Dog Gone (5 page)

“Never mind me. What's the latest with that new store?”

Also known as the threat that's been at Lyon's back for a year and a half. Before life got serious around here, Mom and Lyon would talk about this new store for hours, working out ways to keep customers coming to MacGregor's.

Lyon wipes his hand over his eyes and bites down hard on the toothpick. “It opens next week. A huge warehouse of everything a farmer could ever need. All computerized and high-tech. Don't know how my little store will compete.”

“Horse wings and hoof feathers.” G.D. sweeps his bony hand as if brushing away Lyon's concern. “No one in his right mind would give up doing business with you. You're honest and hardworking. You understand farm life and the needs of farmers.”

“Thanks, Pop. Now forget about my problems and tell me how your legs are today.”

“They're still attached to my body. That's all you need to know,” G.D. snaps.

Lyon glances at me, his dark eyes questioning. Much as I want to explain G.D.'s sour mood, I sure can't say anything about Dead End being gone. “His legs have been bothering him,” I point out instead.

“Don't be troubling your pop about my legs, girl.” G.D. wags a bony finger at me. “Go add those peppers and beans to the beef before it cooks into shoe leather.”

Lyon sighs. “Pop, I called Doc Kerring and told him about your weight loss and leg cramps. He wants to see you.”

“Send him a photo,” G.D. barks.

I cringe, hating how G.D. and Lyon fuss at each other, which they've been doing forever. Mom used to say that they were like male elk crashing their antlers together—all noise and nonsense.

“You need to see a doctor, Pop,” Lyon says.

I flinch, waiting for the next crash.

“I need a doctor like I need a hole drilled in my head.” Straining, those creases at his eyes and mouth pinching, G.D. pushes himself up from the chair. “Dill's chili will need a kick. I got hot pepper sauce from Mexico in my trunk.”

“I'll get it.” Lyon, as big as a bear, the way G.D. used to be, stomps past me in only two strides. “I made you an appointment to see Doc Kerring, Pop.”

G.D. leans on the chair as he gets his cane under him. “I can get the pepper sauce. Go cancel that doctor appointment before I give
you
a kick. Then sit down and relax, boy. Have some of Dill's chili.”

G.D.'s cane taps along the short hallway from the kitchen to the back room that he's been calling his for the last nine months, since he came to live with us. According to Lyon, soon after he married Mom, G.D. became a second father to her. And that's why he was pretty much the only person she'd let take care of her when the treatments made her weak.

Now, Lyon sighs and drops with a thump into his usual chair at the kitchen table, the one across from Mom's chair, which no one sits in these days. He adjusts the toothpick. “That man's more stubborn than a pack of mules.”

“Guess that's where you get it from.” I force a smile, hoping this will lighten him up.

He tries to grin at my little jab, an echo of how we used to be, always tossing teasing and grins back and forth, but now his mouth only wobbles before going flat. He just doesn't have any play in him anymore.

“He seems real down tonight, doesn't he?” Lyon looks at me then, his eyes full of the familiar bloodshot sadness. “He needs to see Doc Kerring.”

I pick up a knife, start chopping more peppers. “You sticking around, having dinner with us, would be the best medicine.” I never speak to Lyon like this, but he's sparked that anger deep down inside me again by talking about the doctor. Not that I have anything against Doc Kerring. He delivered me, treated all my ear infections, and stitched me up more times than anyone could count (I fell out of trees a lot before Lyon introduced me to horses). But doctors mean trouble. Lyon should know this.

He focuses on his boots, kneads his forehead. “I know it's tough seeing G.D. sick.”

“He's not sick!” The words shoot out of my mouth, sharper than I mean them to be. I throw the peppers into the pan, stir them so hard that pieces of beef fly out, land in
splats
onto the counter.

“Dill, Doc Kerring needs to get a look at G.D.” Lyon pauses. “You might as well know that he may want G.D. to go to the hospital for some tests.”

I glare at Lyon over my shoulder. He knows that even the thought of a hospital and tests scrapes the insides of my ears, sours my stomach. “No.” My voice busts out loud and startling. I turn back to the chili, grabbing a can of beans and the electric can opener. “He's not going to any hospital,” I remind him, my throat tight, restrained. “He promised me that he wouldn't.”

