Crooked River: A Novel (7 page)

“What things?” I asked her.

She glanced at me like she was still deciding. The brim of her hat tipped up just enough for our eyes to meet, and then she looked away again and said, “When he brought the truck back, the gas gauge wasn’t much lower than when he took it. That truck’s a hog. It takes a quarter of a tank just to get to Bend. Another quarter to get back.”

“Maybe he filled it before he gave it back to you.”

Franny stared at the pond and nodded slowly. “Maybe.”

One explanation was that Bear had found a gas station between here and there that was open late and he had somehow scraped together enough change to refill the tank. The other explanation, the one I thought Franny was worrying about, was that Bear hadn’t gone to Bend that night, hadn’t gone very far at all.

She took off her hat and wiped her sleeve across her brow. Her cheeks were flushed red, her eyes pinched against the sun. She put her hat back on. “Has he been acting funny to you lately? Doing things out of the ordinary?”

I shrugged. “He’s Bear. Everything’s out of the ordinary.”

But he
had
been acting stranger than usual recently. Leaving me and Ollie alone for long stretches of time, lying about where he was going and what he was doing, skipping Friday breakfast. All of which could be explained away as a husband grieving his dead wife, a father struggling to handle his new responsibilities. And then I thought about the key I was carrying around in my pocket.

“You can tell me, Sam,” Franny said. “You don’t have to be scared.”

I turned my back to her and faced the road. “Tell you what?”

“If there’s something you’re worried about with Bear. Maybe you saw something or heard something that needs telling.” The chair she was sitting in creaked. “I know it’s hard. He’s your father—”

“There’s nothing,” I said, but my voice cracked and Franny heard it.

She said, “That girl had family, too, Sam. Someone who loved her the way you loved your mama.”

A crow landed in the middle of the road, walked a few steps along the center dividing line, then flew off again.

“Don’t you think they deserve to know what happened?”

I reached behind me, picked up a pint jar, and held it to the sun, turning it until the light seemed trapped inside the viscous amber. In Greek mythology, the gods ate honey to preserve their immortality. I wished it could work like that for regular people too. Then at least we could have a choice about dying.

I set the jar back down with the others, trying to decide how much to tell Franny—if anything—how much was something to be worried about and how much was just coincidence. Blue and red flashing lights flickered on the hill and a patrol car came into view, coming fast from Terrebonne. Ominously, without sirens.

Franny leaned forward in her chair. “What’s all this, now?”

Another patrol car, this one with both its sirens and lights off, crested the hill and started down. A tow truck followed close behind. The lead car started to slow a few feet shy of Zeb and Franny’s driveway and I thought,
This is it. This is where it all falls apart.
Another second, maybe two—snap your fingers and your entire future changes course. Blue flashed red flashed blue flashed red, burning my eyes, making me blink too fast.

The first patrol car passed the driveway, and all I saw were brake lights. The driver was stopping, pulling off to the side of the road, but not here in front of us, not here for me.

The car parked on the gravel shoulder beside Blue Heron Pond, and the driver’s door opened. Detective Talbert stepped out. He hitched up his pants, checked to make sure the other cars were on their way, then turned and walked over to the reservoir’s main gate. He stood a moment with his hands on his hips, staring at the padlock, then he took a radio from his belt and spoke into the mouthpiece. We were too far away to hear what he said.

“Must be having trouble with trespassers again,” Franny said, lifting the brim of her hat to see better.

I curled my fingers around the overhanging edge of the honey stand.

The second patrol car parked on the shoulder behind the first. The tow truck pulled up beside them both and idled there in the northbound lane, waiting for whatever was coming next. The driver hung his elbow out the open window.

I recognized Deputy Santos as soon as she got out of the car. She spoke briefly to the tow truck driver and then joined Detective Talbert at the gate, which she pushed open without any trouble. Seemed that the chain had been cut, because I didn’t see her turning a key and when the gate swung wide, both the chain and the padlock slid to the ground. They stood outside the fence awhile, staring down the short driveway that led to the reservoir, staring out across the water. Detective Talbert raised his arm and pointed to something I couldn’t see. Deputy Santos turned her head toward the tow truck and motioned for the driver to start backing up. Then she caught sight of the roadside stand and of me and Franny, sitting, watching.

