Bleeding Kansas (44 page)

A
S HE SCURRIED
home in the dark, Robbie wondered about all the sarcastic ways he described not just Junior but even the students at Tonganoxie Bible College when he talked to Lara. Maybe she really was a bad influence on him. Thanks to her, he was questioning everything he'd been taught all these years, by Nanny and his pastors at Salvation Bible Church.

At first, he kept telling Lara that what they were doing didn't count as sex because he wasn't inside her, but he had to admit it was pretty hard to believe he was truly being abstinent. Besides which, she showed him websites that proved she could get pregnant even if—well, he didn't like to put it into words—so she was using a gel, which was messy and nasty, and that meant he was encouraging her to use artificial contraception, which was against Jesus. But Lara claimed that Jesus never talked about contraception, and when Robbie searched his Bible at home he had to agree. So maybe she was right when she said it was just something his church had made up, to mess with his mind.

If Nanny had been different—well, even if she'd been the same angry person but had treated him like she treated Junior—he might have stood up more strongly for his church's teachings to Lara. Come to think of it, Salvation Through the Blood of Jesus Full Bible Church wasn't really the Schapens' church: they'd always been Methodists, up until Nanny married Robbie's grandfather. Maybe
true Schapens,
to use the phrase Nanny was so fond of, really were Methodists.

If he became a Methodist, or even joined Riverside Church with Lara, would he start thinking the Universe was billions of years old? Trying to imagine the big bang, dinosaurs, the earth going back billions and billions of years without any people on it, made him feel dizzy. How could you believe that and still believe in God?

Even so, as Robbie ran up the road into his family's yard he couldn't help laughing at what Nanny would do if he said, “Dad and Junior aren't true Schapens, because they belong to your church, but as soon as I leave here I'm going back to the Schapens' real religion.”

He could see Myra in the kitchen. He could only stand up to her in his head, not in the flesh, certainly not with Lara's kisses on him: he was sure Myra would be able to smell Lara's lemongrass shampoo on his skin.

He went around to the back of the house, where he crawled in through a window that he kept unlocked just for such occasions. The window opened into the old parlor, where the family Bible sat on a carved wooden stand.

On impulse, he opened the Bible to the genealogy page. He had never been interested in it before, except to see his own birth date and that he was named for that first Robert, Robert Cady Schapen,
b.
1826. Now he wanted to find some sign that he was the true Schapen, Junior the imposter. With Junior gone, Arnie would love him best, the unspoken fantasy of every younger brother.

After his mother ran off, Myra had put a heavy black line through her name, so that it appeared as though he and Junior—Arnold Taylor Schapen, Jr.—had sprung from Arnie's body without any womanly help. He studied the history of marriages and births. Schapens had married Wiesers, Longneckers, and Fremantles, and his great-great-grandfather had even married one of the Grellier daughters. That meant he and Lara were cousins of some kind. The thought made him laugh again.

The noise brought Myra from the kitchen into the front room. “And just what do you have to laugh about, young man, missing dinner without a by-your-leave? Since when do you get to pick and choose when you'll be here?”

Robbie ignored her complaint. “I was looking at the family tree, Nanny. It says here we're cousins of the Grelliers'.”

She glowered but bent over the page. “Hmm. Must be where you come from, then. Or maybe your ma fooled around with Jim Grellier, and told my son you were really his. Kathy Sheldon dated Jim in—”

“I'm tired of you talking that way, about me and about my mom. I am Arnie's son!” Robbie shouted. “If you're so sure I'm not related to him, get our DNA tested.”

“DNA,” she cried, as if he'd suggested her running naked down the county road. “You know Pastor says DNA stands for ‘Devil
Noes
All.' Are you being infected by evolution talk now? Is that what you're doing when you waltz off to get away from the crowds? Studying evolution?”

Robbie started to say “DNA isn't about evolution,” but it was a waste of breath to argue with Nanny. And, anyway, he had an uneasy feeling, from what his biology teacher said, that DNA
did
have something to do with evolution.

“What did you do with my mom's letters to me?” he demanded, made suddenly bold in front of Myra.

“How did you know—” She bit off the words.

“So she
did
write me, and you never let me know. I want to see my letters.”

“I'm trying to save your immortal soul all the time you're trying to sink back down into the pit. Ever since your father told Pastor Nabo you bred that calf, you've been getting a swelled head. Well, I am here to bring it back to normal size! You think you can come and go from this house as if it was a Holiday Inn, but you'll think twice about that from now on. This is a working farm. Your
father
does double duty, working for that liberal, Commie-loving so-called sheriff, besides carrying his load here. I cook three meals a day that you don't think you have to show up for. Your brother cares enough about the farm to come all the way from Tonganoxie to guard the calf, even though he's a college student and a football star, while you wander around the countryside as if you were the prince of Douglas County.”

“That's so unfair,” Robbie said. “I milk a hundred twenty-two cows every day, sometimes twice a day. I clean out the barn. I'm in school, too—and, unlike Junior, I actually study.”

“Junior doesn't need to study,” Myra said loftily. Which was true, Robbie thought, when you considered the free pass instructors at the high school and now at the Bible college gave their football star.

His grandmother added, “Your
father
is on the four-to-midnight shift tonight. You can relieve Junior until your father gets home. And when you get up at four-thirty tomorrow morning to do the milking, we'll see how big your mouth is then.”

“I have homework. Anyway, Junior loves guard duty. You know he's hoping to shoot someone, or break heads or something.”

Robbie brushed past Myra and went into the kitchen. His grandmother had thrown his supper into the garbage, so he started to make himself a peanut butter sandwich. Myra stormed in after him and snatched the bread away, so that he ended up spreading a knife full of peanut butter onto the countertop.

“You will respect me, you—you vermin. I told you to get out there and relieve Junior!”

