used to be about a dozen kids, but now there’s just me and Dolores—and babies too young for school. With Dolores working, she might not be back…” He sighed. “Then it’ll just be me.”
“The only kid in the whole school?” Julie marveled. “Are you in sixth grade, like me?”
Raymond shrugged. “We don’t really have grades. Or teachers even. I mean, all the grown-ups take turns being our teachers for a few hours each day.”
Julie had a hard time imagining such a thing.
“Come on,” Raymond said. “Next stop, our beehives. Empty of bees, though.”
Julie frowned. “No bees?”
“Nope. A couple of weeks ago the whole colony swarmed—that means they flew off. So now we won’t have honey to sell in our new shop until we get some new bees.”
Julie followed Raymond out of the barn to the edge of the woods where wooden boxes were stacked. “What made the bees leave?” she asked.
“No one knows. Loud noises…some kind of disturbance. Vicky thinks someone upset them on purpose, but I don’t know.” Raymond shrugged. “Pa can catch a swarm and lure them to the hives. I’ve seen him do it before! If he were here now, he’d be able to get us some new bees.”
“Your dad sounds really talented with animals,” said Julie. “He trains chicks and catches bees! Pretty cool.”
“Pa is one cool dude,” said Raymond, ducking his head so his shaggy hair hid his face. “I wish he’d move back. He practically built this place himself. He made everything work.” He sighed. “My mom used to call him a jack-of-all-trades because he could build anything and fix anything. But now he says he has nothing to offer us at the ranch—just because he can’t do the work he used to. He wants Ma to move into town, but she doesn’t want to. She blames him for going off to war—says it ruined everything. But I don’t blame him,” Raymond said. “He went to Vietnam because his twin brother was a soldier who went missing in action. Pa wanted to find him.”
“Did he…find him?” Julie ventured to ask.
“Yes—but his brother was dead.” Raymond kicked the dirt around the beehive boxes for a moment before going on. “And then my dad got wounded and came home, and nothing has been the same.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Julie didn’t know what else to say. Her cousin’s sadness made her own heart ache.
“We had so much fun together,” Raymond said softly. “Ma, Pa, and me. Pa always made up games. Treasure hunts. Secret codes to solve. He used to give out silly prizes. Like once he made a headband for my mom, woven out of vines and flowers. He whittled me a whole zoo of wooden animals. And he used to call me funny nicknames—anything but regular Raymond.” He smiled, remembering. “Any name that started with R!”
Julie laughed. Uncle David sounded fun. “You mean like Ronald or Roger?”
“Yep. And Reginald, Reinhard, Raphael. At Christmas he called me Rudolph!” He kicked the dirt again, exposing something white in the dust.
“Hey,” Julie said, bending down. “What’s this?” She picked up a white scrap of paper. Just visible through the dust that darkened it were a sliver of a yellow sun and the last part of a word: afe. “Oh, it’s another napkin from the Galaxy Cafe!” It was just like the one she’d found near the chicken coop.
“That’s weird,” Raymond said. “Maybe Vicky’s right. Maybe Mr. Coker was here.”
The shadows around the barn were deepening, and Julie couldn’t help shivering and looking around worriedly, as if expecting to see the cafe owner sneaking up on them. Mr. Coker hadn’t seemed like a very nice person when she’d met him at the restaurant, but she didn’t like thinking he’d be mean enough to scare off the bees or let the chickens out to be killed by foxes.
“Your mom said maybe a curse is making things go wrong,” Julie said.
Raymond shrugged. “Oh, it’s just the old gold mine story.”
“There’s a gold mine here?”
Raymond was silent for a minute, as if deciding how to answer. “Yep,” he said finally. “It’s on our property, down by the river. Some gold miners staked claims there over a hundred years ago, but then things went wrong. The walls collapsed, and miners died. So when things go wrong at the ranch now, we say it’s the miners’ curse. But nobody really believes it!”
All the same, Julie thought a gold mine sounded very exciting. “I’d love to see it,” she told him.
Raymond shook his head. “It’s boarded up. You can go in only a few yards.”
“But still—” Across the meadow, a clanging bell cut her off.
“That’s the dinner bell,” Raymond said. “Let’s go!”
On the way back to the Big House, Julie tried to find a way to keep the conversation about the mine going. “I saw a TV show about kids exploring an underground cave,” she began.
“Lucky duck. You have TV?”
Julie stopped for a moment and stared at Raymond, forgetting about the mine for the moment. But of course he couldn’t have TV without electricity, she realized.
“Once a year we go to Sonora for a movie on my birthday.” Raymond’s voice was cheerful.
No television, and a movie once a year? Julie regarded her cousin doubtfully. “We’re like the city mouse and the country mouse in that old story. Our lives are so different.” Julie paused. “You know that story, don’t you?”
“Sure. Ma told it to me when I was little. We’re not that backward out here, though.”
Julie reddened. “I never said you were.”
Three black-and-white dogs raced from the porch, barking, and Julie bent down to stroke them, hiding her flushed cheeks. “I think you’re a lucky duck. I adore dogs, but we can’t have them at our apartment.”
“We have six—a whole pack,” Raymond told her, cheerful again. “And three cats. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” He opened the screen door to the Big House.
The great room held the kitchen and dining area. Beyond that was a large living room with several battered couches and armchairs, and a stone fireplace at one end. A chess game was in progress on a coffee table and a jigsaw puzzle under construction on another table. Along one wall was an assortment of banjos, guitars, flutes—even a cello. Three cats lazed on the shabby couches. The dogs surged forward to greet Raymond and Julie.
“You get to have all these dogs,” Julie marveled, accepting their licks and kisses. “And you only go to school for a few hours a day, and there’s a swing in your barn, and…it’s sort of a perfect life.”
“It was when Pa lived here.” Raymond’s voice turned sad again.
Julie felt a little shy at meeting the ranchers, but everyone greeted her enthusiastically. There were adults and babies and toddlers all gathering
