Shelf Life (16 page)

chapter twenty-eight

After spending the night and most of the next day in the hospital, Dad’s released with a broken femur, mild frostbite on his foot, and a nasty contusion on the back of his head. I’ve been diagnosed with not getting my homework done and missing classes.

“Guess we’re both up a creek, huh?” Dad asks.

“Not funny.”

“What’s really not funny is your sister milking the cows. Better get out there.”

I sigh and heave myself off the couch. Dad’s right. Sarah doing chores is a recipe for disaster. Just as I push open the door, I feel a hand on my arm.

“I need to talk to you when you’re finished, sweetheart.”

“Sure, Mom. Everything okay?” It bothers me the way she suddenly looks ten years older than she did the day before.

“I’m sure it is. We’ll talk in a bit. Now scoot.” She pinches my earlobe and winks before letting me go. All the way to the barn, I wonder if I’m in trouble. Maybe she wants to talk to me about forgetting my First Aid training.

Worse, what if my professors called and I’m in trouble for skipping? Can I lose my loans? Surely they’ll understand if I explain what happened. I can even get an excuse from one of the emergency room doctors.

Katie, Scarlett and Ashley shift nervously in their
stalls.

“It’s okay, ladies, just a lot on my mind. Sorry you had to put up with Sarah last night. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

After I’ve finished all my tasks in the barn, I trudge back up to the house, both curious and dreading what Mom has to say.

“Sit down,” she says, gesturing toward the kitchen table. She takes a deep breath while tapping the counter with her fingertips. “Your father is unable to walk, let alone do work around the farm. He wasn’t injured on the job, so he doesn’t get workman’s comp or unemployment. We have no choice but to sell the animals and move to a smaller house in town with little upkeep. We can take all our stuff with us, including all the cans we’ve put up so far this season.”

Fear and dread pool under my tongue and in my gut. I forgot to tell her about the mess in the bunker, not to mention the crude message scrawled on the door. I run the options through my head. If I agree that moving to town is the best idea, she’ll insist on going out to the bunker to clean it and find the chaos. Seeing her hard work destroyed will kill her. I don’t even want to think what that message would do to her. That option is no option at all.

“No. We’re staying here. I can do Dad’s work and Sarah will just have to stop being a princess and pitch in more.”

“Sweetie, I appreciate your offer and I know you love this place, but it’s not reasonable. You and Sarah both have school. That’s not a sacrifice you have to make.”

I shake my head. “You think Dad will recover
better in a tiny, two-story house in town? How will he manage the steps? What are you going to do once the cans run out? Sell your cheese at the Rogers Market for grocery money? No, because you won’t have any cows to make milk or cheese with. Plus, I’m not drinking that sterilized grocery store crap.” I slam my fist on the table for emphasis.

“Honey, we have a little money put aside. It’ll be fine.”

“No, it won’t! I’m not leaving. You guys can give up, but I’m not budging from this place. You said yourself I was almost as big as Dad now. I can do the chores. A hundred years ago this would be no big deal.”

“Boy’s got a point.” Dad appears in the doorway, crutches tucked under his arm.

“Sit down this instant! You shouldn’t be up, and you shouldn’t be encouraging him,” Mom says.

“Quit your clucking. I put up enough wood and provisions to get us through. As long as Sarah pitches in, we’ll be fine. I can help you with the inside chores. Sit me down with a pile of taters and I can peel them.” He leans closer to me. “Don’t tell your mom, but I can even sew a little.”

I smile. “Then it’s settled.”

“It most certainly is not. You don’t get to make the decisions around here, Pete.”

“If I’m going to step up and keep this place running, then yes, I do.”

I witness a look on Mom’s face I’ve never seen before—defeat. She draws up to her full height and sticks out her jaw. “Two weeks. I’ll give you boys two weeks. If we can’t make this work and it gets to be
too much for Pete, we do things my way. Got it?”

Both of us nod.
When Mom storms out of the kitchen, we high-five each other.

