What Comes After (14 page)

I leaned on my bat and smiled. It was the most fun I’d had in months. Since Maine. Since before Dad died.

I raised my hand to wipe the sweat from my brow and realized I was crying, too, even though I had a big grin on my face. It was a surreal moment.

“Wow, man,” Littleberry said, finally breaking the silence.

We all continued to stand there in the middle of the per fect night.

This time Opie spoke up. “Y’all want to fire up another blunt?”

We didn’t get the chance, though. Lapsed Catholic yelped, and we all turned to see the blipping blue light of a security van lumbering toward us across the now-empty lot.

Littleberry yelled, “Haul ass, everybody!” I dropped the bat and immediately wished I’d kept it, but didn’t have time to go back for it as we all scrambled over the berm and ran off into the night.

Littleberry had his motor scooter parked on the other side of the mall. Everybody else scattered in different directions, but he said he’d give me a ride out to Aunt Sue’s, so we snuck back around to his Vespa and hopped on. The trip had taken fifteen minutes in Tiny’s truck, but the scooter was old and slow and had a top speed of thirty-five, so going home took half an hour. I leaned to the side to see the road in front of us and was surprised by all the wildlife that was out: a turtle and a raccoon, even a fox in the high grass on the side. I knew it was supposed to be cold, but I didn’t really feel anything. It was a nice change.

Finally we turned onto the long driveway down to Aunt Sue’s. It occurred to me that Littleberry might want to kiss, or make out, or whatever, and that that’s probably why he offered to drive all the way out here. I thought about how I hadn’t kissed a boy in a long time, and I leaned a little closer against Littleberry on the scooter.

Halfway down the driveway, I heard a loud grinding coming from the direction of the farm — tires spinning through deep gravel. I saw headlights, then a car suddenly careened around a blind corner and was heading straight at us — a big silver Lincoln Town Car. Littleberry swerved off the driveway as the Town Car roared past, and we nearly fell over. Immediately after that, we heard the
pop-pop-pop
of a rifle and saw bullets kicking up rocks in the drive where we’d just been. Somebody was shooting at the car, which had now vanished behind us into the night.

Ahead of us, outlined in Littleberry’s headlight, Aunt Sue had come around the blind corner. She had on a T-shirt and boxer shorts, but no shoes. Her hair hung wild around her face and she was panting. She held a rifle, now just in one hand. She was cursing, but it was as if she was running out of gas. Her voice got gradually lower, until finally she stopped altogether. She lowered the rifle and looked dazed. I wondered if she even realized we were there.

I waited a minute. Littleberry and I both held our breath. She didn’t move.

“Aunt Sue?” I said tentatively.

She turned her head and looked at us dully. Littleberry reached back and blocked me with his arm. “Stay behind me,” he whispered.

“Why?” I whispered back.

“For protection,” he said.

“Oh, please,” I said, pushing his arm away and climbing off the Vespa.

“Aunt Sue?” I said again. She still hadn’t moved. Finally she shook her head, looked down at the rifle, turned, and walked back up the driveway to the house.

Littleberry was shivering. “Now what?” he whispered. “You’re not going home, are you?”

I thought about the look on Aunt Sue’s face, just before she wandered off: drunk, and sorrowful.

“She wasn’t shooting at us,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “It was just her company.”

I started walking toward the house. Littleberry puttered beside me on his scooter.

“You don’t have to come,” I said, hoping he would. “I don’t need protection.”

“Yeah,” Littleberry said. “Only my dad always told me to be polite and walk a girl to the door. And make sure she gets inside OK.”

“What if her aunt has a gun and is shooting at cars?” I said.

Littleberry laughed. “He left that part out.”

He was still shivering.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. “Just scared.” That made me smile. I’d never heard a boy admit to being scared.

“You think she’s scary now,” I said. “You should see her when she’s not drunk.”

“Book Allen’s mom, right?” Littleberry said.

“Does that explain anything?”

“Well, you don’t mess with Book,” he said. “Not even when we were little. I can tell you that.”

The Vespa coughed out when we got to the back porch.

Gnarly was on his chain and hiding under the Tundra. He came out when he saw me, and I hugged him and petted him. He seemed nervous, maybe frightened by the gunshots, and whatever else had happened here tonight with Aunt Sue and her company.

“You want me to come in with you?” Littleberry asked, probably hoping I’d say no.

I’d been pretending to be braver than I actually felt, but I couldn’t keep it up at the thought of Littleberry leaving now, before I went inside. “Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”

We tiptoed up the back steps, eased the door open, and waited.

We heard snoring coming from the living room.

“Is that your aunt?” Littleberry whispered. I nodded. We slipped inside, crossed the kitchen, then peeked into the living room. Aunt Sue lay half on and half off the couch, the rifle beside her on the floor. I stepped past a broken lamp, also on the floor, and a neat line of a dozen beer cans on the coffee table.

“You want me to put a blanket on her or something?” Littleberry asked. I shook my head, though I did pick up her legs and shove them onto the sofa. I unloaded the gun and put it in a closet. Dad had kept a rifle at our house — also a .22, which he only brought out to put down injured animals in the wild — and made sure I knew how to use it and take care of it.

Book wasn’t home yet, and I wondered if he might be looking for me back at the mall. Probably not. He and Tiny were probably out at another field party and too drunk to remember to go get me from the mall.

I walked Littleberry back outside. I couldn’t imagine he’d try to kiss me now, after everything that had happened. He probably just wanted to take off as quickly as he could, and who could blame him?

But Littleberry stopped at the bottom of the steps and grinned. “Kind of a fun date, huh?”

“Were we on a date?” I asked, surprised.

He shrugged. “A secret date.”

“You mean like nobody knows about it?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “Just us.”

