by Nancy Hedin
There wasn’t a drive long enough to digest that maybe Allister Grind was my father. Did Dad know? I cried for him. Then it hit me that Charity was possibly my half sister. I cried for myself. Charity had gone back to Kelly, and even if she hadn’t, how could we be together if we were half sisters?
Back home again, I avoided Momma and Dad by staying in my room. I kept the dogs with me. I cried and brushed the dogs. I cried and kissed them until they scratched at the door to get out.
Even if I had been speaking to Momma—which I wasn’t—and if I had the courage and death wish to ask Momma if she had fornicated with Allister Grind—which I didn’t—I didn’t get the chance because the next day, Becky changed everything.
The following morning after my trip to see Grandma, I was in the kitchen when Becky dropped off Little Man.
“Can you watch him until Kenny’s done with the barns? Maybe 5 p.m. There’s something I need to do,” Becky said.
I didn’t even get the chance to tell Becky I’d seen Grandma before Momma swept into the kitchen and took Little Man into her arms. Becky bolted out of the house like she’d dropped off small pox.
Momma kissed Little Man’s flushed cheeks and swabbed his gums with her index finger. He was six months old and his teeth were giving him a little pain, a little fever, and lots of drool. Momma took one of the wet washcloths she kept in the freezer to soothe Little Man’s gums and gave it to him to mouth. Then she put the boy on the kitchen floor and smiled. Little Man sat up, big as you please, and jabbered.
I hadn’t yet called Twitch to ask for the job I was pretty certain he’d give me. Meanwhile, Momma was dressed for a long night at the diner. Dad and I had Little Man to ourselves for the whole day. Momma left for her shift without a word from me and just a wave from Dad.
By suppertime, Dad and I were surprised, but not concerned exactly. Becky was an hour late. She’d said she’d pick Little Man up at 5 p.m. Kenny hadn’t come to pick him up. When I called Becky and Kenny’s house, Kenny answered, but said Becky wasn’t home. He hadn’t seen her since morning, and she hadn’t told him to pick up Little Man. I told him Little Man was fine, and to send Becky over when she got home.
“Call your momma and see if she’s seen Becky,” Dad said. “Maybe Little Man is staying overnight and we just don’t know it yet.”
“Can’t you call Momma? I’m not talking to her.”
Rice cereal, mashed-up pears and banana covered Little Man, Dad, and part of the kitchen wall.
“I’m a little tied up right now, daughter. Please call your momma and see if she has seen your sister.”
Momma hadn’t seen Becky.
“Have you called Kenny?” Momma grilled me like I was a six-year-old.
“Yep, he hasn’t seen her since this morning.”
“Have you called her girlfriends?”
“Girlfriends? It seems like a long shot, but I’ll call some people. Maybe Jolene can help me.”
“I’ll finish the dinner hour, and I’ll be home. Becky is probably just at a friend’s house and lost track of the time. Don’t worry.”
Momma must not have taken her own advice, because she arrived home not a half hour after I had called.
“Lord Almighty, how that dinner hour dragged on,” Momma said. “Every time the door opened I expected Becky to walk in. The phone rang, and I was distracted to the point that I spilled coffee on my white apron and dropped two plates. Finally, Big Will told me to go early before I hurt myself or broke any more dishes. Now I see I left the diner without my coat and overshoes.”
I was on the phone calling classmates in our class and the class behind us. I had split the task with Jolene, who called from her house. Neither of us had any luck, although Jolene said she was asked out four times. There were classmates we didn’t reach, and I jotted the names down with a plan to call again or drive by their yards and look for Becky’s rusted Chevy Nova.
Reluctantly, Momma called the church, grocery stores, filling stations, hardware stores, lumberyard, beauty shop, and drug store in Bend and called the same businesses in St. Wendell. The feed store and liquor store seemed like a stretch, but she called them too. It seemed unlikely that Becky would venture very far away shopping since it was winter, and I doubted Becky had much money.
