Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  Momma and Eric started arguing; the shouts and slammed doors shook the house and stopped us sleeping. I dreaded the mornings when the world would begin again, only a little bit worse. It felt like we were headed for a cliff with fraying brake cables.

  The only bright spots were my sister, Rudy, and Gloria. Closer than ever, the four of us, arms linked, backs turned against the torrent.

  We met up one Friday at the Roost, a week or so after Mark and Tracy’s wreck. Rudy had called us all together. Waited for us after class and pulled us away, saying it was urgent, he had news about Mary Ridley and it couldn’t wait, we had to go, now. Rain hung in the air, thick and unforgiving. It soaked us in seconds but we sat snug inside the Fort. Gloria beside me, elbows and thighs brushing each other, electric running all through me, more so because nobody else knew about us. We fed each other our warmth until the shivering stopped. We crackled, the two of us, shared a look, caught an eye, nothing to Jenny and Rudy but to us it was blaze after blaze. Each a tiny, addictive burn.

  ‘Blame me if your folks give you shit about being late for dinner,’ he said. ‘I’m a Buchanan, got blame coming out my ears, bit more won’t hurt.’

  Rudy waited until we were quiet, listening, then started. ‘This is going to sound crazy.’

  ‘What doesn’t these days …’ Gloria said, voice heavy with Mark, Tracy, a Larson on the edge.

  ‘Yeah but this really is fucking crazy.’

  Rudy took a flattened, soggy pack of Camels from his back pocket and pulled out a joe. Lit it up with a Zippo, initials RB scratched in the silver side, and took a long drag. Blew out grey smoke.

  He flicked off the first ash and said, ‘I know who killed Mary Ridley.’

  Spikes ran up my back, into my head, stuck themselves under my eyelids. I watched Jenny, saw her shift, brighten and darken at the same time.

  Let him be right, my head said, let all this be over and Jenny be back to normal.

  ‘What?’ Gloria said but Rudy lingered, enjoyed the rising, boiling tension, turning the Fort to a steam room.

  ‘Come on!’ Jenny said.

  ‘You guys really want to know?’ Rudy’s grin reached his ears and a bubble of anger rose in my throat.

  Deep. Breaths. In. Out.

  A drop of rain, from a pinhole in the roof, hit my forehead, ran down my nose, cheek, bypassed my lip, then hung on my chin. Rudy saw it, laughed.

  ‘You needed a shower, Johnny!’

  ‘Spill it, asshole,’ I said. ‘We’re dying here.’

  ‘Who is it?’ Gloria grabbed his t-shirt and wrung it.

  Gloria looked at me, but there were no butterflies in that look, no ruby-red hearts. Just pure, burning intrigue.

  Rudy passed me the joe, caught my eyes and held them, something like defiance in his face. Are you making this up? Is this going to be a fake-out? A-ha! You guys are so easy, I got you so good. Got to be lying, got to be.

  But if he’s not?

  ‘You can’t just drop a bomb like that and then clam up,’ Jenny said, plucked the joe from my fingers, took a lungful. None of the coughing, hacking up those lungs like last year, she smoked like a pro now. Made me sad to see it. My sister, growing up, right in front of my eyes.

  ‘You’re not going to like it,’ Rudy said, looking right at me.

  ‘What won’t I like?’

  ‘See, I thought it was nothing,’ he said. ‘Last year, when that old bastard broke my arm, I holed up at the church for a while. Our good pastor took me to get my arm fixed and said I could crash on the couch in the rec room for a few days while my dad calmed down.’

  My night in the trailer with Frank came back, his conversation with that gruff man, the threat, the name. Black excitement inflated in my stomach, floated about, grew with every possible scenario. Maybe Rudy did know. Maybe he had found out some truth somewhere in Larson that pointed a finger squarely in one direction.

  But he said I wasn’t going to like it.

  The bubble of anger stiffened, hardened into glass.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep one night,’ Rudy said, pinched the Camel from Jenny and took a drag. ‘My arm was killing me so I was sat up on the couch, watching one of those Bible story movies he’s got on the projector for the little kids, you know? Noah’s Ark, Moses in Egypt, one of them. Thinking it’d put me to sleep.’

  ‘Does this story have a point?’ Gloria waved at Rudy to pass her the joe. It was almost spent. She took the last few puffs for herself then stubbed it out on the floor.

