July 14, 1947—9:10 a.m.

I don’t tell Momma about the headband Moon Shadow gave me just in case she makes me wash my forehead to Z, too. It’s under my pillow next to Shortstop for safekeeping.

Last night after lights out, all I could do was worry about Dibs. It’s been a few days now since we’ve been toes to nose, and truth be told, I miss his noxious feet in my face. I even pulled the headband over my head last night, hoping to get the answers I was looking for.

But the headband stayed silent.

I guess it’s an answer I need to find on my own.

After chores the next morning, I find Momma out in the side-yard garden. She’s on her hands and knees in the dirt, weeding around the beet plants that she’ll pick for canning in the fall. She’s in her blue jeans and a button-down shirt, her hair tied back with a flowery scarf. I sit down on the ground and watch her. She’s singing. It’s the first time I’ve heard her do that since Obie got sick.

I like hearing it.

“Momma?”

“Yes?” she asks without looking up.

“My bones are hurting me,” I tell her.

She sits back on her heels and blows an unruly clump of hair from her face.

“Your bones?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Deep inside, they’re aching me.”

“Come over here, let me feel your head.”

“My bones don’t ache for me,” I say. “They ache for Dibs. And you know who else? For Mr. Butte. Even though sometimes I get real mad at him. My bones still ache for him, too.”

“Ahh,” she sighs, standing up.

She steps carefully over sprouting lettuce and Brussels sprouts and takes a seat next to me on the grass at the edge of the garden.

“Why can’t we do more?” I ask her. “Mr. Butte hurts him and Dibs doesn’t deserve that, but he won’t leave because he has to run the ranch or his daddy will lose the whole thing and Dibs thinks it will be his fault. And he won’t leave because he thinks his momma is going to come back, when we all know she’s not. Someone needs to do something. And I think that someone should be us.”

Momma is bobbing her head up and down like she’s thinking real hard about all I’m saying to her. When she thinks of exactly the right words to say, she stops bobbing.

“You’re right,” she says.

“I am?”

“Yes. I’ve been lying up at nights wondering just what to do about it, too.”

“Did you know that he didn’t eat nothing at all yesterday except the lemon square I brought for him from church? And you want to know what else? Mr. Butte made him stay outside in the hot sun all day.”

“Oh, Lord,” she whispers.

“He’s just plain awful,” I go on. “I don’t know why my bones would ever waste their time aching for a man like that.” I put my chin in my hand and pull blades of grass out of the ground one by one.

“Mr. Butte isn’t an awful man,” Momma starts. “He’s just…broken is all. And he doesn’t know how to fix himself. That’s why you ache for him. Because of your heart.”

I think about that.

“Well, who does know how to fix him? Because he needs to be fixed quick. Dibs is skinny enough as it is. He needs to eat, Momma, you know that. That kid would eat ten times a day if you let him.”

She smiles.

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course,” she says.

“I used to hate Mr. Butte,” I tell her, knowing full well that I owe the penny swear jar a whole dime for that one ’cause Momma thinks hate is the worst of all the swears. “For what he does to Dibs. But then there’s the whole aching bones thing. So I guess I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel about him. I’m all mixed up about it.”

“Oh, honey, no one is all good or all bad. We all have some of both in us. We just have to remember to make the right choices even when they are harder to make than the wrong ones. And that’s real tough to do sometimes.”

“You mean like his drinking?” I ask her.

“That’s definitely one of them.” She nods.

“Momma?” I say. “Do you ever feel like the gray is sucking you in? You know, after Obie died and all?”

“The gray?”

“Yeah, like a dark cloud that chases you. Like the one that caught up with Mr. Lord. And that’s what I think has Mr. Butte, too.”

She takes a deep breath and blows the wisp of hair up in the air again while she considers her answer. “I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she says, then nods again. “Yes, I suppose it can feel like that sometimes.”

“It’s dark,” I say.

“It is,” she agrees.

“And scary.”

“Yes.”

“And it got Mr. Lord.”

“No,” she says. “Maybe for a time he let it in, but I think he’s finding his way out of it now.” She pats my knee. “And I think maybe you had something to do with that.”

“It’s got Mr. Butte, though.”

“I suppose so.”

“We have to do something about that for Dibs,” I tell her. “You said it yourself, he’s our family.”

She looks off in the direction of Butte Rise and Shine Pig and Poultry. “You really have a lot of courage, Mylo,” she says. “Do you know that?”

I twist my neck to face her. “Me?” I point to myself.

“Yes.”

“I always thought it was Obie who was the brave one.”

“He was,” Momma tells me. “But you are, too. You are so much like him.”

I smile big. “I am?”

“You don’t agree?”

I think about it.

“I didn’t,” I start. “But I’m beginning to find my courage part again. I think that maybe I’ve had it all along, but I just misplaced it for a time.”

“Well, I’m glad you found it again,” she says.

I pick more blades of grass while she swats at a fly buzzing around her head.

“Momma?” I say. “Can we help Mr. Butte with his gray? I think he’s having trouble seeing his way out of it. And if he loses the farm, what will happen to Dibs and him? Where will they live?”

“You have a good heart, Mylo,” she tells me. “It’s the very best part of you.”

“What about the courage part? ’Cause you said courage earlier…remember? You said it.”

She laughs and throws an arm around my shoulder. “Yes, definitely the courage part, too. Let’s talk to your daddy and see what we can do,” she says. “Maybe he has some ideas about how he can help with Mr. Funk at the bank. Maybe some others from church would be willing to pitch in as well.”

I smile up at her. “Thanks, Momma.”

“Mylo?” she asks.

“Yeah?”

“How did you get so smart?”

“Well,” I say. “I know this sounds weird and all, but it kind of started with a box of Cracker Jacks, and that was only because Dibs’s tongue was tired of chocolate Neccos.”