Crooked River: A Novel (19 page)

“What time did he leave?” I asked.

“Pastor Mike?”

I nodded. “Because maybe he killed her later. After he left your house. Maybe he stuffed her in the trunk of his car and then—”

“I’m not doing this.”

“—after dinner he drove out to some secluded spot in the woods and dumped her body in the river and that was that and now he has this perfect alibi. There was time, you know. He had plenty of time before and after, and maybe—”

He grabbed my arm. “Sam. Stop it. You have to stop. Bear did this.”

I glared at him, then shook his hand off and opened the folder again.

Inside were old employment records from years ago when Bear had a real job, bank statements showing balances hovering dangerously close to zero, my mother’s obituary cut from the newspaper and pasted to a single sheet of white paper, the photocopy version blurred and hard to read. Every minuscule and boring detail of my father’s tragic life. Nothing and nothing and nothing. And then a paper-clipped stack of papers, public records, court documents, criminal history. And I had a sudden recollection of the arraignment hearing and how the prosecuting attorney had mentioned a prior arrest and how it hadn’t really made an impression on me at the time because there was so much else going on and I thought it was just something all lawyers said at those kinds of hearings because my father had never been arrested before.

Outside, a car door slammed.

Travis swung his head toward the front door. “Shit. Sam! We have to go. Now!”

He grabbed my arm. I pushed him off, scanning the papers, trying to make sense of the numbers and abbreviations, the code and garbled text that regular people weren’t meant to understand. Finally, I read something that I could grab hold of: Criminally Negligent Homicide, Vehicular Homicide, DUI. There were dates, too, coinciding with the day Bear disappeared and the day he called home, two years later. Arrested. Convicted. Sentenced. Time served. Released on probation. And somewhere out there was a family grieving, left in pieces because Bear had done the one thing I never thought him capable of doing. I thought about all the times I’d asked my mother where he was, all the times she refused to tell me. My knees bent. I sank into the chair again.

Someone was coming up the porch steps. Keys rattled.

“Sam!” Travis pulled me to my feet. He took the papers, threw them on the table, and dragged me out of the kitchen, down the hallway, into the bedroom.

My legs were made of stone. I couldn’t get them to work right. Travis pushed me out the window. The front door opened.

“Go!” Travis pulled me across the yard to the fence.

I jumped and grabbed for the top of the planks, but slipped and fell backward into the grass. A splinter jabbed into my palm. Travis jerked me to my feet again, wrapped his arms around my legs, and hoisted me over the fence. My skirt caught on a nail near the top. I ripped the fabric free and tumbled into the weeds on the other side. Travis jumped down beside me a few seconds later, grabbed my elbow, and dragged me toward the chain-link fence. We clambered over and slid to the bottom of the culvert, pressed our backs up against the concrete side, and didn’t move.

“Shit,” Travis whispered. “Shit. Shit. Shit. What the hell was that? What the hell were you thinking?”

I gathered my knees up close to my chest and buried my face against my legs, shut my eyes, counted off the seconds.

A sliding glass door opened, and I knew we were caught. A few seconds more, then Deputy Santos would come over that fence and down into the culvert, she’d say my name and I’d look up and see her standing above me, maybe with her gun drawn, with that same disappointed look she’d had when I brought her Taylor Bellweather’s necklace. I would look up and see her blotting out the sun.

The sliding glass door slammed shut.

I lifted my head and looked sideways at Travis.

“Is she gone?” I whispered.

He shook his head and shrugged.

We listened for a while longer, waiting for footsteps in the grass, the clink of handcuffs, Deputy Santos calling for us to come on out now. We waited. We listened. A blue jay shrieked. Somewhere far off a bass thump pounded, and it echoed the thump in my chest. I stretched out my legs and inspected the tear in my skirt. A two-inch-long, jagged hole just below my left knee. I leaned my head back on the cement. Franny wasn’t going to be happy when she saw that.

Travis’s shoulder brushed mine. He took a deep breath. I did, too.

Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw my mother gray and dead. I saw Taylor Bellweather beaten, torn apart. And dead. Every true thing in this world, everything I thought was real: dead, dead, and dying.

Except.

