Republic of Dirt (32 page)

I
was real pleased when the feller with all the tattoos from the government showed up. We just had to make sure that we kept things civilized while he was there. Of course, not ten minutes later, the lady in the puffy red long johns or snowmobile suit or whatever that outfit was supposed to be showed up. I saw that social worker’s eyes get big. He watched while my brother Merle and that little fainty fellow from the farmers’ market went over to deal with her. She looked at Merle and the little feller like they were Jesus and the Holy Spirit come down from on high.

You’re fine, sweetheart, said Merle. Seventy-four years old and half the ladies in the place were looking at him like he was dessert. I think even them ladies who is married to each other was giving old Merle the hot eye.

Your outfit is very nice, said the little feller to the lady in the red snowsuit. Spicy, even.

His mother got up and sat across from the lady. She stared at her hard. Are you single? she asked. My son Anoop here is single.

The lady was so pie-eyed, she didn’t answer.

She’s not right for you, said the little feller’s mother to him. Not a conversationalist.

I play video games, said Anoop. I’m very good. I’m also adventurous about food.

He is not, said a teenage boy who got up and stood beside Anoop’s mother. The kid had at least eight cookies balanced in his hand. Anoop even passes out sometimes when he eats, like, pepper. Anoop’s got issues, said the boy.

Anoop ignored him and continued staring at the lady in the red snowsuit. Her eyes had begun to close.

I decided to go and take a look at Alec Baldwin and finally get some fresh air.

M
y mom was still crying in her room and I was sitting in the living room and thinking about what might happen and where I might go, when Seth’s phone vibrated in my hand.

I’m not supposed to have the phone, so I usually keep it turned off and only use it for emergencies, such as telling Seth things to tell Earl about my chickens and letting Seth and Earl know when I was alone in the campground.

But after the school play, I turned the phone on and muted it. Having it on made me feel less lonely. I might end up being one of those people who spends all their time on their phone if I’m not careful.

I answered the call, keeping my voice low so my mom wouldn’t hear.

“Hello?”

“Sara?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Seth. Alec Baldwin’s not doing so good. Earl and Eustace are with him. Eustace said you better get your mom to drive you over.”

I knew that meant it was a serious emergency, so I hung up the phone and told my mom we needed to go to the farm. She said she didn’t think she was up to it. I put on my coat and boots and started walking over there by myself. My mom picked me up about five minutes later.

“Come on, Sara,” she said. “Let’s go.”

M
e, Earl, Eustace, Prudence, Tamara and Merle all stood on the porch of Earl’s cabin. Mr. Spratt had unhitched Lucky and he stood at the foot of the cabin stairs. We’d asked the rest of the guests to please stay in the house while we dealt with a personal emergency.

“How long?” Prudence asked Eustace, who had moved the rooster into a shoe box lined with a towel, under which he’d placed one of those hand warmers.

Alec Baldwin was half collapsed in the box, one wing spread as though to steady himself. He stared up at us, his strange eye visible for once with his crest brushed out of the way.

“Not long. Do you want to go get her?” he asked Prudence.

“We can take the Lincoln,” said Merle.

But before anyone could decide, Mrs. Spratt’s Buick pulled up and Sara jumped out and came running through the gate and across the pasture.

She charged up the stairs and stopped in front of Eustace. He handed her the box and she sat down with it on her lap.

I could swear that old rooster looked up at her and something in his body changed, unclenched. Sara had that effect on animals.

She used her finger to stroke his feathers and he pulled in his wing and settled further onto his side.

“You should have won the prizes,” she whispered.

Alec Baldwin’s eyes were closed now, the lower lid sliding up to meet the top.

A stillness fell over all of us when the rooster died. Some electrical charge gone out of the world. The feeling lasted until Mr. Spratt spoke up.

“Nice job, Sally,” he said. “Now you’ve really done it.”

S
ara held the box containing her dead rooster and didn’t look up when her parents started in on each other.

“Excuse me?” said Mrs. Spratt.

“Did she really need to see this? Who gave permission for her to be here?”

“What are
you
doing here? Looks like a party. Nice to know Sara and I couldn’t come because we were abiding by the rules you and I established.”

“I’ve got a job to do here. It’s none of your business,” said Mr. Spratt.

