Twisted Summer

by Willo Davis Roberts

  “What happened to him, then?” I took my last bite of cinnamon roll, another gulp from my glass, and passed him the last of the orange juice.

  “I think the local cops ran him off, finally. Somebody complained about his hanging around the coffee shop and the theater. By that time he’d been fired from the feed store because he didn’t always show up on time.”

  The village cops had always been sort of a joke among us kids; there was only one police car, and I don’t think any of the four officers had ever had any kind of training. They mostly sent drunks home, broke up Saturday night fights, and talked to the fathers of kids who accidentally broke windows while they were playing work-up because there weren’t enough kids for a whole baseball team. We didn’t have much genuine crime in our county.

  “Did the local cops investigate Zoe’s death?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they came when her body was discovered. But then the sheriff was called in to do the real investigating, so it wasn’t a bunch of amateurs when it came to that part. Not that I think they did such a professional job.” He put the empty glass down on the dock between us and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “They arrested Brody because they couldn’t find anybody else.”

  I was still back a minute or two. “Is there a chance this Carl Trafton hadn’t really left the area? He sounds like a better suspect than Brody.”

  “Except for the fact that when they checked up on him after the murder—they did do that—he had witnesses that he wasn’t hanging around the lake that night. He was over in Greenway, and several people testified they saw him there. Old Toomhy, you know, the old geezer who played poker with the Judge? And the Judge was one of them, too. He was over there during the evening, had some kind of engine trouble, and both he and Toomhy said they ran into Trafton working on an old junker at a service station. So he wasn’t the one who strangled her. He looked like he could murder someone, though. The rest of us couldn’t see why Zoe was attracted to him; he wasn’t good-looking. He had pockmarks and a scar, right across here—” He ran a finger across his temple and onto his cheek. “No movie star, for sure.”

  I began to figure out why they might have picked Brody for a suspect. “So there weren’t many people it could have been except the ones right here, at the lake or in the village.”

  “They were pretty sure it was somebody here, at the lake. For a joke, some of the kids had closed the gate and put a padlock on it. Some people who had to wait until it could be broken open were pretty ticked about that. Fergus had a load of lumber he was bringing home to build some cupboards for Ellen, and Wally Powell’s ice cream dripped all over him before he got it home. Nobody could get the lock off until the next day when Jerry Staley came out from the garage with some heavy metal cutters or something. The Judge and Wally and Fergus all had to leave their cars on the other side of the gate until he got there.”

  I felt a chill run over my bare arms. “So nobody could have driven in or out from the lake the night Zoe was killed? It happened at night, right?”

  “Yeah. The Cyreks saw Zoe right after supper, and then her brothers found her shortly past midnight, after Mrs. Cyrek found out Zoe wasn’t home yet. Of course somebody could have climbed over the gate, but there was no sign that anybody had.”

  It was a scary thought. I’d known practically everybody at the lake since before I could remember. How could someone I knew have killed Zoe, no matter how big a pest she was? After all, she couldn’t make anyone do what she wanted; all they had to do was ignore her.

  “Who do you think it was, then, if it wasn’t Brody?”

  I didn’t look at his face but at his hands, tanned and still, lying on his thighs.

  “I’ve spent hours wondering about that,” Jack said, almost inaudibly. “I don’t know, Cici. All I’m sure of is that Brody never killed anybody.”

  We sat there for a while in silence, listening to the lap of the water around the pilings, feeling the sun warming our skin as it rose higher into the sky.

  I felt bad about Zoe, worse about Brody, sad for Ilona and Jack and Lina.

  But for myself, I felt an inner excitement at being here, back at the lake—sitting next to Jack the way I had when I was eight and he’d put the wriggling worms on my hook because it made me queasy to do it myself.

  I wanted with all my heart to do something to help him now, the way he’d always helped me. Only I didn’t know how.

  Suddenly he got to his feet, reaching down to pull me up, too. His hand was warm and strong, and I felt as if my blood got thicker, pounding in my ears.