I turned my head, and Travis was looking back at me. I leaned in before he could say anything and pressed my lips to his. He tasted like salt and dust and stale smoke. He tensed at first, then relaxed and brought his hand around, burying his fingers in my hair.

I kissed him because I wanted to be close to someone warm, someone who was breathing, to see what it was like, taking in life, giving my own. I wanted to feel something, anything. I wanted to feel alive. But instead I felt only rough skin and a slight pressure against my bottom lip. No tingling fingers or singing angels. No rush of heat to my cheeks. No spark or snap or blinding light. Nothing that meant anything at all. A kiss was supposed to bring people together. A kiss changed everything, that’s what Laura had told me. A kiss was a beginning, an awakening, an exchanging of souls. I didn’t believe in souls. This kiss was just a kiss, and the dead were all still dead.

I pulled away from him. “We should go.”

“Yeah,” he said, but then leaned forward again, reaching for me, wanting more.

“Your mom’s probably worried.” I pushed him off and rose to my feet, brushed dirt and bits of dried grass off my skirt.

He scrambled after me and tried to take my hand, but I moved ahead of him before he could.

When we reached his bike, he said, “Hey. Are you . . . are we okay?”

I grabbed his helmet and shoved it down over my head.

22
ollie

W
ednesday night and the pews are full. So are the rafters.

The people bow their heads.

The Shimmering float quietly above, calmed tonight by so much remembering. The ones who are unattached, who follow no one, come to places like this. Churches, mosques, temples, cemeteries. To pray and sigh and wait.

They whisper, but there are no words. It is, instead, a sound like breathing, like a single, final, fading gasp. Candles flicker on the altar and in holders along every wall. It is dark enough and light enough that the Shimmering look like the people they used to be, and that makes me nervous. There are so many here, so many I do not know.

When they are all energy and light, it is easy to pretend they’re not real.

But with shape and form and face, they are impossible to ignore.

The one who follows me drifts up and down the center aisle. When she passes our pew, she smiles and looks so much like my mother that I start to cry. I let the tears fall. They are not out of place here where everyone but my sister has damp eyes and trembling lips.

“It’s not a funeral,” Franny said on the drive over after my sister asked why we had to go. “It’s a memorial service.”

“But why even have one at all? She wasn’t from around here. And no one knew her before . . .”

“People want to express their sympathies and show support. To find closure and then move on. Pastor Mike’s offering a safe space for our community to gather. To heal.”

“It’s weird,” my sister said.

Pastor Mike leans over the pulpit. He is drenched in sweat and keeps dabbing his eyes with a balled-up handkerchief. He says, “When someone so young and still so full of life is taken from this world in such a violent manner, the easiest thing to do is blame God. Or question his love, his mercy, his sense of justice. But we must not blame God. God is love. God is good. He did not create evil in this world. He does not cause it. It is our sin and shortcomings. Our own poor choices. We may never fully understand, never know why. The best we can do is pray and trust our Lord and Savior, find our peace in him.”

My sister rolls her eyes and squeezes her hands together in her lap. She doesn’t believe in God.

A
fter our mother’s funeral, when everyone came over to the house for lemon cake and raspberry punch, my sister pulled me into a room alone and said, “What these people are saying, it’s bullshit. You know that, right? You’re never going to see Mom again. There’s no heaven. No bright tunnel of light. She’s not looking down on us. She’s not our guardian angel. She’s not going to be there to help us cross over. Don’t believe any of it, Ollie, okay? It’s better if you just say good-bye now and get on with things.”

It’s hard to say good-bye to somebody who’s still here.

P
astor Mike is talking now about a bigger plan, a reason for our losses.

The one who follows me stops beside our pew. She spreads herself thin above me and my sister and Nana Fran and Papa Zeb. She spreads thin and rains blue fire down on our heads.

I want to tell her I’m sorry for what I said all those weeks ago and how I made her cry, but I think if I do, she’ll leave. Only this time she won’t come back. She’ll go wherever it is they go when their business is finished here. To heaven or some distant cluster of stars.

She’ll go. And I’m not ready yet.

My sister leans across me and whispers to Nana Fran, “I’m going to the bathroom.”

Nana Fran pinches her lips together, but doesn’t say no.

