Bent Road Part 20

"I hoped she wouldn't do it," Ruth says. "I begged her not to. She was so young. So young and afraid."

"Ruth, what are you saying?" Celia says, trying to see Arthur's face because then maybe she'll understand.

Still holding Arthur's hand and ignoring Celia's question, Ruth says, "I'm so sorry, Arthur. It was my books. She must have read them. I think she used wedge root. I begged her. Really I did. I told her to tell Mother and Father. To tell them the truth. I told her we would all love her baby, no matter what."

Celia reaches for Arthur but he pulls away.

"She was pregnant," Celia whispers.

Beyond Julianne's grave, Elaine and Jonathon walk toward the car parked in front of St. Anthony's, Evie wrapped in Jonathon's arms. Daniel stands alone near the gate.

"And she tried not to be," Celia says. "But she was so young. Who? Was it Ray's?"

Ruth shakes her head. "No. She swore it wasn't. Ray loved her. Loved her so much. He wanted to marry her." She crosses her hands and lowers her head like she has done so many times before. "We never knew who. She'd never tell. Never really admitted to being pregnant. But I knew she was. I just knew it. Someone hurt her very badly. She was different after it happened. Never the same." Ruth is quiet for a moment and, as if she realizes something, she lifts her eyes. "Did Father know the truth?" she asks Reesa.

Reesa does not answer. Instead, she raises her chin ever so slightly, just enough that the wind catches the wisps of silver hair sticking out from under her hat.

Ruth leans forward. "Did he know?" she shouts.

Arthur, still facing Eve's grave, says loud enough for everyone to hear, "He's the one who told her to do it."

Ruth's shoulders collapse.

"And you, too," Arthur says, turning to face Reesa. "You told her, too, didn't you?"

Reesa stands motionless, her chin in the air, gray wisps of hair blowing across her forehead.

"She was too afraid to do it alone," Arthur says. "So I helped her. I gathered up the wedge root. I boiled it in one of Mother's pans. I did it."

Daniel stumbles backward when Aunt Ruth screams at Grandma Reesa. Up until that moment, he had been planning what to tell Dad, how to tell him about Ian's nose and how Daniel almost broke it. But now, something else seems more important, and Aunt Ruth is shouting about Aunt Eve and how it wasn't Dad's fault that she died. She wasn't murdered and bloodied up by Jack Mayer. Something else killed her. Something that Daniel thinks a man should know, but he isn't a man yet. He takes a few steps backward until he feels snow underfoot, turns to follow Elaine and Jonathon, and there, in the shadow of a large pine tree growing near the fence line, stands Uncle Ray.

He must have been there all along, standing behind everyone who came to say good-bye to Julianne Robinson, because his collar is up and his hands are buried in his pockets making him look like he's been cold for a very long time. He probably hid back there because more than ever folks are talking about him being one of the rabble-rousers in town and how they think he must have taken Julianne Robison for sure. But he isn't causing any trouble now, only watching Mama and Dad and Aunt Ruth talk, but also he looks like he's not really seeing them. A blue bruise lies over one of his eyes and his bottom lip is still swollen from the beating Dad gave him. As Daniel takes a step to follow Jonathon and Elaine, his boot snaps the icy crust on the cleared path and Uncle Ray turns. Seeing Daniel seems to wake him. Daniel stops. He should call out, warn them, because none of them notices that Uncle Ray is coming at them from behind the pine.

Standing by the mound of dirt that will bury Julianne, the two Negro men see Uncle Ray. One of them is leaning on a shovel and he pulls it out of the snow like he's ready to hit Uncle Ray with it if he needs to. The other man throws back his shoulders but doesn't have anything to hit with. Dad sees the men bracing themselves. He sees Uncle Ray.

"Ray," Dad says, which stops Uncle Ray. "Not today, Ray. This isn't the place."

"You knew all this, Ruth?" Uncle Ray says, ignoring Dad and looking straight at Aunt Ruth across Julianne's grave. "My Eve was pregnant?"

Aunt Ruth doesn't answer but instead wraps her arms around her baby.

"She did it to herself?" Uncle Ray asks.

"I said, not now, Ray," Dad says, louder still.

Again, Uncle Ray ignores Dad.

"That was a child bled out on the floor of that shed?"

No one answers. Mama turns away. Aunt Ruth looks down at her stomach. Grandma Reesa tips her face to the sky like heaven is up there and she can almost see it.

This time, Uncle Ray shouts as loudly as he can.

"That was a child?" His voice booms across Julianne's grave.

Mama presses a hand over her mouth, which means she is about to cry. Grandma Reesa turns to leave, and Dad starts toward Uncle Ray but Aunt Ruth grabs his coat sleeve, stopping him.

"Yes, Ray," Aunt Ruth says quietly, but the wind is to her back and it carries her voice for her. "That was a child, he or she-a baby."

Uncle Ray steps back when Aunt Ruth says it, almost like she slapped him, slapped him hard right across the face. Then he looks up at Dad. He looks directly at Dad and points at him. "And you did it," he says. "You killed my Eve."

The two of them stare at each other, waiting for something.

"Yes," Dad says. "I did it."

