Republic of Dirt (15 page)

Eustace watched all this with concern.

“Don’t tell me the farm is infested with something,” he said. “Because that’s not going to help you guys get Sara back. I leave you all alone for a few days and everything goes to hell. Are you sure you’re keeping a close eye on Prudence? Her condition is serious and I can’t be there.”

“Everything went down the crapper as soon as we lost Sara, but we don’t have an infestation. At least not yet. Prudence is fine. Asleep ninety percent of the time, but basically fine.

“We’re here because I’ve decided that pest control is going to be my new sideline. For the winter. When there’s not much farming to do. Sara’s parents will respect me having a job.”

“I’d have pegged you as a little squeamish for a gig like that.”

My sponsor must be given some credit for understanding me.

“Pest control professionals can make excellent money. By the way, do you have a pair of tall rubber boots I can borrow?”

“I can give you an old pair, but I warn you that they’re a size thirteen and have been through the wars.”

We were in the lineup and, at his words, the checkout clerk’s head came up and she frowned at us. Then she saw Eustace and her frown turned upside down.

“As long as the boots aren’t covered in bedbugs,” I said.

The cashier’s mouth reverted to a frown and the man behind me backed away quickly.

“It’s bedbugs, not meningitis,” Eustace told everyone in earshot. “Don’t worry.”

We walked out of the store, and once we were in his truck he asked if I was sure we didn’t have an infestation in the house. “Because I can send over an exterminator. One who is qualified to deal with the problem. This strangles outbreak is a nightmare. If you all have bedbugs it would push me right over the edge.”

I couldn’t tell him that I was trying to have sex with my former abuser/dramatics instructor. Something told me he wouldn’t approve. I was in favor of rigorous honesty except when it came to my romantic relationships, which did not bear close scrutiny.

Eustace would say that my plan was propelled by low self-esteem and that the drama teacher was taking advantage of me. He wouldn’t like it when I told him that of course she was and that people like me had to go that extra mile to get laid. Fine for him. He would never have to exterminate one of the most odious pests in the world in order to gain a woman’s favor.

“Are you sure, one hundred percent certain, you’re cut out to be a soldier in the bedbug wars?” he asked, starting the truck. “Given everything else that’s going on?”

I hoped my racing heart and shortness of breath wasn’t a prelude to a full-scale jammer.

“It’s fine. Face your fears and do it anyway,” I said, badly paraphrasing Prudence, who is as unfamiliar with fear as Eustace is with ugliness.

I
came in from checking the chickens to find Seth messing around in my cabin. There’s never a good time for that.

I asked him what the hell he thought he was doing and he tried to distract me by asking how I made out with hanging the decorative kale baskets on the farm stand.

How the hell do you think? I said, trying to figure out what he was up to. Looked like cleaning of some kind. But what the hell kind of house cleaner squirts white dust all over everything? I live in a wood cabin and anyone who knows anything knows they’re already dusty as a retired preacher’s throat.

Did the baskets add the touch of polish and charm that Prudence thought they would? he asked.

You know goddamned well they didn’t, I told him.

It’d been raining steady for a few days, so we hadn’t painted the shack or settled on how to renovate it so we could sell vegetables out of the damned thing. I was going to ask Stephan McFadden, the young feller who was getting ready to build the barn, but he’d been
scarcer than a fart in a tornado since he dropped off that batch of bricks. Every time Prudence gets out of bed, she asks me when he’s going to get cracking, so I better find out.

It’s too damned bad we turned that ticket booth we built for the concert last fall into a toolshed. Then we wouldn’t have had to try and turn Werner Guurten’s eyesore into a road grocery.

Did the screws hold the brackets? Seth asked.

The third one did, I said.

The first two had pulled right out of the punky wood siding, leaving holes so big it looked like somebody shot up the place with a Desert Eagle. When I finally found some solid wood, I put up the braces and hung the two baskets of kale. Sure as shit they’d be dead from neglect in a week. One basket was about four feet off the ground, the other maybe two feet. The baskets were planted with them fancy rabbit leaves Prudence likes so much.

