Sugar Birds

by Cheryl Grey Bostrom

  The men bolted upright.

  Loomis jumped off the running board and hurried to Aggie. He cupped the top of her head with both hands. “Deputy Yost, meet Aggie. Your missing person.” His voice had a hitch in it. “A little worse for wear, but she’s back with us.” He picked her up and bounced her, as if his arm were a scale. “You’re hollow, missy.” He poked her belly with a finger. “Time for pie.”

  The officer walked toward them both, his cheeks stretched in welcome. “Miss Hayes. We have missed you.”

  Where her tears had washed away mud, I saw her blush. “See the caps in there?” She blinked against a spatter of rain and tightened her arms around her uncle.

  The deputy stuck his head in the cab.

  “Those are Burnaby’s caps, but he didn’t put them there. Cabot did. He wanted you to think Burnaby did, but I saw him climb in there and take shotgun shells. They’re in the root cellar. He hid other stuff there, too.”

  He stared at her, his face illegible.

  “I believe you, Aggie,” Loomis said. “Saw Cabot out here last Saturday. Figured he was scavenging a part for another rig. Today, though, I was out here for pipe. Saw that cab from my tractor. Couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Had to be either Cabot or Burnaby, stashing all those goods. Nobody else comes near here. Got me to thinking about what Mender said. So I followed Cabot in from the field. I walked over the rise just as he left the truck with a box.

  “I smelled a skunk, so I checked the barns and shop. Sure enough, tools missing everywhere. A full shelf of my ammo was cleared out, too—and one of my shotguns.” Loomis tucked a lock of hair behind Aggie’s ear before he continued. “I was hunting for Cabot to apply a little justice, when Celia here ran up the trail shouting for me.”

  Aggie squirmed free and dropped to the ground. “He hid the gun in the root cellar down by the river. And more of Burnaby’s caps. And this.” She extracted a luminous stone hanging from her neck.

  Loomis rolled the agate between his fingers. “That’s Nora’s,” he said. “How’d he get—”

  “I was spying from behind the tractor and saw him in your bedroom. He passed by the window.” Aggie’s head oscillated between the men like an electric fan. “Burnaby didn’t steal that stuff. You know that, right?”

  Her brother toed a stick in the dirt.

  “I do, Aggie,” Loomis said. “Cabot has left plenty of evidence. And witnesses.” He ticked a finger at Burnaby, Aggie, and me, as if he were tapping us.

  Then he frowned. “Hold on a minute. You were in our barnyard? Spying?”

  “Lots of times.”

  Deputy Yost shut the truck door. “Sounds like you have quite a story to tell.”

  Aggie opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Her words sputtered. “I lit the fire. Burnaby didn’t do that, either.”

  “I’m all ears, young lady. Let’s get you out of this wind. I’ll get my notebook and you can tell me what’s been happening for the last month. You all can.”

  At that, whatever was holding Aggie together disintegrated. She sank to the ground and broke into sobs. “I am …” She struggled for breath. “I am so … sorry. You have to arrest me … I know.”

  The deputy dropped to his knees and held her head in his hands until she stopped shaking. “Aggie. You’re safe now. Safe.”

  Gusts flattened Cabot’s hair and clothes as two more officers escorted him, handcuffed and grim, from Deputy Yost’s patrol car to the back seat of theirs. I watched the car travel the farm lane and shrink behind the hill.

  Burnaby brought me a bag of ice. I held it on my knee as the sky darkened with the changing weather and as Burnaby, Aggie, and I sat at the kitchen table, ate fresh raspberry pie, and told the sheriff everything.

  As we were concluding our stories, Nora drove in. When she walked through that door and saw Aggie, I thought the roof would blow right into the next county with all that screaming and fussing. She kissed that girl’s grimy little face about a hundred times and cried until she snorted.

  My own eyes filled. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about her.” I muttered, but nobody heard. I’d tell them again later. Louder.

  Nora dug in her purse and handed several bills to Burnaby. “Can you two make it to town before the stores close?” She pulled out a scrap of paper and sat at the counter, writing. “Oh, never mind. Just get her some clothes. Undies. And a toothbrush.” She measured Aggie with her eyes. “Size six? Seven? Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “C’mon, sweetie.” She took Aggie’s hand. “Time for a bath.”

