Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  When I was finished, Franny started to get up from her chair. “You need to march right over there and tell all this to Detective Talbert,” she said. “You need to give him that key you’re holding on to so tight and let him sort this whole thing out.”

  I stared across the highway where the detective and Deputy Santos were walking around the car, peering in through the windows, taking notes.

  “No,” I said. “No way.”

  “Then I will.” She reached for the key.

  I curled my fingers around it and backed away from her, shaking my head, fighting a rising panic that I had made a mistake telling her. There would be no keeping it quiet now, no more pretending we weren’t a part of this.

  “He didn’t do anything wrong.” I stumbled over the words.

  “I never said he did. But, Sam, we still have to tell Detective Talbert. If we know something about that poor girl’s death . . . if we think we know something, even if it’s nothing . . . we still have to tell them. It’s the right thing to do.” She reached for my hand. “We’ll go together.”

  I ducked away from her and sprinted up the driveway back to the house. Franny called after me, but I didn’t turn around and I didn’t stop running until I got to the front porch. I leaned a moment against the railing to catch my breath before going inside to get Ollie. I was still holding the key, clenching it in my fist. I uncurled my fingers. The teeth had left dents in the palm of my hand, turned my skin bright red. I shoved the key back into my pocket and took the steps two at a time.

  Zeb and Ollie were playing Slap Jack at the kitchen table. I interrupted them, saying, “Ollie, let’s go.”

  She ignored me at first, turning a card over and placing it in the center of the table.

  “Ollie!” I snapped, grabbing her by the arm, lifting her to her feet.

  She huffed, threw her cards onto the table, and pushed her chair back hard, scraping the legs against the wooden floor. She wriggled from my grasp and shoved past me, dashing through the living room and outside. The screen door slammed shut. She pounded down the steps. Zeb started to say something, but I didn’t stop to listen. I ran away from him, too.

  The rock flew straight and fast from my fingers and hit the pine knot I’d been aiming at with a dead, solid thunk. I stooped, plucked another rock from the pile at my feet, and tossed it in the air. I caught it coming down, curled my fingers around the shape of it, and held the stone in my fist, feeling its weight. One hundred steps from the pine tree and my target knot. My best distance yet. Some fathers teach their kids how to play baseball. Mine taught me how to chuck rocks.

  My first summer in the meadow, Bear handed me a stone so big I could barely get my fingers around it. He’d pointed at a fir tree some twenty feet away and said, “Show me what you can do.” I remember pulling my arm back so far, feeling the muscles in my shoulder blade tightening until I thought they would snap, shouting as I let go, thinking that would make the rock go faster, farther. The stone had clattered into the dirt about five feet from where we stood and nowhere close to the tree. Bear had handed me another rock and said, “Keep practicing.”

  The trick was to aim a little higher than where you actually wanted to hit, on account of gravity, and to throw with your entire body. That’s how Bear taught me anyway. I drew my arm back, then pitched it forward, releasing the stone at the high point of the arc, following through, watching the rock spin and spin and hit its mark. Most of the time I think I just got damn lucky.

  Over an hour had passed since we’d left Zeb and Franny’s house, and Bear still wasn’t back from his interview. I kept glancing at the path, expecting Deputy Santos and Detective Talbert to come storming through those woods at any second, demanding the key, the jacket, my father. I was sure Franny had told them everything by now, but the sun ticked a little higher and a little higher after that until it was right on top of us and still no one came.

  I picked up another rock and rubbed my thumb against its smooth side. “You want to give it a try, Oll?”

  She was stretched out on her stomach in the grass under a tree with her Alice book, reading and ignoring me completely. I held the stone out to her. She lowered the book, looked at my outstretched hand, and shook her head.

  “It’s not as hard as it looks,” I said.

  Ollie didn’t move.

  “Come on. It’s really fun.” I waved the rock like I was tempting her with a piece of candy.

  She lifted the book, hiding her face.

  I shrugged and said, “Fine. Be that way,” trying not to sound too disappointed.

  This time when I threw it, the rock hit a few inches lower than the target, but it still hit the tree and that had to count for something.

  In the distance, I heard an engine whining closer, too fast and high pitched to be a car. It sounded like a dirt bike. Ollie turned her head toward the sound. She closed her book and sat up. We watched the tree line and shadows, waiting.

  The engine sounds stopped, and birdsong flooded the silence. A few seconds later, Travis came through the trees with a white pastry box under one arm. At the edge of the grass where thin scrub gave way to wildflowers and shade gave way to sun, he hesitated. He was dressed more casually today than when I saw him yesterday—a faded gray T-shirt tucked into the waistband of his dark jeans and a pair of red Chuck Taylors, the laces untied.

  He smiled and came toward me. “Hey.”

  And I found myself wishing I had taken time this morning to put away the gardening tools and wipe dust off the tops and sides of the beehives and take the clothes off the line, hide these ordinary parts of our lives out here. I wanted him to see the beauty of our meadow, not the drab. Only the flowers and light, the bright shock of summer, the wide-open pasture and crisp, blue sky all around, the soul of this place.

