The Little Giant Of Aberdeen County Part 12

"The whole thing?" I breathed. It seemed impossible to me that one woman's fingers could loop and st.i.tch with such abundance. How many years had it taken her? I wondered. And what kind of fury had she harbored inside of her to make a kaleidoscope like this? In the parlor's gloom, the colors seemed to vibrate, inviting conspiracies and legends. Everyone in town knew about Tabitha Morgan, of course. An old maid at the tender age of twenty-six, she was Aberdeen's primary healer until the first Dr. Morgan loped into town and married her.

It was an unhappy union, though, and Tabitha died young-some said by her own hand, and others said by her husband's. And no one had ever found her shadow book.

"Do you think her spel book real y exists?" I asked the doctor now, stretching out a finger to tap the old fabric.

Robert Morgan snorted like one of August's horses and bared his long teeth. "That's just a heap of women's gossip-a sin I hope you don't indulge. If you're going to get along in this house, Truly, you wil keep what you see to yourself.

My patients expect it."

"Of course," I stammered.

He spun on his heel. "You can go on upstairs, then. Your room is the third door on the left.

I'l leave you to manage. It doesn't look like you brought much. Oh, and if you want to"-he glanced over his shoulder at the quilt-"you can take that old thing up with you. I have no use for it." He paused.

"We general y like to eat around six. Bobbie's around here somewhere. I imagine he'l be along to say hel o. He'l tel you what he likes for supper." And before I could say anything else, he backed out of the room and squeezed the door firmly shut behind him, leaving me alone with the puzzling quilt, whistling as he walked away, as pleased with himself as if he had just sealed a genie into a bottle.

He'd given me the guest room, with its windows overlooking the back garden and fields and a four-poster bed I wasn't sure would hold me. I spread the quilt over it, pleased with the cheer it injected into the room. Come winter, I thought, when Aberdeen's colors ran together into muck, I'd be glad of the embroidered red-and blue-tipped blooms and faded green stems. They would be a reminder that the green stems. They would be a reminder that the world outside wasn't gone, just sleeping.

I trudged over to the window and pul ed the curtains back a little. The gla.s.s in the window was old and streaked, but I stil had a pleasant view out over the flower beds Maureen had planted aeons ago. Kneeling in them, his head bowed as if he were praying, I saw Marcus, his hands sunk amid the stalks. Aware that someone was looking at him, he glanced up to the window, his almond eyes startled wide. I half raised a hand to wave at him, and he lifted his chin up at me and squinted. It wasn't exactly a hero's welcome, but it was nice to see at least one familiar face. Just then, I heard a scuttling outside the door. Curious, I walked across the room and cracked the door, only to have it strike against something soft and yielding.

"Ow!" a child's voice cried, and my nephew, Bobbie Morgan, popped his blond head into the room. I caught my breath and took a step back. It was as if Serena Jane had been shrunk into a child again-but a boy this time, with elfin ears and a gravity about him that must have come from the Morgan side of the family.

"Oh," I stammered, "I didn't know anyone was there."

The rest of Bobbie appeared in the doorway-a lanky body clothed in a faded T-shirt, no shoes, and, tipped back in his arms, a vase overloaded with flowers. "Marcus let me pick them for your room," he said shyly, casting his eyes down to the petals. "I thought you might like yel ow and blue."

I reached down and took the vase.

"They're real pretty. Thank you." I set the vase on one of the night tables.

Liberated from the flowers, Bobbie looked even skinnier, the bones in his arms as brittle as two kindling sticks. He scowled. "What's that doing in here? That goes in the parlor." He jerked his chin toward the bed and Tabitha's quilt.

I turned back to Bobbie. "I'm sorry.

Would you like to have it in your room instead?"

Bobbie considered, his eyebrows slanted fiercely in toward each other. "No. My father wouldn't like it." Underneath the hem of his shorts, his knees stuck out like overturned bowls. They glowed as white as spil ed sugar. I didn't have any experience with children, but I knew plenty about not having a mother. I remembered al the afternoons I'd spent in my mother's closet, inhaling the diminishing scent off of her coats, her shoes-an odor unlike anything I'd ever known. I patted the quilt.

"Wel , why don't we say this? Anytime you want to, you can come in here and lie down on this bed. And we won't tel your father. It wil just be our little secret."