Uncle Ray's hat is c.o.c.ked high on his forehead, showing off his tired eyes and gray skin. His face is thin and his cheekbones, like his hat, are c.o.c.ked a little too high. His coat hangs on his shoulders and his pants bag around his boots as if he must have shrunk since he bought them. Dad once said too much drinking will wear heavy on a man. It looks like it has weighed Uncle Ray down about as far as he can go. After staring at Dad for a few more minutes, long enough that the Negro man with the shovel takes a few steps toward him, Uncle Ray walks away, down the cleared path, toward the station wagon where Elaine sits inside with Evie and Jonathon. He walks past the car without saying anything to Jonathon, who has stepped out probably because he heard all the shouting. He walks away, until he disappears down Bent Road without ever looking back.

Chapter 29.

Celia takes Reesa's coat from the hook near the back door, hands it to Jonathon and steps aside as Reesa walks by. She fills the small hallway leading from the kitchen to the back porch, fills it with her size and with a sweet yeasty smell from the cinnamon rolls she mixed up that morning, intending to take them to the Robisons after the funeral. Now someone else will have to bake and deliver them to Mary Robison. Reesa says nothing as she sets her suitcase at Jonathon's feet and extends one arm so he can help her on with her coat.

"I'm sure the road home will be fine, Mrs. Scott," Jonathon says to Reesa. "Plows have had plenty of time to do their work."

Reesa makes a grunting sound and, after b.u.t.toning her top two b.u.t.tons, she walks out onto the porch, leaving her suitcase for Jonathon to carry.

"She made her bed," Celia says to Jonathon. "Now she's got to sleep in it and try to make it again in the morning."

Jonathon shakes his head, signaling that he doesn't understand.

"Just a saying my mother liked to use." Celia swallows, something she does when she feels guilt. "And we have to think of them now, Ruth and the baby. They're most important."

Jonathon nods.

"You'll see to it that the house is warm before you leave her?"

He nods again. "Sure thing."

"Thank you, Jonathon," Celia says, reaching up to hug him. "And I know Arthur thanks you, too."

Overhead, footsteps pound across the roof. Arthur and Daniel climbed up there almost the instant they got home from the funeral to shovel more snow.

"He always goes to work when he's feeling bad. We'll have the cleanest roof in the county before this all settles." Celia hands Jonathon his coat. "You drive careful and come back for dinner."

"Yes, ma'am. I'll see Mrs. Scott home safe. Safe and sound."

Hearing the screened door open, Daniel stops shoveling and looks over the edge of the house. Behind him, Dad continues to sc.r.a.pe his shovel across the black roof.

"Grandma's leaving," Daniel says, slapping his leather gloves together. He looks over the edge again, the wind sweeping up and catching him in the face. He squints into the white sunlight bouncing off the snow below. "Jonathon's taking her."

Dad nods, lifts his shovel and begins to chip away at a patch of ice.

"Jonathon's carrying a suitcase," Daniel says.

Specks of ice sparkle as they fly off the end of Dad's shovel.

"Grandma's going home."

Jonathon's truck chokes a few times, rumbles, and then slowly starts down the driveway. Daniel watches, waiting for the truck to disappear, because once it's gone, he has to tell Dad. He has to tell because the weight of it is too much. Maybe a man could carry it around, but not Daniel. At the top of the hill leading toward Grandma's house, the truck fishtails.

"Dad," Daniel says. "I hit Ian Bucher. I hit him in the nose."

Dad stops hammering the ice.

"At school. In the cafeteria. I hit him."

Dad leans on his shovel. "You have good reason?"

Just like that. The weight of it is gone.

"Yes, sir. He said Aunt Eve was murdered. He said she was bloodied up between the legs and killed like Julianne Robison."

Dad nods, and lining up his shovel to take another whack at the ice, he says, "b.l.o.o.d.y nose between friends never hurt anyone. But you be mindful of Ian's size. The boy can't help his size."

Daniel nods. "Sir," he says, and Dad stops again but doesn't meet Daniel's eyes. "I'm sorry Aunt Eve died. I'm sorry that happened."

Dad nods. "Yep," he says. "Me too, son."

Ruth sits on the edge of her bed, tulle draped across her lap and a small box of pearl beads on the nightstand to her left. She glances up when Elaine and Celia walk into the room, then continues trying to thread her needle.

"There's no hurry with that," Elaine says, sitting opposite Ruth on the other bed.

Ruth pulls the white thread through the eye of the needle. "The light's good today," she says. "Especially in here. We don't always have such good light."

Celia sits next to Ruth, lowering herself slowly and scooting close enough to drape part of the tulle over her own lap. "It is good," she says of the sunlight shining through the window. "This is beautiful work, Ruth. Did you see, Elaine? She's started to bead the pearl flowers." Celia lifts one edge of the veil so Elaine can see it, then lets it fall across her lap again. "Elaine, would you excuse us?"

"Certainly," Elaine says, standing. "It's beautiful work, Aunt Ruth. Beautiful." And she walks out of the room, leaving Celia and Ruth alone.

"Reesa is gone," Celia says, running her fingers along the veil's scalloped edge.

