“I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”
“You should try it sometime, Aunt Amanda. It clears your head, helps you breathe better.” Will was all grins.
They entered Amberson Valley, a small offshoot of Path Valley. Thick clouds rose above Knob and Tuscarora Mountains. Will wanted to try his new key on the employee gate, but it was on the other side of the highway, and he knew Aunt Amanda preferred the longer, safer route to the exit. He would use that gate tomorrow when she wasn’t along.
Aunt Amanda unlaced her shoes and stretched her legs. “My, I get tired of standing on that concrete.” She looked at him. “You sure got quiet.”
Will shrugged, watched the road. Finally, he decided why not. “So, who was that looking out the window with you this afternoon?”
“I wondered if you were going to ask.” Aunt Amanda turned to the window to hide her smile.
“Well, who is she?”
“Her name is Ada Franklin, and she’s a real sweet girl from Hopewell. Her family just had that barn fire you heard about.”
She waited, but Will said nothing. She added, “You might ask her out sometime.”
“I don’t need your meddling, Aunt Amanda.”
“Oh, but you asked. She’s mighty pretty. And tall. You’d make a cute couple, both of you so tall.”
“Enough.”
“Just a thought.”
They were silent as they approached the tollbooth. Will signed the form for Audrey Swartz, and Aunt Amanda shouted across to ask how her son was doing.
“We just got a letter yesterday.” Audrey leaned down to look in. “They moved Jacob to a different hospital somewhere in South Korea. He said his leg’s tore up bad, but he still has it. That’s something.”
Aunt Amanda agreed.
“He thinks he’ll be coming home in a few weeks. I just hope they don’t send him back over there.”
“We’re all praying for him and for you,” Aunt Amanda said.
Audrey thanked her and took the clipboard.
“I hope he’s OK,” Aunt Amanda said to herself.
Will was silent as they passed Fannett-Metal High School. Will had graduated just a month ago, and Jacob was a year ahead of him.
“Have you thought any more about college?”
“Not really.” Will was tired of this conversation, tired of not knowing what he wanted. His dad wanted him to farm, and Aunt Amanda wanted him in college so he wouldn’t be drafted. Both seemed wrong. Will liked music, but he couldn’t imagine ever being good enough. And maybe even more than his guitar and sax, he loved engines—tinkering with them, figuring them out.
When he was a kid, he would spend hours fiddling with Aunt Amanda’s lawnmower, getting it to run. Before he could drive, Will would ride his bike the two miles to Ernie’s Garage to help out.
Ernie’s place felt somehow like a church—dark and mysterious, light coming from those high, dusty windows. Ernie always on his knees, as if in prayer to the gods of gasoline, or on his back, as if asking the gods on high for help. Ernie, though, always prayed with goddamn at the start—“Goddamn Buick’s a piece of shit.” “Goddamn Mary Rich needs to buy a different car.” “Goddamn that wrench if it didn’t walk off.” Ernie still went to the Brethren church every Sunday. He still believed.
But what did Will want? To work at Esso all of his life? Or work for Ernie? Or maybe have his own garage, like Ernie’s? He’d heard about being an airplane mechanic—that sounded good too. Better money and the chance to learn how to fly. That sounded even better. The air force seemed like a good place to learn. But there was a big difference between a gun and a wrench.
They drove up the valley, through Spring Run, Doylesburg, Dry Run, the little pebbles of villages strung along the Conococheague and Burns Valley Creeks. Will had lived his whole life in this long, narrow fold, on his father’s farm, in his aunt’s house, and now in his own small apartment above Ernie’s Garage. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Cicero
I loved looking out from that nest. When the gutbags still weren’t hatched, I’d sit on those eggs and just have a gander. (Yeah, I know, gander—a bird or a look—sometimes the same thing—big and fat.) Leaves covered most of the view but for a gap you could see through, and it was like the whole world lay before you. Way out stood another mountain. Closer in, farms and fields and strings of trees along streams. Even closer, that long strip of concrete covered with trucks and cars and all the glorious roadkill they could offer.
The day before the storm, a barred owl got me and Loot riled. We were out foraging, as usual, and I saw that silent bastard first. From high above, I gave the warning call. The gutbags hunkered down as low as they could. They probably even fell asleep. That owl tried to sneak closer, flying from one tree to the next. By the time I came diving down at the big-eyed rat, Loot was right on him, too. By god of all runts and riffraff if that owl didn’t lose a feather before he got away.
One of the gutbags—Cleo, probably—stood higher in the nest to watch, just wanting to have a look, but I gave the warning call again. That owl was not our only problem. This man in a red hat stood right below the nest. Where the hell did he come from? He kept searching the cliff, and I could tell he wanted to have a look. Loot and I both stayed close. Neither of us had ever attacked a human, but I thought about it right then.
That man spoke to us. He said something in an easy voice, something I didn’t understand but for the tone—calm and excited at the same time. And all of a sudden, I understood words—not the specifics, but the idea of them. How they’re magical little vessels, letters strung together like rafts on the river of a sentence, the ocean of a story. The view from that nest suddenly seemed smaller, the world at once larger. All I wanted to do was listen.
Of course, it was Will. That flat-faced owl had led him right to our nest. Lucky for me, I guess.
9
Ada wanted to take her time with breakfast. Her mother sat at the table, her hands still in bandages, but her face wearing a smile. And her father was in better spirits, too. Nathan had called last night at nearly midnight, startling everyone awake. He’d arrived safely in Germany, he said, the call staticky and short. Ada went back to bed holding onto her father’s last words: “Well, you take care, son, and know we all love you.”
“At least he’s in Germany and not Korea,” her mother repeated. As on all mornings, they read the paper. And every evening after supper, they listened to the radio. They knew the intense battles, the mass of Chinamen coming down from the north. Or at least they knew as much as the reporters told them. Their imaginations did the rest.
Ada lifted the bacon and flinched as grease sizzled and spatters burned her arm. She checked the biscuits and started cracking eggs. At the table, her mother pretended to read the morning paper. Ada knew she watched, but Ada held her tongue. Her mother would just say, “But I like watching you work, Ada.” Besides, this was her first breakfast at the table since the fire. Her father had helped her with the chair, her mother complaining, “It’s just my hands, Peter, not my feet.” It was good to see her at her seat.
They talked about the storm that swept through in the night. Her father rubbed his mustache and said he saw a hickory blown down in the meadow. “And another tree, an oak, I think, back of the orchard, looks like it got struck.” Ada didn’t say how little she’d slept because of the lightning.
She set