Power in the Blood by Greg Matthews Page A

hand and wished him well. Clay wondered how they would have felt had they known he shat in his britches. His small but potentially embarrassing secret made Clay cynical.
    So the farm was his. What earthly use did he have for it? He was no farmer. At best, farmwork was a distraction from himself, from his guilt over having made no move to go back for Drew and Zoe. It occurred to him that he could do that now, go fetch them from the towns where they’d been taken in; Wister’s Landing, Indiana, for Zoe, an even smaller place in Illinois called Dinnsville for Drew. Clay’s course of action was obvious, largely because of a lack of alternatives.
    The lawyer was watching his face. Clay’s lips parted. The lawyer leaned forward in anticipation.
    “Sell it,” Clay told him.
    “The farm?”
    “Sell it fast.”
    “Is that the right thing to do, Mr. Delaney? That’s a real nice farm you’ve got there, practically a showplace.”
    “I don’t want it. My name’s Dugan.”
    The lawyer was offended by the last remark, but didn’t allow himself to show it. “Would you like some time to reconsider?”
    “No.”
    “My fee for real estate transactions is five percent of the sale.”
    “Ten percent if you get rid of it before the end of the month.”
    “I’ll return tomorrow with a contract.”
    “Return this afternoon.”
    “I … very well, this afternoon.”
    The lawyer had changed his mind about Clay. The boy was cold clear through. The lawyer didn’t think Clay felt any real sorrow over the death of the Delaneys. He was just a tall bag of bones with a face like a skull and hands that looked as though they could crack rocks the way ordinary boys cracked pecans. The patchwork of black stitching under both cheekbones gave his face a desperate, haunted aspect, but the eyes were calm, unflinching. He seemed a great many years older than a youth almost eighteen.
    The lawyer earned his ten percent, and Clay boarded an east-bound train with a thickly wadded money belt around his waist. On the first leg of the trip, to Dinnsville, he felt himself becoming excited at the thought of seeing Drew again. He’d be twelve years old now, and probably still walked with his feet pointed in: Mr. Pigeontoes, Nettie had called him (Clay, whose feet were planted at a forty-five-degree angle to each other, was Mr. Duckfeet); and he’d probably have that same big smile, the kind Clay had never had, the kind that made people want to be Drew’s friend. These simple recollections made Clay weep as he watched the countryside roll by, and the crinkling of his face with the small grief of remembrance caused his cheeks, recently released from their stitches, to hurt.
    In Dinnsville he asked around the town for two days before learning that the Kindreds, who had taken Drew in, had moved west about four months before, to an unspecified location. Reeling, Clay boarded the next train east, bound for Wister’s Landing. Zoe had just better be there, or he didn’t know what he’d do.
    Hassenplug was pitching hay into the barn loft when someone rode into the yard. He recognized the horse as belonging to the livery stable in town. Even at a distance the rider’s face looked strange, hollowed out somehow. Hassenplug climbed down from the hay wagon and approached him.
    “Something I can do for you?”
    “Mr. Hassenplug?”
    “That’s me.”
    “I’m looking for my sister, Zoe.”
    Clay watched the man’s face cloud over.
    “Say who?”
    “Zoe. Dark hair, thin build. You took her off the orphan train about five years ago.”
    “Well, she’s gone, sorry to say.”
    Clay dismounted. “Gone where?”
    Hassenplug raised his hands in a helpless gesture.
    “Why’d she go?” Clay asked.
    “Never told us. Never said a word, just upped and left, must be four, five weeks ago now.”
    He stared at the stranger’s face. There were two holes in it, filled with new, pink flesh, as if someone had driven a stake clean through his cheeks. It was an ugly