Red Earth White Earth. Will Weaver

and for the rest of the summer, Guy kept track of how many eggs his mother used. He marked down the eggs she fried for breakfast, the eggs she swirled into cake batter, the eggs she broke over flour to make cookie dough. When he was out for chores he made his mother list any eggs she used. For Guy guessed that the Indian family ate about the same number of eggs as did his own family. In this way he could calculate when the rusty blue Pontiac and the boy named Tom LittleWolf would come again.

      Every other Saturday, Tom came. Those Saturday mornings Guy rushed through his chores. “What’s the hurry?” his father said. “Indians don’t get up before noon.”

      But as soon as he fed the calves and rinsed their pails, Guy raced up to the attic of the granary, to its small window that looked west. There he waited for the tiny cocoon of dust to appear down the road, for the blue beetle to emerge from the center of the dust and grow into a real car. When he was sure it was the Pontiac, Guy raced down the ladder and hid himself in the yard. The Pontiac turned slowly into the driveway. Though there was good shade beneath the red oak tree near to the house, the Pontiac parked as always on the hot gravel by the machine shed. But its blue door squeaked open before its wheels stopped crackling on the gravel, and Tom LittleWolf’s moccasins hit the ground running. Guy broke from his hiding place and their play was on.

      Their games took them through the full measure of a farm’s potential for fun. In the hayloft they hid and sought each other in the green city of bales. On ropes they swung back and forth across the wide loft like trapeze artists beneath the crown of a circus tent. Or they left the hayloft and crept back into the granary. There they crouched behind the grain fanning mill with slingshots loaded, their rubbers stretched and trembling the length of their arms as they waited for mice to peek from their holes in the corners of the bins. Sometimes they left the granary alone all morning and let it flock with sparrows. Later, with a baseball bat, they crept up the narrow stairs to the attic and burst in on the sparrows. In the long, narrow attic with its small windows at either end, the startled sparrows forgot their way down the open stairwell. They fluttered window to window, thudded against the glass. Guy and Tom took turns with the bat. The batter stood in the center alley of the attic. The pitcher used a stick to keep the sparrows flying down the batting lane into the strike zone. When the sparrows had all been belted for home-runs, fouled off, or hidden themselves in the cracks of the rafters, Tom and Guy turned to outside play.

      Often they played in the scrap-iron pile beside the machine shed. There they tied worn harrow teeth to sticks and made spears. The rusted iron plates of a field disk were shields. A length of old sewer pipe bolted to a rusted wheelbarrow became a cannon. Discarded grease guns made natural ray guns. From old tractor seats, sheets of tin, and a broken, treadle-powered grindstone, they constructed a space ship complete with a sparking alien death-ray beam.

      But most often they played race and chase. They ran among the square buildings until their backs trickled wet with sweat and their skin glowed with heat. They tackled and tagged each other, then ran again. As the summer progressed Tom got to stay a little longer each time he came. That was because Madeline and Mary LittleWolf talked. At first the two mothers stood together for a few minutes on the front steps. Later they sat on the front steps in the shade. Once Guy saw that both of them held glasses of something cold to drink. Toward the end, the hottest part of the summer, the two women went inside the house. Tom’s father sat motionless in the Pontiac.

      When Tom’s mother came out with the eggs, Tom immediately stopped their game and followed her in silence to the car. He never said good-bye. In the Pontiac he sat straight and did not wave as he left. Soon the car shimmered into the dust. Its blue shape wavered, shrank, then disappeared. And Guy was left alone again on the flat, dry lawn among the tall buildings.

      Once after the Pontiac had gone Guy was in the house drinking his third glass of ice water. On the table were Madeline’s and Mary’s glasses, empty but for thin droopy ice cubes and wilty moons of lemon slices. There was a plate of gingersnaps, still warm. Guy took another. That day he was very hungry. He and Tom had played a long time. Then the porch door slammed as his father came in.

      “So what have you boys been up to all afternoon?” Martin asked. His father was thin and tall and sandy-haired and stoop-shouldered from the dairy cows. Martin looked at the iced-tea glasses.

      “Playing,” Guy answered. He was still out of breath.

      “Playing. There’s work to be done on Saturdays, too, you know.”

      Guy was silent. He looked at Madeline. His mother was short and brown-haired, not from Minnesota. She began to clear the table.

      “You better cut down on that running around,” he said. His eyes were on Madeline. On the lemonade glasses. “Those Indians stay longer every time they come.”

      Madeline turned from the sink to look at Martin. “What do you mean, ‘those Indians’?” she asked.

      “The family with the black hair and brown eyes, they’re Indians, I’d say,” Martin said.

      “LittleWolf is their name. You know that. Mary and Warren LittleWolf. And Tom.”

      “Warren,” Martin said. “He’s the one who never gets out of the car. Wonder why that is?” He laughed once.

      “Likely for the same reason you stay in the barn when they’re here.”

      Martin fell silent. A tiny muscle along his jaw began to move. “Mary, eh? Well, that’s real friendly. But you better not start that. You shouldn’t encourage them.”

      “Encourage them?”

      Martin swung his arm at the plate of cookies, at the two empty glasses. “You do this, they stay longer. Just sell them the eggs. That’s all they come for.”

      “There’s nothing wrong with being neighborly,” Madeline said.

      “They’re not neighbors,” Martin said.

      “I’d say they were,” Madeline said immediately. “I enjoy talking to Mary.”

      “What can you have to talk about?”

      Madeline spoke quickly; her words sliced through the air like tiny whips. “We’re both women,” she said.

      Martin turned, slammed the screen door, and was gone.

      In two Saturdays the LittleWolfs’ car came again. But Guy and Tom had hardly begun their play when Guy noticed his father standing framed in the barn door. He was watching. Tom shouted but Guy missed the ball. It bounced across the driveway and rolled close to the Pontiac. Guy ran after it, then slowed to a walk as he neared the car. For the first time he saw, close-up, Tom’s father. He had thick black hair that stood straight up in a long, sharp crew-cut. He had a wide face, small eyes, and his chin jutted forward like a fist. His chin looked large because he had no teeth, and his lips had shrunk back over his gums. From the car came the strong smell of peppermint.

      Guy stared. But Warren LittleWolf did not see him. He was staring across the yard at Martin. Martin suddenly stepped through the barn door into daylight and stalked toward the house, where Madeline and Mary LittleWolf had gone inside. As Martin quickly crossed the yard, Tom’s father tooted the Pontiac’s horn once. Then again. But Martin had reached the front door by then. Guy and Tom turned to watch. From inside the house they heard loud voices. Then Tom’s mother came quickly, almost stumbling, down the steps. She walked rapidly across the lawn. Tom ran to join her. This time when the Pontiac pulled away its wheels spun and snarled across the gravel.

      Guy stood in the empty yard. A bumblebee droned by. In the windbreak a cicada buzzed. From inside the house he could hear his parents shouting. He heard something crash and break. He saw his father come out of the house backward, then cross the yard to the barn. Guy went to the shade of the red oak and waited. In a few minutes his mother came from the house. She carried a small suitcase, got in their car, and started the engine. She stopped the car by the driveway and the red oak. She got out and kissed him. He could smell iced tea and lemon on her breath. She had been crying too.

      “Mommy will be gone for a few days,” she whispered. “You can eat with Grandma, okay?”