“I think so,” I say, when it becomes obvious that Jonathan isn’t going to field this one.
Many of the seed husks are still attached to the new sprouts, and Cal carefully lifts one off a green bud. “Those labels might have gotten mixed up,” he tells me, holding out the shell in the palm of his hand. It’s light brown and speckled like a cardinal’s egg.
I shrug. “I’ll let her know.”
“Does Rebecca use chemicals?” Cal asks. He pushes himself up, brushing his hands on his jeans and leaving behind dark smears.
I’m not sure how to answer this question to his satisfaction, but I don’t have to consider my options for long. As I watch, a fast line of red snakes out of Cal’s left nostril and begins to slip off his upper lip. The first drop lands in a splotch on his T-shirt, a crimson oval that looks almost exactly like a bullet wound. I can’t quite register what I’m seeing, but Jonathan leaps forward.
“Cal! You’re bleeding!” Jonathan reaches him in a second, but there’s nothing he can do. He fumbles in his pockets for a tissue, for something, anything, but comes up empty-handed except for a bit of loose change and a crumpled gum wrapper.
By now, Cal’s nose is bleeding freely, his T-shirt a ruin of red and his mouth slick and gory. I’ve had bloody noses before, but this is shocking. The thought flashes through my mind that he’s dying before our eyes, of an aneurism or some horrific and unnamed disease. But Cal is unfazed.
“It’s nothing,” he says, tilting back his head and trying to stop the flow by pinching the bridge of his nose. I can tell that this won’t help at all.
“Here.” I grab the towel I was kneeling on and thrust it at him. It’s ragged at the edges and peppered with dust and splinters, but Cal grabs it and presses it blindly to his face.
“Thank you,” he mumbles from behind the dirty cloth. And then, again, “Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.” I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed about the nosebleed or if there’s something about the Baker farm and his business here that’s bothering him. Either way, I can’t take another apology.
“What can I do to help?” Jonathan has moved to stand beside Cal, one hand hovering behind his back. His eyebrows are knit together, his shoulders bent and miserable.
“Nothing, nothing,” comes the muffled reply. “I’ll be just fine.”
But the dark stain on the towel seems to grow by the second, the fabric turning soggy and heavy with Cal’s blood.
“I think we need to go to the ER,” Jonathan says. He curls one arm around Cal and starts leading him in the direction of the driveway and his truck. Jonathan is just a little taller than Cal, and more than a little broader, and the older man allows himself to be led away. Cal is all leathery skin and tight, ropy muscle, but he looks like a child in Jonathan’s half embrace, the salt-and-pepper tuft of his hair bobbing as they make uneven progress across the grass.
I jog to catch up. “I’m coming,” I say without thinking, because what can I possibly do?
“No,” Jonathan says at the same moment that Cal murmurs something from behind the towel. It’s muffled, but the message is clear: I’m not welcome. “Call Beth.”
And then Cal is buckled in the passenger side of Jonathan’s beat-up old truck, his head thrown back against the headrest and hands pressed to the towel against his face, sticky with drying blood. Jonathan slams the door and hurries around the front of the truck. I catch him before he can swing open the driver’s-side door.
“What’s going on?”
“Cal has a bloody nose.”
“Save it,” I hiss. “There’s more to it than that and you know it.”
“Not now, June.” Jonathan shrugs off my hand and yanks open the door, forcing me to hop back or risk breaking my nose on rusted steel.
The truck roars to life and Jonathan throws it in reverse, spitting gravel and making me spin away from the dusty cloud. When they’re gone, I’m left coughing into the crook of my elbow. There’s a narrow scrape of blood along my forearm and I have no idea how it got there.
* * *
Jonathan texts me Beth’s number and one word: clinic. So he’s taken Cal to the small Jericho medical clinic and emergency room instead of to the nearest hospital in Munroe. I don’t blame him—it’s a forty-five-minute drive to the hospital, and it certainly seemed like it was just a bloody nose. An aggressive, almost violent bloody nose, but a minor medical event all the same. Still, when I call Beth to tell her what happened, she hangs up after only a few moments without saying goodbye.
I’m left feeling jittery and shaken, but I know that if I go inside for a glass of lemonade or a cool break in the air-conditioning, I won’t have it in me to come back out. Law doesn’t like unfinished tasks, and I’m not about to explain to him what happened this morning, so I head back to the garden to finish up.
The mulch where Cal was standing is splattered with blood. I know that it will be black soon, an earthy, unrecognizable stain in the garden, but I kick the wood chips over it all the same. Then I scratch the blood from my arm with a fingernail, wondering for half a second if I should worry about getting sick from whatever made Cal bleed. But it’s such a tiny amount, and I’m healthy as a horse. I push all thoughts of illness from my mind and try to focus on the task at hand.
By the time Law and Reb pull down the long driveway, I’ve wrapped up the last bit. I can feel that my cheeks are flushed, and my forearms are sprinkled with dirt that stands out against my pale freckles. I hope I look normal. Tired and dirty and normal. Not like my mind is racing and my heart pinched by the fact that I haven’t heard a single word from Jonathan, good or bad.
“Nice job!” Mom calls, shielding her eyes with her hand as she steps out of the car. She can’t possibly see what I’ve done from where she’s standing, but it doesn’t matter.
I wave back. “Thanks!”
“Where’s Jonathan?” Law squints at me.
“He left a little bit ago.” I jog across the lawn to take the brown paper bag my mom offers, and shift it to one arm so I have room for another. She loads me up again and we fall in step on our way to the house. Law’s hands are free, so he lengthens his stride and swings open the door for us.
“What do you mean, he left?”
“It’s no big deal. We were almost done anyway.” The air-conditioning hits me like a splash of cool water. I set my bags on the kitchen table and lean against the counter to drink it in.
“But where did he go?”
I’ve turned this conversation over and over in my mind. I knew Law would ask and I knew I would have to come up with an acceptable answer. But lying is tricky, so I decide to keep it simple and true. “Cal and Beth needed help with something.”
He’s obviously frustrated, but to his credit, Law doesn’t say anything. In fact, he reaches into one of the bags and starts unloading groceries.