Crooked River: A Novel (9 page)

I turned my head and for the first time saw how close we were, our faces nearly touching. He smelled like the river, like water rushing and snow melting and sun and green algae and beneath that, other things, too. The hint of wildflowers and honey and stretched-out days. He smelled like summer.

He reached his hand to my face, cupped my chin. I kept my eyes wide open. There were flecks of storm-cloud gray in his. I thought he might kiss me and I thought about pulling away, asking him if he was sure this is what he wanted, if he was doing this because he liked me or because he felt sorry for me, but I didn’t. I stayed quiet and let him draw me closer. His breath was warm and fast. His cheeks flushed apple red with life.

A branch cracked somewhere in the woods behind us, and we jumped apart before our lips had a chance to brush together. Travis dropped his hand and turned away from me. Whatever thin thread had been drawing us closer snapped, and then it was just me again, unmoored and drifting. And Travis, standing up now, hopping off the rock into the sand, increasing the distance. My chances for a first kiss, ruined, but maybe it was better this way, less complicated.

Another branch cracked, and I turned to look. Bear stepped out of the trees onto the path. He walked slowly toward us. I climbed off the rock, gathered my shoes under my arm, and went to meet him.

“Where’s your sister?” His eyes scanned the riverbank.

“At camp. She didn’t want to come.” I stared at his brown suit jacket and trousers, his white-collared shirt all buttoned and tucked in, his navy-blue-and-gold tie, his shiny brown shoes. His hair was slicked back, his beard combed, his face washed. “Where have you been?”

Bear jerked his head at Travis, who had come up behind me. “What’s he doing here?”

“Franny told me you had an interview at the mill?”

“She shouldn’t have.” Bear clawed at his tie, loosening it, pulling it off. Like a snake shedding his skin. “I don’t like you leaving your sister alone like this.”

“She’s fine. She’s in the teepee reading.” I grabbed the tie from him.

It was one I remembered from before when he had a real job and lived in a real house and kept his hair cut short. I ran my thumb over gold dots that were actually crested gold lions, running in a diagonal pattern across the dark blue background.

“How did it go?” I asked.

He took the tie back and stuffed it into his pants pocket. “I’m going to need you to start taking on more responsibility for your sister, okay? Especially when I’m not here.”

“I told you, she’s fine. If she needed something, she would have come and got me, or screamed or something. We’re not that far away. I would have heard her.”

“She’s just a kid, Sam.”

“She’s ten.”

“Your mom would want you to look out for her.”

I glared at him. The words I wanted to say—
How the hell do you know what Mom would want?
—stuck in my throat. I shoved my feet into my shoes and, without bothering to tie the laces, started walking back to the meadow.

Travis followed me.

Bear called after us, but by then we were too far down the path to hear what he said.

Travis nudged my elbow. “Hey, I’m sorry if I got you in trouble.”

“You didn’t.”

“You going to be okay out here?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” I slapped at a leaf dangling above the path.

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “Because of Bear and everything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are you sure he’s safe?”

I walked a little slower. “What do you mean? Of course he’s safe.” But my mind kept slipping back to the night he left me and Ollie alone, to the scratches on his cheek and the key I’d found. I asked, “Why would you think that he isn’t?”

“Since that woman turned up dead, people have been talking,” Travis said. “They’ve been saying Bear might have had something to do with it.”

“What people?”

Travis shrugged. “I don’t know. Just people in town and stuff.”

“And you believe them?”

He hesitated, and when he finally spoke, his voice was soft, the way it can get when someone’s about to deliver bad news. “He’s always been a little . . . eccentric. He’s out here by himself all the time. He doesn’t really get along with anyone in town. People think he might be dangerous.”

I tore a leaf from a bush crowding the path, crushed it in my fist, and then dropped it. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Is it?” Travis grabbed my hand.

I shook him off and walked faster. “People should mind their own damn business.”

“They’re worried, that’s all. About their families and kids,” Travis said, catching up to me, keeping pace. “And they’re worried about you, too. You and your sister, living out here with him, not knowing what he’s capable of.”

