I touched my bare neck. “It’s easier this way.”
She nodded, gesturing to her own short hair, and then asked, “Your father back from his interview yet?”
“What interview?”
She frowned and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, streaking her brow with flour. “He didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head.
Franny dropped another raw piece of dough into the oil. It sizzled and popped. “Maybe he meant for it to be a surprise.”
“What’s he interviewing for?” I asked.
She hesitated, pinching her lips between her teeth and squinting up at the ceiling.
“Come on, Franny. Just tell me.”
She let out her breath in a rush. “A janitorial position at the mill.”
She lifted the golden brown cruller from the pan and continued, “That’s what he told Papa yesterday afternoon anyway.” She smiled at me, and I thought she looked a little sad. “Maybe he didn’t want you girls to get your hopes up, and here I am flapping my gums. Forget I said anything.”
I slumped against the counter and shoved my right hand into my pants pocket, wrapped my fist around the key I’d found last night in a small side pocket of Bear’s leather satchel.
I was alone in the teepee, stuffing the satchel inside my duffel bag where no one would find it, promising myself that as soon as I had a chance, I’d get rid of the jacket like I’d originally planned. In my rush, the bag tipped on its side and a silver key fell out onto the ground. It had a narrow, rectangular head engraved with the word Toyota. I didn’t know anyone who drove that make of car. I’d turned it over in my hand, feeling the weight of it, the coldness against my palm, then I put the key in the pocket of my jeans to ask Bear about later. But between last night and this morning an opportunity had never come up.
I took my hand out of my pocket, turned, and opened the cupboard above the sink. Right there in front, like someone wanted me to find it, was Mom’s favorite mug, the one she always used when she was here. It was round, almost as big as a soup bowl, ruby red with tiny white polka dots and a small chip on the handle. It had fit perfectly in her cupped hands. I started to reach for a plain, blue mug that wasn’t important to anybody, but then stopped and took hers down instead. It was heavier than I remembered and looked strange with my small, stubby fingers wrapped around it instead of her long, graceful ones. I poured myself hot water from the kettle on the stove, stirred in three heaping spoonfuls of hot cocoa, and sat down at the table. The key jabbed sharp into my thigh. Maybe I didn’t know Bear as well as I thought I did.
I sank low in my chair and blew across the surface of my mother’s mug, curling the steam in wisps around my face.
After breakfast, after we’d finished washing the dishes and were separating the extra blueberries into pint boxes, Zeb cleared his throat and said too loudly, “Well, Mother, I suppose now’d be a good time for me to take little sister out to see the new chicks.”
Franny wiped her hands on a dish towel, then slowly untied her apron and hung it on its proper hook beside the stove, taking her time like she was trying to figure out the best way to answer. Finally, she said, “I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”
“I thought Ollie could help me work the honey stand this morning,” I said and shrugged. “But I guess we can see the chicks first.”
Zeb and Franny exchanged the kind of glance that said nothing and everything at once. Then Franny said, “Why don’t I help you get things set up at the stand and then when Ollie’s had her fill of those chirping yellow fluff balls, Zeb can bring her out to join us.”
That’s how I knew Franny wanted to talk to me about something important, something she didn’t think Ollie was old enough to hear, because in the three years I’d been selling honey at the end of her driveway, Franny had never come out to help. “This old body just doesn’t work the way it used to,” she’d say, by way of explaining, and pat her swollen joints. “I’d barely get halfway and then you’d have to carry me and I know you’re not strong enough for that.” Then she’d laugh and shoo me away. But today was different. Today, Franny insisted.
I brought up two full boxes of pint-size honey jars from the basement and loaded them onto the wagon with three flats of blueberries, a metal cash box, and a plastic folding chair for Franny. She came out the front door wearing large rubber boots and a wide-brimmed straw hat and took her time coming down the porch steps.
“You sure you want to come, Franny? It’ll be boiling out there so close to the asphalt.” I offered my arm for support, but she waved me away.
“It’s about time I see what you’ve been up to out there, don’t you think?” She reached the last step and paused a moment to catch her breath before stepping down to the ground.
We started up the gravel driveway, slow and shuffling, and this time when I offered my arm, Franny took it.
The stand had been my idea. People bought lemonade and flowers from the side of the road, so I figured they might buy other things too. Better, tastier things like honey. Zeb had built the simple wooden stand and painted it bright yellow. Bear had helped him carry it to a patch of grass at the end of the driveway that was set far enough back from Lambert Road to be safe, but close enough to be seen. I’d come up with a name and a design for labels that Franny helped me stick onto pint jars. Then we tied red ribbons around the lids, and she said it was the most beautiful honey she’d ever seen. That first summer, we didn’t sell very much. Maybe a half-dozen jars, mostly to people who were friends with Zeb and Franny. But the next year those same people came back for more, saying Bear’s was the best honey they’d ever eaten and their allergies weren’t coming on nearly as bad this year, and you know what, come to think of it, they hadn’t come down with a single cold all winter. Not even the sniffles. Those people told their friends, and those friends told their other friends, and by the second weekend, we were sold out.
