Cheating for the Chicken Man Read online

  “Those sunglasses can wait,” Jess said when she and Kate found a seat together on the bus. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Kate turned, a slight frown wrinkling her brow, before she remembered what Jess was talking about.

  *

  The next morning, Uncle Ray stopped by the house early so Kate could go with him to the nearby courthouse to pick up J.T. who had been driven there for his official release.

  “Good luck,” Kate’s grandmother said as she stood in the doorway beside Kate’s silent mother, their arms linked. Had Grandma forced her mother into the doorway?

  “You ready, Kate?” Uncle Ray asked, settling his Nationals baseball cap back on his head. He didn’t always wear that hat, and Kate wondered briefly if it was to get a rise out of J.T., who was an Orioles fan.

  “Yes—oh, no! Wait a minute!” Kate exclaimed, suddenly remembering. She dashed back upstairs and grabbed a paper bag of clothes for J.T. from the top of her desk so he wouldn’t have to wear his prison uniform home. The outfit included J.T.’s T-shirt that said KEEP CALM AND REBOOT, which Kate thought was incredibly appropriate, a pair of his favorite jean shorts, some white ankle-high socks, and old sneakers. Sitting beside her uncle in the truck, Kate clutched the bag of clothes on her lap and prayed silently all the way to town that her brother would still be the same inside.

  Despite the late May heat, it was almost cold in the courtroom because of the air-conditioning. Uncle Ray took off his hat, and the two of them chose seats toward the back. When J.T. walked into the courtroom, Kate gasped. It was still a shock to see her brother’s hair buzzed off. His hair was so short she could see the shape of his skull. He seemed thinner, too, if that was possible. And even with the air-conditioning on, he was dressed way too warmly in boots, long blue pants, and a sweatshirt that hung on his lanky frame. Still, Kate ached with happiness that her brother was finally coming home. She was doubly glad she’d brought those clothes for him, even if she did have to surrender them to a deputy, who promised to give them to J.T. after his court appearance.

  The judge, the master of the court, cleared her throat. “All right, then. We have here Jeremy Tyler,” she began, opening a folder on her big desk.

  Kate leaned forward, struggling to hear, and turned to her uncle with a puzzled look.

  “It’s all just protocol,” he whispered.

  Kate rubbed her arms to get warm and made a mental note to look up that word, protocol, later.

  There was one order Kate heard clearly and that was when the judge sternly reminded J.T. that the state retained legal custody of him until he was twenty-one.

  “If you get into any trouble whatsoever, we can send you right back,” she warned. “Do you understand me, Jeremy?”

  “Yes, your honor,” he replied.

  After J.T.’s case was over, Kate and her uncle waited outside the courtroom in the hallway. When a clanging noise startled them, they turned to see J.T. coming out of the nearby men’s room in the shorts and T-shirt. Kate smiled, figuring the prison uniform had been chucked into the metal trash can, which was fine with her.

  Her brother had a funny grin and a soft twinkle in his familiar brown eyes, but his joy was mostly silent. After setting down a lumpy, black plastic bag full of his belongings, he gave his sister a hug, although not the crazy big one she had imagined.

  When he stepped away to embrace Uncle Ray, Kate saw it: the electronic ankle bracelet, a short black leather belt wrapped around J.T.’s ankle with a little box attached. While it wasn’t a complete shock—he’d worn one before his trial last summer—it bothered Kate to see it again. Maybe because it was a reminder that J.T. was still perceived as some sort of a criminal. Back at the house, a unit was already connected to the telephone line so it could communicate with the ankle bracelet and monitor J.T.’s movements, twenty-four hours a day. He’d be allowed to go to doctor appointments and meetings with his probation officer, but only certain times that were cleared ahead of time. If he didn’t “honor” the perimeter, an alarm would go off, and the police would come.

  J.T. saw Kate staring at his ankle.

  “Just for two months,” he said.

  She propped up another smile. At least it would be gone before school started.

  A woman approached with paperwork in her hands. “Hi there, Jeremy,” she said, extending her hand to J.T. “I’m Miss Hatcher. I’ll be your PO.”

