What Comes After Page 23

  Mrs. Tuten got out of the car and knelt down by Louie. She ignored Gnarly; I wondered if she didn’t like dogs, since they tended to lunge at her ferrets during their walks.

  “Is this him?” she said. “Is he all better?”

  “No,” I said. “This is his brother, Louie. Huey’s in the barn. He’s still sick.”

  Mr. Tuten lifted a wicker basket and a small cooler out of the backseat of their car.

  “We brought dinner,” Mrs. Tuten said. “It’s only leftovers, but it will have to do. Mr. Tuten, would you be kind enough to take everything inside the house?”

  Louie rubbed against Mrs. Tuten’s thigh, and she patted his head, which he likely didn’t even feel. I was pretty sure she’d never touched a goat before. Mr. Tuten headed for the back door with the basket and the cooler. Mrs. Tuten stood up, though she kept her hand on Louie’s head.

  “Now,” she said. “Let’s go see this sick goat of yours.”

  I had my sleeping bag, but Mrs. Tuten made Mr. Tuten drive back into town to get his summer hammock for me to use in the barn. I argued with them — or actually with her. I’d slept in the barn before; I didn’t mind; I just had to stay close to Huey. But Mrs. Tuten insisted.

  “There are mice in that barn,” she said. “I heard them. And I can only imagine what other sorts of vermin.”

  “You just heard the chickens,” I said, but Mrs. Tuten wouldn’t listen. Mr. Tuten drove off while we washed the dishes from dinner, which had been vegetable medley and pork chops again.

  When we finished, Mrs. Tuten put her hands on her hips and looked around, as if she’d been too busy to fully inspect Aunt Sue’s house until now. “It could certainly use a good cleaning.”

  Mrs. Tuten said she thought it best if she and Mr. Tuten spent the night, since I was going to be out in the barn with Huey. And they were the foster parents. I knew there was no use arguing with her about it, or about much of anything. I was still waiting for her to be angry. She probably was, but she seemed to be one of those people who turned helpful in a crisis. As long as the crisis lasted, I figured her anger would stay in check.

  Mr. Tuten helped me tie the hammock up in the barn. It had gotten colder, and a late-autumn wind whistled through cracks in the walls. I pulled on my hoodie and down jacket and a pair of insulated jeans I hadn’t worn since the winter before in Maine. Dad had had a pair just like them. Louie finally settled down and went to sleep with the other goats. Patsy lifted her head at any noise we made, just checking on things.

  Mr. Tuten had to get up early for work in the morning, so around eleven he went upstairs to sleep in my old room. Mrs. Tuten stayed up to help me give Huey his second dose of thiamine. She shivered the whole time — she only had a thin jacket on — so I promised her I would crawl into my sleeping bag in the hammock if she would go back inside the house and go to sleep on the sofa, which she did.

  I sat up with Huey for a long time after that, though. I turned off the overhead bulb so it wouldn’t disturb the animals, but I had a battery-powered lantern of Aunt Sue’s that I kept on so I could still see. I sang some songs to Huey that my dad used to sing to me. Not lullabies this time, but old songs like “Me and Bobby McGee,” and “Teach Your Children,” and this strange one by Neil Young called “After the Gold Rush,” part of which was about getting on silver spaceships and leaving Earth.

  Huey shifted in my lap — not much, more like stretching out, then relaxing. His neck wasn’t so stiff anymore, and his head wasn’t turned so hard and rigid toward his flank. Maybe it was a sign that the medicine was working. “Huey?” I whispered. “Can you hear me? Hey, little guy. Are you there?” He seemed to relax a little more in his sleep, or coma, or whatever it was, and I finally crawled into my sleeping bag in the hammock and fell asleep.

  Mrs. Tuten came back out to the barn what must have been hours later. The squeaky barn door woke me, but it took a few minutes to remember where I was — bound up in the hammock, with my sleeping bag so twisted around me that I thought I’d never be able to pull myself out. I’d left the lantern hanging on a nail, on a post next to Huey’s stall, and could see Mrs. Tuten in the dull light of it — wrapped in one of Aunt Sue’s blankets, sitting in the straw.

