Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by Tucholke, April Genevieve

  Maybe I should have joined things in school, like . . . drama. And the beekeepers club. Maybe I shouldn’t have spent all my free time with books. Or following around a ninety-ish-year-old woman who liked to talk about the Devil.

  I felt old suddenly. Really old. Freddie old. I put my hands to my face. But my cheeks were still smooth, still soft, still young.

  River looked at me, and I put my hands back down. We’d arrived at Jack’s house.

  It was small, with a paint-peeling air of sadness about it, like a forgotten toy left out in the rain. We went up to the door and knocked. I had a smile ready, expecting the solemn face of Jack to greet me at the door.

  A man answered instead. He was tall, and bone-thin. He had thin gray hair and dark hollows under his eyes, like the ones you’d expect to see on a half-starved train tramp in the 1930s. But his straight, even features had a kind of smooth, urbane grace, which still showed through the hollows and the bones. He would have been handsome, once, long, long, long ago. He wore a dirty yellow button-down shirt and brown wool pants. The matching jacket had been kicked into a rumpled heap in the hallway behind him.

  The man was Daniel Leap, the drunk who bellowed his opinion about my family from every street corner in town, the man who had ruined my view that first day drinking coffee with River.

  And suddenly I understood. I understood why Jack was alone. I understood why he was so quiet.

  Daniel Leap held a glass of amber liquid in one long-fingered hand. Bourbon, I supposed. In his other hand he held a needle, with a tail of long black thread. His eyes were big, like Jack’s, except that, instead of Jack’s piercing sort of melancholy, they looked dazed, and lost.

  “Is Jack around?” River asked. His expression echoed mine. Surprise. Confusion. Concern.

  “What do you want with him?” The man’s voice was soft, whispery. But there was an edge to it.

  Before River could answer, Jack appeared in the doorway.

  “Hey, River,” Jack said. “Hey, Violet. This is my pa.”

  Jack’s pa looked from his son, to River, to me. Then he leaned to the side and shoved Jack, just a bit. Just enough. “Be quiet, Jack.”

  There was a long pause. Daniel Leap drank from his glass and we watched him, not saying anything.

  “So, what do you want with my son?” Daniel Leap asked again, and smiled. “Want to buy him from me? You rich people like to do that, don’t you?” His eyes settled on me. “Yeah, I know what you’re like, Violet White. My family’s been in Echo nearly as long as yours. Only we don’t live in mansions by the sea. No, my people live and die in the gutter.” He laughed. It was soft and whispery, like his voice. “But look at you now. Coming into my gutter, trying to buy my son. You want to rent him as a playmate, like in that Charles Dickens book? Yeah, I’ve read it. I can read.”

  He took a long swig of his whiskey and looked at me, up and down, from toes to eyebrows, until I started to fidget. Was he joking?

  “No, I don’t want to buy your son. We just want to . . .”

  I looked down at Jack. He was half smiling, kind of cynically, which I didn’t expect. He was used to this, his dad making a fool of himself. I looked back at Daniel Leap. I wondered if he knew how smart his kid was. I wondered if he knew that his son wasn’t afraid of him.

  Daniel started fumbling with the needle. He was trying to sew a loose button back onto his shirt while he was still wearing it, and while he was holding a drink in his other hand, and while both hands were shaking. “I’ve been trying to get this button on all morning,” he said. He seemed to have forgotten all about Dickens and rented playmates for the moment.

  “Can I hold your drink for you?” River asked, polite and quiet.

  The man shrugged. He handed his glass to River. River tilted it back and took a deep swallow. My eyebrows shot up. Why would River want Daniel Leap’s cheap bourbon? River didn’t even drink.

  Daniel, his right hand now free, stabbed the needle at the middle button on his yellow shirt. I flinched, sure he was going to draw blood. Jack watched for a second, then reached up and took the thread from his father’s fingers. He led his pa to a chair near the door and gently pushed him into it.

  River and I stood there, not saying anything, until Jack looked at River, hard. River turned the glass of whiskey over and dumped it onto the ground.

