It took a few days for everyone to stop talking about what happened to Honey. Sometimes, when Ray asked what was for supper, Eddie saw Isabel, Grandma, and his mother smile.
One night after everyone had gone to sleep and the house was dark, Gregory and Eddie whispered to each other as they watched the bats fly in front of the window, thankful Ray had nailed up bug screens. They had gotten used to the smell of the outhouse that sat twenty feet from the back door. But tonight the wind changed direction, and the warm air held the stench over their bed like a stinking cloud. It drove them under the blankets until they came out gasping for air.
Night in the small cabin felt like a place of safety to Eddie, and he usually fell asleep looking through the window at the stars in the sky. But this evening the ceiling ticked and thumped with new sounds. Suddenly the cabin seemed filled with ghosts. The coats hanging on nails by the door with their arms hanging down and elbows bent, their bodies leaning forward, seemed to be waiting for a signal to come to life and step down to the floor. Just when the noises had gone quiet and it seemed danger had passed, he heard light steps of clawed feet scratching on the ceiling.
“What’s that?” Gregory whispered.
Eddie stared through a gap in the boards into the moonlit attic and saw a shadow sweep by. An animal of some kind was right above them. The sound of crunching bones coming from a corner of the attic meant sleep was out of the question. Only the breathing of the sleeping grown-ups interrupted their miserable silence.
After breakfast on Sunday morning, Ray and Isabel announced they were going for a long walk. When Grace said she was going into town, Grandma said it would be nice to have the house all to herself for an hour.
Gregory and Eddie watched Ray and Isabel walk quickly out of sight. Grace opened the driver’s door of the pickup, and Lewis crawled inside. She slid behind the wheel. “Don’t you guys go anywhere. You stay right here at the house.”
“Why can’t we go, Mom? We didn’t do anything wrong,” Eddie pleaded.
“I know. But it’s not going to hurt you to stay home for once,” she said.
She dug into her purse for change. “Here’s enough for some bubble gum or something. You can go to the store, then get right back home. You hear?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said.
She started the truck and pulled away. The rear wheels kicked up dirt that left Eddie and Gregory in a swirling cloud of dust.
The two boys stood in front of the store window eyeing up the treats inside. There was so much to choose from, but with only a nickel to spend between them, it wasn’t going to be easy to agree on what to buy. They ran inside and lifted the lid of the water-filled cooler. They’d learned all the names of the pop inside it. The bright green Lemon-Lime, the yellow Grapefruit, the purple Grape, the Orange Crush, and the red Cream Soda shone in their eyes like neon lights.
When they couldn’t decide what they wanted, the storekeeper offered a few suggestions. “You can buy bubble gum or share a pop if you return the bottle right away. Or you could have one of these.” He held up a large green sucker.
“How much is it?” Gregory asked.
“The all-day sucker is five cents.” Eddie’s stomach was set on pop even though “all-day” had a nice sound. Agreeing that licking the same sucker was worse than drinking the same pop, they chose a bottle of Orange Crush from the cooler and sat on the store steps. They passed the bottle back and forth until one thought the other was taking too much, and the bottle emptied quickly. When Eddie let out a loud burp, it brought back the aftertaste, burned his nose, and brought tears to his eyes. Gregory sucked the empty bottle until his tongue was drawn inside. Then he held both hands in the air, and the bottle hung suspended as if by magic.
Eddie waited while Gregory went inside to return the bottle. The store had become busy, and Gregory seemed to take a long time. When he finally came out, he raced around the corner of the store and called Eddie to hurry. The pop sloshed in Eddie’s belly as he ran past Gregory at full speed before stopping at their cabin door, a full three strides ahead of him. As they sat on the door sill to catch their breath, Grandma turned from a chair where she had been fanning herself with a magazine.
“Why don’t you guys go somewhere else? I can’t even sit and think sometimes with everybody hanging around. Go on, get outta here until your moms get home.”
She waved the back of her hand at them as if shooing away a cat.
They walked behind the cabin to think of where to go, and Eddie saw a plank propped against the house leading up to the attic. The boys quietly inched up the plank and sat side by side on the ledge. They searched the clouds for shapes of animals or people until Gregory pointed out a cloud he thought looked like Ray. Eddie thought there was much more to see and hear from a place high above the ground.
Sunlight glinted off the river a half mile away, and the swallows warbled as they ducked inside nests under the overhanging roof. A dog chased a gopher to a hole in the ground and began digging and barking. Clouds of dust floated through the dry weeds, and flies buzzed in the attic.
Gregory dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out the all-day sucker. “Look what I got.”
“I thought we didn’t have enough money to pay for it?” Eddie asked.
“I took it when he wasn’t looking.”
Gregory peeled off the cellophane wrapper. The sucker shone like green glass in the sunlight when he held it up to his mouth to take a lick.
“Wait, let’s break it in half,” Eddie said.
