“We can deal with Mom later,” Jonathan says, striding into my room. He opens my closet and yanks a shirt off a hanger, tosses it at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Get dressed.” He glances over to where I’m still huddled on the bed. “I mean, in something other than last night’s clothes.”
“I’m sick, Jonathan.”
“No, you’re hungover. It’s not the same thing.”
“I need a shower.”
“I know. It’ll have to wait.”
Even though Jonathan is younger than me by less than a year, he has always felt like my older brother. When we were little, people assumed he was the oldest because he was bigger than me by the time we were toddlers, and now at eighteen he can easily pass for midtwenties.
“Wait for what?” I say, already bowing to his will, though crawling out of bed is the last thing on earth I want to do.
“Cal called.”
“So?”
“Something came up. They need help.”
I groan, but one leg is already curving off the side of the mattress, reaching for the floor. “What do they need me for?”
“I don’t know, but Beth was crying. I think it’s bad this time.”
Grabbing the clean T-shirt Jonathan has thrown onto the bed, I wave him out. “Give me five minutes.”
* * *
Cal and Beth Murphy live on the far side of the little lake that Jericho was named for. It’s more of an oversized pond than a lake, a blue-gray smudge of spring water that bubbles up from the prairie and is ringed by gnarled oak trees and cattails that wave in the breeze. There are a few old docks scattered along the banks, and one gravel boat ramp that allows fishers to send out the odd aluminum skiff. Years ago, someone stocked the lake with bass, bluegill, and walleye, and optimistic fishermen still sometimes cast a line and hope for the best, but there isn’t much to catch anymore.
From our farm you can drive to the Murphys’ acreage in just a few minutes. At the end of our long dirt driveway, all you have to do is take a right on Delaware, then a left on County Road 21. Their place is on the corner, the pretty little homestead with classic red outbuildings and an ancient stone chicken coop that Cal has turned into a shop of sorts. On weekends, he swings open the wide windows along one whole side of the quaint hutch and sells uncertified organic fruits and vegetables that he and Beth have grown, as well as handmade goat milk soap and jams. When they are in season, Beth also cuts bouquets from her flower garden. Tulips and ripe purple hyacinths in the spring, peonies in early summer. My favorite arrangements are available in late July and August: bright dinnerplate dahlias with blooms as big as my open hand. I’ll miss them this year because I’ll be settling into my dorm room, not collecting flowers from the Murphys’ stand.
I want to drive over, but Jonathan insists we walk. On foot, we take a different route entirely, cutting through the soybean field that stands beside our house until cultivated land gives way to the wild brush around Jericho Lake. We’ve worn a path between the trees and along the water, and we follow it in silence, Jonathan leading the way down a narrow trail of hard-packed earth until we come out on the edge of the Murphys’ property.
“This was a stupid idea,” I complain when I catch the hem of my shorts on the barbed wire fence. It’s sagging between the posts of a single section, but I still have to stand on tiptoe to clear it. My balance is a bit off and a headache continues to thrum at the base of my skull and behind my eyes in spite of the ibuprofen I hastily swallowed. I’m not well equipped for an off-road adventure.
“Suck it up, buttercup,” Jonathan quips. But when he sees me wrestling with the sharp end of a rusted barb, he comes back to hold my elbow.
I wince as the sharp metal finally pulls free of my denim shorts and bites into the soft skin of my thigh. It leaves a tiny dot of blood in its wake, and I lick my thumb and smear it away.
“I can’t believe you dragged me out here,” I mutter in Jonathan’s general direction. But he has pulled away from me and is striding up the hill toward the Murphys’ barn, trailing a quiet worry that belies his subtle jabs and carefree swagger. My brother is so much more than he seems.
And he loves Cal and Beth Murphy. We both do, though when I hit junior high I started spending less and less time with our older neighbors, and Jonathan started to spend more. The Murphys never had kids of their own, and I guess Cal needed Jonathan’s young arms and strong back more than Beth needed my constant chatter while she rolled out pie crust or sheared the woody ends off cut roses. Jonathan still practically lives at the Murphys’， while I’ve begun to feel slightly uncomfortable around them, guilty. Like an old friend who’s lost touch and doesn’t really have an excuse for it.