I wanted her to wave, to lift her hat off her head and sweep it in the air like she was in some grand parade, like this was just a routine call, nothing serious. Nothing to do with that woman. But she didn’t. She nodded, just once, then turned her back on us and walked toward the water. I grabbed the wagon, rolled it up close to the stand, and started to repack the blueberries and honey.

“You giving up already?” Franny said. “We haven’t been out here very long.”

The glass jars clinked together.

I said, “Franny, have you ever been wrong about a person?”

“Now, I’m not sure what you mean.”

I stopped stacking jars for a second. “Have you ever thought somebody was one way, but then something happens and you find out they’re something else entirely? That they were just pretending so people wouldn’t see their true self?”

Franny tipped her head up just enough so I could see her blue-gray, ancient eyes under the brim of her hat. She stared at me so long and sat so motionless, I thought maybe she still didn’t understand what I was asking.

Then she sighed and shifted in her chair and said, “People can only hide who they really are for so long. After a while, all that pretending becomes exhausting and, soon enough, their true stripes and spots start to show through.” She scratched the palm of her hand. “You thinking about someone in particular, Samantha?”

And the way she said my name reminded me of Mom and made it hurt to breathe and I had to look away. I shoved my hand in my pocket, wrapped my fist tight around the key.

On the other side of the highway, the tow truck had reached the reservoir. The back tires were half sunk in brown water, and the driver was standing between Detective Talbert and Deputy Santos at the edge where the gravel driveway disappeared into the pond. All three of them stared across the glassy surface, stared and didn’t move, and I wondered what was taking so long. Finally, the tow truck driver walked away from the water, returned to his truck, and punched a switch near the back. The winch unraveled. A metallic grating and clattering echoed across the road.

“What in the world?” Franny said under her breath.

The driver waded waist-deep into the water and attached the winch to something beneath the surface. He splashed back to his truck and hit the switch again. There was a low grinding sound, the awful noise of metal scraping rocks, and then sunlight flashed off bright white paint as the tow truck pulled a small sedan from the pond.

“Franny?” I said, turning to face her and pulling the key from my pocket, holding it flat in the palm of my hand. “It might be nothing . . .” I glanced back at the white sedan.

She squinted, leaned in a little closer, and then her eyes widened, her hand fluttering to her chest. “Where did you get this?” she asked me.

I told her then about finding the dead woman and the scratches on Bear’s face and how Monday night, the same night he borrowed the truck, Bear had left me and Ollie alone in the meadow for hours and hours after dark. How I’d found the key in his satchel. The one thing I left out was the jacket. I didn’t want Franny to know how I’d convinced Bear to let me take it to the police by myself, how I’d lied and tried to get rid of it instead, how much worse I’d probably made things for him, for all of us, by not coming forward right away.

When I was finished, Franny started to get up from her chair. “You need to march right over there and tell all this to Detective Talbert,” she said. “You need to give him that key you’re holding on to so tight and let him sort this whole thing out.”

I stared across the highway where the detective and Deputy Santos were walking around the car, peering in through the windows, taking notes.

“No,” I said. “No way.”

“Then I will.” She reached for the key.

I curled my fingers around it and backed away from her, shaking my head, fighting a rising panic that I had made a mistake telling her. There would be no keeping it quiet now, no more pretending we weren’t a part of this.

“He didn’t do anything wrong.” I stumbled over the words.

“I never said he did. But, Sam, we still have to tell Detective Talbert. If we know something about that poor girl’s death . . . if we
think
we know something, even if it’s nothing . . . we still have to tell them. It’s the right thing to do.” She reached for my hand. “We’ll go together.”

