The next day was hot. And dry. And they didn’t have time to think about witchcraft because it was Laundry Day.
Laundry Day was hell.
The fun started at eight a.m. when the girls stripped every bed, gathered every mildewed towel and washcloth, and hauled every girl’s laundry bag out back to the Barn. Three washing machines were lined up along its back wall and Miriam kept them rumbling all day. As girls lugged out every sopping load and dumped it in a basket, the rest dragged the baskets to lines on the other side of the yard. The baskets were so heavy it took two girls to carry them. Then they heaved out soaking sheets and towels and maternity dresses and hung them up to dry.
The sun drilled down through their skulls and brought out their freckles. Fern got so hot she couldn’t get enough air and had to sit in the thin sliver of shade beside the Barn until Hagar hollered at her to get moving because this laundry wasn’t going to do itself.
The bugs made everything worse.
Wellwood House fought a constant war against wildlife. The air was thick with clouds of mosquitoes, and the house always smelled like Skin So Soft. On Laundry Day they had to be careful not to step on any fire ant beds. Sometimes they didn’t even notice until fire ants were crawling down the insides of their socks, gnawing their ankles. Huge flying grasshoppers knocked into their faces, hard as golf balls. The blackflies didn’t bother anyone if they stayed in the middle of the yard, but if a girl got too close to the tree line she’d be immediately swarmed by a cloud of them, crawling up her nose and into her mouth, and the only thing she could do was run for the Smoke Shack and hide until they went away.
By the time work ended at two their shoulders were sore, the backs of their necks were sunburned, and the girls dragged themselves either inside like corpses or over to the Smoke Shack for life-restoring bippies.
Fern had stepped in a fire ant bed and all she wanted to do was soak her swollen, itchy feet in cold water. Instead, she had to join Zinnia and Holly in the kitchen fixing dinner. Everything in there was too hot. Even the tap water felt like it came from a kettle.
“I wish we could go swimming,” she said. “Maybe they’ll take us to the beach tomorrow.”
“Who?” Zinnia asked.
“Miss Wellwood? Or Diane?”
“You think either one of them is going to take a bunch of pregnant girls to the beach?” Zinnia asked.
Fern wiped her hand across her forehead and it came away slick.
“Don’t drip your perspiration in my salad dressing,” Hagar warned her.
“Isn’t there a river out back, Hagar?” Fern asked. “Couldn’t we go swimming there?”
Hagar opened cans of tuna like they’d done something to her mother and dumped them in the blender, where Holly was slopping in cans of cream of mushroom soup.
“You don’t want to go in those woods,” Hagar said, scraping out tuna fish with a spoon. “Those woods have turned sour.”
“That sounds made-up,” Zinnia said.
“And you sound ignorant,” Hagar replied. “Used to be farmers living out here, and they buried their people in these woods. When the highway went the other way the farm people moved on and left their dead folks behind. Then there’s those hippies, like the Manson people. The police say there’s a bunch of them camping out in the woods, taking drugs and making trouble.”
“Let’s say we didn’t mind ghosts,” Fern said. “Or hippies. What if we walked straight out back, we’d get to the river and we could swim there, right?”
Hagar thought about it while she stirred mayonnaise into the macaroni salad.
“You could do,” she said. “Except for the glass eels. I’ve been birthing babies all my life, and I always tell my expecting ladies don’t go swimming in that river because glass eels will sniff out your double heartbeat. Then they swim up your privates, slick as glass. You won’t feel them till they’re biting the baby and laying their eggs. But you could go swimming if you feel real confident you wouldn’t stir up a nest of glass eels.”
That was the end of their conversation about swimming.
After dinner, Zinnia, Fern, and Holly retreated to their room. Fern buried herself in How to Be a Groovy Witch. She could feel something huge dangling just out of reach, her fingertips brushing against it, never quite able to grab hold.
She was determined to figure it out. She almost followed a bit about The Book of Shadows but got lost when it started talking about the Ardanes and the Witches’ Rede. Every sentence felt denser and more confusing than the one before. Just when she thought she was following a chain of thought, there came a dash or a semicolon or a parenthesis and some new line of thought raced off in a different direction and she was lost all over again.
Finally, Nurse Kent shouted it was lights out and they settled down in the stuffy semidarkness. They were so close to doing something real, Fern thought. Why couldn’t this book give them a break?
She tried to sleep. She lay on her right side, then her left, and then she tried sleeping on her back, which lasted for five seconds. Again and again, Fern would be slipping away, when she’d hiccup hot dogs, or the baby would kick her in the ribs, and she’d be wide-awake and staring at the lava lamp, its shadows sliding over the ceiling, listening to the rattle of the fan, scratching her ankles with her heels. At least she didn’t have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night anymore.
The five hundredth time she thrashed herself awake she knew something was wrong.
