By morning the hurricane wind had passed, but it was still raining. There was no school because so many of the streets were flooded or blocked by blown-down trees and other debris. It was just as well Kate and her brothers stayed home, because there was a lot of work to do. The animals were still penned up in the kitchen, which was beginning to smell pretty bad. Mom had left early like she always did, and she didn’t come home from the dairy at noon because they had to clean up some hurricane damage there, too.
In the afternoon, when the rain finally stopped, Kate threw down fresh hay in Sugar’s shed and put her back in her pen. Then she and Justin set about getting the calves back to their corral. By then the calves were used to the warm, dry kitchen and didn’t want to leave. Justin had to drag each one down the back steps with Kate pushing from behind. But once a calf got down the steps, it ran for the pasture so fast that Kate and Justin could barely keep up.
Next Kate and Justin gathered up the sheets of tin that had blown off the duck coop. Chip disappeared. Kate figured he had gone down to see Luther. He hadn’t said he was going, so she didn’t have to mention what Mom had said about their visiting the Wilsons. Anyway, she was glad not to have to look after him for a couple of hours. It was hard work dragging the big sheets of tin from wherever they had blown, and even harder to hold them into place while Justin nailed them back on the duck coop where they belonged.
After awhile Chip came back, and Luther was with him. “Guess what?” Chip said, breathless. “We saw a cottonmouth water moccasin!”
“It was shiny black!” exclaimed Luther. “It opened its mouth and flicked its little black tongue at us, and we saw the inside, all white.”
“I hope you know how poisonous cottonmouths are,” Justin said. “With water all over the place there’s no telling where they might be, so you be careful where you step!”
“You think we’re stupid?” Chip shot back. Chip hated being told things he already knew.
Justin ignored Chip and started banging nails into the tin. “Don’t know why we’re bothering to fix this junky shed,” he muttered. “It’s not like we’re going to be here that much longer.”
Kate looked around quickly to see if Luther had heard. She didn’t want the Wilsons to know how the bank might take the farm because they were behind on the payments. Although it wasn’t her fault, she felt ashamed. She was relieved to see Chip and Luther halfway up the lane, headed off on some private mission of their own.
“Justin,” she said, “is that why you aren’t keeping up your grades? Because you think we might have to change schools if—?”
He gave the nail a vicious whack. “That’s right. Even if I got straight A’s I couldn’t go out for the baseball team, because we’re not going to be here.”
“We might not have to change schools,” Kate argued. “There’s only the one high school in our district. Wherever we move, it’ll probably be someplace close by.”
“Kate! If we lose the farm,” he yelled, banging the hammer hard every few words, “there’s no way Mom’s going to stick around here and let people feel sorry for us. She’d hate that.” Bam! “She’ll want to move to where nobody knows us.” Bam! “And even if she didn’t, I would.” Bam! Bam! Bam!
Kate didn’t answer. In the first place, Justin was hammering so hard on the tin that he couldn’t have heard her, and in the second place, she didn’t know what to say anyway. Mom had assured her that they weren’t going to lose the farm. Justin seemed sure they would. The way it looked to Kate, neither one of them really knew what was going to happen.
When there were enough nails in the tin that Kate didn’t need to hold it in place anymore, she walked away. She had that same terrible feeling she used to get when Justin talked about leaving, only worse. Much worse, because now she was thinking that maybe all of them would be leaving.
She went back into the house and cleaned up the kitchen, which was a mess after a goat, three calves, and a dozen ducks had slept there. Even after it was clean it smelled like a barn, but with the window open and fresh air blowing through, Kate figured it would be nearly normal by supper time.
After that Kate went to milk Sugar. She saw Justin out feeding the calves, but Chip hadn’t come back yet. She picked her way across the debris-strewn yard, annoyed that Chip had run off to play with Luther when there was so much to do. He could have helped pick up some of the broken limbs and stuff, and he definitely should have come home in time to get the ducks fed and the eggs gathered, since those were his chores. If he wasn’t back by the time she finished the milking she’d have to walk down to the Wilsons’ to get him, which meant Justin would have to fix supper by himself, when that was supposed to be everybody’s job.
Kate was just coming out of the goat shed with a pail of foaming warm milk when she saw Chip and Luther out on Lost Goat Lane, coming from the direction of the highway. They separated, Luther heading for his house and Chip coming up the driveway toward her.
It occurred to Kate that Chip disappeared quite often nowadays. Used to be he never went anywhere by himself, only tagged along with her and Justin. But now that he and Luther had become friends—no, even before that—ever since the alligator got Go-Boy, Chip had taken to going off on his own.
For a minute Kate wondered whether Chip might’ve gotten up his nerve to go back to the big canal. She sure hoped he hadn’t gone off toward the big canal again. A gator that big, if it got a chance, could catch a child as easy as a dog.