What Comes After (24 page)

I spent a nervous four hours at the farmers’ market, constantly looking around for the Tutens’ car in case they happened to drive by. I thought I saw them once and ducked under the card table, which must have looked ridiculous, because Isabel was laughing at me when I came out.

“I thought I dropped a dollar,” I said lamely — and then felt guilty when she got down on her hands and knees to help me look. I ended up slipping a dollar out of the money box and dropping it on the ground so she could find it.

Somehow, in between hiding and checking out each passing car and pretending to look for stuff on the ground, I managed to sell most of the goat cheese I’d brought — two hundred and fifty dollars’ worth. I had opened Aunt Sue’s bills and called the bank to double-check the balance in her checkbook. Now I calculated everything I could think of in a little notebook, and figured I would have to make at least that much each Saturday from now until Thanksgiving to cover Aunt Sue’s bills. And pray that there was enough hay and grain already in the barn to get us through the winter, that nothing broke down at the farm and needed repairs, and that Aunt Sue would give up her satellite dish. The only way I could figure out to pay for gas for the Tundra was to use the allowance I got from Mrs. Tuten, which meant I’d have to stop eating lunch at school. And I needed Jo Dee to hurry up and kid so I’d have another milker available and could increase cheese production — and sales — that much more.

I felt drained by the time I packed everything up at the farmers’ market, but I wasn’t through yet. I had to make a quick trip out to the farm to milk the goats, start another round of cheese, feed everybody, and check on Jo Dee. I could barely keep my eyes open when I got back to the Tutens’. I was so tired that I almost forgot to hide the truck and was about to park in front of their house when I remembered. Luckily no one saw me.

“Rough practice?” Mrs. Tuten asked when I finally walked in the door ten minutes later.

I nodded. “Very.”

The day should have ended there. A long shower. Dinner with the Tutens. Reading in my room. A letter to Dad.

But then I saw the Saturday paper. The Craven Ravens had lost the night before for the first time all season. They were still in the play-offs, but their perfect season was over. As soon as I read the headline, I knew who was going to get the blame.

It didn’t take long.

On Monday, somebody put a three-foot black snake in my locker. It scared me, of course. A small one once bit me on the hand in an old barn back in Maine; my hand swelled up and I had to get a tetanus shot. Another time when I was with Dad on his vet rounds, we saw a six-footer eat a whole chicken.

The girl at the locker next to mine screamed until a bunch of kids crowded around. A janitor went off to find a machete so he could kill it, but I had a sort of calmness, once the surprise wore off. Dad had taught me that the best time to grab a snake was after it tried to strike, so I held up
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
to give it a target. As soon as it struck at the book, I grabbed it behind the head. The black snake wrapped itself around my arm, but that just made it easier to carry.

Littleberry, who I hadn’t spoken to since that night at the mall before the assault, stuck his head through the crowd of kids. “Whoa, Iris,” he said. “Is that a snake?”

“Yeah.” I held it out toward him, and he recoiled along with the rest of the kids. The black snake hissed, and they jumped back farther.

I carried it outside and Littleberry came with me, even though I hadn’t asked him to. I crossed the athletic fields, planning to let the snake go in the woods. But then when I got to the football field and thought about who had probably put the snake in my locker, and who’d been spitting on my locker, and how panicked I was every time I saw one of them, I changed my mind. I found a big Gatorade cooler in the equipment shed and slid the snake off my arm and into the cooler. Then I carried the cooler out to the fifty-yard line and turned it upside down with the snake still inside.

“Man, Iris,” Littleberry said. “I can’t believe you just did that. They’re going to pee their pants when they lift that bucket up.”

I said I hoped they did.

Littleberry followed me to my geography class, peppering me with snake questions the whole way. I noticed that he didn’t have his customary dip.

“Does that kind bite?” he asked.

“If you let it.”

“Have you ever been bit by one?”

“Yeah, but only by a little one. It didn’t hurt very much.”

