Page 109 of Good Dirt

Baz

2000

“E bby, you’re really bugging the heather out of me,” Baz said. That was what their mother always said. The heather, not the hell . You didn’t get to say hell in their household.

“Oh, come on, Baz, just one last time?”

Baz put his hands over his eyes. “All right, just this one—last—time,” he said.

“Edward Basil Freeman,” Ebby said, crossing her arms over her stomach, “stop peeking through your fingers, I see you.” Baz made a face and put his hands back over his eyes and turned away, counting as Ebby skidded over the polished maple floors and ran out of the living room and down the hallway. This being a wood-frame house of a certain age, you could hear and feel folks as they moved about. Ebby was barefoot, but Baz could tell that she had run upstairs and was headed toward their parents’ bedroom, which was right above the spot in the living room where Baz stood, counting down to the chase.

Baz grinned. As he stepped into the hallway that separated the living room from the study, he could hear his sister coming back now, maybe looking for a hiding place closer to the stairs. But he would pretend that he didn’t know. He would make a fuss of looking for her, calling out and stomping back and forth, though not for long. They really needed to go. They were running late for Ebby’s piano lesson, and it was Baz’s job to get her there.

Baz had just put his foot on the lowest step when he thought he heard someone at the front door. The door sprang open and a shaft of sunlight flooded the hallway floor. Baz was still smiling as he turned toward the door, thinking, Huh, who’s that? And he would keep smiling, even as he watched two men walking toward him, pulling something over their faces.

Masks? Are they wearing ski masks?

You see, it could take a moment for the brain to catch up, to make sense of something that made no sense at all. Baz was getting ready to climb the stairs. That was what made sense at the moment. Because he was playing hide-and-seek with Ebby. Because nothing made her happier. And there wasn’t much that made Baz happier than his little sister.

She was such a goofball, that kid.