Taking a deep breath, Aunt Ruth lifts her chin, and says, “A good man. She was supposed to marry a good man.”
Daniel is glad Dad went out for the night. If he were home, he’d be yelling at Daniel about something. That’s what Dad does most of the time now, yells at Daniel. Poking his potatoes and pushing them around the plate, he silently curses when one tumbles onto the red tablecloth Evie put out. Now he wonders if he’ll have to confess to Father Flannery or does it not count if you only think the bad words without actually saying them. Waiting until Mama isn’t paying attention, Daniel picks up the potato chunk and scoots his plate to cover the buttery stain. He glances up, wondering if anyone saw. Aunt Ruth winks and presses a finger to her lips.
Daniel tries to smile back, but every time he looks at Aunt Ruth since she caught him sneaking the rifle, he thinks she knows about the prairie dogs. He imagines that she saw him shoot that animal for no damn good reason, blow its head clean off. That’s what Ian had said. He went back and found that prairie dog with its head blown all the way off and showed it to his brothers so they would stop calling Daniel a city kid. Ian said he lifted that dead prairie dog up by its tail and flung it as far as he could, and his brothers had said Daniel must be a pretty good shot to blow off the head but leave the rest. Biting his lower lip and stabbing a new potato with his fork, Daniel wishes he’d never shot that prairie dog because he can’t ever take it back. But he did, and Aunt Ruth knows he has been taking the gun without permission.
“What was that?” Evie says, her mouth full of a buttered biscuit.
Daniel shakes his head at her. “Stop talking with food in your mouth.”
Evie swallows, rocking her head forward to help the biscuit go down. “There’s nothing in my mouth.”
“There,” Aunt Ruth says, staring past Daniel toward the kitchen window. “Is that what you heard?”
Mama pushes back from the table. “I didn’t hear anything,” she says, pressing out the pleats on the front of her dress. It’s what she does when she’s nervous, like when Dad went to meetings in Detroit about the Negro workers or the news showed pictures of burned-up cars and buildings. She hasn’t done it much since they moved to Kansas where they haven’t seen a single Negro or burned-up car. Also, Mama doesn’t wear skirts with pleats much anymore.
Evie nods, wiping a crumb from her chin. “That. What is it?”
Daniel turns in his seat, careful not to scoot his chair or make any noise. Through the white sheers, the window is black. “It’s the wind.”
“That’s not wind,” Evie says too loudly.
Daniel frowns and quiets her with a finger to his lips.
Again, as loudly as before, Evie says, “That was not wind. That was a thud. There it is again.”
“Yes,” Mama says, still pressing her pleats. “I hear it.”
“I think Daniel’s right.” Aunt Ruth tucks her napkin under the lip of her plate and stands. “Probably the wind. But to be on the safe side, I’ll check.”
“No, Aunt Ruth,” Daniel says, standing with a jerk and catching his chair before it tumbles over. “I’ll go. I should go.”
“Both of you stay put,” Mama says. “I’ll have a look.”
Evie jumps out of her seat and leaps toward Mama. “Let Daniel go,” she says.
Mama wraps an arm around Evie and kisses the top of her head. All four turn when something bumps the side of the house just below the kitchen window. The white sheers tremble.
“Someone’s outside the window,” Evie says, her voice muffled because her face is pressed into Mama’s side.
“Na,” Daniel says, watching the curtains, waiting for another thud. “There’s no one out there.” But he’s not sure now. The wind doesn’t bump into the house or stumble around the side yard. He wishes his heart weren’t beating so loudly because he can’t hear over it. He hates his God damned beating heart when he can’t hear over it, even tries to hold his breath to slow it down.
At the sound of another thud, Evie pulls away from Mama and points at the window. “It’s a Clark City man,” she says. “That’s what it is.” And then she whispers. “It’s Jack Mayer. He’s back and he’s looking for food. Maybe he’s even got Julianne with him.”
“Shut up, Evie,” Daniel says. “It’s not a Clark City man. And it’s not Jack Mayer. Shut up.”
As the weather has turned colder, the pond near the curve in Bent Road has shrunk, dried up like every other pond around. Every time Daniel passes it, he looks for the tips of Jack Mayer’s boots, thinking he might be lying at the bottom of that pond. Daniel has never seen him, and Ian says he won’t because Jack Mayer has to be alive since he’s the one who swiped Julianne Robison.
“Kids, please,” Mama says. “Stop your bickering.”
Aunt Ruth tucks Evie under her arm while Mama sidesteps toward the back door.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Mama says, but she’s inching toward the porch like she definitely thinks it’s something. “Evie, you stay here with Daniel and Ruth. I’ll go…”
“No, Mama.” Daniel walks around the table, tilts his head down and looks up at Mama from under his brow. “I’ll give a look-see.”
It’s what Dad would have said.
Stepping onto the porch, Daniel pulls the door closed behind him and exhales a frosted cloud. He yanks on the knob again, listening for the click that tells him the door is latched good and tight, and once he hears it, he thinks he should feel more like a man. Instead, he slouches and pulls up the collar of Dad’s flannel jacket because maybe whoever is stomping around their side yard will mistake Daniel for Dad. Mama says that by his next birthday, Daniel will be as tall as Dad. Keep eating Aunt Ruth’s good cooking, she says, and you’ll be as broad, too. He gives Aunt Ruth, Mama and Evie a thumbs-up sign through the window in the back door and walks across the screened-in porch. With the toes of his leather boots hanging over the first stair, he sees nothing or no one as far as the porch light reaches.
Ian had clipped out the latest story about Jack Mayer from page 3 of the Hays Chronicle, the shortest one yet, and one of many that didn’t make page 1. After nearly four months, police now believe Jack Mayer has either left the Palco area or has died of exposure. Authorities at the Clark City State Hospital declined to comment on Jack Mayer’s whereabouts, other than to say the hospital had successfully implemented new security measures. After Ian showed Daniel the article that he kept under his mattress along with a dozen others about Jack Mayer, he took Daniel out to the barn and showed him a wadded-up flannel blanket and empty tin can that were hidden behind three hay bales and an old wheelbarrow. Daniel kicked the can across the dirt floor. Ian stumbled after it, his right side lagging behind because he didn’t have on his new boots, picked it up, and placed it back with the blanket because he thought the tin can and blanket were proof positive that Jack Mayer was alive and well and living in the Bucher barn. “No need to make a crazy man mad,” Ian had said as he cleaned the brim of the can with his shirttail.
At the bottom of the stairs, Daniel tucks his bare hands under his arms, stomps his feet, and looking toward the barn, he wonders if Jack Mayer might just be hiding in there. Mama found the pie that Aunt Ruth baked for Father Flannery and nothing else has gone missing in the house except the last piece of Evie’s birthday cake, which Daniel knows Dad ate but won’t admit. Ian said their food disappeared all the time. He said Jack Mayer stole it right off their kitchen counter. He said Jack Mayer crawled through their windows every night and helped himself to corn muffins, sliced pork roast and ham and bean soup. Daniel asked Ian how he could be sure Jack Mayer was eating all that food with so many brothers living in the house. Ian had said that no man alive could eat like Jack Mayer because Jack Mayer is a mountain of a man.