  River and I went looking for Luke when we got back. I had this notion of making River apologize to him. Though that would mean explaining River’s glow, and I didn’t know how that conversation would go down, exactly.

  I noticed that the door of the shed was propped open. The shed was bigger than you’d think, considering it was called the shed. It was a little white building that had several square windows. Inside, there were cans of paint everywhere and little stools to sit on and easels and brushes and canvas cloths and still life props—pitchers and glasses and wine bottles, fake fruit and candles and a human skull.

  Luke was inside, painting. He had two canvases set up—one had a base coat of white, and the other black.

  “I’m doing a diptych,” he said, and didn’t look up from the box of paints he was fiddling with. “A touch of impressionism with a streak of Victorian whimsy. The black canvas”—he gestured without looking—“is going to be a girl with deep, tired eyes, on the beach, on a bright, moonlit night. She’ll be wearing an old-fashioned swimming suit, the kind with shorts and a belt, like the one you wear.” He glanced up at me. “I’ll throw in a few random objects, out of perspective, like some fish or a whale or something. And—this is key—she’ll be holding up her own shadow, like it’s sick and needs her support. I’m going to do the white canvas with the same girl at the beach during the day, same shadow. It’s a metaphor. You know, the girl feels like she’s a shadow, like she doesn’t exist. Existential crisis, etc.” He looked at me, real quick, and then turned back to the paintings. “You can help me with the white canvas, if you want.”

  I didn’t say anything. But I was pleased as punch that my brother was painting again, and River knew it because he winked at me behind Luke’s back.

  I looked around, at the sun streaming in the little windows, at my parents’ half-finished canvases, at the paint-splattered floor, at Luke, concentrating on the easel in front of him. I breathed in the faint, bitter smell of turpentine, the oily smell of the paint, the scent of fresh sea air. Maybe I’d been wrong to give up on painting.

  My eyes caught on a half-finished portrait of my mother. It wasn’t a self-portrait. It was my father’s hand that had painted that long nose, those dreamy eyes. I could always tell. His lines were more crisp, more solid, his colors darker than my mother’s. She was Chagall, Renoir. And my father was . . . well, he was himself. Of the two, he was the true painter, I supposed.

  River was walking around looking at the old paintings. He was lean, and beautiful, and smiling. But I felt my sense of peace drain away, watching him. Our conversation from the night before hung over me, and it blocked out the very real, very warm sunlight that filled the room.

  I pictured the Devil again, rising up behind River, with his red eyes. My scalp tingled and I shivered, like I was cold, though I wasn’t. River saw. I know he did. But he didn’t say anything. He just leaned over, grabbed himself a box of dried-out acrylics, put it under his arm, and then pointed at the largest canvas in the shed. “Is this guy available? My artistic talent is too big to be contained by anything but the largest of canvases. Canvii? I’m not sure on the lingo.”

  The huge canvas River wanted was supposed to be for a family portrait. My mother had talked about painting all four of us together since I was little. She brought that big canvas home years and years ago. And there it still sat.

  “Sure,” I said, not looking him in the eyes. “Take it.”

  River set down the box of acrylics and looked around until he found a can of house paint, which my parents sometimes used to pre
p a canvas. He popped the lid off, gave it a good stir, and then reached in a hand. It came up with a fistful of yellow.

  “Jackson Pollock,” he said, and smiled at me. “It’s the only way to paint.” He threw his fist at the canvas, opening it at the last second, and yellow paint went flying.

  I picked up a brush.

  CHAPTER 17

  RIVER USED UP three cans of paint in his Pollock tribute. Blue, yellow, and black splotches covered the canvas. I stared at it for a while. River came up behind me and put his hand, still wet with paint, on my lower back, adding to the colors on my mom’s overalls. “It’s a painting of you, Vi. Blue eyes, yellow hair, black thoughts.”

  “That’s why it’s so ugly.” Luke laughed. Loud.