I watched as Bobbie weighed the consequences of this one smal disobedience.

"Okay," he final y agreed, his voice cracking. He tilted his head the same way Serena Jane used to when she examined herself in the mirror. It's too bad he's a boy, I found myself thinking. He's such a beautiful child. Which was, I would soon come to learn, what scared Robert Morgan the most. Boys weren't meant to be pretty. They were meant to be st.u.r.dy, and rough, and rugged as mountains. Why, I thought with a tiny smile, they were meant to be just like me.

As soon as he got me settled in, Robert Morgan stalked over to his office, double-checked that the handle was locked, then resumed his pacing. On his desk, he had flattened my sister's note, smoothing out the creases, tracing the smudged letters over and over with his skinny index finger. Don't come look for me. Like he would ever bother, Robert Morgan thought. Like he wanted her back. Stil , my sister's disappearance was a problem. It didn't look good to have your wife making tracks. It suggested certain inadequacies in the marriage that he didn't feel like justifying. He narrowed his eyes. It was time to cal in a favor.

One of the distinct advantages to being a doctor's son was that Robert Morgan had al his father's col eagues at his fingertips, including Bernie Briggs, the county coroner. It took a minute to get Bernie on the phone, but soon his bristly voice fil ed the receiver. A few more minutes was al it took, and Robert Morgan had him eating out of the palm of his hand.

"Of course I'l cal you first if something comes in," Bernie promised. "Just as sure as sure can be."

"Thank you," the doctor murmured, making sure to keep his voice dipped low. "It's been a real trial." That taken care of, he hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, his arms folded behind his head. If he'd had a cigar, I'm sure he would have held it clamped right between his front teeth at that moment. But it wasn't time to rest on his laurels yet.

He stil had some cal s to make.

Putting his feet back down on the ground, he picked up the phone and dialed the police in Hansen-the closest law enforcement to Aberdeen. Once, during the forties, the county had considered putting a police force in Aberdeen, but, as the police commissioner had said, you don't go pouring water over a fire that's not lit. As he dialed the station, Robert Morgan considered this oversight to be a huge advantage. On the other end of the line, a chirpy receptionist answered. Slowly and careful y, Robert Morgan gave his name and address. He spoke distinctly, making sure the girl had al the time in the world to write down the story of his missing wife.

As for the last number he phoned, wel , I could have recited it even if I'd forgotten my own name. The line jangled and echoed in the doctor's ear, and then a voice breathed a smal greeting into the other end. "Amelia," said Robert Morgan, "how lucky you're home. And always so quiet. I'm counting on that. I need a little favor." Amelia had reverted to silence on the other end of the line, so the doctor continued. "I'm only asking you because I'm trying to protect Truly. What with her sister disappearing and her recent move from the farm, I'm afraid she might be too emotional y fragile. But you, wel , you're tougher than you look."

"Get to the point." When forced to, Amelia would use words sparingly with people outside her family. She had her father's same low tolerance for preambles and prologues. She knew the heart of a deal came when the card was turned and not a moment sooner.

"I might need you to come with me to make an identification. You know, in the worst-case scenario."

"Humpf." Even without words, Amelia could always get a point across.

"What are you implying?" Robert Morgan's voice slid like silk through the phone.

Amelia was silent, so Robert Morgan answered the question for her. "I suppose you're wondering why I'm bothering to look for my wife when she ran away?"

Amelia breathed into the phone. It was, in fact, what she had been thinking. Logistics had never been a problem for her. Robert Morgan clenched his teeth and continued his one-sided conversation. "That's what you're going to help me put to rest. Wait for me to cal you. And remember, don't breathe a word."

Amelia sighed. The doctor's voice came out as rough as a lick of sandpaper. "If you help me with this one thing, Amelia, I wil make it worth your while, I promise. But if you don't-" He didn't finish his sentence, but he didn't need to. If he wanted to, Amelia knew, Robert Morgan could get his friends at the bank to cal in almost every debt owed on the farm for the past fifty years, sending her and her mother out the back door with what little they owned in a wheelbarrow.

in a wheelbarrow.

She hung up the phone, her heart racing.

