little security.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed your family’s pretty big on emergency preparedness.”
He chuckled. “Yep, we’re ready for World War Three over here. You see that cabinet there?” He pointed to one above the refrigerator. “It’s got potassium iodide pills in it, in the event of a nuclear explosion. If anybody drops a dirty bomb on Lake Winnipesaukee, your thyroid is safe and sound.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. Did you get a good look around the cellar? They’ve got enough water stored up to float the house to Canada.”
I chewed two of the antacid tablets, then asked, “What do you think of all that?”
“I think it’s not a bad idea.” He dragged on his cigarette, held the smoke in his lungs for a moment and exhaled out his nose. “If we learned anything from 9/11, it’s that when the shit goes down, you’re on your own. And that goes for normal stuff, too. Out here, if it snows real bad, good luck getting out of the house for a week. If somebody breaks into your house, by the time the cops get here, all your stuff’ll be in a truck en route to Canada.”
“You guys ever get break-ins all the way out here?”
“It’s not unheard of. And there’s a lot of people still got grudges against my dad, even now. Pissed-off renters especially. Dodge usually deals with them these days.”
I replied with a rude little laugh. “Yeah,
“Seriously, right? He’s got a special kind of charm. So what’d you think of that dinner party?” He flicked ash from his cigarette into the beer can beside him. “Dodge is lucky one of us didn’t come across the table and choke him.”
“Seemed like most of the family agreed with him about your uncle Randy.”
“They do. People around here need a hobby. Scrap with somebody one time and then you can milk ten years of conversation out of it. God forbid you just let it go.”
I handed him the Tums bottle and he dropped it back into the drawer. The three empty beer cans lined up on the side table rattled as he pushed it shut. I asked, “What happened ten years ago?”
Elias leaned forward a little and, with his cigarette still wedged between his fingers, cupped his hands as if to explain that this story was a whole little world. “You have two extremists. One wants to create a citizen militia with five hundred guns and a whole army of trained-up guys ready to turn Maine into its own republic if they get pissed enough. The other one wants to drink beer, shoot guns, grill burgers and fuck your daughter. There’s only room for one of them at the supper table.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So which one is Dodge?”
“The second one, obviously. He couldn’t organize a sock drawer, let alone a militia. You haven’t done the math on him and Candy?”
I shook my head.
“He’s forty-one. She’s twenty-six. Their oldest kid is nine.”
I thought about that for a moment, then wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”
“Dad had to sign off on the marriage license, she was so young.”
“I’m surprised he agreed to that. If some creep wanted to marry my teenage daughter, I sure wouldn’t.”
“If the creep is one of your friends, you would. But it’s a stupid squabble if you ask me. Randy’s not so bad. He just had a different goal for the group. It’s nothing to start a blood feud over, but people have to go and take things personally. You gotta let stuff like that go or you’ll drive yourself over the edge.”
I sat on the arm of the chair beside his. “Cade’s like that about this guy named Drew who’s been competing with him for the same job. At some point he stopped being a rival and turned into the enemy. Except that guy really
Elias stopped in mid-drag and, laughing silently, coughed out smoke. “Weren’t you already pregnant then?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it yet. Don’t say anything to Cade about that. He’d kill the guy.”
“Scout’s honor. Pretty funny that anyone would try to cock-block Cade, though.” In an ominous voice he quoted, “‘Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station.’”
I laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Kudos to that guy for thinking he stood a chance. With my brother—just make the son of a bitch work for it, that’s all. Make him buy you a big honkin’ diamond, at least. You look like you’ve earned it.”
I laughed and stood up. “Thanks, Elias.”
“My pleasure.”
I reached in to hug him, and at the first touch of my hands against his upper arms he stiffened so violently that I nearly jumped back. But I hugged him anyway, my hands light and the pressure soft, and patted him on the shoulder.
He nodded and scratched above his ear, and I trudged back up the stairs to bed.
By the following Sunday Cade had found a job as a shift manager at a hotel seventeen miles down the road, in Liberty Gorge, the first real town south of us. The pay was menial and the job a joke compared to what he was capable of, but work was scarce in the area and it was the best he could do. On Monday, after his morning chores, he donned the cheerful blue-green uniform shirt and headed off to field complaints about broken showerheads, unpalatable food and groups of noisy teenagers.
I wished for an escape as pleasantly menial. It hadn’t taken long for me to realize that “the Powell house”— the peach-painted cinder-block cottage tucked in the side yard of the main house—was little more than a formality, a place Dodge and Candy could claim as their own without ever spending any waking time there. Candy homeschooled her sons from the dining-room table of the main house, beginning with the Pledge of Allegiance each morning at 8:00 a.m., followed by prayer, followed by unqualified chaos. It amazed me that Elias managed to spend every day around her and remain so preternaturally calm all the time. Seven days and I felt ready to snap.
Late one morning, when I couldn’t handle listening to one more minute of Candy’s creationist science lesson, I gathered up the heap of garden peas from the kitchen island and took them out to the front porch. As soon as the screen door slammed, two deer bolted away from the vegetable garden on the house’s eastern side. I clucked my tongue in annoyance and sat down to shell the enormous pile, already feeling better just to be out in the fresh spring air, away from the cloud of smoke that blanketed the house’s interior. Out front, the Olmsteads’ rooster, Ben Franklin, strutted in a slow circle around the yard like a one-bird security detail. He was a strikingly beautiful creature. His comb and wattles were bright fuchsia, and from the top of his head down to his saddle feathers his coloring shifted from orange to pale yellow to deep red. The luxuriant tail was peacock-green and shimmered in the light. I admired him from a distance, knowing he was probably territorial. I’d spent the whole previous summer as Dave’s chicken-class teacher, teaching others how to feed and raise such birds, castrate the males so they could be raised for meat, and at the end of it all, slaughter them humanely. I knew how to manage birds like Ben, but I wasn’t foolhardy enough to walk into his space right away.
A green Jeep slowed in front of the house and abruptly pulled into the driveway, driving all the way up to where Cade normally parked. The door opened with a metal-on-metal screech. The kid who stepped out of it looked to be about eighteen, with spiky auburn hair and wire-rimmed glasses. I knew right away—based on his resemblance to a certain Muppets character—that this must be Scooter. I’d heard Elias mention the guy who rented a room from the Vogel family one farm over and helped out Dodge with the self-storage place. He nodded a greeting and smiled at me.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he called. “Is Elias awake?”
“I don’t think so. He usually sleeps till about one.”
The guy nodded again. His earnestly good-natured face looked comical above the rest of his body, clad as it was in baggy woodland camo pants, a white crew-neck undershirt and black combat boots crusted with mud. He held out his car keys and, a little bewildered, I accepted them. “Just tell him his stuff’s on the front seat, along with his change.”
“Okay. Don’t you need your keys?”
“They’re his. It’s his Jeep.”
He raised a hand to say goodbye and began hiking back up the road toward the Vogel farm. I started to walk