  “I’ve got some chores to do for Ma first,” he said, letting me go. “But after that I’m going over to the cove. You want to come?”

  “Sure,” I said. I could see several figures out on the Judge’s dock, meeting the boat when it came in. I could make out Fergus, holding up a string of glistening bass. “I’d better put in an appearance at breakfast.”

  “Okay. Meet me in an hour and fifteen minutes.”

  His grin was the same as I remembered it. I nodded, checked the time, and watched him heading into the woods before I took the path along the edge of the lake.

  I had to do something to help him, I thought.

  But what?

  chapter five

  When Lina worked in the kitchen, people could show up for breakfast any time they liked. If they really slept in late, they might have to shift for themselves, under her direction, if she was already busy with pies or cookies or something for later meals. That was no problem, because there was always lots of food.

  I soon discovered this was no longer the case. Mrs. Graden, as she informed us, would have a hot breakfast at eight; cold cereal and sweet rolls and juice were to be found on the sideboard until nine, and after that time we were not welcome in “her” kitchen. She was engaged in other tasks and had no time for slugabeds, as she termed them.

  I made it in time for the hot meal that first day, and so did everybody else. Pancakes and sausages. The cinnamon roll I’d shared with Jack hadn’t lessened my appetite, and I managed to put away my share.

  I’d wondered what kind of an excuse I was going to give Ginny before I disappeared with Jack for what I hoped would be a long morning. As it turned out, Ginny had plans of her own, with Randy, and she didn’t even wait for me to say what I was going to do.

  So much for my expectations that we’d run as a team, the way we always had before.

  Aunt Mavis showed up at the very end of the hot-breakfast period, and Mrs. Graden’s mouth was rather flat when she went back to the griddle for a final stack of buckwheats. Aunt Mavis didn’t notice.

  “Bad night?” Mom asked, passing her the syrup, noticing the dark smudges under her sister’s eyes. I knew, because they were plain enough to me.

  “It shows, huh?” Aunt Mavis murmured. At the other end of the table, everybody else was listening to the Judge’s account of the morning’s fishing expedition, from hearing about the baits to the total poundage of bass brought in. “Yes, I had some sleepless hours before midnight. I’ll tell you about it later, Vivian.”

  I wasn’t interested in the adult talk. I asked to be excused, and nobody even noticed when I left except Grandma Molly, who smiled at me in a rather tired fashion when I gave her an awkward hug.

  When I was little, Molly used to wander around the lake with us, looking at tadpoles and frogs and dragonflies, explaining which trees were pines and which shrub was juniper and where the violets and Indian pipes grew in little clumps. Molly wasn’t afraid of anything. Sometimes she’d even catch snakes—blue racers—and let us hold them.

  Now she was shriveling up, and she’d lost the energy to play with the younger kids the way she had with us. I hadn’t thought much about getting old, but it was impossible not to, looking at Molly.

  Just in case Jack wanted to stay over on the cove, I thought I might take a lunch along, but Mrs. Graden’s formidable back was discouraging. I didn’t dare leave crumbs on her clean counters, making sa
ndwiches, but I did get a little bit brave. I grabbed a plastic bag and dropped a handful of cookies into it from a batch cooling out of the cook’s sight and added a couple of big apples from a bowl beside them. I slipped out the back door before Mrs. Graden knew I’d been snitching.

  Jack was waiting. He didn’t have a boat, he had a canoe.

  “Whoa! You never allowed me in one of these before,” I said.

  “Not since you dumped us both that time and we had to wade through the muck over on the south end because we couldn’t get back into the canoe. Get in, sit at the other end, and I’ll shove off.”

  I deposited my meager supplies under my seat and determined not to dunk us again.

  It was a perfect day. Blue skies, warm sun, no sign of mosquitoes in the gentle breeze. The lake reflected the sky, and when I trailed my fingers, the water felt just right for swimming. Only I hadn’t brought a suit, darn it.

