Strange Seed by Stephen Mark Rainey Read Free Book Online Page A

him:
    “It’s not like they was broke, Paul. I know for a fact they wasn’t. But, like I said, that’s all they wanted.”
    Paul leaned over and idly fingered the small, rough-hewn, wooden crosses. “Margaret—1970,” he murmured. “Joseph—1971.” He looked up at Lumas. “Why,” he began incredulously, “didn’t they scratch the birth dates in? And the last name? What kind of people were the Newmans?”
    “Can’t say I know the answer to that, Paul. They lived here six or seven years. But I was never what you would call close to ‘em. They let me work for ‘em now and again, but as far as playing cards with ‘em, or just sittin’ in front of the fire and chewin’ the fat—it never happened. They wasn’t much for conversation, you know—just work and sleep. And they was awful religious, which is okay, but not for me.” He pointed stiffly. “For instance, you know what kind of wood those crosses is made of?”
    “Some kind of fruitwood, I imagine,” Paul answered.
    “Nope. It’s dogwood. I can show the tree they took ‘em from.” He jerked his head backward to indicate the forest.
    Paul straightened. “I don’t understand. What’s the significance?”
    “Can’t say what’s significant about it. All I know is that the cross they put Christ on was made’a dogwood. That’s what I read, Paul. And I’ll tell you another thing. Those kids was buried in only a sheet, no box, no nothin’. Just a sheet, and one of those crosses you see people wearin’ round their necks…”
    “A crucifix?” Paul offered.
    “That’s right. A crucifix. Put one each in their little white hands and them wrapped ‘em in the sheet from head to toe, and put ‘em in the earth. Kind of godawful way to say good-bye to their own kids, don’t you think?” Paul started to answer in the affirmative, but Lumas went on. “What might as well have been their own kids, I mean.”
    “They were adopted?”
    “You never met the Newmans, Paul?”
    “No. My uncle rented the house to them—even after I took ownership…”
    “That explains it,” Lumas cut in. “The Newmans was about you and your wife’s age, a little younger. And these kids here—“was ten, twelve years old.” He paused meaningfully. “They was adopted. That’s what the Newmans told me. They adopted these kids.”
    *****
    Paul, at Rachel’s insistence, left the cat curled up on the wing-backed chair and tried to make himself comfortable on the couch. “According to Hank,” he explained, “those children were just…here, one day. And the Newmans told him that an orphanage in Syracuse was very happy to find homes for them because they were older—not, you know infants.”
    Rachel, in her wicker chair at the opposite end of the room, looked quizzically at him. “And they died a year or so later, Paul? What of?”
    “The girl—her name was Margaret— died of pneumonia, according to what Hank told me. It was very late in the year, there’d been a quick change in the weather—very warm one day, very cold the next.” He stood, went to the back window, peered out. After a moment, he continued, “There was an ice storm, Hank says, and the little girl got caught in it, in this ice storm. A week later, she was dead.”
    “How awful,” Rachel said. She averted her eyes briefly, as if remembering. “And the Newmans reacted very…coldly to the whole thing?”
    “Hank tells me they did, but who knows? It’s difficult to tell how a person is actually reacting to something like that. He might appear to be taking it very coldly, very impassively, when, in reality, he’s going through hell.”
    “I don’t know, Paul. Hank’s very…sensitive, despite his appearance. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
    “Yes, I have. But it’s hard to square what he’s told me with what my own reactions would have been under the same circumstances, though there are these awful wooden crosses, of course. And the fact   that the children were buried wrapped