Nathaniel

CHAPTER FOUR

"We're not going home at all?" Michael's voice clearly reflected his bewilderment. "But why?"

He was sitting with his mother in Anna Hall's rarely used living room, and while Janet perched nervously on the edge of a sofa, Michael himself rocked furiously on a bentwood chair.

"Lots of reasons, darling," Janet replied, forcing herself to meet Michael's angry eyes. "For one thing, we have a home here-a place to live that's all our own. Wouldn't you rather live in a house than an apartment?"

"I don't know," Michael answered, too promptly. "Dad never wanted to live on a farm. I bet if Dad were here, we'd be back home."

"I know," Janet sighed. "If your father were here everything would be the way it always was, but he isn't here, and everything has changed. I know it's hard, and it's going to get harder, honey. Now it's up to me to figure out what's best for us, and I think it's best that we stay here."

"But why?"

"For one thing, we don't have much money, and living in New York is very expensive."

"Why don't you get a job?" Michael asked with the serene innocence of his years.

"I might be able to," Janet agreed. "But it wouldn't be much of a job. And what would you do? I can't leave you by yourself every day, and we'd never be able to afford someone to come in."

"I can take care of myself," Michael replied. "I'm not a baby anymore."

Janet smiled at her son. "Of course you aren't. And if we weren't living in New York, I wouldn't worry at all. But in the city I'd worry about you all day, every day. Besides, right now, I don't think I could get any kind of a job at all."

Michael stared at her, and suddenly stopped rocking. "Why not?" he asked, the sullenness in his eyes fading slightly.

"Well," Janet said, "it seems our family is going to get a little larger."

There was a silence, and then Michael realized what she was saying. "You mean you're going to have a baby?"

Janet nodded. "So you see, I'd have to leave whatever job I got in a few months. And most people wouldn't hire me to begin with, right now."

"Why tell them?" Michael asked. "You don't look pregnant."

"I don't lie," Janet spoke quietly. "And I don't ever again want to hear you suggest such a thing. Is that clear?"

Michael squirmed and his eyes shifted away from hers. "I didn't mean you should lie…" he began, but Janet didn't let him finish.

"Not telling the truth is lying, Michael. It doesn't matter if someone doesn't ask you a question. If you know something that's important to a situation and don't say anything about it, that's lying. And you know it, so let's end it right there." She paused for a moment, and settled herself back into the sofa. "The point of all this is that I can't get anything more than temporary work right now. and won't be able to for at least a year, maybe more. And we can't live in New York without me working. Can you understand that?"

There was a long silence, and then Michael nodded. "I guess so." Then, a moment later: "But what about all my friends?"

"You'll make friends here," Janet assured him.

Michael left the rocking chair, and went to gaze out the window. "What if I don't?" he asked, and in his voice Janet heard all the doubts that she herself had not yet been able to put aside.

"But you will," she insisted, and immediately wondered if her reassuring words were for her son or for herself.

For a long time, Michael stared silently out the window, and then abruptly turned to face her with the question she had least expected. "Why didn't Daddy ever tell us we had a farm?"

Janet searched for an answer, but found none. None, at any rate, that wouldn't tarnish Michael's memory of his father, and she wasn't willing to do that. "There was no reason to, really," she said at last. "Daddy wasn't a farmer, and never wanted to be. And there aren't any universities around here where he could have taught." She brightened, as an idea came to her. "Perhaps it was his idea of insurance, in case anything ever happened to him. Something to leave us. Not only a home, but a family, too. What if he'd told me?" she improvised. "I'd have talked him into selling it, and buying something closer to New York, and now, instead of having something we own, we'd have a mortgage to pay, and no family around to help us. Maybe Daddy was smart never to tell us about the farm."

If only, she thought to herself, I could believe that. But I don't. Not a word of it.

Michael, however, seemed to accept her words at face value. "Where is it?" he asked.

Janet stared at her son, then burst into laughter for the first time since Mark had died. Michael looked at her oddly, then glanced uneasily away. "What's so funny?"