She didn't have a choice in this matter, she knew, but maybe she could up the stakes a little. Maybe she could wrangle some sort of permanent work out of the doctor. Maybe she could settle her remaining debts once and for al . In situations like these, Amelia had learned, where the deck was stacked against you, the best thing you could do was to take the next card, play your hand anyway, and keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Alone in my room the first night, I ignored the television set propped on a chair in the corner and slid my few pairs of dungarees and shirts into a drawer in the dresser. I put my toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on one night table and then fussed with Bobbie's flowers on the other. Final y, I reached into the bottom of my battered suitcase and withdrew my familiar cardboard box. After settling myself on the creaky mattress, I opened the worn flaps and rummaged inside for the wad of bil s that I'd rol ed into a tight tube. Over the past few years, as al of August's horses had either died or been taken away, I'd added less and less to the bundle, but there was stil a sizable amount of money in my hand. I'd never counted, but it was enough to strain the rubber band, enough to make a gambler's heart beat fast. What would I do with it, though? Especial y now that I was bound to the doctor and Bobbie, with his strange stare and skinny arms, missing his mother?

I replaced the money and fished around again for my old deck of cards, soft at the edges and quiet in my fingers. I hadn't had them out of the box since August's death, but here, in this new setting, they seemed tatty and lifeless, so I put them back.

Only my old familiar photographs of my parents and Serena Jane were left. There were no photographs of me in the box and none of the Dyersons. There had never been any occasion for any to be taken.

People like us didn't make history, even among ourselves.

But maybe that can change, I thought, nestling under Tabitha Morgan's handiwork in the dark. I felt the quilt's cotton batting settle around my bulk and imagined myself covered with the botanical network. Everyone on earth left something behind, I reasoned, even if it was just bone dust. August had left his bow-backed horses, Tabitha her sewing.

Serena Jane had left me her son, even if she was just gone from Aberdeen, and my mother had left me. What would my legacy be?

I tried to think further, but a breeze outside set the leaves to rustling, a sound that reminded me of the Dyersons and their farm, and before I knew it, I was pul ed away from thought and down into a deep and dreamless sleep like thread pa.s.sing through a needle.

Chapter Thirteen.

After just two weeks, it was as if I'd been bustling around Robert Morgan's house for the better portion of my life. It was astonishing to me, real y, that a man I barely knew could so quickly become a source of routine for me, but that was Robert Morgan for you.

Everything in the house was just the way he liked it. Order was the most important thing for him, and along those lines, the doctor had inst.i.tuted a panoply of domestic rules that could make your head wobble. We ate sweet b.u.t.ter, not salted, drank skim milk, not whole, bought our bread intact and sliced it ourselves, and strained the pulp from our orange juice with a miniature strainer. Bacon was supposed to be served crispy but not burned, the newspaper was supposed to be folded back up into thirds and left on the corner of the kitchen table, and if I got the yolk too hard in his egg in the morning, he'd chuck the whole mess in the trash and refuse to eat again until lunch.

As for the doctor's wardrobe, most of his shirts were solid colored, although he had some shirts were solid colored, although he had some checkered ones for the weekend, and he wanted al of them pressed with starch. He liked his socks sorted in his drawer according to color, and every Friday he left his shoes in the hal for me to polish.

It's a wonder all Serena Jane did was run off, I thought as I ran the iron around yet another pointed shirt col ar . I'm surprised she didn't commit murder first.

"Truly," Robert Morgan's voice rumbled through the open back porch door and into the kitchen. It was my second Sat.u.r.day with the doctor, which meant him catching up on paperwork in his office and me ironing and tending to a slow-roasted dinner none of us would real y want to eat. "Can you come on out here for a minute?"

I blew a strand of hair off my forehead and set the iron upright. "I'l be just a minute, Robert Morgan," I cal ed. I looked at the clock. Two. Bobbie had gone to visit a nursery with Marcus. They wouldn't be back for another hour. Time in the house without Bobbie was heavier, it seemed. The clock trudged instead of ticked, as if its hands were as big and heavy as mine.

I couldn't get over how like Serena Jane Bobbie was. Too like, actual y, for I was beginning to notice some peculiar aspects about him. For one thing, he seemed to be having problems fitting in with Aberdeen's other boys. I was hoping it was just because he was new to Aberdeen. He'd just started school, and it was clear that he wasn't used to the mores and means of a smal town.

