Restoring Harmony Part 6

"Mom said," he mimicked me, suddenly bitter. " he mimicked me, suddenly bitter. "Mom said we have all the money in the world, did she? What do you eat up there in Canada without any money? Stone soup?" we have all the money in the world, did she? What do you eat up there in Canada without any money? Stone soup?"

He had let go of my foot so he could root around in his bag, and I jumped up in indignation.

"Sit down," he said, his voice gentle. "You've got something deep in your foot."

I sat back in the chair, but only because it hurt so much to stand.

"This is going to be painful," he said, "but I'll be as quick as I can." He used sharp tweezers to dig into the tenderest part of my foot. A little yelp escaped in spite of my efforts to hold it in.

He leaned in close, squinting. "Don't move. I've almost got it."

White-hot pain burned through my whole body, and wooziness washed over me, making me sink back into the chair.

"There," he said, holding up a piece of green gla.s.s with the tweezers.

I let out a long, slow breath. "Thanks," I gulped. "Listen, all we need is train fare-"

"You don't get it, do you? There isn't any money."

"There has to be enough for train fare," I argued. "We can sell something."

"Do you think we'd be sitting here without electricity if we had anything left to sell?"

"But Mom said you're rich. And whenever we talked to Grandma on CyberSpeak, she said you were fine."

His tone had softened, but his eyes flashed with anger. "We were getting by until a couple of months ago, but a few weeks in the hospital wiped out our entire savings and the pension fund dried up last year. I had to sell everything I could just to buy food."

He'd sold his possessions to buy food and he had the nerve to be mad at Mom for becoming a farmer? I didn't understand him at all. I took a hard look at the room and saw that it really was much shabbier than I would've expected from my mom's descriptions. The chairs were threadbare, and the china cabinet was empty and covered in a layer of dust. They'd obviously been hard up for a lot longer than he was even willing to admit. Grandma saw me looking around and gave me a lopsided smile. Had she followed the conversation or not?

"None of us are going to Canada," Grandpa said. "If you don't have any money, then you're stuck here, too."

11.

A HALF HOUR LATER, AFTER GRANDPA HAD USED THE supplies from my emergency kit to bandage up my feet, we were all sitting there absorbed in our own thoughts. I knew I should be concentrating on ways to raise some money, but honestly, all I could think about was food. I'd finished all of Poppy's snacks the night before, and my stomach was growling.

"Ummm, Grandpa?" I asked.

He looked over at me.

"Is there . . . I mean . . ." This was hard. I'd been raised to wait for someone to offer food.

"What?" he asked.

"Did I . . . ummm . . . did I miss breakfast?"

"You're hungry?" he asked.

"Starving!"

He stood up. "Come on. I'll see what we have."

I hobbled after him to the kitchen counter and climbed up on a bar stool. I wasn't expecting much, nothing like home, but when he took out a cutting board and knife and chose two battered tomatoes out of a ceramic bowl, I got a little worried. Tomatoes for breakfast? He sliced them nice and thick, just like my mother always did. I didn't have the heart to tell him that if there's one thing I hated, it was tomatoes. I figured I'd just force them down.

"We're out of pepper," he said, sprinkling the slices with salt.

He handed me three on a saucer. On another plate he placed one slice, and on the third, he put two slices, which he cut into tiny pieces and took out to Grandma. I limped behind him, back to the chair, and sat with my food balanced on my knees.

"Three is too many," I said to him. "Have one of mine. I'm not that hungry."

"You said you were starving."

"Figure of speech."

"I'm not a charity case," he said, but he didn't stop me when I slid a tomato onto his plate.

The food situation was clearly worse than I thought. They both looked skinny, but because I didn't really know them, I wasn't sure if that was just how they normally were or not. If he was willing to accept my food, though, things must be pretty bad. I slipped a bite into my mouth and swallowed it whole.

"Did you grow these?" I asked.

"They come over the fence."

"What do you mean?"