It was too light in their room and she couldn’t hear Holly sawing logs. Fern struggled up on her elbows, iron springs bouncing, and saw the door to the hall standing wide open and an enormous black dog sitting there.
It had a big square head, a broad chest, and its tongue lolled out. Fern could smell its hot, musky hide all the way from here. She didn’t know how it got into the Home, she didn’t know if it had rabies, she didn’t know anything about this dog except it was big enough to be dangerous, and it was looking right at her.
“Fern?” Zinnia whispered from her bed, and one of the dog’s ears twitched and it swung its heavy head in Zinnia’s direction.
Zinnia gripped the edge of her sheet with both hands, fingers dug in tight. Her chin buckled like she was about to cry. Fern had to do something.
Holly was closest to the door. If Fern could throw a pillow and distract the dog, then Holly could jump out of bed and slam it. Carefully, she looked over at Holly’s bed, but her slight motion caused the dog to turn her way again. It licked its lips with a sloppy sound. And that was when Holly got out of bed.
She hadn’t seen the dog, Fern realized. She was going to the bathroom.
“Holly!” Fern tried to shout, but her voice came out in a strangled squeak.
Holly trundled across the floor in her shortie pajamas, right at the dog, and it watched her approach and Fern felt her guts fill with ice. The dog lumbered to its feet and faced Holly. It came up to her waist. Holly stopped. Fern couldn’t get enough air. In the light from the hall she watched Holly put out one hand like she was going to pat this monstrous dog. Then she made kissy noises.
The dog simply turned and walked away.
“Holly!” Fern whispered again, but she was already following it out the door.
Fern heard the dog’s claws crunching down the pink carpet, Holly’s footsteps right behind. The girl wasn’t thinking right. She had a screw loose. That dog probably weighed more than she did. Fern got up as fast as she could.
“Come on,” she hissed at Zinnia. “We can’t let Holly go with that monster.”
“Why not?” Zinnia asked, her voice small.
“Because it’s big enough to eat her,” Fern said.
“They looked okay to me,” Zinnia said. “I’m staying right here.”
“Holly’s in trouble,” Fern said. She yanked the sheet off Zinnia and dragged her out of bed.
She peeked around the doorframe while Zinnia put on her pink robe. The black dog waited for Holly at the top of the stairs. She was too far away for Fern to shout.
“I want it on the record that this is your terrible idea,” Zinnia whispered to Fern. “And I am a very brave person for supporting you.”
Fern stepped into the hall. Holly and the dog were already trotting downstairs like they’d made plans to play tennis. When they reached the hall, the dog turned and headed for the front door, all business, just a wild animal strolling casually down the middle of the carpet.
Were they going outside? Through the front door? Fern looked toward the Cong and saw the flicker of blue light and heard the faint murmur of the TV. Nurse Kent hadn’t come out yet, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t. They had to get Holly back upstairs now.
Fern started down after Holly, clinging to the banister, trying to stay light on her feet. It wasn’t easy. Behind her she heard a loud creak and saw Zinnia, clutching the front of her robe, putting one foot delicately on the top step. At least she was coming.
By the time Fern reached the foot of the stairs, the dog was sitting obediently by the front door, staring at the doorknob, and Holly was almost there. Fern picked up speed, trying to make as little noise as possible on floorboards that groaned under her feet.
Holly had her hand on the doorknob and was already turning it when Fern grabbed her shoulder.
“Holly—” Fern started, but Holly swung the door open.
The dog slipped out.
“Okay,” Fern said, grabbing the door to push it closed, relieved to be able to put solid wood between them and this monster.
Holly bumped Fern’s stomach out of the way, stepped around her, and went out the front door after the dog.
“Wait!” Fern hissed after her, uselessly, because Holly and the dog weren’t waiting for anyone.
The two of them were already going down the front steps, side by side. Fern caught the screen door to keep it from slamming, then looked back and saw Zinnia frozen in place by the dining room door.
“Come on,” she whispered.
“We can’t go out the front door,” Zinnia whispered, coming closer so Fern could hear. “They’ll find out and send us home. I can’t get sent home.”
“There’s hippies out there,” Fern whispered. “That’s probably their dog.”
“Good,” Zinnia whispered. “She’ll make new friends.”
“She’s a kid,” Fern said, pushing the screen door open slowly so it wouldn’t creak. “We’re responsible for her.”
“We are?” Zinnia asked. “Who said? I never said.”
Fern started to follow Holly outside, but Zinnia grabbed her arm. She pointed down at the threshold.
“We’re not supposed to cross that,” she whispered. “Not until we go downtown. That’s the line between a little bit of trouble and a whole lot of trouble. It’s the border between—”
Fern grabbed Zinnia’s robe and pulled her outside.
“Tell me later,” she said.
The front yard stretched before them, hemmed in by a wall of screaming, pulsating crickets. They reached the steps just in time to see Holly following the dog around the corner of the house.
“Goddammit,” Zinnia whispered.
