Crooked River: A Novel

by Valerie Geary

  I pat the empty grass beside me.

  My sister shakes her head.

  The one who follows me laughs, and it sounds like a fireworks explosion. The stars twinkle brighter.

  Our noise has attracted others. They inch out of the darkness, hobbling and sliding and skipping closer. Their whispers swell inside my head and I cannot think. Their energies fill my chest and I cannot breathe. I ask them to leave us alone. I say, Go away. It’s not your time.

  The one from the river hisses. The others retreat into the darkness. The one who follows me sighs and settles into the open arms of a nearby concrete angel. My head stops throbbing, the pressure in my chest releases. I rest my fingertips on the wooden planchette and nod to the one from the river. She puts her damp hands over mine.

  I look up at my sister who can see only my hands. I raise my eyebrows and shrug one shoulder.

  “Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “Fine. I’ll play. But it doesn’t mean anything.”

  She waits until I nod, and then she says, “Who killed Taylor Bellweather?”

  I turn my attention back to the board and think, Who did this? Who murdered you? Her hands move my hands, and the planchette skips across the board to the first letter.

  27

  sam

  I was supposed to be the practical sister, the no-nonsense one, the older, wiser, ghosts-are-for-little-kids-and-crazy-people sister. I was supposed to be watching out for Ollie, keeping her safe, not dragging her to a cemetery in the dead middle of night, breaking who knew how many laws. So when she set up that stupid board game, the only thing I was thinking about was how to get her moving again so we could go to Mom’s grave and then get the hell out of here.

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll play. But it doesn’t mean anything.”

  Her pale hands, ghost hands, barely touched the fat wooden pointer she moved across the lettered board.

  Who killed Taylor Bellweather?

  R

  Who dumped her in Crooked River?

  O

  Who in Terrebonne has something to hide?

  T

  Ollie moved the pointer to the last letter.

  H

  She looked up at me.

  “That’s not funny, Ollie.”

  But she wasn’t laughing.

  A rustling noise started up somewhere behind me. Like footsteps swishing through dry grass, strange voices muttering in the dark. I spun around, sweeping the flashlight beam in a wide arc, but the shadows that surrounded us were too thick to see much of anything besides hulking gravestones, scratching tree limbs, and crouching bushes. No shapes moving closer, no animals scuffling through the grass. The air was heavy and stale and still. No wind tonight. Not one gust. I was letting my imagination get the best of me.

  I shined the flashlight back on Ollie and her stupid game. “Put it away.”

  Ollie lifted her hand to block the light. Her eyes were black smudges, her lips straight, gray lines.

  “Put the game away,” I said again. “And let’s go.”

  When she still didn’t move, I kicked the edge of the board. The pointer skittered and hopped away from the H, landing on the word NO scrawled in the top corner. I took a step back. Ollie grabbed the pointer and clutched it to her chest. She scowled at me.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” I said. “I told you. It’s just a stupid game. Anyway, how do I know you didn’t just move that pointer yourself, by your own strength? It doesn’t prove anything.”

  Her scowl deepened.

  “I shouldn’t have let you.” I crouched and laid the flashlight on the ground. The beam pierced a bright tunnel through the grass. I folded the board along its well-worn seams, in half and then in half again, and returned it to its box. “It’s disrespectful.”

  I held out my hand for the pointer. “Give it to me.”

  Ollie shook her head.

  “We’re done playing.”

  She looked over her shoulder where faded moonlight was falling down silver, brushing soft light on a concrete angel. When she turned back to me, her mouth was open like she was about to speak.

  I dropped my hand to my side. “Well, say it.”

  Ollie took a breath.

  “Go on. Say something.” I stood up and put my hands on my hips. “Call me names. Shout at me. Tell me what an awful, horrible sister I am. Go on. Cuss, spit, scream. What’s the matter? Ghost got your tongue?” And I said it in a way that wasn’t nice.

  Ollie snapped her mouth closed, tossed the pointer into the box, and replaced the lid. Gathering the board game under one arm, she rose to her feet and started to walk back to the truck. Her toe caught the end of the flashlight, spinning it in a circle so the beam was illuminating Taylor Bellweather’s name. I snatched the flashlight up from the grass and swung it after Ollie, but she had already melted into the dark.

  A few seconds later, the truck door popped open. The cab light blinked on and then off again as Ollie slammed the door shut. Maybe Franny and my grandparents and, yes, maybe even Deputy Santos, were right. Maybe Terrebonne wasn’t the best place for me and Ollie right now. I’d had this idea that Ollie might pick up talking again once we got to the meadow, that she could shake off whatever sadness was keeping her silent, but now I was beginning to understand it wasn’t going to be as simple as that and staying here was only making things worse.

  I waited for Ollie another few seconds beside Taylor Bellweather’s grave, but she stayed in the truck. I thought about going after her, opening the door, taking her hand, and making her come with me to Mom’s grave the way Grandma had tried last week when we came by here on our way to the meadow. Ollie had refused to get out of the car that day. The only time she’d been to Mom’s grave was for the funeral, but I couldn’t think of any good reason to force her now.

