The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,9

we did didn’t seem to be an awful sin like stealing or hurting someone, either.

Momma and Daddy didn’t mind Cole courting me. He was a good, respectful boy. They were fine with him walking me to church and Momma welcomed his help on the weekends when my family came up to the farm, but they would not have tolerated his night visits. So Cole and I had to be discreet.

Still, Momma seemed to know somehow. Frank Roe, a cousin on my father’s side, had been discharged and would be coming back from Japan, she told me. He’d need a place to stay. With him at the farm, I would not be alone and I would have live-in help with the harvest every day.

“It’s not good, you staying up there by yourself. What if something happened to you? We might not know about it for days,” she said.

My being on the farm alone had never bothered her before.

Frank was not one of my favorite cousins, and I did not want my solitude broken, but how could I protest? The farm was not mine, I was just the caretaker until it was decided who would inherit it. But I told myself, if I had less work to do, I might be able to meet Cole more often.

As soon as Frank jumped off the back of Daddy’s truck and I saw his swagger, the way he wore his uniform and threw his duffel bag down, I knew that seeing Cole would be more, not less, difficult. Frank always had an edgy side to him, like a strange dog, alert and ready to lick you or rip into you. You could never tell which, and you didn’t want him to do either. His eyes seemed smaller now, more doglike, his body harder and more compact. The war had concentrated what he had been as a boy. He was not a man you would want to give the advantage of your secrets.

He moved into Ricky’s old room at the far end of the hall from me, and the house immediately took on the smell of his cigarette smoke and shoe polish.

“Looks like my little cousin is all growed up and got herself a farm,” he announced after he had given himself a tour. Then he looked me up and down in a way I did not like, sucked on his cigarette, and flicked the butt down onto the barn floor. I stared at the smoldering stub and he stomped it, twisting his heel into it. “I got it, I got it. I’m not going to let your precious barn burn,” he said.

As we walked out of the barn, Cole came up from across the field. Frank saw Cole’s face change as he realized I was not alone.

“I guess you are all grown up,” Frank leered.

Frank was a hard worker, but he was also a man. He expected me to fix all of his meals. The first night, I did make him a nice ham supper as a welcome. But on the second day, when he came to me at noon, I returned his dog-stare and told him, “You are not my husband and you are not my daddy. For the work you do around here, I’ll get our supper in the evening and if I make biscuits in the morning, I’ll leave you some. Otherwise, you take care of yourself.”

He ate heartily each evening, but never cooked. His eyes followed me. But he seldom spoke. Only at night did I hear much from him. I shut my bedroom door, but I could still hear him turn and shout in his sleep. His bed lurched and squeaked when the ghost of the war visited his dreams.

At the end of the first week, he went into town, bought a battery radio, and put it in his bedroom. Then there was smoke and music every night. Sometimes I could smell the booze on his breath by mid-afternoon.

He had been at the house a few weeks when I walked by the half-open door of his room one night. He sat on his bed, his back to me, staring at some pictures spread out before him. A man and a woman whispered to each other from the radio. I opened my mouth to speak, then realized that he had his hand down his pants. He may have just been scratching himself. As I stepped back, he turned, grabbed the pictures with both hands, and laid them over his lap. He