Seth quit squirting the white dust all over everything and he started waving around this contraption with a nozzle end that leaked steam and made a noise like an old lady who’d eaten too many beans. He held his hand in front of it and when it burned him, he screamed and swore and called it a stupid piece of shit. He’s always had filthy language. Must be the way he was brung up. That mother of his ain’t exactly Mrs. Manners.

I got tired of waiting for him to tell me what the hell he was doing in my cabin, so I just come out and asked him direct. If he was learning to clean houses, I thought I’d let him stay. I could use the help.

Bedbugs, he says. I’m doing a treatment.

What the hell are you talking about? I don’t have no goddamned bugs unless you brung ‘em in here just now.

I know, he said. This is a test treatment. A trial run. You can even think of it as a preventative measure.

I told him to get the hell out and take his bugs with him.

Can’t, he said. Prudence will get suspicious if I practice in the main house.

If she’s bit to hell every morning she’s probably suspicious already, I told him. ‘Specially considering how much time she spends in bed these days.

No one here has bedbugs. I’m just learning how to get rid of them for a friend. I bought the supplies and equipment on the Internet. Now I need to practice so I look professional and competent when I do it for real. I’ve got to do it right the first time because my nerves will not allow me to go through this more than once. Please notice that I’m not using the pesticides in here. Just the steam treatment and the diatomaceous earth. I haven’t used the passive traps either. This is just a test.

I asked who the hell his friend is and why didn’t he just tell the guy to get a terminator. Back when I was touring with Merle and the High Lonesome Boys, in the old days, we stayed in a few places that had them damned things. Nothing worse than waking up covered in bites and itchy as hell.

He said his friend had special circumstances, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. Right then I knew it was probably a woman. She must have special circumstances alright, if she was hanging around with Seth.

What if you bring the little bastards back here? I asked him. On accident.

I’m going to wear protection, he said. Boots and overalls. A hat.

That ain’t enough, I told him. Them things can spread like scabies. I told him he should stick to his business, although I couldn’t have said what his business was other than wasting time on the computer and listening to that racket he calls music.

I tried to think how Prudence would handle the situation, back when she was in her right mind. She always wants us to be more supporting of each other and so I held my tongue. Mostly.

You sure you’re not putting any bugs in here? I said.

He said my place would be clean as a porn star’s privates and I didn’t even have to thank him. And I said, good thing because I wasn’t planning to thank him.

Then he went back to steaming the ever-living-shit out of my kitchen chairs.

He don’t drink no more but he still don’t make much sense.

T
oday was exciting and also disturbing. Target and I snuck over to Woefield again. We went in an opposite direction from how we normally go, by taking a shortcut through two fields. One field was fenced with barbed wire, and Target’s shirt got caught. I pulled him free and showed him how to pin the wire with one hand or your foot and use your other arm to keep the top strand from poking you. Barbed wire is extremely dangerous. I read a whole book about it just before school started and it gave me nightmares. Prudence said the book was too old for me and she said I should bring my books to her first so we could read them together.

Then she read the barbed wire book and got even more upset than I did. She said she couldn’t believe man’s inhumanity to man and that she really hated war, which is where barbed wire started from, or at least where it got really popular. I won’t write the details about the barbed wire because it would make you sick. Prudence made us sit and meditate for almost fifteen minutes so we could try and get our emotional balance back. We were supposed to send positive thoughts
to all the people who have been hurt by barbed wire and also all the animals. She said she thought she might want to spearhead an anti–barbed wire campaign after she got the farm under control.

Anyway, when we finally got to Woefield Road, I thought it would be okay if we walked by the driveway, because we were already sneaking onto the property to see my chickens. I was hoping that Prudence and Earl and Seth might be out there chopping up that old pink building for firewood. Me and Target could say hello and have a visit as long as we stayed on the road.

