Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  “Well, now.” She bends, picks up the purse, and sets it on the desktop. “You and your sister are quite the little detectives, aren’t you?”

  “Mom,” Travis says. He’s taken his hand away from my mouth, but he’s still holding on to my arm, pushing me behind him, blocking me with his body. “Mom. Just let her go. Let’s just . . . She isn’t part of the plan.”

  Mrs. Roth smiles at her son like she’s disappointed she even has to say it. “Plans change.”

  And then she takes the cowboy gun from behind her back.

  Travis says, “Mom, no.”

  Mrs. Roth reaches around him and grabs my arm, pulls me to her. Though she keeps the gun pointed at the floor, her grip is firm and steady, her impatient finger hovers over the trigger.

  The one who follows me licks like fire across the ceiling, but I am the only one sweating, the only one choking on smoke. There’s nothing she can do to help me now.

  Mrs. Roth holds me against her body with one arm and speaks to Travis over my head, “Go find Sam and bring her to the house.”

  Travis shifts his feet. “Why?”

  “You know why.” When Travis doesn’t move, Mrs. Roth says, “Travis. Go.”

  “Are you going to hurt her?”

  “Of course not,” she says. “It’s just time we had ourselves a heart-to-heart. So she knows what’s at stake here. With all of this.” She waves the gun, bringing it too close to my head.

  “And Ollie?”

  “I’m not going to hurt either one of them.” But when she says this, she squeezes tighter, bruising my ribs and keeping me still. “She’s just a bit of insurance. In case Sam decides she doesn’t want to cooperate.”

  “And after? When Sam agrees to keep quiet about everything? To stop snooping around? You’ll let her go? You’ll let both of them go?”

  Mrs. Roth gives me another squeeze, like we’re buddies this time, and says, “Of course I will.”

  But I don’t believe her.

  29

  sam

  The sleeves of Zeb’s jumpsuit fell down over my hands, and the helmet kept slipping to one side even after I tightened the strap. I rolled the pant cuffs to keep from tripping over them and wrapped duct tape around my wrists and ankles so there weren’t any gaping holes or loose cloth for the bees to crawl into. Finally, I lowered the long veil over my face, slipped on a pair of thick gloves, and entered the apiary.

  “Any idea who did this?” Zeb righted one of the tipped-over hives.

  The bees that had made their home inside it were long gone now. They’d left behind their broken comb and smashed brood, their spilled-out honey stores, their dead. Those who’d survived the violence had flown away, the only sensible thing to do. To get through the long winter months and protect what remained of their colony, they needed to go and find some better place, a new hive where they could start over. They had to move on.

  I answered, “Teenagers? Some drunk bastard who hates Bear maybe?”

  Zeb snorted a laugh, then said, “Seems unfair to take all that out on the bees.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything else. A lot about this summer was unfair, and I was ready for it to be over.

  I pushed a bundle of smoking pine boughs close to the entrance of a hive that hadn’t suffered as much damage. Since the sheriff’s department was still holding all Bear’s tools as evidence, the slow-burning branches were the next best thing to a real smoker.

  Bees flew drowsily in and out and crawled up and down the sides of the box. I thought they’d be more frenzied, hurrying here and there, rushing and angry, but perhaps they were in mourning. Even though their colony had fared better than the rest, perhaps they still sensed the nearby losses and were grieving the destruction of their neighbors and fellow bees.

  “Pick through those frames carefully,” I said. “If there are any with the comb mostly intact and it’s being used for honey stores, not brood, we can put them in an extra box for the hives that are still working.”

  Zeb grunted his acknowledgment.

  We worked quietly side by side, moving between the boxes, saving what we could and throwing out the rest. In the end, we were left with four working hives, two that were abandoned and empty but in good enough shape to be filled with a new colony at some distant point in the future, and two that were too busted up to be of any use. Zeb hauled the broken hives out of the meadow to his truck waiting by the hemlock stump and tossed them in the back.

  When he returned, we stood together at the edge of the apiary, taking sips of lemonade from a thermos.

  “What now?” he asked.

  “Just let them be,” I said. “They’ll repair their broken combs and refill them with honey as best they can before the cold sets in. Since we didn’t harvest this year, they should have plenty to hold them through spring. And hopefully by then, Bear’ll be . . .” But the words felt impossible, so I didn’t finish.

  “Of course he’ll be back by then,” Zeb said. “Of course he will.”

  I was willing to let him have faith enough for both of us.

  “Just in case,” I said. “You should pile hay around their hives in November or December, before the snows hit. It’ll help them stay warm.”

  Zeb bent and yanked a long piece of grass from the ground. He pinched off the roots and stuck the smooth end between his teeth.

  “You should leave them a jar of sugar water every week, too,” I said. “Especially in February and March when they’re most likely to be running low on stores.”

  Zeb said, “You know I always told your daddy that if he ever left this place, he’d have to take his goddamn bees with him.”

  “If he had a choice, I don’t think he’d ever leave. He loves it here.”

