Dreaming of Flight
Catherine Ryan Hyde
Part One
Late Spring, Early Summer
Chapter One
Like the Mouse
Stewie
Stewie rolled his shoulders and pulled the collar of his shirt away from his sweaty neck. It bothered him when it clung there.
He had never gone down to that last house before, because he hadn’t needed to. He had always sold out his wagon full of eggs without needing to walk so far.
There was a good quarter of a mile gap along the banks of the lake—an undeveloped spot with no houses. It was after six but still quite hot in an unseasonably summerlike spring. Four of his regular customers had not been home, or had not answered their doors.
If his sister, Stacey, had been there, she would have encouraged him to pack it up. She would have told him to put the leftover cartons in their fridge and try again the following day. But they wouldn’t be as fresh the next day. Stewie prided himself on the freshness of his eggs. It was what set them apart—what made them more than worth what he charged for them. Maybe his customers didn’t notice the difference. Maybe they didn’t care. But Stewie cared. In fact, he was unable to stop caring.
He sighed slightly and trudged off in the direction of the last house.
It was located at the narrowest part of the lake. The shallows. The view from the deck was more mud and less water. The gray two-story house looked to be in poor repair and needed a good coat of paint, but it was clear that someone lived there. Stewie could see lights on in the windows.
It didn’t seem feasible to haul his little red Radio Flyer wagon up the concrete steps, so he left it at their base. He carried with him one carton of eggs, cradled in his arms like a baby or something else of great value.
He rapped on the door.
Immediately he heard a shuffling of feet, and the door swung wide. In the open doorway stood a woman a little older than Stewie’s much older sister. She had dirty-blonde hair, and looked tired. Her face gave Stewie the impression that all of life was simply too much for her. Hiding behind her legs was a shy little girl of about five or six.
“Fresh eggs, ma’am?”
“I don’t need any eggs,” she said, as if it was a thing he shouldn’t have required her to say. “I get my eggs at the market like everybody else.”
“Oh, but these are much better than what you get at the market. They’re fresh. I gathered them myself just this morning. That’s a big part of what makes them better. The ones at the market, if you knew how old they were, why, you’d never want to buy them again.”
“It doesn’t matter how good yours are,” she said, swiping a stray lock of hair off her sweaty forehead as if in frustration. “What matters is that I already bought the ones I have, and so I don’t need any more.”
Stewie opened his mouth to thank her anyway, but he never got the chance.
A big voice bellowed out from the living room behind the woman and child. An older woman’s voice.
“I might want some eggs,” the voice said. “Did you ever stop to think about that?”
Stewie looked past the woman and girl, but saw no one.
Then the two people in front of him retreated, and an older woman filled the open doorway—filled his field of view. For a moment, Stewie got a little tingle of recognition down his spine, as though he were seeing a familiar person. But in the very back of his mind he knew which familiar person he felt he might be seeing, and it was someone it would have been plainly impossible for Stewie to see.
She was a small woman, and stooped. She had that curved upper spine his grandmother had used to have. Something about the size and shape of her struck him as deeply familiar. But then he looked closely at her face, and it was not his grandmother. Of course it wasn’t. His grandmother had died.
Stewie didn’t figure he understood death particularly well. In his eleven years of life—or more accurately, during the parts of it when he had been old enough to process and remember such things—death had never come near him or touched down close to him until the day Gam left the world. Still, he wasn’t a baby, and he knew enough to know that after someone dies, you don’t see them again. Not ever. They don’t just open a door on the other side of the lake.
Anyway, she didn’t look all that much like Gam. Her features had more of a pinched appearance, and her gray hair was cropped short.
But that profile. That silhouette.
And she was a grandmother. Not his, but still . . .
“Fresh eggs, ma’am?”
“How do I know they’re fresh?”
“Oh, you can ask anybody, ma’am. I got happy customers all over town.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. It struck him that she seemed not to like him, which was odd. They’d only just met, and he hadn’t done anything especially controversial.
“Well, I’m not going to walk all over town asking everybody, now am I?”
“I just gathered these myself this morning. Slipped a hand right under the hens and pulled them out, and they were still warm.” He gently undid the lid of the carton and extracted one big, brown-shelled treasure. Held it up for her to see. “I don’t mind giving out a free sample,” he said.
“I don’t know that it’s necessary. I guess I can buy a dozen. You can come back next week and I’ll let you know what I think. If you were right, I’ll say so and buy some more. If you were wrong, I’ll tell you to your face. How much are they?”
“Four dollars a dozen, ma’am.”
He watched her eyes fly open wide.
“Four dollars? That’s a bit steep, don’t you think? They’re only two dollars a dozen at the market. Three if you get the fancy ones that’re supposed to be from happier chickens.”
“But these are much better eggs, though.”
“Because they’re fresh.” It was not a question. She seemed to say it a bit derisively, as though making fun of him for saying it so many times.
“Not only because of that, though. I give the hens better feed, and that makes a big difference. Those giant egg factories, they just feed any old thing. The cheapest thing possible. And you can see the difference. See it with your own eyes. The yolks on those market eggs are all pale and sickly. Barely even yellow. Like when your blood is . . . what do you call it again when your blood is iron poor?”
“Anemic?”
“Yeah. That. You crack open one of these eggs and the yolks are bright orange. Bright. And it’s not just all about looks, either. That shows they’re more nutritious. And also, you said it like it’s a joke, but it’s no joke. Happier hens really do lay better eggs. When they’re all stressed out, it hurts everything. All their body functions.”
“Yeah, maybe. But four dollars.”
He held his sample high. His fingers were a little dirty, and he felt self-conscious about that. He hoped all her attention was going to the beautiful egg.
“You could take the sample,” he said.
“No. That’s okay. I’ll try a carton. One week, like I said. Let me get my purse.” She turned as if to walk away, then stopped. She peered at him over her shoulder. “Oh, but they’re not fertilized, are they? I hate fertilized eggs. That nasty little spot of . . . well, anyway, it’s disgusting.”
“No, ma’am. They’re not fertilized.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
“Oh, I’m very sure.”
“How can you be that sure?”
“Because we don’t have any roosters, ma’am. Not a one. My sister works nights at the county hospital. She’s doing her internship as a nurse, and she can’t abide any roosters at the crack of dawn. And when you don’t have any roosters, then no eggs ever hatch, and so you never get any roosters. It’s a foolproof way to do a thing like that.”
She shook her head slightly, but then she went ahead and walked off to get her purse.