Читать книгу Message in a Bottle - Kathryn Reiss - Страница 6

BACK IN THE car, Mrs. Albright peered at the driving directions. “Turn off one mile beyond the cafe. Look for a red wooden gate on the left.”

Julie watched the sides of the road, wondering about the aunt and cousin who would be waiting for them. Why did Aunt Nadine need Julie’s mom so desperately?

“There!” Julie pointed out a sagging red gate, half hidden by bushes.

Mrs. Albright turned the car sharply up a steep, unpaved drive. At the top of the drive, she parked in a circle of gravel next to two old cars and a battered van. Just beyond the parking area, a large, ramshackle house stood in the shelter of pine trees. It had a long front porch, a tin roof, and two tall stone chimneys. The weathered boards of the house were unpainted, but Julie liked the bright blue front door and the cascades of herbs from the window boxes. The smell of rosemary and mint grew stronger as they walked up to the house. Julie tapped on the door, but no one came.

Mrs. Albright knocked harder. “We come all this way, and they’re not even home?” she muttered.

Julie peered through one of the windows into a large room. Four long tables were set for dinner. Loaves of bread and plates of sliced tomatoes lay on one. But the mismatched chairs surrounding the tables were empty. No one was there.

“Looks like they left in the middle of cooking,” Julie said.

“Odd,” said Mrs. Albright.

Julie jumped off the porch and looked around. After a moment, the silence was broken by shouts coming from some distance away, followed by a screech, and then: “Don’t let her escape!”

Intrigued, Julie followed the voices across a small meadow, passing a garden full of tomato plants and squash growing tall over high trellises. She reached two barns both surrounded by a low rail fence. At the edge of the barnyard, people raced this way and that, stooping down, then standing up with something in their arms that seemed to be flapping and clucking.

“Look, Mom. Chickens!”

Mrs. Albright stopped and put her hands to her face. “Oh! There’s Nadine!” She started laughing. “She looks just the same!”

A tall, thin woman with long, fair hair the color of Julie’s stepped away from the group, thrusting the chicken she held into the arms of a boy about Julie’s age. Then she waved and ran toward Julie and her mother, her multicolored skirt swirling around her legs.

“Joyce?” She caught Julie’s mom in a bear hug and spun her around. “Joyce, it’s you!” Nadine’s voice was husky. “Let me look at you!”

“Can it really be nearly ten years?” murmured Julie’s mom, her hands tightly clasping Nadine’s. “Oh, Nadine, it’s good to see you! Julie, meet your Aunt Nadine.”

“Hello, honeypot.” The woman’s smile looked so much like her mom’s that Julie couldn’t help but grin back. “I wanted to welcome you both properly, but as you can see we’re in a bit of a pickle here.” She motioned to the boy who held the chicken in his arms. “Raymond! Come meet your aunt and cousin.”

The boy moved closer. He appeared to be about ten or eleven, with dark eyes and a shock of dark hair. He wore faded jeans and a blue T-shirt that hung on his thin frame. He gave Julie a fleeting smile. The chicken clucked and pecked lightly at his shoulder.

“Hi,” he muttered. He moved back a step when Julie’s mother reached out to hug him.

“Hi!” Julie said cheerfully. Raymond probably didn’t meet many new people, she decided.

Aunt Nadine linked her arm through her sister’s. “I know you must have been surprised to get my letter, Joyce. I wasn’t sure you’d come. But I know you can help us. In fact, you can start right now, with these birds! Somehow, the coop door was left open and our hens have escaped. We need to get them back in before the foxes and coyotes come out.”

“If Pa were here,” said Raymond in a low, tight voice, “he’d capture them in a flash.”

Aunt Nadine frowned at him. “Your pa’s not here. We’ll catch them ourselves!”

Julie eyed the bird in Raymond’s arms. She’d never held a chicken before, but this one looked placid enough. “I can help.”

“Then follow me.” Carrying the chicken, Raymond strode ahead to the wood-and-wire mesh enclosure and shooed it inside, latching the gate carefully. “Just put ’em in here when you get ’em.”

People dashed this way and that, trying to intercept the hens that were scattering into the meadow. Julie approached a fat bird sitting under a bush and held out her hand. “Here, girl,” she called, as if to a dog. The chicken studied her warily. Julie darted forward, arms outstretched—but the bird flapped its wings in panic and flew off, squawking. “I didn’t know chickens could fly!” Julie exclaimed.

Raymond snorted. “Try this,” he said. He walked to a wooden barrel of chicken feed, dipped in his hand, then scattered the feed on the ground. “My pa trained these hens when they were chicks. They’ll come to you. They just need a little bit of encouragement!”

When two hens ventured over to peck at the feed, Raymond bent down and expertly scooped one up under each arm. He held them against his sides as he walked back toward the coop. “Your turn!” he called back to Julie.