  Right away Kate liked Miss Hatcher because she said “PO” instead of “probation officer.” It didn’t sound so official—or so mean.

  “Is this your family?” Miss Hatcher asked.

  “It is,” J.T. said. “This is my uncle, Mr. Ray Tyler, and my sister Kate.”

  Miss Hatcher shook hands with them. Then she turned back to J.T. “Welcome home,” she said. “I’ll be out to your farm tomorrow morning to see you, and we’ll have us a talk, okay?”

  Kate watched J.T. swallow and nod. She knew he was nervous. Maybe tomorrow, when he and Miss Hatcher had their talk, he could ask her to call him J.T. and not Jeremy. Maybe that would help a little.

  J.T. picked up the black garbage bag.

  Uncle Ray said, “Thank you kindly, ma’am.”

  When his uncle put his baseball cap on, J.T. noticed and said, “What? You think the Nationals have a chance this year?”

  “Darn right I do,” Uncle Ray said. “It’s a new year, a whole new ball game.”

  J.T. started to smile, and Kate beamed. A whole new ball game. She liked that phrase. Uncle Ray put one arm around J.T.’s shoulders and his other arm around Kate, and they headed for the door.

  Kate wrote in her journal that night.

  We three squished into the front seat of Uncle Ray’s truck. It was a long ride home for such a short distance. Uncle Ray doesn’t have AC, and it was raining, so maybe the heat and humidity tamped us down. Plus those windshield wipers thumping made a lot of noise. Uncle Ray would ask a simple question, like “How you feelin’?” or me, “Are you hungry?” and J.T. would just mumble a quick answer like “okay” or “not really.” Then we’d hear those windshield wipers thump back and forth again.

  Pausing with her pen poised over the journal page, Kate looked back at a word she’d just used—tamped, a recent vocabulary word. She knew it meant “to pack or push something down, especially by tapping it repeatedly.” Which was exactly how she felt. All those weeks of joyous anticipation and crossing the days off on her panda calendar had collided with a cold courtroom where she couldn’t hear the judge and had to endure the sight of her brother, thinner than ever, with his hair buzzed off and an electronic bracelet on his ankle. It was no wonder he was so quiet. It was like it was all supposed to be over, but it wasn’t. The windshield wipers thumping . . . Not by a long shot.

  *

  When they arrived home, Kate’s grandmother was waiting on the porch with her hands on her cheeks and tears in her eyes. Kerry rushed down the front steps and plowed into J.T., wrapping her skinny little arms around him while Tucker went crazy barking and jumping up and down. Seeing Kerry and his dog, J.T. fully smiled for the first time. He buried his face in Tucker’s fur and let the dog practically lick his face off.

  Inside the house, Kate’s mother stood stiffly in the living room with a plate of warm brownies in her hands. When she didn’t say anything, Grandma took the plate from her hands. “Extra chocolate chips and no nuts!” she announced cheerfully. Everyone knew that was the way J.T. liked his brownies. Kate thought surely that would prompt a small “welcome home” from her mother, but no such luck. The plate was passed around, but it turned out that, just then, no one was hungry for brownies.

  “I’ve gotta get back. Take care, Angela,” Uncle Ray said to Kate’s mother. To Grandma, he said, “Good to see you again, Sarah.”

  It was always funny to hear someone call her grandmother Sarah, or Mrs. Gunter, Kate thought.

  Unc
le Ray turned to J.T. “Good to have you home, son. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  At dinner, J.T.’s favorite meal was put on the table: spaghetti, a green salad, and a loaf of hot, buttered garlic bread. Grandma said grace, thanking the lord for J.T.’s safe arrival home, and as soon as she finished, Kate watched her brother wind up a big ball of spaghetti on his fork.

  “You don’t know how good this tastes,” he said around a mouthful.

  Kate spooned sauce over her pasta, carefully avoiding the lumps of meat.

  “Was the food not very good at that place?” Grandma asked.

  J.T. shrugged and swallowed. “It wasn’t that bad,” he said, “But nowhere near as good as Mom’s cooking.”

