Page 10 of Keepsake
Kieran was the first to start snoring. The Shipley cousins were just here on loan for the busy season. Their parents had a spread up in Hardwick and a business breeding highland beef cattle. They’d be gone by Thanksgiving.
That would leave only me.
I was pretty sure that most people who passed through the bunkhouse saw it as a short-term thing. For a hundred years this building had housed temporary farm labor. The place was a waystation to a bigger and better life.
The trouble was that I couldn’t picture my own next chapter. And as I lay reflecting on the day’s events, something began to trouble me. My promotion from apple picker to market manager was a good one, except for one big flaw. The markets wereseasonal, ending right before Thanksgiving.
It was just dawning on me that my time on the Shipley farm might be coming to a close faster than I’d thought. I’d need a Plan B, and pretty quick.
I wasn’t one to panic, but the idea was sobering. I hadn’t been to high school, because the religious freaks at Paradise didn’t allow it. Finding other work was a crapshoot. I could only hope that there’d be another job for someone who worked uncomplainingly and was a capable mechanic, too.
But Ruth Shipley and Leah Abraham kept mentioning school. I wondered if I could make that happen, or if it was just too late for a guy like me. When I listened to Griff’s tales from his college days, I couldn’t see myself on a campus somewhere, doing keg stands and writing papers about the Civil War. That was something other people did—people who’d grown up in a home where schooling was important.
I didn’t have family members to guide me on this journey because I’d left them behind out West. I had a borrowed family. They were great, but they had done too much for me already. I didn’t have a girlfriend, because who would want a guy with an eighth-grade education who’d been kicked to the curb by his family?
These were my thoughts as I listened to the bunkhouse settle in for the night. Whenever I stopped to think about it, I realized that the bunkhouse was a lot like me—it was annexed to the farm. It was part of it, but only in a casual way. Off to the side. Not quite independent.
I lived in the bunkhouse of life.
On that thought, and in spite of the sound of two other guys snoring, I slipped off to sleep.
Sometime later—it might have been an hour, or even two—I awoke to the sound of something going terribly wrong. My eyes flew open in the darkness, my heart pounding in response to the sound of a high-pitched, keening cry. The noise died as quickly as it had come, and for a moment I lay there wondering if I’d dreamed it.
But then it came again as a muffled scream. I felt goosebumps on my chest.
“What…is that coyotes?” someone slurred.
I listened hard. Across the room, another snore was still going strong. But the sound came a third time, and it was even louder now.
And it was coming from the guest room.
I slid out of bed, my feet clumsy on the cold floorboards. I moved into the darkened hallway without stumbling too badly. Outside Lark’s door, I paused. Now I could hear her speaking, but the tumble of words was impossible to make out.
Either she was dreaming, or Lark had been visited by an unlikely intruder.
Still, I hesitated. If I was disoriented, I might not want some sleepy stranger bursting into my room. But then Lark screamed again, and the sound of it was chilling enough to inspire me to move. I pushed her door open.
The room was lit by a nightlight that someone had thoughtfully installed. Lark was curled tightly in the center of the double bed. Her face was wet and contorted in dismay.
“Lark,” I said.
“No!” she moaned, twisting her face into the pillow.
“Lark,” I said firmly. “Lark, you’re dreaming.”
But she didn’t hear me. She was shaking now. “Stop!” she cried out.
I was wide awake now, but I had no idea what to do. The choices were to touch her and wake her from what looked like a violent dream. But that had the possibility of startling her half to death. Or I could walk away and do nothing.
As I hesitated, she began to cry in earnest.
Aw, hell.
I leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Lark, wake up.” I applied only a gentle pressure, one designed not to become part of whatever horrors she thought were actually happening. I said exactly what Leah would have said to someone suffering from a nightmare. “Wake up, sweetie.” I rubbed her arm.
That did it. But now she whirled on me, sitting bolt upright.
Startled, I jumped back. “Sorry,” I said quickly.