It chafed me to let so many people know our business. It probably bothered Momma just as much. After the phone calls, Momma quelled her anxiety by cooking, with the likely intention to fuel our hopefulness with comfort food. She peeled potatoes and set them to boil. She mixed up a cake and put it in the oven. She soaked navy beans. She took ham hocks from the freezer and put them in a stock pot on the stove with some water. She chopped celery, onions, and tomatoes and added them to the ham hocks.
Dad took the last layer of food off Little Man. He hoisted him out of the high chair, bundled him in a snow suit and blankets, and took him to the barn to look at the animals and stoke the wood furnace.
I paced and looked out the window, but truthfully, I was more preoccupied with my own suffering than Becky being missing. It was late January in Minnesota. I should have left for college. I should have left for a city where they actually plowed the streets—a place where winter meant that winter sports were optional and entertaining. I should have at least been keeping warm cuddling with Charity and doing whatever it was queer girls did together, but I was certain Charity was doing those things with Kelly. I shouldn’t want to do that anyway because of hell and the possibility that Charity was my half sister, which probably meant damnation in a bad neighborhood in hell. But I wasn’t at college, learning, skating, or cavorting. I was in Bend.
“Lorraine.” Momma interrupted my ruminations. “I need you to be real careful, but I want you to take the station wagon and drive some of the country roads. Maybe Becky has run in a ditch somewhere.”
Glad for the opportunity to leave the house, do something, and at last drive the family car alone, I accepted the offer. I skidded between ditches on slippery country roads that the school bus didn’t attempt without chains on the tires. Becky wasn’t at the stores I checked, and her car wasn’t at the church or the school or in any of the yards of the classmates Jolene and I hadn’t reached by phone.
I met up with Twitch in his Jeep at a four-way stop on the edge of town. We talked briefly as snow and ice pelted us. He was out doing the same searching since he’d heard Becky was missing. Becky wasn’t at the diner, and she wasn’t at Gerry’s place or back at Hollisters’ farm.
When I got home, the county sheriff’s cruiser was in the yard and so was Kenny’s truck. I bounded up the porch into the house, afraid of bad news.
The sheriff put his hands on his gun belt. “I told you already, but I’ll tell it to you again: I can’t take an official missing person’s report until said person has been missing twenty-four hours.”
He wrote down a description of Becky and her car and took a picture Momma gave him. He didn’t seem to take her being missing too seriously. “She’s probably shopping!”
Dad got in between the sheriff and Kenny. Sheriff Scrogrum was wiry and strong, but dumb as a post. He had a holstered handgun hanging from his belt.
I wanted that stupid sheriff to know we were the kind of family who looked for our own. “We already called the stores in Bend and St. Wendell. Nobody has seen her today, and I drove around both towns and most of the country roads.”
Maybe it was because he was the only one there with a gun within reach, but the sheriff wasn’t so set on de-escalation.
“Maybe your wife got tired of smelling pig shit and went somewhere for a beauty treatment,” Sheriff Scrogrum said while he eyed the cake Momma was slicing into pieces.
“My wife doesn’t need help being beautiful. She’s the most beautiful girl there is, and she’s not ashamed of how we make our living.” Kenny tried to move around Dad.
“Thank you for taking the information, Sheriff.” Dad blocked Kenny’s path to Sheriff Scrogrum. “I don’t want to delay you getting that lic
ense plate number and car description out to the state patrol.”
Momma put a paper plate of cake in Kenny’s hands first and then handed one to the sheriff. Once the sheriff left, Kenny calmed down enough to eat his cake, and another two pieces after that.
After Momma tucked away Little Man to sleep in my room, Momma, Dad, Kenny, and I sat together at the kitchen table. I’d been grilled by Dad, Momma, and Kenny about all the people I’d called and every place I’d checked with the car. With all his questions, Kenny didn’t offer a damn thing that he was going to do to find Becky. Finally, he just left in a huff like it was our fault she was missing. Momma and Dad gave Kenny strict orders to call as soon as he heard from Becky.
