Spirit - Part Six
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
Emmett is still smiling at Ellen’s awed, starry-eyed expression. She’s still staring up at the stars, thunderstruck.
I give her a very gentle push towards the chicken coop, then beckon for Emmett.
“Come on, we need that starlight to work by!”
Ellen gives herself a shake, struggling to slowly come back down to Earth. Emmett, on the other hand, seems to instantly remember that we’re off to start class.
His glowing smile falls away completely as he sets off behind Ellen. He closes his eyes and screws his face up, like he’s gearing up to make some kind of huge effort. At the same time, his shoulders sink, like he instinctively knows that effort will be futile.
He’s pale again, but his cheeks color up as he steals a glance at Ellen, humiliation already showing itself in his eyes.
God. I thought I was nervous. I had to rethink this lesson at the last minute for the farm, and now I unexpectedly have two students instead of one. I’m nervous, and I’m sure that it’s showing, but Emmett - he looks like he wants to run, more and more the closer we get to kicking this off.
“We didn’t get introduced properly, did we?” I ask, speeding up a little to walk at his side. “I’m Jamie.”
He adjusts his beanie over his hair, his anxious hazel eyes darting up to my face. “Emmett.”
I give his shoulder a gentle knock. “Really excited to have you in my class, lil’ dude. We’ll have some fun, okay? I promise.”
Emmett’s eyes blink up to me, full of surprise.
“I - okay.” He stops beside the chicken coop and stands there uncertainly, rubbing his elbow. “So - what d’you want with the coop?”
Poor kid. He’s so obviously, visibly stressed out. I’m finding myself more determined than ever to make sure that he has at least a little bit of fun.
I glance in at the hens, take a deep breath, and kick off the class.
“Are they already asleep, Emmett? I don’t want to disturb them, if they are.”
Emmett drops to a crouch and peers inside, balancing with one hand on the little wooden roof. “Nah, not yet. But if I let them out I’ll have to round them all up again.”
A vision of us chasing a whole lot of chickens around in the darkness flashes before my eyes.
“No, yeah, definitely don’t let them all out! I was actually just gonna ask if you could take one chick out? Hopefully without angering its mom?”
Emmett shrugs his shoulders, looking immensely relieved. This is territory he knows, clearly.
He opens the door and reaches in towards one of the hens, prompting some soft, startled cooing and clucking. She fluffs her feathers up immediately, making herself much bigger where she’s perched.
“Careful, Emmett!” Ellen blurts out worriedly, seizing a handful of the back of his shirt.
“It’s alright,” he laughs softly. He glances at her over his shoulder, his hazel eyes calm again. “You two mind taking a step back?”
I gently tug Ellen a few steps away, catching Molly by her collar and pulling her with us. As soon as it’s just Emmett left in front of the coop, the hen goes calm again, returning to her normal size. Emmett reaches in without hesitation and without incident, tilting his head in the low light of the coop so he can see what he’s doing.
He shuts the coop again, then straightens up and turns to face us, something cupped in his calloused fingers.
“Oh my god!” Ellen squeals softly, staring with delight at the tiny, bewildered chick in Emmett’s hands. She watches its wobbly movements, then gasps as it lets out the tiniest little peep. “Emmett!”
“What?” he laughs, staring at her with warm eyes.
“It’s so adorable!” Ellen whispers, pressing her fingers over her mouth. “Is that the point of today’s class, Jamie? That chicks are adorable? I hope it is.”
“Not quite,” I laugh, shifting the strap of my bag on my chest. “Emmett, can you open the coop again and set that little guy down on the ground? But stand off to the side.”
Emmett follows my instructions, setting the chick near the walk-up to the coop. The chick flutters and hops its way onto the wood, then darts right back to the hen.
I narrow my eyes at the mud as Emmett shuts the coop door again. Hoping it worked - and it looks like it did. I look up at the kids again, smiling brightly with relief. I catch Emmett with one hand and Ellen with the other, then draw them a safe step back.
“We’re gonna learn about using science to understand more about your natural surroundings.” I glance between Ellen and Emmett, adjusting to having two little faces tilted up to me instead of one. “It’s a good skill to have. The more you know, the better you’ll know how to be more respectful of the environment. You can learn about your non-human neighbors with this skill, too. And it can help you stay safe, out in nature.”
Ellen is smiling excitedly, her hands stuffed in the pockets of Emmett’s borrowed jacket. I cast a searching look at Emmett, half-expecting to have lost his attention by now.
But he seems interested, and I can tell he’s listening. There’s something vaguely confused about his eyes, too. Like he’s not certain if the class has actually started yet, unsure if this is it. He looks like he’s waiting for the part where we go inside and sit at a desk.
“Okay, question,” I try, directing it at him. “What tools are there to help you, when you want to navigate a natural place?”