My sister slips out of our pew and down the aisle through the double doors. The one from the river goes with her, slowing a little as she passes the very last pew where Mrs. Roth and Travis sit together. Billy Roth is not with them; neither is the pale girl. Mrs. Roth watches my sister leave, then touches Travis’s leg and whispers something in his ear.

Pastor Mike says, “Though we cannot say our good-byes in person, I believe she is able to hear us from heaven.” He smiles, though he’s not happy. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling and folds his hands. He says, “You are remembered. You are missed. You are loved.” And then he moves his eyes over the rows and rows of tragic faces but does not settle on any one. “Let us all bow our heads for a moment of silence and remember Taylor Bellweather. Pray for her family in this difficult time. Pray they will find comfort. Finally, pray they will always remember their daughter for how she lived rather than how she died.”

He bows his head.

From the silence comes weeping and sighing and sniffling and rustling tissue. Someone coughs.

The Shimmering stir the air and make the candles sputter.

And in the very last pew, Mrs. Roth stands and moves into the aisle, hurries through the double doors after my sister. Travis goes with her.

I am the only one who sees them leave. I start to get up, but Nana Fran puts her hand on my knee and shakes her head.

23
sam

P
astor Mike’s office door was wide open. I glanced over my shoulder. The foyer was empty. I was alone and would probably never have another chance as good as this one. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, or if there was even anything to find. But I’d need something more than cobbled-together hunches to prove Pastor Mike was lying about what had happened the night of Taylor Bellweather’s death. I ducked inside and shut the door behind me.

The streetlights outside were close enough and shining through the picture window bright enough, I didn’t bother looking for a light switch. In the middle of the room, taking up most of the space, was a large wooden desk. If Pastor Mike had been sitting in his leather chair, he would have been the centerpiece. Bookshelves lined one wall. On the other hung an assortment of framed photographs and certificates. Set atop a filing cabinet in the corner was one of Billy Roth’s sculptures. It was similar to a piece I’d seen in a newspaper clipping a few years ago, surreal and, at first glance, repulsive, but take a second look and you might see something beautiful.

The one in the clipping took up half a room, but the piece on Pastor Mike’s cabinet was much smaller. The base was butter-brown wood carved to look like tiny, rolling mountains covered in pine forests. Four stumps grew up from the base and spread roots into the body of a fox. A real fox. Dead, now, of course. Taken apart, stuffed, and sewn back together. His legs had been cut off, his torso mounted on these intricate wooden replacements. His mouth was open, his head tipped back like he was howling, and long twists of wire shot past his sharp yellow teeth and into the air. Tiny metal birds in midflight had been welded onto the end of each wire. The fox’s tail was curved into an unnatural-looking S-shape, and a section of skin on its right hind leg had been peeled away, revealing bright white bone underneath. I could have stared at it for hours, but I knew if I stayed away too long Franny would send Zeb to come get me.

I turned my attention to Pastor Mike’s desk. The top was uncluttered. No papers strewn about, no haphazard piles, no pencils teetering on the edge, no jotted notes. Just a phone, a blank notepad, one pencil, a simple wooden cross, and a day planner. I flipped the day planner open to August. Most of his days were filled with things like board meetings and hospital visits, a counseling session with Mr. and Mrs. Dunsworth, the usual comings and goings of a small- town pastor. I closed the day planner and put it back exactly where I’d found it, lining the edges up with the corner of the desk. I bent and tried opening the drawers, but they were locked. I straightened a paper clip and jammed it into the keyhole, wiggled it around a little, but the lock stayed fast.

I scanned the bookshelves, running my finger across the spines, looking for something interesting, something that seemed out of place. Mostly there were the usual books about God and religion and how to counsel people who had post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, people who were alcoholics or drug abusers, people who had lost their way. There were books about financial planning, too, and how to run a business, books about strategic leadership and woodworking and how to cook Italian food. And Bibles. So many Bibles. All different versions and bindings and one written entirely in Hebrew.

