Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  Franny shook her head real slow and twisted a napkin in her hands. She turned her attention back to the phone and said, “I think it’s about time we called the sheriff.”

  “We saw Deputy Santos at Patti’s,” I told her. “She’s getting a search party together. They’re all meeting here in an hour.”

  Zeb came into the kitchen behind me. “No use sitting around worrying yourself half to death, Mother. Might as well keep your hands busy.”

  Franny rose from the table. She went to the sink, filled a pitcher with water, poured in a packet of powdered lemonade, and stirred in ice with a wooden spoon. Then she put a saucepan on the stove, measured in water, butter, sugar, and salt and settled in to stirring, waiting for the ingredients to boil. She worked methodically, slowly, putting all her worry into the familiar routine of making crullers. I left them in the kitchen and went upstairs to the guest room.

  Ollie’s duffel bag was still on the floor beside the dresser. Her pajamas were folded neatly on the end of the bed. I searched for a note. On the desk, the dresser, her bed, mine, on the window, behind the door. Nothing. A corner of the Ouija board peeked from underneath her bed. I pulled it out and opened the lid. The wooden pointer had slid into one corner.

  I placed my fingertips on the edge of the pointer and whispered, “Is Ollie safe?”

  The pointer didn’t move. I jammed the lid back on the box and placed the game on top of the dresser.

  I sat down on the end of Ollie’s bed, then stood right up again and took her Alice book from my back pocket. She carried this book with her everywhere, and if she’d left it behind, it was for a good reason. I thumbed quickly through the pages. Tucked near the beginning was a small piece of paper torn from a larger calendar page. August 1 and some of August 2 and 3, too, but it was that first day, the day of Billy’s interview, that Ollie wanted me to see. Under this was another piece of paper, folded in fourths. I unfolded it and only had to read the headline to recognize it as a photocopied article about Bear’s accident and the awful, horrible night ten years ago that changed the entire course of our lives. On the opposite page, she’d underlined a passage in her book in thick, red ink:

  “It was much pleasanter at home,” thought poor Alice, “when one wasn’t always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits. I almost wish I hadn’t gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—it’s rather curious, you know, this sort of life! I do wonder what can have happened to me! When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened, and now here I am in the middle of one!”

  I looked at the news clipping again. Billy Roth’s name was circled so many times the paper was starting to rip, and in the blank space at the bottom of the paper it looked as though Ollie had tried to write something, but the letters were all jagged and streaked and crossed through with lines, and I couldn’t make out a single word. But it didn’t matter. I knew what she was telling me, what she’d been trying to tell me all along, and I knew, too, where to find her now: in the exact place I’d prayed she wouldn’t be.

  I left the book on the bed and ran downstairs. A map showing the farm and the meadow and a long stretch of Crooked River was spread out over the coffee table, but the living room was empty.

  In the kitchen, Franny was at the stove turning a cruller in crackling-hot oil. She’d already fried up two plates’ worth, but the mixing bowl was still half full of raw dough.

  “Where’s Zeb?” I asked her.

  She waved her free hand toward the sliding glass door. “He took Albert and a couple other men to search along the river.”

  “Is Deputy Santos here?” I asked her.

  “Not yet.” Franny wiped her forehead with a dish towel and narrowed her gaze on me. “Sam? What is it? Did you find something?”

  I ignored her questions and took the stairs two at a time back up to the second floor and Zeb and Franny’s bedroom, where I could have some privacy. I shut the door behind me and left the light off. There was a phone on the nightstand beside the bed. I picked it up and listened to the dial tone for a few seconds. Then I punched in Deputy Santos’s phone number. It rang and rang and rang. I slammed the phone back in its cradle, feeling stupid. Of course she wasn’t going to answer. She was out searching for Ollie. I’d have to call 911, have them get her on the radio and tell her to come straight here. I reached for the phone again, but before my fingers wrapped around the receiver, it rang.

  I jerked my hand back. The phone rang a second time.

  I grabbed it off the cradle and pressed the speaker to my ear. “Hello?”