  Even though Grandma was the one who made the sauce, no one pointed it out. Instead, they all turned to look at Kate’s mother, who sat quietly, picking at her food as if she hadn’t even heard the compliment. The air felt heavy. There was an open wound in her family, Kate thought. When was somebody going to make it better?

  “Mommy, how come you don’t talk to J.T.?” Kerry asked. It took a six-year-old to do it. “Aren’t you glad he’s home?”

  Kate’s mother lifted her head to look at J.T. “You never wrote to us.”

  J.T. met his mother’s eyes. “No. I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

  “You weren’t here at the end, when your father got so sick.”

  Just then, the cat, the bell on its collar jingling, jumped off the extra chair at the table, as though sensing the tension, and ran from the room.

  J.T. put his fork down. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Mom. I’m sorry for what happened. I’m sorry Dad died and I wasn’t here. I am sorry for everything. You think I’m not ashamed of it?”

  This was her mother’s chance, Kate thought. If only she would say “I understand” or “Let’s start over.” But she didn’t. She just sat there, silent as a stone, with a pained expression, like she didn’t know what to do or say.

  Kerry’s little voice broke the silence again. “Well, I’m glad you’re home,” she told J.T. “So is Tucker. And so is Jingles!”

  “Me too,” Kate added.

  “We’re all glad you’re home, dear,” Grandma said. She reached across the table to touch both J.T.’s and Mom’s hands at the same time. “Angela, please. It’s time to forgive. It is time to move forward.”

  Kate’s mother looked up again. Her eyes glistened and then closed. “I am trying.”

  Another heavy, dead silence followed. Kate wished her mother would try a little harder and say something. But this was how it was now. She knew her mother wasn’t well, but it wasn’t the kind of sickness you could cure with antibiotics or a week of rest. Something inside her mother was broken.

  “It’s okay,” J.T. said. Then he asked for the bread basket, which got everybody moving forward again.

  The bigger disappointment came after dinner, when J.T. wanted to go to bed early and Kate’s grandmother had to fetch the key to unlock his room. Kerry followed, and so did Kate, bracing herself because she knew the bed had never been made.

  “I had no idea!” Grandma gasped, scooping up dirty socks from the floor and sending Kate to retrieve fresh sheets. “Give us five minutes,” she told J.T.

  He went to sit on the stairs.

  Kerry, cradling the docile black cat in her arms like a baby, went to sit beside him. “Do you want to hold Jingles?” she asked.

  “Five minutes!” Grandma called out to him again while she and Kate hurriedly tucked the bottom sheet around the mattress corners. “We’ll have this place fixed up in a jiffy!”

  Kate glanced out the door, but all she could see was J.T.’s back, hunched over, unmoving.

  ~4~

  UNSPOKEN

  In the morning, Kate’s phone woke her with the ding of an arriving text. She reached out from the covers to grab her phone from the night table.

  Jess: You up? Mom’s taking me to the mall. Sunglasses and a new bathing suit. Want to come? We can get pedicures! She’ll pay!

  Kate hesitated. She and Jess had talked about getting new bathing suits together. Would Jess go without her? Just like that? Kate sat up so she could text back with both hands.

  Kate: JT’s first day home.

  She set the phone down and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Should she ask Jess to hold off on buying the suit? They hadn’t even decided one piece or two. And Jess was going to help Kate find some of that lotion that gave you an instant tan. Why couldn’t she just wait?

  Jess: Is JT okay?

  Kate picked up her phone. She wasn’t going to get into what had happened yesterday.

  Kate: Fine.

  Jess: Sure you don’t want to come?

  Kate was imagining the pedicure. She and Jess and two other friends had gotten pedicures for Jess’s eleventh birthday, and Kate had enjoyed the trip to the salon, picking out the color, getting the foot massage, seeing her toes transformed. Reluctantly, she texted back.

  Kate: I should stay home.

  Jess:

  Kate: Sorry

  Jess: ttyl

  Downstairs, everyone else was already up. J.T. was even dressed and handing his mother a note at the breakfast table.

  “I wrote down all the things Uncle Ray did for us. I can take over now,” he said.