  “Mrs. Tuten?” I said, still trying to get free of my bag.

  “Oh, don’t get up, Iris,” she said, her voice low and husky, from either deep sleep or lack of sleep. I had a feeling that she might have insomnia a lot of nights, though I’d never actually seen her up late before. It was just the way she always seemed to be tired, sometimes staring off at nothing when she didn’t know anyone was around.

  She said, “I came out to check on things. Are you all right? I’m sorry to wake you up.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “You didn’t wake me up. It’s time to give Huey his next dose.” I squinted to look at Mr. Tuten’s watch, which he’d let me borrow. “In about an hour.”

  I finally made it out of my sleeping bag and tumbled onto the barn floor. Then I crawled over to Huey’s stall with Mrs. Tuten and sat in the straw next to Huey, who seemed to be snoring. I’d never heard a goat snore. It was kind of a muttering, spitting, whistling sound.

  “You really should go back to sleep, Iris,” Mrs. Tuten said. “You could go inside the house, where it’s warmer. I can wake you up when it’s time for the medicine.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Tuten,” I said. “I’d be too worried about him, anyway. I was hoping he’d be better by now.”

  “He will be soon,” Mrs. Tuten said. “I’m sure he will.”

  I didn’t say anything. I’d learned the hard way that things didn’t get better just because I wanted them to.

  I thought Mrs. Tuten had nodded off to sleep, wrapped in her blanket in Huey’s stall. But then she started talking.

  “My mother,” she said, “would have died to know I was sitting here in a barn like this.”

  “How come?”

  “Oh, she was very, very proper,” said Mrs. Tuten. “And she liked a neat house. I had to wear skirts or dresses at all times in public, and anytime I sat down on the floor, I was expected to fold my legs back to the side, like I’m doing now.” She stroked Huey’s neck. “And we did not have pets. We weren’t really around animals at all that I can remember.”

  “None?”

  “We did go to a petting zoo once. And there was a picture of me when I was three, sitting on a pony at a birthday party.” She stopped talking, but I could tell she wasn’t through.

  She unfolded her legs and pulled her knees up in front of her. She hugged them and clasped her hands together to hold on. “Mr. Tuten and I were determined that when we had our daughter, she would have lots of animals,” she said. “Dogs and cats and fish and hamsters. Whatever she wanted. We fenced in the backyard, but we never did have the animals. Except Hob and Jill, of course. But they came much later.”

  “Your daughter didn’t want pets?” I asked tentatively, a bad feeling in the bottom of my stomach. They had never mentioned any children. There were no pictures of a daughter in their house, or none that I’d seen.

  “Alice,” Mrs. Tuten said. “I always thought that was the prettiest name. I think it confused Aunt Nonny at Thanksgiving, seeing you there. She thought you were Alice, all grown up. I’m sorry about that.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. “Alice is a pretty name.”

  Mrs. Tuten nodded. “I know it’s an old-fashioned name — it was even then — but I did always like it.”

  “My mom and dad felt the same way about my name,” I said.

  Mrs. Tuten smiled. “I like your name. Very much,” she said. “Iris is my favorite flower.”

  “My dad said he liked it because Iris was the messenger of the gods,” I said. “She traveled between heaven and earth on a rainbow.” I wasn’t sure why I was telling her that. I stroked Huey’s neck the way Mrs. Tuten had been doing, first down, toward his shoulder, going with the direction of his hair, then back up so I felt the bristly ends. It reminded me of ru
nning my hand over the carpet in Mr. DiDio’s office.

  “We just liked the sound of Alice,” Mrs. Tuten said.

  “Where is she now?” I finally asked.

  Mrs. Tuten had that look I saw on her when she thought she was alone. “We only had her for a few days,” she said. “She was so tiny and so frail. She was in such a hurry to meet us that she came out too soon. They tried everything to stop her, to stop the early contractions. And then they tried everything to keep her alive. We got to hold her only once while she was alive, with gloves, in the incubator. She was as small as a kitten. As small and as light. She never made a sound. She was such a good baby.”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Tuten,” I said. She seemed far away, though we were just a few feet from each other in the stall, sitting on either side of Huey in the dry straw.

