“Even so, it was mean to throw everything away.”
“I don’t know. I might’ve done it myself if he hadn’t. Taking all those pills was a rotten thing to do.”
Harlan looked far off. “It sure was that,” he said. “But I guess you could look at it that if she hadn’t done what she did, you wouldn’t be here.”
“What?”
“God, I shouldn’t’ve said that,” he said, suddenly disgusted with himself. “Should’ve kept my mouth shut. Never have been stop signs between my brain and my mouth.”
“No, I want to hear. What do you mean?”
He stared off in the distance and slowly shook his head. “Let it lie. Let it all lie.”
“Please,” I said.
He turned back to me. “All right. You want to know, I’ll tell you. I spent nearly a year with your mama, and the first half of that year was passable, she and I had some fun. She was real pretty and good company as long as she was getting her way. But the last half of that year was the worst time of my life. Where she was concerned, I mean. By then I wasn’t staying for her, I was staying for you.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “I kept thinking that however bad her drinking and drugging and lying and meanness and craziness were for me, it was your whole life to you, all the life you knew. I even went to a lawyer one time to see if I could get you away from her, but he just laughed in my face and said, ‘Not a chance.’ His exact words. So, all I’m saying is, bad as what she did was, her doing it cut you loose. Brought you to Henry.”
Just then I had a picture of how I’d be living now if Mama was alive. She’d still be sick and not doing anything about it, in and out of the hospital, bringing home one bloodsucking boyfriend after another, one step ahead of the bill collectors and the law—thinking only of herself. I thought of Henry standing between me and that hunter’s gun, putting my life before his own, something Mama had never done.
“Henry’s good people,” Harlan said. “Not like some.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Maybe the Padre’s right,” he went on, an edge in his voice. “He says, ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope.’ Maybe that’s right, but I can’t believe it about your mama, knowing her like I did. Even if you weren’t here with all these good people, even if you were in some home, or out there on your own, you’d be a million times better off without her in your life. Maybe that’s a hard thing to hear, but I believe it. Maybe the best thing about her is the second chance she give you. Maybe that’s the good in her you’re looking for. And maybe she didn’t give it to you on purpose, but so what?”
I stood there staring at him. “You really went to a lawyer?” I asked.
“Cost me a week’s pay.”
“You really stayed just for me?”
“Till she kicked me out.”
“I never knew.”
He shrugged. “Now you do.”
“Thanks, Harlan,” I said. “You don’t have to be in any rush to go, okay? The cabin’s looking real nice.”
He smiled crookedly. “I appreciate that.”
Harlan headed down the path to borrow some tools from Henry. I shimmied underneath the trailer, where Mr. C was curled up, asleep.
“And you think you know people,” I said.
Two minutes later they came. I heard them before I saw them, both of them all care and apprehension, especially him. I saw his work boots and the raggedy cuffs of his coveralls and her slim legs and ash-gray hooves right behind. He dipped a drink of water from the well and set it down for her. I admired that. As she lowered her head into the bucket, her pink eyes caught sight of me under the trailer. She didn’t seem to mind me. I could only see him from the knees down, but he was facing the cabin, and I guessed he was taking in the improvements. He went inside, and after a few minutes he came out and stood in the yard facing me, like he’d known I was there all along. I inched forward, out from under the trailer, waking Mr. C as I did. He took one bug-eyed look at the boy and the deer and bolted into the woods toward Henry’s. I kept still so they’d see I wasn’t a threat.
The boy seemed perfectly calm. He looked much like he had on Thanksgiving: dirty all over but not minding. It had the effect of blending him into the land and trees. His long black hair was flecked with leaves and pulled back off his face. He looked fourteen, maybe fifteen. His dark eyes studied me, and I saw then the purplish rings underneath them, how worn-out he looked, like somebody who hadn’t slept in a while.
We stared at each other. I tried to think what to say, how to start a conversation with a complete stranger I already knew.
“I’m Zoë,” I said lamely.
He nodded. He’d probably heard Henry and everybody else shouting it on Thanksgiving Day.
“I live just south of here with my uncle Henry, the bearded fella who makes all the big metal contraptions in our yard.”
“Wild things,” the boy said, nodding again.
“Wild things,” I repeated, smiling. “I’ve been coming up here regular for a while now.”
“Saw you the day you came,” he said, something like amusement in his face and tone. “Most days since.”
“Is that a fact?” I said. “Well, I didn’t see you, not till Thanksgiving, but I’ve felt you nearby a few times when I saw your deer, except I—”
“You didn’t!” he scoffed, interrupting. He took the strap of his canvas bag off his shoulder and let it drop to the ground. He slid something from his pocket and sat down cross-legged in