Emmett hesitates, blinking anxiously, then blurts out - “A map?”
“Yes! But people were navigating without maps for a long, long time. Of course, a map is always good to have,” I add hastily. The mental image of one of the kids tossing a map into a river like the fool from Blair Witch just popped into my head, followed by a little voice saying Jamie told me to do it. “Always have a map, if you can! And you should take a good long look at the map before you even go. Good answer, Emmett.”
Emmett shifts from foot to foot, looking startled, then faintly, cautiously excited. He glances sidelong at Ellen, maybe checking to make sure she saw that. She flashes him a beaming smile, her cheeks rounding out, her eyes bright with affection.
Emmett quickly looks back at me and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans, his sunburned cheeks a little darker in color.
“But the environment itself can tell you a lot of things, too,” I go on, opening up my bag as I talk. “So what we’re basically doing is hunting for clues.”
Emmett and Ellen both react to that phrasing. They shift excitedly on their feet, then simultaneously start scanning the landscape with their eyes, like they’re ready to set off on the hunt.
I rummage in my bag until I find the pebble I took from the riverbank near the Ghost Office, then hold it out to show the kids. “Science all begins with observation, right? What can we observe, here?”
Emmett glances up at me warily, like it’s a trick question. But Ellen has spent more time in my classes, so she has a better idea of what I meant.
“It’s dark, and round,” she pipes up. “And smooth.”
“Exactly, El.” I fix her with an encouraging smile. “If a rock is round and smooth, it’s probably spent some time in water, or ice. That’s what smooths it down and rounds the edges. You notice all the pebbles by the river look like this?”
Emmett and Ellen both nod, gazing at the stone.
“So, if you’re out in nature, and you find yourself walking on a whole lot of smooth, rounded rocks-”
Ellen’s face lights up with understanding, so I stop and spread my hands at her, waiting.
“There must be water nearby!” she blurts out excitedly.
“Yes! Or there was, at some point. There might have even been a glacier where you are, once. Or an ancient river that’s gone now.”
Ellen and Emmett both stare up at me in startled, interested silence.
“Either way, it probably means you don’t want to set up camp right there,” I add. “If there’s a flash flood, you might be sitting right in an empty riverbed that could fill up with water-”
I stop in surprise as, without warning, Emmett plucks the rock from my hands. He gazes down at it and slowly turns it over in his fingers, feeling its texture with his thumbs.
I - guess it’s fine? I get the sense that he’s still listening, even if it doesn’t look like it. I give my shoulders a shrug, let him have the rock, and keep going.
“Rocks can give you clues about your surroundings, but almost everything in nature can, really. What else could you look at for clues, besides rocks?”
Ellen and Emmett fall silent for a moment, glancing at each other. Ellen’s eyes drop to Emmett’s muddy boots as she thinks.
“Oh, the - the mud?” she tries suddenly, looking up at me. “The ground.”
“The soil, El, yeah! Nice work. I think we’ve got a clue in the mud right here, actually.”
I take out my flashlight and click it on, then aim it just in front of the chicken coop. The dark earth is still soft and muddy from the earlier rain, but just starting to form the beginnings of a dry crust. The little chick, despite being so light-footed, left a perfect set of prints leading up to the coop.
“Oh my god!” I gasp, like it’s a real shock. “Look, guys! Tracks! An animal has been here!”
Ellen giggles, and Emmett blinks, then breaks into a tiny grin.
“Tracks can tell you a lot about who you’re sharing a place with,” I tell the kids, who crouch down on either side of me to look closer. “You don’t have to do a lot of memorizing to figure out some basic information. If you didn’t know who left these tracks, you’d still be able to tell it was a bird, right?”
The kids both nod, eyes roving over the tracks left by the chick.
“What if the tracks showed that the bird had webbed feet?”
Emmett looks up at me and opens his mouth, then stops, hesitating. But he must not want to miss an opportunity to answer a question he knows something about, because he blurts out -
“Ducks have webbed feet.”
“That’s right!” I give him a nod, smiling down at him. “Birds that swim have webbed feet, because it helps them swim better. So we know, looking at these tracks, that this bird probably doesn’t swim.”
I slip my phone from my pocket, pull up a picture I saved earlier, then hold it down to show the kids.
“These tracks were left by a songbird. Do you guys see the difference between this and the prints we’re looking at?”
Ellen points to part of the songbird’s tracks, the back-facing toe. “That?”
“Exactly. Songbirds perch on little branches, so they need a toe like that to hold on. Chickens don’t need that, though.” I aim the flashlight at the chick’s prints again. “So we can tell, just from these prints, that there's a little ground-dwelling bird nearby, and it doesn't swim. That’s a start! If you keep that basic stuff in mind, you can-”
I break off as Molly, apparently curious about what everyone’s staring at, walks directly over the chick’s tracks to put her nose in Emmett’s face.
