Mother Lode (40 page)

Jorie shook his head. "How’s Eliza,
Helena?"

‘She’s a frisky one, she is. Up at the crack
every day, laughin’ and gigglin’.” Helena’s smiled faded. “It’s
missin’ you, she is. And her ma."

Jorie swallowed hard. "I think she should
know, Helena. That Ma’s not coming back."

His old nanny’s eyes
opened wide. "Is it askin’
me
to tell her, you are? That she’s. . .
dead?
”

"If you could see your way to doing it, I’d
be mighty grateful.”

“Sure and you can’t be sayin’ that,
lad!”

Jorie remained silent as the woman blew her
nose again and squirmed in her seat.

“I’ll try. With the help of Mary and Jasus,
I’ll do it.” She crossed herself, and Jorie watched the gears move.
"I’ll explain she died in the storm, which is God’s truth, and gone
up to heaven, to be with Jasus.” She twisted her mouth. “That is
what happened, isn’t it, Jorie?”

“Yes.”

“Then that’s what I’ll tell her.”

The woman wiped her face, then reached down
into her basket.

“I brought you some cookies, lad. The kind
you were always after me to bake when you were a wee lad.”

“How kind you are, Helena.”

“Soda cookies with cinnamon and sugar on
top.”

“I remember.”

Helena got up to leave. Jorie started to
embrace her, but such a rush of sobs came forth he pulled back.

“Give Eliza lots of hugs for me.”

“I will, I will,” she managed as she
left.

He had assumed the prisoner in the next cell
was sleeping while Helena was there. He was wrong.

“Hey, ain’t you the guy what left his ma out
in the woods to die?”

Jorie was silent.

“I heard about you. Your
brother’s tellin’ everybody he saw you do it.” The man waited.
“Hey, are you deaf or what? He’s sayin’ he followed you out
there—how you
planted
her in the storm and high-tailed it back to town.”

Again the man waited for a response.

“Well, ain’t you got nothing’ to say?”

“Nope.”

“That right? Well, the boys in town do.
They’re placin’ bets on you — whether you done it deliberate or
not. Most bettin’ you did.”

Jorie tried to tune the man out, turned his
attention instead to the munching of the termites. But the voice
came through anyway.

“If you make it out a here, they’ll give you
a necktie party fer sure.”

The next day Earl brought Jorie his supper.
The diner near the jail furnished the inmates’ meals, but Earl
thought maybe he could loosen Jorie’s tongue with something
home-cooked. Besides, he felt bad about yelling at him
yesterday.

He knew he didn’t have to visit the prisoner
at all. It wasn’t his job. The real reason he was here was, like
the itchy rash on his hand, he couldn’t leave it alone.

He watched as Jorie attacked the beef pie
with gusto.

“Glad to see you eating, lad. Beginning to
think you were set on starving yourself.” As Jorie said nothing, he
continued. “Do you know who made your dinner?”

”No.”

“Mrs. Foster.”

Jorie tightened his lip.

“You recall planting carrots with her?”

He barely nodded.
Jorie remembered having the same dish at their
home, Mrs. Foster insisting he have seconds after all the hard work
he’d done in the garden. Then she’d served up the best lemon
meringue pie he’d ever tasted.

Tonight there was no pie.

Jorie speared the last carrot and ran the
piece of bread around inside the pan to scoop up the rest of the
gravy. When he was finished he looked up solemnly at the
sheriff.

“Tell Mrs. Foster thank you.”

The sheriff nodded. “Look, if I’m going to
help you, I got to know what happened, and why.”

“I know.”

Tell me about this plan to leave town.”

“I had planned to, yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It didn’t seem important. I decided I
couldn’t. Not after. . .”

“Why not?”

“My sister. With Ma dead, how could I
leave?”

“When did you first decide to take your ma
on that ride?”

Jorie frowned. “I’m not sure. Some time that
week, I think.”

“Then it wasn’t a spur of the moment
thing.”

“No.”

“Why did you want to do this?”

“I’ve
tried
to remember.” Jorie held his
head in his hands. “I think she’d been asking me that week to take
her for a country ride.”

