The Phoenix Girls: The Complete Trilogy

Chapter 4-2

Penny dressed hastily and rushed downstairs, the framed picture in hand.

“Susan?” She checked the kitchen, then the living room, which she had only viewed fleetingly the night before, then past the open door of the empty bathroom on her way to a large utility room with a door that led to the backyard.

Penny could not find her anywhere in the house.

Penny rushed to the front of the house and pushed through the unlatched front door, stopping short of the porch steps in surprise.

A boy sat on the top step, watching Susan argue with a man at the far end of the driveway. His dress was so stereotypical it was laughable. He wore a black Stetson too big for him. Tilted to one side, it disclosed a mop of unwashed hair and a mullet that hung past his shoulders. His white western-style shirt and blue jeans were dirty, and the soles of his black cowboy boots thick with what could have been mud or cow crap. He held a pocketknife in his right hand, gouging the top step with it, digging out splinters of wood.

He turned at the sound of her footsteps, looking startled for a moment, then only irritated.

“Hush,” he said. “I’m trying to listen.”

“Stop that!” She pointed at his knife as its tip bit into wood again.

He ignored her, watching the arguing pair intently until they wandered too far away to hear, then turned to her again, folding the blade and sliding it into his pocket.

“Who are you?” His attention turned fully to her for the first time, he sized her up and smiled. It was a look Penny recognized and hated, the smile of a bully singling out a promising new victim.

“I live here,” she said, hardly believing the words as they left her mouth, surprised that she was already coming to think of the place as home. “Who are you?”

“I’m Rooster,” he said, actually thumping his plump chest with a fist.

“My papa,” he pointed to the distant man, “owns this town, so you better watch how you talk to me!”

Penny began to laugh, was helpless not to.

Rooster flushed, taking a step toward her, and Penny matched it with a step of her own. Bullies at the group home had beaten her up more than once, and she had beaten up a few of them. But even if she lost, she never let them intimidate her. She’d discovered that if you let them push you around once, they would continue to do it—but actually fighting was more of an effort than most of them liked to make.

Guys like this Rooster preferred easier targets.

“Tucker! Come on!”

Susan and Rooster’s dad stood in the driveway again, the latter’s face red with anger.

Rooster–Tucker–shot Penny one last sour look and turned to join him.

Penny walked to meet Susan, turning to watch Rooster and his ‘Papa’ disappear around the side of the house.

“Who are they?” She stopped beside Susan and turned in time to see them step through the strands of a barbed wire fence at the edge of the small backyard, into the wheat field on the other side.

“Ernest Price and his …” she paused, as if searching for the right word to describe Rooster.

“His son,” she said finally. “Ernest is a local big shot and resident pain in the …”

Susan censored herself again and regarded Penny.

Penny heard real venom in Susan’s voice, and understood she could come to feel the same way about Rooster as Susan did about his dad.

“He’s a farmer,” Susan said in a somewhat calmer tone. “But most of his money is in real estate. Ernest Price owns most of the land around Dogwood. He owns a lot of the land in Dogwood too.”

Susan took Penny by her arm and led her back toward the house.

“He owns the building my shop is in, and the lease runs out next year. He’s trying to strong-arm me into letting him farm up there,” she gestured to the rise of land behind them. “He farms the seventy back acres in exchange for my lease, but he wants it all.”

Susan sighed and released Penny’s arm as she climbed the steps to the house. She didn’t go inside, but sat on the porch swing, gesturing for Penny to do the same.

Penny slid a hand in her pocket, feeling the corner of the framed photograph, then withdrew her hand and sat down next to Susan.

“The field behind the house is yours then?” Penny was curious, but also concerned. If Susan and Ernest’s business brought them together on a regular basis, she was sure to see more of Rooster.

Susan faced Penny, a curious look of speculation on her face. Then, reluctantly, said, “No, not really.”

“Then he does own it.”

Smiling, Susan shook her head.

“Who then?”

“If I tell you a secret, can you keep it just between the two of us?”

Penny nodded, feeling touched at the unexpected confidence.

Susan looked right, then left, apparently checking to make sure Ernest and Rooster had not returned to make more trouble.

“You own it,” she said, then laughed aloud as Penny stumbled over her reply.

For several seconds Penny was incapable of speech. She swallowed hard to clear her throat, licked her suddenly dry lips, and tried again.

“I own it?”

“All of it,” Susan said, throwing her arms wide to indicate the house and all the land around it. “It’s all yours.”

* * * *

The next day Susan returned to work, and Penny faced her first day alone at her new home. Though the past four months had been a flurry of activity with social workers and the other kids at the group home, she had somehow felt more alone there.

Here, at her new home, it was almost as if she’d found her mother again.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Susan asked a final time on the way to her car, an ancient Ford Falcon with chipped blue paint and a spider web crack in the rear windshield. “You can browse the books and check out the town.”

Penny considered it briefly, but decided she wasn’t ready to face Dogwood’s strange geography and new faces yet.

The field behind their house was off limits, but that was fine with Penny. She wasn’t ready for another run-in with Rooster or his dad.

The stretch of wild land in front of the house was wide open and inviting though. So as soon as Susan’s car vanished down the winding driveway, Penny started walking, replaying the previous day’s conversation with Susan in her mind again.