Twilight Time by Emily Sue Harvey

Author:Emily Sue Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Story Plant, The
Published: 2015-02-19T21:03:13+00:00

Chapter Ten

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“Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.”

—Mother Teresa

Mark closed his hard-bound journal. He’d just poured out his heart on those lined pages and felt only a smidgeon better. Sometimes the venting relieved him. Seemed lately, however, that the hurt around his heart just plain didn’t want to turn loose.

He hid the diary under his mattress and pulled on his jacket to dash outside to do his after school chores, which involved feeding the Hereford sow, Hortense and her rapidly budding piglets. Little Petunia was a beauty, as piglets go, with her plump, rustic red body, white head and feet, and pink snout.

In the barn, fifty-pound bags of Hortense and her babies’ meals sat stacked in a corner. He prepared the premixed blend of ground corn, soybeans, oats, and wheat, with added all-natural supplements. His dad was picky about what he fed their farm animals. Everything they used was organic, with no chemicals added. Even the animals’ compost served as fertilizer for the fruit orchards and gardens.

As Mark neared the pigpens, he heard the piglets squeal a gleeful welcome at spotting the arriving feast. At least that’s how he surmised it. He poured the mixture and stood back to enjoy the exuberant feasting, his eye trained on Little Petunia, who got rooted out, during which he would cheer her on. “Get back in there, Petunia!”

He admired her stubborn attempts to comply and laughed from his belly when she got bumped aside again and took a comical tumble. Nonplussed, she proceeded to reclaim another gap for long moments before the drama played out again.

He deduced that she got her tiny belly full during those brief moments of feeding because when he picked her up, she looked contented.

It was her little snorting sounds that tickled his fancy and made him laugh and forget how messy she was from feeding. Sometimes, he would declare that she laughed with him. Oh, he loved the others in the litter but Petunia looked at him differently, as though she could understand the gibberish he spoke to her.

“Mark! Suppertime!” his mother’s voice called from the back door.

He wiped his hands on his pants as he trudged toward the white dwelling. He’d wash up inside.

He wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t been lately. Too much drama going on around their house. Not home. House. Only place he felt truly at home was outside with the animals. They were his true friends. They loved him unconditionally and, with them, he belonged.

That made him feel he served some purpose here on earth.

Not at school.

Definitely not at school. He wished he didn’t ever have to go back there.

Not at church. Especially after Ralph had decided to resign his deacon’s post, despite the pastor’s objections. And though his stepdad had not in any way blamed him, Mark knew in his bones that the resignation was all because of him and his lies.

So he had no place to call his own, no niche of warmth and security.

Mark did feel that warmth at Gramma’s but outside of there, it had gone off somewhere far away.

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