Earl Foster shook his head. “You’ve had a
lot of trouble with your mother. You wanted to have her committed,
remember? Failing that, did you think the only solution was for her
to die?”

Jorie was following a spider’s journey along
the edge of the floor. “It’s getting dark inside my head.”

Earl sighed. “Well, when the sun comes out,
enlighten me, too.” He rose. ”I brought you some reading
material.”

Jorie brightened.

“This is your mama’s diary. One of them. I
probably shouldn’t be letting you have it, but I’m going to. Seems
like your mind jumped the track, boy. Maybe reading this will help
bring it back.”

Jorie was silent.

“You have a go at it, all right?”

Jorie lay back down on his cot.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your reading, while
there’s still some light.”

Earl set the parcel on the end of Jorie’s
cot, and took his leave. He didn’t know if he’d done the right
thing or not, though he suspected the boy had already read the
diaries. Why else were they in his room? And he wasn’t sure leaving
it would do any good, but it was worth a try.

Jorie stared at the book a long time. It was
like a thing alive, waiting with a strong presence, commanding his
attention. He’d taken the two diaries from an old trunk in his
mother’s closet several months ago, but couldn’t bring himself to
read them.

Now the parcel just sat there, waiting,
would wait with infinite patience, until he picked it up. He wanted
to hide it — from himself. There was not even a drawer to put it
in. Why hadn’t he told the sheriff he didn’t want it?

When he looked away, the
bundle seemed to bore into him with invisible eyes, daring him to
open it, daring him not to. Like a cat poised to pounce its prey,
it waited silently. For an hour he lay on his cot, resisting the
voice:
Go ahead, read it. It’s yours
now.

He considered putting it under his bed, but
he knew that would be admitting its ominous effect. There was no
way to escape it.

Even now, she was defeating him.

With quick darting movements, as though
touching hot coals, he loosed the string, gingerly removed the
brown paper the sheriff had wrapped it in. The thick volume was
closed with a strap and locked. Possessing no implement with which
to dislodge the closure, Jorie attacked it. The tired leather put
up little resistance, yielded easily to his will. Before him was
his mother’s hand, younger than the one he knew, but unmistakably
hers.

He opened it at random. The brittle, yellow
sheets fairly crackled as he turned the pages.

And there she was before him, open and
inviting as she’d always been.

February 9, 1888

For many weeks now, it has been most
difficult to sleep. Again tonight, after lying awake for hours
listening to Thomas’ snoring, I left the warmth of the bed, went
shivering to the kitchen where a few embers from the stove still
gave off heat. Here I took pen to paper, recording my thoughts. It
is strange, but somehow when finished, it is as though I have taken
a sleeping powder, for then my hand, my head and heart can finally
come to rest.

Jorie turned a few pages and read:

I touched Thomas’ shoulder gently, ran a
finger gently up and down his spine, but he never turned to me. It
has been so for several months now.

He snapped the diary shut, tucked it under
his thin mattress. This was no business of his—had never been. He
would read no more. But like his mother, the balm of sleep did not
come.

The turnkey admitted Buck Boyce, and the
cell door slammed shut.

“I’m not going to play games with you," the
prosecuting attorney told him. “You can save that nonsense for the
jury. Now you and I both know what happened to your mother.”

Buck Boyce’s hard stare was returned with
Jorie’s cool, patient one.

“How’s my sister?”

“Your sister’s fine and dandy and I’m not
here to talk about her. Your hearing’s coming up, boy, and I want
you to give me some real straight answers. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right, then.” Boyce placed one foot on
the chair, took a pencil from his pocket and flipped open his
pad.

“Tell me what you were thinking that day you
set out for a joy ride in the blizzard.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I thought it was a fine day for a ride in
the country — blue sky, with a few cumulus clouds, a soft breeze
shaking the golden aspen leaves, the smell of autumn fires.
Somebody must have been burning a pile of leaves, though it smelled
more like hay. You could almost taste the apples in the nearby
orchard, but I couldn’t say what kind they were. Macintosh,
probably.”