Ruth nods.

"She took her things. Jonathon is seeing her home." Celia pauses. "She'll be fine. Hardheaded as she is, she'll be fine."

"Why do you suppose we did this? Why so much hiding?"

"People get used to things," Celia says. "Without even realizing. We get used to the way things are." She reaches for the box of beads, plucks out one of the smooth, oval pearls between two fingers and pa.s.ses it to Ruth. "Too afraid of the truth, I guess."

Ruth lays her hands in her lap and closes her eyes. Deep inside, Elisabeth shifts and flutters.

The elderberry was in full bloom by early June 1942. Ruth's father, Robert Scott, was due to plant his soybean, and Ruth woke, thinking it would be a fine morning to make elderberry jam. Before the day turned hot, she decided to wake Eve so they could walk a quarter mile down the road to the ditch where the plants grew best. The exercise would do Eve good, maybe chase away the blue mood she had been carrying around for a few months. Whether it was a touch of dropsy or a lingering flu, the elderberries would clear it right up. Mother always cooked with too much salt, and the summer heat could make a person swell and feel out of sorts. That's all that troubled her-too much salt and humidity. That's all it was. After a day of fresh air, Eve would get her color back and feel like finishing the blue satin trim on her latest dress. Mary Robison said she could sell it if Eve would finish it, said she could sell all the dresses she and Eve had made together, but Eve never wanted to part with them. Until now. Now she said that once she felt well enough to st.i.tch on the blue satin trim, she'd sell it and the rest, too.

Ruth stood at Eve's door and tapped on it, leaning forward to listen. "You up?" she whispered, even though the rest of the house was already awake.

Eve was always the last to get out of bed on the weekends, leading Mother to lecture her about laziness being an engraved invitation from the devil. Ruth tapped again, this time hard enough to push open the door that was not latched. She peeked through the crack, and seeing Eve's bed made, she walked downstairs.

At the bottom step, Ruth remembers that the air chilled, but it couldn't have. It had been June. Still, a shiver had slipped up her spine to the base of her neck. A pot boiled over in the kitchen, a heavy, rolling boil. Water hissed on a hot burner. Placing one foot flat on the wooden floor, holding tight to the banister, Ruth listened. Boiled eggs, probably, for Father to take along to the fields. He was quite precise-half a dozen eggs, fourteen minutes at a heavy boil, and Mother poked small holes in the large end of each one so they wouldn't crack. Father wouldn't eat a cracked egg.

Ruth walked across the living room, taking long slow steps because she knew something was wrong, and stopped inside the kitchen. She stood looking at the white, foamy water spill over the sides of Mother's cast-iron pot, and without turning down the flame or sliding the pot to a cool burner, she walked on toward the back porch.

At the top of the stairs leading down to the gravel drive, Ruth looked east, toward the patch where yesterday she had spotted the finest elderberries. She couldn't see them from the house, but Eve would know the spot. It was the same every year. The berries had a special liking for the odd stretch of ditch where Bent Road took a hard curve. Pa.s.sing cars kicked up dust there. Maybe that's what the plants liked so well. It was the same stretch of road where the wind swept over the rolling hills, down into the valley, and where the barbed-wire fence scooped up all the tumbleweeds. She and Eve would have a nice bunch in no time at all, and they could pick some of the flowers, too, and dry them on the back porch for tea. If the jam wasn't enough, a nice tea with honey and sugar would definitely fight off whatever bug had slowed Eve down over the past several weeks. Ruth walked down the stairs one at a time and across the drive toward Bent Road.

"Ruth," Arthur said.

Only yesterday, it seemed, he had had a smooth, fresh voice that sometimes he sang with in the bath. Now, suddenly his words came from deep inside his chest and rattled like Father's.

"Ruth," he said again.

Ruth stopped in the middle of the gravel drive. Knowing they were there, she had been trying not to look. It was where Eve always went for privacy. She said a young woman needed quiet, even if it was in an old shed. Ruth turned. Arthur stood outside the small building. His arms hung at his sides, the Virgin Mary dangling from his left hand. Next to him, Mother kneeled inside the doorway. She shook her head as she fumbled with her ap.r.o.n strings, untying them and pulling off her ap.r.o.n. She pa.s.sed it inside the shed. A hand reached for it, Father's hand, bloodied. Mother began to rock on her haunches. Back and forth. Back and forth. She breathed out a low, rumbling moan.

"She's gone, Ruthie," Arthur said, dropping the Virgin Mary.

Mother fell backward and scrambled for the two hands that broke off the statue and settled in the soft, dry dirt. She picked up each tiny hand and the rest of the Virgin Mary and started to slide them all into her ap.r.o.n pocket, but it was with Father now.

"She's gone," Arthur said.

The ditch was only a ten-minute walk. The elderberries were in full bloom. They'd have plenty for a dozen or more jars, and Eve would feel fit again, fit and fine.

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Ruth squints into the fading light, picks up a pearl bead but doesn't thread it onto her needle.

"Arthur thinks he did it," she says. "All this time, did you know?"

Sitting next to Ruth on the bed, Celia shakes her head but doesn't answer.