“Dill…”

The grind of the can opener chews up Lyon's words.

When it finally stops, he clears his throat, sounding impatient. “Dill, I know it's been a rough year, especially the last nine months, but you have to deal with…”

My hands slam the can to the counter. The thud is startling. My heart is galloping. Beneath it, sadness escapes the jar deep in my core. The ache swells up and wraps around my insides until my breathing becomes short and ragged.

“Dill, you can't spend the rest of your life avoiding certain words. You can't keep avoiding visiting her grave.”

“STOP!” My scream about shakes the ranch as my fingers torpedo into my ears. A tidal wave of a sob wells up into my chest.

My legs take me out of the kitchen, through the family room and back doorway. I fly across the yard, wishing with everything I have that Dead End has come home.

CHAPTER 4

NEIGHBORS
AND FARMERS

The sweet smell of flour, milk, and eggs near knocks me flat as I step into the kitchen. It's the first time in a long while that I've smelled breakfast when I haven't cooked it. G.D. has never gone near ovens. And Lyon hasn't opened a carton of pancake batter in months. Up until now, I figured he'd forgotten how to use a pan, and wouldn't recognize a spatula if it slapped him between the eyes. But delicious smells don't lie.

“Morning, girl.” G.D. leans on a counter, winks at me.

I smile at him as the breakfast smells take me back to special times when Mom, Lyon, and I began each day together around the kitchen table, G.D. joining us whenever he visited. Mom used to say how she loved starting her day watching Lyon and G.D. smile and listen to me chatter like a mockingbird gone amuck while we all inhaled her amazing blueberry, banana, or chocolate chip muffins—made from scratch, when Lyon didn't pour pancakes.

When Lyon went to work and I went to school, or off to ride at the stable, G.D. and Mom would sit longer, drinking coffee and talk, talk, talking for hours, especially after Mom got sick and found it hard to get up the energy to garden, clean the ranch, and take care of her animals.

Even now I still catch myself half-expecting to see her by the stove, her long hair piled on top of her head, the way she wore it while cooking.

“Hope you're hungry.” G.D. straightens. “Lyon made a mountain of pancakes before he left for the store this morning.”

“From the batter that comes in a carton, I bet.” Lyon doesn't know how to make anything but pancakes from a container. Mom tried to teach him how to cook more, until he near burned the house down. After that, she didn't let him near our oven, something I used to be able to tease him about.

That's why, for the last six months, I've been the muffin baker. Mom fussed some about this, the way she did whenever I cooked or cleaned too much, saying I needed to be a kid while I could be. But she enjoyed those muffins. I could tell by the way she closed her eyes and slid into a smile as she chewed them.

I go to the counter near the stove, pull the coffee and sugar canisters out from the cupboard, and slide them back in line with the flour and tea canisters, the way they're supposed to be—have been for as far back as I can remember. As I do this, I catch G.D. watching me, so I toss him a shrug. “Lyon has been moving everything,” I explain. Everything that was a part of Mom's world. “He just can't leave things the way they should be.” The way she'd had them.

I pull out Mom's dark green, metal recipe box from where Lyon keeps stuffing it behind the coffee machine. My pointer finger traces the loopy script that spells out
From the kitchen of Summer Stone MacGregor
. Knowing she wrote these words on the yellowed, grease-stained index card taped to the top of the box makes the thing precious. The recipes inside it bring her back: her famous Christmas berry cookies, her secret barbecue sauce, the chocolate cake that she'd only make on birthdays. That card even has her chocolate thumbprint on it—a bittersweet fossil.

G.D. squints at me. He does this a lot lately—studying me as if trying to peer inside my skull and read my feelings like print. “When are you planning on telling Lyon about Dead End?”

When I don't answer, he shakes his head real slow. “I heard you lie to your pop about Cub taking the dog for a walk, girl.” He stares at me long enough to make me squirm. “You can't avoid the truth simply because you're afraid of it.” G.D. lets out a big breath that sounds like worry. “Tell me, what'd you and your pop have a spat about?”

