Wanted

Chapter 55

Finally. Apologies again. But at least it's a bit of a longer chapter this time.  

I just find it so hard to put it in words these days. It's all there so, it just needs to get out. 

John saw the pitying look Mrs McCarthy gave her son, as she set the plate with the piece of pie down onto the table beside John's bowl of soup. Horace missed it. He was too busy scowling at John who tried his hardest to ignore them both.

He was going to enjoy this, every little bit of it.

"Now John, you must eat your soup first," Mrs McCarthy gently scolded him when he picked up the small fork to dig in. He'd never seen a fork that size. She wasn't upset with him though. In fact, she even smiled at him.

He couldn't believe his luck. Something like this was a rare treat and even rarer was it that it was just his, that he was singled out for that treat and wasn't expected to share it with anyone else neither.

He had always counted himself lucky the way Sally and Walls included him in everything alongside their children and none of them ever complained that their small size got even smaller on accounts of him.

Over the years he'd stolen the odd cake or two, and some sweets here and there of course, but even then, he'd always shared it with his ma and his brothers. Even when it was his birthday, they shared whatever treat his mother would have managed to rustle up. And had they'd been there, he would have gladly done so again, but they weren't, so he pushed that thought as far away as he could. He was going to have this all by himself and enjoy every bit of it.

When they had come home from church the previous day Mrs McCarthy had been strangely angry at the woman who had handed her the little box containing the treat.

At first on the ride home she was all pleased with herself. Mrs Grune owns the bakery she explained to John. She bakes the loveliest cakes, they even won her prices she explained. "Wasn't it so nice of Mrs Grune to think of us?" she asked her husband rhetorically. From her tone and demeanour, it must have been quite the surprise. "Who would have thought?" she asked her husband linking into his arm and resting her face on his shoulder contently. McCarthy however didn't say anything and just nodded grumpily as he urged the horses to trot home. John assumed he'd been in a bad mood because of the man from the school telling him he was going to visit in the evening.

Mrs McCarthy's demeanour however changed as soon as she opened the little parcel that she had held so carefully in her lap all the way home. She seemed upset. The box contained three large slices of pie. Perfect triangles, each separated with paper so that the shape didn't get distorted.

McCarthy took it from her and told her to get him five plates. He cut two of the three pieces in half and put the third slice into the pantry. We'll decide later what we do with this, he decisively told his wife. She suggested to give it to Carter and Lee but McCarthy told her No. It'd be like casting pearls before swine, he told her, they'd been drinking the night before and he was glad to say that they were suffering the consequences. Apart from the fact that they were too sick to appreciate it, that sort of behaviour was not to be rewarded, he told her.

When he handed his son one of the pieces Horace grumbled about the size, even though John thought his was a little bigger than everyone else's. If John wasn't there, he'd get a full one, he complained to his parents. McCarthy told him he could have none if he wasn't happy about it, and that shut him up.

John hadn't expected to be included, so he was pleased with any amount at all. On the farm it was the norm that he didn't get any cake when the family had some. He wasn't even given any on the rare occasions when the woman brought some over to the bunkhouse. He knew it wasn't her though. She would have given him some if it hadn't been for her husband, and she didn't dare to go against him. He wasn't always nice to her either.