  I kept the flashlight pointed down at the narrow, gravel path and walked deeper into the cemetery. I’d only ever been here during the day when the landscape was bright and airy and layered with color. At night, with just this blue-white beam illuminating no bigger than a three-by-three patch of the world at any given time, I started to feel pressed in, like any second I’d run into a wall or fall into an open grave. I tried telling myself that this place was no different than any other place, but then the flashlight beam would sweep over a crooked stone and I would remember all the buried bodies. Hundreds of men and women, husbands, wives, sons, daughters. Decomposing and falling to pieces right here under my feet.

  I kept the beam pointed as straight as possible and followed the path to the left and up a small rise, then into the grass, six headstones in and three rows below a large stone cross. It’s hard enough trying to find a certain gravestone in the day. At night, it’s nearly impossible.

  The flashlight danced over graves and flowers and names, stones worn almost flat by time and rain. Here lies Mr. John C. Gordon, may he rest in peace. His wife was buried beside him. Their two daughters and their husbands took up space nearby. I spun in a slow circle. She was here. Somewhere. Six headstones in, three rows below the large stone cross. Or was it above? I walked up the hill, past the cross to the third row.

  Because it had only been a few weeks and the headstone wasn’t ready yet, her grave was marked with a small placard, a piece of paper shoved into a plastic sleeve. Printed black on white was her name, Sara Bethany McAlister, the day she was born, March 2, 1949, and the day she died, July 4, 1988. These would be carved on granite, along with the epitaph Grandma had picked out because Bear hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. Beloved Daughter and Mother. As if that was all that counted. As if an entire person was made up of only two parts.

  She was other things, too. Stargazer, storyteller, bibliophile, chocoholic and something of a weekend wino, gardener, collector of roosters and spoons and oddly shaped rocks, a good hugger, a better back-scratcher, a terrible cook, loyal, passionate, ever the eter
nal optimist, wife. A loving wife. Despite how it may have looked to people on the outside, or how many times Grandma had begged her to file for divorce, or all the days, weeks, months they spent apart, Mom had never stopped loving Bear. And he had never stopped loving her. And maybe someday, no matter what Grandma or anyone else thought, maybe someday Bear would have come home to her, to us. We could have been a family again.

  I moved the flashlight from left to right across the placard. Grandma had left roses when we’d stopped here on our way to the meadow, but they were dead now, brown and drooping over, their dried petals falling to the dirt. I crouched to take them out of the vase, planning to throw them out in the garbage can in the parking lot, and that’s when I saw the honey settled down in the grass, a pint jar with a yellow label and red ribbon.

  I picked it up, turning it in my hand, and shined the flashlight on it. The honey glowed, like something on the inside was trying to burn its way out. In ancient Egypt, people used to bury their loved ones with sealed honey pots so they would have something to eat in the afterlife. A waste of good honey, if you asked me.

  There was writing on the lid, black marker scrawl, and I recognized Bear’s handwriting from the receipts he’d written out for people who bought honey and from those letters he’d started but never finished.

  On the lid, he’d written, My love for always. Forgive me.

  I put the jar back in the grass beside the vase. So here it was. Proof that Bear had been here, that he was telling the truth. Grandma and I could both be witnesses for the defense. “I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God. No, the honey was not in the cemetery Saturday morning when we stopped to leave flowers at my mother’s grave. Yes, that is my father’s handwriting. No, I did not actually see him in the cemetery on Monday night, but . . .” It wasn’t enough. It meant something to me, but that was all. No one else would be convinced.

  If I could set up the timeline better . . .

  If I could find someone who’d testify that they saw Bear in the area between the time he left the bar and the time he showed up for breakfast . . .

  If he would fight harder for us . . .

  Ifs and ifs and ifs. Our entire future dependent on conditional clauses.

  I’d been carrying Mom and Bear’s honeymoon picture around with me since I’d taken it from the teepee. I slipped it from my pocket now and tucked it in beside the jar of honey. It seemed the right place to leave it.

  Something rustled in the grass, like someone was walking over to me. I swept the flashlight beam to one side and then the other, and then over my shoulder, then around to the front.

  “Ollie? Is that you?”

  Another sweep of the beam. I didn’t see anyone or anything and the sound had stopped, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Probably just a raccoon. I switched off the flashlight and walked through the shifting camouflage of darkness and pale moonlight back to the truck where Ollie was waiting, her seat belt buckled and ready to go.

  Along the highway between the cemetery and Zeb and Franny’s farm, I counted six gas stations. Four were shuttered and dark, and when I pulled the truck through, the signs in the windows all said CLOSED, and though the hours varied a little from station to station, all four had been closed since at least 10:00 P.M. and would stay closed until at least 5:00 A.M. Only two of the six stations still had their lights on, welcoming late-night drivers.

  The first one I tried was a Chevron. The attendant was a rough-looking man with gray scruff and slicked-back hair. His lower lip bulged, and just before he reached the truck he turned his head and spat.

  He leaned into the open window. “Awfully late for two young birds like you to be flitting about, isn’t it?”

  One of his eyes wandered, taking its own initiative and looking off in some more interesting direction.

  I held the newspaper folded to the front page and Bear’s mug shot out to him. “Do you recognize this man?”

