Bee tore down the road back toward Peach Hollow Farm. Bo sat in the front seat, letting a paper whirligig spin out the window. He’d slipped it past Bee and she didn’t even seem to realize he had it.
I whispered to Finch, “The day Paps died, did I have funny-looking hair?”
He puckered up his lips. “Yep, as I recall you came in from recess looking like you’d stuck your finger in a light socket.”
He said it as though I’d asked him if the sky was blue.
“Why are we whispering?” he asked.
I caught Bee’s eyes in the rearview mirror—those searching eyes, waiting for something, looking for something. I turned away and watched the passing fields of sassafras and sprawling live oak whiz by.
When we pulled up to the house, I didn’t look at Solace Hill. But I could feel it pulling me, tugging at me, like a cool swimming hole on a blazing hot day. Finch stepped on the back of my shoe, leaving an ugly black smudge. He laughed, and I pushed him away. I didn’t want to see him anymore today; I didn’t want to see anyone. I wanted to be by myself up on that hill.
“What’s got you all in a fluster?” he asked, grinning. His cowlick had managed to pop up. It looked like a flag on his head. For the briefest of second I wanted to tell him everything, but I couldn’t. I didn’t even know what was happening.
“Nothing,” I mumbled. My eyes betrayed me and I looked at Solace Hill. Something passed through me then, achingly, as I imagined Paps up there going in circles on the tractor. And I’d been sitting on that swing minutes earlier when lightning hit. I felt Bee’s presence behind me then in the driveway; she’d paused, and the shivers went up my back. The moment seemed to go on forever, us sharing something, that knowing, that vibrating, that something-needed-to-be-found feeling.
But it was my secret for now, mine, whatever was up there, whatever was happening in me. It was mine. I was going to have to be very careful; Bee could sniff out a secret a hundred miles away and I had about as much chance as a rooster egg that she wouldn’t find out what I was up to. She nudged me forward up the steps.
June Rain was in the kitchen. She’d set the table and was making something doughy and cinnamony—something that needs ingredients, and mixing and baking—and putting it in the oven. I suddenly had a memory of her cooking chili for Harlan. It tasted like it had been cooked in an old stinky barrel, but Harlan seemed pleased that June Rain had made the effort. And here she was actually baking. There was even bacon frying in a pan, and scrambled eggs with vegetables chopped up in them, like how you get them at the Dinner Bell Café. I couldn’t believe it. I got a little sick feeling in my tummy, though, wondering what she was up to, knowing somehow that any change involving June Rain had consequences. Bee and I exchanged a look. She was just as surprised as I was. Even Old Jack froze, his head tilted curiously at her.
Finch helped himself to a pinch of the dough that June Rain had left on the counter before Bee scooted us out of the kitchen.
“You go on, you two, start picking some of the early-ripe peaches. I’ll call you in for lunch when it’s ready.”
I went upstairs and changed out of my dress and stupid shoes and back into my overalls. I left on the new underwear with the lace. I think I actually liked it a little bit, although I’d never admit it to Bee.
I walked as slow as I could to the orchard, Finch ahead of me whistling, Bo running behind us. Old Jack zigzagged through the trees after a jackrabbit. Nothing I hated more than picking peaches. I’ve been picking peaches for over a hundred years, at least it seems like it. Bee says it is our life-blood, and someday I’ll enjoy it. But not today. Not ever.
After we’d been picking awhile, Finch said. “You sure are quiet today, Esme.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a pack of Candy Cigarettes gum and held it up proudly. He must have purchased it at the Ben Franklin and Bo’s whirligig, too. Candy Cigarettes were one of our all-time favorites, but neither of us had money usually. I took a purple-tipped one and put it in my mouth.
A bee was droning around my head, so I moved under another tree. I feared bees more than anything in the world, even more than spiders, which was very strange since we had beehives out in the woods (the famous bees that Bee supposedly stole from her sister) and gathered our own honey. Bee thought I was just being difficult. But I’d always been afraid of them, those bees, even from before I could remember.