  Zeb chewed his long piece of grass, then nodded and said, “Ain’t that the truth.” And then, “You know, a few months before your mama passed, Bear came up to the house wanting to talk to me about buying this land.”

  “He did?”

  “He wanted to build a house.”

  I readjusted my grip on the helmet.

  “Nothing fancy. Just a two-bedroom cabin. Something big enough for all four of you.”

  It hurt to swallow. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to do anything but stare at the tiny, dark shadows flitting in and out of their cozy, white boxes.

  “I remember him saying your mama refused to sleep on the ground, even though he told her the meadow grass was softer than any mattress you could buy. He said he wanted to build her a proper bed and a proper roof, one with a skylight so he could still see the stars. He said he wanted to give you girls a real home with all of you together, and he thought this was a better place than most because at least here you had fresh air and vegetable-growing soil and a river to sit by and me and Franny within hollering distance.” Zeb laughed a little and swept his hand over his thinning hair. “Don’t see really what we have to do with any of it, but sweet Franny, now she was pleased as punch when I told her what he’d said.”

  A bee flew right up close to my face, then dodged away.

  “Maybe after all this craziness settles down a bit, he and I can pick up that conversation again. Maybe it won’t be too long before you and Ollie are back here seeing to these bees properly. Lord knows what’ll happen if I’m in charge of them for too long.”

  Everything Zeb was saying would only make it that much harder to leave.

  When Mom dropped me off last August, we’d done something we didn’t normally do. We all walked out to the meadow together. Ollie and me and Mom and Bear, like a real family. Halfway there, Bear and Ollie slowed to watch a fuzzy caterpillar inch across the dirt road and into the leaves on the other side. Mom and I kept walking, kicking at stones.

  She asked me if I liked staying here. I told her it was my favorite place in the whole world. She said, “The world’s a pretty big place, Sam
my,” and I told her even if life took me on a grand journey to all sorts of different countries and cities and wild lands, even if I saw the northern lights and stone castles and a field full of perfect red tulips, even then, my heart would always bring me back to the meadow and Crooked River.

  “Why do you like it so much?”

  “Because it’s ours.”

  I picked a daisy for her to wear in her hair.

  When we came out from the trees, she stood in a patch of bright sun, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes. I held my breath, watching her. I had talked about this place for years, trying to convince her. Now she was here. She was seeing, breathing, listening, becoming a part of it. I remembered thinking, Finally. She opened her eyes just as Bear and Ollie appeared at the edge of the meadow, and I waited for her to tell them she’d had a change of heart, she was staying, we all were. But a few minutes later she was kissing me good-bye and telling me to be good; she was waving and walking with Ollie back into the trees. And then, three weeks later, we were driving back to our house in Eugene and leaving Bear behind and nothing had changed.

  Now I thought she’d probably known about the house all along, that they’d been working on it together, but had kept it a secret from Ollie and me, wanting to surprise us. It helped, a little, believing that when she died her thoughts were of a bright and smiling future, in which her daughters lived with their father in the most beautiful place in the entire world and, there, found a way to be happy again.

  Zeb held the thermos out to me for another sip of lemonade, but I shook my head, afraid my stomach wouldn’t be able to handle something so sweet. We stood side by side saying nothing for another few minutes. The bees hummed in the apiary, but softer than I remembered and less enthusiastic, as if they were only half going about their work now that Bear was gone.

  There’s a tradition among beekeepers, an enduring superstition that if something important happened in the household, if the beekeeper, or someone in his family, got married or had a baby or had to go away for a while or died, then someone had to go and tell the bees. Otherwise, the colony would swarm and leave their hive, or worse, in midflight fall right down dead. I guessed Bear had told his bees about Mom already, and he would want me to tell them now about his arrest and how he might not be coming back, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, not in front of Zeb.

  A twig snapped in the trees somewhere behind us.

  Zeb and I both turned toward the path that led back to the hemlock stump. At first there was nothing but trees and dull shadows. Then the shadows trembled and shuddered, and Travis stepped into the meadow, striding toward us, crushing clover and dandelions under heavy boots. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of reflective sunglasses. When he reached us, I started to take a step back, remembering last night, how swiftly Ollie’s fingers had moved the pointer, but then I stopped myself, shifting my feet a little in the dirt, hoping he hadn’t noticed.

  He nodded to Zeb and said, “Mrs. Johnson said I might find you two out here.”

  “Just cleaning up a bit.” Zeb gestured toward the apiary. “And getting a quick lesson in beekeeping.”

  Travis glanced at the hives, then tipped his chin toward the teepee. “That paint’s not going to come out easy, you know. Probably best to just get a whole new canvas.”

  Zeb nodded and snapped the lid back on the thermos. “They wrecked things pretty good around here.”

  Travis shook his head. “It’s a shame.”

  Zeb looked at me, then at Travis, who was fidgeting his hands in his pockets and scuffing his boots across the ground like a nervous horse, then back at me, then at Travis again. He cleared his throat and said, “Well, if we’re done here, we should head on back to the house. Franny’ll be wondering.”

  “Can I say good-bye?” I asked.