"Where's the rest of it?" he asked, wrinkling his forehead in confusion, when I walked him up to the schoolhouse. Miss Sparrow stood on the front steps with her hands folded. Her hair looked whiter than I remembered, and upon closer inspection, the knuckles of her hands were as gnarled as old fruit branches, but she stil had the same ramrod posture, the same iron set to her neck.

"This is al of it," I answered. "This is the whole school. There aren't that many children in Aberdeen, so you al attend cla.s.s together. Later, when you're a little older, you'l get bussed over to Hansen, but when I was little, we went here al the way through high school-your mother, and Marcus, and Amelia, and me, and your father, too."

Bobbie's eyes brightened. "Real y? That lady was my mother's teacher? Do you think she remembers her?"

I grimaced but tried to make it look like a smile. "Oh, I'm sure Miss Sparrow remembers al of her students, but maybe"-I peeked over to confirm Priscil a Sparrow scowling heavily in my direction -"it's better not to bring up the past. Why not just go in there and let her love you for you?"

Bobbie threw his arms around my knees.

"Thanks, Aunt Truly! I'l see you back home at three, okay?"

I watched Miss Sparrow's eyes narrow as Bobbie approached, then her mouth split in half like an overripe melon, and I realized she was smiling. "Why, if it isn't little Bobbie Morgan," she simpered, sizing him up. "Back fresh from Buffalo.

My, my, how time flies. Just yesterday, it seems, I was teaching your father geography. Why don't you come inside?" She held the door open wide, and then, because it was stil so hot, she lingered a moment, relishing a last blast of air. "Where do you want to sit?" she asked, sweeping her arm to the rows of desks, and Bobbie hesitated before sliding over to the girls' side of the room and plopping himself down next to a very smal child with beribboned pigtails. Inwardly, I sighed. Please, I thought, let him get up and go to the other side of the room. Miss Sparrow's eyes flickered for a moment, but she took her hand off the door before I could see anything else, letting it slam shut.

Bobbie stayed in the seat he'd chosen, and he didn't prove popular with the other boys because of it. He was a wil -o'-the-wisp to their thunderclouds, a dented tin soldier to their cavalry.

He couldn't kick or throw a bal quite like the other boys, couldn't run as fast as them, and didn't find the same thril in hanging out of trees. After school, he walked home alone, relieved to get back to the safety of the kitchen, and if it had been a particularly bad day, I always knew because he went straight up to his room without eating the snack I fixed. I figured he must be missing his mother, but I had no idea how to bring her up, so we just let the memory of Serena Jane hang between us, as thick and tantalizing as the ghostly scent of night jasmine.

"Truly!" Robert Morgan's voice crackled through the kitchen again, a little crosser than before.

"I'm out here waiting on you ten minutes already! Did "I'm out here waiting on you ten minutes already! Did you forget?"

"Coming, Robert Morgan." I hung up the shirt I was working on and switched off the iron, then smoothed my dungarees over my hips and started across the porch, wondering if I should bring up Bobbie's school life with the doctor. Probably not, I decided. From what I had seen, Robert Morgan was mostly a Ten Commandments kind of father. He laid down the letter and line of the law and didn't seem too interested in any problems you had fol owing it.

"What do you need?" I poked my head around his office door. Out here, things were even more severe than in the house. I vaguely remembered the office and examining room from my visit as a child, but Robert Morgan had put some new equipment in and updated the lighting with fluorescent bulbs, with the result that even the healthy patients looked half-dead against the white wal s.

Robert Morgan sat behind his desk, his back perfectly straight in his big old chair, so that walking up to him felt like approaching a pharaoh. Al he needed was the headdress and a little goatee, I thought, but he settled for spectacles. He peered over them as if he were surprised to find me there in front of him, when wasn't he the one who'd been hol ering the wal s down for the past ten minutes, tel ing me to get my b.u.t.t across the porch? I folded my arms across my chest, glad for once that I was big and that he had to crick his neck to talk to me.

He swept an arm out in front of him. "Please, sit."

Al I wanted was to get back to my ironing, but I crunched my bones down into one of the little chairs in front of his desk and folded my hands up on my stuck-together knees the way Miss Sparrow had taught us in deportment lessons, most of which I never thought I'd need, but some of which I could see might come in handy now. Suddenly, Robert Morgan wrenched off his bifocals with a savage yank. This close, it left his face too naked, as if I'd just caught him stepping out of the shower. I looked back down at my cal used hands. Ugly as they were, anything was preferable to the doctor's come-to-Jesus stare.

