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  For Amanda, with love

  ONE

  The night that Posey and Evalina moved to Harmony, Georgia, Walter Tipple had that dream again.

  The one about his birthday.

  Mama and Daddy are standing nearby, waiting for him to blow out the candles.

  Eleven of them.

  Everyone sings “Happy Birthday,” but suddenly the screen door bursts open and in steps Walter’s brother, Tank, in his army uniform.

  He throws his arms out and says, “Look who’s back!” while everyone stares, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, like they’ve just seen a ghost.

  Which, of course, they have.

  The candles drip wax onto the buttercream frosting that Mama makes so good.

  And then it happens.

  Every single time Walter has that dream.

  The ghost that is Tank takes off his army hat, plunks it down on Walter’s head, and says, “Blow out them candles, little man, and I’ll show you my world.” He slaps Walter on the back and adds, “But you gotta blow ’em all out. First try. No cheating.”

  He grins that grin of his with the chipped front tooth.

  Then he crosses his arms and taps his foot and says, “I ain’t got all day.”

  So Walter looks down at those eleven candles, takes a deep breath …

  … and wakes up.

  Every single time.

  The night that Evalina and Posey moved to Harmony, Walter had sat on the edge of the bed after that dream with his heart racing.

  Then he’d heard a car bouncing and squeaking up the gravel road toward Ernest and Nadine’s old tumbledown house next door.

  He got out of bed and padded to the window, the wide plank floor cool under his bare feet. The full moon glowed over the yard, making the clothesline cast an eerie shadow, like a long black snake that slithered through the garden and over the lawn chair where Daddy sometimes napped in the afternoon.

  By the light of the moon, Walter saw Evalina’s car pulling a trailer piled high with cardboard boxes. A washing machine. A mattress.

  He hadn’t seen Posey or her scruffy little dog, Porkchop, sitting in the front seat beside Evalina.

  But the next day, he had done what Mama asked him to and run up to that old house with a jar of her bread-and-butter pickles. He stood on the wooden porch with half the boards missing and started counting to ten to calm his nerves before knocking on the door. But he had only gotten to six when a skinny, scabby-kneed girl came busting out onto the porch, followed by a small, yapping dog.

  “Can’t you read?” the girl hollered.

  Walter nearly fell backward into the prickly bushes along the porch. And just when he thought his beating heart might come to a screeching halt, that girl stuck her face up close to his and said, “I suppose you can’t talk, neither.”

  “Um…” Walter said, looking down at the pickle jar.

  “Stick out your tongue,” the girl snapped.

  So, of course, that is exactly what Walter did.

  He stuck out his tongue.

  That was when Evalina came out onto the porch and said, “Good gravy and green beans, Posey. What you doing to that boy?”

  “Checking to see if he can hear me, ’cause he sure can’t read.” Posey jabbed a finger at the sign nailed on the porch railing:

  NO SOLICITORS

  That sign had been there as long as Walter could remember and he still didn’t know what solicitors were. He’d always figured it meant any human being who was breathing because Ernest and Nadine hadn’t wanted anybody to set foot on their property. They stayed inside that falling-down house the livelong day, only opening the door every now and then to shoo cats out of their weed-filled yard.

  Then one day Nadine died and three days later Ernest died. Not long after that, Mama heard somebody at the post office say that their daughter from Tennessee was coming to live in their old house.

  Evalina.

  Mama hadn’t heard that Evalina had a skinny, scabby-kneed daughter named Posey and a yapping little dog named Porkchop.

  Which was why it had come as a bit of a shock to Walter to find himself on their porch with a jar of pickles and that girl glaring at him and her dog snapping and snarling.

  After he got over the shock, he took a good hard look at Posey and felt his spirits lift a little.

  Right there in the middle of Posey’s left cheek was a large heart-shaped birthmark.

  Deep dark brown against her pale, freckled skin.

  The instant Walter saw that birthmark, he began to think that maybe he and Posey were destined to be kindred spirits, bound together by the misfortune of being an easy target.

  Walter had a lifetime of experience in being an easy target.

  He was a quiet, timid, pigeon-toed boy with a lazy eye that never seemed to want to look where the other eye was looking.

  Such boys were easy targets for the sharp-tongued kids in Harmony.

  Now here was this girl with a heart-shaped birthmark on her cheek who was surely going to be an easy target, too.

  Walter had waited his whole life for a kindred spirit and now here she was.

  True, she seemed a little wild, wagging her finger at him and going on about that sign on the porch railing.

  But then, Walter figured, beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to kindred spirits.

  He handed Evalina the jar of pickles, and that little dog snarled and snapped at his ankles, making him jump down off the porch, landing in the red dirt yard with a thud.

  “Hush up, Porkchop,” Posey said, holding the dog by his collar. She peered down at Walter and said, “He only bites if I tell him to.”