  “It’s all right, Iris,” she said. “It was a long time ago.”

  The lantern flickered, making shadows dance around the cold barn walls. The wind had died during the night, but I could still see my frosty breath, and Mrs. Tuten’s, and shallow puffs from Huey’s nostrils that came out in little chugging sounds, like a far-off train. Then Huey lifted his head. Just a little. He looked at me, or at least he opened his eyes in my direction. Then he settled back down.

  I checked Mr. Tuten’s watch again, even though only a few minutes had passed. Mrs. Tuten was shivering again. I wondered if it was from the cold or from thinking about Alice. I suggested we go ahead with the next dose, since we were close enough to the six-hour mark, so she held Huey while I got the dropper and the medicine.

  Huey opened his eyes again after I gave him his dose, and this time he kept them open. He sort of shrugged, and then he stood up. He wobbled, but he stayed standing for a couple of minutes. Mrs. Tuten was beaming. I thought she might even start clapping. I hugged Huey gently — laid my cheek against his side and my arm softly over his back. I was so happy, I couldn’t speak.

  He pulled away from me after a few minutes and took a few steps around the stall, but before long he settled back down and nodded off to sleep again.

  After I laid the blanket over him, I realized Mrs. Tuten was silently crying. “It’s all right, Mrs. Tuten. I think he’s going to be all right. It probably just tired him out getting up for a little bit.”

  “I know, Iris,” Mrs. Tuten said, wiping away her tears. “It’s just the happiest thing.”

  Louie woke up and came over to Huey’s stall, about as casually and sleepily as if he’d just gotten up to go to the bathroom, then he lay down next to his brother. I stood and stretched and peeked out the barn door. Gnarly poked his head out from under the porch steps, where he’d been sleeping lately — I guess it was warmer there. Stars still lit the sky, but a faint light crept over the tree line, too, east of the farm. Mrs. Tuten stepped outside with me, and we looked at things together for a while. Gnarly crossed the backyard and leaned against my leg, still half asleep. One of the goats maaed in the barn. I couldn’t tell for sure which one, but it kind of sounded like Huey.

  “I’m sorry I lied to you and Mr. Tuten about coming out here,” I said. “But I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have the goats. And I don’t know what they would do if they didn’t have me.”

  “I know, Iris,” Mrs. Tuten said. “I can see that.”

  Patsy came out of the barn and stood between me and Mrs. Tuten, pressing her shoulders against our legs to let us know she was there, too. She studied the sky with us for a while, then shook her head, as if she didn’t quite get the point.

  Mrs. Tuten reached down to pet her.

  “Tell me this one’s name again?” she said.

  “Patsy. She’s the herd queen.”

  After a few more minutes, Mrs. Tuten spoke again. “There are some things I need to say to you, Iris, and I need you to hear them.” She let out a breath as if she’d been holding it for a long time. “The first thing is that you should not have gone behind our backs to come out here to the farm, and drive your aunt’s truck. You should have told us about the agreement with your aunt. You have apologized, but the one thing we cannot have, if you are to continue living with us, is any more lying. That has to be understood.”

  “Yes,” I said, hope filling my chest at the words “continue living with us.” Still, her tone was serious, and I worried that she was going to order me to stay away from the farm. But I couldn’t agree to that. Ever. “I do understand,” I started. “But the goats —”

  “Let me finish,” Mrs. Tuten said.

  So I waited.

  “The second thing,” she said, “is that we’re going to have to clear this arrangement with Mindy and Mr. Trask. We’ll need their permission for you to continue coming out to your aunt’s farm, to take care of the goats. It’s probably a formality, but we need to do this right.”

  She knelt down to scratch Patsy under her chin. I couldn’t believe what she’d just said. I wanted her to repeat it, to make sure I’d heard her right, that I wasn’t imagining things.

  Mrs. Tuten looked up. “And finally, you have to let us help.”

