Drizzled with Death(19)
“No way. Anyone who wasn’t here tonight to see the kangaroo will be hoping it returns tomorrow or at least will want to see with their own eyes where it all went down. I’ll be lucky not to run out of supplies.”
“Then we best get home so you can get a full night’s sleep if you expect that sort of a run tomorrow. I’ll help you lock up.” I placed a steering hand under her elbow and propelled her toward the door. She threw a long last look toward the underbrush, where her salad bowl had been dragged away to die, and then turned her attention to closing down for the night.
By the time we had locked everything and said our good-byes, it was ten at night. I dragged my exhausted carcass to the car and hauled myself inside. It started without any trouble, a credit to the loving care Grampa lavishes on it and all the other geriatric vehicles parked around the farm. One thing about the Greenes, we may have more money than New England farms have rocks, but we don’t throw it away on a bunch of foolishness.
My mother, even though she’s only a Greene by marriage, took to being a cheapskate like a hypochondriac takes to an ambulance. I never wore a pair of jeans not first worn by my older sister until it became obvious Celadon was going to keep growing and I wasn’t. I had to wear through the ones she passed down until it was becoming what my grandmother described as vulgar before we could go buy new ones in my size. Even then my mother just clucked and hissed at the waste of it. She just couldn’t imagine what had gone wrong to leave me unable to take advantage of all the hand-me-down bounty.
It wasn’t until Grandma reminded her of how much the church thrift shop appreciated gently worn children’s clothing that she calmed down and took me to a discount chain for a couple of pairs from the clearance rack. Fortunately for me, there are always some great bargains to be had in the smallest sizes.
I steered down the lumpy road out of town and kept my eyes peeled. Between suspicious deaths and wild animals, I was pretty spooked about being a ways from home. I felt like I was on one of those television shows where a solitary individual sets off minding her own business and is confronted by Bigfoot. I kept expecting at least a mountain lion to make an appearance. Every so often I was sure I caught sight of something slinking through the woods, but like it is with distant stars, as soon as I tried to look straight at it, whatever it was faded away. I welcomed the sound of gravel crunching under the tires as I turned into the driveway at Greener Pastures Tree Farm.
The porch light glowed wanly in the gloomy fall night. I was grateful for any kind of welcome. The distance between the truck and the kitchen door looked farther than usual. I grabbed my purse and scooted off the seat, breaking into a dead run as soon as I shoved the door shut behind me. I sprinted to the kitchen door, popped it open, and launched through it as though the hounds of hell were on my tiny heels. Loden looked up from the rocking chair near the cookstove. He paused in the peeling of his apple, the long curl of skin dangling in midair.
“Feeling kind of jittery, are you?” he asked, resuming his careful removal. You’d think he was a colonial young woman hoping to reveal the name of her beloved with a complete apple peel under her pillow on the night of a full moon.
“You might, too, if you’d seen a woman topple over into her stack of hot cakes at breakfast then a kangaroo take out your best friend’s eatery in five minutes flat.” I plopped into a creaking wooden chair at the well-worn kitchen table and helped myself to an apple from the bowl in the center. I didn’t remove the peel. From an early age, I learned to eat everything put in front of me in a serious attempt to sneak up on a growth spurt. I was still hoping it would work.
“Roland stopped in to tell us about it on his way home from the Stack. How’s Piper?” Loden asked. If I had to guess, he kept hoping the peel under his pillow would take the form of the letter P. Neither of them said anything about it but everyone else knew they would be perfect together. Both of them pooh-poohed the idea whenever it came up, but secretly I think it would do each of them a world of good. Loden loves his work and doesn’t make demands on others. Piper is the same way. And I’d love for her to be a part of the family officially instead of almost officially.
“She took it pretty well. She even tried to lure in a lost creature with a big bowl of salad in order to capture it with her hammock.”
“Did it work?” Loden finished with the peel and sliced off a thin piece of Cortland apple, then popped it into his mouth.
“Whatever beast it was made off with the salad as well as the bowl. But no, we didn’t manage to catch anything.” I leaned back in my chair, but I wasn’t tall enough to tiddle back on the two back legs. No one had ever asked me to keep four on the floor.