  Walter looked up at the dog and felt his mouth drop open in surprise.

  That scruffy little dog only had three legs!

  Two in the front and one in the back.

  Posey must’ve seen Walter’s surprise, because she said, “You gotta be tough when you look like ol’ Porkchop here. He’s a scrapper.” She jabbed a thumb at herself and added, “Like me.”

  When he headed back home that day, Walter felt a little lighter. Maybe this summer was going to get better. The Tipples lived so far from town that Walter had never had anyone but Tank to hang out with. Now that Tank was gone, he spent every day alone.

  His mind whirled with images of him and Posey having a grand old time together.

  Looking for salamanders under the rotten logs down by the river.

  Maybe adding a second story to the fort he and Tank had built way back in the woods behind a pile of termite-riddled lumber that used to be somebody’s barn.

  But later that night, Walter felt that familiar Mr. Doubt come creeping back, turning him into his worry-filled self again. He thought about Posey pointing at that NO SOLICITORS sign and squinting right up in his face so bossy and all.

  He was starting to realize that Posey was probably one of those kids who had perfected the fine art of
bully-thwarting.

  He’d bet anything that when summer was over, she’d march herself right into Harmony Elementary School and dare those kids to laugh at her just by sending them a glare as mighty as any laser.

  She’d probably snatch fish sticks right off the plates of first-graders at lunch or dare the third-graders to touch her birthmark and then charge them a quarter if they did.

  Yep. Posey was a bully-thwarter the way that he, Walter Tipple, could never be.

  She and that dog, Porkchop, were tough, the way that he, Walter Tipple, would never be.

  By the time he fell asleep that night, Mr. Doubt had stepped aside and Mr. Disappointment had settled in. A bully-thwarter like Posey wouldn’t want to hang out with a loser like him.

  But then, the very next day, something happened that told Walter that fate might finally be on his side, sending him the kindred spirit he’d been waiting for, after all.

  Because the very next day, when he and Posey and Porkchop were pushing their way through tangled pricker bushes and climbing over fallen trees in the dense woods beside the river, they found a dead man.

  TWO

  The morning after Walter delivered Mama’s pickles to Evalina and Posey, he splashed cold water on his face, trying to clear his head of that dream he kept having. The one about his birthday with Tank telling him, “Blow out them candles, little man, and I’ll show you my world.”

  At breakfast, Mama shuffled around the kitchen in her bathrobe and slippers, her face lined with the sadness that had been written on it every minute of every day for the last six months.

  She dropped into the kitchen chair across from Walter and pushed a cereal box toward him. Walter sighed. He sure did miss that French toast and those blueberry pancakes she used to make for him and Tank.

  Walter looked over at Tank’s empty seat at the table and could practically hear him going on and on about Mama’s cooking the way he used to, making her face light up and sending her back to the stove to cook some more.

  Now silence settled over the little kitchen except for the sound of the leaky faucet dripping onto the pile of dirty dishes in the sink.

  Mama stared out the window.

  Walter stirred his cereal, feeling invisible.

  “When’s Daddy coming home?” he asked.

  Mama took a sip of coffee and shrugged. “Soon,” she said.

  “How soon?”

  “He’ll be home for your birthday, for sure.”

  Good, Walter thought. Only about two more weeks.

  Walter’s daddy drove a truck for the lumber company and was sometimes gone for weeks at a time, leaving Walter and his mama here in the quiet emptiness without Tank.

  Sometimes Walter imagined that he heard the sound of his brother’s work boots on the worn oak floors.

  His off-key singing drifting from his bedroom.

  His corny jokes that made Mama laugh.

  Walter set his bowl of soggy cereal on the floor for the cats and went out back to the barn. He pulled open both doors and stepped inside, peering into the darkness and breathing in the smell of damp earth and old wood. Motor oil and gasoline. He opened the door of Tank’s shiny black pickup truck and climbed into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and whispered, “Hey, Tank.” He ran his hand along the polished chrome around the speedometer and the gauges. He pictured Tank here, vacuuming and polishing and buffing until everything about his beloved truck was perfect.

  Walter put his cheek against the seat and took a deep breath. He was pretty sure he could still smell the faint hint of Tank’s aftershave that hovered there.

  Walter opened the glove box and felt the familiar stab at the sight of Tank’s things.

  A small canvas pouch filled with quarters.

  A deck of cards covered with Tank’s greasy fingerprints.

  A pair of sunglasses.

  A picture of a girl Tank used to date, sitting on the back of his truck. A heart drawn around her face with a red marker.

  Walter took out the truck keys on the key chain with Born to Be Wild stamped in the metal. He put the key in the ignition, like he had done every day since Tank left.

  Like he had promised he would.

  “Just let her run a few minutes every day,” Tank had told him. Then, with a wink, he added, “Keep her all warmed up for when I get home.”

