The Plenty
By Peter Anthony
Copyright © 2011 Peter Anthony
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapters
Chapter 1. 5
Chapter 2. 16
Chapter 3. 22
Chapter 4. 41
Chapter 5. 48
Chapter 6. 55
Chapter 7. 71
Chapter 8. 87
Chapter 9. 93
Chapter 10. 105
Chapter 11. 113
Chapter 12. 125
Chapter 13. 130
Chapter 14. 134
Chapter 15. 142
Chapter 16. 156
Chapter 17. 174
Chapter 18. 186
Chapter 19. 194
Chapter 20. 201
Chapter 21. 217
Chapter 22. 225
Chapter 23. 235
Chapter 24. 259
Chapter 25. 265
Chapter 26. 279
Chapter 27. 285
Chapter 28. 293
Chapter 29. 299
Chapter 30. 313
Chapter 31. 322
Chapter 32. 329
Chapter 33. 336
Chapter 1.
In the cool grass, the Werther girls tackled their brother, Bryce, pressing yellow construction paper to the front and back of his shirt, wrapping him in packing tape. Dawn and Rhea wore their Halloween costumes a day early while they sat upon the toddler, drawing on him with magic marker, rough strokes on the paper creating the black lines of a bee. They pinned his arms over his head. The stinger he refused, violently, when they attached it to his nose. He cried and protested, flapped his arms until they gave up and then he missed the attention once they abandoned him. They had moved to the edge of the yard, to where the corn stood, resuming an argument started on the school bus that afternoon, when certain boys questioned their costumes.
Dawn said, "You really do look like a fly."
"I'm not a fly," said Rhea. "I'm a witch."
"But if you look like a fly instead of a witch then you're a fly. And flies are bugs and tarantulas eat bugs." Dawn lifted her arms, all eight of them, affixed to her spider costume. "They catch flies in their webs and spin them and eat them. Dia-Rhea is a fly."
"I'm a witch."
"Bzzz."
Rhea swiped at her sister and missed. Dawn fled toward the cornfield and ran into the first rows, hiding and inviting pursuit, peering out from behind wrinkled brown leaves and dead tassels that leaned from the weight of mature ears on the stalk.
"Mom said we're not supposed to go in there," Rhea yelled. Bryce clung to Rhea's pant leg, with his forced costume already falling to pieces.
"They aren't picking this field today," said Dawn, pulling an ear off a plant and thumbing kernels, watching them fall to the soil.
"Mom said…"
"Mom doesn't know," said Dawn sharply, setting her chin on her shoulder, glancing at the house. "Besides," she added, tossing the corn to the ground, "don't you want to go to the fort one more time? Before it's gone?"
"It's almost dark," said Rhea, stepping away from her brother as he pressed his runny nose against her pants.
"Well, I'm going," said Dawn. "I'll protect the fort by myself, since it is my fort." She turned her back to Rhea and stepped into the field, disappearing in the rows and columns of corn. Rhea watched from the lawn, undecided, fretting. Dawn reappeared near the edge of the field, in a different place, all teeth and taunting.
"It's not your fort, it's ours," Rhea shouted, and ran toward Dawn, abandoning mother's rules. "Let go of me, bee," she said to Bryce. "Wipe your nose on your sleeve."
They ran down a row, single-file, with the nine-year-old leading the five-year-old dragging the two-year-old. Dawn leaped across rows and Rhea tried to follow, running as fast as Bryce could stumble. A flock of birds ascended in front of Dawn. She screamed and raised her arms to shield her face from the birds overhead.
"A beak in my eye!" she yelled over her shoulder.
"A beak?" said Rhea, ever gullible to Dawn's claims. "Hurry up, Bryce!" Turning around, she watched the boy trip on a dirt clod and fall to his knees. She retreated to help.
"Up!" he said, motioning to her with raised arms.
"You're too heavy," Rhea said.
He started to whine. The lower lip thickened. Eyes saddened into crescents. His arms stretched out toward Rhea.
