Bitter Sun

by Beth Lewis

  18

  The Easton mill explosion made the national news. It made the country wake up and talk reforms, heat sensors, safety precautions. Reporter vans topped with spindle antennas and plastered with initial decals – CBN, KNW, WNN – slithered around town like slugs to cabbage. Busybody curtain twitchers like Margo Hyland and Jennette Dawes became the voices of the tragedy. When poor Mrs Easton wouldn’t talk, wanted to mourn in privacy, those two filled in the gaps. Mark and Tracy’s suicide was exposed, dissected, judged. Even the Easton mill’s accounts were pulled apart and pawed through like they were searching for a tick on a dog’s back. All the Easton skeletons unearthed with a bulldozer.

  It was the first time Larson was invaded by the big wide world, but it wouldn’t be the last.

  They found what was left of Roy Easton’s body in his office slumped over the desk, so burned up they had to identify him by his teeth. Mrs Lyle at the post office said the fire ate him up right there, he didn’t even try to get out, maybe he was already dead when the flames reached him. Thank the Lord, she said, nobody else was hurt. A firefighter was caught when a beam collapsed inside the grain elevator, burnt, scraped up bloody, but that’s their choice isn’t it, John, it’s not like he died, Mrs Lyle said.

  Rumours flew from corner to corner in Larson, changing, morphing as they bounced. A pinball machine of this and that and he said she said they said. Mrs Lyle told one tale. Al Westin another. Mayor Wills, Darney’s father, gave an official account nobody believed.

  The pinball kept jumping.

  It was an electrical fault in the old wiring.

  It was a revenge fire set by a driver Easton fired the week before.

  It was a build-up of corn dust set off by a static charge.

  It didn’t matter. The result was the same. Kaboom.

  The explosion blew the top off the main building and the fire spread, destroyed twenty silos and the grain elevator. All over town, windows broke in the shockwave and had to be boarded up. Me and Jenny drew the shape of it on a map. Right in the middle, the mill, then we marked all the damaged houses and stores. Almost a perfect circle. The force of it broke tree branches and they found shards of metal embedded in trunks half a mile away.

  For a long time, Larson was beaten and closed off. Everyone said they were repairing, would be open again soon, come back in a couple of days, smiling through the lies. It didn’t take long for us to realise that some of those window boards would never come down.

  School was closed for a few days after, our classrooms full of broken glass and the acrid smell of smoke. Momma wouldn’t let us out of her sight so we stayed home. I helped Eric clear the west field of the rotten corn. The wet summer had brought maggots and blackfly, killed half the field. He said we should clean and burn it before it got the other half. Once she’d hung the sheets on the line, Jenny sorted through the stalks, trying to find an ear or two to salvage, but her collection was pitiful, the corn not worth the hulling. We piled the debris high and Eric held the matches.

  He stared at the brown tip and striker as if he didn’t know what they did. Half a minute later, he looked up, put the match back in the box, and said, ‘That’s enough for today.’

  I glanced at Jenny but she was already on her feet, trailing behind Eric into the house. The pile remained unburned, the maggots writhed, the rot set in, right there on Royal land. I wanted to burn it, watch those maggots hiss and pop, punishment for killing half our harvest, but another part of me wanted to see what would happen if the infection stayed and ran its course. How far would it go? Would it get the rest of the fields, would it reach the house, would it get me and Jenny?

  Inside the house, Eric wasn’t himself. He was heavy and slow, like his blood had been replaced with concrete. The three of us sat in the family room, him in the armchair, Jenny and me on the couch. Momma was upstairs in the bath, soaking away one of her headaches. I wasn’t paying that much attention, my mind still on the pastor’s basement, what we would say to Samuels, what Samuels would say to us. Then how Frank would look at me, how disappointed he’d be, how hurt, when he found out I’d gone snooping.

  Jenny shuffled closer to the edge of the couch, closer to Eric. She tried to catch his eyes but he stared right through her. He’d barely spoken these last few days, despite Jenny’s endless questions about Roy and how they found him and what his body was like and how terrible he must have felt to do something like that. The wide-eyed obsession surged in her and he wasn’t helping. He wasn’t answering her questions and giving her peace of mind. He changed the subject or said he was tired or just flat out said stop asking. So the curiosity in Jenny started to burn, I saw it in her eyes, her movements, the jittering electricity in her bones. While Eric saw, and did, nothing. He just lay around the house, his long moustache turned ragged beard, show-pony hair dull and flat, constant smell of beer on his breath.

