Franny Parker (9 page)

“Come on, Lucas!” Sidda cried.

“Go ahead,” Lucas answered. “I'll catch the next one with Franny.”

My heart pounded. The look on Sidda's face was enough to freeze the Ferris wheel, to stop every ride and game in time, but it was too late. The ride operator clicked the safety bar closed, and Sidda swung into the night, her legs kicking and her mouth moving silently up, up, up, into the sky.

“I think she wanted to ride with you,” I told Lucas.

“But I wanted to ride with you.” He smiled down at me, and my legs felt fuzzy. It didn't matter that we had to wait ten
minutes for a turn. Lucas sat right next to me, our knees pressing together, as the wheel turned and lifted us into the sky.

“Look how tiny everyone looks,” I said. From the top of the Ferris wheel the town shimmered with the glow of games and lights and the purple shadows of kids moving through the park. Yet I felt safe and cozy, the thrill of the distance from the ground no match for the thrill of Lucas Dunn seated beside me.

“Makes you want to stay up here awhile, doesn't it?” he said. And then he reached over and put his hand on mine, right on the bar in front of us. My head swam. I thought of the animal patients nestled safely in my barn and of the throbbing chirp of the peepers in the riverbed below our yard. Summer to my hands, my eyes, my ears. I closed my eyes, my body filling with the gentle pull of the wheel, the swaying of the chair, the night air lifting around us. I felt myself fill up, spill over into the sky, the summer fever quivering in my bones. I squeezed Lucas's hand. I wanted him to know, to feel what I felt.

And then the ride slowed, the Ferris wheel stopped to let people off. It delivered us down into the crowd, returning us to the regular noise of the world, the spell of the starry night hovering above us like a promise.

W
e did it! We beat the Walker frog!” Ben yelled.

“How?” I asked. We were walking home through the quiet streets with Lindy and Lucas, slowed by bellies full of
carnival food. Ben bounced on Dad's shoulders, a cotton candy in one fist and his frog trophy in the other.

“Well, most of the competition jumped into the crowd, so the only real threat was the Walker frog.” Ben was completely wound up. “He's big, but not so smart. He took one big hop, then stopped. When Martha saw that frog ahead of her in the lane, she just pulled her head out and started following. And when Martha went, George went. The Walker frog was just one hop away from the finish line, and here comes Martha running up behind him—”

“Martha ran?” I asked.

Mama winked.

“Yes!” Ben shouted. “And so here she comes running, and the Walker frog is just about to take his last hop, and all of a sudden his big bulgy eyes get real sleepy-looking, and they start to close, and
conk
, he just falls asleep. Right there on the track.”

“He fell asleep?” Lucas asked, breaking into laughter.

“Like a baby,” Ben said. He hugged his frog trophy to his chest, his face covered in pink cotton candy.

“Jeb Walker falls asleep in school all the time,” Sidda said.

“Well, there you go,” said Dad.

We cut through the Dorsens' pasture, newly mowed, and climbed Berry Hill, taking the shortcut home. It was a beautiful night for a walk. We were all having such a fine time celebrating the frog hop and the fair, laughing so loud, that no one noticed the rusty black car parked in Lindy's driveway when we arrived home. The same car from the other day.

“Looks like you've got company,” Dad said.

Lindy halted, wrapping her shawl tightly around her shoulders. We all peered into the darkness, wondering who was there.

Except for Lucas and Lindy. They seemed to know.

Mama stepped forward, her hand moving to touch Lindy's arm. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Lindy didn't look so good. There was a creak on the porch. The pale-faced man stood up from one of the rocking chairs, rising from the darkness like a spooky moon, right there on Lindy's porch. He stared at us, saying nothing.

“Who is that?” Ben asked.

Lindy's voice quivered. “That's Lucas's father,” she said.

T
he cabin was quiet the next morning. It stayed quiet all weekend. The potting shed doors remain closed, and Jax whined at the edge of the yard with a stick in his mouth. On Sunday morning, Sidda complained that Lucas had never shown up at Marilee's party on Saturday night.

“Something's not right,” Mama said, clutching her coffee mug at the breakfast table. “Did you see the look on Lindy's face the other night?”