  As she passed by, Kate peered over her mother’s shoulder at the list:

  CULLING

  CHECK THE FEED

  CLEAN THE STANDPIPES . . .

  “Thank you,” Mom said softly.

  J.T. put on his baseball cap, giving it a tug front and back, and said, “Uncle Ray won’t need to come anymore. I know he’s here this morning to mow, but I told him I could learn how to do that, too.”

  Suddenly, Kate felt hopeful. Quickly, she ate a bowl of cereal and got dressed so she could follow J.T. outside.

  “Gassing up for Uncle Ray,” he said when Kate approached the pump down by the tractor sheds where he was standing.

  Kate smiled. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “Me too. You have no idea.”

  She waited for him to hang up the nozzle and cap the tractor’s fuel tank.

  “Sorry about Mom,” she said, eager to talk. “I mean, the way she is now.”

  J.T. wiped his hands on a rag he pulled from under the tractor seat. “It has a name, you know. What Mom’s got.”

  “You mean why she won’t leave the house?”

  “Yeah. She has agoraphobia,” J.T. said. “She’s afraid of having another panic attack in public, so she doesn’t want to go anywhere. She only feels safe in the house. I talked to Miss Laurie, my counselor at Cliffside, about it.”

  “I didn’t know it had a name,” Kate said. “I know she takes medicine.”

  J.T. caught his sister’s eyes. “We have to help her, Kate. Grandma can’t keep coming up here all the way from North Carolina. She’s got a life with Grandpa. He needs her, too. I know that Mom is their only child, but we can’t expect Grandma to give up her life for us.”

  Kate’s lips remained parted. Her brother’s compassion was unbelievable.

  “Wait!” she said when he started walking away. It had been nine long months since they’d had a conversation, and there was a lot she wanted to talk about. “I wanted to tell you that I got an e-mail from Brady on my birthday.”

  “No!” J.T. snapped, stopping abruptly and whirling around. “Do not be mentioning Brady to me—or Digger either! Do you hear?”

  Surprised, Kate drew back.

  “Sorry,” J.T. said quickly, lowering his voice. “I didn’t mean to yell. And I’m sorry I didn’t write to you.” He lifted his hands and then let them drop. “I didn’t know what to say.”

  “You could’ve just told me what you did,” Kate suggested gently, recalling how desperate she’d been for even the ti
niest bit of information. She lifted her shoulders. “Like what you had for breakfast—”

  “But I didn’t want to talk about it,” J.T. said, cutting her off. “I still don’t, so just let it go, okay?”

  “Okay,” Kate instantly agreed. But she couldn’t help herself. When he walked away, she trotted after him. “Can I tell you something I did? That Mom doesn’t know?”

  “What? About sending the trumpet?” J.T. asked, smacking at a deerfly on his arm while he kept moving. “I knew you did it behind Mom’s back.”

  “You did?” Kate was surprised.

  “Of course I knew.”

  But how? Kate wondered, slowing down. And why hadn’t he thanked her?

  “Well, that’s not it!” she called after him.

  J.T. kept going.

  “I became a vegetarian,” Kate declared when she caught up to him.

  Her brother finally stopped and stared at her. “What?”

  Kate nodded vigorously. “Yeah. I don’t eat meat.”

  “Why?”

  “I saw a film, J.T. It showed how they slaughter animals—how awful it is. Not just the chickens, but the cows and the pigs—and the lambs. I cried so hard. I swore I’d never eat meat again. I wish no one would eat meat.”

  Her brother’s face softened. “Kate,” he said, opening his hands. “You live on a chicken farm!”

  “I know.” Kate screwed up her face. “I know!”

  “Mom hasn’t noticed?”

  She shook her head. “Grandma hasn’t either. Jess is the only one I told.”

  “Are you getting protein and stuff?”

  “Sure, it’s not a problem. I researched it. I eat a lot of peanut butter and beans. It’s easy, ’cause I’m the one who does the food shopping and most of the cooking when Grandma’s not here. Did you know that? Every other month, she goes home to North Carolina. I go to the grocery store with Jess’s mom. I take the bags and everything.”