"You know what?" Janet gasped. "I don't even know where it is! Here I've made up my mind to move us onto a farm, and I never even asked where it was, let alone what it looked like. Let's get your grandparents and go see it."

But the Halls refused to take them.

"Tomorrow," Anna insisted. "We'll show it to you tomorrow."

"But why not today?" Janet asked.

Amos grinned at her. "If you saw it today, you'd never move in. By tomorrow, it'll be cleaned up and at least habitable."

"But I don't care if it's a mess," Janet protested. "You don't have to hire someone to clean it up. Michael and I can do that."

"Hire someone?" Anna asked. "Why would we do that?" Then suddenly she understood what Janet meant. "This isn't like New York," she said. "Out here, everybody knows everybody else and helps them out. It's just like having one huge family. We'll take care of you. That's what we're for."

Janet's eyes flooded with tears, and she leaned down to hug the elderly woman. "Thank you," she whispered. "You've no idea what all this means to me. Ever since Mark died, I've been so… so frightened."

Anna gently patted her back. "I know, dear. I know just how you feel. But everything's going to be fine. Just fine," she said, as her eyes met Amos's beyond Janet's shoulder.

"Do you know Mr. Findley?"

The sun was high, and Michael and Ryan, yesterday's fight forgotten, had taken shelter from the heat under the enormous cottonwood in the Shieldses' front yard. Ryan, to Michael's disappointment, hadn't been at all surprised by Michael's news. In fact, when he'd told his cousin that he and his mother had decided to stay in Prairie Bend, Ryan had only grinned and said that if he thought that was news, he was wrong-there probably wasn't anyone in Prairie Bend who didn't know they were staying. Now, however, he looked at Michael curiously.

"He's crazy," he said at last. "How'd you hear about him?"

Michael ignored the question. "Who is he?"

"He's an old guy who lives all by himself. Everybody says he's crazy and ought to be locked up, but nobody ever does anything about it."

"Crazy how?"

"Just crazy. You know. He talks to himself all the time, and never lets anybody near the place, except Dr. Potter. I heard the only reason Dr. Potter ever goes out there is to see if old man Findley's still alive or not."

"Do the kids ever go out there?"

"What for?"

"Just to see what's going on."

Ryan glanced at his cousin with suspicion. "Nothin's going on. And if you go out there, he shoots at you."

"Bullshit," Michael challenged.

"Bullshit, nothin'. Eric Simpson lives out that way, and he saw old man Findley shoot at someone."

"Then how come they didn't arrest him?" Michael demanded.

Ryan frowned. "I don't know," he reluctantly admitted.

" 'Cause he didn't do anything, that's why," Michael told him with a certainty he didn't really feel. "I bet he was just shooting at an animal or something. If he'd done anything, they would have arrested him."

"That's not what Eric says, and he saw it."

"What did he see?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"I don't know him."

"Well, let's go out there," Ryan suggested. "Then you'll know him."

Ten minutes later they were riding out of Prairie Bend and east along the river road, Michael on an old Schwinn that Ryan had dragged up from the Shieldses' basement. He was straining to match his cousin's ease with the machine, but it wasn't easy. Unlike Ryan, Michael had not grown up on a bike, and the one time he had risked Ryan's no-hands technique, he had nearly lost control.

"Whatcha going to do about school?" Ryan suddenly asked, braking his bike so he fell back alongside Michael.

"What do you mean?"

"Aren't you going back?"

Michael shrugged. "I guess not."

"Then what grade will you be in next year? Will they pass you?"

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Don't you have to take tests?"

"Our school doesn't have tests," Michael replied. "It's an experimental school."

Ryan's look was one of disbelief. "No tests? How do they know who to pass?"

"Everybody passes." Suddenly, Michael slowed the bike and called out to Ryan, "Is that Findley's place?" He pointed off to the right, where an old farmhouse, its paint peeling and its porch sagging slightly, huddled in a grove of scraggly elms at the end of a rutted driveway. A barn loomed twenty yards from the house, and between the two buildings some chickens scratched at the dusty surface of the unkempt and unfenced yard. As he looked at the place, a man appeared on the front porch, dressed in overalls, cradling a shotgun in his arms.