We'd said good night after finding Mr. Dunn on Lindy's porch. I could tell Mama didn't want to leave her. It was like all the beauty of our night had been sucked up into the cloudless sky, a storm of worry in its place.

I wanted to tell my parents what Lucas had told me about his father that day in the barn. I felt betrayed. Dead fathers don't show up in cars or eat corn dogs at fairs. But first, I wanted to ask him about it myself.

“I'm inviting the Dunns for dinner,” Mama said, getting up and gathering her cookbooks. When anything went wrong, Mama liked to get everyone around the dining room table. I could see the hairs of the mother wolf rising on her neck as she paced the kitchen.

Dad saw it, too. “Now, Celia, maybe we should give them some time to visit. I'm sure everything's just fine,” he assured her.

But the mother wolf was stubborn. “Then a dinner invitation will give us a chance to meet him,” she insisted.

But we never did. Mama called the cabin, and the phone rang and rang before Lindy answered. She thanked Mama but said they couldn't come. This just made Mama more worried and she spent the rest of the day at her easel, glaring at the old woman in her painting, prodding her angrily with the brushes.

“Who is that?” I asked, examining the painted woman, the familiar straight line of her back, the determined jaw.

But Mama didn't answer. She abandoned her paints and stared out the window at the little cabin.

“You can't drag them over here,” Dad said, but I had a feeling that was exactly what Mama would do if she could.

I was just as curious. I don't know if that's because we are as alike as Grandma Rae says or because of what Lucas had told me in the barn that day. But I took on my own mission and began spying on the cabin.

G
irls, girls, girls. Less talk, more books.”

Pearl and I looked up at the giant shadow looming over us, blocking out the sun.

“Where is it, Pearl?” Mrs. Jones asked.

“Right here, Mother.” Pearl slid Nancy Drew number 5 out from under her towel.

“Well, what good is it doing under there? Hand over that ice cream. You need to focus.” Mrs. Jones whisked the half-eaten cone from Pearl's sticky hand and headed back toward the pool, where Pearl's little brothers were trying to drown each other.

Pearl sank onto her towel.

“We can share,” I said, passing her my ice cream.

It was the end of July. There were just a few weeks left in the Aubree Library summer reading contest, and Pearl was not making much progress. Oh, she was enjoying her books. And that seemed like enough to me. But not to Mrs. Jones. As far as she was concerned, that gold trophy gleaming in her living room window would be the only proof of any progress.

“Let's take a dip,” I said. It was another scorcher, the Monday of what promised to be another rainless week, and it appeared the whole town was squeezed in the pool. I swirled my feet in the water and lowered myself in with a sigh. The weekend was over, and with it the fair, and I wondered idly if
Lucas was working at Harland's today or still at home with his father. I wanted desperately to see him.

“Pearl, what page are you on?” Mrs. Jones demanded. That woman had ears like radar. She peered at us in the shallow end, where two of Pearl's little brothers bobbed up and down. She was just lowering herself into the water with Mable when the oldest Jones boy cannonballed off the pool deck and over her head. Mrs. Jones screamed as a wave of water crashed over us, but we didn't have time to laugh.

Suddenly, above Mrs. Jones's scream, there was another: a long, shrill wail that echoed across the pool, silencing everyone, even the Jones boys themselves. We covered our ears. It was the fire whistle. Two red trucks rounded the corner, their sirens blasting. Behind them an ambulance followed, and behind that another fire truck.

“What's going on?” Pearl shouted.

The pool emptied quickly as people lined up by the fence to watch. The sirens continued, and a black cloud of smoke filled the sky, rolling lazily toward us.

As usual, there was no room in the red convertible for all of us. Mrs. Jones packed the baby and boys in, crushing one raft and two sand pails as she slammed the trunk shut.

“Come right home,” she ordered Pearl, squeezing behind the wheel. By then, the black clouds had risen over the treetops, shadowing the parking lot.

We wrapped our towels around our waists and walked fast, past the ball fields and the school. Past the park where the fair had just been. Above us, the smoke grew thicker in the sky, and the odor of charcoal filled our noses.

“Where do you think it's coming from?” I asked.

A small crowd had gathered on the steps of the library.

