“Yes.”
“Terris people always do what they’re told. So what’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong with you, love,” she said. “You just haven’t got a good parent to guide you.”
“Ma,” he said, scrambling off the mat to take her arm. “Don’t talk like that. You’re agreatma.”
She hugged him to her side, but he could feel her tension. “Wayne,” she asked, “did you take Demmy’s pocketknife?”
“He talked?” Wayne said. “Rust that rustin’ bastard!”
“Wayne! Don’t swear like that.”
“Rust that rusting bastard!” he said in a railworker’s accent instead.
He grinned at her innocently, and was rewarded with a smile she couldn’t hide. Silly voices always made her happy. Pa had been good at them, but Wayne was better. Particularly now that Pa was dead and couldn’t say them no more.
But then her smile faded. “You can’t take things what don’t belong to you, Wayne. That’s somethin’ thieves do.”
“I don’t wanna be a thief,” Wayne said softly, putting the pocketknife on the table beside the cards. “I want to be a good boy. It just… happens.”
She hugged him closer. “Youarea good boy. You’vealwaysbeen a good boy.”
When she said it, he believed it.
“Do you want a story, love?” she asked.
“I’m too old for stories,” he lied, desperately wishing she’dtell one anyway. “I’meleven.One more year and I can drink at the tavern.”
“What? Who told you that!”
“Dug.”
“Dug isnine.”
“Dug knows stuff.”
“Dugisnine.”
“So you’re sayin’ I’ll have to snitch booze for him next year, ’cuz he can’t get it himself yet?” He met her eyes, then started snickering.
He helped her get dinner—cold oatmeal with some beans in it. At least it wasn’tonlybeans. Then he snuggled into his blankets on the mat, pretending he was a child again to listen. It was easy to feign that. He still had the clothes after all.
“This is the tale,” she said, “of Blatant Barm, the Unwashed Bandit.”
“Oooh…” Wayne said. “Anewone?”
His mother leaned forward, wagging her spoon toward him as she spoke. “He was the worst of them all, Wayne. Baddest, meanest,stinkiestbandit. He never bathed.”
“’Cuz it takes too much work to get properly dirty?”
“No, because he… Wait, it’sworkto get dirty?”
“Gotta roll around in it, you see.”
“Why in Harmony’s name would you do that?”
“To think like the ground,” Wayne said.