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“Hey!”
Charles and Uncle, clustered around a pile of junk at the front of the house, barely turned to greet Jack as he ran up to them, winded and wringing his hands together.
“I looked everywhere and can’t find Ma or Pa!” Jack cried with another futile look about the property. He’d searched high and low, and found nothing of his mother or father, though really he had just been looking for the former.
“Wagon’s gone, son. They must have gone into town,” Uncle hummed with a shrug.
“Both of them?” Jack asked, disbelieving. Ma and Pa barely went anywhere together without him, as long as he could remember.
“Seems like it,” Charles nodded, just as nonplussed as Uncle.
Jack shook his head. “No, Ma woulda said something! A-and Pa gets in all kinds of trouble. Ain’t like havin’ a farm’s gonna change that!”
“There’s no trouble, Jack, I’m sure,” Charles urged. He swept his hand behind him, gesturing at the pile he and Uncle had been picking over before. “Look.”
Jack took a breath and did as he was bade, finding in there an assortment of house things he didn’t recognize. “What’s all that?”
“It’s furniture. For the house!” Uncle laughed. “Might be your folks felt like finally sprucin’ up the place and went to buy more things.”
“I- I just don’t feel good about it,” Jack insisted, still unsettled despite their assurances.
“If they’re gone too long, we’ll go looking,” Charles promised, patting Jack’s shoulder as he passed them to pick up one of a set of chairs. “Your folks can manage themselves, a’right? Keep yourself busy, and they’ll be back before you know it.”
“Yessir,” he nodded, wracked with worry and growing embarrassment over how childish his fears seemed, even to himself. Charles shoved a box into Uncle’s hands, and Jack turned from the pair, kicking at the ground until the toe of his boot hit the tree around the side of the house.
He sighed and leaned against the trunk, sliding to the ground and curling his knees up to his chest. Jack looked into the green canopy to spy a raven in the branches overhead, cawing and looking down upon him like some feathered overlord.
“Ain’t your tree,” he grumbled, though the bird just squawked again, unbothered, as the late afternoon blared dapples of sun over his hands and the dust and grass around him.
He knew he shouldn’t worry as much as he did; Ma and Pa were grown, and he trusted Charles’ intuition for danger. But trouble did follow Pa like he was a magnet for it, and he wasn’t one to deescalate once that trouble found him, neither.
‘Farm was supposed to change all that,’ he thought miserably, imagining Ma and Pa coming home yelling at each other over whatever, or else only one of them coming home at all.
The raven shrieked again and jumped from his branch, flapping away in a great flurry that sent little green leaves falling over Jack. He kept his eyes trained on the canopy, watching the clusters of green darken and split into sunny bursts as the wind shifted it about.
He wanted to run up to the gate, and sit there and not leave until he saw his parents return. But just as much, he wanted to be more grown than that, and so he kept himself at the tree— far enough to feign some nonchalance, but with good enough of a view of the land that he could keep himself trained on it. And in that way, he waited and worried as long as the day would let him.
It was dark when Jack, still at his somber post under the tree, finally heard the wagon rattling up the way. A lantern swung from the wagon’s side like a beacon, and his parents’ laughter spilled out, reaching him over the whisper of leaves. Were he not so relieved, Jack would have wondered at his parents’ newfound mirth. He threw aside the tin of food Charles had shoved into his hands for supper some hours previously, standing and running to meet the wagon as it stopped some paces from the house.
“Ma!” His voice cracked, and he felt babyish for how close he sounded to tears. Pa helped Ma off the wagon, the two of them giggling between each other again before Ma turned with a great, big smile to Jack.
“Jack! You’re up la- oh!” Jack cut her off with a tight hug around her middle, ignoring her confused laugh as she wrapped her arms over his back and Pa’s hand ruffled playfully through his hair.
“Where were you?” he asked, only just keeping himself from choking up over his words.
“Oh, Darlin’! We was just in Blackwater. You didn’t worry ‘bout us, did you?” Ma asked, voice soft and colored with surprise.
Jack nodded, face buried in her shirt. “Didn’t know you was goin’ nowhere.”
Ma made a sympathetic sound, and she patted Jack’s back as he let his grip around her loosen a bit. “Oh, I’m sorry, Jack. We just lost track of time.”
“How? It’s gone dark!” he shot back.
Ma just laughed, sharing a half-embarrassed look with Pa that Jack couldn’t for the life of him decipher. “Oh, well there’s an awful lot of distractions in Backwater! Next time, we’ll take you with us, and you can see a movin’ picture, ‘n everything! How’s that sound, Darlin’?”
Jack was relieved enough that he forgot to be indignant, just nodding again and letting Ma go. “Fine.”
“Get you inside, son,” Pa bade, voice light as he set a hand on Jack’s back and steered him for the porch. “It’s past time you was in bed.”
He wouldn’t notice the new ring on his mother’s finger until the next morning, when he would spy her coddling it and sharing dopey grins with Pa over breakfast. For now, he was just glad his parents were where they ought to be, with him.