  “Don’t take out your Pollock-hate on the new kid,” I said, moving to rinse out my brushes in the shed’s small sink. I looked at River over my shoulder. “Luke thinks abstract expressionism is, well, bullshit. Mom thinks the same thing. But it’s just the natural descendent of—”

  “Pizza.” Luke stood up and stretched. “I need some pizza in my belly before I listen to Vi go off on art.”

  “Me too.” This from Sunshine, who was standing in the doorway of the shed, a glass of iced tea in her hand.

  “Where have you been today?” I asked. “We have been creating great masterpieces in here.” I stood back and looked at Luke’s painting. And then mine. And scowled. Why did my brother paint like me, and I like him? We were so different, in every other way. But my lines went the way his went, turned thin, then thick, same as his. My brushstrokes were short and quick like his too. It . . . bothered me. It made me think that Luke and I were more alike than I’d thought, as if . . . as if we were both headed in the same direction and just taking very different roads there.

  “My parents made me drive the bookmobile around,” Sunshine answered me, slow and breathy because Luke was there. “A lot of dried-up, house-bound spinsters needed their trashy romance novels.”

  “Sunshine, you’re the kindest person I know. Have I ever told you that?”

  She grinned at me, and then went over to ooh and aah at Luke’s paintings.

  “So where do you find pizza in this town?” River asked me.

  “There’s a great place right off the town square,” I replied. “Want to come?”

  “Yep,” he said, a sparkle starting up in his eyes. “That will be perfect.”

  “Perfect for what?”

  “You’ll see,” he said, and smiled the crooked smile.

  Echo had a great pizza place called Lucca, which sat on the main square by the café. It was run by the same Italian family—Luciano and Graziella, and their three sons. From what I could tell, the men in the family did all the cooking, and Graziella mainly went around giving orders and saying allora, allora, over and over. I asked her what that meant once, and she told me it was Italian for now I think. And I guessed from this that it must take Graziella a lot of thinking to make the pizza.

  We were early and the restaurant was empty. Luke found us a booth near the large windows that overlooked the main square; they were half open and a nice breeze was drifting in. Sunshine had a pink, bottom-hugging summer dress on, and even I’d changed out of my painting overalls and put on a black silk shirt with a black skirt. I felt kind of pretty. The late sun was doing that slanting thing I found romantic, especially when it slanted off River and made his deep brown hair shine.

  That will be perfect, he’d said.

  I looked around the restaurant, and out the windows into the town square, and then at River again. He was leaning back into the seat, his arms behind his head, as if to say: Nothing to worry about here, Vi . . . I’m the most relaxed guy in the world . . . nothing on my mind . . . nothing up my sleeve . . .

  His nonchalance was annoying. It was. But then I noticed the yellow paint on his right forearm, and my irritation . . . melted.

  I ordered pesto and margherita. The pizzas arrived in less than twenty minutes, and the crust was thin, black in spots from the wood fire. Delicious.

  Graziella wandered over while we were eating, and made a long speech in Italian that no one understood. Except River, who actually did speak Italian, like I’d guessed. He said something back to her, smooth and fast, and she laughed. Then she called out, “Gianni!” and her dark-haired son came over. She sent him off to the kitchen and he came back with a bowl of pistachio gelato for each of us.

  In sixth grade I stood next to Gianni while we had our class photo taken. And the whole time I couldn’t take my eyes off the long brown sleekness of his arm, next to my white one. Even when we were supposed to be looking at the camera, I kept starting at Gianni. But he just smiled at me, when he caught me staring, and I’d kind of liked him ever since. It helped that he always said hello to me, when the other kids in my class didn’t.

  Gianni squeezed into the booth next to Sunshine and Luke, so now all three of them were sitting across from River and me. He put his elbows on the table, and Sunshine pressed up next to him, smiling.

  But he was looking at me. “The new issue of Fresh Cup came out,” he said. Gianni’s English was perfect, since he’d grown up in Echo, but his voice still held the low, emphatic speech patterns of his native Italian.

  I nodded. “I saw it in the café. What’s the latest news?”

