Starbird Murphy and the World Outside (41 page)

“We don't know how this court case is going to go,” he said, sitting down on the last step and making room for me beside him, “but the lawyer thinks we have a good chance to show mental stress on the part of my mother. If we win, ownership of the Farm will revert to me.”

“What if we lose?” I said.

“You can't cross a river until you reach it,” Iron said with a sad grin. “If I get the Farm, I'll let the remaining Family live there. I'll manage the harvest and hope enough people stick around to help. Fern Moon wants to stay and so do the boys. Gamma and Adeona will be there, a few others. I'm still a young man, and I hope to live another forty years, but Ephraim was young, too, and you never know.”

We sat quietly for a moment. I was thinking of Ephraim. Our collective future seemed to keep changing like the hands of a clock.

“Your legal name is Starbird Murphy. According to the records, you are my only heir and closest relative. If I get the Farm back, it would eventually be handed down to you.”

I hadn't considered that before.
Personal property? The whole Farm?
I had never even owned a dresser.

“If and when that happens, you can decide what to do with it. Sell it, keep it, give it back to the Family. It will be up to you.”

“That's a lot of responsibility,” I said.

“That's what ownership is,” said Iron. “If you want to come back, you can have any job you want. You don't have to go back to the chicken coop. Doug's taken it over for now.”

“I think I want to stay in Seattle,” I said, “and keep going to school.”

“It's up to you,” said Iron.

I heard the gate to our chain-link fence rattle. It was my boyfriend, Ben.

“Sorry I'm so shucking late,” he said. He had on an ill-fitting suit with sleeves that were an inch too short. He walked over to where we were sitting. “I had church and then I had to do some work for my dad today and then I went home to change clothes and I thought I should dress up because it was a memorial, but I guess I kind of got here too late because it seems like everyone's leaving and I kind of missed it.” He looked at Iron and reached out to shake his hand, but then pulled it back and put his hands together in prayer position and bowed. “Hello, sir.”

Iron studied Ben for a moment, looking at Ben's suit and his hands pressed together in front of his heart. Then he started to laugh. It came out slow at first, a light chuckle that grew into a howl. I had never heard Iron laugh like that. He laughed until little tears sprouted from the wrinkled corners of his eyes, and he stomped his boots on the wooden porch steps.

“Hello, there,” Iron said at last, holding his hands together over his heart. He was still chuckling as he went back inside the house.

“Why was he laughing?” Ben asked.

“I'm not totally sure,” I said. “Maybe it was the suit.”

“Should we go inside?” Ben asked. “I mean, I know I'm late, but maybe I should say hi to your mom.”

I stood up to lead him into the house but suddenly changed my mind. “Come with me,” I said.

I took Ben's hand and led him across the grass, toward the back of our property near the alley. The wind lifted up my hair and pulled it across my face, so I had to brush it out of my eyes as we walked. The grass was tall and wet, making the toes damp on the pretty brown boots Io had found for me. When we reached the evergreen that provided us privacy from the neighbors, I turned around toward Ben and kissed him.

It was sweet at first, like a quick good-bye kiss you might have in the parking lot after school. But then I wrapped my hands around his neck, threading my left fingers into his mop of dark curly hair, and I kissed him deeply, the way you kiss in a car when you're being dropped off after a movie. He put his hands around my waist and pulled me toward him. Then I pushed him on the shoulders to make him step away from me, his weight shifting until his back was up against the tree. And we kept kissing there as the wet air turned our cheeks red and the pinecones crunched under our toes and the moon rose over us like a fat, white egg up in the sky.

Acknowledgments

M
any people and organizations helped me create this story. For generously sharing their own incredible stories, I thank Won Isreal and Vashti Whissiel-Wren. Organizations that made this book possible include: Hedgebrook Writing Retreat, 4 Culture, the City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Richard Hugo House, and the Helen R. Whiteley Center. I'd like to thank my editor, Kendra Levin, and my agent, Dan Lazar, for their keen guidance. Writer friends make everything better. Thank you Peter Mountford, Kevin Emerson, and Brian McGuigan. Thank you Rachel McKibbens and writers of Pink Door. Thank you to the young writers of Nathan Hale High School and Teacher Ted Lockerly, the perfect choice for a mentor. Thank you Sunlight Café for the best cup of yogi tea in town. Thank you to my family, my grandmother, Helen Freeman, the best reader I know, and Joe Paul Slaby, who hears all my ideas first.