  It was possible to walk all the way around the lake, though there were no houses on most of the far side. The cove was formed by two points of land that poked out into the water, one of them curving to form a protected beach. The path around the lake was away from the water at the cove cut off by thick woods. Nobody ever walked from the path to the cove because of the trees, heavy underbrush, and a marshy area full of mosquitoes. So if you took a boat across the water, you were sure to have privacy.

  I remembered the first time Ginny and I went there. We were nervous, although we hadn’t exactly been forbidden to go. It was a grown-up place, or at least a big kids’ place; we could tell by the beer cans and cigarette butts. That was the first time we swam without suits, half scared someone would catch us, though of course they didn’t. It was daring, exciting, to feel the silky water against bare skin, and afterward to stretch out in the sand and let the sun warm us all over.

  Later we went with other kids and built fires and had picnics and sat around telling secrets and lies.

  I’d never been there alone with Jack.

  He didn’t ask me to help paddle. He was obviously used to it; he took off his shirt after the first few minutes, and I watched the sunlight play over his bronzed skin. I’d tried tanning in the front yard for a week or so before we left home, but I felt pale and unhealthy looking. Mom wouldn’t let me stay out long enough to do much good, though it seemed she wasn’t going to be unreasonable about how much time we spent outdoors while we were here.

  We rounded the curved point, and the cove opened before us. Still, peaceful. There was more beach here than on the shore we’d left behind, a strip of pale sand almost as good as the beaches on Lake Michigan to the west of us.

  “It’s so nice and clean,” I said as we nosed in to a stop.

  Jack went over the side, reaching back to draw the slender canoe above the waterline. “That’s because I keep it that way. I pick up the junk and haul it back home to dispose of it.”

  “Do other people still come here, then?”

  “Not often.” He stretched out a hand to help me out so I didn’t tip the canoe, then pulled it a little farther up the beach. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  A narrow, shallow stream trickled into the lake a few yards away, and we followed it, leaving footprints along its damp banks. The trees closed in around us, a few birches among the pines, and when Jack stopped abruptly, I almost ran into him.

  He touched my arm. “From here on, be really quiet.”

  I noticed he avoided stepping where he might break a stick, so I did the same. And then I heard the loud smack that brought us both to a halt again.

  After a moment we moved slowly forward once more, and I saw it.

  A beaver dam. Though I’d never seen one before, I knew at once what the rounded pile of brush was. And there he came, old pa beaver, hauling his latest felled tree to work it into his dam and house.

  I looked at Jack, and he was grinning. It was the kind of place he’d have brought me when I was eight. Grandma Molly would have liked it then, too.

  We stood watching for long minutes, and another beaver appeared in the water, swimming effortlessly, diving out of sight.

  Finally we turned around and made our way back to the beach, not talking until we were nearly there. I had mixed feelings. I’d enjoyed seeing it, but I wondered if he was always going to treat me as if I were eight years old.

  If he looked at me, in my cutoffs and T-shirt with the picture of the bridge at Mackinac on the front of it, he could hardly help noticing that I was nearly fifteen now.

  He stood looking out across the water. From here no houses or docks showed; we could have been on the moon for all the company we had.

  “Let’s go swimming,” he said.

  Something jumped in my stomach.

  “I didn’t bring a suit,” I said, my mouth going dry.

  “Neither did I. But our clothes will dry before we get home. Or we can always say, if they don’t, that we flipped the canoe.” He grinned. “Remembering your reputation, everybody will believe that.”

  “What the heck, why not?” I decided and made a run for the water and a shallow dive.

  It was cold at first, but within a few minutes, with Jack swimming strongly after me, it felt wonderful. I cut across the little bay toward the end of the point, and within seconds Jack passed me, then held a pace just fast enough to stay slightly ahead of me.

  We emerged, dripping, and dropped onto the warm sand. I felt invigorated and alive, and I thought that Jack did, too.

  We sat there not even talking for a while, and it was a comfortable silence. Somehow I’d known that it would be the same with Jack as it had always been. I didn’t have to try to think of things to say and hope I wouldn’t sound like an idiot, the way I did with the boys at school.