  I hoisted myself into Burn’s truck, my bum leg straight, the other folded under me. Burnaby flipped on the windshield wipers and shifted through the gears. His cheek ticked nonstop; his calf tightened every few seconds. The accelerator responded to his spasms, and the truck pulsed forward. He kept clearing his throat.

  “What color’ve you got in that head of yours?” I yawned and massaged my bad knee. “You look like chewed twine.”

  “I don’t know yet.” Burn tapped the turn signal and aimed the truck toward town, heading for Crescent Clothiers. Nora said the store carried Aggie’s size, whatever that was.

  I imagine I didn’t look much better. We needed to get our minds off the day’s events if we planned to buy anything remotely suitable for the girl to wear.

  “Take your time,” I said. I closed my eyes and pressed my head to the glass.

  “More rain’s forecast for Saturday,” he said.

  Rain. I officially met Cabot in the rain. I was running. I sat up so fast Burnaby jerked the wheel. His brow bent with concern.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you this forever,” I said.

  Now he really looked worried. “Ask me what?”

  “The rain problem. Mr. Maurer gave it to us at the end of the year to play with over the summer.”

  Burnaby relaxed. Those parentheses appeared at the corners of his mouth. “‘Problem.’ As in ‘math problem’?”

  “Yeah. Sounded trivial at first.” I scooted closer to him and aimed my voice at his ear. “It’s raining. You’re on foot. You want to get home, but also stay as dry as possible. Should you run or walk?”

  His hands relaxed on the steering wheel. “We won’t need integrals.” He thought for a moment. “Velocities, vectors, and variables.”

  “Okay, Burnaby. Okay. You got something to write with in here?” I rummaged through the glove box and pulled out a pencil and a notepad with mileage numbers on it. Right there beside a bag of caps. “Variables for the amount of rain being dropped in gallons per square feet per second, right? Plus the vertical component and wind speed—each in feet per second.”

  He shifted in his seat as we pulled up to a stop sign. “And distance traveled, speed of the traveler with respect to a fixed point, and the total surface area of the traveler from the top and, separately, from the front.”

  I scribbled as a semi crossed in front of us. Burn touched the notepad. “To find the angle of the rain to the direction of the path, we can use arctangent.”

  Sweetest ride I’d ever taken. By the time we returned with a bag of clothes and a toothbrush, we had pages of answers for different body types and conditions which, summarized, came down to this:

  Run, usually; walk sometimes.

  Pure bliss.

  Back in the kitchen, a fair-skinned girl with felted blonde hair sat at the table, an empty dinner plate in front of her. Her skin glowed pink instead of brownish-gray, and she smelled a whole lot better. Her tiny body swam in one of Nora’s T-shirts. Scratches and mosquito bites covered her arms and legs. A long, scabby pink scar ran the length of her forearm. The girl had been through the wringer.

  Nora snagged a comb in her hair. “No use, sweetie. These mats will never come out. Time for a trim.” Aggie lifted scissors and a hand mirror off the table. She frowned at her knotted hair, laid the blades against her head, and sawed. Burnaby and I sat down to watch.

  “Here, let me do that. You hold
the mirror.” Nora seized the scissors and went to work. Half an hour later, Aggie’s dreadlocks lay in a heap on the floor like a pile of dead mice. Nora swept them up and carried them outside. The girl sported a pixie cut with bald spots. Trendy.

  “Think we could see our house?” Aggie asked. The sun dipped below the clouds and the rain had let up. Her fresh clothes hung loose and flapped in the wind, as she, Burnaby, and I sat on the farmhouse porch. I would have taken that girl to the moon if she’d asked.

  Burnaby drove, of course. We wound our way through tall firs to a grassy hillside dominated by the Hayes’ barn, unpainted and weathered. A brick chimney rose from rubble and charred ground. Somber, Aggie left the truck and crept to the burned site. She shuffled along the perimeter, then paused on a bare patch outside the home’s footprint. A few weeds poked through the dirt. “Right here, Burn. Here’s where I built the fire.”

