My father was still adjusting the beer bottle. “Philip,” he cried, glancing up, “hello!”
“How’s it going?” The intruder stepped closer. He squinted at the swollen parts of Old Speckle Face and in a girlish way his hand went to his mouth. “Looks kind of intense in here,” he managed. Next he noticed us. “Hey, cousins.”
“Hey.” William had never said hey before in his life.
Amanda and I said nothing. Philip was a second or third cousin, a relation that was so dilute it hardly counted.
“We’re hoping to keep this lady from delivering prematurely,” my father explained. He took a large darning needle from Amanda, a thin shoestring looped through the eye, and proceeded to stitch a crisscrossing hold for the bottle across the thick walls of the naked pink slit. The poor mother opened her mouth, her square teeth like ours, grade-school-size, and made an otherworldly groan, her eyeballs flipped back into her head. William and I had to keep a firm hold on her.
“Whoa,” Philip said.
“There.” My father removed his rubber gloves but even so he said, “Consider your hand shaken.”
Philip laughed, a sputtery noise. He did not look like May Hill. His nose was without bumps and a modest size. Blond curls peeked from under his hat, and his thick golden lashes plus the particular blue of his eyes were not features he’d inherited from the Lombard side. He was stockier than his aunt, his shoulders were broad, his legs sturdy, his hands meaty, a person clearly graced with strength.
“This is Amanda, Sherwood’s daughter, and William here, and Mary Frances,” my father said.
“Cousins,” Philip reaffirmed. “Great to meet you.” Old Speckle Face was released from our hold but didn’t know what to do now that she had a bottle up there. She stood looking at the stranger. He said, “She going to be all right?”
“She does this every year,” my father replied.
Philip nodded. He started to talk about his hopes and dreams. “I’ve wanted to come to the farm for basically my whole life. My father’s told me stories about you people and this place and I’ve always been like, Why can’t we go visit Wisconsin? What’s so important in Seattle that we can’t take a trip to the family homestead?”
“It’s great you’re here,” my father said.
William and I looked at each other. In a matter of two minutes we already knew enough to think, No, it isn’t.
“Thanks!” Philip said to my father. “So, I wanted to let you know I’d love to help out—whatever assistance you need this week. My dad’s going off to a meeting in Chicago but I’ll be here. May Hill has some projects for me, too, which I’m psyched about, but honestly? If anything needs doing? I’m at your service.”
“Wonderful,” my father said.
May Hill had projects for him? He was at our service? William and I left the shed right away, muttering our good-byes. In the six minutes it took us to trek through the orchard, to get to the road and cross to Velta, my initial impression had undergone an evolution. I didn’t just dislike him. I said, “I hate him.”
“As much as the Muellenbach boys?” The Muellenbachs were Dolly’s barbarian nephews.
“More,” I said. “I hate him more.”
William nodded, as if I’d given the correct answer.
The spring vacation dragged on. It was the end of March and hardly warm and there was very little to do in the damp outdoors. Adam and William were building a computer from components they’d found somewhere or other. Amanda wanted to do nothing but play chess. The Kraselniks had gone away to the Bahamas, no point in climbing the tree to watch for signs of my teacher. Despite the cool temperatures we were already calling the season spring because my father had sprayed the oil application on the dormant orchard. For us true spring arrived when we first heard the sprayer revving up before dawn, Sherwood or my father on the tractor. It was important to properly aim the sprayer nozzles, the heady brew in the great tank, to shoot the insecticides and fungicides into the trees when the air was as still as possible, thus the early hour.