“Well, they’re wasting their energy. Bear isn’t dangerous. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.” But even as I said the words, I was starting to doubt them.

We had reached the edge of the meadow. Travis grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop just inside the tree line. He said, “Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

He looked genuinely concerned, and I didn’t know what else to say, except, “We’ll be fine.”

I don’t think he was convinced, but he let go of my arm and didn’t say anything else about it.

Ollie was outside again, sitting with her book in the shade. When Travis and I emerged from the trees, she dropped the book on the ground, jumped to her feet, and ran over to us. She planted herself directly in front of Travis and extended a closed fist, fingers facing up. Her lips were turning white they were pressed so tight together, and the expression on her face was much too serious for any kid, though I’d seen it on Ollie more than once this summer.

“What is it?” I asked her.

She didn’t even look at me as she uncurled her fingers and opened her hand. Resting flat in her palm was a lighter. In the sunlight, it glinted gold.

I looked at it, then looked at Travis. “Isn’t that yours?”

“No.” He shook his head and dropped his gaze. “No, I don’t think so.”

Ollie pushed the lighter closer.

“It looks like yours,” I said, and then, remembering earlier how he’d taken a cigarette from the pack but hadn’t smoked it, “Check your pockets.”

He patted his pockets and, finding nothing, leaned in for a better look. He rubbed his hand back and forth across his neck, and then finally said, “You know what? Yeah. I think that is mine.”

He plucked it from Ollie’s palm and turned it over a couple of times, then slipped it into his pocket.

“Thanks,” he said, and then to me, “I better go.”

I nodded, then put my arm around Ollie’s shoulders and pulled her close to me. “Thanks for the cobbler and everything.”

He smiled, but it was a weak, halfhearted attempt, making him look sad and hollowed out. He seemed about to say something else, something important, but Bear emerged from the trees right then and whatever Travis might have been thinking about saying he kept to himself.

Shoulders hunched and hands plunged deep into his pockets, Travis crossed the meadow alone. He reached the path that led to the road, and I stood waiting for him to turn around and wave, but he kept walking with his head down. A few minutes later, his dirt bike started up and shrieked away.

T
hat night, Bear fried up fresh trout for us over an open flame. The meat was pink and tender and seasoned with pepper and a spoonful of honey. I think it was his way of saying sorry, of trying to make up for leaving us alone all day. Ollie grubbed down her piece of fish like she hadn’t eaten in days. I picked at mine, taking smaller and smaller bites until finally I just stopped eating altogether.

Bear nodded at my plate. “Not hungry?” His lips were covered in grease and shining in the firelight.

I shrugged and poked at my uneaten fish.

Bear stared at me across the flickering coals and then said, “I stopped by the house this afternoon.”

I couldn’t look at him.

“Franny was pretty upset. She said you were, too.” He waited for me to say something. When I didn’t, he continued, “We’re going over there first thing tomorrow morning to set things straight, okay? We’re going to call Detective Talbert and get everything out in the open the way we should have from the beginning.”

I set my plate on the ground.

“You’ll feel better after it’s done,” he said, leaning forward to scrape his sucked-clean fish bones into the fire. “I promise.”

He was wrong, but there was nothing I could say to change his mind. I got up from my chair and started walking toward the teepee.

Bear called after me, “And stay away from that boy, Sam. He’s no good.”

12
ollie

T
he moon leans into our teepee. Tonight, she is half full and bright enough for me to see the shape of my hand in the dark.

Bear sleeps. His body, curled tight under blankets. His snore, a low growl.

My sister is awake. She’s turning and tossing, her sighs uneven and loud. She throws her hands above her head and brings them down again, and her sleeping bag swishes.

She doesn’t want to tell. Like me, she’s afraid that they will see only what they want to see, not what is actually there. They will stop looking for the truth.

Bear thinks everything will be just fine.

I stare across the teepee through the gray night and Shimmering at the man who makes tomatoes grow and bees hum, who calls the stars by name and tells time using sun and shadow, who once gave me a thunderstone for Christmas and told me how even though the black and gray rock outside was strong, the sparkly purple crystals inside were fragile and that’s what made it so special.