"Let's get out of here," Ryan said. Without waiting for a reply, he pumped hard on his bike, spewing a cloud of dust into Michael's face. Michael paused a moment longer, his eyes leaving the figure on the porch and concentrating on the barn. For a second, he thought he'd seen something- something he couldn't really identify-but as he studied the barn there was nothing. And yet, even as he rode after Ryan, something tugged at him, an ill-formed thought-a feeling, really-that made him look back once more. The man on the porch was gone, and the barn looked exactly as it had before.

He pedaled harder, catching up with Ryan, but it wasn't until they'd passed over a slight rise that Michael's uneasy feeling-that feeling of something pulling at him-passed.

A little further on, they came to another drive, overgrown with weeds. A mailbox dangled from a post by a rusted nail-the only sign that anyone had ever lived there. Ryan pulled his bike off the road. Michael had to slam on his brakes to keep from running into him. He finally spotted the house, nearly invisible in the tangle of weeds that surrounded it.

"Is this where Eric lives?" he asked, his voice reflecting his incredulity at the idea that anyone could inhabit such an abandoned-looking place.

Ryan shook his head, grinning. "This is where you live."

Michael's mouth dropped open, and he stared at the house for a long time. "Mom's gonna croak," he said at last.

Ryan nodded. "I wasn't supposed to tell you, but I couldn't resist. Isn't it something?"

"It doesn't look like anybody's ever lived there."

"Who'd want to?"

"Let's go look at it."

Michael started maneuvering his bicycle up the drive, but Ryan stopped him. "I wasn't even supposed to tell you about it, and if we go look, Mom might see us. She's helping clean it up."

"Why don't they just burn it down?"

"Search me." He paused, then: "You won't tell anyone I showed you where it was, will you?"

"Hell, no." Suddenly Michael grinned. "But I can hardly wait to see the look on Mom's face when she sees it." Then, as he gazed at the old house, his voice dropped to a whisper. "No wonder Dad never said anything about it."

"Hunh?"

"My dad never told us about this place. Mom just found out about it the other night, when Grandpa told her." He was silent for a little while, then turned to his cousin. "Ryan?"

"Yeah?"

"How come my dad didn't like it here?"

Ryan glanced impatiently at Michael. "I already told you I don't know."

"Well-didn't anyone ever talk about him?"

"What do you mean by talk?"

"You know-the way people talk about people."

Ryan thought about it for a little while. "My mom talks about him sometimes. Mom always says he was smart to get out of here, and she wishes she'd had a chance to do it, too."

"How come?"

"I don't know. I guess 'cause it's so small." He gave his bike a push. "Come on, let's get over to Eric's. It's the next place."

The Simpsons' farm, in contrast to the place Michael was going to be living, was well tended, its buildings sitting squarely on their foundations, everything except the house painted the traditional barn red. The house itself, green with white trim, was surrounded by a grove of cottonwoods dotting a neatly trimmed lawn. As they pulled their bikes to a stop near the back door of the house, Eric Simpson, a curly-haired, freckle-faced boy of about Ryan's age, spun the small tractor-mower he was riding around to face them, grinned, and gunned the engine. He expertly cut the throttle and applied the brakes just before the machine crushed Michael's bike.

"Hi."

"Hi," Michael replied. "I'm Michael Hall."

"I know," Eric said as he jumped off the little tractor. "You're gonna live next door." Then, remembering what his mother had told him to say, he scuffed self-consciously at the ground. "Sorry about what happened to your dad," he mumbled.

Michael, still not used to the reality of his father's death, searched for a reply, and found none. An awkward silence fell over them.

"He's not supposed to know about the house," Ryan finally said. "But I knew you'd never be able to keep your big mouth shut, so I already told him."

Relieved, Eric grabbed at the topic. "Did you go inside?"

Ryan shook his head.

"Good thing," Eric said, barely suppressing a grin. "Mom said it looked like some raccoons were living there all winter. There's shit all over the place."

Michael swallowed.

Noting the reaction, Eric pushed on. "And rats, too. Big ones. And then, up in the attic, there's the bats, but at least they don't bite. Much."

