The Hole in the Wall - Lisa Rowe Fraustino [37]
“Claire!”
“Craig?”—and then she said with her eyes, Don’t you dare raise your voice to me in front of a visitor. When he blew his stack at her, she always made him take the argument behind closed doors or else made us kids go outside.
I’d rather be out at the Hole in the Wall, anyway. I started to stand up, but Ma stuck out her arm and held me down in my seat.
“There’s nothing wrong with raising your voice when you’re good and mad!” Pa yelled. “This man is laying cash money on the table, and you’re treating him like a criminal!” Then he took a quick look at the man. Boots Odum was frowning—just a little—but definitely frowning.
When Pa continued he wasn’t loud, but with his face so stiff and his words so pointed, you knew it had to be paining him to keep the anger down. “Listen here, Claire. Be reasonable. We can trust Stan. Him and I go way back. You know that.”
Ma tipped her head toward the stripped gore. “Back there?” she scoffed. “Nothing there to go way back to. It’s as bad to rape the land as it is to do it to a person. And you know what else? The son-of-a-gun killed our chickens!”
Barbie dropped a roll of toilet paper as she was putting away bathroom stuff. We uh-oh looked at each other.
I swallowed hard. “Gee, Ma, what makes you think that?”
“Well, if he didn’t kill the chickens, he might as well have. After I dropped you kids off skating I came back here to get one. Thought I’d take it to the vet. Couldn’t find a single chicken—which I’m sure you two know very well and were afraid to tell me this morning.” Ma pointed the finger of shame at us. “Dead or alive, it’s pretty obvious what happened. Someone who doesn’t want us to know what’s wrong with them absconded with those hens!” She gave Boots Odum a full-on glare.
Boots Odum was literally taken aback—his chair almost fell over. The guy was shocked at the accusation, and I knew why, but I didn’t dare tell Ma what had become of her birds. Not in front of Odum. Or Pa. I was still figuring on breaking the news to her gently. Eventually. After I followed through on an idea I had involving the glasses I’d borrowed.
Barbie opened her mouth but no words came out.
Boots Odum rebalanced himself and took a couple of deep breaths before he spoke. “Claire, those are very strong words.” He used one of his bionic fingers to scratch his head in confusion. “I honestly have no idea whatsoever where your poultry have flown off to. And I assure you that I do not break laws; therefore, it would be useless for anyone to sue me. But I hear you, and I want you to know that ORC will be restoring the gore to a pristine public park when our mining interests are through. I mean it. Trust me, it’ll be nicer than it ever was. There’ll even be a lake.”
“Hear that?” snapped Pa. “There’ll even be a lake! You always wanted to live on the water, sweetheart.”
“We already do,” I muttered, rolling my eyes toward the cellar.
“A fat lot of good that lake’ll do us if we sell out, Craig,” Ma snapped back at him. Then she turned to Boots Odum. “Look, Stan, I believe you have grand plans and good intentions the way you see it. But the way I see it, there’s no way you can succeed. Once you tear the world apart, you can’t put it right. What you patch back together will be a different world entirely, with ugly spots and weak seams.” She glanced at Pa then, with a look that made me wonder which one of them she was really talking to.
“Claire, you’re not making any sense,” Pa said. “Stan’s talking straight business, not namby-pamby. You’re just being stupid. We won’t need your diddly buck fifty for eggs if we take Stan’s offer.”
“Stupid,” Ma echoed in a hurt version of his sneering voice. “Diddly.”
“Stupididdly,” Pa repeated, his face arrogant. Ma looked crushed. I was stunned at the line he had crossed, insulting Ma like she was the same to him as Jed’s Stupid Cat. And in front of us. How could he?
Ma looked out the window and blinked a few times, then said softly, “Stan, I know this place is just a hole in the wall. Some would say it ain’t worth nothing. But to me it