His breath is even and deep. He does not stir beneath his blankets. A guilty man would not sleep so peacefully.

I pull my book from under the pillow and turn to a page near the middle, to a sentence I’ve already underlined.

The one from the river crouches near the door and stares through the flap to the world outside. She is listening to the bees, tucked into their hives for the night, murmuring secrets to one another. A breeze lifts a corner of the flap, bringing in scents of ripe blackberries and warm honey. She turns her head, nods at my book, and then returns her attention to the night meadow.

I sit all the way up and push the sleeping bag off my legs.

“You okay?” my sister whispers.

I reach for my flashlight.

The one who follows me rains silver diamonds from the hole in the ceiling, and the falling, falling reminds me of a snow globe, shaken and set right again. She is a fountain, a spray, a rush of invisible moonflakes, uneasy because of what might happen tomorrow. She wants to slip into our dreams and show us the truth, what will happen if the wrong man is accused. But this is impossible because for my sister, my father, even me, dreams are where we go to be alone.

13
sam

T
he numbers on Deputy Santos’s business card blurred, then separated, then ran together again. I smoothed my thumb over the slightly raised surface and wondered what it would be like to be blind. When I closed my eyes, the numbers were still there, white against black. When I opened my eyes, black against white. I turned the card over, but the back was blank. I flipped it to the front again and read the phone number backward, wondering who might answer if I called that number instead.

Bear pushed the cordless phone across Franny’s kitchen table. “Call.”

He was making me do it because I’d lied to him about taking the jacket to Deputy Santos and hadn’t told him about the key. He’d confiscated both items last night and put them in one of the filing cabinet drawers for safekeeping. I was supposed to tell Deputy Santos everything I should have told her in the first place, and then Bear would tell his part and then she would come out here and we’d give her the jacket and the key, and everything would be fine. That’s what Bear kept telling me anyway. I held the phone in one hand, the business card in the other. My thumb moved over the buttons, but I didn’t press down.

Last night, Ollie had sat up in her sleeping bag, turned the flashlight on, and passed me her
Alice
book. It was open to the page she wanted me to read and she shined the light straight on it so I could see. She’d underlined a single sentence:
“It is wrong from beginning to end,” said the Caterpillar.

I closed the book and gave it back to her. “I’m sleeping.”

She turned to another page and pushed the book into my face again. This time the passage was:
Alice sighed wearily. “I think you might do something better with the time,” she said, “than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers.”

I rolled over so my back was to her. She clambered over the top of me and stretched out so we were lying parallel on the floor, our noses almost touching. She was frowning and had the book clasped to her chest. I rolled onto my back and faced the moon. Ollie sat up, cross-legged. She rustled through more pages, then held the book out to me a third time.

“Go away,” I whispered.

She snorted air through her nose like a goat.

I propped myself up on my elbows. “Fine. Give me some light.”

The final underlined passage she wanted to show me was this:
“If everybody minded their own business,” the Duchess said, in a hoarse growl, “the world would go round a deal faster than it does.”

I flopped onto my back again and closed my eyes. Ollie didn’t move. She was waiting for me to finish the game; she would wait there all night if she had to.

I sighed and said, “I get it. You don’t want us to call the police tomorrow. Now, please go to sleep.”

She climbed back into her own sleeping bag and turned off the flashlight. I’d gotten it right, though it didn’t change anything.

In the morning, Bear nudged us both awake and told us to get dressed because we were going to Franny’s. Ollie and I dragged our feet and complained about being hungry, but Bear hurried us toward the house, saying we could have breakfast after this whole thing was over and done. Franny was waiting for us in the kitchen with the phone. She took Ollie into the living room and left me alone with Bear. I’d been staring at the phone for the past ten minutes, hoping something would happen—a fire, an explosion, the end of the whole world—so I wouldn’t have to make this call. We’d lost Bear once before and, even though he kept telling me we were doing the right thing and everything would work itself out, I didn’t believe it and I was terrified if we lost him again, we’d never, ever get him back.

