and a complete unconcern for his own safety and a kind of smoldering disrespect for the command of his elder—Len—which erupted into outright disobedience and ensued in a ridiculous chase that left Len winded and feeling foolish. The boy looked down at the ground and spoke with such a low voice when he did speak that Len was forced to crank the dial on his hearing aid (the gift of too many years around loud machinery) to top volume and even then found it hard to gather the meaning of the boy’s garbled utterances. Len could not understand why he did the things he did. Who in his right mind would climb to the top of a stack of logs three times his own height—the logs themselves well stacked but always subject to tipping under pressure, a log that size a steamroller once it gets started—and let loose with a holler and jump? And then, earnestly chastised for his action, the danger explained in no uncertain terms, and with the elder in command watching—climb to the top and jump again? He was taken with the log truck, with the winch, with the machines. And every time Len turned his back the boy disappeared. Into the woods, into the lumber shed, drawing with a stick in the dirt between the vehicles. And once, it seemed, into thin air.
Len was searching the bushes by the outhouse for the second time, calling for the boy, when he heard a sound from the direction of the house. He stood up to listen. Yes, from the house, and it had to be the kid: not a high whimper like a puppy would make, but closer to a moan. It raised the hair on the back of his neck. He had penned Meg’s goose to keep her from harming the boy, but God help him—he’d never thought of his wife that way. He took off at a run, leapt the front steps, and threw open the door.
Meg was no small woman. Broad-hipped and broad-shouldered, she had cornered the little boy and was advancing on him, her arms outstretched to bar his exit. Wrecker huddled in the corner of the room, moaning, his head tucked like a turtle as close as he could get it to his chest and his eyes wide with terror.
“Meg!” Len shouted, and wrapped his arms around his wife.
Wrecker saw his opportunity and shot like a bullet past the two of them, out the door and gone.
Meg slumped her whole weight against Len. He stepped back to support her and shifted his grip and saw where his hands had raised red welts on her forearms. He had never hurt her before, and a wave of guilt and horror crashed over him. He would never do that again. Never. Never.
“Oh, girl—,” he started, but Meg opened her mouth wider than he thought possible and drained all the air in the room into her lungs and then let it out in a tremendous bellow so loud Len had to release her and frantically clap his hands over his ears and struggle to adjust the volume on his aid and roll his eyes up into his head to escape the pain of the sound.
And when that breath ended she drew another and bellowed again. And again. For breath after breath, despite Len’s every effort to calm her, she kept up her wail. She clung to him as she bellowed, she held him tightly, and when she finally calmed—or tired—enough to stop, she took his face in both hands and said the first two intelligible words she’d uttered since the dental surgery had gone so wrong.
Her eyes wide, bovine, her mouth struggling to meet the unreasonable demands of language, Meg said, “My boy.”
Len led Meg into the bedroom and settled her onto the bed. The early evening sun streamed through the window and left a bright patch on the spread. He lay next to her and stroked her hair and spoke softly. It didn’t seem to matter what he said. He told her how he was going to have to borrow the grader to improve the track to the back lot, and how the welding generator would need an overhaul, and that he hadn’t quite gotten used to seeing the new red roof on the lumber shed. He said she made the best buttermilk biscuits around and that the latch on the garden gate was working fine now and that he had more business to take care