  Burnaby nodded. “The inspector identified this as the point of origin. Without accelerants.” His eyes passed over Aggie’s. “We’ll rebuild. Dad and Mama will come home.” She leaned into her brother, holding him tighter than she had by the well.

  I found a stick and poked around in the debris, jabbing and scraping the black remains. Not much left. Then I bumped something with my foot. The lid had melted, and the glass was sooty, but intact. “What’s this?” Aggie and Burnaby looked up from their crouch over a warped skillet. “Full of rocks.” I shook it.

  Aggie ran to me. She wrapped both hands around the jar and held it to her chest as if it were sacred. Her face was soft, bright.

  “Mama’s agates.”

  We pulled into the parking lot of The Regional Burn Center at Harborview at ten the next morning. Burnaby touched Aggie’s knee with one finger and pointed. Near the front door, a blond man in a hip-high cast sat outside in a wheelchair, one arm swathed in bandages. Despite the apparent misery he had endured, he smiled and craned his neck, obviously waiting for someone.

  That someone was Aggie. Thirty seconds later, the pixie was in his arms.

  CHAPTER 45 ~ AGGIE

  Scars

  Aggie pressed her fingers hard against the jar on her lap and watched the tips of her fingernails turn white. Harborview Burn Center filled her passenger window as her dad parked near the same entrance where they’d reunited four weeks earlier, when he’d held her until she finally stopped crying and released her grip on his arm. The same grip she now had on the jar.

  “She’s awake enough to talk? For sure?”

  Her father turned off the engine and smiled at her in the rearview mirror. Healing skin bloomed pink on his neck. Ingrown beard hairs erupted from red bumps along a scar under his chin. “Chatted with her last night. Not for long, but she’s back with us.”

  “With you and Burnaby, maybe.”

  Her brother unclipped his seatbelt and stepped onto the blacktop. Pushed the car door closed behind him and stood with his back to the wind, yellow hair blowing over his eyes.

  “Your mother wants to see you, Aggie.”

  “She’s just saying that.” Aggie shrank low in the seat and the agates clinked against the jar. She had replaced the melted lid, buffed soot off the glass.

  “C’mon, sweetie. She’s still on pain meds, so she’ll be a little sleepy, but you’ll be glad you came. I promise.”

  “Dad …”

  He reached over the seat and rested his hand on her knee. “We’ve been through this a dozen times. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  He had a point. Since Mama would hate her forever, she may as well get used to it. The warmth in Dad’s eyes whenever he looked at Aggie still surprised her, but she was learning to count on it again, and Burnaby talked to her more. She hoped she could live with two out of three.

  “Now I can’t pretend, Dad.”

  He raised his brows, searched her eyes. “About what?”

  Her thumbs petted the agate jar. “She used to be happy. Before she got sick, she loved me. With her in that coma, I sat by her bed and pretended those things were still true.”

  “Oh, Agate.” His eyes brimmed. “They are, they are, they are.”

  Aggie swung her gaze to the heavy clouds overhead. Even the sky was crying.

  She set her jaw and trailed him into the hospital, hugging the jar to her chest. He led her to a different room than the one they visited during late July and August, the one where her comatose mama had faced the ground in a sling or lay sideways in that special burn-unit bed.

  In this new room, they didn’t make Aggie or Dad or Burnaby wear a yellow suit or mask. The air smelled like clean linens, not antiseptic. No ventilator hissed and clicked. Aggie shrank against the wall and fixed her eyes on the single IV line trailing from the hanging plastic bag to her mother’s arm. The crowd of hoses and wires she’d seen the previous week were nowhere in sight.

  Mama’s eyes were closed. Propped on her side at an incline, she faced the door from a plain old hospital bed with rails. Rain battered the window.

  “Hey, sweetheart.” Dad bent over Mama and kissed her lips lightly. Ran his hand over her close-cropped hair before he rested it against her cheek.

  Mama’s eyelids fluttered, then closed again.

  “We’re here. All of us.” His voice sounded like feathers.

