was not one night that went by where he didn’t tell them he loved them. He saw his share of fellow soldiers cut down in Vietnam when he served as a lieutenant. Boys who would have given anything to tell their wives, their kids, their folks, they loved them one more time. Every night Will would go to his children’s bedrooms and tell them one by one that he loved them. When they were little they would throw themselves into his arms, even Holly, pressing their scrubbed faces into his neck, inhaling the complicated, earthy smells of the farm that rose from his pores. When the boys were older they would casually toss back a Love you, too, Dad, and Will was satisfied. Those words said, he could sleep well that night. Holly, his youngest, was another story. When she was twelve something shifted. She no longer looked at him through the eyes of a little girl who adored her father, but would look at him askance, her eyes judgmental slits. Love you, Hol, he would say, coming to the doorway of her bedroom but not stepping over the threshold into her realm of bottles of nail polish and piles of clothes.
“Good night,” she would say without looking directly at him, snapping the pages of a fashion magazine in irritation.
“Love you, Holly,” he would repeat a little more loudly.
“Uh-huh,” she would answer absentmindedly, and a spark of anger would ignite low in his breastbone.
Eventually he didn’t even bother opening her bedroom door to say good-night. He would knock twice on her door. “Night, Holly. Love you,” he would call through the closed door and briskly walk away. He couldn’t bear seeing the disdain on her face, of not hearing the sweetness of those three little words in response. Now here he was, eighteen years later, saying I love you to a daughter who still couldn’t seem to find one reason to say it back.
After he finished feeding the cattle, he went to the big barn where he and Daniel had moved four expecting heifers earlier in the week. Over one hundred calves were due to be born by mid-May. Despite the shelter from the barn walls, the cold had still seeped in and Will worried that some of the new calves might perish in the bitter weather.
Will patted the sleek rump of the heifer. He would have to stay close and check on her throughout the day. He expected a calf by that evening. He looked up at the sound of a shout. Through the wide doorway, Daniel was waving and jogging toward him. Daniel Tucker was an equable, methodical man of around thirty, unmarried and thoroughly dedicated to the animals and the land. He was a great help to Will, had a calm, gentle way around the cattle, was dependable and a hard worker. In addition to helping Will out on his farm, Daniel was renting farmland from Will in order to raise crops, hoping to one day purchase his own slice of Iowa. As Daniel came closer, his normally placid face was creased in concern; Will realized something wasn’t quite right.
“The school,” Daniel said breathlessly, his cheeks red, his nose running from the biting cold. “Something is happening at the school,” he said again, swiping his arm across his nose.
“What happened?” Will felt his heartbeat gathering speed and guiltily he realized that his thoughts went immediately to P.J., Augie a beat later.
“Something about a man with a gun,” Daniel said, and pulled his stocking cap from his head. “My sister just called me, my niece and nephew go to the school—she’s frantic. Said there’s a big crowd of parents at the school trying to find out what’s going on.”
“My daughter-in-law teaches fourth grade at the school,” Will said, pulling his hat from his head. “I need to call my son. You want to go be with your sister?” Will asked, biting his lip.
“Thought you’d want to go check on P.J. and Augie,” Daniel answered, reaching into his coat pocket for a handkerchief and blowing wetly into it. “And Todd’s wife, of course.”
“I’d appreciate that, Dan,” Will answered gratefully. “Numbers 87 and 134 will give birth sometime today. Can you stay near?” Will asked, pointing toward a wide-shouldered black-baldie whose swollen flank and udders looked ready to burst.
“You betcha,” Daniel said, patting his boss on the shoulder. “If you hear anything, let me know.”
The two moved quickly but in silence back toward the house. The only sounds were the wind whistling between the outbuildings and the mild lowing of the cattle, now satiated and huddled together trying to keep warm.
“Who would do such a thing?” Daniel finally asked, stretching his stocking cap back over his ears.
Will shook his head in bewilderment. He knew just about every single person in Broken Branch, and though there were a few mean, crazy sons of bitches, he couldn’t imagine anyone walking into a school with a gun. “Don’t know, Daniel. I’ll go see what I can find out,” he assured him, and went into the house. Will didn’t bother to change out of his coveralls or his dirty work boots but paused to grab the cell phone he seldom used. Then, unaware of the streaks of muck and manure he was trailing across Marlys’s carpet, he made his way into his tiny office. He spun the lock on his Browning gun safe, pulled it open and retrieved his Mossberg 500 pump action shotgun and tucked a box of shells into his pocket. Just in case.
Augie
Mr. Ellery steps out of the room and Noah and Justin follow him to the doorway. “Go sit down. Now,” he orders, his voice so serious that even Noah knows better than to disobey him.
“What’s going on?” Beth Cragg asks nervously, chewing on her fingers. Beth is the closest thing to a friend that I have in Broken Branch. Our grandmothers are friends and had unsuccessfully tried to make our mothers into best friends when they were our age. I guess they thought this was their second chance, because ten minutes after P.J. and I arrived at the farmhouse Beth and her grandma showed up with a plate of lemon squares. But I was the one who looked like she had sucked on a lemon when I first met Beth. We seemed so different from each other. Beth is all farm girl. She wears Levi’s and John Deere sweatshirts or McGee Feed Store T-shirts every single day. Beth is one of those girls who is naturally beautiful and doesn’t even know it. She has freckled skin and pulls her shiny brown hair back into a ponytail or twists it into a braid that lies across her shoulder like a thick rope. Whenever I try to wear my hair in a braid it looks like an anorexic rattail. The boys in eighth grade love her because she is still interested in chasing toads and skipping stones across the creek and because she belongs to 4-H and raises calves that she shows at the county fair each summer. She can talk about crops and guns and goes pheasant and deer hunting with her father. All except this year, because of her parents’ divorce. In the past two months, though, we have become friends. Beth is nice and is a good listener. Plus, she was the one person, including my grandpa and P.J., who didn’t make fun of the way I dyed my hair red. Now that’s a true friend. And we do have something in common. Our parents. Mine are divorced and Beth’s mom and dad are getting a divorce. She listens to me while I bitch about having to leave Arizona to live with my grandfather and she complains about how sad her mom is and how her dad tries to make her feel guilty for taking her mother’s side.
“What’s going on?” Beth asks again, her voice shaking. I feel my stomach flip with worry and I think of P.J. Then I think of my mother back in Revelation and I want to talk to her more than anything. My cell phone is in my book bag, which is in my locker out in the hallway, and I wonder if Mr. Ellery will let me go and get it.
“We’re