“You have never been supportive of Sara’s poultry,” snarled Mrs. Spratt. “You small-minded, nasty little—”

“Stop it!” yelled Sara so loudly that we all jumped. “Do you want my stomach to start bleeding again?”

“Oh my god, honey. No,” said Mrs. Spratt. “We’re sorry.”

Mr. Spratt nodded.

“I want to come back to the farm. I don’t like living with either of you.”

Her parents stared at her with open mouths.

“You aren’t good parents. It’s okay. I don’t mind. But you need to let me come back here.”

“We …,” Sara’s dad started but couldn’t seem to think of what else to say.

They didn’t approach her. The two of them just stood on the cold ground, in the near dark, and stared up at their dry-eyed daughter, who held the box with her dead pet clutched to her chest.

“I want to bury him now,” said Sara, looking at me.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll have a ceremony.”

Sara, ever considerate, looked toward the house and all the people, some of whom had come out on the porch to stare, concerned, toward Earl’s cabin. “What about the party?”

“It can wait. We need to take care of Alec Baldwin.”

Merle took in the situation. “This seems like an event for immediate family. I’ll go see if the folks want a tune or two to keep ‘em occupied.”

Tamara, Seth’s lovely editor, followed.

Merle made his way back to the house. He gestured to his driver, who stood with several of the other guests on the porch of the house, and the driver went over to the car and retrieved Merle’s guitar.

Sara walked down the cabin stairs, carrying her box. The rest of us fell in behind as she led us around behind the new barn.

“Here,” she said. “The ground is soft here. And he liked this patch of grass.”

“Are you sure you want to do this now?” I asked, as gently as I could. “We could do it tomorrow.”

“Now is best,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to come back.” Then she asked us all to put something in the box with Alec Baldwin so he wouldn’t feel lonely.

We each went off to get a farewell object. Seth offered up a tattered Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, Earl an old work glove. I got a photo from my room of Sara holding Alec Baldwin. She was grinning widely and Alec Baldwin looked resigned. Eustace added a chicken-shaped key chain Sara had given him. Sara’s parents stood like statues. Adding nothing. Saying nothing.

Earl and I dug the hole, and when Sara had organized all the items alongside the bird’s body, everything covered with Seth’s T-shirt, she put the lid on and placed the box in the cold ground.

“Good thing it’s not frozen yet,” she said.

“Do you want to say anything?” I asked as we stared down at the little shoe box, sad but also strangely life-affirming.

“He was a very good chicken,” she said. “Probably my favorite.”

That made me cry.

“A great chicken,” said Seth. “A rock and roller.”

“The best goddamned chicken,” said Earl.

And with that, we took turns shoveling dirt onto Alec Baldwin’s body.

T
he guests went quiet when we walked back inside. Then Merle started playing bluegrassy Christmas carols again and people started singing along, quietly, I guess out of respect.

I looked around and saw Prudence usher Sara’s parents and the social worker upstairs.

The drama teacher had, thank Christ, passed out on the couch in her red snowsuit, which someone had zipped up to a decent height. Eustace and I carried her up to Prudence’s room and put her to bed.

Not long after, Prudence came down by herself. When Merle stopped playing, she announced that it was time to have dessert and then we would turn on the lights. Soon Sara was helping serve pumpkin and strawberry pie, stopping now and then so people could tell her they were sorry to hear about Alec Baldwin. The boy from the chicken club put a hand on her shoulder and I saw her wipe her eyes. That was a throat-tightener, for sure, and I caught Tamara looking at me.

Jesus. I wondered what she thought about all of this. About me.

When most people had finished their desserts, we all started trooping outside for the light show.

“This is going to be great. We need something great right now,” said Prudence, who is the definition of whatever word it is that means a person doesn’t easily get fatigued or discouraged.

It was cold outside and pretty soon we were stamping our feet and trying not to develop that condition you get from damp cold—chilblains?

“All together now!” shouted Prudence. She sounded like some over-amped track and field coach, trying to cast off the pall left by the death of our poor rooster.

I sprinted for the stereo and Eustace started the generator. Music blasted out over the farm, probably spooking livestock for a two-mile radius. Thousands of lights came on. Everybody oohed and aahed in spite of the fact that the display was a bit wonky. I have a theory: in order for Christmas lights to look really good, what they’re illuminating should be halfway attractive. But when we flipped the switch and Woefield Farm became the Vegas of the Pacific Northwest, it was clear that inexperienced light hangers and a less than gorgeous setting combined to make the whole farm look like there’d been an explosion in the lights section at Canadian Tire. Bright though. It was definitely bright.

