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Forcing this town to deal with her.
II
Part 2
8
42 years earlier, summer 1956
Sally
The night was filled with so many flying bugs and nasty critters in mixed combinations that she was practically eating them for dinner. Soon there wouldn’t be a need to even steal the Ford’s apples. She took two steps and swallowed a fly. Another, and there plopped a swamp flea on her bottom lip where it stuck to a leftover dot of that morning’s maple syrup she’d swiped from the low hole in the backyard tree. She learned a long time ago that trees don’t like to be messed with when one bucked her off a high branch just for trying to reach a handful of its pecans. The big maple one with the backward-hanging branch at the back of their property didn’t mind her poking her finger inside it sometimes. Especially not when she made pancakes and needed a bit of the tasty sap to sweeten them up. That tree was old, and even at seven, Sally’d learned that old things can’t be bothered to care about things like a little girl’s hand scooping out its innards.
The big apple tree from Ford’s orchard, though—it hated little kids. Little girls especially. Every time Sally tried to climb higher to reach the pretty reds growing closest to the sun, the tree booted her off with a kick, and she landed on her backside. The grass was thick under the tree anyhow, so all the falling didn’t keep her from going right back up. Sally just stood up and brushed off her skirt, first the front and then the back, little bits of crushed leaves and cut grass sticking to the hem. She plucked out a splinter in her pinky finger that was stubborn enough to jam inside her skin when she clawed at the bark and slid downward, then tossed it in the grass with a curse.
“Dumb tree. What’d you do that for?” she said, sucking off a drop of blood from her finger and wiping her running nose with the base of her palm. She kicked the tree with a bare foot, then yelped when the bark bit back with sharp teeth. “Now stand still so I can climb you.” She hooked a knee around the lowest branch, pulled herself up until she sat tall, then hugged the trunk as far as her small legs could and heaved herself up a few inches. Tree bark cut into the arches of her feet, but she ignored the pain and kept going. Dinner was up in that tree, and it was up to her to fetch it before the sun went down, and the shadows came out. The shadows were where the monsters lived, and no matter how friendly Peter and Wendy thought they were from Neverland, Sally hated seeing them in the Ford’s backyard.
She stretched two inches and grabbed a green, then stuffed it in her pocket. A couple red, and she’d be good to climb down. Most nights, she could only eat two apples anyway, and then she’d have a leftover for breakfast.
“What are you doing in my tree?” a boy’s gruff voice accused from down below. “My pa better not catch you, or he’ll whip you good.”
Sally clung to the tree and peered at the ground, a couple strands of hair sticking to her eyelashes and making it hard to see. She tried to shake them free, but they didn’t budge. “He better not whip me, or I’ll punch him in the face.” She knew better than to argue with the boy but couldn’t help herself; Paul was always giving her a hard time, and besides that, she could hear his pa’s temper fit nearly every night. Made her mad, listening to him take out his bad day on Paul, even if Paul was a nine-year-old bully in dirty overalls. Her own papa might not be home much, but at least he didn’t hit. “Couldn’t whip me anyway from all the way up here. And he won’t catch me because I’m fast,” she said. To prove it, she snatched two nearly red apples real quick and shimmied down the tree to face Paul, looking up at him more than she wanted to because he was so tall. At least half a foot taller than her. She glared to make herself seem bigger and rose up on her toes, shoving a hand on her hip. The other hand was still holding onto apples, so she couldn’t shove it anywhere. Paul didn’t need to know that her heart pounded so loud in her ears she thought it might pop her eardrum. If she got caught in the orchard, what would she eat for dinner? “You’re not gonna tell him, though, are you?” The question came out shaky, so she forced her chin up. Her papa said a raised chin made you look stubborn. She didn’t know what stubborn meant, but it sounded better than scared.
“I’m not gonna tell him,” Paul said, making her insides sag in relief. “But I saw you up there from all the way over in our kitchen window, so you need to be faster next time. And go farther back, closer to the road where no one can see you. Here. I brought you these.” Paul pulled a couple day-old dinner rolls from his pocket. Sally could tell they were old because they looked dried out and stale, but they smelled like yeast, and you couldn’t be picky when you were fresh out of options. She reached out and grabbed them before he decided to keep them for himself. He never kept them for himself, but hungry seven-year-old girls are not other people’s problem. That’s what Miss Hannah Smith at the five and dime said every time Sally tried to buy some chicken with the change she found in the couch. Last Saturday, she found a whole four cents, but chicken costs more than that because Miss Hannah wouldn’t let her have any when Sally showed her the coins.
“Go on home with you,” Miss Hannah said with a scowl. “And tell that good-for-nothing father of yours to take better care of you than he took of your ma.”Sally sulked out of the store, feeling like a stray cat everyone threw rocks at. She didn’t know what Miss Hannah meant because her ma was dead. Some people said she’d been killed, but that wasn’t true because there was a grave with Ma’s name on it behind their house, and killed people didn’t have graves.