Bud Boyce snapped his note pad shut. “That’s
enough of that nonsense. You told the sheriff that a man with a
lantern helped you look for your mother.”

“Who was he?” Jorie asked.

“You tell me.”

“I remember he had huge feet — left much
bigger footprints than mine.”

The attorney’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

“But they were covered by the snow faster
than we could make new ones.”

“Go on.”

“It came down so hard I could hardly see my
own.”

“You lost the big footprints.”

Jorie looked up, surprised. “No, my
mother’s. My mother has very small feet.”

When the prosecuting attorney left Jorie
wondered what kind of gibberish he’d spouted. It just came out that
way — he didn’t know why. They’d probably think he was insane.
Well, maybe he was.

Chapter 31

Earl knew Cora didn’t like all the time he
was spending away from home. She kept reminding him those visits to
the jailhouse weren’t his job. She didn’t understand that he had
to. He’d started this ball rolling, and he had to get it sorted
out.

“You haven’t spent a bit of time at home,”
she complained one morning. “Even when you are here, you’re not
here, if you get my meaning.”

“I do.”

“I had a nice mutton roast ready for you
last night, fixed up the way you like it, with parsnips and onions.
You never came home for supper and never sent word, neither.”

“We’ll enjoy it tonight, though, won’t
we?”

She sighed. “It’s not the same, warmed
over.”

“I’m sorry, Cora.”

“What’s gotten into you? Do you think the
world hangs in the balance while the great Earl Foster deliberates
this case?”

“That’s enough.”

“He’ll have his hearing, and it will all
turn out in the end — however it’s supposed to.” She softened her
voice. “Can’t you let go, Earl, a little bit?”

Once more he was on his way to see the lad.
Despite her resentment at the time Earl was away, she had wrapped a
piece of cornbread. “Take it to the boy.”

“I won’t be so late. If you behave yourself,
we could spend the evening together.” He patted her ample
fanny.

She pushed him away, but he knew she was
pleased.

“Watch your step out there. It’s icy. I
nearly fell going to the privy.”

As he walked across town, a freezing rain
descended, adding to the already frigid atmosphere. He could hear
the tinkling sound it made hitting the bare elms, encasing them in
ice. Tiny pellets stung his eyes; he wound his muffler around as
much of his face and neck as he could. He should have taken the
buggy, but Bigot didn’t like the ice any more than he did.

Shaking as much precipitation as he could
from his wraps, he descended the stairs of the courthouse, noting
the echo that followed each step in the quiet depths of the
building. He found Jorie staring at the ceiling again, probably
studying the spider webs.

“Have you had your breakfast?”

“Yes.”

“Anything you need?” Earl asked.

“I’d like some books.”

“The diary is about all the reading material
I can allow you for now.” He handed the cornbread to Jorie.
“Courtesy of Mrs. Foster.”

“That was kind of her.”

Jorie ate part of it, wrapped the rest up
for later.

“How’s Eliza?”

“Mrs. O’Laerty says she’s doing fine. Did
you read the diary?”

“Some of it. The part about the
cemetery.”

“The cemetery?”

Earl snapped the rubber band on his wrist.
“She had you keep a punishment journal.”

Jorie colored. “How’d you know about
that?”

“It’s in the second diary.”

“Oh.”

“How’d you feel about having to keep that
journal?”

“I hated it!” Jorie struggled to keep his
feelings under control.

“Where is it now?”

Jorie dropped his voice. “I burned it.”

“When was that?”

“After. . .she died.”

“
Look, lad, they’re going
to decide if there’s sufficient evidence to bind you over, and if
you’re sane enough to stand trial. I can’t help you, unless you
cooperate.” Earl waited. “We don’t have much time, boy.”

“You want me to say I killed my mother.”

“We certainly have
probable cause. Enough to go to trial. Perhaps the charge will be
reduced to manslaughter if you explain to the court
why
you took her out
there.”

“I don’t know! I just don’t know, I tell
you!”

“What about the inheritance? Did you get
your ‘sizeable sum’?”