her for a long time. And then Johnny bent forward to rest his cheek on Wrecker’s forehead. He straightened himself, breathed deep, and stood to leave. He had thousands of seedlings to set where a grove had been clear-cut, and he gathered his crew of wild boys about him and took to the woods.
Wrecker had cried, soundless and trembling, for an hour, Johnny said.
Was it bad? Johnny had looked at her with something close to pity in his eyes before he answered.
It was everything.
Weeks passed, and still Wrecker did not fall down the stairs, nor break a bone, nor throw a tantrum from which he couldn’t by chocolate and reasonable patience be retrieved. The nightmares came less often. Melody rummaged through the free box at the Mercantile for hand-me-downs that would fit the kid. He’d stretched out of everything he had come with and had busted through two pairs of shoes since his arrival. Five months? Six, almost. Long enough for all the relationships at Bow Farm to subtly shift to accommodate him. And according to the papers Len had on him, Wrecker was about due to turn four.
All signs pointed to a party. It was the height of summer, and everything alive was bursting its seams with the pure urgency of growth. The days were long, and the night sky, when dusk finally surrendered to dark, was filled with stars and meteor showers and the unspeakably rich odors of deep grass and damp riverbank and tree sap and the family of skunks who had taken up residence under the tumbledown shed that housed Ruth’s farm implements. Johnny Appleseed had a few days to lay low at the farm before heading back to the forest. Ruth’s garden had produced a champion watermelon. It was time to celebrate.
Johnny sent word over the green wire, and in pairs and threes his wild and unkempt treeboys trickled in from the woods. Melody’s coworkers from the Mercantile piled into pickup trucks to get there; they brought children and dogs and guitars and draft-dodging cousins who’d caught wind of how easy it was to get lost in this untamed stretch of overgrown coast. Len ironed his clothes before coming. He brought six pairs of new socks and a savings bond for the boy. And Willow summoned her friend Daria, who raised white doves; she brought them to offer Wrecker the spectacle of their flight, and he laughed and clapped his hands with the others when she set them free and they circled the farm twice, a pageant of wingbeat and white fluff, before heading for home.
It was late in the afternoon on the third day, a day fat and full and green and with enough of a breeze to keep them from broiling, that the last of the guests shook off the celebratory stupor occasioned by Ruth’s extraordinary blue sheet cake and made their way home. Melody lay sprawled in the hammock, one foot trailing out to gently press the ground and keep it rocking. “Know what I think?” She proceeded, undaunted by silence. “I think we should go to the beach.”
Willow peered over her book, raised her eyebrows, and went back to reading. She turned the page. “Ruth won’t go.”
“Ruth never goes,” Melody said. Ruth had swallowed enough seawater the day they found her to sweat ocean brine for the rest of her life. “What about you?”
Johnny Appleseed came around the corner of the farmhouse. He held an elk ivory drilled for a wire loop and strung on a piece of rawhide. “Wrecker around?” When the boy crawled out from under the porch, twigs and dry leaves stuck to his scruffy hair, Johnny stepped forward and looped it around his neck. “Happy birthday, kid. May it keep you strong and free.”
Wrecker fingered the creamy tooth. He had on a pair of shorts and no shirt and the tooth was bright against his tanned chest. He grinned. Johnny Appleseed dazzled him. Wrecker said, “Want to go to the beach?”
“With you? Anywhere.”
Melody reached out a foot and nudged the leg of Willow’s lawn chair. “Come on.”
Willow shook her head.
Wrecker padded closer to her. He stayed a few feet away, as though he needed permission to enter her force field. When he caught her attention he lifted the ivory to show her. His face was earnest and he stood his ground. Melody watched Willow reach out and gently take hold of the tooth. “Nice,” she said. She looked down at her book and sighed, then folded it