“Give it to me,” Bear said, reaching for the phone.

I pulled it away from him. “I’ll do it. Just give me a minute.”

He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

Today’s newspaper was lying on the table between us, folded so her photograph was facing up. Facing us. She must have been looking straight into the camera when the picture was taken because her dark eyes followed me, no matter how far I shifted to either side. Even though the photo was grainy and a little blurred, I could tell she’d been beautiful once and that when she was alive her eyes were the kind that sparkled. So different from the day I grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her back, then let her slip from my grasp. She wore a necklace, some kind of pendant attached to a simple chain. Her hair was short in this photo, cut close to her scalp like a boy’s, and she was younger, too. Or maybe it was just that her skin was intact and there were no bruises, and she was smiling back at the world—so full of promise still, so full of hope.

Bear was staring at the picture now, too, frowning and rubbing his beard. Without looking away from her, he said, “Ten more seconds, Sam.”

“And then what?” I sat up taller in my chair. “What will you do if I don’t call? Ground me? Send me to my room?”

He pinched his lips together and laid his hands flat against the table. There was nothing he could do to me, and he knew it. Short of sending us to live with Grandma and Grandpa, which he didn’t want either, there was nothing he could say and no threat bad enough to make me dial Deputy Santos’s phone number.

“I thought we raised you better than this,” he said, lifting halfway off his chair, reaching again for the phone.

Again, I pulled it away from him, this time hiding it behind my back.

“Give me the phone,” he said.

“No.”

He stood all the way to his feet, bent with his hands pressed flat against the table. Color rose high in his cheeks. For the first time in years, he shouted at me. “I said give me the phone!”

I shrank lower in my chair.

He held out one hand, fingers stretched long, demanding, “Now, goddamn it!”

I shouted back at him, “This is stupid! It’s going to ruin everything!
You’re
going to ruin everything!”

He rose to his full height. His nostrils flared, his eyes sparked. I glared at him, not backing down.

Franny appeared in the doorway between the living room and kitchen. She leaned against the frame like she needed the extra help and said only one word, “Frank.”

It was his real name, a name I hadn’t heard since I was a little girl and one that had never quite fit him anyway. He flinched hearing it and folded in on himself, dropping his head, sagging his shoulders, curling his hands close to his body. He backed away from the table and, without looking at me or Franny, walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, and out the front door. A few seconds later, the front porch swing began to squeak a slow rhythm.

Franny sighed and sat down in the chair Bear had left empty. She picked up the newspaper and unfolded it, shaking out the wrinkles and clearing her throat.

“Taylor Bellweather.” She read from the front page. “Age twenty-five. Recently graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism. Valedictorian. President of her senior class. Just started working as a reporter for the
Register-Guard
.”

I brought the phone around in front of me again, but I still couldn’t get my fingers to push the numbers. A loud rustling in the living room made me flinch, even though I knew it was just Ollie scribbling nonsense, wadding up sheets of paper and throwing them away—telling me without having to actually talk that she wasn’t happy about any of this.

“Taylor Bellweather,” Franny said the name again, louder, and this time when she said it she looked at me. The wrinkles in her forehead and around her mouth and nose looked deeper than I had ever seen them.

I looked down at my thumbs suspended over the keypad, suspended but not pressing down.

Franny snapped the newspaper once and continued, her voice stumbling a little over the words. “Only daughter of Mitch and Teresa Bellweather. Cause of death. Blunt force trauma to the head. Deschutes County Sheriff’s Department is investigating this as a homicide and asking people to call with any information pertaining to the case. Says here that they’re trying to establish her whereabouts and activity on the night she died.”

From the living room, more crumpling and the sound of paper tearing. The porch swing continued squeaking back and forth.

Franny folded the newspaper and slid it over to me. She tapped her finger on the edge of the dead woman’s photograph. Taylor Bellweather. She had a name, a birthday, a history, a family. She was a person now, as real as me and Ollie. As real as anyone. But I still couldn’t push the buttons down. Even with her staring at me and Franny waiting and Bear telling me everything would be okay, even then, I couldn’t do it.