But no one was outside. I wondered why they hung those nice kale baskets on the old shed and I wondered why no one measured so they hung at the same height. Earl and Seth are my friends but they don’t take as much time with their work as they should. They do not have perfectionist personalities.

Me and Target were standing on the road in front of the little pink house and I was just telling him about how much water kale needs, when Target made a little noise and I looked in the direction he was looking, which was the front porch of the house.

What we saw there was a big shock to us both. Seth was standing on the porch and he didn’t have any clothes on! Well, he had his underpants on but it was still a bad thing to see, especially because we are young and have good vision. The rest of his clothes were all in a pile at his feet and we saw him bend over, which was especially terrible because we weren’t expecting it. Target made another noise. He’s had a hard life and seeing Seth naked wasn’t making things any better. Seth was shaking all his clothes over the side of the porch like there was sand in them or something.

We were so embarrassed that we ran and ducked near the shed so we couldn’t see any more. What if he took off his underpants?
That would be terrible! I explained to Target that Seth and Earl and Prudence are very nice people and that they aren’t usually in their underpants that I know of. I said it would be best if he didn’t tell anyone what he saw, especially not Pete the social worker. He said okay, and then I was going to suggest that we go see my birds, because they are very good for taking your mind off things and their run was parked near the edge of the property, but when I looked down the road I saw my dad’s taxi coming. His signal light was on and that meant he was turning up the driveway to the farm! We weren’t supposed to be there! What if he saw Seth in his underpants on the porch? He’d for sure never let me come back no matter what Pete’s report said.

Then I thought maybe he was looking for me! I told him I was going to a library club meeting after school, and there is no library club!

I grabbed Target’s arm and pulled him into the little building. As I was closing the door, I heard my dad’s car turn off the paved road and up the gravel driveway. My heart was really pounding but probably not as hard as Target’s. He was breathing loud, which is a sign that your heart is going fast.

I said he should try to be quieter, and at first he didn’t answer. He just kept breathing loud and then he started making a wheezing sound.

I wished I had a bag for him to breathe in. I know from first aid classes that bags are very effective for hyperventilating.

His breathing was so fast and loud that I wished I got to take the adult first aid and not just the youth one.

“It’s okay,” I told him. “When I get scared sometimes my stomach hurts.”

He kept puffing.

“It’s very safe in here,” I said. Even though it didn’t seem safe at all.
The shed was tall and skinny and I thought I could hear something moving over our heads. I hoped it wasn’t a weasel or a badger. Badgers can be extremely dangerous. Fortunately, they’re rare.

“Don’t worry about all the mold that’s probably in here,” I said. Then I sniffed again, trying to be evidence-based, which is what my
Home Science Guide
says you should be when you try to understand the world. “There is probably some animal feces in here, but as long as it’s not from mice we won’t get hantavirus.”

Then I told him about how hantavirus comes from mouse droppings and how if you ever feel bad because your family doesn’t have a cabin in the woods, at least you have less chance of getting hantavirus when you clean your cabin up. I’m not in foster care, but I
do
know what it’s like to wish you had a nicer life.

His breathing got even louder.

I said maybe we should sit down so we wouldn’t get too tired. I said it for him. I wasn’t tired at all. I kind of liked being in the little playhouse. Now that we were inside, I could see that’s what it was. My eyes were getting used to the dark and I pulled back the curtains on the little windows to let in more light. There was a stool near a ladder that went up to the second floor.

“The kids who had this house before must have been really small,” I said. Then I told him that I never heard of any kids around here getting hantavirus and so he shouldn’t worry.

“Do you want to sit on the stool? You can put your head between your legs if you feel like you’re going to faint.”

Target sat on the stool and put his head down on his knees.

I was going to ask him if he was okay, but then I didn’t because that question never helps. It just makes you remember that you might not be alright.

