That first night at the farm, Temple reads to Liam from an antique book pulled from a shelf that spans their entire living room, while Everett mutely cooks dinner and Willow organizes Liam’s things in his new room. After they eat, Liam has three slices of rhubarb pie and then plays checkers with Everett in mutual silence, as Willow and Temple sit up late out on the porch, drinking wine and speaking in low voices.
Temple gently rouses Liam at dawn the next morning and informs him that since he’ll be staying on the farm, he’ll need to learn how to slop the pigs and feed the chickens and goats.
“Fine,” he says, rubbing his eyes, worried she may dump him in the nearest orphanage if he doesn’t comply.
“This used to be a proper farm, one where hungry people with nowhere else to go could come and work,” she says, handing him a pitchfork. “But ever since we paid it off with that inheritance from your grandfather, Everett and I decided that our efforts would be better spent elsewhere.” Temple goes on to say that she volunteers as a book buyer at the public library in Estevan, and Everett makes furniture that he sells, the proceeds of which they donate to charity. “There are still hungry people out there,” Temple says, “but they’re hungry for different things now. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t the faintest idea what it is they need.”
When the chores, which Liam enjoys slightly more than expected, are completed, Everett has lunch waiting for them: egg salad sandwiches on real wheat bread and soup with actual chicken in it. Already, Liam has started to secretly pretend that Temple is his true and rightful mother, and that her farm is his true and rightful home.
“Remember that stuff I said about Everett?” Willow tells Liam that afternoon, while he’s helping her pack the van before she returns to Vancouver. “You should forget it. Temple and I straightened it all out. It was just a big misunderstanding. You have nothing to worry about. Okay?”
“I never believed you anyway,” he says.
Liam doesn’t cry when his mother drives off, perhaps because after less than a full day on the farm, he’s already flushed with the guilty hope that she’ll never come back, that she’ll simply forget about him and leave him behind, just like she does everyone else.
Through the hot and dusty days of June, after his morning chores are complete, Liam spends hours exploring the farmhouse and the barn. He gives the goats and chickens funny names and chases them around the wheat fields. He spits fat globs into the black void of the well and climbs almost to the very top of the big weeping willow near the porch, the one that’s like a great, green room when you go inside it; the one with the swing that Everett has hung for him, though Liam is nearly twelve and has outgrown swings. Nightly, Liam listens to the radio while his great-uncle cooks dinner and Temple sets the table. She refers to Everett as either “the Help,” “the House Carpenter,” or “the Resident Arborist,” depending on what is to be done that day. And sometimes Everett gets her back by calling the farm “this God-forsaken, treeless patch of dust,” which initially strikes Liam as a betrayal, except Everett’s eyes glint when he says it, so Liam isn’t sure.
He loves the predictability of farm life: waking up each day in the same place to eat the same food at the same table with the same people who say mostly the same things. The only ritual he doesn’t appreciate is when each night, just before they’re about to turn in, Everett always asks Temple, “You think I can stay here awhile?” and she replies, “Just until we get these trees in,” as though Everett is some drifter just passing through. Liam knows it’s just another of their jokes, but he despises it anyway. The farm is the one permanent thing he’s found in his life, and the thought of Everett leaving or it all coming apart threatens everything he’s come to cherish.
By July, Liam has befriended a local boy named Orin, who is Liam’s age and lives up the road near the abandoned railroad tracks. When Liam invites him over to climb the willow tree and spit down into the well, Orin claims his parents won’t allow it.
“Why not?” Liam asks, recalling his mother once mentioning that some kids don’t do certain things because they hold strange religious beliefs, not with respect to Nature, but about a magical person they called God.
Orin glances around, leans in close, and squints. “Everyone knows your uncle was in prison. And that’s why no one in Estevan will hire him.” Then he drops his voice to a harsh whisper, an expression of half wonderment and half horror on his face: “People say he killed a baby.”
Later in bed, Liam mulls this over. While he’s gruff, his great-uncle doesn’t seem capable of harming a baby, or even an adult for that matter. Everett spends his days in his woodshop out behind the barn, building desks and beds and cribs and tables and chairs, as well as sets of intricate chess pieces made of fine maple, all of which Temple drives into town in her pickup on the first Monday of the month to sell because Everett doesn’t have a driver’s licence. Willow herself had admitted before she left that she’d been wrong about him. But how, Liam wonders, could a whole town believe something if it isn’t true?
Beginning the next day, Liam spies on Everett as he turns wood on his lathe, watching for signs of violence or insanity. While Everett never gets frustrated by a mistake and never makes any quick movements, he curses quietly and constantly. There’s an odd tenderness to his curses, as though they are the one power that can coax the pieces of wood into agreement.
To Liam, the woodshop—with its forest-like stillness—is a quiet realm of exactitude, discipline, and possibility. His great-uncle isn’t destroying trees at all; he’s transforming them, into useful things that will endure. And once Liam is brave enough to alert Everett to his presence, he sits in the wood shavings beneath the table saw like a boy-sized gerbil, watching his great-uncle work. When he finally builds up the nerve, he pesters Everett to teach him how to operate the fearsome tools.
Everett shakes his head. “Your mother forbid it.”
“She’s not even here.”
“She won’t have you cutting up wood. And her wishes go around here, at least with respect to you.”
“Well, she’s a bitch,” Liam says, the words slipping out like he’s dropped someone’s gold watch down the well. He sets his feet firmly on the floor and waits to taste his great-uncle’s murderous fury—in fact, he nearly craves it.
But Everett’s eyes only soften. He returns to his lathe and resets the guide that braces his chisel. “It’s not simple, you know, raising a child. Your mother is doing what she believes is right. And there isn’t just one way to do it. You’ll come around to that someday.”
Suddenly, Liam’s cheeks are wet and he can feel his heartbeat in his ears. “I don’t want to live in a van anymore,” he says. “I want a normal life. And I want to live in a normal place. With normal food.”
Everett turns back to regard him and places his hand on Liam’s head. “There aren’t any normal lives, son. That’s the lie that hurts us most.”
The following Monday, while Everett and Temple are away in Estevan for the day, buying animal feed and books, selling Everett’s furniture, and taking in their monthly movie at the theatre there, Liam sneaks into the woodshop. He flips the table saw’s switch and watches the naked blade roar and disappear into a fearsome blur like an airplane propeller. He swallows hard and sets a knotty board on the table and starts gliding it into the saw. He’s only cut a foot into the wood when it pinches the blade and there’s a loud bang and the board jumps from the table and strikes his chin with the force of a baseball bat.