LITMIR.BIZ

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of hard breathing, he retrieved his T-shirt from the adjoining pallet and put it on, then picked up the knife and a piece of wood from the table and began whittling.

      She was certain he hadn’t seen her, not with the racket from the birds above. She was just thinking of how she could inch her way back, desperately afraid she’d sneeze or something, when he looked up and grinned. “Here you go, you little peeper!” He tossed something at her and she ducked. When she raised her head again, he was gone. She felt around in the hay until she found what he’d thrown. It was a small wooden frog, crudely carved.

      Five years later…

      SHE’D THOUGHT it was beautiful and had kept it on her windowsill ever since. She’d gone back up to the house to join her mother and the Hardin women that day, but the boy had not appeared.

      Now, at nearly fifteen herself, on another such mission of charity, with her mother and her aunt Catherine this time, Phoebe thought about that silly wooden frog. It was grubby from handling, and once she’d actually thrown it away; the next day, she’d dug through her bedroom trash basket and retrieved it. It brought her luck. Or happiness. Something that didn’t bear thinking about.

      Saint Augustine’s kept a list of the families they helped in the area, and Bearberry Hill was within the parish. Nothing remained there but a white-painted clapboard church with a windblown cemetery at the brow of the hill and the ramshackle settlement that marked the Hardin place. If there’d been a husband for the older woman, Mercedes Hardin, he was long gone and forgotten by the community. Her daughter, Billy, lived with her, a young-old woman of perhaps forty. She was not right in the head, some said, and others said she was peculiar by choice. Mercedes looked older than her sixty-some years, with flyaway white hair and watery blue eyes. Because of a hip broken years earlier, she favored one leg and walked with a cane, which had always made her seem older. There was another member of the family, Phoebe knew—the son, Lewis. He was in jail.

      Ever since Lewis Hardin had gone to jail for rustling cattle the year before, Cal Blake, the rancher who lived up the road a few miles, had kept the Hardins supplied with beef and firewood. He’d promised Lewis they’d be taken care of, according to a neighbor, which was strange, considering it was Cal’s beef that Lewis and a gang of n’er-do-well cowboys had stolen.

      “I hear Mercy still keeps a fine garden,” her mother said, from the driver’s seat. “And no one can say they’re afraid of work, the two of them, living like they do.”

      “Nan,” her aunt sniffed. “Be sensible. It’s no way to live, two women out here alone. They ought to move to town.”

      “Mercy was born on the place and she’d told me once the only way she’ll be leaving is feet first,” replied Phoebe’s mother.

      Feet first, Phoebe knew very well, meant dead. Phoebe sat in the back, between two large sacks of used clothing from the parish thrift store, which had been chosen with the Hardin women in mind, and a box of groceries on the floor of the station wagon, which had come from the Glory food bank. Canned goods, mostly—ham and soup and condensed milk—although Phoebe could see several boxes of pasta and, oddly, a flat, paper-wrapped tin of anchovies. Anchovies!

      A view of the azure blue Pacific off Peru, silvery with the tiny fish, flashed through Phoebe’s mind…

      “And that boy of hers—ooh!” Her aunt shuddered and made a face Phoebe could see in the rearview mirror. “Thank goodness he’s where he belongs—in jail! He’s been nothing but trouble since he was born. Imagine another one coming so long after Billy? It makes a body wonder who the father was…”

      “Oh, Catherine,” her mother murmured, driving slowly and carefully. “I don’t suppose anyone cares about all that. Not now. Not after so many years.”

      How many years? About nineteen or twenty, Phoebe guessed later when she came across him at the bottom of the orchard—mainly twisted crab apple trees and blighted russet pears. He frightened her, sitting there on a long-downed tree trunk, so still and so alert at the same time. He blended into the dry grass. If she hadn’t smelled the cigarette smoke, she might not have seen him at all. And that thought scared her more.

      She’d asked Mercy Hardin if she could go and see the sheep that she’d noticed from the road when they turned into the lane. Since that first long-ago visit, the Hardin women had acquired a scruffy clutch of sheep, black and brown and white, that they kept for who knew what reason. Meat, perhaps. Or wool.

      Two of the Hardin dogs, who’d barked madly at the car as they drove up to the house, lay at the man’s feet.

      “Come here,” he said quietly. At first she didn’t realize it was Lewis. He was supposed to be in jail. “Are you afraid of me?” His eyes narrowed through the cigarette smoke. He wore an old shirt and jeans, no jacket, even though it was cold enough that Phoebe had worn the new wool coat her mother had bought her for school in September. His boots were black, sturdy and plain. Government issue.

      “I’m not afraid,” she said, picking her way toward him through the fallen branches and frozen windfall fruit. It was true; she wasn’t. She stood in front of him. “You shouldn’t smoke. It’s a filthy habit.”

      He laughed and threw the stub of a cigarette away. It smoldered in the frosty grass. “Who’s up there?” He frowned and hunched one shoulder toward the house.

      “And you shouldn’t throw away lighted butts like that. You could start a forest fire.”

      “Aw, can it, kid. Who’s up there?” he repeated.

      She frowned. “At the house, you mean?”

      He nodded impatiently.

      “Just my mother. And my aunt Catherine.”

      “That’s all?”

      She nodded and he patted the log he was sitting on. “Have a seat. I’m not gonna bite you.”

      She sat beside him. He edged closer to her, against her, and she realized he was shivering. “How’re Ma and Billy?”

      “Why? Haven’t you seen them?” She was thoroughly confused. What was he doing here in the orchard, anyway?

      He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the house. “Naw. Not yet. I’m supposed to be in jail, didn’t you know?” He smiled briefly. His features were harsh and pinched. All these years she’d remembered a dark intensity, a passion, to his thin face; what she now saw was hunger and a certain grim determination.

      “Well, why aren’t you?” Later, when she thought about it, she wondered at her nerve.

      “I left. Got tired of the food they shove at you in there.” He winked and put his arm around her shoulders in a sudden, impulsive gesture, and held her close against him. “Man, it’s cold! I could use a cup of coffee and a bellyful of beef stew. Some nice warm Parker house rolls. Ma done her baking today?” He had a wistful look in his eyes, then came the knowing, self-deprecating laugh again.

      Phoebe stared at him. She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She unwrapped the scarf from around her neck, the one her grandmother had knitted, and gave it to him. “Here, this will make you a little warmer.”

      He buried his hands in the scarf. “You’re a good kid, you know that?”

      Phoebe shrugged. “Well, I guess I’d better go back to the house.” She made a move, as though to get up, but he bumped her with his shoulder, on purpose. She could feel her thigh warm against his. Her thigh and her arm and her shoulder.

      “You won’t say nothing?” He shot her a penetrating look. “About me down here?”

      She hesitated. “They’ll get you, you know. Eventually, you’re going back to jail. For even longer.”

      He laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, I know that. I just needed a break, y’know? Little holiday. I wanted to see how Ma and Billy were getting on. When your ma leaves, I’ll go up to the house, say hello.” His face was so close to hers. He hadn’t shaved

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