Did they?
“Thanks,” Sally said to Paul, taking a big bite of bread and putting the other one in her skirt pocket for her papa to eat later. He didn’t like charity, so most of the time, Sally lied and told him she bought food at the bakery or made it herself. He always believed her, even though the only thing she knew how to bake was pancakes, and you don’t even bake those. You try not to burn them black in a skillet.
“You should probably run on home before it gets dark,” Paul said. “Since the dark scares you and all.”
She forced her chin up again. Sometimes it was hard to remember to look stubborn. “I ain’t afraid of the dark.”
“Sally, I see you running through the orchard and looking over your shoulder every time you come in our yard. If you ain’t afraid, then what are you looking at?”
Her chin dropped just a little. “I’m looking for snakes, is all.”
“Then you better run home before the snakes get you. Can’t have that.” Paul tried not to smile, making fun of her without words. “Besides, your pa’s home, and he won’t like seeing you here either.”
Sally’s head whipped around to look toward her own house. Sure enough, her papa was already climbing out of his old pickup truck, walking around back to grab his briefcase. He was early today, home even before the sun went down. Paul was right, she was afraid of the dark, and she was afraid of snakes, but she was afraid of her daddy seeing her standing in Mr. Ford’s yard more. They hated each other, Paul’s pa and hers, which meant he hated Paul by default, even though the boy always gave them food. He didn’t know that, though. And what he didn’t know was better because Paul didn’t need two grown men knocking him around.
“Thanks for the bread! And the apples!” she whisper-shouted, running through the yard and into the back door of her own house before her papa noticed she wasn’t home. Two things she was supposed to always be by the time he got home from work: in the kitchen and cleaning her plate. She ate first, that was his rule. As for him, he ate what she couldn’t finish. “Nobody tells me I can’t provide for my kid,” he often muttered. It was a weird thing to say and an even weirder rule, but it was his. Sally shoved the whole roll in her mouth and worked to chew as fast as she could. Wasn’t her fault he was home early, but she still had to hurry. The front door banged opened, and she swallowed half the bread, working quickly on the wet and pasty other half.
“You eat?” came Papa’s scratchy voice, and she could tell he was removing his shoes. Her papa worked as a train engineer or something at a big place in town, but they kept taking his hours away, saying if he didn’t start minding his own business, then he wouldn’t get to work there no more. At least that’s what she heard him yelling about nearly every night this week when he’d come home in a surly mood. She gave a strangled yes as best she could around a mouthful of stale roll, then reached for the water and gulped. There. Gone. She tucked an apple into her pocket and made for the stairs. After she saw to his supper, she’d make quick work of eating her apple in the upstairs loft that served as her bedroom. But first, she had to hide it.
“Be right back!” She took the steps two at a time, then sprinted back downstairs to cut open the extra roll Paul gave her, slather it with butter and the last of the blackberry jam, and slice up both apples in jagged pieces to dip in peanut butter. Not the best meal they’d ever had, but the venison from papa’s hunting trip had run out last week, and there wasn’t no money to buy more. Her papa was supposed to bring groceries home today, but there were no sacks on the kitchen counter full of items to put away. She could always try her hand at fishing tomorrow, but first, she needed a twig, some string, and a hook. The first item would be easy to come by because they lived clean near the woods, and trees were always shedding their dead branches, but the second two might be a problem. All she had was thread for darning socks, and the fish wouldn’t be fooled by it. And where’d you even begin to look for fishhooks? Most people didn’t sell things like that to a kid, and they probably cost a whole lot more than the four cents she scraped up from the sofa.
“Here you go, Papa,” she said as he scraped back his chair and lowered himself with a shuddering thump that nearly split the chair in half. She placed the plate of food in front of him and tried to smile, knowing better than to talk about the fish they didn’t have.
“This all we got?” he growled. Her smile fell. A hard-working man needs more than bread, and rotten apples was what he said yesterday, but this was all she could find. Besides, the apples she brought home were never rotten.
“That’s it for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll make something else,” she promised, praying she would catch a fish in the sliver of daylight left between school and dinnertime. No matter, a person’s got to finish what they put their mind to. Otherwise, the mind will keep thinking about it. She was sick of thinking about how to eat tomorrow. “How was work?” This is what women always asked in picture shows, and just because she was seven didn’t mean she didn’t know how to pretend she was grown up.
“I got fired,” he said, upending the last bottle of beer and draining it by half. “Knew it was coming, but I hoped it wouldn’t be today.” Sally didn’t know what was so special about today, but she knew better than to ask. Her papa’s temper was asleep, and she didn’t want to rouse it. “They said I was poking too much and told me to leave. And since they already think I’m to blame for your ma…” She didn’t know who ‘they’ was or what he was ‘poking.’ She also couldn’t figure out why people kept bringing up her momma, but she knew she didn’t like it.
“Are you going back to work tomorrow?” She jumped when his fist landed on the table. She roused his temper without meaning to.