As we waited, Dad rose periodically to check the phone for a dial tone, as if phone malfunction was the reason we weren’t getting a call from Kenny or Becky or anybody who knew where Becky was. All that long night, no one called, and no Becky. One by one we went to bed, but I doubt any of us slept.
At first light, Dad said he was driving over to Hollisters’ farm. He wouldn’t let Momma or me come along. He was home again a very short time later. Still no Becky.
It seemed like that first day was the longest and also the shortest, because I was the least scared and had the least amount of time to worry. By the morning of day two, I’d exhausted any reasonable explanation for Becky’s disappearance. There was some solace when enough time had passed that Sheriff Scrogrum took the official missing person’s report. It felt like action, but our family’s edges were frayed, and we were not a tight-knit garment in the first place.
Momma and Dad talked with the sheriff about a search party walking the woods and pastures, starting with the Hollisters’ place. The fact that Becky’s car was missing made that measure an unusual next step. If her car turned up, then there would be reason to do a manual search like that, and the location of the car would guide us to the search area. I pictured Becky’s face on the side of a milk carton, and milk drinkers everywhere pitying our family and having profane imaginings about what might have happened to such a pretty young girl.
Momma vacillated between cooking, loud praying, and speculation on what the TV detectives would do in this situation. She said it wasn’t fair. They had better clues to help them resolve their mysteries in no more than two hours prime time than we had in the twenty-four hours Becky had been missing.
That afternoon I took matters into my own hands. Let Kenny and Dad depend on law enforcement. Let Momma beseech God, the Law and Order cops, or Sherlock Holmes for all I cared. I knew where to go to hear Bend’s secrets. I scheduled a haircut.
“I’m ready for you, Lorraine!” Lucille herded the last bits of hair from Buddy Newman’s perfect crew cut, swept them away from the chair, and spun the chair around for me to sit in. Lucille would graduate in the spring when Kenny should have graduated. That wasn’t what made her worth questioning though. She’d been cutting hair in Bend since she was old enough to work scissors and clippers and big enough to work the hydraulic chair. Her ears were the only organs larger than her breasts, and just slightly smaller than her mouth. She styled Becky’s hair every so often and heard, solicited, and spread the Bend gossip as a part of her vocation. And she was Kenny Hollister’s cousin.
Lucille pumped the pedal and the hydraulics in the chair raised me up to the height where she could reach my hair, and I could question her.
“What can I do for you, Lorraine?” she said. “You aren’t going to ask me to straighten these curls? That can’t be done.”
“You are such a tease, Lucille. No, I just want a haircut.” I tried to smooth the wrinkles out of the black vinyl smock she had put around me. “Hey, you heard anything about my sister?”
“Yeah, I heard the smartest girl in your class married the dumbest ass in my class, but maybe she’s back to being a genius and left the son of a bitch.” Lucille toed the pedal and brought me down a notch or two.
“Oh, such language. You make me blush.” I wasn’t lying when I said she made me blush. I thought that Lucille would have made a great queer if she weren’t so certain she should only be attracted to boys. Maybe someday she’d meet her own Charity case and realize she couldn’t control who she loved.
“It’s the fact you blush that encourages me. I’m sorry. I sure hope Becky is okay. I heard she didn’t come home. Can’t say that I blame her.”
“Becky is over the moon about her baby, Lucille. She loves that dope Kenny too.”
“Lorraine, you got to remember, Kenny and I are cousins by marriage.” She started trimming my split ends. “I saw him through his whole life. I saw him that day at the beach when he doused that snapping turtle with lighter fluid and then set it on fire. He’s a charmer.”
I swallowed the vomit that rushed into my mouth at the thought of torching a turtle, but tried to keep the information coming. “Well, you’re preaching to the choir. You don’t have to convince me she made a mistake marrying him. Becky seemed to think he’d changed and those things happened a long time ago when Kenny was having lots of stress to deal with.”
“Stress? Shit! Everybody in this shabby little town knows that Kenny Hollister got beat by his old man every day of his life right after the bastard beat Mrs. Hollister. He’d still be beating both of them now if he hadn’t had that stroke and needs them to do everything for him including wiping his hairy ass.” Lucille rested both hands on the counter, pushing aside the extra combs, mousse, and spray bottles. She looked at me in the mirror like she was waiting for my response.
