Bent Road Part 5

Arthur throws open the truck door. "Not your wife anymore."

"Arthur," Celia says, grabbing his arm and pulling him toward the house and away from Ray. "Please, let him be on his way."

Arthur pulls away and without looking at Celia, says, "Get inside."

"You're a man, Arthur. Same as me," Ray says, though he is looking at Celia when he says it, not in her eyes, but lower. "You wouldn't have me telling you about your wife, would you? Wouldn't want me telling you when you could or couldn't have her."

"Well, I'm telling you now," Arthur says, taking one step to the left so he blocks Ray's view of Celia. "Ruth is no longer your concern."

With his forearm, Ray wipes the blood from under his nose and steps up to Arthur. The brims of their hats nearly touch.

"You wait until they come looking for you," Ray says, "thinking maybe you're the one took that girl. You ought to know, people think it's strange, you all moving back right when that girl goes missing. People think it's strange, all right."

Arthur nods. "Folks'll think what they think," he says and Ray slips inside the truck.

Evie stops on the last step, holds onto the banister and leans forward. The downstairs room is full of gray smoky air. Trying to see into the kitchen and beyond to the back porch, she listens for Daddy and Uncle Ray and wonders if they're still fighting. Mama shouted for them to stop but maybe Daddy and Uncle Ray won't listen to Mama. She blinks, clearing her tears. Not seeing anyone, she squeezes her nose closed with two fingers and steps down, touching the wooden floors with one toe. She holds that pose, trying not to breathe any of the smoky air and listens.

"Good Lord in heaven."

A crash follows Grandma Reesa's shout.

Evie presses her tiptoe foot flat on the floor and steps down with the other. Still pinching her nose, she walks through the living room and as she nears the front of the house, she covers her mouth and coughs. The gray smoke is thicker and swirls overhead. Waving it away, she steps into the kitchen. Grandma Reesa stands at the stove, her back to Evie, a silver potholder on one hand.

"Fine food charred to no good," Grandma Reesa says and, sliding the large iron skillet off the hot burner, she reaches into the sink, pulls out the cast-iron lid with the potholder, lifts it overhead and slams it back into the sink.

"What got burnt, Grandma?" Evie asks, her hands pressed to her ears in case Grandma throws anything else. She bites down on her lower lip when her chin wrinkles.

"Burned every last piece of chicken," Grandma Reesa says, holding the skillet up by its long thin handle. Black clumps of chicken stick to the bottom, even when she shakes it. "Help me, child. Get the bucket from the mudroom. We'll be scrubbing these walls for days."

Pulling a fan from under the sink, Grandma Reesa sets it in the kitchen window. "The mudroom, Eve. Get the bucket from the mudroom. My green bucket."

Evie runs into the large closet where everyone leaves their muddy boots on a rainy day, grabs the green bucket and hurries back to the kitchen. Grandma Reesa has begun pulling the white curtains off their rod. The fan drawing cool, outside air into the kitchen ruffles her gray hair and blows it across her blue eyes-the same color as Evie's, except older.

"Run the bathroom sink full of hot water and soak these," she says, brushing the hair from her eyes and handing the curtains to Evie. "Go on now. This mess will keep us busy all day if we let it."

"Daddy is fighting with Uncle Ray," Evie says, wrapping her arms around the bundle of curtains.

Grandma Reesa puts the green bucket in the sink and begins to fill it.

"I saw them," Evie says. "Outside. Fighting."

"Drop a bar of hand soap in the water." Grandma Reesa pulls a long-handled spoon from a drawer and points it at Evie. "No bleach. It will yellow the cotton."

"Daddy was. .h.i.tting Uncle Ray in the face. Knocked him down and everything. I saw them from upstairs. I was in Aunt Eve's room, cleaning it for you. I dusted her dresser and fluffed her pillows. It'll be ready for her when she comes home."

Grandma Reesa stabs the spoon into a bowl. "Go on now," she says, yanking it out and jamming it back in. "This smoke will ruin my curtains. Go on now."

"Where's my daddy?" Evie feels her chin wrinkle again. She blinks as the air blown in by the fan parts her bangs. "He's. .h.i.tting Uncle Ray."

"Run the water until it's good and hot. Get on with it."

"I saw them from Aunt Eve's room. I saw Daddy fighting." Evie stands in the middle of the kitchen, still hugging the curtains. "I wanted Aunt Eve's room to be nice for her. I wanted . . ."