Cinching her arms around Bryce's waist, she lifted and squeezed until his chubby toddler arms squirted out of her grip, overhead, causing her handle of the boy to slip with each step until she only held him by the neck. Pages of construction paper fell to the ground. The crushed bee started to choke and Rhea released him.
"You'll have to walk then," Rhea said.
"Potty."
"You have to go?"
He nodded.
Rhea said, "Ok, pull your pants down and go."
Bryce began to loosen his pants, but with his button-fly lassoed by tape, he struggled, fingers fiddling, and was not in time. "Help," he said, saying the word over and over, "help", one of his few single word sentences. A wet stain on his jeans began to show through his pants.
"Oh Bryce." Rhea pulled tape from his skin, shirt, and pants. It pinched and pulled his flesh. She overpowered his defensive hands and said, "Now you're all wet. Now we have to go to Mommy."
"Fort," he said, with eyes starting to water.
"It's for girls only."
"Me fort," he said, bending shoulders and neck to match the drama of the whine.
A faint voice called out ahead of them. Celebratory, Dawn had found the hideout. Without hesitation, Rhea grabbed the boy's hand and they started to walk together as quickly as his short legs could place one foot in front of the other without tripping.
They continued down the same row until a small clearing of bright space opened before them. "There it is," said Rhea. "The fort."
"Fort?"
He was always asking dumb questions. Rhea released his hand to run forward. When she reached the edge of the clearing, she leaped inside, shouting the password, the name of their cat, Cheryl.
But the fort was empty. In the middle of the opening, Dawn's throne of corn stalks appeared abdicated. The vacancy attracted Rhea like a pot of gold. The throne's availability made her cheeks ripen with expectation. Rhea needed to sit there, needed to be queen of the fort, for once.
Upon the pile of dead stalks, instant gratification welled in Rhea. Peasant no more, rags to riches, she was queen. But only briefly could she enjoy the throne as the solitude surrounded her. The moment of feeling superior shrunk in the silence, a presence of its own. An open pale sky above became strange. Corn leaves rustled in the wind. The corn walls wavered in the breeze. It was odd to be alone. An eerie lack of voices made her yearn for Bryce to join her, to rid herself of the quiet. Soon, near the entrance, tassel-tops wiggled, and though she knew it to be her brother, a fear continued to shake her, an absurd fear that it might not be Bryce. Most of all she feared a ghost, or worse, the bear from Wayne County shown on the six o'clock news every night for the past week.
When Bryce appeared, wiping his nose with his hand, his presence relieved her. He ran forward until he tripped and fell on his face. Rhea then relaxed on the throne. With another person in the fort, she could again enjoy her status. The rustle of leaves continued, no longer sinister, the sky g
aped as wide, but no longer seemed vacuous and infinite. No ghosts in the stalks worried her. And just when she felt relaxed, a pair of hands reached under her armpits and turned her skin to ice. The once and future queen had returned.
"Boo!"
Dawn lunged and yanked Rhea from the throne. Eight flailing arms danced about while Rhea pawed at the air with her eyes closed.
"Get off my seat!"
"I was on it first."
"Only because I let you. Flies don't get to sit on thrones, they sit on cow pies." Dawn moved to one side of the fort and constructed a small pile of dirt clumps, pointing at it with authority. "There. There's your seat, fly. In the peasant area, over there."
"I'm not sitting on that."
"The peasants sit over here," said Dawn, speaking articulately, altering her voice to sound like her teacher, who Dawn deemed the standard of propriety. "Please, peasant fly – please, sit on your pie."
"No."
"Be a good maggot," said Dawn.
"You sit on it."
Courtliness faded. Dawn's royal face soured. "You don't tell me what to do. Nobody tells me what to do." Order returned when the queen took up a handful of the pretender's hair and twisted it in her regal knuckles. Rhea rose to her feet and moved from the throne to the dirt pile, following Dawn to lessen the pain, like a hooked fish.
