A Hard Witching by Jacqueline Baker Read Free Book Online Page B

hedge.
    “It works the other way around, too,” he said loudly, “if the ground is cold and the air is warm. Like in winter. That’s why sometimes it seems like things are closer than they really are. Like farms. Or towns.” He leaned over her a little, to see if her eyes were open. They weren’t. “Sometimes it looks like the Sand Hills are just on the other side of the highway. Like you could walk right over. You ever seen that?”
    He wondered if he should explain about refraction, about how you could see it by holding a pencil in a glass of water. Probably she already knew about that.
    “Anyway,” he sighed, slumping back on the grass, “that’s a mirage.”
    He watched the ribbon flip and settle. She was beginning to look a little pink. Hot. Had she fallen asleep?
    “I can fill that spray bottle with ice water,” he said. “My mom keeps a pitcher cold.”
    Lucy lay there motionless, her skin gleaming. Beads of sweat glinted in the hollow of her collarbone, like sparks, as though she would burst into flame at any second. It could happen. Spontaneous combustion.
    Finally she said, “She home?”
    What difference did that make? “No,” he lied.
    Without opening her eyes, she unscrewed the cap, dumped the tepid water from the Windex bottle on the grass at the edge of the blanket and held it out to him.
    He eased himself up, noticing how his shadow fell across herbelly in a wide, dark stripe. He wondered how long he would have to stand there in order to leave the white shape of his body on her skin. He banged the empty bottle against his leg a couple of times. Lucy opened her eyes.
    “You want a drink?” he asked. “I could get something.”
    “Yeah,” she said, “see if you got any Tang.”
    Owen slammed through the screen door. His mother knelt on the kitchen floor in a halter top and the cut-off shorts she wore to work, trimming new strips of MACtac to line the cupboards—yellow with green dots a shade lighter than Lucy’s swimsuit. She was wearing the belt he hated, the one with her name stitched on the back,
Lillie.
He had one, too, in a box somewhere in the basement.
Owen.
Like it meant something. It was too small now. He’d picked them both out that year they’d gone together to the Stampede in Medicine Hat. He’d ridden on the carousel and on a pony, a brown one with big white patches that made him think of continents. And then she’d taken him on the Ferris wheel, and the wheel had stopped when they were almost right at the top, and he was amazed that even from way up there he could still smell red candied apples, like cinnamon, and popcorn and hotdogs (and mustard, he was sure he could smell mustard), and he wondered whether he just thought he could smell it because he knew it was all there, hamburgers and pizza and fat pink wads of cotton candy, and before he knew it the wheel had started, and they were at the bottom again, and his mother was holding the bar back so he could climb out, and he realized with dismay that he’d never even looked at the city.
How about a corn dog?
his mother said then. But he wasn’t hungry. So they splurged—that’s what his mother said—and bought the belts. Owen picked them out andstood watching while a man with an electric tool like a drill etched their names on the leather. He wished now he’d chosen something else. He wished his mother would not wear hers anymore, but he could not tell her this.
    “Shush,” she said as he stood in the kitchen doorway, though he had not said anything, “I just put the baby down.” She leaned back on her haunches and frowned at him. “Owen. Where’s your shirt?”
    “I been in the shade,” he said, trying not to look at the loose flesh of her belly over the shorts.
    “Still.” She put down the scissors. “Sun goes right through leaves, right through to your skin. You’ll get sunstroke. Or skin cancer. Do you want that, skin cancer?”
    Owen did not want skin cancer. He wished she would not say those