“It's the orchard,” a woman said. “The whole thing's gone up!”

Pearl and I exchanged looks. Blue Jay's Orchard was on the edge of town, just a couple miles from my house. It was a place we knew well. Any blueberry tart or apple pie in town was made with fruit from Blue Jay's. Suddenly, all I could think of was home, Mama, and my barn, with its patients closed inside.

“I've gotta go,” I said to Pearl and took off, leaving her on the sidewalk.

W
oe is me,” Grandma Rae whispered the next afternoon.

We'd come to see for ourselves. The charcoal fields stretched out before us up and down the Cimarron Through-way. Even the dirt was burned. Black sticks rose out of the ground, row after row of smoking tree skeletons.

“Scary,” Ben whispered, squeezing my hand.

Up and down the road, families pulled over to look. It was the saddest summer attraction. Only the little red road stand sign remained, a smiley-faced apple on dancing legs. “Welcome to Blue Jay's Orchard!” he greeted the crowd.

“Poor, poor Emma,” Grandma said, glancing over at her friend. “I'd better go see her.”

Not far away was old Emma Johnson herself, the owner of Blue Jay's Orchard, slumped on the tailgate of a pickup truck.
The fire marshal patted her back, and said something we couldn't hear. It didn't matter. No words could make a difference now.

“It's what we all feared,” Mama said, turning for home. Her eyes watered as she spoke, and she wiped at them quickly.

“Got smoke in your eyes?” Ben asked, reaching up to pat Mama.

“Just woe,” she responded.

The grass was burned right up to the roadside. I kicked at the dirt, digging my toe into its crusted layers. A small pebble rolled free. Smooth and white, no bigger than a robin's egg, it tumbled across the charred ground untouched by the flames that had roared over it. I picked it up. Some things are like that, I guess. Even as flames lick the surface above, some things get tucked away safely, only to be unearthed just as pure and lovely as before. A little piece of snow-white hope in a scorched field.

“How bad is it?” Daddy asked us when he got home that evening. We'd plopped ourselves on the porch, exhausted by what we'd just seen, wondering who would be next.

“It's all gone,” Mama told him, shaking her head sadly.

Sidda joined us on the porch. “No cider doughnuts this fall?” she asked.

“Or fresh apples,” Mama said. We sat on the porch a long time, thinking of the seasons we'd spent at Blue Jay's. The Halloween parade among the trees, the apple-picking afternoons and sticky cider lips. The Johnsons had lost their farm. And with it we'd lost a part of ourselves. Ben whimpered a little and climbed into Dad's lap.

“I need a tissue,” Ben cried. “I've got woe in my eyes.”

A
fter the orchard burned, it became official. There was an emergency town meeting that Tuesday night, and the water restrictions were upgraded to a full ban.

“Save the water for the fields and livestock,” people said.

When the president of the garden club had the nerve to water his prize roses, Grandma Rae almost ran him over with her town car.

The summer fever hit us hard, and it wasn't in the moony-eyed July way we were used to. The animal hospital was bursting. With everyone out walking their fields and inspecting their pastures, the whole town's eyes were on the ground. And that made for all kinds of discoveries. Ruby Miller, one of Grandma's church friends, found a nest of three baby opossums curled in her shed that Wednesday morning, and by lunchtime five-year-old Melody Watson was knocking on our door with a frog in her hand.

“Bob's thirsty,” she said.

Ben took one look at that curly-haired little girl holding a frog named Bob and it was true love. “He needs a bath,” he told her.

Melody looked offended. “Bob's not dirty. He's just thirsty.”

“That's how it works,” Ben explained. “He soaks up water with his skin.”

The way Melody looked at him, he might as well have told
her that the frog had landed from the moon. But she followed him to the barn and giggled as Bob got his bath. Afterward, she even donated two nickels to our coffee can.

“For heaven's sake,” Grandma Rae said, stepping over the food bottles and trays and buckets that lined our porch. “The critters have taken over.”

I had to admit she was right. As it was we were running back and forth to the barn day and night. The stalls were full and noisy, and the old patients were being pushed aside by the new. We were so busy I barely had time to think, but still I looked for Lucas. I wanted to introduce him to the new patients.