They went after her, Fern moving faster and faster down the side of the pitch-black Home, dragging Zinnia with her, desperate to stop Holly before she got them in even more trouble.
They emerged into the backyard. The nearly full moon roosted low in the treetops, throwing the sharp shadow of the tree line across the middle of the grass, slicing the Barn in two. Holly was just on the other side of that black line, headed toward the trees, her white pajamas floating in midair, the darker shadow of the dog padding along beside her.
“Finally,” a voice said behind them, and Zinnia squeaked. Fern jumped.
The tip of a cigarette flared inside the Smoke Shack.
“I wondered when y’all would get here,” Rose said from behind the screen, her voice low.
She came to the door, wearing a smiley-face T-shirt.
“We’re getting Holly and going back inside,” Fern whispered. “It’s dangerous out here.”
Rose came out of the Smoke Shack, closing the screen door behind her. Then her feet were whispering over the grass.
“That’s our spirit animal,” she said. “He came to me first.”
“Of course he did,” Zinnia said.
“This isn’t exactly normal canine behavior,” Rose said. “Let’s see what’s on his mind.”
“Eating Holly?” Zinnia suggested.
Holly’s pajamas floated closer to them. She moved lightly for a girl in her condition. She pulled on Fern’s arm, dragging her toward the trees.
“We’re not following a strange dog into the woods,” Fern told her.
“Y’all are a pair of air-conditioned squares,” Rose said. “The universe is calling.”
She took Holly’s hand and they headed after the dog.
“Well, I’m not home,” Zinnia said. She turned to Fern. “She’s got a babysitter, now let’s go back.”
Fern thought of turning around and going back inside, but she felt right on the edge of something immense, the way she felt when she read the book. Her body leaned ever so slightly toward Holly and Rose, disappearing into the woods.
“Leaving her with Rose is like leaving her with a tomcat,” she said. “Don’t make me do this by myself. Please?”
Zinnia clenched her fists hard and looked like she did before she threw up, then she relaxed, jammed her hand into Fern’s, and said, “You don’t deserve a friend like me.”
They pushed between two bushes and slipped into the dark woods.
The pines closed around them, blotting out the sky. Fern pulled her collar up over her mouth and nose to keep from inhaling blackflies. Holly and Rose crashed through bushes up ahead, moving too loudly, sending branches slashing back to catch her in the stomach, letting everything in the woods know where they were.
Briars tugged at Fern’s duster. Twice, she tripped over roots and almost fell. Each step was an excuse to sit down. Her hips ached and for the first time she really felt like she was lugging an entire human being around inside her. She breathed even harder than when Coach Sue made them run the mile.
All around them came the outrageous racket of life. Crickets whirred, frogs bleated a call-and-response in stereophonic sound—three croaks on the left, then three on the right, then three on the left again—ping-ponging back and forth. Fern listened as hard as she could for the hippies, but couldn’t hear a thing over all this insect noise.
Then, without warning, they emerged from the woods.
“What the heck?” she asked.
They stood on the edge of a vast lawn of long, soft grass that reached their thighs. Moonlight touched it with silver and the air was thick with a chewy odor, like tea that had steeped too long. The grass unrolled in front of them in a wide carpet leading to the river. And the river was bigger than God.
A silent, silver ribbon, dusted with the light of the moon, it was so broad the opposite bank might as well have been in another country. It moved, sluggish and unstoppable, winding toward the sea. Holly stood nearby with Rose in long grass up to her waist.
The big black dog pushed its way through the grass toward the river, chest first. Rose looked back at them and hooked a thumb after the dog, then she and Holly followed. Fern grabbed Zinnia’s hand and pulled her along, and then they were all crashing through the grass.
As the river got closer, they picked up speed, led by their heavy stomachs. The night air fizzed on Fern’s tongue as the river got bigger, the smell of it filling her throat, forcing its way into her lungs. She felt a little looped on the whole scene.
“This isn’t real,” Zinnia said. “You know that, right? We’re going to wake up in our beds tomorrow morning and none of this will have happened.”
“And we’re going to see each other at breakfast.” Fern couldn’t help smiling. “And say, ‘I had the weirdest dream.’ ”
The ground turned to soft dirt beneath their feet, and then they were standing on a long muddy bank with Holly and Rose. The dog lay down and placed its muzzle on its crossed paws. If it had opened its mouth and said Why don’t you have a swim? Fern would have taken that in stride. It was that kind of a night.
In front of them flowed the river. The cool wind that skimmed its surface felt like the sweetest air conditioning and Fern could only think of one thing to say.
“Are we going in?”
There was a pause, then Rose slipped her smiley-face T-shirt over her head and tossed it on the grass. Fern couldn’t look away. The lunar light softened Rose’s face and bathed her stomach in silver. It had slid lower down her body since the last time Fern had seen it. Rose looked strong and ripe and full of life.
“See you on the other side,” she said, and waded into the water.