He cleared his throat. "I have had an unpleasant phone cal from the county morgue. I need you to listen wel to what I'm about to say, and to prepare yourself."

My heart did a barrel rol in my chest. I swal owed hard. Of course, I already knew what the doctor was going to tel me. He was going to give me some grievous news about my sister. I'd been hoping for some kind of information about her, and now I realized with a rush that it wasn't going to be good. Robert Morgan put his gla.s.ses back on, as if he not only wanted to deliver the message, but also see its impact.

"A woman fitting your sister's description has been found floating in a pond outside of Albany.

She was naked, so there's no identifying clothing or jewelry. She'l require a positive ID from someone who knows her. From two people, in fact, but don't worry"-he stuck a hand across the desk, as if to steady me-"I've asked Amelia to come with me.

She knew Serena Jane wel enough to recognize her. You can stay here with Bobbie. You shouldn't have to do this."

I shifted my hips a little in the uncomfortable chair and didn't say anything. On the one hand, I was grateful for Robert Morgan's sudden and uncharacteristic concern about my emotional wel being. As sure as there were fleas on dogs, I would have crumpled if I'd had to see my beautiful sister's hair streaming across the steel table of a morgue. It just irritated me that Robert Morgan knew me wel enough to guess it.

There was a light tap on the office door, and Amelia's head appeared through the crack, her dark eyes calm. She tiptoed over to my chair and squeezed one of my shoulders. It was the first time I'd seen her since the move, and she looked even slimmer to me than usual, her black hair knotted neatly behind her neck. I remembered al the times in childhood she'd cal ed for me to come and kil off a spider in our bedroom, hiding her face behind her long tapered fingers, and it made it hard for me to imagine her at the doctor's side in a chil y, tiled room, watching as Bernie Briggs, the coroner, unzipped a rubber bag. Before I could change my mind, I sat up and spoke.

"Amelia, this shouldn't be your business.

I'l go with Robert Morgan. Lord knows I'm big and bad enough."

Amelia threw a panicked glance at the doctor and squeezed my shoulder again. The doctor nodded, and she rea.s.sured me in a wavering nodded, and she rea.s.sured me in a wavering falsetto, which was what her voice always did when she was nervous beyond belief. "Let me do this for you, Truly."

I should have known better. I was heads bigger than Amelia and about three times as wide around. Without exception, I was always the one who lifted the shovel in the garden, manhandled the meanest horse, picked up the sofa so she could sweep under it, and stacked the bales of hay. But weakness has an insidious side no matter how big you are. It wil creep and slide, wrapping around your ankle like a snake until it's up around your throat, squeezing hard, turning you blue in the face. I slumped in my chair, picturing Serena Jane bloated and tinged green, and understood again that if I had to see that image for real, it would undo me.

"Okay," I whispered. "Go." I felt an immediate wave of relief and, after it, the sinking feeling that I was letting the snake get too good a choke hold on my bones and that in the end, like al snakes, it would always be there, waiting to bite me in the behind.

"You're making a wise choice," the doctor said as I stood up to return to the kitchen.

"This is how families operate, Truly. We lift each other up when the road gets rough."

If that's true, I wanted to answer, I'd be in heaven right now. My road has been that b.u.mpy.

But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything at al . The snake had my tongue.

When Robert Morgan came home that evening, it was with the prowling step of a cat guarding a kil .

Amelia crept close on his heels, her lips pinched shut, as if what she'd seen that afternoon had left flecks of something malodorous dusted on her soul. I was sitting in the parlor with Tabitha's quilt over my knees. The dishes were done. Bobbie was fed and upstairs, and the house had settled into a twilight stupor, dragging me along with it. First I heard the front door open, and then I listened with astonishment to what sounded like Amelia and Robert Morgan whispering angrily. What could they ever have to discuss? I wondered. It was out of character for Amelia to speak to anyone but those closest to her.

"If I'd known, I never would have agreed,"

Amelia hissed, and the doctor gave it right back to her.

"One person dies, another lives, Amelia.

That's the way of the world."

"But this-"

The doctor cut her off. "This is what we agreed. Now you keep your end of the bargain."