Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

  “Where have you been?”

  There was a long pause, and I thought he’d hung up on me. Then he said, “I needed to be alone for a while.”

  “Why?”

  “I just needed some space to think.”

  His answers were terrible, but hearing his voice again after so long, I didn’t even care. I asked, “When are you coming home?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Tomorrow?”

  He sighed and then, “No, not tomorrow.”

  “Maybe the next day.”

  “No, probably not.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know, Sam.”

  “Oh.”

  “I need you to be a big girl for me, okay? I need you to be brave and take care of your mother and baby sister. Can you do that?”

  “Okay.”

  He cleared his throat, and in the background I heard a car drive by. Then Bear said, “How would you like to stay with me for a few weeks this summer? We can sleep under the stars. And I can teach you how to fish.”

  “Really?”

  “Would you like that?”

  “Yes.”

  And so my father had finally returned, but not in the way I’d imagined. The first time I saw him after he’d been gone for so long, I didn’t recognize him. I was afraid to get out of the car. Here was this bearded man standing not much taller than my mother, though I remembered him being a giant. Here was this sallow-faced stranger, so much thinner than I remembered, and I was sure there’d been a mistake. Then he smiled at me, and it was as if he’d never even been gone.

  But now.

  And again.

  I was here, and he was not. I was alone, and he was lost. Only this time, there were no stories to give me hope and no Mom to keep me safe or hold me when I cried.

  At the river’s edge, I bent, picked up a flat stone, and tried to skip it across the water, but the current was too rough, the rapids moving too fast, and the stone was sucked away before it ever had a chance.

  A dark speck darted past me. I followed its movement, watched it bob low and come up again, then drop quickly down to the shallow water a few inches from where I stood. I crouched on the bank and leaned in for a closer look. It was a honeybee, maybe one of Bear’s, but that’s not something you can tell just from looking. Her job today was to carry water back to the hive. She drank deeply, and after a few seconds she took off, bobbing, dipping, pulling up again, trying to balance. Then she circled once and flew upstream, away from me and in the exact opposite direction of Bear’s hives. I jumped up and ran after her.

  When bees fly back to their hives, they fly in a mostly straight line. Bear taught me that. He also taught me that the best conditions for tracking them is an overcast day when you can see their black bodies against pale clouds. Today’s sky was piercing blue, but as long as she stayed out of the trees, I thought I might have a chance to find my first wild colony.

  Bear was always saying you can’t call yourself a real beekeeper until you’ve tracked a wild bee to her wild hive. In the past four years, he’d found six, and he’d said it was because he was patient and attentive and had eyes like a hawk. I always wondered, though, if maybe the bees just moved slower for him, because whenever I’d tried to follow them, I’d take only a few steps before losing sight and giving up. “Beelining is ten percent skill and ninety percent luck,” Bear liked to say. Bees are small and move fast, tracking them is like trying to follow a dust mote in the sun. The best thing to do is lock onto their movement, ignore where you’re putting your feet, and just run as fast and as straight as you can.

  It felt good to feel the earth pushing back against my feet, to suck great gulps of air into my lungs, to crash and stomp and blaze a path through the brush. The pillowcase thumped against my back and every few steps I stumbled over a loose rock or a piece of wood sticking up from the dirt, but I didn’t fall, I didn’t slow down. The bee flew. I ran.

  She stuck close to Crooked River for about a half mile, and it was easy enough to follow her. The shoreline south of my swimming hole flattened out, the river itself widening, the current slowing. Grass swished around my ankles. A flock of small birds exploded from a clump of cattails.

  I’d explored this part of the river before, and there was still a ways to go before Zeb’s property ended and somebody else’s began. I didn’t think the bee would go much farther now, and I was starting to get excited, imagining what it would be like to find a wild hive. It would be in a tree hollow or a rotten log or maybe even inside a cave, tucked under the rock eaves. Once I got close enough I’d start to see more bees, maybe even hear them humming. And I wondered if they’d sound the same as Bear’s bees—comfortable, soothing, cheerful—or if the wild buzz would be more frenzied, more hurried, rushing and angry. And Bear. I pictured the look on his face when I told him how I’d tracked a bee all the way from our part of the river to wherever. Elated, grinning, proud.

  I thought, I have to be getting close now, and glanced at the tree line. And that’s when I lost sight of the bee.

  You have to pay attention. Time and time again, Bear had told me this. You have to keep your head up and your eyes wide open.

  I stopped running and twisted my head around, scanning the air, the sky, the trees, every possible place, but she was gone. Vanished in the blink of an eye. I kicked at a rock. It skittered away from me and splashed into the river.

  The sun inched higher. I had an hour, maybe, before Zeb and Franny and Ollie got back from church. I was close to the service road where Bear said he’d found the jean jacket. If I followed it to Lambert Road, I could get back to the farm faster and easier than backtracking through the trees and meadow. I continued upriver a few yards, following the curve of the shoreline, kicking stones and thrashing at weeds with a broken stick. Finally, I reached a break in the brush, a place where the trees thinned.