I was flustered. I lived in this shabby town and didn’t know anything like that about the Hollisters. “Are you trying to say you think Kenny hit Becky?”
“Well—”
“You know for a fact that Kenny hit Becky?”
“I don’t know for a fact whether Kenny carried on the family tradition with Becky, but I do know for a fact that his dad beat his mom and the kids pretty regular,” she said. “I’m embarrassed to say it out loud because I never was part of lifting one finger to stop him.”
I remembered the bruises I’d seen on Becky’s arms after Little Man was born. I had never gotten around to asking Becky about them, but I was certain I’d had a twin set the one and only time I had talked back to Kenny.
“For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen Becky since just after Christmas week when she got the same wash, cut, and set that she gets every few weeks so that she looks exactly like her graduation picture.” Lucille shook her head. “Kenny likes her to look just the same.”
Lucille painted a picture of the last time she saw Becky.
“Becky acted like she was Miss Scarlett, but pretending that pig farm is Tara don’t make it smell any less like pig shit, and I told her there wasn’t anything she could say that would convince me that Kenny Hollister is anything more than a bully who’s been bullied so long himself he don’t know no different. That doesn’t go away in a person. You know she had the nerve to tell me she’d be praying for me? What the hell I need her prayers for is beyond me.”
Lucille headed back to the sinks. “Come on back, Lorraine. Let’s go soak your head.”
I told Dad what Lucille had told me. Momma heard too, but I still wasn’t officially speaking to her. I also told them about the bruises on Becky’s arms around the time Little Man was born. I waited for them to yell at me for not saying anything sooner about the bruises. Neither one did. They didn’t say whether or not they knew about Mr. Hollister beating his family, and I didn’t ask.
The strain of Becky being missing showed in all of us. Momma was quiet, and Dad was jumpy. I couldn’t keep a single animal fact in my head. I couldn’t have told somebody the difference between an abscess and an aardvark.
From then on, everything Kenny said or did sounded suspicious to me. Could he really have beat on Becky? Did he know where she was? Gossip mounted. Momma said she heard that Kenny was more irritable than usual. Little Man was still living with us since the day Becky dropped him off and disappeared. Ken
ny made no mention about picking him up again. Kenny had lost focus on pig farming too. His hired hand called our house looking for him. Another time Kenny left in the middle of chores on some errand, returned hours later, and didn’t have the thing he went to fetch in the first place.
Kenny missed filling their troughs and let them get too thirsty. The pigs fought to the point of bloodshed and had to be slaughtered before they reached target weights. The pigs were skinny by Hollister standards. Still, Kenny killed them and had them dressed out at the locker plant. He brought a liquor box of neatly wrapped packages to our house, and dropped the box inside the porch.
“Pork chops are here early this year,” Kenny said, and was again out the door.
Dad caught him at his truck before he left the yard. I eavesdropped from the porch.
“What about your son?” Dad said. “Are you going to come in the house and see him or take him home awhile? His grandparents are probably mighty lonesome for the little guy.”
“Ma is in no shape for a little one under foot, and I know you and Mrs. Tyler are doing a better job than I could without Becky. Could you just keep him for now? Without Becky, I’m no good with him.”
Dad nodded. Even though keeping Little Man was no problem, I think we all worried about Kenny not showing much interest in the boy. I studied Kenny for signs that he’d hurt Becky and kept her from coming home. I couldn’t really find the signs, although I didn’t know what to look for.
Little Man replaced Becky and soothed my worry in one way. In another way, he reminded me endlessly that Becky was missing. Becky wasn’t there to nurse him, so I supplemented the start of him trying solid food with god-awful smelling formula. He smiled, jabbered, and pooped a lot. It smelled worse to me than cleaning up after my chickens, sheep, and goats, but somehow it didn’t seem any hardship feeding, cleaning, and loving him. It came natural to me.