  Gianni’s eyes lit up. “Pour-over coffee, still, molto bene, molto bene. But Ma won’t let me serve it, even if we just roasted juicy, tropical Kenyan beans that would be perfect for it. It’s traditional espresso only. Because we’re Italiano. I did order the special kettle, though, so you’ll have to come over and try it, after hours sometime. It should arrive in the mail this week, so we could—”

  “I’m River.” He held his hand out across the table. “New to town. I’m living with Violet.”

  “He rented the guesthouse,” I added, a bit too quickly.

  Gianni let River’s sudden rudeness roll right off him. He reached forward and shook River’s hand. “I’m Gianni.” There was a pause, and River looked at me, and Gianni looked at me, and I turned to the open window and tried not to look at anyone.

  Luke was staring out the window too, fingers to his scalp, checking his auburn hairline in the reflection. But he stopped when I caught him.

  “So have you all heard the news?” Gianni asked, after a few seconds of silence.

  “What news?” Sunshine asked. She put her ice cream spoon in her mouth and pulled it back out, nice and slow. “I don’t like to read the newspapers. They make my head hurt.”

  I kicked her leg under the table, but she ignored me.

  “Something strange happened in Jerusalem Rock. Everyone’s talking about it because it’s kind of like what happened here, with the kids in the cemetery. Only worse.”

  “Where the hell is Jerusalem Rock?” This from Luke.

  “It’s a small town about two hours south of here,” Gianni answered, and his eyes were sort of shadowed and unreadable. “Two days ago a group of people in Jerusalem Rock met in a field outside of town and accused some old woman of witchcraft. They tied her to a stake and threw rocks at her until she passed out. And then they set her on fire.” Gianni paused, and took a deep breath. “They said she was a witch because she had red hair. Red hair. What’s going on with the people around here lately? Did someone put LSD in the well?”

  “What . . . what happened to the woman?” I asked, in a whisper, because all the air had been sucked out of my lungs. “The red-haired woman. Did someone rescue her? Was she all right?”

  Gianni looked at me and shook his head. “No, Violet. She died. And they put a little girl up on the stake next, a little redhead, and were shouting accusations at her. Their hands were full of rocks, ready to throw, when the police finally arrived. She was just nine years old. Scary, no?”

  None of us said anything. River just kept staring at Gianni, and Gianni was lo
oking at me, kind of worried, and I was watching River, and suddenly my hands were shaking and then I was shivering a little all over and I felt sick.

  River. The glow. He left. He could have gone to Jerusalem Rock, that day he disappeared, he could have done it, it could have been him, who else would it have been?

  “Gianni,” Graziella called from the kitchen. “In cucina. Subito.”

  Gianni shook his head again and slid out of the booth. “Consider getting yourself some San Pellegrino, is all I’m saying. Probably best to be on the safe side, and get your water from Italia for a while.”

  Gianni disappeared through the kitchen door. Sunshine and Luke started talking to each other, but I couldn’t pay attention to what they were saying. River refused to look at me. He just turned and stared out the windows. The part of my leg that was touching his felt hot, suddenly, burning hot, so I started inching away from him in the booth.

  River tensed. His shoulders jerked backward and his head snapped up. I stopped moving and followed his gaze.

  Outside in the town square, two dark-haired girls sat underneath a tree, one reading a book out loud to the other. A skinny kid with shoulder-length red hair and a cowboy hat sat on the swings, watching a mother with twin toddlers as they walked by. Jimmy the popcorn man sat in his popcorn cart, chin on his chest, asleep. It was a happy scene. I breathed deep, and felt a little better.

  And that’s when I saw him. Daniel Leap. Jack’s father. He was drunk. Really drunk. He staggered, one unsteady foot after another, into the middle of the village green, and stood there, swaying side to side, sucking the sweetness out of my town.

  I felt River fidget beside me. He was also watching Jack’s pa. His eyes had narrowed into tight slits, and his face looked . . . eager. So eager, his jaw was clenched tight with it.