Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  Ollie folded her arms across her chest and raised her eyebrows.

  “What?” I asked, lowering the jacket so it hung at my side. “You don’t think . . . ?”

  Ollie lifted her shoulders and let them drop again.

  “Come on, Oll. Say something.”

  She sucked on her bottom lip. She’d done this kind of thing before, four years ago after Aunt Charlotte died. Ollie didn’t talk to anyone for two weeks. Not a single word. And then, when she finally did start talking again and I asked her why she’d stopped in the first place, she’d said, “Aunt Charlotte’s ghost stole my words.”

  “You know ghosts aren’t real, right?” I’d told her.

  She’d cocked her head to one side and said, “Tell that to Aunt Charlotte.”

  I thought seeing a shrink and growing up a little would be enough to keep this from happening again, but it wasn’t. She’d stopped talking after Mom’s funeral and though I was trying to be patient, the way Mom had been the first time, her silence was finally starting to wear me thin.

  “Ollie,” I said. “If you know something . . . if you know where this jacket came from, then you have tell me. Talk to me. I won’t get mad. I promise.”

  She grabbed a pencil, reached for one of Bear’s sketchbooks lying open on the table, turned to a blank page, and started to draw something.

  I took the sketchbook from her and tossed it onto Bear’s cot. “You’re too old to act like this now. This silent treatment stuff? This drawing pictures instead of talking? It’s for babies. If you have something to say, use your words.”

  She glared at me. I waited another few seconds, but she stayed silent. I shrugged and said, “Fine,” and then folded the jacket over my arm and left the tent. Ollie followed, sticking close to me.

  In the apiary, Bear was working on an older and more established hive. Despite the smoke, the bees were darting quick circles around his head, filling the air with loud and angry buzzing. They were agitated, crawling on his hands and neck and around his nose and mouth, and I was sure by now he’d been stung a few times. Still, he never once flicked or swatted them away; he didn’t seem bothered by them at all.

  “They’re only defending their brood and stores,” he told me the first time I saw a hive upset like this. “You can’t get angry with them for that.” Later, when it was time to actually harvest and not just peek, Bear would use escape boards, forcing the bees into the lower boxes so he could remove the top ones and extract the honey. For now, he let them do as they pleased.

  He secured the top cover and patted it gently, whispering something only the bees heard. This was the last hive. He gathered his smoker and hive tool and walked toward the lean-to at the edge of the apiary where he kept his tools and supplies and where Ollie and I stood waiting.

  Here was where I should have told Bear everything. It would have been easy enough: We found a woman floating in Crooked River, we found a woman dead. Then she got caught up in the current and drifted away. We found a dead woman and now she’s gone and maybe we should tell someone so she can be found again and we think this jacket might be hers, too. He was the adult—this should have been his burden. Here was where I should have told. But I kept my mouth shut. Because he was close enough now for me to see two scratches on his right cheek, stretching parallel from the outside corner of his eye to the top of his beard. Two scratches, bright red and raw. Two scratches that hadn’t been there yesterday.

  He stopped in front of us and narrowed his eyes when he saw the jean jacket draped over my arm. Before I even had a chance to ask, he said, “I found that in the woods.”

  He tapped the hive tool against his leg. “I thought it belonged to one of you.”

  Ollie leaned into me. I shook my head and shoved the jacket toward him. “It doesn’t.”

  He didn’t take it. Instead, he asked, “Do either of you want it? I think Franny might be able to get that stain out.”

  This was the first summer I was tall enough to look Bear in the eyes without having to tilt my head up, but when I did so now, he dropped his gaze to the ground.

  “We don’t want it,” I said.

  He shrugged and took the jacket, draping it over his shoulder. “I’ll leave it with Franny, then,” he said. “She can drop it at the church donation box next Sunday.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”

  A bee flew right up close to us, darting back and forth, making a nuisance of itself. Ollie shrank away from it and swatted the air.

  “They smell fear, you know,” Bear said. “You can get stung real quick that way if you’re not careful.”

  Ollie sucked in her breath and puffed her cheeks out huge.

  The bee flew off, leaving the three of us standing there in a broken circle. Ollie and I watched Bear, Bear watched us, no one saying a word. Then he walked past us, swinging the hive tool at his side, and for the first time I noticed how thick the metal was, how blunt the edges, how weightless he made it seem. It wasn’t very big, barely a foot long, but the potential was there. Lift it above your head, tilt it at an angle so the edges hit first, swing it fast enough and hard enough, crack a woman’s skull, bludgeon her to death.

  2

  ollie

  This night is made of ghosts. One stands behind me, at the edge of firelight and just out of reach. One sits beside my sister. Both wait for someone to look up and see.

  I see.

  I see things no one else does.

  I see them there and wish I didn’t. I want to tell and can’t.

  I try because my sister needs to know what I know about the jacket and this man we call Bear, who sits beside me, who is our father. I try, but my sister says I’m being a baby and she’ll only listen if I use my words. But my words are gone and I’m afraid they’re never coming back.

  Bear throws another piece of wood onto the fire. Bright sparks leap, but they lack the spirit to become stars and fade before reaching the black-ink sky.