"Thank you for cooperating," said Dawn, smoothing her tarantula dress, putting her fingers together and sitting with excellent posture on the throne. "At last, peace in the realm." Using a fallen tassel, Dawn pretended to comb her hair. She patted her cheeks with corn silk, as if powdering her face. She exhaled and peered into space with her chin high. "A splendid evening, isn't it?" Dawn began to sing a song, letting her golden voice fill the fort.
Bryce stood near the throne, entranced by the song while observing the application of imaginary makeup. Dawn used the boy as her closet and mirror, placing the silk on his head, taking it back, sticking a corncob in his pocket, moving it to his armpit. Then she scoffed and sighed, shook her head, said, "This won't do, not at all," and she yanked the corncob from the arm – her curling iron – and resumed preening.
"Jester," she said to Bryce. "Where is the costume that I made for you?"
He rubbed his dirty face, smearing leftover tears with dirt and mucous. Each time he rubbed, he altered the pattern of filth on his cheeks. The only clean part of his face was a ring around his mouth, rimmed by a rash on his chin and upper lip due to a constant licking of lips.
"Jester?"
His finger pointed at the corn row from where he had emerged. "Uh-oh."
"Uh-oh? Your costume is uh-oh? We are not amused," said Dawn. "Then you must dance for me."
Crippled with embarrassment, Rhea scowled on the dirt pile, but hearing the ridicule aimed at another, her spirit lifted.
"No," said Bryce.
"Dance for me."
"No!"
"Ok, you're in the dungeon now, Jester. You cannot speak to a queen like that. Over here," said Dawn, pointing to a square of rocks gathered near the throne. Without arguing, Bryce stepped into the jail and Dawn pretended to lock a door with a key, and then pretended to swallow the key and rubbed her stomach. Bryce smiled from his jail.
Rhea said, "There's no smiling in the dungeon."
Dawn said, "And there's no talking in the peasant area."
"Yes there is. I'm talking…I can talk." Proving this she sang and talked nonsense. Dawn commanded her to stop, but failing to quell Rhea, she ignored her, curling her hair with the cob once again, staring aloof toward the east. When her prattle did not gain attention, Rhea stopped and began to mimic her sister, finding a corn cob and tassel of her own. Bryce licked his lips in jail.
"I almost forgot," said Dawn. "I almost forgot, we have guests coming."
"Is it the prince again?" Rhea stood up. "Do we need more space in the castle?"
"We do," said Dawn, tapping her cheek. "Much more space. Oh, how could I forget that today was the big day?"
"Eric is coming," said Rhea, referring to a Disney prince. "I will make up a room over here."
"Corey will be here, too," said Dawn, referring to a boy from her class. "I will make a bigger room on this side."
"Who's Corey?" asked Rhea.
"No one."
The girls moved to opposite edges of the fort and turned their backs to the corn. In unison, they fell backwards, knocking down the corn, squealing in the tumble. Again they stood and fell, bending and breaking the farmer's corn, laughing with the fall. Again. Bryce escaped his jail and ran face first into a row, knocking down several of the brittling plants. The fort began this way in late July and had expanded with every visit. The thrill waned after a few minutes, and the Dawn deemed the fort sufficiently widened for the imaginary guests.
Dawn ran outside of the fort into the standing rows and then emerged inside the fort at a different spot. Following her lead, Rhea ran in the other direction. Each sister rushed out from the corn at a different location, startling Bryce, who clapped his hands and squealed and pushed his elbows together and licked his lips.
The game became serious when Rhea stuck out her foot and tripped Dawn, causing the older sister to fall and knock her nose against the peasant clods of dirt.
Rhea fled the fort, fearing Dawn's retaliation. The chase began. The girls ran into the cornfield. Corn leaves batted Rhea's face as she sprinted, and to lose her follower she changed rows every few seconds. The sound of footsteps neared. Rhea turned in the field, running in a straight line once again until the crashing of corn stalks came within arm's reach. The lungs of Rhea could not hold out against the long legs of Dawn. Rhea felt her knees buckle as the weight of her sister collapsed over her back.