  Her mother’s eyes opened and played on the ceiling, unfocused. Then they swerved to Burnaby. Smiling, she ran her hand over the white waffle blanket. Burn stepped closer and touched her knuckles, one by one. “Hello, Mama.”

  “What time did you leave last night?” she asked, her tongue thick.

  “Eight forty-two. Right after you fell asleep.”

  “Glad you’re back, love.” She pressed her other hand on top of his.

  He tensed but left his fingers between hers.

  She lifted her head and looked past him to Aggie. “Agate? My Agate?”

  Aggie nodded and crept to the bed, raising her eyes to Mama’s only after she set the agate jar on the blanket in front of her.

  “I ever tell you how I got these?” Mama slowly unscrewed the lid and tipped the jar with the back of her hand. Agates spilled onto the blanket. Her lips barely moved. “Giant waves guarding them.”

  Aggie leaned closer to hear. Mama reached for her, then dropped her hand to the bed.

  “We’ll have to go to that beach together sometime.”

  Together?

  Aggie’s lips puckered as her mother closed her eyes again. She wanted to believe Mama in the worst way, but she couldn’t. Hunting agates with her kind Mama? The hope was too big. She couldn’t hold it inside herself even for a second. She backed up to the wall and slid to the floor, her chin to her chest, her forehead on her knees.

  Her dad lowered himself to the linoleum beside her, his injured leg straight out, his side pressing against hers. “Waited a long time for this, haven’t we?”

  Aggie’s face rubbed her jeans as she nodded.

  “A little too much?”

  She nodded again.

  Dad rose and gathered the strewn agates, then set the jar on the bedside table behind a water glass with a bent straw. “We’ll be back, Bree. I’m taking Aggie to the cafeteria.”

  Mama nodded without opening her eyes. Burnaby sat in the chair beside her as Dad pulled Aggie to her feet.

  For the next month, they prepared to bring Mama home.

  Deacons from their old church towed in a single wide trailer and connected it to the power pole and the septic field and the well on their property. Dad said they had good insurance so didn’t need help from the church’s benevolent fund, but that didn’t stop the scrubbed-out cattle truck, pickups, and cars. They arrived with clothes and towels and canned goods and pots and pans and dishes and casseroles and beds and dressers and a sofa and recliner and kitchen table with wooden chairs. Friends carried everything inside.

  Aggie’s father was closing the tailgate on a truck when an old man slipped inside the trailer with a package wrapped in newspaper. Dad found it after dinner and unwrapped the sca
rred violin and ancient bow with half of the horsehair missing. Lifting the fiddle to his chin, he tuned and plucked the strings.

  Insurance bought Mama a wheelchair. She could walk the hospital halls, but not very far before her lungs hurt, so Burnaby built a ramp up to the trailer’s door and smoothed a gravel path to her seed barn, so she could get around once she arrived.

  Aggie lived on high alert every second after Mama woke up. Whenever they visited the hospital, she watched her mother for a shift in her mood or tone of voice, something that would confirm what Aggie knew would happen: Mama would come to her senses and realize what Aggie did to her. Or her brain would start acting up again. Either way, her mean mama would be back.

  So far, Mama hadn’t mentioned the fire. She had been … well … gentle. Curious about Aggie’s time in the woods. Even a little playful now and then. Aggie didn’t trust her for a minute. Pain medications drugged and confused Mama—no more, no less.

  Aggie braced herself. The second week of October, Mama would leave the hospital and move back in with Dad and Burnaby and her. By then she’d be clean. The doctors had already been weaning her off the painkillers for more than a month. They had stopped her prior psychotropic medications when she was in the coma, Dad said, and she refused to restart them once she regained consciousness. Now Mama’s mind was sharper, her eyes clear. What would that mean? Which mother would come home to them? To her?

  “What about her antidepressants, Dad?” Aggie sat across the table from him in the trailer. The aroma of taco filling wafted around them, but Aggie hadn’t touched her favorite meal. “And that other pill. The yellow one.”

  Dad spooned salsa over his beans. “Those side effects … As long as she’s stable … She says she doesn’t need them anymore.”

  “Don’t they all say that?”

  “Who’s they?”

  “You know. Mental patients.”