  He stares across the hot red coals and smoke at my sister, who sits apart from us. “You’re awfully quiet tonight.”

  She shrugs.

  “You and Ollie both.” He looks at me and winks.

  But he doesn’t say I’m crazy.

  The day we got here, Grandma pulled me close and pressed her dry lips to my forehead and said to Bear, “I’m worried about her. Maybe she should see a doctor. There’s still time for Al and me to cancel our trip. Stay here with the girls instead.”

  Bear told her I’d be fine, he’d look out for me. “Give the kid a break, Judy,” he said. “She’s been through a lot the past few weeks. We all have. She’ll start talking again when she’s good and ready.” All I needed was a little more time.

  The marshmallow on the end of my stick catches fire. I let it burn a few seconds before blowing it out. I like them this way, the bitterness of burnt. How the shell is crisp and smoky. How the center is gooey and sweet. Opposites and the same. I lick sugar from my fingers and take another marshmallow from the bag, hold it out to Bear. He doesn’t usually eat this kind of thing, he says. He eats only what he can grow. But he bought them special for me and Sam because he doesn’t want us to be sad anymore.

  I wait one second, two seconds, three seconds . . . five and then ten. Finally his hand crosses the distance and his fingers brush mine.

  The one at the edge of firelight smiles and tells me not to be afraid.

  The one shimmering beside my sister turns her hollow gaze on me and I think, Leave her alone. She curls her lips, hissing, and gnashes her broken teeth.

  3

  sam

  The next day I skipped breakfast and hiked into the woods alone. I followed the well-worn path toward Crooked River for a while, then veered right, following no path, making my own, weaving through bitterbrush and elderberries and sugar pines and red rock boulders twice as big as me. I didn’t have to t
hink about where I was going; my feet knew the way. I walked about ten minutes due east, far enough from the meadow that I couldn’t hear Bear plucking at his banjo anymore, but close enough that if they needed me, or if I needed them, all we had to do was holler.

  The poplars were waiting in their usual spot, old friends unchanged from last August, or the August before that even. Zeb planted the tallest ones years ago as a windbreak, but never much bothered with them afterward. Now they stretched roots and branches, intruding on a nearby field that had been overrun with dandelions and ryegrass. Three of the largest trees formed a lopsided triangle and, even though you couldn’t see it from the ground, up in the leaves was a platform made of plywood and old fence boards. Bear helped me build it five years ago. He said every kid needed a place to go and be alone, a place all my own where I could just sit quiet and watch the birds, the clouds, the world go by. We were a lot alike in that sense. Bear and I both thought trees made better friends than people did. Mom was always worrying I was too much alone, that I didn’t try hard enough to make friends with the kids at school. I had friends. Heather, who was on the swim team and sometimes sat with me at lunch, and Laura, my best friend since first grade. They were both at Mom’s funeral with their parents, and it was awful and embarrassing and I hadn’t talked to either one of them since. I was glad to be starting over at a new school in September where no one knew anything about me and no one had seen me cry.

  I grabbed the rope ladder hanging from the bottom of the platform and climbed up. This high off the ground I could see for miles in every direction. Crooked River to the northwest. Zeb and Franny’s house a quarter mile to the east. The dirt road connecting our meadow to their gravel driveway and the paved highway beyond. If I’d brought Bear’s binoculars, I would have been able to see a small chunk of Smith Rock scraping the sky four miles west and the steeple of the First Baptist Church of Terrebonne glittering white three miles north. Year after year my view from the poplars stayed the same. The fields ever rolling green, the river curving around the usual bends, the water flowing on and on, the sky and earth reaching to infinity. Up this high the small changes, the slow erosions and fallen trees and gone-away people, were impossible to see. I sat with my back against one of the poplar trunks. A light breeze swayed the branches around me. I was embarrassed to admit it, but a small part of me had been hoping that this summer would feel just like every other summer. Ollie and I would pick wildflowers and float in the river until our fingers and toes went numb and watch clouds trip lazy across a perfect blue sky and not think a minute about how Mom wasn’t back home waiting for us. I thought for a few days, maybe, we could forget.

  Last night I dreamed about the dead woman we found in Crooked River. She was still alive and reaching for me, begging me to save her, but my feet were stuck good and fast in the shore mud; and hard as I tried, I couldn’t break free. The river was pulling her away from me, and I screamed at her to swim, to move her arms and kick her legs and swim, goddamn it, swim! But the current was too strong, too fast, and she was swept away again.

  I woke up in a panic. My mouth was dry, my tongue like cotton. The air inside the teepee was swollen and heavy, warming quickly now that the sun was up. I shoved the sleeping bag off my legs and stumbled outside where Bear was bent over the fire pit, stirring a pot of boiling water. I slumped down in a camping chair a few feet away from him.

  He said, “How’d you sleep?”

  “Fine,” I lied. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Oatmeal with honey and fresh peaches.” Same as yesterday. “You want hot chocolate?”