  In that dream Walter kept having, when the ghost of his brother shows up, nobody moves. Not even Walter. But in real life, he would’ve dashed over there and hugged his brother. He’d have been so happy that Tank had come home after all, even though that sad-faced army man from Fort Benning had come by the house six months ago and told them Tank wasn’t ever coming home from the war he’d been fighting in overseas.

  But Walter was still keeping his promise. That truck had been Tank’s pride and joy, bought with money he’d earned whacking weeds and blowing leaves and digging fence-post holes every day after school. Now Walter was going to keep the truck warmed up and shiny and polished just the way Tank liked it. He was going to keep the windows perfectly clean. The silver hood ornament gleaming. The hubcaps shining like mirrors.

  He turned the key and the engine started with a roar. Tank’s favorite country music station blasted on. Some guy singing about putting money in the jukebox and slow-dancing until closing time.

  Walter put his hands on the steering wheel and pretended to drive.

  With the windows down and the warm Georgia air swirling around inside.

  Tank used to let Walter drive sometimes. In cow pastures or plowed-up bean fields or big empty parking lots. The last time Walter drove the truck was one night in the parking lot of Oak Grove Methodist Church. Walter could barely reach the gas pedal as he craned his neck to see out into the darkness. They had whooped and hollered and Tank had told him about girls and high school and parties late at night out by the water tower. The one with HARMONY painted on it in red. Then on the way home, Tank had told Walter how he was going to join the army and get the heck out of Harmony, Georgia.

  All the joy from earlier in the evening had come crashing down on Walter when he heard that.

  “But where you gonna go?” he had asked with a lump in his throat so big he could barely get the words out.

  “I don’t know yet,” Tank said. “Just need to spread my wings a little, you know? Harmony, Georgia, ain’t nothing but a dot in the universe.”

  “What about me?” Walter asked in a small, wavering voice. “If you’re spreading your wings, what am I supposed to do?”

  Tank punched him on the arm. “You gotta serve your time, little man. You gotta serve your time.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Finish school. Mow some lawns. Kiss some girls.” Tank winked at Walter. “You gotta grow wings before you can spread ’em.”

  Then they had driven home in silence, Tank with his arm draped out the window and Walter thinking about serving his time.

  Now he was sitting here in the pickup truck, feeling sorry for himself. He reached into the glove box and took out an envelope. He looked down at his own name and address scribbled in Tank’s messy handwriting.

  Walter just couldn’t bring himself to open that envelope. He had saved Tank’s other letters and read them countless times. But this one had come two days after that army man had told them Tank was never coming home.

  Was this letter the same as the others that Walter kept tucked in his dresser drawer?

  Telling him about his brother’s exciting life far away from home.

  Making it sound so good.

  Making it sound like he didn’t miss Harmony one bit.

  Or would this letter say something different?

  Would this letter finally say how much Tank missed Harmony?

  And would this letter finally say he was sorry he hadn’t come home to tell Walter goodbye before he went overseas like he promised he would?

  Thinking about those things made Walter’s insides tumble with anger and then the heavy burden of guilt hung ove
r him. He didn’t want to be mad at the brother he was missing so much. Being mad at Tank felt just plain wrong. But anger and grief wrestled each other inside him nearly every minute of the day.

  Walter turned the truck off and put the key and the envelope back into the glove box and whispered, “Bye, Tank.”

  He shut the truck door and wiped a smudge off the handle with the bottom of his T-shirt, closed the barn doors, and ran smack dab into Posey.

  THREE

  “Evalina told me to give you your pickle jar back but I need it.” Posey was wearing dirty rubber boots that came clear up to her knees. Porkchop trotted along behind her, hopping up and down with his one back leg. His brown-and-white fur stuck up every which way and his tail waved in the air like a flag.

  Walter blinked. “Um…”

  “I found some more jars in your shed,” she said, motioning toward the tiny shed by the garden. She held up a plastic bag, making the jars inside clatter.

  “Isn’t Evalina your mama?” Walter asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Then why do you call her Evalina?”

  “’Cause that’s her name,” Posey said. Then she marched across the yard toward the road with Porkchop racing ahead.

  “Hey!” Walter called after her.

  She stopped clomping and turned around.

  Cocked her head.

  Lifted her eyebrows.

  “What are you gonna do with those jars?” Walter asked.

  Posey looked him up and down long enough to make him shift nervously from one foot to the other.

  “Catch minnows,” she said. “Well, probably not real minnows. Unless there’s carp in that river. Any carp in that river?”

  “Some,” Walter said. “But mostly trout and catfish.”

  “Real minnows are carp,” Posey said. “I know that because I’ve read Nuggets of Knowledge four times and I have practically a photographic memory so I remember nearly everything I read in there.” She shifted the bag from one hand to the other. “You ever read that book?”

  Walter shook his head.