Grandma Reesa lifts her white mixing bowl with both hands and slams it down on the counter. "Don't you speak to me about Eve, child. Don't you do it. Now get that hot water running. Get those curtains soaked."

Evie presses her face into the bundle of curtains. She lifts her eyes enough to see Grandma Reesa standing at the sink, her back to Evie, her right elbow jutting in and out as she scrubs the black skillet with a scouring pad. Evie nods her head, walks into the bathroom, breathing in the smell of the lemon-scented curtains, and closes the door behind her.

The devil's claws are waist high. Walking toward Mother's back porch, Jonathon guiding her by the elbow, Ruth brushes a hand over the pink, funnel-shaped blooms. The flowers are blurry through her one good eye. It still waters, as if she's been crying, but she never does. The tears will pool for a few more days. She licks her top lip, which is silky smooth where it has swelled to twice its normal size. Even though it hurts, she can't stop licking it. Sometime during the night, the shaking stopped. It always stops during the night. Ruth blinks her good eye and sees that some of the blossoms have died off, the tender petals shriveling and turning brown. The rest will follow and Arthur will mow them down soon. They won't bloom again until spring. Before walking inside, Ruth touches one of the woody claws that has dropped its seeds, and she knows she's pregnant.

Chapter 8.

At the top of the hill, their warm breath turning to a frosty cloud that settles in around them, Celia and Elaine stop and wait for Ruth and Evie to catch up. The wind is quiet today and the sun is bright, almost blinding through the cold, dry air. In the surrounding fields below, perfectly s.p.a.ced rows of green seedlings curve and roll with the flow of the land-the first stages of winter wheat. Their own land isn't fit for wheat because it's too hilly. Arthur says that someday they'll have a few more cows and put the pasture to good use.

Celia knows this land well. She knows that the hollowed-out spot used to be a pond, that two fence posts need mending a quarter mile up the road and that there's a patch of quicksand over the first ridge to the south. She knows these things because all of them, the whole Scott family, walked these grounds many times searching for Julianne Robison. In the early weeks when she was first missing, they walked them almost every day, and then once a week and eventually in pa.s.sing. Celia gasped the first time Arthur showed her the small patch of quicksand, thinking it had sucked poor Julianne to the bottom, but then Arthur stuck a stick in it and showed her it was only a few inches deep. As Evie and Ruth near the top of the hill, three olive, round-winged birds rise out of the thick bluestem growing along the road, glide across the red-tipped gra.s.s and settle in the ditch.

"Prairie chickens," Evie says, skipping up to Celia and pointing toward the spot where the birds disappeared.

Joining the others, Ruth nods but doesn't seem to have the breath to answer. She places one hand on her lower back and stretches.

"You feeling okay?" Celia says, motioning to the others to stop. "Did we go too far?"

Ruth shakes her head and signals that she needs a moment to rest. Before Ruth came to live with them, Celia took her walks along the dirt road, walking as far as County Road 54 before heading home. She needed fresh air, she would tell Arthur, and some time to herself. But what she really needed was a place to cry where no one would hear, a place where she could cry so hard that she choked and hiccupped and when she was done and her nose had stopped running, she would return home, saying her allergies were acting up or the wind and dust had reddened her eyes. She never told Arthur that she cried because she missed home and her parents, even though they were both dead. She never told him she missed walking Evie to school or visiting with the other ladies at Ambrozy's Deli. She never told him that she cried because in Kansas she is still afraid. She is afraid that he won't need her in the same way. She is afraid she'll never know how to be a mother in Kansas. And mostly, she is afraid of being alone. But now, she has Ruth. Thank goodness for Ruth, but having her in the family also means they must walk the pastures instead of the road where Ray might happen along in his truck.

"Hey, look," Evie shouts, holding one mitten to her forehead to shade her eyes and pointing with the other toward the fields south of the house. "There's Daniel. And that's Ian with him."

"Where do you suppose they're going?" Celia asks, knowing that it's Daniel not because she can see his face but because Ian's limp gives them away.

"Out for a walk, I suppose," Elaine says as the two silhouettes disappear over a rise in the pasture.

"Well," Evie says, swiveling on one heel so she can march back down the hill. "I hope they're not up to no good."

Celia pats the small of Ruth's back and gestures for everyone to follow Evie toward home. "I'll tell you what," Celia says. "No good will be had if we don't all get warmed up soon."

At the bottom of the hill, Evie stops, points toward the road straight ahead where a black sedan appears out of the glare of the late-day sun and shouts, "Look. It's Father Flannery's car."