I moved on to the wall of photographs and certificates. Here were diplomas and other various achievements alongside pictures of Pastor Mike with his parishioners. Smiling, happy, arm-around-shoulder pictures. Potlucks and fishing trips and volunteering at a soup kitchen. There was one of him and another man I recognized immediately as Billy Roth. They were standing waist-deep in a river, holding up the two fish they’d caught, still on hooks, swinging dead in the air. Both men were grinning like it hurt. Beside it was another picture of Pastor Mike, this time with the entire Roth family posing in front of one of Billy’s sculptures. Baby Travis was perched on his mother’s hip. A blond-haired girl who must have been Travis’s sister had her arms wrapped around Billy Roth’s legs. The sculpture they stood in front of was like the one I remembered from the news clipping, huge and grotesque.

It was hard to tell from the photograph exactly what the sculpture was. The main bodies looked like reindeer, but I couldn’t tell if they were real or carved from wood—though based on the fox sculpture, I imagined it was some combination of both. I counted four heads and sixteen hooves, or maybe there were seventeen. Antlers rose together, higher and higher, making a tangled column so tall it almost touched the ceiling. There were places too, where it looked like the insides of the reindeer had exploded out through their skin, where colored blobs hung frozen in midair. Maybe it was supposed to be some kind of metaphor, but I didn’t get it.

Out in the foyer, a door opened and closed. Two people started arguing in hushed voices. I was trapped in Pastor Mike’s office until they left.

I moved closer to a watercolor painting hanging beside the door that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Fine brushstrokes and saturated colors came together in the form of a beautiful church that seemed to be made almost entirely of glass. The architecture was simple. Straight lines and steel beams, a one-room sanctuary, a steeple reflecting the sun. Inside were pews all in rows, the pulpit, the altar, a cross behind. But even more beautiful than the church’s simplicity and beveled edges was what surrounded it on the outside. A quilt of wildflowers, a lush green tapestry, statuesque trees, and off in the distance, a sparkle of blue, hinting at water, at a river flowing into forever. At first I thought it was just something nice, something lovely for Pastor Mike to look at and dream about when he grew tired of his own white, clapboard, shake-shingle-roofed building surrounded by asphalt, but then my eyes focused on what was hanging on the wall beneath it. Blueprints. I took the frame carefully off the wall and brought it close to my face so I could see the fine lines better.

Not blueprints exactly, more like a rough sketch. Here was the glass church, and here was a river running behind it. I squinted to read the writing that curved alongside the water.
Crooked River
. A hard knot formed in my throat. My eyes moved over the drawing quickly now, jumping from label to label, allowing just enough time to take in the name and move on.
Service Road 19. Blue Heron Pond. Lambert Road. Johnson Farm
. All familiar places. Places I’d spent the past eight summers exploring. The glass church was sketched inside a wide open space encircled with trees a quarter mile east of Zeb’s barn if you followed the dirt road to the hemlock stump. Underneath the building were the words
Terrebonne Baptist
. A church that hadn’t been built. Yet. A church that would never be built as long as Bear had any say in the matter. But Bear was in jail now, thanks to Pastor Mike’s statement. Bear was in jail and no longer had a say in anything. I hung the plans back on the wall.

Outside the voices had gotten louder, right up close to the door. Someone said, “She’s not here. Let’s just go back inside.”

A second person, a woman, said, “She couldn’t have gone far.”

“She’s probably in the bathroom.” I recognized Travis’s voice now and felt pretty sure he was talking to his mother. “I’m sure she’ll be back in a few minutes. Come on.”

“Just let me . . .” The handle turned.

I took a step back, searching the room for someplace to hide. Too late, the door opened.

Mrs. Roth didn’t seem at all surprised to see me. Instead, she smiled. “What are you doing in here, dear?”

“I . . . uh . . .” I took another step back and bumped against the desk. “I was . . . Pastor Mike told me I could borrow one of his books.”

Mrs. Roth glanced at the bookshelves and then at my empty hands. She said, “Travis told me about your mother. Poor thing. I’m so sorry.”

I gave her a halfhearted smile.

“I was worried about you when I saw you leave the service.” She gestured to Travis who was still standing in the foyer. “
We
were worried.”

Travis moved into the doorway behind her. When he dropped me off yesterday at the house, Ollie was waiting for me on the front porch swing. So I’d just thanked him for the ride, and he left. There’d been no time in between for us to talk about what we’d found at Deputy Santos’s house, or about the kiss and how quickly I’d pushed him away.