Julie took a handful of the feed from the barrel. The chicken she’d tried to catch earlier was now sitting on a wooden fence post. Julie scattered the grain at the base of the post and then waited, not moving a muscle. The chicken eyed her suspiciously. “Here, chick,” Julie cooed. “Come on, girl!”

When the hen finally hopped down to peck at the grain, Julie held her breath. Bending low and moving slowly, she grabbed the bird as Raymond had done. She tried to tuck the hen snugly against her body but found herself clutching a flapping fury of feathers. “Oh no!” cried Julie. “She’s escaping!”

The others chuckled, and Julie felt her face grow pink. Determined not to embarrass herself, she wrapped her arms firmly around the struggling bird. Suddenly the bird went quiet and still in her arms. Now I’ve killed it! Julie thought. She almost dropped the bird—and then felt a gentle peck on her arm and looked down to see the chicken’s beady eye fixed on her. “Good girl!” said Julie, relief coursing through her. She carried the chicken to the coop, where Raymond waited, grinning now.

“You’re a natural—for a city girl!” he said.

She felt the sudden warmth of his approval and smiled back.

After that, catching chickens seemed easy. Julie placed the last one in the chicken coop, latched the door, and went to join her mother and Aunt Nadine, sighing with satisfaction. There! The hens were safe. Still, feathers littered the barnyard as if there had been a terrible struggle, and Julie thought a feather would make a funny souvenir of her first day’s adventure at Gold Moon Ranch. Spotting an especially white one, she bent down to pick it up.

It was not a feather at all. It was a bit of crumpled white paper, and when Julie unfolded it, she saw something familiar printed on one side—a rocket headed toward the sun.

“Look, Mom, it’s a napkin from that cafe!”

“May I see that?” A woman with blond braids strode over and took the napkin from Julie’s hand before Julie’s mother could reply. The woman studied the napkin intently. “I’d say this proves it.”

“Proves what?” Julie stared at the woman in confusion.

“Vicky’s got a theory,” Aunt Nadine explained, “that somebody’s trying to make us want to sell our land.”

The woman named Vicky held up the napkin so others could see it. “Draw your own conclusions. But when I see a napkin from Coker’s restaurant, I can’t help but think he’s been sneaking around our property, causing trouble.”

“We don’t know for sure it’s Eli Coker—other people sometimes go to his cafe,” said a young woman with a baby on her hip.

“One of us might have left the gate to the chicken pen open by mistake,” said a black-bearded man with hair in dreadlocks. His eyes were tired.

“Maybe we all just need to be more careful,” said a tall woman in a flowing red caftan.

The group started back to the large building they called the Big House, but Aunt Nadine drew Julie and Mrs. Albright aside. “We’ll come soon,” Aunt Nadine told the others.

The woman in the red caftan waved them away. “Don’t worry. Bonnie and I can handle dinner prep, and Dolores will be home from the cafe soon.” She smiled at Julie. “I’m Rose. My daughter will be glad of another girl at the ranch.”

“Oh, you’re Dolores’s mom?” said Julie. “We met at the cafe!”

“Yes, and that’s my husband, Allen.” She pointed to the man with the dark beard and dreadlocks, who was pulling Julie’s suitcase out of the station wagon. “He’ll bring your bags to Nadine’s cottage for you.”

Julie and her mother followed Aunt Nadine and Raymond along the path to the cottages. First they stopped at the bathhouse, where Aunt Nadine showed them the toilets, which were nothing more than pits in the ground with seats over them. She demonstrated how to use a hand pump to draw water for washing. There were six long sinks, like metal troughs, and a few metal tubs. Julie stared at her face in the mirror. She washed her hands in cold water and shivered to think of taking a bath here. Then she saw there was a fireplace and large cauldron for heating the water. A warm bath seemed like a lot of work.

Cottages lined both sides of the path, each built to the same simple plan, with a front porch and two windows. Aunt Nadine and Raymond led the way to the last cottage at the edge of the woods.

Julie stepped into a small living room. There was a single bedroom beyond, and a ladder that Julie scrambled up to find a long sleeping loft with a bed on one side and a camp cot on the other. A rolled-up sleeping bag lay on top of the cot.

Julie peered down over the edge of the loft.

“You’ll be up there with Raymond,” Aunt Nadine called up to her. “Joyce, you’ll take my room.”

“The couch is fine,” Mrs. Albright protested.

“Nope—dibs on the couch!”

Julie’s mother laughed. “We’ll flip a coin, just like in the old days!”

“Heads I win, tails you lose?”

“Oh, Nadine, I’ve missed you so much…”

“And I’ve missed you,” her sister answered.