  And it all felt so usual. As if I’d imagined the dead woman and everything else; I’d dreamed it all and didn’t have anything to worry about. Nothing had changed, and we were all going to be fine, just fine. Then Bear straightened and turned his face toward me. The scratches were still there below his right eye, red and starting to bruise around the edges. Maybe he had a good explanation for them. Maybe not.

  Before I could ask him about it, Ollie came out of the tent. She was wearing the same shirt from yesterday and smelled like last night’s campfire. Her braid was starting to unravel. I drew her close to me and started to fix it tight and smooth again. As I worked, she crouched, picked up a small stick, and drew something in the dirt at our feet. Two stick figures—one with curly hair, one with long braids—stood beside a river. I finished her braid and bent for a closer look. She’d drawn a body floating in the water and something like fireworks exploding above. She tapped the crude sketch once with the stick and then turned and pointed the stick at me.

  “Go wash your hands,” I said. “Breakfast is ready.”

  She tapped the dirt again, insisting. I scuffed out the drawing with the toe of my boot and said, “Stop it.”

  She scowled at me, then spun on her heels and stomped to the rain barrel to wash her hands.

  Bear had been watching us and asked, “What’s that about?”

  I shook my head. He scooped oatmeal into a bowl and held it out to me.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, rising and walking past him into the woods.

  He called after me, but I pretended not to hear.

  Maybe Grandma was right. Maybe Bear wasn’t cut out to be the kind of father we needed. Monday night, the night before we found the dead woman, he left me and Ollie alone in the meadow. Normally, this wouldn’t have been any big deal. Ollie and I were latchkey kids. We were used to coming home from school while Mom was still at work, letting ourselves in, fixing our own snacks, starting our homework, even making dinner sometimes. But Mom never left us alone for more than a couple hours, and if we called her office phone, she almost always answered on the first ring.

  Bear was gone all night and there’d been no way to reach him. He said an order of jars and lids had come in at a supply store in Bend and he was going to borrow Zeb’s truck to pick them up. He asked if we wanted anything special and promised to be back before dark. Ollie and I fell asleep waiting for him. One minute we were watching the stars spark to life through the small opening at the top of the teepee where the poles came together, the next we were waking, blinking back bright morning, and Bear was outside cooking oatmeal over a small fire.

  He was wearing the same clothes as the day before and his cot looked like it hadn’t been slept in, but I didn’t get a chance to ask him where he’d been because by the time I wriggled out of my sleeping bag, dressed, and put on my shoes, he was already busy in the apiary. And then Ollie and I had gone down to the river for a swim and that’s when we found the dead woman and I forgot all about Bear being gone until we were standing near the lean-to, and I glanced in at the shelves where he kept extra jars and noticed the number of jars was the same as when we got here on Saturday. He hadn’t brought back any new ones like he said he was going to.

  I tilted my head back and scanned a patch of open sky where the poplar branches didn’t quite come together. Sometimes I saw bald eagles up there, but mostly vultures. Today, there was only empty blue. I sighed and stretched my arms, bounced my legs.

  When Mom was alive, Grandma was always pleading with her to get a divorce, to leave that good-for-nothing sad sack of lazy bones and move on with her life, but she never did. She would always just smile sadly out the window and say, “Families come in all shapes and kinds, Mama. Love, too.”

  After the funeral, which Bear skipped out on, Grandma was all set to file and fight for custody of me and Ollie, but Grandpa had laid his hand on her arm and said in a low, gruff voice he only brought out once in a while, “Give him a chance, Judy. Poor man deserves at least that.”

  Bear was supposed to be using this time to find a job and a place for us to live with a roof and four walls. So far I hadn’t seen him doing any of that. But Mom had trusted Bear. And I did, too. If I wanted to know where he’d been on Monday night, if I wanted to know about the scratches, all I had to do was ask, and whatever answer he gave, I’d
believe it. I’d believe him.

  I shifted my gaze toward Zeb and Franny’s house. A car was coming down the driveway, a blur, really, dust billowing from the back tires. As it got closer, I recognized its boxy shape and bubble lights, the lettering on the side. Early on, the sheriff used to send deputies out to harass Bear about permits and squatting and proper disposal of waste, looking for any excuse to kick him out of town. After a while, they must have decided he wasn’t worth the effort because they stopped coming. This was the first time in almost four summers I’d seen a patrol car headed our direction, and there was only one good reason I could think of for them to drive all the way out here now.

  I jumped to my feet and scrambled down the rope ladder from my roost. Past the barn, the patrol car could go a quarter mile along the dirt road Bear and I walked every summer before it dead-ended against a hemlock stump. After that, the deputies had to walk another fifty or so yards to reach the meadow. I could get there first if I ran.

  I broke through the tree line just as the patrol car reached the end of the road. Doors slammed shut. They left the engine running. Heavy boots crashed through the underbrush. Bear looked up from where he sat by the fire pit with his banjo, his hands frozen over the strings.

  “Sheriff’s here,” I said, running past him to the teepee.

  I ducked inside and not really thinking, just doing, I grabbed the jean jacket from the back of the chair where Bear had left it the night before. I stuffed it in his leather satchel and then stuffed the satchel inside my sleeping bag, pushing it all the way down to the bottom.