The Great Upending by Beth Kephart

Author:Beth Kephart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

Nobody Should Be Forced into an Ending

This long walk on this long day is the thump, is the thump of my heart. It is the sun, it is the sun, it is the sun. It is the hills that go down and the hills that go up and the rounding of the road with the low side ditch that you have to jump into when the cars and the trucks go zoom, and then, after they zoom, you climb back out, you catch your breath, you have to keep on walking.

My brother is only walking, he’s not talking. My brother is completely silent.

It’s so hot out here.

The farm is far.

“Could you talk?” I finally ask.

“Not talking,” Hawk says. He kicks a loose stone with the toe of his boot.

“Could you tell me what you’re thinking?”

He doesn’t say no. He doesn’t say yes. He just keeps walking.

“Hawk?”

“Okay,” he says.

I wait.

“Hawk?” I have to remind him.

“Cooperate.” He chews the word.

“Cooperate.” When I say it, I spit it.

“I’m an idiot,” he says. “I’d thought it all through—I thought The Mister could help us—but he’s in a pickle too.”

“You didn’t have time to think.”

“You knew.”

“ ’Cause I’m older, Hawk.”

“Shut up. You’re not that much older.”

“ ’Cause I know some things that you don’t know.”

“Yeah. Well. You don’t know everything.”

He turns and walks backward so I can’t see his face. I can still see his arm, his fist, that reaches up to blot his crying.

“Hawk—”

He turns and walks the right way again. He gets quieter and quieter, a super-sad kind of quiet, and I feel sick inside, like I swallowed a cloud. A heavy rain cloud. A black one.

We walk and we don’t talk. We walk and we walk and we walk.

He kicks another stone. He kicks another one. He shifts his book from hand to hand. We walk, completely silent. If I could, I would find a patch of corn or a patch of hay or a row of hairy asparagus and crawl inside. If I could, I would take a long lie-down in the shade and open my borrowed Book One and turn and keep turning the pages and forget everything except for those red, red shoes. I would tell the bugs and bees and the crows and hawks and the snakes and mice that in this very place someone very famous lives, someone who is looking for an ending, and then I would turn this book into a pillow for my head and close my eyes and sleep through the dusk and the stars and the moon and when I woke up, everyone who is wishing for a best or better ending would have found their best or better ending. Everyone would have a pair of red shoes that takes them just precisely where they most want to go.

“Hawk?” I say, but he doesn’t look up.

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