Bear started taking special orders and making deliveries to keep up with demand, and sometimes he even sold honey down at Potter’s Grocery Store where they kept shelf space for his jars between the jam and peanut butter. But he always saved some jars just for me. He told me whatever I earned at the stand was mine to keep. It seemed like a lot of money when I was younger—fifty, sixty dollars for a few hours’ work. I’d been saving all of it, plus the money I got on my birthday and for doing odd jobs around the house, for a car when I turned sixteen. Last week I’d counted, and I had almost a thousand dollars. Last week, too, I’d decided the car could wait. Whatever money I had saved up already and whatever I earned this summer was going to pay for the first month’s rent on an apartment or a new winter coat for Ollie or a new suit for Bear for job interviews. I had to start being more responsible now, pitching in where I could.
When we reached the stand, Franny collapsed into the folding chair and fanned her hat in front of her face. She exhaled, long and loud, more groan than sigh, and fanned under her arms too, where large patches of damp were visible against her pale green cotton dress. I started to unload the wagon, and when Franny made to help, I shooed her away.
“Sit,” I said. “Relax.”
She settled her hat atop her head again, crossed her arms over her chest, and stretched out her legs.
I arranged the jars in pyramids at just the right angle where when the sun hit them directly, the honey sparkled. The county road was empty, no cars coming in either direction, but it was early yet. Soon enough someone would come rolling over one or the other of those hills.
Franny said, “Deputy Santos stopped by the other day.”
I unstacked the jars and spread them in a straight line across the top of the counter to see if they looked better that way. They didn’t. I restacked them, three pyramids all in a row.
“Shame about that poor girl they found,” Franny continued. “I can’t even begin to imagine . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, Deputy Sant
os was asking a lot of questions about your father.”
“Like what?”
“Like if we’d seen him the day before,” Franny said. “What he said to us. How he acted.”
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth, of course.”
A dark blue minivan appeared on the horizon, coming at us from the south. Closer, closer, it slowed as it passed, but then went right on by, picking up speed again on the hill headed toward Terrebonne.
Franny shifted her weight in the folding chair. The brim of her hat shaded her face, and I couldn’t see if she was smiling or frowning or wearing any kind of expression at all. She said, “Your father borrowed the truck that night, Sam.”
“I know. He told me.” I turned one of the jars so the label faced the road. “He went to Bend to pick up supplies.”
Franny nodded. “That’s what he told us too. But then after Deputy Santos and that detective came around, I got to thinking about it again and there’s things about it that just don’t sit right with me.”
Some two hundred feet south of us on the opposite side of the highway and set back a little from the road was Blue Heron Pond. A man-made reservoir used by farmers to irrigate crops, the pond was rectangular in shape with sloped dirt retaining walls and a gravel driveway and a chain-link fence guarding the perimeter. Sunlight brushed the surface of the water, glinting radiant white. I stared at the reflection until my eyes hurt. When I looked back at Franny, she was a blur, a thin, paper-white ghost. Blink, and she was solid again, her hands worrying the tops of her knees, the brim of her hat dipping lower like she was trying to think of the gentlest way to say whatever it was she’d been holding on to all morning. I imagined her thinking, Poor girl’s been through enough already. But I needed to know.
“What things?” I asked her.
She glanced at me like she was still deciding. The brim of her hat tipped up just enough for our eyes to meet, and then she looked away again and said, “When he brought the truck back, the gas gauge wasn’t much lower than when he took it. That truck’s a hog. It takes a quarter of a tank just to get to Bend. Another quarter to get back.”
“Maybe he filled it before he gave it back to you.”
Franny stared at the pond and nodded slowly. “Maybe.”
One explanation was that Bear had found a gas station between here and there that was open late and he had somehow scraped together enough change to refill the tank. The other explanation, the one I thought Franny was worrying about, was that Bear hadn’t gone to Bend that night, hadn’t gone very far at all.
She took off her hat and wiped her sleeve across her brow. Her cheeks were flushed red, her eyes pinched against the sun. She put her hat back on. “Has he been acting funny to you lately? Doing things out of the ordinary?”
I shrugged. “He’s Bear. Everything’s out of the ordinary.”
But he had been acting stranger than usual recently. Leaving me and Ollie alone for long stretches of time, lying about where he was going and what he was doing, skipping Friday breakfast. All of which could be explained away as a husband grieving his dead wife, a father struggling to handle his new responsibilities. And then I thought about the key I was carrying around in my pocket.
“You can tell me, Sam,” Franny said. “You don’t have to be scared.”
I turned my back to her and faced the road. “Tell you what?”
“If there’s something you’re worried about with Bear. Maybe you saw something or heard something that needs telling.” The chair she was sitting in creaked. “I know it’s hard. He’s your father—”
“There’s nothing,” I said, but my voice cracked and Franny heard it.
She said, “That girl had family, too, Sam. Someone who loved her the way you loved your mama.”
A crow landed in the middle of the road, walked a few steps along the center dividing line, then flew off again.
“Don’t you think they deserve to know what happened?”