Celia stops midway down the hill and pulls her jacket closed. "We don't have to go back, Ruth," she says. The prairie chickens rise up again as the car pa.s.ses, kicking up dust and gravel. "Arthur can see to him."

Elaine nods. "Yes, we could stay out a while longer."

"They'll be waiting," Ruth says, tugging on the edges of her stocking cap and continuing toward home. "Can't hide from this forever."

[image]

Daniel stares down at Ian and thinks that even flat on his stomach, Ian is crooked. Not as crooked as when he has to swing one leg over the bench seats in the school cafeteria, but crooked all the same. He is wearing his new black boots and even though his mother said they were only for church and school, Ian wears them all the time because they make things almost normal for him. One of the boots, the right one, has a two-inch heel while the other has a normal, flat heel. The thick heel is almost thick enough, but not quite and black boots don't do anything about a spine that looks like a stretched-out question mark. As Ian lifts up on his elbows, pressing his cheek to the stock of Daniel's new .22-caliber rifle, his shoulders sink under the weight of his head. Black boots don't do anything about Ian's oversized head, either. None of Daniel's Detroit friends had giant heads or lopsided legs. They were regular kids with regular-shaped bodies. Not knowing why but wanting to look somewhere else, anywhere else but at Ian, Daniel turns toward the road as a black sedan drives over the hill to the north.

"That Father Flannery?" Ian asks, lifting his head up out of his shoulders for a moment before letting it sink again.

"Yeah. How'd you know?"

"Everyone knows he's coming today." Ian rests his right cheek against the rifle.

Pulling his jacket closed, Daniel exhales and squats next to Ian.

"Not too close," Ian says so Daniel scoots a few feet away, flipping up his collar and wrapping his arms around his waist. "Go there, behind the gra.s.s where they won't see you."

Daniel waddles a few more feet to the left where he'll be hidden by a clump of brome gra.s.s. "Won't my folks hear the shots?" he asks, still able to see the roof of his house. "I mean, we're not so far away."

"No one thinks anything about a gunshot this time of year. Hush and let me get the first one. The rest are easier." Ian inhales and lifts his head again. "There," he whispers. "Did you see it?"

Daniel stretches enough to see beyond the gra.s.s into the pasture on the other side of the barbed-wire fence. "I don't know. Maybe."

"It'll be back. Sit tight."

"How does everyone know? About Father Flannery, I mean."

"Everyone knows everything." Ian props the gun in his right hand and breathes short puffs of warm air into his left fist. A clump of brown hair has fallen out of his hat and across his forehead. "Everyone knows everything about everybody," Ian says, tucking the clump of hair back under his stocking cap with his warmed-up left hand.

In Detroit, n.o.body knew anything about anybody. They were too busy worrying about the Negroes who wanted to work side by side with the white people. They were too busy worrying about the color of their neighborhood and kids who couldn't play outside anymore. n.o.body had time to care about someone like Father Flannery or why he was visiting on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. People in Kansas have nothing but time. That's what Mama says whenever Grandma Reesa shows up without an invitation.

"Know what else they say?" Ian says, crawling forward a few inches on his hips and elbows. The boot with the thick heel drags behind.

Daniel shakes his head. "Got mud stuck in your shoes," he says, pointing at the tread on the bottom of Ian's boots. Ida Bucher will know he wore them in the field. She'll whip him because money doesn't grow on trees and neither do black boots with extra-thick heels. "You'll need a nail to dig that out."

"They say your Uncle Ray went crazy from drinking."

Daniel stands and looks back at his house. Though he can't see the driveway, he knows Father Flannery has parked his black car there. He will have gone inside and is probably sitting at the kitchen table. Mama will take his coat and serve him a piece of the apple pie that Aunt Ruth made after breakfast. Dad will drink a cup of coffee, cream and two sugars.

"He didn't even get his crop planted." Ian's head pops up, his legs go rigid and he fires.

Daniel stumbles backward, crushing a few feet of the new winter wheat and presses his hands over his ears. Beside him, Ian lifts up on his knees and watches his target. Wondering who or what may have heard them, Daniel scans the horizon.

"Got him," Ian says, flipping the safety and shifting the gun to the other side so he can pa.s.s it off to Daniel. "Now be real quiet. And get ready."

Keeping low to the ground where he'll stay out of sight, Daniel scoots toward Ian again and they switch places.

"Come on," Ian says, pulling back the bolt action. An empty casing pops out and flies over his left shoulder and after a new bullet has dropped into place, he pushes the rifle at Daniel. "Hurry up or you'll miss them."

