Up on the stage his teacher would hand them the trophy—the biggest he’d ever seen, not that this would stop him from lifting it high over his head. As he did, he’d see Larry, nodding and clapping, like he was sorry for how he’d acted, and the face of Pauline Calhoun twisted like an evil witch, gnashing her teeth before stomping out of the gymnasium. He’d watch his mother’s face burst into a smile again. His little sister would scream like girls did when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. The whole crowd would be cheering—cheering and smiling. We were wrong about you, Nate, the principal would say as he shook his hand. We owe you and your whole family an apology.

Then all of them—he and his sister and their mom— would get in the car and sweep off to Warm Springs, and when they got there, his dad would be waiting for them, and they would all be together again.

Maybe not that part. Nate knew, of course, that wasn’t very likely. But he would make the trip anyway—he and Junie. And he would tell his dad about the cloud chamber and show him the trophy.

I’m so proud of you, son, his dad would say. And a look would come over his father’s face that Nate hadn’t seen in a long time. Happiness.

Fourteen

SPRING WAS STARTING TO COME TO LONETREE. Baseball tryouts—always the best thing about this time of year—would happen soon. With the snow beginning to melt, planting season was upon them, but nobody in Nate’s family was saying anything about that. All his mother and his grandfather did lately was go over the books of the farm, the mounting pile of unpaid bills, Sam Carter’s overdue loan note shoved to the bottom. With no customers left to buy their cream, milk soured in the buckets. The wind whipped the loose shutters on the house that no one had gotten around to repairing. It had been weeks since he’d heard his mom play the piano.

“Maybe we can find someone to lease our land till I get on my feet, Dad, and I’d take a percentage of the yield for the three of us to live on,” he’d overheard his mother say one night recently. Poppa and Grandma and Aunt Sal and Uncle Harold had stopped by for dinner, and everyone supposed he was safely upstairs, working on his homework.

“You know that would never pay the bills, Helen,” Poppa told her. “Small farm like this, Carl had a hard enough time getting the place to support one family, never mind two.”

“I could get a job in town,” she said. “Clerk over at Morton’s, maybe. Or wait on tables at the steak house.”

“You don’t think people talk enough as it is?” Nate’s grandmother said to her.