CHAPTER SIX
The tax bill arrived two weeks later, the day that Dad, Matthew, and Mark loaded the hogs onto the livestock trailer and took them all away. Most were going to the slaughterhouse. The ones too young and too small to bring a decent price were going to an auction for feeder pigs. Luke watched through the vent at the front of the house as Dad drove by in the battered pickup with each load. Matthew and Mark sat in the back of the pickup, making sure the trailer stayed hitched right. Even three stories up, Luke could see Matthew's hangdog expression. Then when the three of them came into the house for dinner, after washing the last of the hog smell off their hands in the mudroom, Dad handed Mother the tax bill without comment. She put down the wooden spoon she'd been using to stir the stew and unfolded the letter. Then she dropped it.
'Why, that's-' she seemed to be doing the math in her head as she bent to retrieve it. 'That's three times what it usually is. There must be a mistake.'
Dad shook his head grimly. 'No mistake. I talked to Williker at the auction.'
The Willikers were their nearest neighbors, with a house three miles down the road. Luke always pictured them with monster scales and fierce claws because of the number of times he'd been cautioned, 'You don't want the Willikers to see you.'
Dad went on. 'Williker says they raised everyone's taxes because of them fancy houses. Makes our land worth more.'
'Isn't that good?' Luke asked eagerly. It was strange- he should hate the new houses for replacing his woods and forcing him to stay indoors. But he'd half-fallen in love with them, having watched every foundation poured, every wooden skeleton of walls and roofs raised to the sky. They were his main entertainment, aside from talking to Mother when she came upstairs for what she called 'my Luke breaks.' Sometimes she pretended his room needed cleaning as badly as the bread needed baking or the garden needed weeding. Sometimes she just sat and talked.
Dad was shaking his head in disgust over Luke's question.
'No. It's only good if we're selling. And we ain't. All it means for us is that the Government thinks they can get more money out of us.'
Matthew was slumped in his chair at the table. 'How are we going to pay?' he asked. 'That's more than we got for all the hogs, and that was supposed to carry us through for a long time-'
Dad didn't answer. Even Mark, who normally had a smart-alecky comeback for everything, was stupefied.
Mother had turned back to her stew.
'I got my work permit today,' she said softly. 'The factory's hiring. If I get on there, I can maybe get an advance on my paycheck.'
Luke's jaw dropped.
'You can't go to work,' he said. 'Who will-' He wanted to say,
CHAPTER SEVEN
By mid-September, Luke's days had fallen into a familiar pattern. He got up at dawn just for the chance to sit on the stairs and watch the rest of his family eat breakfast. They all rushed now. Mother had to be at the factory by seven. Dad was trying to get all the machinery in working order before harvest. And Matthew and Mark were back in school. Only Luke had time to linger over his undercooked bacon and dry toast. He didn't bother asking for butter because that meant someone would have to stand up and bring it over to him, all the while pretending for the sake of the open window that they'd just forgotten something upstairs.
As soon as the rest of his family had stomped out the door, Luke went back to his room and watched out the vents-first out the front, to see Matthew and Mark climb onto the school bus, then out the back, where the new houses were practically finished. They were mansions, as large as the Garners' house and barn put together. They gleamed in the morning sunlight as though their walls were studded with precious jewels. For all Luke knew, maybe they were.
Hordes of workmen still arrived every morning, but almost all of them worked indoors now. They headed into the houses first thing, carrying rolls of carpet, stacks of drywall, cans of paint. Luke couldn't see much of them after that. He spent more time now watching a new kind of traffic: expensive-looking cars driving slowly down the newly paved streets. Sometimes they pulled into a driveway and went into one of the houses, usually trailing a woman who appeared to be talking nonstop. It had taken Luke a while to figure it out-he certainly hadn't dared ask anyone else in his family-but he thought maybe the people were thinking about buying the houses. Once he realized that, he studied each potential neighbor carefully. He'd overheard Mother and Dad marveling that the people moving into the new houses were not just going to be city people, but Barons. Barons were unbelievably rich, Luke knew. They had things ordinary people hadn't had in years. Luke wasn't sure how the Barons had gotten rich, when everybody else was poor. But Dad never said the word 'Baron' without a curse word or two in front of it.
The people streaming through the houses did look different from anyone in Luke's family. They were mostly thin, beautiful women in formfitting dresses, and heavyset men in what Luke's dad and brothers called sissy clothes- shiny shoes and clean, dressy pants and jackets. Luke always felt a little embarrassed for them, showing up like that. Or maybe he was embarrassed for his family, that they never looked like any of the Barons. Luke preferred it when the adults had children with them and he could concentrate on them. The smallest ones were always as dressed up as their parents, with hair bows and suspenders and other geegaws Luke knew his parents would never buy. The older kids usually seemed to be wearing whatever they'd grabbed first out of their closet that morning.
Though he knew no one would dare show up with three kids, he always counted: 'One, two…' 'One…' 'One, two…'
What if a family with just one kid moved in behind them, and he sneaked into their house and pretended to be their second child? He could go to school, go to town, act like Matthew and Mark…
What a joke-Luke living with Barons. More likely he'd be shot for trespassing. Or turned in.
When he began thinking things like that, he always jumped down from his perch by the vent and grabbed a book from one of the dusty stacks by the eaves. Mother had taught him to read and do math, as much as she knew herself. 'At least we have a few books for you…,' she often mumbled sadly when she left in the morning. He'd read all their books dozens of times, even the ones with titles like
He liked to forget he was Luke Garner, third child hidden in the attic.
Sometime around noon he'd hear the door from the mudroom to the kitchen swing open and he'd go down and eat at the same time as his dad. Without Mother there were no homemade pies now, no mashed potatoes, no roasts that sent good smells throughout the house. Dad always made four sandwiches, checked to make sure no one could see him, then handed two of them to Luke in the stairwell.
Dad never talked-he'd explained that he didn't want anyone overhearing him, and wondering. But he did turn the radio on for the noon farm report, and there was usually a song or two after that before Dad silenced the radio and went outside to work again.
When Dad left, Luke went back to his room to read or watch the houses again.
At six-thirty Mother came home, and she always stopped in and said hi to Luke before rushing out to do a whole day's work in the few hours before bedtime. Usually Matthew or Mark came up to visit him, too, but they could never stay long, either. They had to help Dad before supper, then do homework afterwards. And they always had been nicest to Luke outdoors. Before the woods came down, the three of them often had played kickball or football or spud in the backyard, after school and chores. Matthew and Mark always fought about who got to have Luke on his team, because, even if Luke wasn't very good, two boys together could always beat the third.
Now they played halfhearted games of cards or checkers with Luke, but Luke could tell they'd rather be