“You sure you want to try this?”

“I’m sure,” I tell him.

“You saw the bunker, didn’t you?”

“You know about that?”

“Why do you think I didn’t come home on time? I was so busy fuming down by the creek I lost track of time, and then I was fighting a big fish and he made me so mad I jerked the line too hard and slipped. I suppose we’re going to have to tell your sister so she can go clean it all out. Was there anything we can save?”

“Not that I noticed.”

Dad bites his lip. “Then we’ll tell her animals got into it. Tell her I must have left the door unlocked and they busted up the place. Just don’t let her back there until it’s all cleaned up.”

“What about the door?” Heat creeps into my cheeks again. Thinking about the bastard who wrote such a vile thing gives me an ulcer.

“We’ll just have to replace it. They busted off the lock, but they shot up the door pretty good, too. We’ll get a metal one this time.”

I blink. “What about—”

“The canning jars? I know. We’ll have to replace them, too.
Might be able to trade some dairy for new or used ones.”

That’s not at all what I was about to say, but in that instant I realize Dad hasn’t seen the message on the back of the door. I intend to keep it that way.

“Guess I better go tell your sister the situation.”

“No, let me do it.”

Dad raises an eyebrow. “You sure about that, son? She’s liable to put you in a cast, too.”

“Probably, but you need to get off your leg. Doctor said to keep it elevated for a while.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I had no idea these things hurt your armpits so much,” he says, swinging out his crutches. After helping Dad back to the living room I trudge down the hall to Sarah’s room, realizing that each step might be my last.

“Sarah?” Her door cracks open a bit and the smell of fingernail polish
hits me in the face.

“What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“So talk.”

“In private.”

“Whatever.” She moves to close the door in my face, but I stick my foot out before she gets the chance.

“It’s about Mom and Dad,” I whisper. She must read something in my expression, because her icy veneer cracks for just a split second. I shut the door behind me and sit on Sarah’s bed.

“Did I say you could sit there?”

“Shut up and listen. Mom wants to leave the farm.”

“It’s about time.”

“There’s more, and you have to hear me out. It’s really important.”

She crosses her arms but nods.

“We can’t leave. We have to stay and I’m doing all of Dad’s chores. He’s going to help Mom with the inside stuff. That leaves you to help me with everything else.”

“No frigging way. I hate this place.”

“Wait, there’s more. Someone broke into the bunker and trashed it. All the jars were smashed and the food is ruined. If we move to town, Mom will have to get a job at a fast food place or worse, we’ll have to get food stamps. You think your friends will stick by you when that gets out?”

I’m encouraged when all the blood drains out of her face. “It gets worse. Dad’s going to tell Mom he accidentally left the door unlocked and animals ransacked the place.”

“But they didn’t, did they?” Sarah croaks.

“No. Someone shot off the lock.”

“Are we in danger? Does someone want to hurt us? Did they take anything?”

“I don’t know if we’re in danger, but they didn’t take anything. They did, however, leave a message.” I swallow, not sure I can speak the words aloud. “We can’t let Mom back there so you have to clean up the mess.”

“What was the message?”

I pick at the lint on Sarah’s bed quilt. If I’m going to step up and take care of our family, I better get used to doing tough things, starting with telling my sister what I saw. I take a deep breath and meet my sister’s wide eyes.

“It said,
Your mom is a whore
.”

chapter twenty-nine

“
What?
”

I brace myself for impact. After a few seconds, I crack open one eye and find Sarah standing in front of me with her mouth hanging wide open. Oddly, there were no words coming out for once.

“Shhh. Dad didn’t see it. This is between you and me.”

“You’re not going to tell him?”

“No, it would just make him more upset and feel more useless. He hates being cooped up.”

“It was probably just some punks. They probably don’t even know who lives here or who our mom is.”

“Maybe. Or maybe it was—” I jerk my head to the side, indicating west.

“Shut up, it was not Jay Leaher.”