  Mrs. Tuten and I had an appointment with Mindy and Mr. Trask two days later. Huey had almost completely recovered, but Littleberry was staying with him out at the farm anyway, just to make sure he was OK. Reba and Louie stayed close by, too.

  Mrs. Tuten stopped me when she parked the car downtown and said she didn’t think we needed to mention that I’d already been driving the truck and going out to the farm to take care of the goats and Gnarly.

  “It might be best to just make a fresh start,” she said. “Let the past be the past.”

  The receptionist escorted us right away down the hall to Mr. Trask’s dark-paneled office. Mindy was already there, and we sat with her in a row of spindly chairs. Mr. Trask blinked at us from behind his desk, which was bare except for a single yellow number-two pencil. I wished he’d turn on more lights.

  He looked at his watch and pressed a button on the side — probably the stopwatch function. “You asked to see me?”

  I took a deep breath, thanked him and Mindy for meeting with us, then nervously explained as well as I could about how much the goats meant to me, about the situation with Animal Control, about my visit to the jail, about the agreement with Aunt Sue. I showed them a copy of Aunt Sue’s letter giving me permission to take care of the animals. I showed them my report card from school and told them I’d joined the softball team, which I hoped demonstrated what Mr. DiDio called “a healthy balance of activities.” Then I explained my proposed schedule for visiting the farm, handling the cheese production, and working at the farmers’ market — all things Mrs. Tuten had suggested I do.

  “I recently accompanied Iris to the farm,” Mrs. Tuten interjected, “and was able to see for myself how well she can manage things. One of the goats fell ill, and I was very impressed with how Iris dealt with the situation.”

  Mindy scribbled notes as we talked, and seemed to be nodding, which was always a good sign. Mrs. Tuten had spoken with her on the phone the day before — they had talked for more than an hour — but she still asked a couple of questions, which Mrs. Tuten and I took turns answering.

  Mr. Trask looked at his watch again and started drumming on his desk with the eraser end of his pencil.

  Mindy stopped writing. “Do you have any questions you would like to ask, Mr. Trask?”

  He said he didn’t. We waited to see if he would say anything else.

  He didn’t.

  “Well,” Mindy said finally, “I can’t say I think it’s at all fair for Iris’s aunt to put this financial burden on her, just so Iris can see the goats. I’ve actually never heard of anything like it. But I do see how important this is to Iris. I’ve spoken with Mrs. Tuten at length about it, and I’m convinced that Iris is capable of handling the arrangement — or at least should have the opportunity to give it a try.” She nodded earnestly again. “As long as Mr. and Mrs. Tuten are comfortable with it,” she added. “And Iris continues to do well in sch
ool.”

  I was ready to celebrate, a huge grin on my face, but faltered when I looked at Mr. Trask again. His mouth was twisted into some strange species of frown that made his lips disappear. He picked up Aunt Sue’s letter, glanced at it, then laid it down in front of him.

  “I have to disagree,” he said, sliding the letter back across his desk toward me with his pencil. “Miss Wight has shown poor judgment in the past. There were repeated incidents of vandalism to Mrs. Allen’s property earlier this year — including vandalism to the new truck. I do not see sufficient evidence that Miss Wight is mature enough to take over the care of the animals, or to take on these financial responsibilities.”

  “I already told you why I did all of that!” I said, gripping the chair arms so hard I thought they might break off. I hoped they would. “But you wouldn’t listen to me!”

  Mr. Trask leaned back so far away from me that his chair threatened to tip over. I started to say more, my anger boiling over, but Mrs. Tuten stopped me.

  “Iris,” she said, laying her hand on my arm.

  She had a determined look on her face. I’d seen it before — the last time we were in Mr. Trask’s office, and two nights ago when she and Mr. Tuten showed up at the farm to help with Huey.

  “Could I get the two of you to step outside?” Mrs. Tuten said to Mindy and me, smiling a thin smile. “Just for a few minutes. I think it would be a good idea if Mr. Trask and I had an opportunity to speak. Alone.”

  Mr. Trask’s strange frown deepened further, practically on the verge of turning his face inside out. He checked his watch yet again and shook it, as though he thought it might have stopped working.