“They’re not poisonous?”

“No.”

I said “Bye” once I got to class and turned to go in, but Littleberry grabbed my arm. I recoiled worse than he had when he first saw the snake. His face fell. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything.”

I shook my head, embarrassed. “I don’t like people to do that,” I said. “To grab me.”

He apologized again. “The — the thing is,” he stammered. “I mean. What I was wondering. The
thing.
” He swallowed and tried again. “I just wanted to see if you maybe wanted to maybe go hang out with me again. Like we could go back to the mall. I could, like, buy you a smoothie. Or I know where they have some of those batting cages where you could hit more baseballs and stuff.”

When I didn’t answer right away, he shifted nervously. “You want to go do something this afternoon? After school? Hang out or something?”

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Littleberry pulled his knit cap off and wrung it in front of him. “How come, Iris?” he said. “I’ve been trying to talk to you, and see if you want to do stuff, but you keep running away and all. I mean, didn’t we have fun that one time? I know you’ve been through a lot. I know it was all terrible and everything, but...”

“But what?” I said. “What were you going to say?”

He looked away. “Nothing,” he said. “Just that other people have terrible stuff, too, you know. You’re not the only one.”

“You have terrible stuff, Littleberry?” I said angrily. “Somebody attacked you, too? Somebody beat you up, and did
this
to you?” I grabbed the bill of my dad’s cap to pull it off and show him the bald spot on the back of my head, but I stopped.

I remembered the paper he’d written in English class, and what his friends had told me that night at the mall about his dad. But that was his
dad.
It wasn’t
him.
It wasn’t anything like what I’d been through.

“I’m sorry,” Littleberry said, for the third time. “I’m just saying. You know. Some people still want to be your friend or whatever.”

I looked at him then — really looked at him, the way I’d done with Aunt Sue: his long hair and his soft cheeks, his peach-fuzz mustache, his dark eyes, the way his clothes hung off him, like hand-me-downs he hadn’t quite grown into yet. He probably got what he needed from his dad’s closet or the Goodwill store.

He smiled, or tried to, not quite ready to give up, though I couldn’t figure out why. “Will you just think about it? And don’t be all mad at me, OK?”

The geography teacher, Mr. Nichols, interrupted us. “Miss Wight?” he said. “Are you joining us for class?”

Mr. Nichols walked over to his desk. I started to follow him, but stopped.
Oh, what the hell.

“Wait, Littleberry,” I said. He was already walking away, late for his next class, but in no hurry to get there.

He turned around. “What?”

I said, “Look. OK. Here’s the thing.”

“Yeah?”

My T-shirt felt damp under my arms. “Tomorrow’s Tuesday,” I said. “I can maybe hang out tomorrow, but I can’t go to the mall, or the batting cages.”

He shrugged. “What, then?”

“Have you ever milked a goat?”

Littleberry and I met in the parking lot the next afternoon by Aunt Sue’s truck. I brought a bag of Cheetos for the goats, even though I knew I shouldn’t be spending the money. But I thought it might help them take to Littleberry if he fed them some. When I told Littleberry what it was for, he ran back to the school to buy more out of the vending machine. While he was gone, I realized someone had broken off the Tundra’s antenna, to go along with the key-scrape. I looked around to see who might have done it, but didn’t see anyone. I assumed it was one of the football players. I hoped the black snake had bitten one of them at practice.

Littleberry came back with five bags of Cheetos. We shared one on the way out to the farm, though I was so hungry from skipping lunch that I ate way more than my share.

“Will they eat the bags, too?” Littleberry asked.

“Yeah. If you let them. They’ll try to get hold of your fingers, too, to lick the Cheetos dust off.”

Littleberry looked at the cheesy residue on the ends of his fingers.

“Will they bite?”

“Oh, yeah. You definitely don’t want them chewing on you.”

Littleberry licked his fingers clean.