Instead I commented how the house was pretty cool inside, even though it looked sort of dumb from the outside because it was pink and had all those pieces of wood glued all over it. I started hoping that Prudence wouldn’t chop the house up for firewood. Maybe we could paint it brown and use it for when someone needed alone time. I wondered if Prudence got the playhouse for me, for when I get to move back to the farm. She probably did. Prudence is very fond of me. She probably thought I’d like the kale baskets on my playhouse since I’m interested in crops. I’m kind of old for playhouses, but gifts are nice and I definitely like kale more than most people my age.

Next time I see Pete the social worker I decided I would tell him about the playhouse, but I’d call it a fort because you can use forts even when you’re a teen, which I will be in a few years. I wouldn’t say how I knew about it, though, so he wouldn’t know I’d been back at the farm against my parents’ rules.

Target said something but I couldn’t hear it because he was talking into his knees. I had to get him to say it again.

He said it again.

“Closetphobia,” he said.

I said I didn’t know about that but that he should be fine if he stayed out of closets. I doubt kids who are in foster care have a lot of closet space. Living with my dad is like living in foster care. My closet at my dad’s is extremely small, with a folding door that’s broken and stacked inside, so I couldn’t go inside and get closetphobia even if I wanted to.

“I don’t like small spaces,” he said.

“This isn’t that small,” I told him. Then I put out my arms and turned in a circle to show him how big it was. When I did that, I accidentally hit him in the ear.

“Oww,” he said, and then we both laughed.

It was pretty funny, even though we were both afraid of quite a few things inside our fort, such as badgers, viruses and small spaces.

“Wait down here,” I said. “I want to look upstairs.”

I thought there might be boxes full of interesting things up there. If there was a badger or some other wild animal, I’d come right back down. There might be bats, but that would be okay. I like bats because I like Kenneth Oppel’s bat books. He’s a very famous Canadian author who came to our school once. He was funny and he taught us a lot about bats. Without bats, we would all have malaria from too many mosquitoes. I don’t know if Kenneth Oppel said that or if I read that in a book.

It felt very risky to climb the ladder. I don’t usually like to be risky, because if you get injured it’s hard to help others and take on a leadership role. But no one could see me inside the fort except Target, and I would always be more of a leader than him, thanks to his bad family life.

The ladder had six rungs and when I poked my head through the hole in the floor of the upper part, I was at least four feet off the ground, maybe even five.

Whoever built the fort was very careless about the safety of kids! Seth says that about the equipment every time he takes me to the school playground, which isn’t that often because I’m too old for playgrounds, but he seems to enjoy it, so I go with him sometimes.

There were no boxes full of cool stuff upstairs. In fact, there was nothing up there at all except for some straw on the floor. It wasn’t completely dark, because of a small window that faced the house and Bertie and Lucky’s pasture and Earl’s cabin. I really wanted to see what my dad was doing. Maybe he was returning my things so I could move back.

Target asked if I was okay and I said I was.

Then I climbed all the way onto the second floor.

Target asked what I was doing and I said I was just looking around some more. He said he thought he’d stay downstairs. That was okay. There was even less room upstairs than there was downstairs.

I crawled on my stomach over to the window and tried not to breathe in any viruses. When I pulled the curtain across the rod, the fabric ripped because it was rotten. Me and Target would need to make new curtains, although forts didn’t usually have curtains. Maybe we could hang wool blankets.

The window on the top floor actually pushed open, which was a nice feature. I looked outside. I’d never seen Woefield from so high up. It looked like a storybook farm. The raised beds were very neat and the house, which had been painted after the concert, also looked nice, except for the roof, which still had a couple of blue tarps on it. Seth had gone inside, hopefully to put some clothes on over his underpants.

Then I noticed someone in the field. It was my dad and he was walking after Lucky and Lucky wasn’t running away like he did when other people walked after him. Instead, Lucky just waited and my dad put a halter on him and led him over to the hitching post that Eustace put up near Earl’s cabin. My dad tied Lucky to the post and started brushing him and then he picked out his hooves. It was incredible to see my dad doing that!

Maybe it was from all the dust on the second floor of the fort, but I started to feel funny in my face.

Target asked if I was okay and I had to be careful so my voice didn’t show anything when I answered him.