apartment, and even if I could the only apartments for rent were in
town. Then I’d need a car. I had only eight hundred dollars. I sputtered
all this at Mother, then ran to my room and slammed the door.
She knocked moments later. “I know you think we’re being unfair,”
she said, “but when I was your age I was living on my own, getting
ready to marry your father.”
“You were married at sixteen?” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “You are not sixteen.”
I stared at her. She stared at me. “Yes, I am. I’m sixteen.”
She looked me over. “You’re at least twenty.” She cocked her head.
“Aren’t you?”
We were silent. My heart pounded in my chest. “I turned sixteen in
September,” I said.
“Oh.” Mother bit her lip, then she stood and smiled. “Well, don’t
worry about it then. You can stay. Don’t know what your dad was
thinking, really. I guess we forgot. Hard to keep track of how old you
kids are.”
—SHAWN RETURNED TO WORK, hobbling unsteadily. He wore an Aussie
outback hat, which was large, wide-brimmed, and made of chocolate-
brown oiled leather. Before the accident, he had worn the hat only
when riding horses, but now he kept it on all the time, even in the
house, which Dad said was disrespectful. Disrespecting Dad might
have been the reason Shawn wore it, but I suspect another reason was
that it was large and comfortable and covered the scars from his
surgery.
He worked short days at first. Dad had a contract to build a milking
barn in Oneida County, about twenty miles from Buck’s Peak, so
Shawn puttered around the yard, adjusting schematics and measuring
I-beams.
Luke, Benjamin and I were scrapping. Dad had decided it was time
to salvage the angle iron stacked all around the farm. To be sold, each
piece had to measure less than four feet. Shawn suggested we use
torches to cut the iron, but Dad said it would be too slow and cost too
much in fuel.