Raji, Book Two

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Fuse stood on top of the silo, watching the sunrise over Caroline Bell Crest. The forested ridge was three miles east of the Fusilier farm in Appomattox County, Virginia.

Not as pretty as it used to be. He gazed to the north. She’s only a hundred miles away, but it might as well be ten thousand.

He climbed down the ladder and began his morning chores; the work he and Raji used to do together. Ransom, the miniature horse, tagged along, but he didn’t prance around and whinny as he did before. He only went through the motions, just as Fuse did. When Fuse scattered feed for the chickens, Ransom sniffed at the pile of hay, just inside the barn door, then lay down, ignoring the two barn cats circling around behind him.

“You miss her, too, don’t you, Handsome Ransom?” Fuse dumped the last of the chicken feed from his bucket, then hung it on a wooden peg. “Let’s go see how Cleopatra and Alexander are doing.”

The little horse sighed deeply and dropped his chin to the hay.

Fuse swung the barn’s side door open and began raking out the huge stall where the Percherons Cleopatra and Alexander spent the night.

“Move over, Alex,” Fuse said as he pushed against the horse’s hindquarters.

Alexander stared at Fuse for a moment, then went outside. Cleopatra followed him.

Everything would have been done by now if Raji were here.

Fuse finished raking out the stall, then spread a fresh layer of straw on the ground. As he carried a bucketful of cracked corn to the pigs, his mother called to him from the back porch.

“Vincent, breakfast is ready.”

“Okay, Mom.”

He dumped the corn in the pigs’ trough, then hung the bucker over a post.

I’ll milk the cows after breakfast.

There was no rush to finish the work around the farm now that he was out of school. After the intensity of last week’s competition at the academy, the menial tasks of farm work seemed boring and useless.

Is this what remains of my life? Feeding hogs and mucking out horse stalls?

Fuse had graduated from high school the previous spring and thought of nothing other than going to Octavia Pompeii Academy. Now that dream was gone and he had no plans at all for the future. He could probably go to college somewhere, but it wouldn’t be the school he wanted.

Fuse walked through the barn, toward the back. He paused beside the Model T Ford to kick a flat tire.

There’s another problem I’ll have to take care of.

In the back part of the barn, in the blacksmith shop, he found their farm hand.

“Mr. Cramer,” Fuse said. “How about some breakfast?”

“Ah, the magic word, my friend,” Mr. Cramer said, “breakfast.” He sat aside the leather harness he worked on and stood to brush the dirt from his faded gray overalls. “How are you this morning, Vincent?”

“Fine.”

Mr. Cramer looked at him and narrowed his eyes. “What do you suppose Mrs. Fusilier is giving us for breakfast?” He poured water into the washbasin from an oaken bucket.

“Who knows?”

Mr. Cramer washed his face, then reached for a towel hanging from a hook. He dried his face and hands, then hung the towel back in its place.

“This old farm’s not the same without her, is it?”

Fuse shook his head and left the room.