  We met at the picnic table. I brushed dirt off the bench and sat down. He sat down across from me, set the pastry box on the tabletop in front of us, and opened the lid. “Blackberry cobbler from Patti’s. Still warm.”

  He pulled three forks from his back pocket and held one out to me.

  I took it. “What’s this for?”

  “Yesterday,” he said. “An apology, I guess. For how I acted at the store, yelling the way I did, making a scene. Upsetting people.”

  “It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “Yeah, well. My mom thought it was.” He spun a fork in his fingers. “But it was as good an excuse as any.”

  “Excuse for what?”

  “To see you.” He stared so hard, I had to look away.

  Laura was always whispering about the cute boys in our class and writing their names in her notebook. She’d even kissed Derek Bosch last summer. But the most I’d ever done was hold hands with Gavin Thompson on the bus to the science museum in fifth grade. I didn’t pay much attention to boys, and they didn’t pay much attention to me. But Travis was different, and I thought maybe I was starting to like him, which was pretty bad timing, considering everything else going on in my life right now.

  I jabbed my fork into the cobbler and took a large bite. It tasted rich, sweet, like those long days of summer when you spend entire afternoons just dangling your bare feet in the river, and the whole world breathes fresh honey. I swallowed and nodded and said, “This is really good.”

  Travis ate a few bites. “Best cobbler west of the Mississippi.”

  “Is that true?”

  “It should be.”

  I laughed a little and ate more and, after a few minutes, half the cobbler was gone.

  Up to this point, Ollie had been watching us from the grass. Now, she got up and, with her book still in hand, walked slowly toward the table. She stopped a few steps away.

  Travis offered her the last fork. “Get it while it’s hot.”

  She stared at him, not blinking.

  He shifted on the bench, waved the fork a little, an
d said, “I brought it for both of you.”

  Keeping her eyes fixed on Travis, Ollie came right up next to me and leaned hard against my shoulder. She plucked on my T-shirt sleeve.

  “Don’t be rude,” I said to her.

  Travis smiled and shrugged. “It’s all right. More for us.” He placed the extra fork on the picnic table and took another bite of cobbler.

  Ollie looked back and forth between me and Travis. Her mouth twitched. She pushed her glasses up and yanked harder on my shirt.

  “Stop being such a pest, Oll.” I brushed her off. “Leave us alone.”

  She gave me a final piercing stare and then turned and ran, full sprint, to the teepee.

  Travis shook his head. “I’ve never met a kid who doesn’t like sweets.”

  “She just gets shy sometimes.” I watched the tent flap, waiting for it to open again and Ollie to come back out. She didn’t.

  Travis stared off into the woods in the direction of Crooked River, then turned to me again and said, “You want to walk down to the water?”

  “Sure,” I said with a small shrug, like it was no big deal.

  Travis closed the pastry box and stood up from the table.

  I went to the teepee and poked my head inside to tell Ollie I wouldn’t be gone long and if she needed something to come get me. She was standing over the card table, scribbling on a piece of paper. There were other papers wadded up and tossed aside, growing in a pile on the rug by her feet.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder at me but kept scribbling.

  “I’m going down to the river with Travis,” I said.

  She wadded up the paper she was writing on and threw it at the teepee wall. It bounced off the canvas and rolled underneath Bear’s cot. She tore a blank piece of paper from Bear’s sketchbook and pressed the pen down hard.

  I left her there alone and walked with Travis into the trees.

  10

  ollie

  I follow them. My sister and her new friend who is hiding something. Travis, who is stitched together with secrets and dark threads. He says something I can’t hear. My sister laughs and touches his arm. The one from the river coils around my sister’s ankle and leg, wraps around her torso and squeezes. My sister feels nothing.

  But I do.

  My stomach twists. I can’t catch my breath. I lean one hand against a tree trunk and wait for them to move farther away.

  I keep my distance, being as quiet as I can. Light feet, ghost feet: what Mom used to say when I would sneak up on her.

  They do not see me. They do not see anything but each other.

  Travis slips his hand into his pocket. He walks this way for a while, one hand tucked out of sight, the other swinging loose at his side.

  They have almost reached the place where the trees end and the grass skims my waist. The path here is narrow and half buried in weeds. They have to walk single file. My sister goes first, leading the way. The one from the river slides through the grass behind her and Travis comes after. He slows his pace, stretching the gap between them. I am last and far behind, but close enough to see him pull his hand from his pocket and open his fingers. Something falls to the ground, but he doesn’t stop to pick it up again.

  He catches up to my sister, and they disappear over a small hill.

  I stay in the trees.

  What he dropped glints in a sun-yellow polka dot. The one who follows me floats over the top of it, too. She’s a glowing orb, changing red to blue to green to bright white. I bend and pick up what he left behind. A lighter. Heavy, solid, made of gold. One side is smooth. I turn it over and rub my thumb across an etched rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike.

  I hear their voices up ahead, but their words are lost to me. I put the lighter in my pocket, where it will be safe, and go back to the meadow to wait.

  I do not like this in-between boy, this almost man.