  For a few seconds, there wasn’t anything on the other end but silence.

  Then, raspy breathing and a low voice. “Sam?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Sam? It’s me. It’s Travis.”

  I closed my eyes, opened them again, stared at the ceiling, tried not to imagine the worst.

  From downstairs Franny called, “Sam, honey? Who is it?”

  I blinked, took a breath. “What do you want?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew what his answer was going to be.

  “We have Ollie.”

  Franny shouted my name again, louder this time, like she’d moved from the kitchen into the living room. I pressed my hand down hard against the mattress.

  “We have Ollie,” Travis said again. “At the house.”

  “Please. Don’t hurt her. Just tell me where to go. I’ll come. Please . . .” My voice was a scratch below a whisper.

  “Take Smith Rock Way north. About a mile outside Terrebonne you’ll see a gravel driveway on the left. Our name’s on the mailbox. You can’t miss it. Oh, and Sam?” His voice hostile, my name dagger-sharp. “Come alone.”

  I hung up the phone.

  The bedroom door opened. Franny stood half in shadow, half in light, with streaks of flour on her forehead and grease spots on her apron.

  “Who was that?” she asked.

  “Wrong number.” I got up from the bed and pushed past her into the hallway.

  “Sam?” She called after me.

  “It wasn’t her.” I called over my shoulder.

  “Sam!”

  But I was down the stairs already, moving toward the front door. I shouted, “I’m going to go help Zeb,” and slammed through the screen door onto the porch.

  The truck wasn’t in the driveway. Zeb must have taken it. I ran to the barn, grabbed the black-and-red Schwinn, and rode as hard as I could toward the road.

  On the uphills, I stood and leaned over the handlebars and set my body on fire. On the downhills, I switched to the hardest gear and spun my legs into taffy. The wind screamed in my ears and drew salt tears from my eyes. And when it started to become too much, when my muscles and ligaments and cells begged me to stop, I imagined I was made of gears and cogs and greased-up bearings. I imagined myself a machine, incapable of pain.

  I sped down Lambert Road, then Smith Rock Way, and all the way through Terrebonne, the fields and houses passing in a blur. Another mile to go now, give or take, and my legs were going numb. I dug way down deep, found a shallow reservoir of strength, and pedaled even faster.

  32

  ollie

  I pluck at the rope with my fingernails. Twist my wrists one way, another, rubbing my skin raw. I squirm and lean side to side, feeling for a sticking-out nail or splinter, something sharp. There’s nothing.

  Mrs. Roth watches me struggle but doesn’t try to stop me. She says, “Things didn’t have to happen like this, you know.”

  I slump down in the chair. The one who follows me beats her silent wings against the window. She wants me to be brave and keep fighting. I turn my face away from her.

  “If you and Sam had just had the sense to leave well enough alone.” She looks at the pistol in her hand. “Maybe this will be better, though. For everyone.”

 
Someone’s running up the path. Mrs. Roth spins to face the door and raises the gun, pointing it at chest level, ready to shoot.

  But it’s only Travis.

  “Jesus Christ!” He stops short.

  Mrs. Roth lowers the gun quickly. “Did you do it?”

  Travis nods and enters the shed. He says, “Now what?”

  “We wait.”

  Travis begins to pace. After a while, he stops and stares at the sculpture behind me and says, “Tell me that’s not really her under there. Please tell me that’s not my sister.”

  Mrs. Roth hesitates a beat too long.

  “Mom,” Travis says, and then when she still doesn’t answer, “Oh my God. How could you let him do this?”

  “Keep your voice down.” Mrs. Roth glances at her husband hunched over his workbench. She speaks to Travis in an almost whisper. “I had no idea this is what he was doing out here. Not until that night. When I realized what he’d done, that he’d gone into the woods and . . . I tried to talk him into doing something else, leaving her out of it, but he refused.”

  “You aren’t really going to send this to New York, are you? I mean, now that you know, you aren’t really—”

  Billy Roth slams his hammer down. “Quiet!”