I ducked away from her and sprinted up the driveway back to the house. Franny called after me, but I didn’t turn around and I didn’t stop running until I got to the front porch. I leaned a moment against the railing to catch my breath before going inside to get Ollie. I was still holding the key, clenching it in my fist. I uncurled my fingers. The teeth had left dents in the palm of my hand, turned my skin bright red. I shoved the key back into my pocket and took the steps two at a time.

Zeb and Ollie were playing Slap Jack at the kitchen table. I interrupted them, saying, “Ollie, let’s go.”

She ignored me at first, turning a card over and placing it in the center of the table.

“Ollie!” I snapped, grabbing her by the arm, lifting her to her feet.

She huffed, threw her cards onto the table, and pushed her chair back hard, scraping the legs against the wooden floor. She wriggled from my grasp and shoved past me, dashing through the living room and outside. The screen door slammed shut. She pounded down the steps. Zeb started to say something, but I didn’t stop to listen. I ran away from him, too.

T
he rock flew straight and fast from my fingers and hit the pine knot I’d been aiming at with a dead, solid
thunk
. I stooped, plucked another rock from the pile at my feet, and tossed it in the air. I caught it coming down, curled my fingers around the shape of it, and held the stone in my fist, feeling its weight. One hundred steps from the pine tree and my target knot. My best distance yet. Some fathers teach their kids how to play baseball. Mine taught me how to chuck rocks.

My first summer in the meadow, Bear handed me a stone so big I could barely get my fingers around it. He’d pointed at a fir tree some twenty feet away and said, “Show me what you can do.” I remember pulling my arm back so far, feeling the muscles in my shoulder blade tightening until I thought they would snap, shouting as I let go, thinking that would make the rock go faster, farther. The stone had clattered into the dirt about five feet from where we stood and nowhere close to the tree. Bear had handed me another rock and said, “Keep practicing.”

The trick was to aim a little higher than where you actually wanted to hit, on account of gravity, and to throw with your entire body. That’s how Bear taught me anyway. I drew my arm back, then pitched it forward, releasing the stone at the high point of the arc, following through, watching the rock spin and spin and hit its mark. Most of the time I think I just got damn lucky.

Over an hour had passed since we’d left Zeb and Franny’s house, and Bear still wasn’t back from his interview. I kept glancing at the path, expecting Deputy Santos and Detective Talbert to come storming through those woods at any second, demanding the key, the jacket, my father. I was sure Franny had told them everything by now, but the sun ticked a little higher and a little higher after that until it was right on top of us and still no one came.

I picked up another rock and rubbed my thumb against its smooth side. “You want to give it a try, Oll?”

She was stretched out on her stomach in the grass under a tree with her
Alice
book, reading and ignoring me completely. I held the stone out to her. She lowered the book, looked at my outstretched hand, and shook her head.

“It’s not as hard as it looks,” I said.

Ollie didn’t move.

“Come on. It’s really fun.” I waved the rock like I was tempting her with a piece of candy.

She lifted the book, hiding her face.

I shrugged and said, “Fine. Be that way,” trying not to sound too disappointed.

This time when I threw it, the rock hit a few inches lower than the target, but it still hit the tree and that had to count for something.

In the distance, I heard an engine whining closer, too fast and high pitched to be a car. It sounded like a dirt bike. Ollie turned her head toward the sound. She closed her book and sat up. We watched the tree line and shadows, waiting.

The engine sounds stopped, and birdsong flooded the silence. A few seconds later, Travis came through the trees with a white pastry box under one arm. At the edge of the grass where thin scrub gave way to wildflowers and shade gave way to sun, he hesitated. He was dressed more casually today than when I saw him yesterday—a faded gray T-shirt tucked into the waistband of his dark jeans and a pair of red Chuck Taylors, the laces untied.

He smiled and came toward me. “Hey.”

And I found myself wishing I had taken time this morning to put away the gardening tools and wipe dust off the tops and sides of the beehives and take the clothes off the line, hide these ordinary parts of our lives out here. I wanted him to see the beauty of our meadow, not the drab. Only the flowers and light, the bright shock of summer, the wide-open pasture and crisp, blue sky all around, the soul of this place.