Gnarly poked his head out from under Aunt Sue’s truck to see what was going on. The goats
maa
ed softly from the barn.

Littleberry heard it, too.

“And them,” he added.

I hadn’t written Dad a letter in a while, so I thought I’d have a lot to say. But once I got that part out, I wasn’t sure what else to write. I didn’t want to tell him about Aunt Sue hitting me, or about her stealing my money. I might have told him about taking batting practice at the mall, but I didn’t want to mention getting high, or Littleberry and his friends “borrowing” the bat and balls from Dick’s. I was glad I had something good to tell Dad for once, and I hoped I’d have more soon. But I figured he didn’t need to know
everything.

I had just walked up to the house the next morning after milking the goats when I heard Aunt Sue’s muffled voice on the other side of the kitchen door.

“I want to go ahead and butcher up them kids this morning,” she said. “Get the rifle when you’re finished breakfast. Be sure you shoot them in their brain.”

“No!”
I shouted, slamming open the door, my heart pounding wildly. I threw the bucket on the counter, and milk sloshed over the side. “You can’t!”

Book looked up. He had a mouthful of his usual cereal. Aunt Sue was packing coolers for the farmers’ market.

“Keep your mouth shut and finish your chores,” she said. “You don’t get a say in the matter.”

“But — but you said you’d wait a month,” I stammered. I’d thought I had another week to work out a way to save them. “You said you wanted to fatten them up. They’re still so little.”

Aunt Sue just looked over at the spilled goat milk on the counter, dripping onto the floor. Then she looked back at me dismissively. “Clean up this mess.”

But I had to save the kids. That’s all I could think about. I had to hide them somewhere before Book came out with the gun.

“I have to get the eggs,” I said, backing away. “I’ll do it when I get back.”

“Like hell you will,” Aunt Sue said. “You’ll do it right now, like I said.”

I didn’t respond. I just stared at her, continuing to back out of the kitchen and then out the back door, letting it slam shut behind me as I ran down the steps and sprinted over to the barn.

I didn’t have long. Book would have to find bullets for the gun, plus he and Aunt Sue both had hangovers, so they were moving slowly, but I still didn’t have much of a head start. My plan, such as it was, had been to see if Aunt Sue would let me get a job after school so I could buy the kids from her. Then I would ask the Gonzaleses or someone else at the farmers’ market to take them in.

But there wasn’t time for that now. I could tell by the stony resolve in Aunt Sue’s voice that she just wanted the kids dead. She probably didn’t even care about the meat. So for now I had to get them away from the farm before Book found those bullets. I’d figure out the rest later.

I grabbed a length of rope off the wall as soon as I got to the barn, shaking the whole time. I tied loops around Huey, Dewey, and Louie the best I could, then dragged them off through the field behind the barn. Patsy escorted us to the fence, which might have helped keep the kids calm. She calmed me down some, too, and I finally stopped shaking. I rubbed her head and thanked her, then I lifted the kids over the fence one by one and led them into the woods. Gnarly came with us.

The other goats
maa
ed behind us — Reba loudest of all. I heard them from deeper into the brush when we waded in to find the trail.

Soon I heard other sounds — Book cursing and Aunt Sue yelling, “Iris! You don’t bring back those goddamn goats, it’s your ass!”

A gunshot echoed through the trees, and I stopped cold. Was it just a warning shot, or had Aunt Sue killed one of the other goats in her rage? I thought of the nannies back there with no one to protect them and turned to go back, but after a few steps I stopped. Aunt Sue wouldn’t shoot a nanny. She’d never give up the milk, and the money. She must have been shooting to scare me. And it worked. I snapped the ropes taut and pulled hard. The kids stumbled forward. We ran.

We only stopped once on the way to the Devil’s Stomping Ground — at the faint remnants of a creek. It was hot out, and we were all thirsty. The kids, panting heavily, shoved their long noses between rotting limbs and gray rocks and found enough water to keep them going. Gnarly, too. I went upstream until I came across a pool with a sandy bottom, really more of a puddle, but at least it seemed clear. It was so shallow I couldn’t scoop any out, so I had to lie down on my stomach and stick my face in and drink like the goats.

Something crashed through brush far off behind us. Birds fled from nearby trees. I grabbed the goat rope again and we plunged farther into the woods, not stopping for another half hour until we reached the Devil’s Stomping Ground and the still-green meadow.

I felt safe there, protected in a way I couldn’t explain. I let the kids go free, and the first thing they did was hop around the perimeter. Gnarly stayed next to me, helping me supervise, and he kept watch when the kids stopped hopping and got down to the serious business of eating everything they could find: bark, leaves, grass, branches. My own stomach rumbled. I hadn’t brought food, water, anything. I sat on the ground, my heart still racing. I closed my eyes and made myself breathe slowly, deeply, to calm down and to clear my head. I’d saved the kids from immediate danger, but now I needed a new plan. I couldn’t leave the goats here by themselves. There were coyotes around, maybe even bears. But I couldn’t take them back.

After an hour the kids finished eating and collapsed into a little goat pile, the sun burning as the day inched ahead. I lay with them at the edge of the meadow, half in shade, half out under an empty blue sky.

I thought about my dad, what he would say, what he
had
said when he was alive: “It’s wrong for an animal to have to suffer, Iris. As long as how we put them down is humane, though, I think God understands that it’s just the way of the world.”

Dad wouldn’t tell me I was being foolish, trying to save the wethers, but he’d remind me about all the things I already knew — that keeping them was a drain on Aunt Sue’s resources, that she couldn’t afford to keep them as pets, that she probably did need the meat, that a neat shot to the brain was quick and nearly painless, if you aimed just right.

That all made sense. Dad always made sense. But I still couldn’t get past what I knew would be Reba’s suffering at the loss of her kids. The trauma to the other goats. The trauma to me.