Sara’s parents came outside and they whispered something to Sara’s teacher, Miss Singer, who nodded and went in the house.

Prudence gestured to Mr. Spratt, who seemed embarrassed.

“Ready?” she said.

“You sure you want me to drive him?” he asked. “I haven’t done a lot of good around here tonight.”

“You’ve changed the fortunes of that mule and this farm,” said Prudence. “And Lucky’s been waiting patiently for his chance to shine.”

She turned to the group. “Who wants a mule ride? Dean is just going to get Lucky hooked up again and you can take a tour around the pastures. Enjoy our light show up close. Listen to the music.”

“Do you have a death wish?” Portia asked Brady, her fellow bad writer.

“I once took a donkey ride through Tijuana,” said Brady. “Mules don’t scare me.”

“Don’t even think about it,” said Anoop’s mother to him when he started toward the pasture. “Mules are not like video games.”

Pretty soon, Dean Spratt had Lucky hitched to the wagon, and Sara and the boy from her poultry club and Brady and Anoop’s young cousin climbed aboard and pulled blankets over their laps.

Mr. Spratt said something to Lucky, who moved off smoothly.

I waited for the mule to startle and run off, crashing and maiming everyone on the wagon and perhaps several people in the crowd of watchers, but he was as docile as Bertie and only slightly faster.

“I had no idea he could do anything useful,” said Mrs. Spratt. I wasn’t sure whether she was referring to Lucky or to Mr. Spratt.

I nodded noncommittally. I’d thought the same thing about her until I read her work. In fact, before learning about their hidden talents, I assumed the only useful thing the Spratts had ever done or ever would do was create Sara. Maybe they thought that themselves and were troubled by the notion.

“If you’re open to it, we’d like her to come back here to stay, at least while we’re away. The social worker agrees this is a good place for her,” she said, with no preliminaries.

In spite of myself, I let out a strangled cry and hugged her.

She smiled wryly. “This fall and winter have not been my finest seasons as a mother. Not by a long shot.”

I wasn’t going to argue. But all my animosity toward Mrs. Spratt and Mr. Spratt disappeared as I watched the wagon, which was also lit up like a gas station at two in the morning, move around the field.

Y
ou know, I never had much time for Sara’s parents because of how they weren’t worth a turd in a septic system from a looking-after-kids perspective. But I guess Old Man Sprout showed he had some worthwhileness when he got the mule going. And Mrs. Sprout might be the saddest excuse for a woman I ever seen, but Prudence says it’s because she was writing a book.

That argument don’t work for me. There’s things you should do with your time and things you shouldn’t. Writing about yourself, or worse, writing about people you made up, is no activity for a grown-up. But I respected that they told that social worker Sara should come back to us, even though it hurt their pride, since it was up to them all along.

We’ve all talked to that social worker two or three times now, and I’m starting to get the feeling he just likes coming around. Not just him, either. Old Mrs. Sandhu is over here for tea all the time, and them international kids who wear fuzzy tails and ears and whatnot stop by a lot, and my brother Merle shows no sign of leaving.

He’s got himself set up at the Coast Bastion Hotel. Has himself the nicest room in the place. But he’s here every day when he’s not keeping company with that lady in the red snowsuit. The one who showed up at the party and tried to take off her clothes.

Him and his driver took her home after the party, and him and her have been hot and heavy ever since.

Even that little Anoop feller has a romance. His mother sent the video of him picking up construction garbage to a lady in India. I guess she liked the look of him, because he’s talking to her on the computer all the time when he’s not working or playing video games.

Me and Seth were talking and he said he figured my brother Merle’s hanging around because he’s lonely. And you know, Seth might be right. I feel bad for Merle. So I told him I’d do a holiday album with him, even though I hate Christmas music. Might be the only way to get rid of him. And we could use the money. I even asked Merle if he remembered Ella Grace, the gal from when we was young. The one who rode a mule. He said he sure did. I said I might look her up and see how she was doing. He give me a funny look then, but he didn’t say nothing. Just give me a pat on the back and said I should do that.