"I hope you like dirt," said Dawn, putting a handful down the back of Rhea's shirt, causing an insurmountable shame in the younger girl. Screaming was no defense, but still worth a try. Dawn held Rhea down for a a few seconds longer before allowing her a chance to move, and then when Rhea did move, Dawn pushed her down again and stepped on her feet. Another cycle of the same catch-and-release, and Rhea had enough. Tears were no defense either, as Dawn would not relent until Rhea appealed to responsibility.
"What about Bryce?"
"What about him?"
"We had better check on him."
This caused Dawn to straighten up, under the reminder that their mother did not dawdle when doling punishments for mismanagement of the boy. Dawn released Rhea and walked back toward the fort.
Expecting to be stepped on again, Rhea hesitated, turning her head to make certain that Dawn no longer hovered. Dust covered Rhea's face and she felt pieces of dirt falling from her shirt into her pants. The polyester witch costume was now dusty and scratched. Rubbing the dirt from the front of her shirt only increased the mess. Suddenly the shame she felt from Dawn's beating faded as she worried that her mother would not allow her to go trick-or-treating. Rather, the shame and the worry banded together, as it always did for Rhea, causing an crushing sadness in her chest.
Carrying this weight, shaking dirt from her pants with each step, Rhea walked with her head down, thinking of her mother's warning about not playing too rough at lunch so that the costume would remain clean. A week ago in the Ben Franklin store she had begged for the costume, mainly because her mother wanted her to wear a frog suit picked up on the cheap from a rummage sale. Rhea hated frogs. The witch costume on the rack, wrapped in plastic, with the picture of a little girl casting a spell with a wand, captivated her. (Wand sold separately, she found out upon opening the package.) So happy in the picture, the girl with her magic powers, the ability to change things, make things better. If her father, Josh Werther, had taken her to the football game that night, then her costume would still be clean. But he had refused to take her to the game, because he had to hold the chains on the sideline. He never took Rhea anywhere. Her mother would be mad. All t
oo clearly, once again obvious to Rhea, everyone hated her. She felt that the world was one enormous conspiracy against her.
Ruminating, Rhea stumbled down the corn row, locked in her negative mode, until she forgot her self-pity when something moved in the row ahead of where she stood. A jerky motion startled her. Two yellow eyes stared in her direction. Unable to move, her shoulders stiffened from anxiety, like that in the silence of the fort. A blob of flesh surrounded the yellow eyes, balled up on the ground. She whispered, "Dawn?"
The animal darted away at the sound of her voice, flashing a ringed tail, leaving the row.
Rhea spun around. Rather than following the rows vertically, Rhea ran across the rows horizontally, not changing direction but going straight, going deeper yet into the field, to a place she had never been, only breaking loose from the fear when she tripped on a stalk. The ground startled her when she landed on her elbows.
Getting up again, she noticed the gathering darkness. The light of day neared its end and the shadows of corn grew long enough that there was only dusk. She turned in a circle to find her place, yearning to find the fort, or the road, or the house, but even on her tip-toes she could only see the nearest stalks, and those withered plants began to seem a legion of thin monsters, all closing on in her. She ran again, back in the direction of the fort, or so she guessed. She prayed that the fort entrance would glow bright before her, but her legs fatigued with hope as nothing but corn confronted her. Turning another direction randomly, she convinced herself that Bryce and Dawn would be shouting her name if she ran only a few steps more. Now and then she stopped to listen, only hearing the rustling of dry leaves in the autumn breeze. The silence again. In desperation she tried to climb a stalk, putting her feet on the ears of corn like rungs on a ladder, but they broke off and her feet dropped to the ground. She could see nothing, being three feet tall in a sixty acre cornfield on a flat prairie.
She started to cry, eyes filling up with tears so that she could not see a foot in front of her. Images of the raccoon and other animals took shape and morphed in her blurry view. The spiny feet of the corn plants turned into hairy spiders. She set out aimlessly, blubbering, until a hum sounded in a distant direction. A car or a truck. It was the sound of something man-made. She set out toward the noise. The whine of a machine an oasis in the field.