  Finally he stirred. “Did I notice a bag of apples or something?”

  “And cookies,” I said. “Do you want to swim back or walk around?”

  “Better walk, maybe, and keep on drying out. What kind of cookies?”

  “Just peanut butter ones. Not those fat oatmeal-chocolate-chip-raisin ones your mom used to make.”

  “She still makes ’em,” Jack said as we began to trot easily around the edge of the bay toward the canoe. “She sends boxes of them to Brody. They x-ray them before he can have them.”

  So we were back to Brody. Of course we’d have to be, sooner or later. I doubted that Brody was ever far from Jack’s mind. I slowed to a walk again.

  “It’s been very hard on you and your mom, hasn’t it?”

  “It kills us,” Jack said flatly. “Do you know he was sentenced to twenty-five years? He’ll be a middle-aged man when he gets out. And he won’t have been to college, or have any job experience, or any family except Ma and me. And he didn’t do it, Cici. He didn’t kill Zoe.”

  My throat hurt. “Did . . . did they try to figure out who else could have done it?”

  “Not very hard. They decided it was Brody, because Zoe had said he was driving her to the movies, and they found his footprints on the beach a little ways away. But he never went to town, nobody saw him or Zoe there, and everybody said they’d never intended to go to a show. Why would they? Brody was going with Ilona, but she had gone over to Traverse City with her mom, shopping or something, and she wasn’t home that night. But he didn’t conspire to spend time alone with Zoe. He just went for a walk along the beach, by himself. How are you going to prove you did anything by yourself?”

  I didn’t have any answer for that. When we reached the canoe, I got out my plastic bag and split the apples and cookies; we sat on the ground to eat them.

  It wasn’t even noon yet, but Jack gathered up our apple cores in the bag and reached down to pull me up. “Come on, got to get back.”

  Disappointed, I got to my feet. “What’s our hurry?”

  “My job. In town. I pump gas, afternoons, so Mr. Allen can work in the garage. It’s a wonder he gave me the job, but he caught Bobby Jensen in the till and had to fire him, and there wasn’t anybody else who didn’t
already have a summer job.”

  Feeling subdued, I asked, “You didn’t have one because . . . of Brody?”

  “Most folks don’t want a murderer’s brother working for them. It might be contagious, you know. Even Mom has to drive over to Greenway to work for some people named Harris. After she left the Judge’s, they all had reasons why they couldn’t hire her in Timbers.”

  “Did he fire her?” I blurted, wading out alongside the canoe before I stepped into it while Jack held it steady.

  “The Judge? No. She quit. Said he wasn’t willing to help her, stand by Brody, or anything. I worked last summer for the Kraskis, but they made it clear they wouldn’t need me this year. They were always good friends with the Cyreks, so it wasn’t a big surprise to me.”

  He stepped into the canoe with one foot and pushed off with the other, then reached for the paddle. “No, the Shuriks aren’t exactly popular around these parts. I suggested we move now, but Ma thinks I’d be better off finishing high school here. I can’t see what difference it makes.”

  My heart lurched. “Move? Away from this area?”

  “No reason to stay, is there, when Ma has to drive thirty miles to work, and the other kids look at me as if I’m some kind of freak, with a brother in the state prison. Ma doesn’t even shop for groceries locally since a few people deliberately avoided speaking to her when they met in the aisle.”

  There was bitterness in his words, and I couldn’t blame him. “It isn’t your fault, or your mother’s.”

  “No.” He dipped the paddle deeply into the placid water, propelling us forward, too fast, toward home. “But that’s the way it’s going to be, I guess. And when I’m out of school, there’s not going to be any work for me here. I asked my Uncle Doug, in Traverse, if I could go stay with him and look for work there. Maybe in a year or two I could save enough to go on to a trade school somewhere. I’m a pretty decent mechanic.”

  There was a pain in my chest. Lina and Jack moving away, to where I’d never see them again? My lips were stiff. “What did your uncle say?”