18

AFTER THE TRIAL, after his conviction, after Billy Crosby was carted off to Lansing State Prison at the eastern edge of the state, the drought resumed. Northern winds blew away the planted seeds of winter wheat, calves got branded, steers got shipped to feed lots. Bobby Linder went off and joined the Army without telling anybody first, so that his mother suddenly found herself without two of her sons at home. She gained a son-in-law when Meryl Tapper and Belle got married in a small ceremony, followed by a barbecue at the ranch.

By that time it was nearly Thanksgiving.

In a classroom in the elementary school, a teacher called on a quiet pupil.

“Collin? Are you with us today?”

Collin Crosby looked up from his desk, alerted not by the sound of his second-grade teacher saying his name in her gentle way, but by the snickers in the classroom around him.

He nodded at her and whispered “Yes” as she smiled at him.

“That’s good. I’m glad you’re here with us.”

He flushed, because even if the other kids didn’t get the hidden meaning, he did, and although he appreciated it, it also embarrassed him. The last thing he wanted was to be singled out or have attention drawn to him, so he realized in that moment that he’d better pay better attention at all times. He was used to doing that, because he’d always had to stay hyperalert when his dad was around; since then, he had started to let his guard down.

He’d been daydreaming when she called him out.

He now realized there were still reasons to keep his guard up.

It was exhausting, having to be like that, but he already knew he could do it.

Collin was learning the ways of his new world, the one where his dad was in prison.

And it wasn’t just that his father was in prison, it was what he did to get there.

What people said he did…

His teacher, Mrs. Davidson, had been kind from the very first day he’d come back to school, and Collin knew it and he was grateful, as he knew his mother was, too. It could have gone a different way if he had a different teacher. He might have Mrs. Perron, who had a face like a knot in a tree trunk, all twisted up in a constant frown, and who was only nice to girls and hated even the good boys, and who had already stared at him in the hallways as if she’d like to stamp on him like a bug. His mother hadn’t had the nerve to go up to the school and talk to the principal about how to make things easier for him when he came back to school, but Mrs. Davidson had made it okay, some of it, anyway. She was young and fun and sweet to him, no matter how any other teacher, or parent, or child acted toward him. She was soft, like her first name, Heather. When no other kid would walk beside him when they formed their double line for the playground or the cafeteria, she took his hand and let him lead the line with her.

“They don’t hate you, Collin,” his mother had told him. “They’re just scared.”

He didn’t think that was true. He thought some of them probably did hate him, because their parents hated his dad. It all rubbed off on him and his mom. Most of the kids were just quiet around him so far, and awkward, not knowing what to do, as if he was the one who’d had a death in the family. Maybe they’d get used to him, he hoped. Maybe things would eventually go back to the way they were in school before everything happened, back when he had a best friend and got along okay with almost everybody else. Only a few boys and a couple of girls were outright mean, but they were the same ones who’d been snotty before, so that wasn’t any different from usual. They just had worse things to say to him now, bigger ammunition, as his dad might have put it. The girls who hadn’t paid any attention to him then still didn’t, so that wasn’t new. The only real and bad difference was that his best friend from “before,” Miles Montgomery, was avoiding his eyes, and didn’t seem to want to be friends anymore.

Miles lived on a ranch next door to the Linders.

Collin didn’t blame Miles for avoiding him, but he really missed him and almost cried the second time that he grinned at Miles to share something funny with him and Miles looked away. The first time it could have been an accident; the second time meant Miles didn’t want to be friends. His mom hadn’t let him telephone Miles when she kept him home after Mr. Linder died and during the trial. When he wondered why Miles didn’t call him, she’d said in her sad voice, “Miles may not act the same the next time you see him.”

Collin had hoped so much that she’d be wrong about that, but she wasn’t.

He hadn’t realized how life wasn’t only going to change in a good way with his father gone.

It might change in some unhappy ways, too.

Things weren’t all bad right now, though.

Collin was already deeply in love with his nice, pretty teacher, Mrs. Davidson.

And he still loved school, in spite of everything. He loved the smell of his school building, thrilled to the look and feel of the books in his hands, loved his sharpened pencils and his wide-lined notebook paper, loved his glue bottle, his sticky stars, and his box of tissues. He didn’t even mind so much that he had to keep his enthusiasm a secret now and couldn’t share it with Miles. Some of the other boys were acting as if they hated being in school, although Collin didn’t believe them, because who wouldn’t love to be in school where your friends were and facts were?

And of course he had the gift of Mrs. Davidson as his teacher.

When he’d gone home after the first day back at school, he told his mother, “I want Mrs. Davidson to be my teacher next year, and every year, and in middle school, and high school, and I want her to teach me in college, too.”

His mom, who stood alone by the school’s front door every afternoon to take his hand and walk him home, had laughed for the first time since his father went to prison. Collin’s heart had swelled with pride to make her happy like that. When he laughed, too, he realized it was the first time for him as well.

The boy at the desk to his right leaned over toward him and mimicked what Mrs. Davidson had just said about being glad that Collin was with them. “You dad’s not with us anymore, is he? They shoulda gave him the death prison.”

“Death penalty,” Collin corrected him before he thought, and then he flushed again.

“That’s right! Ha ha!”

The sentence his dad got was what Collin had heard people call “hard forty plus twenty,” which added up to sixty years, which meant his dad would be an old man when he got out.

There were booby traps everywhere now, just like there’d been at home when his dad was drunk. Now there were things he shouldn’t say, people to avoid, people who avoided him, places he couldn’t go, and friends he couldn’t have. Everybody he and his mom encountered was a new test: would they be friendly or not? Some women wouldn’t use his mom’s checkout counter at the grocery store anymore. “They blame me for what your dad did,” she explained to him. “They say I should have known. I should have stopped him.” His mom had started to cry again. “And they’re right! I should have… I don’t know what I could have done… but I should have.”

That was a complication he hadn’t expected.

He didn’t know people would blame his mother!

That shocked him, and he hated them for making her feel like that. How was any of this her fault? And then Collin had to admit there was a little part of him that blamed her a little bit, too. Why hadn’t she fought back? Why had she let it get so bad? How could she let his father hurt her? He hated himself for having those mean thoughts about his mother, and he pushed them aside as soon as they popped up. Being mean to her would make him be like his dad. I’ll never be like him, Collin told himself over and over.

The new little girl at the desk to his left and catty-corner from him turned around and started to smile at him, but the snotty girl to her left quickly nudged her and shot an unfriendly glance back at him. Collin instantly understood something else: if somebody wanted to be popular, they couldn’t do it by being friends with him.