"Most days the neighbor throws vegetables over the fence," he explained. "Not just tomatoes, though. Sometimes there's zucchini. We used to get a few strawberries, but not anymore. I guess strawberries are done for the year. And once we got a couple of onions and some pretty small carrots."

Was that all they had to eat? Grandma inhaled her tomatoes and stared ravenously at mine, so I cut them into small pieces and when Grandpa got up to take his plate to the sink I slipped them to her. She stuffed the bits into her mouth all at once with her fingers, and I hoped she wouldn't choke. The last thing I wanted to have to do was tell Mom I'd killed her mother.

"Show me this fence," I said, when Grandpa returned.

He led me out through French doors onto a huge covered deck and down some steps into an overgrown yard. "Wow. You've got more land than I expected," I said.

"Goes all the way down to the creek," he said. "Half an acre."

"You'd never know it from the front."

He shrugged. "Hey, look." He pointed to where half a dozen tomatoes lay on the ground along the bottom of the fence. "Lettuce too!" he shouted, grabbing up a small head of romaine with brown edges.

I handed him a couple of bruised tomatoes. "Have you ever tried to talk to the neighbor?"

Grandpa's smile vanished. "Leave well enough alone, Molly."

"I don't have enough money to get us back to Canada," I said, "but I have a little left over from busking. Maybe if I offered to pay him, he'd give us more." And better quality, I thought.

"Just forget it, okay? He might think you're one of the squatters and shoot you."

"What? Are you serious? With a gun?"

"Of course with a gun. Listen, I'm not saying he's a bad guy, and he probably wouldn't shoot you, but you can't be too careful. If he wanted to be friendly, he would've come over. He knows we're here. Come inside."

"I'm just going to walk down to the creek," I said.

"Stubborn like your mother," Grandpa said, but he didn't sound angry, or even worried, so I didn't think he was too scared of whoever lived next door.

"I just want to see what the garden looks like," I said.

Shaking his head, Grandpa took his cache inside, and I waded through the tall, dry gra.s.s. My mom always says gardens are like a magnet to me. Every time we visit friends, I have to check out theirs to see if I can learn anything. I had to see this one too.

When I got to the end of the yard, I was met with a solid wall of blackberry bushes. I found a place near the fence where they were a bit thinner and peeked around the end into the neighbor's yard. The man had cleared the entire lawn and turned it into a huge vegetable garden, but he was obviously not a serious farmer because the place was overrun with weeds. He'd be lucky if he didn't lose his whole crop.

Bracing myself for scratches, I pushed through the briars to get a better look. Green corn rustled in the light breeze, and weeds choked the stalks, but the plants looked like they could be saved with some care. The tomatoes stood tall and bent to the ground under their own weight. Someone should stake them up to keep the slugs from getting them.

Carrots, potatoes, and other root vegetables grew helterskelter, and I could barely figure out what was what because of the weeds suffocating everything. Pumpkin and zucchini vines had taken over at least 20 percent of the garden and needed to be cut back.

The place actually looked abandoned. Whoever the gardener was, it had to be someone totally overwhelmed, completely clueless, or very lazy. As I stared at the overgrown vegetable patch, my hands itched to get in there and go to work. I could see dozens of healthy green weeds, just a foot away, that I longed to pluck from the ground and toss onto the compost heap. I wanted to feel the soil against my palms and under my nails, just to remind myself that home still existed. I was hungrier than ever, and it was all I could do not to rip the young corn from the stalk and eat it right then.

I stood in the garden, leaning against the fence for a really long time, breathing in the fresh scents of plants and dirt, thinking. There were a lot of things in life I didn't know, but the raging hole in my stomach made me absolutely certain of one thing: We needed more food, and we needed it today. I could try to buy it from the neighbor, or I could just take it at night and . . . and what? Leave the money I had to pay the owner back? No, that was stupid. I needed a better idea.

What would my dad do in this situation? I laughed to myself. Knowing Dad, he'd get his farmer's almanac out and open it randomly, looking for advice. Maybe I should do that. But suddenly I didn't need to because I remembered Dad's favorite quote from the book.