“Oh - thank you, Miss Molly,” I laugh, gently catching her collar. “Now we have some dog tracks to look at. Actually, come here-”
I catch Molly’s foot, then hold up her forepaw to show the kids. “You see how her claws are out all the time? That’s why her lil’ feet click on the floor.”
The kids nod at me, both of them giggling as Molly twists in my arms to enthusiastically lick my face.
“But cats keep their claws tucked away, right?”
“Unless they’re usin’ them,” Emmett answers.
“Yes! So-” I let Molly go, then point at her tracks again. “Puppy prints have the claw marks, and kitten prints don’t. That’s how you can tell those tracks apart.”
Emmett looks at me thoughtfully, then reaches down and runs his fingertips over the tracks, his other hand absently smoothing over Molly’s fur.
“The tracks are nice and clear because it was muddy, and mud makes good prints. Can either of you guess what other conditions are good for finding tracks?”
“Snow,” Emmett answers, without seeming to think about it.
“That’s exactly right, Emmett!” I smile approvingly at him. “How’d you know, bud?”
He looks up at me, startled, then breaks into a tiny smile.
“Because - I’ve seen ‘em,” he says, a little more eagerly. “Around the farm before. In the winter. But I didn’t know who left them.”
“Maybe you’ll figure it out, next winter.” I knock his shoulder gently, then aim the flashlight at the tracks again. “If you want to try, the best time to look for tracks is early in the morning or late in the day.”
“Why?” Ellen asks immediately, lifting her curious gaze to my face.
I get this question from Ellen a few times in every class, so I thought to look it up in advance, this time.
“It has to do with the sun. Altitude, refraction, a few other things. The angle of the sunlight changes as the sun goes through its movement across the-”
I stop myself mid-sentence, realizing that I just lost Emmett.
As soon as I started talking about angles and altitudes and refraction, he drew back and started to look alarmed, then miserable. He’s keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the ground, but I can see him holding tight to Molly’s long fur, an anxious blush blossoming in his cheeks.
“Um… here, I’ll show you.” I feel around in my bag until I find a notepad, then open it to a blank page. “C’mere.”
Emmett slowly straightens up, determinedly keeping his gaze fixed on the mud.
I shrug off my flannel and hand it to him. “Mind holding that over us? It’s gonna look silly, but we need it to be dark.”
Emmett looks confused, but he holds my flannel over the three of us when I crouch down to be closer to his height. It blocks out the starlight decently enough. The flannel fabric makes a sort of tent around us and over us when we crowd close together.
“Okay, let’s say that this is the sun.” I hold up my flashlight in our little pocket of darkness, then point to the notepad. “And the paper is the earth. At the middle of the day, the sun is about here.”
I aim the flashlight directly over the center of the page and let the kids look for a moment. There’s not much to see.
“But at the beginning and the end of the day, the sun is only just above the horizon line, so it’d be like… here.”
I aim the flashlight from just above the edge of the notepad. The fibers of the page all illuminate from the new angle, revealing the paper-grain texture that looked perfectly flat and blank when the light came from above. There are even a few random indents visible on the page, left there from something written on the page before.
“Oh, shit,” Emmett murmurs, then immediately freezes.
His suddenly very wide eyes flick up to my face in obvious alarm. He looks like he wants to drop my flannel and clasp his hands over his mouth.
“It’s alright,” I laugh, as Ellen smothers a soft cascade of giggles behind her fingers. “I’m glad the demonstration made an impact.”
Emmett stays frozen, like he’s still not sure if he’s in trouble.
“Does that answer the question, though? You guys understand?” I ask hopefully, and the kids both nod. “Cool. Can I have my flannel back before we move on, Emmett? Thanks for your help with that, by the way!”
He hands it back to me, then breaks into a slow smile, his shoulders sinking as if he’s immensely relieved.
“Okay, let me ask you guys something.” I aim the flashlight at Molly’s tracks again. “Is there another clue right here, besides the tracks?”
Ellen’s eyebrows knit uncertainly, but Emmett turns to look at me.
“The soil is - muddy and soft and dark, and kinda red.”
A great observation. Following Ellen’s example, perfectly. I stare at Emmett in surprise, then give his back a proud, gentle slap.
“That’s right, bud! The soil itself can tell us a lot. Even just the color of it. You’re really doing great, especially for your first lesson!”
I crouch down to get closer to the muddy earth, so I can explain what the color means.
I catch Ellen flashing a grin at Emmett over my head. She mouths at him - told you you’d like this.
Emmett gives his shoulders a sheepish, concessionary shrug, biting back a little laugh. Ellen fights down a laugh of her own, her smile glowing in her eyes. She catches her lip between her teeth, staring at Emmett, then suddenly catches his hand in hers, gives it a squeeze, and lets him go.