  Travis glares at his father. Mrs. Roth glares at her son. And for a while, except for our breathing, the shed is silent. Then the clinking, clanking, tinkering starts up again.

  Mrs. Roth whispers, “Your father’s worked hard on this project, Travis. It’s the first time since the accident he’s wanted to be in his studio. The first time he’s made something important. Something that has the potential to shake up the art world, change its very essence.”

  “This isn’t art,” Travis says. “It’s . . . it’s wrong and awful and—”

  “Remarkable,” says Mrs. Roth, raising her voice to drown out her son’s. “Groundbreaking, really. The work of a true genius.”

  “Of a lunatic.”

  A loud crash behind me and Billy Roth shouts, “Enough!”

  Travis ducks. A wrench flies overhead and dents the wall.

  “Billy!” Mrs. Roth shouts.

  Travis takes a step back. “Shit!”

  “Language!”

  Billy Roth says, “Coming in here, criticizing, cutting me down. Flapping and squawking. Telling me what is and isn’t. Acting like you know better. Like you’re all high and mighty and above. You have no idea. None.”

  “Billy, honey, calm down. Travis didn’t mean—”

  A jar of nails crashes to the floor. Mrs. Roth screams. So does the pale girl, a sound like screeching tires and breaking glass. A sound of shattering bones.

  “I don’t want you in here!” Billy screams. “Go! All of you! Get the hell out!”

  “Billy, honey, listen to me. Listen.” Mrs. Roth goes to him. “He doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do. You need to finish her so he can see. So he can understand.”

  I rock back and forth, trying to get the chair to move, but it’s too heavy, and I’m too small. Travis stares at me but does nothing.

  Mrs. Roth continues, “You’re so close now. Look. Look at what you’ve done. She’s beautiful. You’re going to make history with this one, Billy. You’re going to be bigger than Dalí.”

  Billy Roth murmurs something so soft I can’t understand, and then there is a single pop, a paint can being opened.

  Mrs. Roth returns to Travis and says, “You need to calm down too. You’re not helping, getting him all riled up like that.”

  “But—”

  “Enough.” Mrs. Roth gets right up close and puts her hand on his chest, looks straight at him and doesn’t look away. “I know I’m asking a lot from you right now. I know that, but I need you on my side. I need you to trust me.”

  Travis bites his lip and rubs his neck. He lowers his head, hiding his eyes.

  “Travis.” She reaches and lifts his chin, stares at him with a trembling smile. “We’re too far in to turn back now.”

  He jerks from her grasp and steps back. “I told you, didn’t I? When you asked me to help clean up his mess, I told you it would only make things worse. From the very beginning I’ve said this was a shitty plan!”

  “Language,” Mrs. Roth says through gritted teeth.

  “We should have called the sheriff right away.”

  “Your father would have gone to jail. He doesn’t deserve that.”

  “He killed that woman, Mom. He just . . . he killed her.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.” She reaches for him, but her hand can’t cross the distance. She says, “She showed up early for the interview. If she had come to the front door instead of going straight to the shed . . . but she just barged in on him, came into his space, and started asking him all these questions about Bear and you know how your father gets, and then she saw the sculpture and, understandably, she was upset. But she could have just walked out. She didn’t have to start tearing him down, calling the whole thing a desecration. She didn’t have to threaten to call the police, either. She pushed him first. Your father . . . he felt trapped. What was he supposed to do? But it was an accident, Travis. I swear to you. He didn’t mean to push her that hard. If she had fallen any other way, we wouldn’t even be here right now, talking about this. It was an accident.”

  “Then what are we protecting him from?”

  “You know how hard it’s been for him since the crash. With his headaches. His episodes. And remember how they raked him over the coals when he tried to go back to work? How they said he’d lost his edge? They won’t understand. They’ll think he did it on purpose.” Mrs. Roth shakes her head. “Prison is the last place he needs to be right now. He’d die in there.”

  Travis stares at the sculpture, says nothing.

  “He needs this, Travis. He needs us.”

