Flock (34 page)

“What’s the count now?” I asked, my voice small and tight.

“Five. All in Pinewood,” Penny said. “For the size of the storm, they’re saying that number could have been a lot higher. Just think if your dad hadn’t found those last couple of kids hiding in the gym . . .”

As much as I understood just what had been saved yesterday, I still swallowed something bitter and hard with every reminder of a death toll. It should have included me. I still felt uneasy — guilty, were I to put a name to it — about surviving when others hadn’t.

We divided into teams. Ofelia and I took care of the front of the store: sweeping up glass, tossing spoiled perishables from the freezer cases, and duct-taping a patchwork of flattened boxes over the hole in the front window. Penny and Jinky volunteered for back-room duty, where more sweeping up and sorting of salvageable merchandise was to be done. For his part, Afi moved between the two zones, shaking his head and carping about “damn Mother Nature” or was on the phone with the insurance agent, the window-repair company, and the power company.

Ofelia and I had been at it for a long time without word from the back when we heard a loud creaking sound and then a muffled thud; Jinky and Penny emerged looking as if they’d been blasted fifty years into the future. Their hair and skin were covered with a fine gray powder.

“What happened to you guys?” I asked.

Jinky shook her head, demonstrating the possible origins of the headbangers brand of dance style.

Penny, on the other hand, scratched at her head with both hands. “Uh, the ceiling kind of heaved and then buckled, sending a shower of dust down on us.” She grimaced. “You don’t think this stuff is asbestos or anything like that, do you?” She raked a hand deep into her scalp.

Afi, who had discharged of his phone call at the sight of them, said, “Shouldn’t be. The building’s old, but the roof is new. My guess is it’s gypsum from the drywall, but I suggest you run on home and take a good, long shower.” He lifted the phone back to his ear with a sigh. “I’ll call my roof guy to make sure, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”

Jinky, true to her nature, accepted the situation with a mere scowl and uttered something — in the Icelandic-expletive family, I’d guess — under her breath.

Penny had the more physical of their reactions. She scraped at her head like some flea-bitten pooch and rushed Jinky out of the store without time to hear the apologies and thank-yous that Afi, Ofelia, and I voiced in their wake.

Afi declared the back room off-limits. It immediately struck me that this would impact the Storks as well. Could they still meet here? Would they have anyway, now that I was out? And if not here, where? I felt a pang of hurt that I, quite possibly, would never know.

“I suppose we should call it a day,” Ofelia said. “We’ve done what we can up front here; the rest will depend on the insurance agent and an inspection. Besides, I for one am exhausted.” She took a seat on the stool behind the register. As she lifted a bottle of water to her lips, I noticed her hand, ever so briefly, touch her hairline. Anyone else would surely have thought she was tucking a stray wisp of hair into her trademark twist. But I knew better; I knew it was a call,
the call,
rather. I couldn’t help it; I stared at her.

When the phone rang and Afi answered it, I rounded on Ofelia. “Did you —”

Ofelia held up her hand to stop me, and I remembered my vow of silence. I pressed my lips closed, but my bulging eyes said it all.

She took off in a hurry, which left just me and Afi in the closed-until-further-notice store.

“Leira’s probably home by now. Should we head over and welcome her back?” I asked.

Afi looked rail thin, and his pale blue eyes blinked back from behind a crush of wrinkles. “It does seem a thing that should be celebrated. And we could all stand a little good news for a change.” His voice had that slurry quality, the one I’d recognized in Leira before her miraculous recovery.

When Afi flipped the lights off, shouldered the front door closed, and clicked the key in the lock, I was overcome with emotion. For the shop, I felt a small swell of nostalgia. On Afi’s behalf, I just wished there was something that would see those lungs of his through a bit of retirement.

Jack dropped a piled-high bucket of apples at my feet. “The pink ones. Your favorite,” he said.

When Jack had called that morning, Sunday, to suggest a cider press, I thought he was crazy. It just didn’t seem like the appropriate weekend for something so trivial. But he’d insisted, arguing we needed a break and an excuse to see each other. That point won me over.

Penny, Marik, Jinky, Shauna, and Tina came clomping up the gravel path with a crunch of gravel under their feet. Shauna was already a surprise addition, but . . .

“Tina!” I squealed, barreling into her for a hug-turned-body-slam encounter. I could tell she was flattered by the attention, once she got her wind back, anyway.

“When did you get in? What are you doing home? How’s Iowa State? How’s Matthew? When did you cut your hair?” I hadn’t realized how much I missed Tina, who had been such an important component of my transition to Norse Falls last year. Had it not been for her and Penny, I’d have been new-girl roadkill.

Tina held her thumb up. “I got in yesterday.” She brought her index finger to join it. “I wanted to check on my family after all the reports of damage.” Her middle finger was next to join the lineup. “Good, but tough.” She added the ringman. “Still my guy.” With her “about two weeks ago” comment, she brought the whole hand to her hair for a fluff of the new do.

“Is everything all right with your family?” I asked, biting back my top lip.

“Yes. They’re fine, thank goodness. We lost a couple of trees and an old shed out back, but nothing major. There was a mountain of crap to clean up, but it could have been a lot worse.”

We were all quiet for a moment. I thought again of those who weren’t so lucky. An apology formed in my throat, but I managed to swallow it.

