Scowler Read Free Page A

husband, feeding farmhands, keeping house, and nursing a child. He, on the other hand, was a year past graduating near the bottom of a class of forty kids, and he’d yet to make a single feint toward a life of his own. There were community colleges within a few hours’ drive. There were jobs holding road signs in Bloughton. There were other farms that, despite the hard times, would pay him hourly wages. They might keep a close eye on him for a while—the son of Marvin Burke, poor messed-up kid—but eventually his pedigree would be overlooked. His hand strayed from the ladder and touched the swelling of a new pimple alongside his nose. It seemed symbolic of the issue: Was he an oily-faced kid, or was he a man?
    Sarah’s head poked out from under her mother’s arm. A faint pinkness of eye was all that betrayed her earlier crying.One thing was clear: She had gotten paid. It glittered all over her.
    “Mom’s got stuff for the Crowleys,” she taunted. “Don’t you want to go to the Crowleys’?”
    Four miles was a long way to go for your nearest neighbor, but that was the distance to the Crowley farm. Sarah had somehow gotten it into her head that Ry was in love with Esther Crowley, the eighteen-year-old daughter with a mane of black hair that sometimes caught under her ass when she sat down. He was not, in fact, in love with her, but he had, in fact, nearly had sex with her two years ago, a traumatic incident that marked the only attempt at physical relations he’d ever had with a girl. He refused to think of it, ever—he’d think of algebra, baseball statistics, anything to keep the memory away. How Sarah suspected the truth was beyond him, but he was pretty sure Jo Beth had never picked up on it. He’d like to keep it that way.
    “We do have some mending for them. A nightgown. A beautiful nightgown.” Jo Beth paused. “But I can drive it over if you want.”
    That pause—did she suspect after all? His mother imagining him putting his clumsy hands to a girl’s bare skin made his ears boil. He took the hammer from his belt loop. “I’ll do it. It’s fine. It’ll take me like twenty minutes.”
    “You should take longer,” Sarah suggested. “You and Esther could watch the Jaekel Belt together. It’s very romantic.”
    Ry sighed. “But I can’t do it tonight.”
    “Then I’ll have to do it myself,” Jo Beth said.
    “Well, enjoy the walk.”
    Her face fell. “The car? Oh, Ry.”
    He gripped the hammer more tightly. “Don’t give me that. The car what? The car is not my fault.”
    “But you said you’d have it done.”
    “What am I supposed to do? Grow spark plugs next to the strawberry patch? I put the order in with Phinny and he’ll be here.”
    “When? I just feel so bad about that nightgown; she must be wearing something of Kevin’s—”
    “Tonight? Tomorrow? He’ll be here when he gets the part.”
    “Ry, how many times is this going to happen?”
    “That depends on how many times you plan on incinerating the spark plugs.”
    “Can we order more than one box?”
    “Can we get a new car?”
    “Ry.” She shielded her eyes even though the falling sun was behind her. “Can we order more than one? Is it too late?”
    “Will you calm down? Phinny’s bringing a bunch. The Crowleys can wait for their damn pajamas. I’ll install the plug and drive over there tomorrow morning, end of story.”
    Ry chanced a look at his mother and saw both resignation and gratitude. He should have felt good about that, about solving yet another of the farm’s myriad problems, but instead felt only the sensation of further sinking. He was six foot three and shaved every day; his continued presence here was becoming a mockery. He mashed his lips and told himself that he deserved an extra year of childhood—a year at the very
least
—for all those months stolen by doctors, psychiatrists, and the Unnamed Three.
    “Fine,” Jo Beth said with hushed complacency. Beside her Sarah had twisted so that she