"Who didn't plant his crop?"

"Your Uncle Ray," Ian says, flipping off the safety and pressing Daniel's right hand over the stock of the gun. "A lot of nice land going to waste. That's what Dad says. My brother says Ray got sick from all the drinking and the sheriff took him to Clark City. Says it's been coming for years. Says that's where people go to dry out."

"Dry out?" Daniel asks. Propping himself up on his elbows, he looks down the barrel of the gun and tries to balance it. The wooden stock is cold on his bare hands and against his cheek.

"Dry out. You know. Stop drinking. Your Uncle Ray is a drunk. Everyone says so. Says your Aunt Ruth is a married woman and belongs with her husband. Says he wouldn't be such a drunk if she'd go home."

With his lips pressed together, Daniel stares up at Ian.

"That's what they say. Not me. Hey, there's one."

Daniel flattens out so he can see under the barbed-wire fence. A hundred feet away, surrounded by unplowed ground covered with dry stubble, is the mound that had been Ian's target. One small head shaped like a giant walnut pops out of a hole in the center of the mound and then disappears. A few moments later, a prairie dog creeps out and lifts onto his hind legs. Its brown, furry body is plumper than the one Ian shot.

"Wait. Don't be too quick," Ian says.

"Who cares what they say about Aunt Ruth?" Daniel's breath warms the gun where it's pressed to his cheek. And then, remembering the words Dad used when he sent Uncle Ray away, Daniel says, "She's not my concern."

"Some people even say your Uncle Ray had something to do with taking Julianne Robison. Say that he is just that crazy. Even say he killed your Aunt Eve. But that was a long time ago."

"That's a lie," Daniel says, thinking that he'd know for sure if his own aunt was dead. "A G.o.d d.a.m.ned lie."

"I ain't saying it," Ian says. " 'Course it's Jack Mayer who took Julianne. But you ought to know that since you're the only one who's seen him." Ian kneels behind the same clump of gra.s.s. "Watch what you're doing. Careful." Before the new boots, Ian didn't squat or sit on the ground much because getting up was too hard. It's easier now but he still groans on the way down. "Wait another second. We might see more."

The prairie dog that Ian shot lies at the base of the mound, which, according to Ian, means he grazed it. A direct hit would blow the animal a foot in the air. Ian said it was best when that happened. Best for who, Daniel thinks, as the prairie dog starts to chirp-slow steady chirps as it drops down onto all fours. His stubby tail flicks in sets of three.

"Ready." Ian waddles a few feet closer, close enough that Daniel smells his moldy clothes and new leather boots, but the prairie dog won't smell him because Ian made sure they were downwind.

"Whoever said that about Ray, you tell them I don't care," Daniel says, pressing his cheek against the gun until it digs into his cheekbone and his eyes water. "I don't give one good G.o.d d.a.m.n." Then he jabs his elbows into ground that is recently plowed and soft. Squinting through his right eye, he bites the inside of his cheek and tilts the barrel until the tip lines up in the sight.

"Don't talk. Take a deep breath, hold it, then fire."

The prairie dog crawls down the mound and begins to drag the injured one toward the hole.

"Not one good G.o.d d.a.m.n bit," Daniel whispers.

"You got to be quick," Ian says, close enough that Daniel smells his breath. Slowly, Ian lifts his hands and covers both ears. "Now."

Daniel tightens his index finger, the trigger softening under the pressure. He inhales and squeezes his shoulder blades until his neck muscles ache and his lungs burn. The trigger collapses, and the gun fires. The prairie dog shoots up into the air and lands a few feet away. The chirping is gone.

"Got him," Ian shouts. He stumbles as he tries to stand, so stays put instead. "Now we have to wait. They'll be back. Be back for sure."

Peering through the rifle's sight, Daniel scans the field until he sees the dead prairie dog lying in the gra.s.s. Ian says prairie dogs are bad for the fields. He says they're rodents and that there will be lots more in the spring. Baby ones by June. They're the hardest to get. They don't come out like the others. Daniel drops the barrel of the rifle, flips the safety and pushes up on his knees.

"I'm not waiting around for another stupid prairie dog."

Being careful to step over the winter wheat, Daniel stands and walks toward home. Behind him, Ian stumbles with his old rhythm, the one he had before he got his new boots. G.o.d d.a.m.n, Daniel hates that sound.

"Slow down," Ian calls out.

Holding the rifle at his side instead of over his shoulder, Daniel takes long steps toward home and doesn't look back.