He stood in front of me now, blushing and staring at his feet.

“I’m fine,” I said.

Mrs. Roth came into the office. She crossed to the wall of photographs and tapped her finger on the picture of her family taken so many years ago. “Did you see this? I’ve always loved this picture.”

“Mom,” Travis said.

“This was the sculpture that made my Billy famous.” She leaned in closer, squinting, and wiped the glass with her sleeve, then turned and gave me a hard stare. “Travis told you about the show?”

I nodded.

“Only a few more weeks now.”

The congregation had started singing, and I wanted to return to the sanctuary, but Travis was blocking the doorway.

Mrs. Roth took a small step toward me. “It’s been ten years, you know. Since he’s been in his studio. Ten long years. Hard years.” She had a run in one of her stockings, from her ankle to her knee. “This piece he’s working on now? It could change everything.”

“Mom,” Travis said again.

She glared at him and then back at me. “Our family is depending on this show. All of Terrebonne is.”

The fox stared down at us from the top of the filing cabinet. His eyes glinted like Mrs. Roth’s. I licked my suddenly dry lips and backed toward the office door. Travis moved out of my way. I turned my back on them and hurried through the foyer toward the sanctuary doors.

I slipped inside as quickly and as quietly as I could, but Pastor Mike still noticed. He looked up from the hymnal spread open on the pulpit and lost his place in the song. He stumbled over the words, found them again, then sang louder, stronger, giving his whole attention once again to the sheet music in front of him.

O
llie and I sat between Zeb and Franny in the front seat of the truck, all of us squeezed together. They stopped to pick up a pizza and when they asked us what we wanted, I shrugged and said nothing because my stomach hurt. And Ollie shrugged and said nothing because she was still pretending to see ghosts. Zeb turned on the radio and asked what kind of music we liked listening to. I shrugged and said nothing. Ollie did the same. Franny turned off the radio and asked us if we wanted to talk about anything.

“The service,” she said. “Your father’s arrest. Your mom?”

I shook my head. Ollie slumped down in the seat and crossed her arms over her chest.

We used to play this game on long car rides where we would both turn our faces away, pretending to look out our respective windows, and slowly, very slowly we’d start to turn inward again, toward each other. If we both turned at the same time, we’d both whip our faces back around to our windows. If one person was looking and the other person wasn’t, the looker would stare and stare until the person being looked at started to turn, then the looker would have to whip her head around fast, pretending she hadn’t been staring at all. We called it Look, Don’t Look, and the point was to not get caught, or maybe the point was just to make each other laugh.

Ollie was always the first one to start laughing. Her shoulders would bounce up and down, and then she’d snort and giggle, gasping, “Stop it, Sammy. Stop!” And when I didn’t, when I made her laugh even harder, so hard tears rolled down her face, she’d clutch her stomach and say, “My seams! They’re splitting!” And then, if I still didn’t stop, she’d say, “Sammy! I’m going to pee my pants!” And after that we’d collapse into each other, arms and hands tangled, laughing and laughing until we’d forgotten what had been so funny in the first place.

I stared at Ollie’s profile, her stretched-thin lips and tired eyes, so much weight, so much sadness. In this dim light, her hair looked gray, her skin see-through, like she was a tiny, old woman. I tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away from me, curled it in her lap instead. The last two miles back to Zeb and Franny’s house, no one said a single word.

A
t the kitchen table, I picked the pieces of pepperoni off my slice of pizza and stacked them on the edge of my plate. Ollie kicked her feet against the chair rungs and started in on her third piece. She kept her eyes down, staring at the tablecloth.

Franny was talking about how Pastor Mike should have decorated with lilies instead of roses tonight because roses were too festive and fit better at weddings and birthdays than memorial services.

I picked up my slice of pizza, then set it down again without taking a bite.

“Got something on your mind, Sam?” Zeb asked, cutting Franny off midsentence.

She sniffed loudly, her only protest, and dug into her pizza with a knife and fork.

I wiped my fingers on a napkin. “Are you going to sell the meadow?”

Zeb snorted. “Where’d you hear a fool thing like that?”

“Travis told me.” It seemed a good enough answer as any.