“Sure I do. What’s not to like?”
They walked down the hall together, Stewie slowing his steps to match his brother’s straining pace. Even though Theo didn’t stand up very straight when he walked, he still towered over Stewie.
“Sell all your eggs today?”
“Nah. I had to bring three cartons home.”
“They’ll be just as good tomorrow.”
“Not just as good.”
“Good enough, though.”
“I guess.”
The truth was, they would be plenty good enough for everybody but Stewie, and they both knew it.
It was a little after five in the morning, and still pitch-dark. Stewie walked from nesting box to nesting box, feeling his way. There was no electricity in the henhouse.
He had been cooing to the hens from the moment he arrived at the door. That way they would know it was him.
“It’s only Stewie,” he sang, making up different sets of notes as he went along. “Not a fox. Not a coyote. Not a mean stray dog. Only your friend Stewie.”
He spoke to each hen by name, though he knew it was possible to get their names wrong in the dark. They tended to go for the same nesting box day after day, but it was not an absolute. Then again, he wasn’t sure they knew their names anyway. Mostly he figured they just liked it when you cooed and sang to them.
“Thank you, Bessie,” he said when the tip of his fingers touched her egg, the back of his hand against the warmth of her feathery underside. “You did a good job today.”
He wrapped his hand around the egg and gently slid it out from under her, placing it in the basket that hung over his left arm. It was growing heavy from all the eggs. It was a good morning for eggs.
That made Stewie furrow his brow, because he still had those three dozen left from the previous day. He would have to offer the day-old eggs at a discount. If that wasn’t enough to move every carton, he would have to give them away. He would always have preferred to give them away over wasting them. They were something like a gift from the hens, something useful and good they gave in return for their feed and their safety from the outside world at night, and that wasn’t a thing to be taken lightly.
“Thank you, Clara,” he cooed. “You did a good job today.”
“Thank you, Weezy. Let’s see. Am I missing anybody?”
He would check again before he went out on his door-to-door rounds that afternoon, because in the light he would catch any he had missed. But first, a three-egg breakfast. And then school.
Stewie and Theo walked to the school bus stop together, as they did every weekday morning, Stewie slowing his pace to match his brother’s stride. Now and then he glanced behind them, and side to side, to see if any of the other local kids were close by. Stewie always looked around for trouble, figuring it was best to be prepared. Theo always looked straight ahead, seeming to choose the focused approach.
Stewie heard a bark of laughter, and swiveled his head around.
Mark McMaster, Paul Sweet, and Jason Regalus had fallen in a few yards behind them. Jason was doing an exaggerated imitation of Theo’s challenged stride.
“I’m a spaz,” Jason squeaked in a high, girlish voice, his arms flailing like windmills, his steps drunken looking and awkward.
His friends laughed more enthusiastically.
Stewie felt his shoulders stiffen and rise up around his ears. His face felt hot, and he figured it was beet red. He spun around to confront them, but in the process his brother was able to catch his eye. Theo shook his head at Stewie, gravely, but almost imperceptibly.
Stewie faced forward again and marched along with his neck bent forward and his head down. But it was beginning to eat at his belly now. It flashed through his head that if this were a cartoon, he would have a dark cloud over his head, and maybe steam coming out of his ears.
“How does this look?” Jason asked his friends, imitating—exaggerating—Theo’s inexact, slurred way of speaking.
Stewie could not stop himself from looking over his shoulder. Jason was combining his impression of a spastic person with an unrealistically effeminate one. Stewie looked forward again, his ears burning.
“Hell, you still look better than Theo,” Paul Sweet said.
Stewie spun again to face them.
“Don’t,” Theo said, his voice calm. “Just let it go. If I can let it go, so can you.”
“I’m sorry, Theo,” Stewie said. “I just have to.”
He launched himself at Jason, seeming to fly through the air. Or, anyway, that’s how it felt to him. When he hit his target, he knocked Jason off his feet and landed on top of him, raining blows around his head and neck. Jason was more Theo’s age, fourteen or fifteen, so older and bigger. But Stewie had the advantage of surprise and sheer determination.
For a moment, Jason seemed unable to overcome those advantages. All he could seem to do was cover his head with both arms.
Then Stewie felt himself pulled away by the back of his shirt. The grasping hand pulled him to his feet, and roughly backward. The goal seemed to be to throw Stewie over onto his back on the sidewalk, but Stewie kept his balance and resisted falling.
A moment later Jason Regalus filled his line of vision. Filled up his world. And then the world was nothing but a fist racing in Stewie’s direction. It hit him hard on the bone at the outside of his left eye socket, and sent him flying. He landed roughly on his back on the sidewalk, hitting his head.
He looked up at the flickering of sunlight between the tree leaves, trying to get his bearings. Trying to pull himself back together. A second or two later that pastoral scene was replaced by Jason’s huge, sneering face.
“Loser,” the face said. “Freak.”
Then Jason stepped over him and the three boys walked on, talking and laughing.
Stewie squeezed his eyes closed and left them that way for a few seconds. When he opened them, he saw the familiar and welcome face of his brother leaning over him. Peering at him close up.
“You okay?”
“Sure.”
“Why do you do it, Stewie? Why do you even bother with them? They’re not worth it.”
“I can’t help it,” Stewie said, gingerly touching the tender area near his eye. “Some things just won’t let you not do them.”
Chapter Two
That Egg Child
Marilyn
Marilyn was working on a jigsaw puzzle at the dining room table when she heard the doorbell ring. It briefly startled her, and made her think of trouble. But then she decided it was probably just someone to see the little girl. Lots of kids came by wanting to play with the girl.
Marilyn did not get up to get it. She let Sylvia answer the door. After all, it wasn’t even her house.
The puzzle was a tableau of seventeen kittens in different patterns and colors. Marilyn was not especially fond of kittens, but it had been the only 1,000-piece puzzle the gift and drugstore had had left in stock. And besides, the price had been reduced. Marilyn had been counting that little stash of stolen money every day, and it wasn’t getting any bigger.
She heard Sylvia, from the front door, say, “What the Sam Hill happened to you?”
She still did not get up. She was working on the outside border of the puzzle, and her eye had just landed on a corner piece. She placed her middle finger on it so she couldn’t lose it again.
Sylvia stepped into the room.
“Someone here to see you,” she said.
Her words hit Marilyn like a club to her belly. Like a truck crashing through her world. She had always known that sooner or later they would find her. That there would be a knock on the door and it would be for her.
And that would be the end of her freedom.
“Who?” she said, her voice trembling. Not moving a muscle.
“It’s that egg child,” Sylvia said.
The news filled Marilyn with a rush of anger. She had just had a good scare, and it was all that little boy’s fault.
“Now what’s he doing here? I told him to come back in a week, not a day.”
“Tell him,” Sylvia said. “Don’t tell me.”