  “He needs to be in a mental hospital,” Travis mumbles.

  “So we’ll find him a doctor. After the show, we’ll get him help.”

  “And what about that woman’s family?” His voice loud again. “Who’s going to help them?”

  Mrs. Roth doesn’t answer.

  And I imagine her, the one from the river. Taylor Bellweather. I imagine her lying there in a pool of her spilled-out blood. Her body broken, but her soul still awake. Waiting for someone to come.

  33

  sam

  I rode down the Roths’ long and narrow, winding driveway. The first fifty yards or so were gravel, but then it changed to rutted dirt with patches of soft sand. My tires kept slipping. Fir trees crowded me on both sides, their limbs intertwining overhead and blocking the sun. The farther I went, the darker it got. The light changed, and the colors shifted from a dust-and-orange summer to a shadow-and-blue midnight. The sun couldn’t be setting. Not yet. It wasn’t that late, but sweat was drying on my skin, cooling me, and I couldn’t see more than a few feet into the trees. And the birds—there were none. That scared me more than anything else.

  Dirt became gravel again as I finally came around the last bend, and the narrow road widened, ending in a turnaround driveway big enough to park two cars and Travis’s dirt bike. Black handlebars stuck out of the open back of a Jeep Wrangler. I skidded to a stop beside the car and looked inside to find Ollie’s blue-and-white Schwinn crammed between the backseat and the tailgate. Keys dangled from the Wrangler’s ignition.

  Travis hadn’t told me what to do once I got here. I thought he’d be waiting, but he wasn’t. I got off my bike and leaned it up against a tree that was set back a few feet from the road. My legs shook and my elbows were numb. My palms were red from gripping the handlebars so tight. I wiped my hands on my jeans and walked toward the house.

  I’d never seen anything quite like it before. All hard edges and sharp corners, it looked like three giant shipping containers stacked one on top of another, each end turned a sli
ghtly different angle. The roof was flat, and wrought-iron balconies jutted from two dormers facing the driveway. One lower-level wall was made entirely of glass, but no lights were on and I couldn’t see inside. The sepia-colored siding was going a bit green with moss on the north side, and there were mobiles hanging from every railing and empty space—delicate bird skeletons wired together, wings stretched in midflight, so perfect it was impossible to tell what they were made of, if they were real bones or something else entirely. Sculptures littered the front garden, lunging from behind azaleas and rosebushes and clumps of ferns. Many were like the fox in Pastor Mike’s office, some unholy combination of carved wood and real animal, but a few were made of glass and metal, bits of things welded and twisted together to make abstract shapes and whorls of color and light. I went up a winding staircase that curved twice around a pole inlaid with colored glass and tiny mirrors before reaching the upper level and what I hoped was the front door. Instead of a regular brass doorknob, there was a clenched metal fist the color of blood. I grabbed it and turned.

  The door swung open, and when I walked in, it was like stepping into a tomb. Dank, suffocating, crowded. The air reeked of wet dirt and mold and something else, something long dead. The room was dark except for an old film projector set up in the middle of the floor with a spent reel that hissed and clattered, flickering bright white light against the opposite wall. Hanging from the ceiling above my head, a rainbow-colored and shimmering banner shouted HAPPY 9TH BIRTHDAY!! Limp gray streamers sagged from the center of the banner to the corners of the room. I took a step toward the couch and a cardboard party hat crunched under my foot. I kicked it aside and lifted a framed photograph from the coffee table.

  A barefoot, blond-haired girl with buckteeth grinned up at me. She wore a light blue swimsuit and goggles around her neck. Behind her, brightly colored slides spiraled into a large, indoor swimming pool. She had wrapped a beach towel around her shoulders like a cape and was clutching the corners together just under her chin. She stood beside a birthday cake ablaze with candles. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittering. Hanging from the table’s edge was a rainbow-colored and shimmering banner. The exact same banner that hung over my head now. All these years later. I returned the picture to the coffee table and then turned off the rattling projector. The house settled into silence and twilight.