“I, for one, think we’ve all earned a little breather today.” Penny stepped between Tina and me. “I can’t tell you what a great idea this is. Anything to divert attention from . . .” She nervously adjusted the crochet cap from under which dropped two thick russet braids. “. . . All the hard work we’ve been doing.”

“Check it out,” Jack said, calling the group’s attention to a contraption that, by all appearances, was predated only by the wheel. “It’s an old-fashioned barrel press.”

“That thing is sick,” Shauna said. I thought it was a compliment, but I wasn’t entirely sure.

Jack demonstrated the workings of the contraption for everyone. It looked like nothing more than an old washtub on a stand with a top funnel device, some kind of crank handle, and a spigot at the bottom. It was as simple and crude-looking as anything I’d ever seen. Jack dumped the apples — skin, stems, and all — into the top opening. As he cranked on the noisy wheel, the apples were smashed into their subatomic particles, and a slush of cloudy cider poured into a bucket positioned below the tap. It wasn’t the most sophisticated or pristine of operations, but, then again, my own
afi
had a meat grinder on his kitchen counter. Yuck.

“It smells wonderful,” Marik said. Up until then he’d been so uncharacteristically quiet that I’d failed to really notice him. His skin was so pale it was translucent, and he had the stoop of an old man. Of course, he was an old man, a very old man. The problem being that he wasn’t an old soul, or any kind of soul, for that matter. Yet even in this deteriorating state, he was enjoying himself.

The cider was poured into an old metal jug, from which speckled tin cups were filled. Once again, I was struck by the way Jack’s family farm was like a wormhole to the past. No wonder the Álaga Blettur, a power place, had gone undetected here. The entire property was a wonderful little bubble of magic and history. Though I was sure that, with the post-storm rebuilding, Norse Falls and Pinewood were in for changes, I sensed that this place would resist.

When Marik eased himself onto a battered picnic bench, I noticed Shauna eyeing him.

“Are you OK there?” she asked. “You don’t look so hot.”

“On top of everything else, there’s a virus going around. A bad one,” Penny said, talking fast, even for her. “My grandmother volunteered at the hospital Friday night and said they had an above-average caseload of severe flu symptoms.”

Shauna took a step back. “If you’re contagious, shouldn’t you be holed up at home?”

Marik ran a hand over his glistening forehead. “I should have listened to Penny earlier. Maybe she’s right. To be on the safe side —”

“I’ll drive you,” Penny interrupted, “if it won’t leave anyone stranded.”

“I can take the others home,” Tina offered. By the look on Shauna’s face, she was more than happy to avoid the walking contagion that was Marik.

As they strode away, I witnessed a crushingly tender moment between Penny and Marik, who appeared to be arm in arm but with him listing toward her on every third or fourth step. I couldn’t help feeling gutted by the sight of them. It was going to end badly — very badly — for both. I felt my whole body shrivel with the thought of it.

The entire party seemed to fade a little with their absence. We ate cinnamon-and-sugar-dusted donuts, homemade by Jack’s mom. Jack and Jinky pitched horseshoes at a pin, while Shauna, Tina, and I sat atop the picnic table, dusting crumbs from our lap. I asked Tina more about Iowa State and her course load. She claimed to like the school but made no mention of their unfortunate mascot.

“Any news from Pedro?” I asked finally.

“Liking Minnesota State,” she said. “Matthew keeps in touch with him.”

Pedro, Penny’s boyfriend last year, had been a little harsh during their breakup, but, overall, he was a good guy, and I was glad to hear he was doing well.

“Well, I’m driving back tonight,” Tina said, standing and stretching. “Are you two ready?” she asked Jinky and Shauna.

Once the others were gone, Jack grabbed his backpack from under the picnic table and removed a small, clear water bottle with an inch or so of brown sludge at the bottom.

“A gift,” he said.

I looked at it. It didn’t appear to be much more than a swallow and, well, nasty-looking.

“You shouldn’t have,” I said, not taking it.

He shook it at me expectantly.

“No, really,” I said.

He forced it into my unwilling hands. “You’re as stubborn as your
afi,
who, by the way, this is for.”

“For Afi?” I asked, confused.

“When I got there Friday night, you, Hulda, and Penny’s grandmother were so busy you didn’t even notice me. Hulda had dropped the other half of the apple she sliced into. I picked it up for her and brushed it off, and next thing I knew Leira was crying, and the crisis seemed to be over. And you know how I believe in an apple a day. Even if this was just a half, it seemed special. And your
afi
could stand a little boost, could he not? So I kept it and pressed it, figuring what the heck?”

“Thank you. Thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around Jack’s neck while holding the bottle aloft like something precious and fragile. So it wouldn’t be administered at a vortex while the universe’s powers were in flux, but it couldn’t hurt. And if anyone could cheat death out of an extra hand or two, it was Afi. Stubborn old coot!

School felt like a changed place come Monday morning. It felt a little disingenuous walking the pre-first-bell halls when Pinewood didn’t have any. Besides local damage, all anyone could talk about was the leveling of their building. An emergency session of the school board — make that combined school boards, for both communities — had been called for that evening. Speculations were rampant that Norse Falls High would accommodate the displaced students from Pinewood.

Even as all this was, almost spookily, sorting itself out, another mystery was in the making. Both Penny and Marik were no-shows for first period. I texted Penny twice but got no reply. With respect to Marik, this had potentially tragic implications. Penny I didn’t get, however. Especially with so much news to cover.

“Where’s Marik?” I whispered to Jinky as the bell rang to second-period Design and there was still no sign of them.