Chapter 5 - The Blue Tarp and the Snapping Wind
On Saturday, twenty-four hours before Easter, the Oklahoma sky was a brilliant, washed-out turquoise, scrubbed clean by thirty-five-mile-an-hour gusts that howled out of the southwest.
Aaron spent the entire morning working in the backyard.
He had rented a commercial ditch-witch from the Home Depot on 33rd Street to repair the severed sprinkler lines, working with purple primer and PVC cement until the leaks were sealed and the system held sixty pounds of pressure.
The six-foot mound of red clay, however, remained where the dump truck had dropped it.
It sat beside the west wall of my shop like a bloody wound on the green lawn. Because the wind was gusting so hard that red dust was blowing into the air, Aaron had covered the mountain of earth with a massive, thirty-foot blue poly tarp, weighting the edges down with cinder blocks and heavy railway ties.
Every time a gust tore through the pecan orchard, the blue plastic snapped with a violent, rhythmic CRACK-CRACK-CRACK that sounded like rifle fire outside my kitchen window.
At 2:00 PM, a white Ford Explorer pulled into my driveway.
It was Danielle.
She didn't get out right away. She sat in the idling vehicle for five minutes, smoking a cigarette with the window cracked two inches, the smoke whipping away into the spring wind.
In the back seat, eight-year-old twins Bryce and Braden were bouncing against their seatbelts, punching each other’s shoulders, their faces pressed against the glass.
I was standing at the kitchen counter, boiling three dozen eggs for Callie’s Easter hunt, when the back screen door clicked open.
Danielle walked in without knocking.
She was thirty-two, two years younger than me, but carried herself with that perpetually exhausted, aggrieved posture that my mother had spent thirty years indulging. She had our mother’s small chin, her thin lips, and our father’s habit of scanning a room to see what she could claim before she said hello.
She wore leggings, an oversized college sweatshirt, and carried an iced coffee from the drive-thru in Guthrie.
"Hey," Danielle said, dropping her keys on my clean counter with a sharp clatter. "Mom said you had a fit on Thursday."
I didn't turn around from the stove. I lowered six white eggs into the simmering water with a slotted spoon.
"Hello, Danielle," I said.
"Chad’s furious, Crystal," she continued, leaning her hip against the island, pulling on her straw. "He had to take off three hours early from the warehouse to borrow his uncle’s flatbed because Dad said Darren wouldn't drop the lumber off. You know Chad doesn't get paid for personal hours. That’s seventy dollars out of our grocery money."
I set the slotted spoon down. I turned around slowly, leaned my back against the range, and crossed my arms.
"Why are you here, Danielle?"
Danielle sighed—that long, theatrical, put-upon sigh that meant she was about to explain why her problems were my moral responsibility.
"The boys need to get out of the house. Chad’s working an extra turnaround shift at four, and Mom’s baking her pies for tomorrow. I figured I’d drop Bryce and Braden here for a few hours so you and Callie could take them to the park."
"Aaron and I are working in the yard," I told her. "The ditch is still open, and the dirt is wet."
"They’re eight-year-old boys, Crystal! They play outside!" Danielle snapped, her voice rising into that familiar, whiny cadence. "Stop acting like my kids are made of porcelain! You treat Callie like she’s a doll in a glass box. A little mud never killed anyone."
She looked through the dining room window toward the backyard, spotting the blue tarp snapping in the wind.
"Dad said you called the city on him," she murmured, her eyes narrowing.
"I didn't call the city on him, Danielle," I said, my voice level and cold. "I work for the city. He walked into my department and submitted a fraudulent application with my address and your phone number on it."
Danielle didn't blink. Not a single trace of shame or surprise crossed her features.
"Well, somebody had to do something," she said, taking another sip of her coffee. "You’ve been sitting on that empty shop for six years doing nothing with it. Dad said the family needs to stick together right now. We’re losing our rental in thirty days, Crystal! What are we supposed to do? Move into a motel?"
"You could take the duplex I offered to pay for," I said.
"I am not living on Campbell Street!" she yelled, her face flushing red. "The schools over there are awful, and the backyard doesn't even have a fence for the dog! The shop has three acres! The boys could have had horses out here!"
"Horses?"
I stared at my sister. The sheer, breathtaking scale of her entitlement left me momentarily speechless.
"You don't own a horse, Danielle. You don't have three acres. I have three acres. Aaron and I pay two thousand four hundred dollars a month for the privilege of standing on this dirt."
"Dad put you in this house!" she screamed, slamming her plastic cup down on my counter so hard the lid popped off, splashing cold brown liquid across my white laminate. "He gave you fifteen thousand dollars! He’s never given me fifteen thousand dollars! Everything you have is because Dad favored you, and now that my family is in trouble, you're hoarding it all like a miser!"
Before I could answer, the front door opened.
Callie walked in from the living room, wearing her little pink fleece slippers, holding her favorite stuffed rabbit, Barnaby. She stopped three feet from Danielle, her big hazel eyes wide with apprehension.
"Aunt Danielle?" Callie whispered. "Why are you yelling at Mommy?"
Danielle looked down at my six-year-old daughter.
There was no warmth in her face. No auntly affection. There was only the cold, bitter resentment of a woman who viewed my child’s peace as a personal insult to her own chaotic life.
"I’m not yelling at your mother, Callie," Danielle said coldly, grabbing her keys from the counter. "I’m just trying to get her to act like she has a heart."
Danielle turned on her heel, pushed open the back door, and walked out to her Explorer.
"Bryce! Braden!" she shouted into the wind. "Get out of the car! Go play in your cousin’s yard! I’ll be back at five!"
The two boys tumbled out of the SUV like wild animals, screaming, kicking gravel, their heavy sneakers pounding across the lawn toward the blue tarp.
Danielle backed down the driveway, her tires throwing white limestone into the road, leaving her children behind without another word.
Callie stood beside me, her small hand reaching up to grip the fabric of my apron.
"Mommy?" she whispered, looking out at the blue tarp snapping violently in the thirty-mile-an-hour wind.
"Yes, baby?"
"Bryce said tomorrow they’re going to take my swing set down so they can put their basketball hoop up."
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I knelt down on the kitchen floor. I pulled my daughter against my chest, feeling the small, fragile flutter of her heartbeat against my ribs, smelling the clean, sweet scent of baby shampoo in her hair.
"Nobody is taking your swing set down, Callie," I whispered into her ear, my voice harder than the concrete slab behind our house. "Nobody is touching a single leaf on this ground. I promise you."