Michael caught on. "That's okay. I'm gonna live in the attic, and I had pet rats at home. And I bet there aren't any alligators in the sewers here. You know what it's like to have to beat an alligator over the head before you take a crap?"

Eric grinned slyly at Ryan. "Has he been snipe hunting yet?" he asked. Ryan shrugged, but Michael nodded.

"They tried that at camp last summer, but I already knew about it."

"Michael wants to know about old man Findley," Ryan said. "I told him you saw him shoot at someone, but he didn't believe me. Then just now, he came out on his porch, and he had his shotgun."

"But he didn't shoot at us," Michael argued. "He didn't even point it at us."

"Did you go onto his property?"

"No."

"Well, try it sometime. Me and another guy were messing around there last summer, and we were going to sneak into Potter's Field. So just when I was gonna sneak under the fence, old man Findley came out. He didn't even yell at us. Just blasted at us with his shotgun."

"I bet he was shooting up in the air," Michael suggested. "Just tryin' to scare you. What's Potter's Field?"

"It's down near the river, sort of between your place and old man Findley's, except that he owns it-old man Findley, that is. Hey, you guys want to see my mare? She's gonna foal any day now."

Michael and Ryan followed Eric around to the barn, and a moment later the subject of old man Findley was forgotten. The mare, a large bay, stood in her stall, liquid brown eyes regarding the three boys with benign curiosity. Even Michael could see the swelling of her pregnancy. "Wow," he breathed. "She's really big, isn't she?"

"She was even bigger last time." Eric's voice reflected his pride in the animal, and he pointed to a sleek young horse in the next stall. "That's Blackjack. He was foaled two years ago." Eric's face broke into a grin as he remembered. "That was really something. The same night Magic was dropping him, Ma was having my baby sister, and Doc Potter and the vet were both here. Pa kept running back and forth, so I got to help with the foaling."

Magic, nervously eyeing the three boys, suddenly snorted and reared in her stall. Eric moved forward as the other two boys backed away.

"Easy, girl, easy," Eric soothed her. He continued talking to the nervous mare, and waved Michael and Ryan out of the barn. A moment later the horse calmed, and he joined them. "You guys want to come out when she foals? I'm gonna help the vet, but you could watch."

Ryan shrugged, pretending lack of interest. "I've seen lots of colts being foaled."

But Michael was intrigued. "When's it gonna happen?" he asked.

"Maybe over the weekend, or next week. You want me to call you?"

"Sure. But what if I don't get here in time?"

Eric grinned. "You will. Sometimes it takes all night, but it's always at least a couple of hours." He looked at his watch. "Hey, it's almost three, and I gotta clean up the yard before Ma gets home. You guys wanna help?"

"I can't," Ryan replied. "I gotta be back home by three-thirty."

Eric's eyes shifted over to Michael, but Michael, too, shook his head. "I better not. I have to take the bike back to Ryan's, then walk home."

"Keep the bike," Ryan offered. "You can give it back when you get one of your own."

"Won't Aunt Laura be mad?"

"Nah."

"You care if I stay?"

Ryan shrugged. "All I'm gonna do is go down to the store and help my dad."

Michael made up his mind, and a few minutes later, after Ryan had left, he sat happily on the seat of the tractor-mower while Eric showed him how to work the controls. As he put the tractor in gear and began moving across the lawn, he decided that Prairie Bend wasn't going to be so bad after all. Except that the only reason he was here was that his father had died. His good mood suddenly evaporated, and a stab of pain shot through his temples.

As he rode home through the soft lazy light of the spring afternoon, Michael was unaware of the eyes that followed him. First there were the eyes of Laura Shields and Ione Simpson, looking up from the final stages of their cleaning of Janet Hall's old farmhouse, watching as Michael rode by. Then, a little further on, there was Ben Findley, peering out from behind the heavy curtains that kept his rundown house in constant gloom. As Michael slowed and peered at the Findley place through the darkening day, the old man's hand automatically reached out and clutched the shotgun that stood on its butt next to the front door. But Michael passed on, and Ben Findley relaxed.