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be dead,’” says Monroe, and he leans towards me. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispers. “Did you know that?”
    I shake my head.
    “It’s true.” Monroe shakes my hand. “Congratulations,” he says. “When can you start?”
    I don’t know what to say.
    “Day after tomorrow,” he says. “That’s when the truck arrives.” Monroe grabs the wheels and rolls himself backwards towards the door so he can watch me all the way. “You ever been in a museum?”
    “No.”
    “You ought to see the stuff they have in museums.” Monroe waits at the door, the wheelchair leaning against the sill. “Pull me over,” he says. “And don’t dump me.”
    “The paint job’s pretty neat,” I say. “How’d you do it?”
    “Don’t tell anyone you saw me.”
    “Sure.”
    “It’s a surprise,” says Monroe. “I want the whole thing to be a surprise.”
    Outside the church, the wind is blowing. From the porch, I catch glimpses of the green square in the tumbling grass. The kite is so high in the sky that if the string broke, it might never come down.
    “Is that yours?”
    Monroe nods and shades his eyes. “‘Teaching the Sky About Blue.’”
    “It’s a kite, right?”
    “Thought I’d better start with the easy ones first.”
    “What about the green thing?”
    “‘Teaching the Night About Dark’ is going to be a lot trickier.”
    The Cousins are nowhere to be seen. Soldier steps off the side of the porch as if he can see what he’s doing and waits for me in the grass.
    “So the green square is art?”
    “Can you imagine all the grass in the world that colour?” Monroe straightens his wig and turns his face into the wind. “Exciting, isn’t it?”
    I feel my way off the porch, searching for the steps with my toes, and by the time I reach solid ground, Monroe has disappeared back inside. Soldier is waiting for me at the green square. I stand on the platform, close my eyes to a squint, and stare at the church fromdifferent angles to see if I can figure out how Monroe has managed the trick. It must have something to do with the paint and the way the colours of the land and the sky carry over into the wood.
    In the distance, clouds are on the move, thick and white. But as they clear the bridge, they begin to separate and change, and by the time they reach the church, they look like long, slender bones. They settle for a moment in the afternoon sky before the current catches them, and they float over the horizon as if they were being carried along on a river.

Chapter Seven
    W hen Soldier and I get back to the shop, my mother is waiting for us. She’s sitting in front of the sink, her hands gripping the arms of the chair as if she expects it to try to bolt out the door. “You’re late.” She’s wearing her good dress. “Get changed.”
    “It’s auntie Cassie,” I say. “Why do we have to get dressed up?”
    I see my mother’s hands squeeze down on the arms of the chair. Soldier leans against me with his head and tries to move both of us towards the back and cover.
    “All I have are jeans and T-shirts.”
    My mother closes her eyes and relaxes her fingers. “Find something with a collar,” she says.
    My mother gets a little tense whenever auntie Cassie comes home. My father thinks it’s because auntie Cassie travels all over the world while my mother is stuck in Truth and Bright Water. I figure it’s because they’re sisters and are excited to see each other and don’t know where to start.
    I look through my drawers, but in the end, the only thing I can find is the green knit shirt my father got me when he came back from Edmonton. I’ve never worn it because it is the same colour as the carpet they use at the miniature golf course behind Mel’s Drive-In and because it has a red patch on the front that says “Four Square Farm Store.”
    My mother is standing by the front door, arguing with Soldier. The door is open just a crack and Soldier is trying to manoeuvre his way past my