Bent Road - Lori Roy [60]
“You could have told me. I’m not a baby.”
“No, honey,” Celia says, reaching for Evie with one hand and for Ruth with the other. “We never thought you were a baby.”
“Everyone thinks I’m too little.”
“No, Evie,” Elaine says, one arm still wrapped around Jonathon.
“No one thinks that, squirt,” Jonathon says.
“I’m not a squirt either.” Evie takes two more steps away. She is almost out of the kitchen. “I’m not too little. You could have told me she was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Dead like Julianne Robison.” Two more steps and Evie stands where the living room meets the kitchen. “I don’t even care. I don’t even care about either one of them,” and she runs across the wooden floors, into her bedroom, and slams the door.
Standing just inside the back porch and holding a box of Christmas ornaments, Daniel sees his reflection in the gun cabinet. Behind the glass, his .22-caliber rifle hangs next to Dad’s shotgun. After Evie’s door slams shut, he sets the box on the ground and bends to pull off his boots. Mama bought them at the St. Anthony’s yard sale two weeks after they moved to Kansas. She said they were a good deal and would be plenty big enough to last a good long time. Now, a short five months later, Daniel’s feet ache because the boots are too small. Small boots make crooked toes, God damned crooked toes that don’t have room enough to grow. He sighs, thinking crooked toes are one more terrible thing about Kansas.
Dad and Mama never told Daniel that Aunt Eve was dead, just like they never told Evie. He never thought much about her, but if someone had asked, he would have said Aunt Eve moved away and was living somewhere else, probably with a husband and children of her own. Two probably, or maybe three. Had someone asked, he would have said Aunt Eve was like Mama. He would have said she wore aprons trimmed in white lace and had long blond hair. She probably smelled like Mama, too, and had soft, warm hands. But Aunt Eve is dead, and it makes Daniel feel the littlest bit like Mama is dead. Maybe that’s why Mama and Dad never told Daniel and Evie.
Ian and some of the kids at school said Aunt Eve was dead. They said Uncle Ray killed her twenty-five years ago and now he’s killed Julianne Robison—either he or Jack Mayer did it. One of them’s guilty for sure, that’s what the kids at school said. Daniel never believed them about Aunt Eve. Even though he never knew her, he didn’t like to think about someone killing her, but now he knows it’s true. Now he knows that his parents didn’t tell him about Aunt Eve because they think he’s a baby like Evie.
Still staring at the gun cabinet, Daniel wonders about the shotgun, wonders if it will be heavier than his .22. Maybe too heavy. Maybe too heavy for someone who doesn’t have many friends and everyone thinks is a baby. But Ian says he needs it for pheasant hunting. A rifle won’t work. Not even Daniel is a good enough shot to use a rifle. Ian has enough ammunition, but Daniel has to bring his own gun. The Bucher brothers say that if Daniel is really a good shot, he’ll handle a shotgun just fine. He will use the key on top of the cabinet, take the gun before Mr. Bucher picks him up next Saturday afternoon, and hide it in his sleeping bag. Dad always takes a nap on Saturday afternoons. Mama says the week wears him out and that Dad needs a little peace and quiet. He’ll take the gun while Dad is sleeping. Ian says the plan will work, that the sleeping bag will hide the shotgun. But Ian, who walked too slowly before he got his black boots, has never been pheasant hunting either and he’s never stolen a shotgun, so how does Ian know what will work and what won’t?
“Daniel,” Mama calls out from the kitchen. “Is that you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Come in here, sweetheart. We have something to tell you.”
Daniel hangs his coat on the hook closest to the gun cabinet. If he drapes it carefully, it almost covers enough of the cabinet to hide Dad’s shotgun. It’ll hide an empty spot, too. He will remember this for next weekend.
“Coming, Mama,” he says