  I tried to tell my sister before she left with him. I went to the teepee knowing she’d follow. I went to the teepee and grabbed a pen, pressed it to paper, tried to write her a warning.

  It should be easy. The words played over and over in my head:

  He’s not who you think he is.

  He’s not your friend.

  We can’t trust him.

  He’ll hurt us.

  Tell him to go away.

  But trying to write is like trying to talk. The Shimmering want to climb inside me and write their way free. But if I let them in, I’m afraid they’ll never leave.

  My sister came into the teepee, and the one from the river was right behind her. She was upset. They both were.

  The one from the river slid up beside me and put her hand on my hand and tried to move the pen across the paper. It felt like needles being jabbed beneath my fingernails, like someone twisting my bones. The worst Indian burn in the history of all Indian burns, and I jerked my hand away from her. The pen went sideways, streaking ink across the paper in jagged lines and bleeding scratches.

  “What are you doing?” my sister said.

  She has to know, and I am the only one here who can tell her.

  I tried to write a T, but my hand was shaking so bad, it came out looking more like an S.

  My sister stared at me the way she did after the funeral when she found me in Mom’s closet, wrapped in Mom’s gray peacoat and all her winter scarves, wearing her pink rain boots, reading Alice by flashlight. She stared at me like she didn’t know who I was anymore.

  I wadded up my useless scribbles and threw the paper as hard as I could.

  My sister said, “I’m going down to the river with Travis,” and left.

  I have to find another way. I have to make her see, before it’s too late.

  11

  sam

  It had only been three days since Ollie and I found the dead woman floating in our swimming hole. Three days that stretched into forever.

  I got to the riverbank before Travis and took off my shoes and socks. At a glance, everything looked the same. Same white alders huddled on the banks. Same rapids twisting, crashing, spilling downriver. Same paddle bugs skimming across the shallows.

  And yet.

  A dark stain spread over the surface of my swimming hole, swelling, growing darker, like a body rising from the deep, like black fingers reaching toward me. I blinked, and the stain moved away. Not a stain at all, only a cloud crossing in front of the sun, and the water sparkled again, swirling slowly as the current moved around the rocks, lapped against my toes, beckoned. I took a long step backward, putting distance between me and the river.

  Travis crashed through the brush behind me. He took off his shoes, too, stood next to me in the sand, and stared out over the water.

  “I bet she floated right by here,” he said in a quiet voice.

  He seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I was caught up in thinking about the dead woman and how even though she was probably in some hospital basement, zipped up in a body bag, and not here, not anywhere near here, I still saw her floating. Just there, beneath the dark glass of my swimming hole. Sunlight reflected off her pale skin, and then she was coming closer, pushing to the surface. Her fingers broke through first, then her face, her eyes and mouth wide open, water streaming from her bruised purple lips and tangled black hair. She gasped my name and reached for me, then slid under again, sinking into the dark. Ripples cut through my swimming hole, out beyond the half-sunk boulders and into the main current where they were swept downstream. Echoes of her.

  Travis nudged my shoulder. “Earth to Sam.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them again, she was gone. It was all in my head. She was all in my head.

  “Do they know who she was yet? Why she was in Terrebonne?” I asked, climbing onto a large, flat rock that extended a few feet over
the water. I pulled my knees to my chest and curled my bare toes against the sun-warmed stone.

  Travis climbed up next to me. “There was an article about it in the paper this morning. She was from Eugene, I guess. Her parents are driving in tomorrow to ID the body.”

  “It’s so sad,” I said.

  Travis nodded and squinted at the trees crowding the opposite bank.

  We sat close together, our shoulders brushing, and listened to the river hiss, birds chirp, a hawk scream.

  Picking at a bit of moss growing on the rock, I glanced at Travis and asked, “Does your dad get angry with you a lot?”

  His arm twitched against mine.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quickly, wishing I could take the question back. “I shouldn’t have—you don’t have to answer that.”

  “No. It’s all right,” Travis said. He stretched his legs out in front of him. His bare feet dangled above the water. “He’s been spending a lot of time in his studio lately getting ready for a show in New York at the end of the month. Things can get a little . . . tense . . . this close to opening night.”

  Billy Roth was Terrebonne’s most famous artist-in-residence, or used-to-be-famous, as Deputy Santos had once called him, since he hadn’t sold a single new piece in over ten years. He was a sculptor who’d stopped sculpting. A has-been, all washed up, used up, dried up. If he was working again, preparing for a new show, that was a big deal. I didn’t know much about his rise and fall—when he started, why he stopped—only that his pieces were strange and sold for a lot of money in certain circles. Though some people—Franny—called them abominations, it seemed to me that a new piece, or pieces, from Billy Roth could bring in much-needed income for his family. For the whole town of Terrebonne, even.

  “That’s great, Travis,” I said, bumping him with my shoulder. “You must be so excited!”

  He shrugged.

  “Have you seen what he’s working on?”

  He shook his head. “He keeps the door locked. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing out there.” He took a crumpled pack of Marlboros from his pocket and tapped it against his knee. “Mom’s seen it, though.”