A competent farmer rarely goes hungry.

Of course! Whoever had planted this garden didn't know the first thing about keeping it under control, but I did! Not only could I show my competence, but I could make myself totally indispensable. And I knew exactly how to do it. a.s.suming I didn't get shot in the process.

12.

July 13th-Jesus said to his disciples, "The harvest is truly plentiful but the laborers are few."

-Matthew 9:37

I HAD TO WAIT A DAY TO PUT MY PLAN INTO EFFECT because I was so tired, I couldn't even think, let alone pull weeds. I spent most of afternoon sleeping, had a dinner of lettuce and tomatoes, and then slept long and hard all night.

The next morning I was in the garden right at dawn, though. It wasn't long before the sun started getting strong and the vegetable beds were steaming around me, the emerald leaves glistening with dew. Morning in the garden is one of my favorite places to be on Earth. The fact that it wasn't my garden-and I'd probably have to do some fast talking when the owner came outside-didn't really bother me because I had my hands deep in the soil.

Even though I don't like to eat tomatoes, I love their fragrance; that sort of bitter-fresh scent smelled like everything good to me . . . soil, dew, plants, food . . . the farm, so I started weeding around the thick green tomato stalks.

I scooted along the row on my knees, letting the monotony of pulling weeds relax me and bring me the first real peace I'd known since leaving home. I was running a tune through my head, deep in my own private world of music, when I noticed movement.

The house looked almost exactly like my grandparents', and up on the deck a little boy and girl were watching. They moved closer and peered out at me through tangled dark hair. Their smudged faces were in need of a good was.h.i.+ng, but their matching blue eyes sparkled. They both had such skinny bodies it made me queasy. The girl walked over to me and plopped down onto the damp ground. "I'm Brandy," she said. "Who are you?"

"Molly. Nice to meet you." I held out a muddy hand and she giggled.

"That's Michael," she said, pointing at the boy. "He loves worms. What are you doing?"

Making myself indispensable!

"Weeding," I answered.

"I'm six. My brother's four. He doesn't know what weeds are, but I do. This is a carrot." She yanked a spindly carrot out of the soil. "This is a weed," she added, pointing to a plant next to it and leaving it in the ground.

"Yep. You're pretty smart for six."

"I know."

More movement near the house made me look up. In three quick strides, a tall man was towering over us. Luckily, he didn't seem to be armed.

"What in the h.e.l.l is going on out here?" he said. "Who are you?"

Brandy jumped up and ran back to Michael. I stood, brus.h.i.+ng my hands on my shorts, and then I got my first good look at the man and almost staggered back in surprise. I don't know what I was expecting, but it definitely wasn't young, blond, and handsome! Well, youngish. He must've been about thirty. His hair curled around his ears where it had pulled loose from a thick ponytail that hung halfway down his back. His face was tan, and his arms were chiseled muscles.

"Ummm . . . h-hi," I stammered.

"Hi? Is that all you have to say? What are you doing in my garden?"

"Well . . ." He glared at me, and I took a step back. "I, ummm . . . I'm staying next door . . . with my grandparents . . . Jack and Katharine Buckley-"

"And?" he demanded.

"And so they were telling me about the food you give them.

You know, throw over the fence. And so I was looking at your garden-"

"And you thought you'd just help yourself?"

"No! No, not at all! The thing is," I said rus.h.i.+ng on, "I live on a farm in Canada, and the kitchen garden, it's all my responsibility. It looked like you needed some help over here, and since you've been giving my grandparents food, I thought maybe I should come over and, you know, weed for you."

"Did it ever occur to you to ask first?"

"I guess I should've," I admitted. "But I was up at dawn and you weren't around . . . so I just started. Look at the tomatoes! Don't they look great?"

He gave them a cursory glance. "Slugs are getting them."

"I know, but I can help you with that. We can stake them up, and-"