“I haven’t been around animals much,” he said as we pulled into Aunt Sue’s. All the goats lined up at the fence to greet us. Huey and Louie were so happy, they started bouncing in the air. Gnarly slobbered all over Littleberry there in the backyard.

“Man,” Littleberry said. “I need a shower.”

“Just come on inside the fence,” I said. “Let the goats have their turn at you.” Littleberry pushed Gnarly away and opened the gate. He started to open one of the bags of Cheetos, but Tammy chomped it out of his hand. The other goats crowded in on him to get theirs, and in a panic Littleberry tossed the rest of the bags in the air. Tammy happily chewed on hers — Cheetos, bag, and all — off to one side while the others fought over the rest.

Huey and Louie ended up not getting any, so they turned their attention back to Littleberry — butting his legs and dancing around him. I could tell he liked playing with them. He pushed on their heads. They liked that a lot and pushed against Littleberry harder until he fell into the grass. Then they stood on him.

“Time for milking,” I said when the milkers had finished their Cheetos. I helped Littleberry up, and we coaxed them into the barn. Patsy stepped right up onto the milking stand. Littleberry watched closely as I patted and massaged her udder and then squeezed long streams of milk from her teats. Loretta climbed up next.

“Can I do it?” Littleberry asked. I said OK, but it didn’t go well.

First he tried to hold her steady by her teats whenever she moved, which Loretta didn’t like at all. She
maa
ed and stomped at him on the stand.

“Stop,” I said to Littleberry. “That hurts her. You wouldn’t pull a woman around by her nipples, would you?” As soon as the words came out, my face reddened with embarrassment. “Anyway, just don’t do that.”

Littleberry smiled, probably embarrassed, too. “Sorry.”

I refilled the grain trough, and that calmed Loretta enough that he could try milking her again. He did a little better, but not much. Mostly he just squirted milk on his pants. Then the guinea hen attacked him, pecking at his pants leg, and that freaked him out.

“Maybe I’ll go play with the little goats while you finish up,” he said.

I took over with Loretta after he left the barn, Jo Dee pressed to my side the whole time, then it was Tammy’s turn. I could hear Littleberry back outside, running around with Huey and Louie. I let Patsy, Loretta, and Tammy out of their stalls while I milked Reba, thinking she would take the longest time, as full as she was.

Littleberry started yelling while I was milking Reba, and I ran outside just in time to see Tammy throwing him off her back. Apparently he had decided to go for a goat ride. I’m not sure how he got on top of her in the first place, but after she threw him off, she butted him hard in his ribs.

Littleberry tried to run, but Tammy chased him and knocked him down. Patsy and the others looked on passively, as if they saw that sort of thing all the time. I couldn’t stop laughing as Littleberry got back up and Tammy chased him around and around the field.

“Help me, Iris!” he yelled. “Call off your goat, already!”

But he was laughing, too, and could barely run because he was gasping so hard. But whenever he slowed down, Tammy butted him again from behind.

I finally interceded, grabbing Tammy and holding her just long enough for Littleberry to run to the gate and let himself out. Tammy looked at him for a minute, then dropped her head and started grazing, as if nothing had happened.

I brought the milk buckets with me over to the back steps and sat next to Littleberry.

“Thanks,” he said. “I thought she was going to kill me and eat me.” Gnarly laid his head in Littleberry’s lap. It seemed to be a gesture of sympathy, though he also slobbered on Littleberry some more.

“I doubt she’d eat you,” I said. “Probably just your clothes.”

Littleberry pulled up his shirt to check for bruises. I couldn’t help looking at his smooth chest. He saw me and grinned, and I looked away quickly.

“So,” I said. “Think you’d ever want to come out to the farm again?”

He tugged his shirt back down. “Yeah. But it would be good if you could bring the catcher’s equipment from your softball team so I could strap it on first for protection.”

After we pasteurized the milk and set up the presses, I sat down with Littleberry at the kitchen table and we snacked on crackers and goat cheese, which he said he liked a lot.