it. A burnt cross on the lawn ain’t exactly a selling point. So it’ll get dug up and thrown into a dump truck, and dumped into the landfill. That seems a lot more sacrilegious to me than us digging it up and making some kind of memorial out of it.”
And so we begin to dig.
I don’t know how much time you’ve spent digging up a ten-foot burnt cross from somebody’s front yard, but I’m here to tell you, it takes a while. Five minutes into it, I’m seriously regretting that I didn’t bring gloves. I can feel the blisters rising in painful little relief maps all over my palms.
“You know, if you were really my friend, you’d tell me to take a break while you finish up,” I tell Monster, leaning against my shovel and breathing hard. “I think I forgot to mention that I’m a delicate flower.”
“Well, you smell good,” Monster agrees, still digging. “But you throw around a bass too easy for me to think you can’t do a little yard work when the situation calls for it.”
He’s right. I’ve only been playing bass a few weeks and you can already see the change in my biceps. I start digging again.
It takes us forty-five minutes to dig through the rocky ground and carefully pull out the cross and lay it on the yard. I kneel beside it and put my hand on a burned place. It feels evil to me.
“Only one thing to do about hate that big,” Monster says, pulling my hand away so it’s no longer touching the dark spot. “And that’s to put a bigger love out there. Like your friend Mr. Pritchard did.”
“And Mrs. Pritchard,” I add. “And Mrs. Brown.”
“Big love, dude,” Monster says, pulling me up. “Beats big hate every time.”
We haul the cross to the truck and carefully lift it into the back.
And so ends the strangest and maybe most amazing day of my life, with me and Monster driving down the road in the dark, a burnt cross in the truck bed behind us, the two of us singing along with the radio to a song I don’t even know the words to, and I don’t even care. I just keep singing.
Chapter Twenty-four
Field of Dreams
Some girls are presented at debutante balls. Others are bat mitzvahed. Lucky Korean girls have a Gwallye ceremony to celebrate their coming of age.
Me, I get a hootenanny.
God bless America.
The hootenanny of all hootenannies takes place tonight, and my birthday is tomorrow. My fifteenth birthday.
“Your Quinceañera,” my mom informs me this morning. “The funny thing is, when I started planning the hootenanny, I didn’t put two and two together. I knew the hootenanny would be on Saturday and your birthday was the next day, but the fact that you’re turning fifteen just hit me last night. That’s a special birthday for a girl.”
“Yes, if the girl happens to be Hispanic or Latina,” I tell her. “But, sadly, I am neither.”
We’re sitting at the breakfast table eating French toast, and because the sun didn’t rise until 7:10, it isn’t even that absurdly early to be up and at ’em. Not that I wouldn’t prefer to be snug as a bug up in my bed, mind you, but you take what you can get when you live in Farm World.
My mom leans back and takes a sip of coffee. “So, how should we celebrate this milestone birthday of yours?”
“By not having a hootenanny?” I suggest.
“Not have the hootenanny?” My mom looks aghast. “Honey, it’s going to be the social event of the year. And all your friends will be there—Sarah and Emma, Monster, Virginia—”
“Verbena,” I correct her.
“And I invited Mrs. Brown and Monster’s grandmother and all the ladies from the quilting circle.”
“And don’t forget Mrs. Welsch,” I remind her. “The Agrarian Librarian.”
My mom spikes a piece of French toast from my plate. “It’s a shame about that rat eating her chicken. But I’ve promised her one of our Faverolles hens. Those girls are big.”
I take one last swig of orange juice and stand. “Well, I’ve got some goats to tend to, if you’ll excuse me.”
“What about your Quinceañera?” my mom calls after me.
“We could have it in Mexico City,” I call back over my shoulder as I take to the stairs. “Where it would actually make sense and be semi-appropriate.”
After pulling on my Farm World jeans and “Rednecks for Peace” T-shirt, I hurry out to the goat pen. There’s a lot to talk about, and Loretta Lynn is just