I reached behind me, picked up a pint jar, and held it to the sun, turning it until the light seemed trapped inside the viscous amber. In Greek mythology, the gods ate honey to preserve their immortality. I wished it could work like that for regular people too. Then at least we could have a choice about dying.
I set the jar back down with the others, trying to decide how much to tell Franny—if anything—how much was something to be worried about and how much was just coincidence. Blue and red flashing lights flickered on the hill and a patrol car came into view, coming fast from Terrebonne. Ominously, without sirens.
Franny leaned forward in her chair. “What’s all this, now?”
Another patrol car, this one with both its sirens and lights off, crested the hill and started down. A tow truck followed close behind. The lead car started to slow a few feet shy of Zeb and Franny’s driveway and I thought, This is it. This is where it all falls apart. Another second, maybe two—snap your fingers and your entire future changes course. Blue flashed red flashed blue flashed red, burning my eyes, making me blink too fast.
The first patrol car passed the driveway, and all I saw were brake lights. The driver was stopping, pulling off to the side of the road, but not here in front of us, not here for me.
The car parked on the gravel shoulder beside Blue Heron Pond, and the driver’s door opened. Detective Talbert stepped out. He hitched up his pants, checked to make sure the other cars were on their way, then turned and walked over to the reservoir’s main gate. He stood a moment with his hands on his hips, staring at the padlock, then he took a radio from his belt and spoke into the mouthpiece. We were too far away to hear what he said.
“Must be having trouble with trespassers again,” Franny said, lifting the brim of her hat to see better.
I curled my fingers around the overhanging edge of the honey stand.
The second patrol car parked on the shoulder behind the first. The tow truck pulled up beside them both and idled there in the northbound lane, waiting for whatever was coming next. The driver hung his elbow out the open window.
I recognized Deputy Santos as soon as she got out of the car. She spoke briefly to the tow truck driver and then joined Detective Talbert at the gate, which she pushed open without any trouble. Seemed that the chain had been cut, because I didn’t see her turning a key and when the gate swung wide, both the chain and the padlock slid to the ground. They stood outside the fence awhile, staring down the short driveway that led to the reservoir, staring out across the water. Detective Talbert raised his arm and pointed to something I couldn’t see. Deputy Santos turned her head toward the tow truck and motioned for the driver to start backing up. Then she caught sight of the roadside stand and of me and Franny, sitting, watching.
I wanted her to wave, to lift her hat off her head and sweep it in the air like she was in some grand parade, like this was just a routine call, nothing serious. Nothing to do with that woman. But she didn’t. She nodded, just once, then turned her back on us and walked toward the water. I grabbed the wagon, rolled it up close to the stand, and started to repack the blueberries and honey.
“You giving up already?” Franny said. “We haven’t been out here very long.”
The glass jars clinked together.
I said, “Franny, have you ever been wrong about a person?”
“Now, I’m not sure what you mean.”
I stopped stacking jars for a second. “Have you ever thought somebody was one way, but then something happens and you find out they’re something else entirely? That they were just pretending so people wouldn’t see their true self?”
Franny tipped her head up just enough so I could see her blue-gray, ancient eyes under the brim of her hat. She stared at me so long and sat so motionless, I thought maybe she still didn’t understand what I was asking.
Then she sighed and shifted in her chair and said, “People can only hide w
ho they really are for so long. After a while, all that pretending becomes exhausting and, soon enough, their true stripes and spots start to show through.” She scratched the palm of her hand. “You thinking about someone in particular, Samantha?”
And the way she said my name reminded me of Mom and made it hurt to breathe and I had to look away. I shoved my hand in my pocket, wrapped my fist tight around the key.
On the other side of the highway, the tow truck had reached the reservoir. The back tires were half sunk in brown water, and the driver was standing between Detective Talbert and Deputy Santos at the edge where the gravel driveway disappeared into the pond. All three of them stared across the glassy surface, stared and didn’t move, and I wondered what was taking so long. Finally, the tow truck driver walked away from the water, returned to his truck, and punched a switch near the back. The winch unraveled. A metallic grating and clattering echoed across the road.
“What in the world?” Franny said under her breath.
The driver waded waist-deep into the water and attached the winch to something beneath the surface. He splashed back to his truck and hit the switch again. There was a low grinding sound, the awful noise of metal scraping rocks, and then sunlight flashed off bright white paint as the tow truck pulled a small sedan from the pond.
“Franny?” I said, turning to face her and pulling the key from my pocket, holding it flat in the palm of my hand. “It might be nothing . . .” I glanced back at the white sedan.
She squinted, leaned in a little closer, and then her eyes widened, her hand fluttering to her chest. “Where did you get this?” she asked me.
I told her then about finding the dead woman and the scratches on Bear’s face and how Monday night, the same night he borrowed the truck, Bear had left me and Ollie alone in the meadow for hours and hours after dark. How I’d found the key in his satchel. The one thing I left out was the jacket. I didn’t want Franny to know how I’d convinced Bear to let me take it to the police by myself, how I’d lied and tried to get rid of it instead, how much worse I’d probably made things for him, for all of us, by not coming forward right away.
Crooked River: A Novel Page 7