“No? Think about it. With his family’s property right next to ours, he has easy access and he may have even seen one of us going in or out. He’s got some grudge against me and he’d be stupid enough to do it. Plus, whoever it was didn’t take anything. They weren’t after the food.”

“I guess so.”

“Unless it was someone who doesn’t like you. It said
your mom
, not
your wife
, or
Linda Wilson
. It was addressed to you or me. Or both.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Okay. Okay. So, what do we do?” Sarah paces her
room, a caged bear hungry for her next meal.

“I’m going to pretend I don’t know anything. Dad’s going to tell Mom that animals got into the bunker. You’re going to load up the ATV with whatever you need to clean up the mess. There’s a lot of glass, so be careful and take a First Aid kit with you. When Mom cans the remaining stuff, offer to help and put the wrong date on them. Mark them as last year’s so she doesn’t know it’s all gone when we pull it from the shelves later. And…I don’t mean to be a jerk, but I’ll need to know where you are most of the time.”

“What, so you can boss me around? I don’t think so.”

“No, it’s so I know where to look in case you go missing. You know, like Dad did.”

She presses her lips together, clearly struggling to swallow the bitter pill I’ve handed her. “Okay. I’ll do it right after school tomorrow. Do you need help right now?”

“No, I already did the last milking of the day and all the other animals are in for the night. For the rest of the week we’ll just have to do the minimum to get by, but this weekend we’ll have a long list of stuff to do.”

“Okay. Make a list. I’ll do the best I can. Oh, what do you want me to do about the graffiti on the door?”

“It’s on the back of the door. Dad wants to replace it with a metal one, but until then, we should paint over it. Take a picture of it first then grab some spray paint out of the shed. Dad will want to reuse the door, and we can’t take the risk of anyone seeing it.”

“Got it.”

“You know, I could get used to this whole you agreeing with me thing.” I try to wipe the smirk off my face, but it won’t budge.

“Don’t get a big head. You’re still a twig,” she says.

“Low blow, brat.”

“Now get out of my room. I plan to enjoy my last few hours of freedom.”

I head across the hall to my room. Once inside, I flop onto my bed and stare at the ceiling. A million questions poke their ugly noses at me.
Can I really do this? Do I have what it takes? How am I going to balance the farm and classes?

It’s stupid, but I don’t want to show up smelling like manure or looking even more like a redneck. I finally escaped that label after graduation—I can handle Farm Boy—but memories from high school swirl in the dark. Not that long ago, things got unbearable when the media hyped up the 2012 Mayan Calendar predicting the end of the world. At first, I’d rolled my eyes and ignored the jabs. Then someone taped dust masks to my locker and wrote “The End is
Near” in lipstick. When I walked down the hall, Jay and his friends yelled, “The sky is falling! Everybody down!” and hit the floor. It had been humiliating.

In seventh grade I’d gone to the dollar store with Mom when they were having a sale on canned vegetables and SPAM. She had loaded up the
cart, carefully checking each can’s expiration date.

“These will be great additions to the stockpile,” she had said. In the parking lot, we ran into Jennifer Burgess and her mom, who were loading their new Cadillac SUV with groceries from the real grocery store next door to the dollar store. She giggled as we
opened the back of our rusty hatchback and began filling it with the bright yellow bags, unmistakable from a thousand yards, I’m sure.

At first, I’d blushed because Jennifer was cute and I’d been admiring her all year in social studies. Then I blushed harder when I realized she was making fun of me. That was the first time I was ashamed of my family. Then I was ashamed for being ashamed. I remember glancing down and seeing my toe through a hole in my gray shoe, and while Jennifer wore a pretty sequined scarf to protect her from the
cold, I wore a hand-knitted one my grandmother had made for Christmas the year before. It was orange and brown. Even by boy standards, it was ugly.

That’s when Mom first suggested home-schooling. I’d refused. It wasn’t because I didn’t think she could do it, I just wanted something normal. Being home-schooled would be one more thing that set me apart.