“I’m right here!” yells Patrick, coming out of the silo shed. “What are you doing?”
Uncle Carl laughs like it’s the dumbest question he’s ever heard.
Birdie and me run downstairs. Then we go through the front door and stop on the front step.
Patrick’s telling Uncle Carl to calm down.
Uncle Carl’s eyes go all big and he says he’ll show him calm and then climbs up on the hood of Patrick’s truck, yelling at Patrick the whole time, calling him all sorts of mean things. I worry that he’ll fall off the truck and am about to rush forward when Patrick yells, “Stop!”
That’s when Uncle Carl starts laughing real hard. “Well, well, well,” he says. “Look at the state of this place. Mama and Dad would be disappointed you’ve turned their home into some kind of recluse’s spot, Patty. You ever heard of a new coat of paint? Or watering the grass?” He laughs again, slapping his thighs with his hands, but wobbles and puts his arms out to steady himself.
“You get down from there!” yells Patrick.
“Or what? You gonna come get me, big brother? Come on up, old man.”
“I don’t have time for this.”
“You never do, do you?” Uncle Carl spins around once, nearly falling off the hood. “Jeez, you’d think that you were the president of the U-S-of-A with how much time you don’t have.”
Patrick yells again. “Get down from there, I said!” He moves closer to the truck as Uncle Carl tips to the left, then catches himself. When he sees his brother advancing, he crawls to the top of the cab, streaking mud from his shoes on the windshield.
“Come on up, Pattycake! Come get me.”
He wobbles some more and I take a couple steps forward. Birdie hangs back. I’m starting to feel this pressure inside my body. After disappearing for a week, this is how he shows up. It would have been better if he’d just stayed home forever.
Uncle Carl starts teasing Patrick and Patrick yells back. But they aren’t actually saying anything and no one is listening to me as I shout, “Come on, Uncle Carl, get down!” but he doesn’t stop talking and I know he’s making it so that him and Patrick go another five years without talking.
“Stop!” I yell. “Why can’t everyone just stop!”
But Uncle Carl starts talking. “You couldn’t stand that I was finally gonna get my Rosie, huh? You always said she was too good for me. And me and the kids had an awesome plan and now everything is ruined and you couldn’t be happier, am I right?”
“You know that’s not true, Carl, now get down!”
But now Carl is really upset, saying it is true and everyone knows it, and now Marlboro’s gone, and Rosie’s gone, and Birdie and me are gone. But Patrick’s shouting that he’s going to call the police if he doesn’t get down and I feel like each of my bones are about to explode, more than two hundred individual bombs ready to go off.
So I pick up a big rock and yell, “You guys ruin everything!” and throw it, as hard as I can, toward the silo shed.
It hits the center of the front window, which shatters instantly. Everything goes quiet. Both Patrick and Uncle Carl look at the shed with open mouths.
“Get down!” I yell again. “You’re going to get hurt!”
But saying that turns out to be a bad idea, because then Uncle Carl turns toward me and stomps on the truck’s roof, hollering, “What makes you think I’m not already hurt, huh? Any new hurt won’t be nothing new. Nothing. New.” He slams his foot down to the beat of the last two words. And that’s when the wind gusts and he loses his balance and goes tumbling off the truck.
Next thing I know, Patrick has a frown on his face as we hover over Uncle Carl. Birdie joins us and asks if he’s okay.
I lean down to get a good look at Uncle Carl’s head. When he fell, he partially rolled down the windshield and then plopped to the gravel. His head looks to be in one piece and I think I even hear him snoring.
Suddenly, from the shed, there comes a long creak and then a great crashing sound, like something big just fell from up high.
The door to the shed is still open and something small and round rolls out and stops in front of Patrick’s truck.
Everyone stares at it.
I go over and pick it up.
It’s a small wooden egg. Just like the one Birdie and me and Mama got from the family with backyard chickens we helped move during a Wolf Day.
No one says anything as I walk to the shed door. As I feel around for the switch, I think of the part in the Bible, at least I think it’s the Bible, when God says Let there be light!
And then I see.
It’s everything from home.
Mama’s old armchair that she usually just sat in front of. The Miss Luck Duck lamp. Our bright green bookcase that we found next to the dumpster behind an old office building. The mannequin that used to hold Mama’s and Birdie’s sewing projects. Boxes on top of boxes on top of boxes and so many trash bags. And I finally see the big rock I threw, which lies by an open cardboard box on the ground.
My hand around the wooden egg feels numb.
“Miss Luck Duck!” says Birdie, who’s suddenly beside me. “How long has she been in here? And the Tokyo Tower hat rack!” He points to the far wall. “And Mama’s chair . . .” His eyes start to move quickly all around the shed; back and forth they dart until his face has morphed into a frown. “I don’t understand. Why does Patrick have our stuff?”
I grab his hand and hold up the wooden egg.
“Follow me,” I say.
We turn around and walk toward the gate.
“Where are you guys going?” Patrick asks.
“To the reserve!”
Patrick picks Uncle Carl up and Uncle Carl groans, his arm slung