  Zeb thought about it a second, then nodded and took the helmet and veil from me. “Fifteen minutes. That’s it. If you aren’t back by then, I’ll be telling your grandparents all about last night’s joyride. Okay?”

  I nodded, then stripped off the gloves and the rest of his bee suit and handed it over to him. “Fifteen minutes.”

  “Fifteen.” He winked and then left me alone with Travis beside the apiary.

  Travis said, “Joyride?”

  “It’s nothing.” I walked to the overturned picnic table.

  Travis followed. I grabbed one end, he grabbed the other, and we turned the table upright again. The wood was covered in a thick layer of dust. I leaned against the edge and crossed my arms over my chest. Travis stood in front of me, fumbling with his pockets.

  “So you’re leaving soon?” he asked.

  I nodded. “My grandparents are driving in tomorrow morning.”

  “But you’ll be back.”

  I tapped my thumb against my elbow. “Doubt it.”

  “But the trial? You have to come back for that, right?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Travis nodded and nodded, like he didn’t really know he was doing it, like once he got started, he wasn’t able to stop. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a cigarette and that gold lighter he was always carrying around. He tapped the cigarette against his palm, tapped and tapped. Finally, he lifted it to his lips, cupped the lighter, struck a flame, and inhaled sharply. Smoke billowed from his mouth and nose.

  “You still think Bear’s innocent?”

  I waved away the burning cloud. “Of course I do.”

  “Have you found your proof yet?”

  I thought of Ollie’s hands floating above the wooden pointer, barely touching it. She’d closed her eyes, squeezed them tight.

  “If I did, Bear wouldn’t still be in jail,” I said.

  “You said you found something by the river, didn’t you?” He blew smoke above our heads. “What about that?”

  I shrugged again. “Dead end.”

  Travis flipped the lighter off and on, striking a tiny flame, then extinguishing it again. I thought back to the day he’d brought us cobbler in the meadow, how Ollie had acted and, too, how she’d behaved a few days later at Patti’s Diner.

  “Bear’s innocent,” I said.

  “But how do you know?”

  Ollie blowing spitballs, tracing her finger over the storefront window, writing the name Delilah over and over in the air, sitting in the grass beside Taylor Bellweather’s grave—all the ways she’d tried to make me see.

  “My gut, I guess.”

  “And what’s your gut say?” he asked.

  “That things are never as simple as we’d like them to be.”

  Travis’s thumb worked the lighter. Click, flame, smoke. Click, flame, smoke.

  “Why are you here, Travis? Really.”

  “I came to see you.” He tapped ash from the burning end of his cigarette.

  “What for?”

  He brought the cigarette up to his mouth again, inhaled. His hands were shaking.

  “She came to your house, didn’t she?” I asked.

  “Who?” He fumbled with the lighter, trying to shove it in his pocket.

  It slipped from his fingers and landed in the dirt at our feet. We both bent to pick it up at the same time and our hands brushed. Travis jerked back like he’d been burned.

  “You know who.” I picked up the lighter and turned it over for a better look. A coiled rattlesnake had been carved into one side, its tail up, its eyes narrow and angry. “She was there, wasn’t she? She showed up for the interview.”

  “No, I told you already. No.” He threw his cigarette butt on the ground and stomped the ember out with his boot. “She was never there.”

  He reached for the lighter.

  I curled my fingers around it. “I don’t believe you.”

  He scowled at my fist, then shoved his hands in his pockets again, took them back out, rubbed his ne
ck.

  I said, “I think you know what happened to her. Maybe you even had something to do with it.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not what you think.”

  “You put that key in my bag, didn’t you?”

  He couldn’t look me in the eyes.

  “And this lighter? It’s hers, isn’t it?” I rubbed my thumb over the etching.

  “Listen to me, Sam. I can explain everything. Just stop talking for a second. Just stop . . .” He reached for me.

  I tried to get out of the way, but I was stuck up against the table. He grabbed my wrist, held me still.

  “You’re hurting me.” I twisted my arm, but he squeezed harder, forcing my fingers open.

  The lighter fell to the ground.

  “There’s something you need to know. Something important. Your . . . there’s . . .” He clamped down on the words, then took a deep breath and said, “Come with me.”

  “What? Why? No. No way.”

  “Please. Don’t make this any harder for me than it already is.”

  I stared at him and in his mirrored lenses saw my mouth stretched thin, my teeth clenched, my freckles darkening against my pale skin—I saw myself scared and all alone.

  I said, “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  He looked down for a second. The muscles in his neck tightened, released. When he lifted his head again, something in his face had changed, the lines hardening, bearing down. “Yes, you are.”

  I leaned as far away from him as I could, but he was still holding on to my wrist, and the table pushed sharp into my back. There was nowhere to go.

  “I’ll scream,” I said.

  “They won’t hear you.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  He said nothing.

  “Travis. Please. Let go.”

  Before either of us could say or do anything else, a loud horn blasted through the meadow, and Zeb’s truck roared to a stop somewhere on the other side of the trees. Travis and I both turned toward the path. A door opened but didn’t close, and the engine kept running.