  ‘Where will you work now? I heard from a girl at school that they’re looking for farm hands in Bowmont. It’s not that far,’ Jenny said.

  He looked away, tried to smile but his peace-and-love shell had cracked. Our Pigeon Pa hung his head, pressed his thumb and finger against the bridge of his nose. His knee bounced up and down like he was at one of his concerts, jumping to the beat.

  Then he stood up, rubbed his hands together. ‘You kids hungry? How about some pancakes, huh?’

  I glanced at the clock on the mantle. ‘It’s nearly dinner time.’

  Eric’s head snapped back and forth, looking out into the hall, then to the clock, then to us. ‘You can have pancakes for dinner, right? It’s not like Patty’s going to give a shit, huh.’

  I flinched. That was the first time I ever heard Eric snipe at Momma. He was patience and calm beside her storm.

  ‘She might.’

  ‘You go without then,’ Eric shot at me. Such venom in his tone. I sat there with my mouth open, a helpless fish on the beach. I watched him, seeing a different man beneath the red flowery shirt and CND symbols.

  Eric turned to Jenny. ‘Come on, princess, you and me have a date with some chocolate chips.’

  He held out his hand to my sister and she took it, smiling. Off to the kitchen together, left me in the family room. The sound of cupboards, the fridge, the tick-tick-whoosh of the gas stove. Eric said something, Jenny laughed and, just like that, I was in another world, another family, forgotten. I sat for a moment, stunned, until I heard it. Momma’s gentle singing floated down through the floorboards and I found myself stepping, like a ghost, up the stairs.

  ‘Momma,’ I said, tapped on the bathroom door.

  The singing, Patsy Cline’s ‘Crazy’, Momma’s favourite, stopped.

  ‘Come on in, baby.’

  I opened the door just wide enough to squeeze through then closed it behind me. Momma was private when she was bathing, no open doors, no prying eyes. This is my quiet time, she always said. Not even Eric was allowed in but I was.

  The bathroom was a steaming blur, all soft edges and dull colours. The steam fogged the mirror, filled my mouth and nose with damp heat. The air tasted strawberry sweet from Momma’s soap and I sucked it in, felt it seep through me. Our bathroom was small and tiled pale yellow with sunflowers. The bathtub was built into an alcove in front of the door so I could see only one part of Momma. Her glistening arm, dangling over the edge of the tub. Her fingers played the air to Patsy’s tune and she began humming again.

  ‘Momma …’ I wanted to tell her what Eric said, the way he said it, but my mouth was empty, my throat closed up.

  Her arm twisted, her palm opened up to me in a gesture that said, come closer, Johnny, take my hand. I did. The humming continued and my mind filled in the words.

  ‘What is it, baby?’ Momma said, her eyes closed, her head resting on a rolled-up towel.

  I stood beside the bath, steam lifted off the white foam. It covered everything from her neck down except one knee raised out of the water like a mountain through clouds. The smell of soft fruit and Momma seeped into m
y head and blood, muddled me up like sipping the smoothest whiskey.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, voice as warm and thick as the air.

  She opened her eyes, perfect blue like Jenny’s. ‘You can tell your momma.’

  ‘It’s Eric, he’s making Jenny pancakes and won’t make any for me.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be giving either of you pancakes this time of day. Spoil your momma’s dinner, wouldn’t it?’ she said, the soft heat in her voice sharpened. ‘Why would Eric do a thing like that?’

  I shrugged. ‘He was acting strange. Jenny was telling him about a job in Bowmont and he just jumped up, said he’d make pancakes. I told him we shouldn’t have pancakes for dinner, you wouldn’t be happy, and he told me off. Said some other mean stuff.’

  Momma’s fingers tightened around mine. ‘We can’t have that.’

  ‘He’s changed,’ I said.