Raymond spun away and slammed out onto the porch. Julie scrambled down the ladder and followed him outside. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

He sank down onto the porch step and stared out at the woods. “I just wish Ma missed Pa as much as she says she’s missed your mom.” Through his shaggy dark hair, Julie could see his anguished expression. It was suddenly clear what he’d meant earlier when he’d wished his father could help round up the chickens.

Julie sat next to him. “My parents are divorced, too,” she offered. “I used to wish they’d get back together, but now…well, I can see they’re happier as things are.”

Raymond’s eyes were hard with misery. “Well, my parents are not divorced! And they’re not happy as they are! None of us is happy.” He jumped up when Aunt Nadine opened the screen door and their moms stepped out onto the porch.

“Lemonade, anyone?” Aunt Nadine offered. “I’m sorry it’s not cold, but the only time we have ice is in the winter, when we can break icicles off the eaves.” She laughed, passing glasses to Julie, her mother, and Raymond. “But who wants cold lemonade in the winter?”

Raymond scowled at his mother, but he accepted the glass and drank thirstily.

Julie took a sip of her lemonade. She was thirsty too, and even warm it tasted delicious. Still, she couldn’t imagine not having ice when she wanted it, or lights, or hot showers. “Don’t you miss electricity?” she asked her aunt shyly. “Or running water?”

“We use the pump to get water,” Aunt Nadine said, “and we heat it in our fireplace, and bathe in those tin tubs. We light lanterns when it’s dark. Living simply isn’t a problem.”

Mrs. Albright set down her glass and looked at her sister kindly. “Well, then, what is the problem? We’re thrilled to be here, but we’re desperate to know why you need my help!”

Aunt Nadine sat in one rocking chair and motioned to the other. “Sit down, and I’ll tell you our tale of woe.” She rocked back and forth for a moment. “Nothing’s gone right here for a long time. It’s been this way since the war.”

“The war?” Julie frowned. The Vietnam War had ended three years ago. How could it still be causing problems in a commune in the mountains?

“I’m afraid so.” Aunt Nadine rubbed her forehead wearily. “David—my husband who wouldn’t kill a fly!—enlisted in the army.” There was a catch in her voice. “He had his reasons, but he had some awfully good reasons not to go, too. He had Raymond. And me. And this community we built. There’s been trouble here ever since.”

Raymond set his lemonade glass onto the step so hard, Julie was surprised the jar didn’t break. “I hate when you blame everything on Pa!”

“It’s been difficult,” Aunt Nadine murmured.

“I miss Pa!” Raymond said abruptly. He leaped off the porch and darted down the path, vanishing among the trees.

Julie looked at her aunt in alarm, but Aunt Nadine shook her head. “He’ll be back,” she said. “He just misses David. But he doesn’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” Mrs. Albright said.

“We were all against the war in Vietnam, so it shocked me when David joined up.” Aunt Nadine’s voice broke. “Then he was wounded and spent months in rehabilitation trying to walk again. He couldn’t do his work here on the ranch, so he took a part-time job at the library in town. He lives in Sonora because things have been strained between us. I can’t help feeling angry.”

Julie listened, feeling troubled. Poor Raymond!

After a pause, Aunt Nadine spoke again. “Raymond visits David a couple of times a week, but it’s never enough for Raymond. He just wants his pa living here at the ranch. But David needs a desk job now. And it’s hard to work out the problems between us when there are so many other problems to solve here.”

“What kind of problems?” Mrs. Albright asked.

“Well, the biggest problem at the ranch is money. With David away in Vietnam, a lot of our members started leaving, too. Now our numbers are really down. It’s been harder to get crops planted, harder to tend the animals. We don’t have extra fruit and vegetables to sell. We don’t have enough money to pay our property taxes. And if we can’t pay, we’ll be forced to sell the land.” She sighed. “Gloomy times!”

“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Albright.

No wonder Raymond is miserable, thought Julie. Maybe it was because they were cousins, but it was almost as if she could feel his sadness herself.

Aunt Nadine sipped her lemonade, then smiled. “Well, it’s not all gloom and doom! About three months ago, Vicky joined us. She used to be an accountant, and she’s full of plans. It was her idea to sell our honey and bread and fresh eggs to the restaurants in town. She said we could ask the shops to sell the sweaters we knit from our own sheep’s wool. Then it hit me: We’ll open our own shop!”

Aunt Nadine stopped rocking and grabbed her sister’s hand. “Joyce, you wrote about how well your shop is doing. Will you help me open a shop like Gladrags?”

Mrs. Albright smiled. “I’d be happy to.”

“It will be so great to have something good happening here. All of us are desperate to find a way to stay. But we’ve had an awful run of luck. Everything we try comes to nothing. It’s almost as if…” her voice trailed off.

“As if what?” asked Mrs. Albright.

Aunt Nadine closed her eyes. “As if…we’re under a curse.”