Emmett blinks hard at her, then winds his fingers into Molly’s fur again. Smiling shyly, nervously.
Holding on tight.
~~~~
“It was great, Aiden,” I call from the kitchen, pulling the leftover Chinese food out of the fridge. “Emmett is such a sweet little guy. Kent still insists he’s not going to start worrying about Ellen and boys for ten more years-”
“Ten more?” A huffing rumble of Aiden’s laughter drifts into the kitchen from the coffee room. “Okay. That’s - optimistic.”
“I know, I told him he’s delusional. I think he should be happy that Ellen has good taste.” I step back into the coffee room, hand Aiden the stuff in my arms, then loop back to the kitchen for drinks and chopsticks. “I understand why Emmett is having such a hard time in school, but he did so good in my class.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, like-” I drop down to sit next to Aiden on the cushions, then crack my chopsticks, struggling to think of how to explain. “Emmett is really sensitive, but not like - I mean - he’s sensitive to his atmosphere, and his surroundings. He’s all in his senses. He’s always reaching out to feel things and touch them. If I give him something to look at, or something to touch, or if I read out loud, his face lights up. But the instant I said something more technical, or handed him something to read by himself - the poor kid looked anguished. He’d just get this wretched look in his eyes… and he’d look guilty, too. Like he was waiting for me to get upset with him or tell him off.”
Aiden drops a muscular arm around my shoulders and presses a kiss onto my temple, his blue eyes smiling warmly. “Knowing you, Keane, that didn’t happen.”
I shake my head in confirmation, cuddle up against Aiden’s side, then nibble thoughtfully on the end of my chopsticks.
“You know, Emmett is really quiet and serious, and Ellen is all joyful chaos. They’re so different from each other, but they’re both… I don’t know. Trying to force Emmett to do things the standard way just isn’t going to work, I don’t think. It’s only going to make him dread the moment when people get mad at him because he inevitably did it his own way, because - he can’t help himself. That’s the only way he can do it. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing, except he’s at a regular school. And…”
“Ellen is the same way,” Aiden finishes.
I nod in confirmation, sit in thoughtful silence for a second, then give myself a shake.
“Well, the point is, I thought that adding Emmett to the mix was gonna turn my class into chaos, but it was a really good class, actually. He and Ellen make each other focus as hard as they can, ‘cause they’re trying to impress each other.”
Aiden huffs out a warm laugh, leaning back against the wall. “It’s almost too bad he’s not a permanent addition to your class, huh?”
“Yeah,” I answer slowly. “It’s too bad.”
Images flash through my mind before I can stop them. Emmett’s pleased, startled smile every time I told him he got an answer right, and Ellen’s glowing smile every time she caught sight of him like that.
Sylvia’s surprised, delighted expression when the three of us trooped back into the kitchen at the end of class, muddy and victorious from the track-hunting that took us all over the farm - and Emmett eagerly rushed to her to tell her about our class.
That smile lit up and transformed Sylvia’s whole face, just like Emmett’s face transformed when I told him he was doing great.
“It’s too bad,” I repeat again, tapping my fingertips on the coffee table.
Aiden lets me go so that he can crack open his fortune cookie. He slips the fortune free, reads it, and lets out a gasp. “Holy shit, Jamie.”
I freeze, staring at him in confusion. “What?”
“You’ll never believe what this says.”
“Wh-?”
“It says, just go call Sylvia already, you know you want to. Man, they’re starting to make really specific fortunes these days, aren’t they? So personalized.”
“Oh, my god.” I let out an indignant laugh, shoving Aiden’s shoulder. “Stop it, dude! I wasn’t - I don’t even have her phone number, and I’d have to get permission from the school-”
“Couldn’t you get her phone number from Kent, and ask the school to just use the same paperwork they did for Ellen?” Aiden gestures down at the fortune cookies. “Or would you like me to crack open another one of these for answers? We have six, which I’m guessing is how many people the restaurant thought we were, based on how much food we ordered-”
“You’re annoying,” I groan, tossing my hands up in the air. “Don’t you think it’s gonna be really weird if I just call up Sylvia and tell her I-?”
“Nope,” Aiden rumbles, his deep voice calm and steady.
I wait for a second, but apparently that’s all he had to say.
“But won’t she think it’s so-?”
“Nah,” Aiden cuts in.
Again, apparently that’s it. I try to make an exasperated face at Aiden, but end up letting out a laugh instead.
“Come on, babe. I can’t just-”
My phone starts buzzing on the coffee table, lighting up with a call from a number I don’t have saved. Ketterbridge area code, though. I cast a quick, bewildered glance at Aiden, then pick it up and answer.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jamie! I’m sorry to call you like this, I hope it’s not weird, um - I got your phone number from Kent. There’s something I wanted to ask you about. This is Sylvia, by the way.”
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