  No, Jenny has changed, Jenny is different. She’s going down this dark, death-lined road and I don’t know what to do. But I couldn’t say that, it’d just make Momma mad at Jenny and I couldn’t live with myself. Anger rose in me and I felt lies burning in my throat. This is all Eric’s fault. I needed Momma to share my anger, to be mad at someone and it had to be Eric. The lies flowed from me like lava.

  ‘He keeps saying he’ll take her away to see Joni Mitchell and Jefferson Airplane,’ I said. ‘He says they’ll go together, just them. He never asks me to go. He says all kinds of mean stuff about me and … and you and I don’t like it. He looks at her different too, like he’s only just met her, you know?’

  Wheels turned behind Momma’s dark eyes. In that last lie, I worried I’d gone too far and Momma would flip to blame Jenny instead of Eric but the wheels turned, the idea passed.

  ‘Hush now, John,’ Momma said and stroked my face. ‘That girl isn’t going anywhere, you can lay every dollar and dime on that. She isn’t going anywhere with that man.’

  Momma’s voice didn’t waver and I felt hot guilt for lying but maybe Momma would give Eric a stern talking to, make him get a new job or at least work on our farm if she thought he was making eyes at Jenny. Maybe she’d chuck him out. Would that be so bad?

  ‘We don’t need him any more. I can take care of you and Jenny. I can make pancakes and take her to concerts.’

  ‘I know, baby,’ Momma smiled, her hand lowered, stroked my neck. ‘You have to keep an eye out for her, that’s what a brother does. She’s too pretty for her own good. That makes it all the easier for her to stray and men will snatch her up as soon as they see her. They can’t help it, it’s their nature.’

  ‘I will, Momma.’ I smiled too, my body felt lighter, my mind clearer. Eric didn’t matter, he was a Pigeon Pa after all, he wasn’t blood, wasn’t ours.

  Momma closed her eyes and straightened both legs in the tub. She let out a happy, warm sigh and reached for my hand without opening her eyes. She knew where all my parts were, as all mothers do.

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that, her holding my hand, humming Patsy. The next I remember was a knock at the bathroom door.

  ‘Patty,’ Eric, muffled through wood and steam. ‘I’m going to Gum’s. Don’t wait up.’

  Momma’s eyes sprang open, her jaw set hard. I felt the muscles in her hand tense and I knew my lies had worked. Eric’s footsteps sounded on the landing, then heavy and quick down the stairs.

  ‘Off you go, John,’ she said. ‘See about fixing me a drink, will you?’

  Momma dropped my hand and repeated her instruction. Drink. Now. Go. A glimpse of the beast in her eyes, before it sank back down into the bath.

  ‘Yes, Momma,’ I murmured.

  Downstairs, Jenny sat at the kitchen table, her feet dangling, her toes brushing the linoleum, eating pancakes and smiling. Her blonde hair, so bright and straight, like a sunbeam tied up in a ponytail.

  Momma always said some people need to be kept an eye on. Some people are tricky and wear masks. Frank had a mask, the one he showed his church tacked over his real face, the one he showed to me that night he offered me a drink and talked about first kisses, a normal man behind the white collar. Eric’s mask of peace and love and justice was cracked and slipping. Maybe Jenny had one too.

  ‘You want some?’ Jenny said, holding up a fat triangle of pancake speared on her fork.

  I shook my head and went to Momma’s cupboard where she kept the whiskey.

  19

  The shouts woke me. The smash of breaking glass woke Jenny. Pitch black, sweating in the heat, we stared at each other, at the ceiling, at our bedroom door, and listened. Momma and Eric, raging drunk, him from Gum’s, her from the bottle in the kitchen. My ears buzzed with every word, a hundred times louder for the darkness. The guilt hit me again. Had I caused this with my lies? Eric was a good guy, I liked him. What had I done?

  Jenny’s hand slid beneath our thin sheet and found mine. Fingers interlaced.

  ‘I don’t want Eric to leave,’ she whispered.

  ‘Me neither.’

  I squeezed Jenny’s hand. Another smash, a plate or bowl maybe. The floor shook as Eric stormed up the stairs, carrying the sharp din with him, getting closer, harsher. Momma screamed about work and money, Eric about death and compassion. Momma said he was lazy, Eric said she was heartless. Back and forth until Eric slammed their bedroom door and plunged the house into fevered silence.