No way I'm going to share what Lyon said about the hospital.

“And don't tell me that you didn't quarrel, because when I came back into the kitchen with the hot sauce last night, I found Lyon trying to finish the chili.”

I wince. “That couldn't have been pretty.”

G.D. shakes his head again. “That boy was jumpier than a rabbit with fleas. But I didn't ask any questions. Not even when he stuck around, watching the back door, waiting for you. Figured time would tell me all I needed to know.” G.D. goes to the oven, pulls out the baking sheet that holds the pancakes. “These are a peace offering or my name is Dolley Madison.”

I start to braid my hair, as if I don't care about Lyon or his pancake offering.

“My Bets used to fuss with her hair, too, when trying to avoid something.”

G.D. knows darn well that being compared to the grandmother I've never known always makes me soft.

“You and your pop and even Dead End need to get close again, Dill.” G.D. uses a spatula to flip pancakes onto plates. “Take it from me: Trying to avoid the pain of what's happened won't do you a bit of good. Face your loss. Lean on each other. It's the only way to feel any better.” G.D. pauses, thinks for a moment. “Your pop's scared, girl. He hasn't figured out how to handle what life has thrown at him. Like you. I've walked in those boots. I know how it feels to lose…”

As I'm about to cut him off, keep him from saying anything that will fire up the hurt, someone knocks on the screen door in the family room, making it rattle.

“Anyone home?” Mr. Fred Barley's gravel voice comes through the screen much as it has been doing regularly for the last two years, ever since he bought the farm that pushes up against our driveway and the right side of our property.

Mom always welcomed Mr. Barley and his chatter. G.D. said that this was because she'd never really taken to the seclusion of country life in southern Virginia. And old Mr. Barley always brings information, local news, and gossip. Still, his visits weren't enough. Mom drove north, back to the Fairfax County suburb where she grew up, at least once a month to stay a day or two with Mrs. Sarah Doyle. Lyon never liked this, but in the end, G.D. convinced him that Mom belonged in Fairfax. Apparently, Mom had opened up to G.D. and shared how much she missed her hometown.

“Hey, Mr. Barley.” I step into the family room, ready to offer pancakes to this man who reminds me of a barrel in overalls.

“Hi there, young lady.” He pulls at the visor of his oil-stained baseball cap with the tractor logo on the front of it. Part of his usual greeting. “What've you been up to?”

Before I can offer up some bland answer that might give him what he wants, his expression narrows into a squint that adds lines to his already-wrinkled and tanned face. He leans into the screen. “You been to visit your poor mother's resting place yet?”

Stunned that he'd actually asked me the question that all our other nosy neighbors won't, I go stiff. Unable to speak, I move my mouth like some kind of fish out of water. But in my head, I scream
No pancakes for you, Mr. Fred Barley!

“Not attending the funeral, refusing to visit her grave. It's not right, young lady,” he says when I don't answer him. “You need to pay respect to such a fine woman.”

I don't remember asking for your opinion,
I don't say, biting my bottom lip now, using every bit of strength I have to keep the hot anger inside me from spewing out of my mouth. Why can't folks leave me be?
People can be like chickens pecking at each other,
Mom once said to me. I didn't know then how right she was.

Poor Lyon,
I can almost hear the neighbors pecking.
After losing his wife, his only child won't go to the cemetery. Terrible!
They don't know that Lyon brought this on himself. I told him not to take Mom to the hospital.

“Hello, Fred,” G.D. calls, working his way across the kitchen and into the family room.

Good-bye, Mr. Barley,
I think, itching to get away from this man, desperate to be at the stable. Being around the peaceful shufflings and shiftings of Crossfire and the other horses is the only way I can put the pecking and everything else aside, even if for only a little while.

“Came by to warn you folks,” Mr. Barley announces. Rumors of trouble spread like floodwater in our community.

He pulls at the visor of his dirt-smudged baseball cap, a mangy thing that he wears day and night, probably even sleeps in. “Got myself two young steer.” Mr. Barley puffs himself up, proud as a prizewinning rooster. “Wanted to warn you. Steer can be skittish.”