  ‘Yes, Miss Impatient, it does.’

  ‘Hey,’ I snapped, ‘don’t be a jerk. You’re the one bringing us here in the rain, telling some cockamamie bullshit story. Get to the point.’

  Three pairs of wide eyes. The outburst surprised me as much as them. Gloria gave my leg a nudge, the corner of her lip curved up. I wished I could kiss her.

  ‘All right, boss,’ Rudy said, sneer growing in his cheek. ‘That night I saw your best bud the pastor through the window, in the middle of the night, meeting my bastard father behind his trailer, where they both thought nobody could see. A proper secret meeting.’

  I almost laughed. ‘That’s it? Bung-Eye was probably there because you were there, dumbass.’

  ‘No shit,’ Rudy shot back.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Gloria said, arms out, patting down the air between us. ‘Take it down a notch. Remember that a girl is dead,’ she held that moment, let those words sink in. The tension eased. Then she turned to Rudy. ‘What exactly are you saying?’

  Rudy, full of sneer, knee bouncing, looked at us, one by one. ‘I’m saying Pastor Jacobs killed Mary Ridley.’

  This time I did laugh. ‘Oh come on. You got that from one meeting?’

  ‘Not just one.’

  Jenny let out a tired sigh. ‘John, be quiet. Go on, Rudy.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t just that,’ he said, suddenly losing the bravado, becoming Rudy again and deflating my anger at him. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Course it made sense for my dad to be there. But then about a month ago, I saw another meeting. This one with my dad and Mayor Wills. I got close and caught a bit of their conversation. The mayor said something like, “Is the matter resolved?” and my dad said, “Yes, back to business as usual.”’

  It stung me, right in the heart, that anyone would think that of the pastor. That anyone would even hear out the theory. But if a few meetings, a few words, were all Rudy had, then Frank, and me, didn’t have anything to worry about.

  ‘Not seeing the connection here,’ I said.

  Jenny slapped my arm. ‘Shh, John.’

  On his side, Jenny? After everything Frank had done for me? I retreated, shrank against the wall of the Fort. Listened to the rain.

  ‘The mayor gave the old bastard a fat envelope,’ Rudy said. ‘Looked full of cash, a G easy, maybe two.’

  ‘Why would the mayor be giving your father money like that?’ Gloria said.

  ‘And what’s it got to do with Pastor Jacobs?’ I asked. I didn’t care about the mayor. If he was anything like his son, he was as downright dirty as they came, being involved with Bung-Eye was barely a surprise.

  ‘That’s the funny thing. I asked around a few people, folks my dad works with, even ran into Darney Wills. I tell you, trying to get a straight answer out of him is like getting sharp corners in wet dough. Ain’t gonna happen.’

  I heard the gruff man from that night with the pastor. I been hearing that some kids in town are flappin’ gums about the Ridley girl. I’d thought it was just me. Rudy had been talking too. I swallowed, lump high in my throat that wouldn’t go down.

  ‘But then,’ Rudy continued as my head began to throb. ‘I saw my dad meet with the pastor again about two weeks ago, before all that shit went down at the trainyard. Jacobs came to our place, said he needed parts for an old car he was restoring and wanted to see if we had anything for a Caddy. Bung-Eye sold him a box of junk and the pastor handed over a stack. Fat as anything. All Lincolns. Ten t
imes too much for what that crap was worth. I was sorting a box of washers just inside the barn, about ten feet away. Jacobs was all, “I hope this settles things”, and my dad said, clear as glass like I wasn’t even there, “For now. I won’t cover for you a second time. No more mistakes. I won’t have what happened last year happen again.” Or something like it.’

  As Rudy spoke, my insides twisted, like someone stuck a finger through my skin and twirled my guts. We all knew what happened last year. Mary Ridley was shot, dumped, and forgotten and nobody seemed to care. The trail we followed led to Bung-Eye Buchanan’s property and a brand new blue Dodge Challenger that belonged to whoever killed her. That cocksucker didn’t have to kill her. Should have wrecked the fucker’s car.

  My insides went cold and hard, frozen in a knot.

  ‘I reckon,’ Rudy went on, ‘that the pastor had this girl back to his place, they got frisky, and one thing led to another, someone gets angry and bang! Shots fired.’

  Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

  One-one-thousand. Keep it together, Johnny. Two-one-thousand. Gloria’s hand on my arm, soft and calming. Three-one-thousand. Rudy still talking shit about Frank. How dare he? Four … four-one-thousand. He’s wrong. That’s all it is. Plain and simple and wrong. Five-one-thousand. No point getting mad about it. No point lashing out and beating him to mush. Six-one-thousand. Let it play out. Let him spout off his wild theory, let’s follow the breadcrumbs all the way and then we’ll see. Seven-one-thousand. Then we’ll prove that Frank isn’t what Rudy thinks and is only trying to help. Eight-one-thousand. Then maybe I’ll find out who really did it. The whole town will stop thinking I killed her. The whole town will pat me on the back. The whole town will call me Hero. Nine-one-thousand. And Jenny will be my sunshine girl again.

  I didn’t need to count to ten. Decision made.

  ‘That’s what I think.’ Rudy leaned back, raised his hands behind his head. ‘Pastor J got panicked and goes to the one guy in town who knows how to cover up a crime, pays him off with a pile of cash and a shiny new car, just like the one in that Dodge calendar he had up on his wall for months. Took that down quick after the body was found, you all notice that?’

  The two girls nodded. And I did too. Go along with it, John, it won’t take long for this stupid theory to fizzle out.

  ‘We need more evidence,’ Gloria said, her passion, her sense of justice, reignited. ‘Hard evidence we can take to Samuels. No offence, Rudy, but a few meetings and some envelopes isn’t enough. But we’ll find it. We’ll find who killed that poor girl and we’ll make sure they get locked up.’

  ‘Screw locked up,’ Jenny said, back straight, eyes blazing. ‘Whoever did that to Mary should get the chair.’

  Rudy gave a hoot and I tried to keep the anger off my face. The thought of proving Rudy wrong, finding the real killer, made it easy.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ I said and gave Rudy a ‘Good work, bud’ nod.

  A moment of quiet. Rain tapped the sheet-iron roof and we all thought through this new information, next steps, possible outcomes. We bristled, the four of us, together, on a ledge, waiting for the right wind to lift our wings and send us soaring. We were galvanised but we had eyes on the wrong man. It didn’t really matter. Our purpose had returned, our mission resolved, albeit with differing goals.

  ‘We need to find the evidence,’ Gloria said. ‘There must be something in the pastor’s office that proves he did something to her.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be in his office,’ I said. Keep up the act, throw them a bone. ‘Too many people go there, I’m there every week. He wouldn’t risk it. But maybe in his house.’

  ‘How do we get into his house?’ Jenny asked.

  We don’t. And suddenly the plan grinds to a halt. I smiled but only a little.

  Rudy flashed that movie-star grin. ‘Leave that to me. We just have to find a time when he won’t be home.’

  ‘But he goes home for lunch,’ Gloria said. ‘We could try after school but that doesn’t give us much time before he gets back.’

  ‘He’s at the church half of Sunday,’ Jenny said.

  ‘But so are we, at least some of us,’ Gloria sighed and rested her chin on her hands.

  ‘We’ll find a time, the right time.’ Rudy put his arm around Gloria and a sharp ache hit my chest. She shrugged him off and met my eyes. I tried not to smile.

  We spent another hour or so at the Fort, making plan As and plan Bs, running through wild theories about who the other man in the trailer was, what did it have to do with the mayor, the hows and whys of the murder itself, what Frank might have done. Did we all truly think he killed her? Really? He was a man of God, the caretaker of the whole town. He wasn’t a killer, he just couldn’t be. But something nagged at me. What if he was? He was involved with Bung-Eye somehow. With that gruff man who probably worked for Bung-Eye. And Bung-Eye knew who killed Mary Ridley. We had so many pieces but they all floated around inside my head, wouldn’t come together to make a whole picture. We just saw parts, like those blind men with the elephant. Maybe in Frank’s house there would be a piece that explained his corner of the puzzle.

  We left the Fort and choppy waters of Big Lake, engorged and still growing from the rain, promising we would find a time to search the pastor’s house. We’d keep our eyes open, watch him closely.

  We didn’t have to wait long.

  On Wednesday the sky over Larson turned black and the second domino toppled.