  My heart thrummed. I felt Momma downstairs, her presence and weight. I imagined her standing by the kitchen table, fists clenched, trembling and red-faced, then moving to the cabinet, fixing a last drink.

  She never came upstairs.

  Jenny and me found her the next morning asleep in the armchair, empty glass slack in her hand. Eric’s snores tumbled down the stairs. We didn’t wake them. With school still closed, Rudy and Gloria called for us and we went down to the Roost. I knew what they wanted. Go to Samuels. Tell him about Frank and the nothing we found in his house. It was time, despite my efforts to change their minds, despite my shouting that, no, you’re wrong, Frank didn’t do anything, you haven’t got a stitch of proof. It fell on blocked-up ears. All three of them wanted to go. Every word they said was a sharp claw tight around my bones. Every raised voice, every ‘Shut up, John, he’s evil, he’s a killer’, were black wings in my chest, beating and buzzing and filling me up. We took a vote. Three to one. I couldn’t argue any more, could barely speak through the humming in my head. Why would my friends do this? Was Mary Ridley more important than me? More guilt washed over me. It seemed to be all I felt these days.

  I seized up, dug my sneakers into the mud by Big Lake. Eyes on the spot we found Mary, the cold, grey thing that started all this. They were headed in the wrong direction but I had to follow my sister, keep her safe. The birds quietened but never left. I felt them there, inside me, perched on my bones, ready to launch.

  The four of us walked into town together. Smoke still lingered in the sky, almost disappearing against the heavy cloud. I trailed behind as we walked, didn’t want to speak to them, didn’t want to look at them. I felt wretched after what I’d said to Momma about Eric and Jenny, wished I could take it all back. Maybe she’d got so drunk she’d forgotten.

  What kind of shitty hope is that, Johnny boy?

  The only one I’ve got.

  Gloria hung back as we turned on Main Street. ‘You okay, John?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gloria said, her eyebrows raised, surprised at my tone.

  The four of us came together outside Al Westin’s grocery store. One window and the glass door were boarded up, same as almost every other store in town. The mill explosion really did a number on this place.

  ‘Got your stories straight?’ Rudy asked and any patience I had left vanished.

  ‘We can’t do this,’ I shouted. ‘We’ll be destroying his reputation.’

  ‘Maybe he deserves it,’ Rudy snapped. ‘He’s dirty, John. Deal with it.’

  ‘And if he’s not? Huh? Samuels is going to laugh at us and when we do find
the real killer, he won’t believe us. We’re crying wolf here, you idiot.’

  ‘What about the bed?’ Rudy carried on. ‘Only reason that’s bolted to the floor, out of sight of the window, is ’cause that sick bastard does stuff to girls down there, and that …’

  Rudy trailed off, his gaze followed something on the opposite sidewalk. The three of us looked.

  Frank. My gut clenched. Strolling past the boarded-up barber shop on the other side of Main. A girl beside him. She was young. Our age. He was stooped, his hands clasped together behind him, speaking to her, nodding along when she replied.

  I didn’t recognise her, she wasn’t in our school, but she had long, blonde hair just like Jenny. I wanted to race over there, grab him and tell him to run and never stop, my idiot friends are trying to get you arrested. We watched the pastor turn off Main Street, toward the church, the girl with him.

  ‘Right out in the open like that.’ Rudy spat on the sidewalk. ‘What a fucking nerve that guy has.’

  I balled my fists but held them by my sides. Rudy and I had got into plenty of scraps in the past but this, this was the first time I’d wanted to hurt him. Bloody up that pretty-boy nose of his.

  Then something magic happened. Gloria turned to me, then to Rudy and said, ‘Maybe John’s right.’

  ‘What?’ Rudy shot at her.

  Jenny stepped beside Rudy. ‘Don’t be stupid, Gloria. Of course the pastor did it.’

  Gloria took a step toward me, by my side, close enough to smell her soap. Two against two. Heat in my cheeks and neck, another prickle of guilt.

  ‘There’s not much to go on,’ Gloria said. ‘We could keep looking and go to Samuels with something more concrete.’

  ‘We’re not wrong,’ Rudy said, fist beating against his palm with each word. ‘What other explanation is there for what was in his house? The picture? That bed? And what about the meetings with my dad?’