I turned the newspaper over and shoved it away. Franny reached and squeezed my hand. Her skin was like tissue paper, chalky and thin. “You can do this, Sam.”

I stared at the phone, my eyes blurring with tears. I wiped them quickly with the back of my hand.

Franny said, “I’m right here with you,” and I punched in the first number, then the second and third, my fingers shaking so badly I almost messed up, but then it was ringing. Twice, three times, four.

“She’s not answering,” I said.

“Leave a message.”

I counted ten rings before the answering machine picked up, but before I had a chance to say anything, we heard cars coming up the driveway, tires crunching the gravel, engines muttering.

Franny eased up from the table and shuffled toward the living room window. “Now, who could that be?”

I disconnected the call without leaving a message. There was just too much I needed to say to fit into such a short amount of time. I left the phone on the table with the newspaper and went into the living room.

Franny and Ollie were standing at the picture window, both of them staring out across the front yard. I went and stood next to them, watched as one patrol car, then two more—all with lights flashing, but sirens off—drove past the house toward the dirt road behind the barn.

The front porch swing was empty, still rocking back and forth, as if Bear had only just left. I looked, but didn’t see him anywhere. Not at first. Large hedges grew against a split-rail fence running alongside the driveway, casting shadows deep enough to hide in. It was only when the hedgerow ended and Bear stepped out into the sun that I saw him: walking slowly away from the house, away from us, following the patrol cars back to the meadow.

Franny pressed her hand to her mouth, then turned away from the window and hurried back into the kitchen, saying something about Zeb never being around when she needed him most, and why’d he have to choose today of all days to disappear into his damn fields. It was the first time I’d ever heard Franny cuss.

I watched the cars until they disappeared around a bend and the dust they’d kicked up had settled again, until Bear, too, had vanished, then finally I turned and looked at Ollie. Her jaw was tense, her eyes wide and storming, staring hard at me, her arms folded across her chest.

I shook my head. “I didn’t call, Ollie.”

Her nostrils flared.

“No one called.” I reached for her, but she spun away and stomped to the coffee table where she’d been drawing or writing or coloring or something before the patrol cars arrived. She grabbed a pencil and pressed it to a fresh sheet of paper. Her hand jerked sharply to one side, streaking dark lead across the top of Franny’s white oak.

“Be careful!” I said.

She gritted her teeth and returned the pencil to the top of the paper, and again her hand jerked. This time downward, tearing jagged through the middle.

“Ollie! Stop it!”

She threw the pencil across the room, then crumpled up the notebook paper and threw that, too. The paper ball landed near the front door and rolled up against a coatrack, heavy with so many sweaters and hats and jackets. I wasn’t sure if her aim was intentional, if she meant for me to see the jackets and make the connection—how much worse this was going to be for Bear if they found Taylor Bellweather’s jacket stuffed in his satchel inside his filing cabinet, how much worse it was going to be for all of us—I didn’t know if that’s what she meant to do, but that was what happened.

I turned and bolted out the front door. The screen slammed shut behind me.

“Sam!” My name like a gunshot.

I tripped on the bottom porch step and fell forward, skidding my palms and knees across packed gravel. The tiny cuts burned and started to bleed, but I was able to stand and put weight on both legs and move both wrists full circle. Nothing broken. Nothing to cry about. I brushed my hands down the front of my shirt, streaking dark red across white cotton.

The screen door creaked open behind me.

“Sam?” Franny called out to me again, but I didn’t turn around.

And I didn’t wait to hear what else she was going to say.

I took off running. My lungs felt stretched thin. The cuts on my knees, like they were ripping wider with each step. But still I ran. Around the barn to the dirt road, between the fields, following the fresh-pressed tire tracks and my father’s barely visible footprints to the hemlock stump. I was still over fifty yards from breaking through the trees and reaching the teepee when I heard Bear shouting.