Robbie's hands were shaking, but he took another piece of bread from the bag and put peanut butter on it. The knowledge that his mother hadn't forgotten him, that she had written to him—written him letters his grandmother had kept from him—brought him a small glow of comfort as well as courage. “You know, Nanny, if Arnie isn't my father that means you're not my grandmother, either, which means I don't have to listen to you for one nanosecond. Which is what scientists call a billionth of a second.”

“Don't you dare bring science into this household and pretend it means something. If you won't respect me out of your own conscience, your brother will make you do so. Junior!” she shouted, but of course he couldn't hear her, all the way at the back of the lot, so she stumped her way out past the old hay barn, the milk and cow barns, and the sheds for the new calves to the red heifer's enclosure.

When Myra reached the enclosure, she expected to see Junior patrolling the perimeter. The padlock was off, and light was seeping around the edge of the door. What if someone had jumped Junior and was making off with the calf? She'd better go in to see.

It was wrong that a boy like Robbie, who talked back to his own grandmother and even dreamed about DNA testing, could get in to see the calf while she, Myra Schapen, who had rebuilt this farm and raised Junior and Robbie when that worthless Kathy ran off, was barred from it. On top of which, since when did a good Christian like herself take direction from a bunch of Jews with greasy coats and long, dirty beards?

She pushed open the door to the heifer's pen and heard a loud howl. She blinked, her eyes adjusting to the lights, and saw the calf, her grandson, and Eddie Burton in a great whirl of motion. The calf was bleating unhappily, its “yeh-heh, yeh-heh” drowning the noise that Eddie and Junior were making. Eddie Burton had his jeans down to his ankles. That was what she focused on. Not on her beloved older grandson, whom she hadn't seen naked since she changed his last diaper seventeen years earlier.

“Eddie Burton! Eddie Burton, have you been peeing on this calf?” Myra said. “Get your clothes on this minute and get home! What are you doing in this sacred place?”

The calf continued its uneasy lowing, but Junior was laughing. “He didn't hurt the calf, Nanny. Don't get your undies in a bundle.”

Robbie appeared in the doorway behind Myra. “Junior! You and Eddie better not have been touching the heifer. The Jews are coming tomorrow and they look at everything about her—and I mean
everything
!”

“You think a couple of Christ killers with long hair should be telling me what to do? Think again, shrimp.”

“You shouldn't be in here with Eddie,” Robbie said, trying to stand his ground.

“I seen you,” Eddie said to Robbie. “I seen you at Fremantles'.”

Robbie's stomach went cold.

“Oh yeah?” Junior was interested. “When was that, Eddie?”

“Today. Lots of times. Yesterday, maybe, too.”

“You're a retard, Eddie,” Robbie said crudely. “I was here all day yesterday.”

“What was he doing, Eddie?” Junior had a fatherly arm around Eddie's shoulders.

“Him and that girl, you know, that Grellier girl, her and Robbie, they hide in the old barn at Fremantles'.”

“You're making stuff up to change the subject,” Robbie said wildly. “Lara Grellier calls me names all over school, ask anyone.”

“I
seen
you,” Eddie repeated. “And I ain't a retard just because I can't learn my letters. It's a—a illness, my ma explained, in my brain—”

“You've been hiding at the witch's den with Lara Grellier?” Myra cried, glad to bury what she'd seen in the calf's enclosure under renewed anger with Robbie. “You've been seeing the daughter of your father's worst enemy and lying, telling me the boldest lies that ever came from Satan's mouth, with a straight face. And you've been doing it at Fremantles', with the help of Gina Haring, who flaunts her perversions in public and boasts that she's a witch! She's getting her Halloween bonfire ready. And, if she has her way, you'll be roasting with her in fires like that for all eternity.”

“Nanny, listen to me: I have never in my life done anything with Gina Haring. So what if she is building her Halloween bonfire, that's nothing to do with me. Eddie, you should learn not to spread lies around or, before you know it, I'll be spreading some truth around.”

“Like what, you shit-eating dirtbag?” Junior's voice was heavy with menace.

Robbie had had enough experience with his brother to recognize that tone as the prelude to violence. He took off for the old hay barn, where he'd been keeping his guitar since Arnie had banned it from the house. Junior and Eddie ran after him. Junior's size made him slower on the rough ground, and Robbie reached the barn just ahead of his brother. Robbie scrambled up to the loft, pulled up the ladder, and swung the trapdoor shut. He shoved everything in the loft on top of the trap and sat on it.

Junior menaced him from below, so Robbie started playing his guitar, singing loudly,
“Yes, he's heavy—he's my brother,”
which wound Junior into a greater frenzy. Cheered on by Myra and Eddie, Junior found a ladder and tried to push up on the trap, but the weight of a couple of hay bales, Robbie's amplifier, and Robbie himself kept it shut. Junior climbed down and found an ax. He started hacking at the door.

He'd been at it for about ten minutes when Arnie drove into the yard; he was stopping at home so he could use his supper break to take a look at the calf. The commotion from the old barn made Arnie detour to it on his way to Nasya's enclosure. When he got there, he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing—Junior on a ladder with an ax, Eddie Burton's mouth bubbling saliva in excitement.

“What's going on?” Arnie demanded.

Eddie Burton jumped up and down gleefully. “Junior's gonna kill Robbie with the ax. Nanny Schapen told him to.”

Junior stopped chopping. “Sheesh, Eddie, you get everything backward. I'm just trying to get the brat to come down here and eat his words.”

“That's right. I won't tolerate him disrespecting me the way he does,” Myra snapped. “He sneaks off every night after he finishes milking. He doesn't go to Teen Witness. He's been lying to me, and to you, too. You won't believe it when I tell you who he's been seeing—”