“Her’s a nice person,” Boss added from his perch on the tailgate of our truck, but no one acknowledged him.

Pa leaned closer to the fuming man and lowered his voice to say, “And shame on your parents for not raising you no better than that. Now I think the best thing you can do is load up and go get to work on that batch of wine you gonna bootleg.”

Clive looked at the berries and then at his wallet.

“Foxy and Jinx are a part of our family and we don’t take too kindly to anyone mistreating them, so we don’t want your money or your business here ever again. Take the berries and get.”

Clive spit and sputtered on his pride, but he ended up taking the beautiful free berries he had no real right to and kicking up a dust storm on the way out of the farm. Once he was out of sight, Pa whirled on his booted heels and started off toward the house with Peg still dangling across his shoulder playing possum. My brother’s scrawny arms fell limp, and I half expected his tongue to droop out the side of his slack mouth but it didn’t.

“Ox, round the young’uns up and meet me inside the barn. Now!” Pa kept beating a path up the dirt drive, on a mission that I hoped would lead to Peg’s first ever butt whupping. He’d been asking for it, in my opinion.

I directed the older twins and Boss to get in the back of the truck while I scooped up the babies from the playpen underneath the shady elm tree and loaded them in the floorboard. They were pretty good at sitting up by themselves as long as I took the drive slow, and I was in no rush, not wanting to catch up with Pa. No worries there since it seemed he sprouted wings and was at the barn well before we arrived. I handed Knox to a confused Boss and placed Nash on my hip. Even though Boss’s mind was slow, he took orders considerably well. Best part was he never questioned me. Just did as he was told —opposite of Peg. Man, life would have been so much smoother if we’d figured out how to take a page out of Boss’s simple book.

We quietly crept toward the dark barn, Raleigh and Charlotte filing in behind us. We stepped inside the packhouse that no longer held the sweet appeal of cured tobacco but the musty aroma of years gone by. The loft was mostly used for storage and the first floor as a graveyard for broken things. A bicycle missing a front tire. The rusted two-seater tobacco setter that had been replaced with a shiny red four-seater. If I looked hard enough, surely my hopes and dreams could be found buried in one of the corners.