  This service road—rutted, packed dirt, grass growing down the center—was similar to the one that ran between the meadow and Zeb and Franny’s barn, but instead of ending miles from the river, this road ran straight up to the water’s edge. Maybe there used to be a bridge here, or a shallow place to ford. I looked across to the other side, where the trees grew thick and right up close to the shore. Didn’t seem to me like a good place to cross. The water was too high, the current too swift.

  A few feet downriver was a small island, a heaped mess of boulders, grass, and spindly trees that would never grow much taller than my waist. Debris collected against one end, limbs and leaves tangling, and it was here that the sun kept catching on something, glinting gold and reflecting into my eyes.

  I took off my shoes and socks and set them with the pillowcase on a nearby rock. I rolled my pant legs up to my knees and waded into the shallows. The current wrestled me, threatening to pull me off my feet and drag me under. I leaned forward, pushing against it and wading deeper. When I reached the island, my pants were soaked through. So was the hem of my shirt. The river rushed around my waist, pressing me up against the rocks. I grabbed onto a sturdy-looking branch jutting out from the tangle of debris and held on tight with one hand. With the other, I reached for what I could now see was a necklace caught on a twig.

  My fingers clasped the charm first. I tugged gently, but the necklace didn’t budge. I wiggled the chain back and forth and, at the same time, pulled. The necklace slipped off the twig, and I curled my fist around it.

  I turned, pushed off the island, and splashed through the churning water back to shore. In the shallows, my feet slipped across the algae-covered stones covering the bottom of the riverbed. I steadied myself and clambered to dry land.

  Water dripped from my pants and shirt, dampening the sand around my feet. I opened my hand and brough
t the necklace close to my face. The chain was gold and simple, and a round pendant dangled from it, a dark stone set in an intricately patterned base. I recognized the shape of it and the etchings around the stone, could see now that they were snakes, not vines like I’d thought when I saw this same necklace in the newspaper. This same pendant hanging around Taylor Bellweather’s neck.

  I snapped my head up and searched the woods behind me. I’d gotten that feeling, the kind where your skin crawls and a shiver runs up your spine and you think you’re being watched. No one was here with me but the wind and the trees and a forest full of birds.

  I stared at the necklace again. The clasp was broken and a bit of mud was caught in between the stone and the setting, but it was hers. Definitely hers. And because of that, I looked around and started to notice other things.

  Tire tracks in the mud ran from the road down to the water and then out again. Clean and pressed deep, they hadn’t had a chance to crust over yet or get worn down by wind and rain. They were only a few days old, if that. And here, up next to one of the tracks, so close I almost mistook it for a tire tread, a single, perfect boot print. Bigger than any shoe I’d ever worn, with a waffle iron pattern and a logo that wasn’t familiar to me, but seemed distinct enough to mean something.

  Here was evidence. New evidence. Evidence that would prove Bear’s innocence. Beyond a shadow of a doubt. I put the necklace in my pocket where it would be safe. Then I dug around in the pillowcase for the sketchpad and a pencil. I sat down in the dirt beside the boot print, turned to a blank page, and started to draw.

  16

  ollie

  The waitress asks, “Just the two of you?”

  My sister, nodding, says yes, even though there are two of us and two Shimmering.

  The waitress, whose sparkle-blue name tag reads Belinda, takes menus from a box near the cash register and leads us to a booth. I slide in on one side, my sister slides in on the other. The one from the river and the one who follows me break apart in the bright sunlight coming through the naked window. They float like dust around us, brushing arms, cheeks, lips. Never settling.

  Belinda lays the menus down in front of us. “Special’s meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Kids’ menu’s on the back.” She leaves us alone to decide.

  Patti’s is crowded for a Monday, and people are watching us. Those two men at the bar. That woman and her husband sharing a stack of pancakes. Those three gray-haired ladies who all look the same. They whisper behind their hands the way they did at church, but their voices are not soft enough today and I hear things like “poor girls,” “arrested,” “always suspected,” “monster.”

  My sister clears her throat too loudly and shifts her body. The vinyl bench squeaks. She says, “Do you know what you want?”

  I point at the grilled cheese sandwich that comes with a bowl of tomato soup. Comfort food because it’s what Mom would have made me on a day like today. She would have cupped my face in her hands, kissed the tip of my nose, and said, “It’s okay to be sad sometimes.”

  A bright speck floats close to my face. I wave her away.

  She is not my mother because my mother is dead. And yet she is my mother. I have seen her face in the dark. We are stuck between hello and good-bye, here and gone.

  Belinda comes back to our table holding a notepad and pencil. “So what’ll it be, girls?”

  My sister gives our order, and Belinda goes away again. When she returns with two glasses of water, my sister starts to ask a question. “I was wondering . . .” But then she stops and shakes her head, glances out the window, and chews on her bottom lip. As Belinda is leaving, my sister says, “Can I get some coffee, please?”

  Belinda brings a brown mug to the table and pours coffee from a half-full pot.

  My sister slips her hand into her front shirt pocket, then clears her throat and speaks in a too-loud voice, the way she does when she’s trying to convince people she’s older than she really is. “So, that woman they found . . . what’s the word on that? Any new developments?”