Holding the horseshoe-shaped candy in the palm of his hand, Gregory gave a hard bang on the ledge. Pieces of the sucker slid across the ceiling boards into the attic. They gathered up as much as they could find, except for a large chunk that had slid farther back into the dark. On hands and knees, they searched for the missing piece. Eddie saw something at the edge of the light, but it didn’t look solid enough to be a sucker.
“Gregory, come here,” he said, pointing to the bones and feathers of a bird. “It’s a robin.”
Even in the dim light they could make out the red clump of its breast. The skin of the bird had been stripped and tossed aside like a banana peel. Eddie couldn’t connect the grey-brown feathers spread around the attic floor to the funny sight of a robin hopping across grass to pull a stretchy worm from the ground or the way it rested on the bottom bough of a tree, chirruping to the world. Nearby lay the feet that had once plucked sticks and grasses off the ground for a nest. Gregory pointed to a dot-sized drop of blood on the wood.
“Are you kids up there? Get outta there right now,” Grandma yelled.
They backed out of the attic space and climbed down the plank to the ground.
Eddie noticed Ray watching him and Gregory all during supper and wondered if they had done something wrong. It was as if Ray wanted to say something but didn’t know how. After supper Ray stepped out the front door and turned back to the boys. “Let’s go for a walk to the store. Bring Lewis. I’m thirsty for an ice-cold pop, and my lucky dollar is burning a hole in my pocket,” he said smiling.
It was cooler outside, but the grass and weeds beside the path, dried out by the hot summer sun, gave off a powder that made their eyes burn. Other people were also outside, trying to get away from the trapped heat of their cabins. A man and a little girl with an ice cream cone walked up the trail from the store that narrowed to single file. The little girl turned the cone each time she took a lick so she didn’t lose a single drop. Ray walked toward the approaching man without making any effort to move out of the way. The man pulled the little girl with him, and the grass crunched under their feet as they stepped off the path. The man smiled and nodded, but Ray ignored him.
Ray picked out a mixture of flavours from the pop cooler. He wiped each one with the towel hanging beside the bottle opener and put them into an empty cardboard case. He held an extra one in his hand. Setting the bottles on the counter, he reached for his wallet.
“Okay, let’s see here,” the storeowner said as he counted the bottles. “Seven bottles plus deposit makes forty-two. And I’ll be needing a nickel for the sucker the boys made off with today.”
Ray’s eyes narrowed. “What?” he asked.
“These two took an all-day sucker without paying for it. I don’t want any trouble, so just pay me the nickel, and I’ll forget all about it. No point getting the sheriff involved over a nickel, is there?”
The storekeeper drummed the counter with his fingers. Ray reached inside his pocket and pulled out a nickel. He dropped it on the counter and it bounced off the glass with a loud crack, and then he turned and walked out the door. Lewis cried because they were leaving the store empty-handed.
Gregory and Eddie were quiet. They knew they were in a lot of trouble. How quickly things had changed. A moment earlier, Ray would have bought them anything they wanted, but now they were being led home like prisoners. Eddie and Gregory stopped at the cabin door.
“Get in here,” Ray ordered.
The boys walked carefully as if the steps were made of thin glass and stepped inside. Grandma and Isabel looked up from where they sat at the table. Grace took Lewis by the hand to the basin to wash his face. Eddie’s heart thrashed inside his chest. Ray stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips. A moth fluttered against the ceiling as it circled the electric light bulb, unable to pull away from the draw of the light. The flycatcher hanging down next to the bulb was speckled with dead bluebottles. The moth landed on the flycatcher, and its wings beat madly.
“Did you two steal a sucker from the store today?” Ray asked.
“Yeah,” Gregory said.
“No,” Eddie said.
“Did you or not?”
“Gregory did. I was outside waiting.”
“So you knew he took it, but you thought you wouldn’t get blamed if you got caught? Is that right?”
Eddie didn’t answer.
“Did you?”
“No. I dunno,” Eddie answered.
Ray reached over to the washstand and picked up a red willow stick. He bent the switch into a bow and swung it back and forth in front of him. The white tip beneath the bark flashed as it filled the room with a whooping sound. Tears welled in Eddie’s eyes as he backed away.
“I got this down at the river. I was gonna make a fishing pole and take you guys fishing so we could catch us some trout. Here I was feeling bad about leaving you behind today and I find out you’re nothing but little thieves.”
He pulled out a small paper bag from his shirt pocket and tossed it into the woodbox. “I don’t go fishing with thieves.”
Gregory ran to Isabel. “Mom?” he pleaded.
She pushed him away, and Gregory fell to the floor crying. Ray reached down and pulled him to his feet.
“No, no, no,” Gregory begged.
Eddie looked away, but the shadow on the wall showed Ray reaching back and swinging the stick hard. It landed with a horrible sound. When Gregory tried to pull away, Ray jerked on his arm pulling him back. Gregory’s feet kicked madly. With one more solid whack, Ray let go of Gregory’s arm. He crossed the room in two strides and grabbed Eddie by the elbow. Eddie put his hand behind his back to stop the blow, but it fell on his thumb. He shrieked with each stroke. Finally Ray let go of his arm.
“Get to bed. The both of you. And stop your damn crying.”