  “You buying gas?”

  I shook my head.

  He said, “Nope, never seen him,” without even looking at the picture.

  I dug a wadded-up five-dollar bill from my pocket and shoved it out the window alongside the newspaper. “What about now?”

  The man took the five dollars, then leaned in close and squinted at the grainy picture. He shook his head real slow. “Nope. Still never seen him.”

  He pocketed the money and sauntered back to his post inside a small, glass-enclosed office where he settled down onto a tall stool and lit a cigarette. The smoke crowded up against the glass, obscuring the man for a few seconds before breaking apart and disappearing through the cracked-open door. He kept his face pointed away from me.

  We drove on.

  The second open station was an Arco and the lights glowed bright on the horizon for several miles before we actually came up to the driveway. A blue sedan was parked at one of the pumps, the driver a hunched silhouette tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel.

  I didn’t pull up to any pump this time. I parked in front of the convenience store and left the engine running.

  “Stay here,” I told Ollie and got out of the truck.

  A bell above the double glass doors rang.

  The kid behind the counter looked up and said, “Can I help you?”

  His skin was dark, his eyes golden brown. He smiled and his teeth were shining white. He was only a few years older than me, and cute, too. Any other summer, I probably would have been too embarrassed to even say hi. I slid the newspaper in front of him, and he leaned his elbows on the counter, bending close for a better look.

  “You know him?”

  The kid looked up at me, nodding. “Sure, I do.”

  And my heart lifted. And my feet wanted to dance across the ceiling.

  “He’s that crazy hobo who lives out in the woods. In a teepee or something, right? He beat that girl to death a couple weeks back.”

  Ten days. It had only been ten days since Taylor died. And no, my father hadn’t beaten anyone. Those were just rumors and terrible lies. I pulled the paper away from him and held it down beside my leg.

  “You ever see him around here?” I asked.

  The kid leaned back on his stool. “No, but if I ever did . . .” And then he punched his fists in the air, one-two-three, quick jabs meant to break a man’s nose.

  “Yeah. Right. Thanks,” I mumbled and returned to the truck.

  I tossed the newspaper on the floor at Ollie’s feet. She bent, picked it up, and stared at Bear’s picture for a few seconds. Then she spread it out flat and laid it on the seat between us, keeping her fingers on the newsprint close to Bear’s face.

  I drove back onto the highway and headed toward Terrebonne, keeping the speedometer steady at fifty-five. Ollie, still holding the Ouija board in her lap, leaned her head against the door. Now was as good a time as any to tell her what I had learned about Bear, about his accident and Delilah Roth, about how he’d fought with Taylor Bellweather the night before she died and maybe he wouldn’t ever be coming home.

  I glanced over at her. Her eyes were closed. A car passed in the opposite direction and the headlights swept through the glass, brushing gold over her face.

  “Ollie?” I whispered.

  Her eyes stayed shut. Her mouth was open a little, something that always happened when she fell asleep in a car. Turning my attention back to the highway and the double yellow lines rolling on for miles, I let Ollie sleep.

  When we finally got back to Zeb and Franny’s, it was closing in on three in the morning. The lights were still on, and before I even had a chance to shut off the engine, the front door of the house opened. Franny hobbled across the porch, stopping at the top of the steps and leaning one hand on the railing. Zeb followed her, taking his time. They were both dressed, though Franny had on house slippers and her hair wa
s pinned in curlers. I turned off the truck and took the keys out of the ignition.

  Zeb went down the steps slowly, pausing at the bottom to rub his hip and tug at his belt before going on.

  I nudged Ollie’s shoulder. “We’re back.”

  She shifted and raised her head, saw Zeb coming toward us, and turned to look at me. There was still sleep in her eyes. She rubbed at it with knuckled fists.

  “I’ll tell them it was all my idea,” I said, because it was. “I’ll tell them I made you come with me.”

  She started to shake her head. I reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. “It’ll be okay.”

  Zeb tapped on my window. I opened the door, and he took a step back.

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Where in hell’s blazes have you two been?”

  I climbed out of the truck. Ollie climbed out after me, holding the Ouija board under her arm. We left the newspaper crumpled on the seat.

  I said, “We went to see Mom.”

  From the porch, Franny shouted, “Are they all right, Zeb? Is everything okay?”

  “They’re fine, Mother.” He never moved his eyes from me.

  “Do you know what time it is?” he asked.

  I stared at the ground and scuffed my shoe in the gravel.

  He said, “I would have taken you, if you’d just said something.”

  “We wanted to go alone.”

  He shifted his attention to Ollie, taking in the board game tucked under her arm. “Is that right?”

  “We didn’t want to bother you.” I reached for my wallet in my back pocket. “I have my learner’s permit. And I know how—”

  He waved the card away. “We were this close to calling the police,” he said. “You could have been hurt. Or killed. You could have killed someone else.” He pinched the skin between his eyes and exhaled sharply. “Both of you. Get inside.”

  When Ollie got to the front porch, Franny gathered her under one arm and took her into the house. I started to say something about paying for the gas I used, but Zeb just shook his head and held out his hand.