  17

  The four of us were in biology class, last class before lunch, learning about the circulatory system, about blood and arteries and veins and all the chambers of the heart. Mr Frome, a precise, firm – if fat and lazy – teacher, kept slapping the diagram with his pointer, punctuating every name, vena cava, carotid artery, aorta, so they stuck in our heads.

  ‘Nick one of these,’ Mr Frome pointed to the web of red lines on the diagram. ‘And you’re kaput in seconds.’

  I tried to memorise that diagram, imprint every tiny strand and finger of vessel on my brain. A cut here, a cut there, blood will seep or blood will rush. Under my eyes, my crude, copied diagram changed into Mary Ridley. A black dot appeared on her abdomen where she had been shot, where the eel had emerged. Right on the diamond shape of thick arteries running down the legs, and back up into the heart. She didn’t stand a chance when that bullet ripped through. Whoever pulled the trigger must have known it. I thought of the pastor, a gun in his hand, watching a girl die at his feet and shuddered. I tore out the page and screwed it up.

  I was deciding who to throw it at – Rudy or Scott – when the light changed.

  Murmurs rose from the students. A shadow fell over the blackboard and obscured the chalk. Mr Frome told us to settle down and went to the window. I couldn’t see his face but I heard his words.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  A giggle from the back of the room. He whipped around, a look of frenzy on his face. He told us to shut up and stay in our seats, he’d be back. He ran to the door, down the hall, leather shoes cracking on the floor.

  Then we heard the sirens.

  Rudy was the first to the window.

  ‘Holy shit,’ he called back. ‘You’ve got to see this.’

  The rest of the class surged forward, each boy and girl craning for a look at the black sky.

  ‘Are those storm clouds?’ Jenny asked beside me and I shook my head.

  ‘That’s smoke.’ I swallowed the weight of my words. ‘There’s a fire.’

  A tremor ran through the class.

  ‘That’s the Easton mill, isn’t it?’ someone shouted and we all knew she was right.

  More sirens. More running in the halls. The classroom door burst open.

  ‘Children.’ Miss Eaves appeared at the threshold, her hair escaping its bun. ‘You’re all dismissed. Go straight home and, if your parents are there, tell them to get to the fire department. They’ll need volunteers.’

  Nobody moved. We were stunned cattle before slaughter. This was a trap.
Go home in the middle of school? We ain’t falling for that, miss.

  Miss Eaves clapped her hands together. ‘Now! Come on. Hustle, hustle, hustle.’

  The corridor behind her filled with students and clamour, scared birds taking flight. That broke us out of the trance. This was real. This was happening. Get your bags and go go go.

  Our class joined the stream of rushing bodies, through the halls, past the lockers, out into a midday twilight. I kept Jenny’s hand in mine. Rudy and Gloria held onto the back of my t-shirt so we wouldn’t be separated.

  The sky, every blue inch, turned black and grey. The Easton grain elevator, a constant landmark stretching high above the streets, giving us our bearings, showing our way home, was gone. Nowhere. Obscured in smoke or destroyed, I didn’t want to guess. The acrid smell of burning was everywhere, in every breath, blocking my nostrils, sticking to my clothes. The town coughed and sputtered, choked on itself. People rushed through the streets toward the mill. Police sirens, ambulance sirens, fire truck sirens, everything on fast-forward.

  The four of us waded through the clot of staring students and onto the sidewalk.

  ‘Oh God,’ Jenny said and turned to me. ‘Eric.’

  My stomach turned to stone. Eric worked at the mill.

  Dark thoughts filled my brain. He’s dead. He’s burned alive. He’s trapped and suffocating.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ Gloria said. She stroked Jenny’s arm and nodded to me. ‘He’ll be just fine.’

  ‘Course he will,’ Rudy joined in. ‘He’s probably on his lunch break in the Backhoe.’

  Miss Eaves appeared at the top of the steps to the school doors. I told myself over and over that Eric would be fine, he’s out to lunch, he’s far away, but I didn’t believe it. I squeezed Jenny’s hand.

  ‘We need to find Eric,’ I said to her. ‘We have to make sure he’s okay.’

  Miss Eaves clapped to get everyone’s attention. ‘Go home. Tell your parents Pastor Jacobs is organising the volunteers from the church. They need help. If your parents work at the mill, go to a friend’s house and wait. Do not go anywhere near the mill, do you hear me?’