  Belinda draws the coffeepot close to her chest and holds it there with both hands. She watches us with thin-slit eyes. A bead of water slides down the outside of my glass. I catch the drop on the tip of my finger before it reaches the table and touch it to my lips.

  It’s a good question, but not the right one.

  The silence worries my sister.

  One hand is still in her pocket, clutching something I can’t see, but the other is picking at the corner of her napkin, tearing away tiny pieces. She stammers, “I mean . . . since you get a lot of people coming through here . . . in and out . . . talking . . . I just . . . I thought . . . I thought maybe you’d know . . .”

  “Do you want cream, honey?” Belinda asks.

  My sister shakes her head quickly and grabs a sugar packet from a small container at the edge of the table. “No, thanks. This is good.”

  And then we are alone again, and I want to tell her that she’s doing the best she can and to keep trying. We can’t give up. Not now. Not ever.

  Not until we prove the truth.

  She takes a sip of coffee, makes a face, and pushes her cup away. She stares out the window, and when the sunlight hits her, that’s when I know something is different. Something has changed. It’s her: clenching and unclenching her jaw, drumming her fingers against the tabletop. But it’s also the one from the river: coiling and uncoiling, trembling the air between us. Both of them, all nerves and racing pulse.

  My sister has found something. Something important.

  Something that changes everything.

  17

  sam

  We went to Patti’s because that’s where Deputy Santos usually came for lunch when she was out on patrol. Today, though, her favorite booth was occupied by someone I didn’t know. I was about to march right back out the door and straight to her house then, but Ollie was holding her stomach and staring at the pies in the glass case so hard I thought her eyes would pop. Early this morning Detective Talbert had called and asked Zeb to bring the truck in as soon as he could. For processing. Ollie and I hitched a ride with him under false pretenses of going to the public library a few blocks away. The plan was to meet in front of the diner at three. We still had a few hours yet, so I didn’t see the harm in getting a booth and ordering lunch first.

  I touched my hand to the pocket of my flannel shirt, checking for the thousandth time that the necklace was still there, that I hadn’t imagined everything.

  Yesterday, the second I got back to Zeb and Franny’s, I’d zipped the necklace into a plastic bag for safekeeping and tucked the bag inside my pocket. I didn’t tell Ollie about it because I didn’t want to get her hopes up. And I didn’t tell Zeb and Franny because they already had enough to worry about. I did call Deputy Santos, though, as soon as I could, but she didn’t answer. That’s when I decided to take the necklace and sketches to her in person. All the rest of yesterday and this morning, too, when we were eating breakfast and getting ready and even when Ollie and I went out to feed the chickens, every minute, every second, I kept the necklace with me, safe and secure. Once I gave it to Deputy Santos and showed her the boot print, it could only be a matter of time before they let Bear go free.

  I looked around the diner, surprised at how many people were here. Nearly all the tables and booths were full, and the room was loud with laughter and gossip and coffee being poured, utensils clinking on plates. I paid particular attention to the men, their hands and feet especially. Most of them wore sneakers or dress shoes, but a few had on boots, and from where I sat they all seemed to be about the right size.

  One of the men glanced over his shoulder at the exact same second I was staring at his broad torso and thick neck, staring and thinking how Taylor Bellweather would have been like a matchstick in his hands. Our eyes locked. I blinked but didn’t look away. I recognized him now, his receding hairline
and hooked nose, the way his mouth was always turned up at the corners even though nothing was funny, his tiny dark eyes sinking too close together.

  My second summer staying with Bear, Franny came to the meadow the Sunday after I got there and told me to change into something nice because she was taking me to church. She said it was about time I felt the fear of God in my life. I told her I didn’t believe in God, but if I did, I wouldn’t be afraid of him. She told me I was going to church even if she had to drag me there. And then she said I was right, it wasn’t God I needed to fear. I was shorter then, by a lot, so much smaller and younger, and Pastor Mike Freshour seemed to me a terrible giant. Leaning over the pulpit to get closer to the congregation, he near bent double. He clutched the sides and, as his words reached a crescendo, he bore down, white knuckled, and I remember being afraid that he would snap the sturdy wooden platform into a thousand tiny splinters. I don’t remember what he preached about, but I do remember running outside as fast as I could after the final Amen, desperate for air that didn’t reek of hellfire.

  He was still staring at me, and now he took a napkin from his table and dabbed at his mouth. His hands were bigger than I remembered, all knuckles and sinew. I’d only gone back to Franny’s church a few times since that first time—whenever I was visiting Bear and Franny got it in her head that my soul again needed saving—but Pastor Mike was looking at me like we were old friends, like he was about to get up and come over here and say something.

  I looked away from him quickly, focusing all my attention on Ollie instead. She was staring out the window. Her fingers tapped against the cover of her Alice book lying on the table between us. She must have felt me watching her, because her fingers stopped moving and she turned her head and our eyes met. I smiled at her, trying to be reassuring. We’ll be all right. I’ve figured out a way to fix this.

  The corners of her mouth twitched a little, and I thought I might get her to smile, but then her eyes shifted focus to something behind me, and her mouth drooped, her frown intensifying. I turned to look.