I wanted to be farther away from Finch, too. He knew me too well. He knew most of my secrets and I could tell him anything. Bee said that Finch Aberdeen had no arrows in his quiver and she’d been making him as welcome as a wet shoe lately, but I still liked him, wet shoe, empty quiver or not. He’d never turn on me. But I wasn’t going to tell him about the bone like I wasn’t going to tell him about my new lace underwear or that I was hoping I’d fill out my bra soon. I wasn’t going to tell anyone.
“Is it because of what Miss Lilah said yesterday about Paps?” he asked a few moments later, one of the candy cigarettes dangling out of his mouth.
“No,” I said as I bit into a peach and sat down under the tree. “Why would you say that? We all know Lilah Ames’s got a hole in her screen door and is not playing with a full sack of marbles anymore. Poor Miss Opal.”
“My daddy says Miss Lilah was fancy on your paps once upon a time.” Finch pulled the cigarette into his mouth and started chomping on it, then blew a giant pink bubble.
“I think we can all guess that,” I said, thinking about her sitting on that low tree limb in the rain like she was sixteen, her moon-pie eyes on Solace Hill.
“But your paps didn’t marry her because Bee Hennessey put some spell on him. That’s what my daddy says. Says all of your line is mighty strange and peculiar and maybe . . .”
I threw my peach at him and it left a wet mark on his church shirt. “Why would you say something like that, Finch Aberdeen? And who’d believe anything that comes out of your daddy’s mouth anyway?” I knew that would hurt. But no one was gonna call my family crazy.
Finch pushed his glasses up his nose, and looked at me. We could say almost anything to one another, tease each other to no end, but our families were off-limits. He’d started it, though, talking about my paps and Bee. He walked away, back toward the house. Ow! My arm started to tingle like it was on fire. That bee had stung me. My eyes welling up with tears, I calmly pulled the stinger out as a large, angry welt appeared.
Bee was in the kitchen making a lemon curd. She’d sent Finch home after June Rain’s fancy scrambled egg lunch since we’d hardly looked at each other all through the meal. The bittersweet smell of lemons wafted up to my room and I could hear the rhythmic click click click as she sliced them on the cutting board. Click. Click. Click. Something was on her mind. June Rain and Bo were watching Gumby and Pokey in the living room; the goofy, cheerful up-and-down lilt of the TV voices sounded so strange in our house. Click. Click. Click.
I went downstairs and froze in the kitchen doorway, shock running through me. Sweetmaw was at the screen door, still wearing her pillbox hat and lavender polyester church dress, her purse clutched at her side. She held one of her famous Hennessey pies—cherry I could tell from the dark pink peeking through the crisscrossed crust. Bee had stopped chopping her lemons, her knife frozen in midair.
“June Rain invited me for dessert,” Sweetmaw said, through the screen. “She called me.” Bee looked at June Rain, who’d suddenly appeared and was washing dishes. Her face was obscured by her dark silky hair, but somehow I knew there was a slight smile there. The whole scene unsettled me, because June Rain did not bake, did not smile. She usually just let the world spin around her. I always feared the world would someday stop and she would just get off. I ran to open the screen door for Sweetmaw and she walked into Bee’s kitchen as though she came every Sunday for dessert.
“How’s the Just Teasin’?” Bee asked as she continued to chop the lemons. Click. Click. Click.
“Busy like always,” Sweetmaw said.
Bee rolled her eyes ’c
ause she knew that wasn’t the truth. Most everyone in town was poor and business was slow.
“Hoping June Rain might come back soon,” Sweetmaw said. “She always worked magic on the older ladies.”
Sweetmaw put the pie on the table and Bee shot a look at it. There was something there—a memory perhaps, but the kind that feels sweet at first and is then followed by something bitter and sad. I watched them and wondered how they could be sisters. Sweetmaw was as short as she was wide and wore her hair in one of those sprayed helmet do’s that was popular a long time ago. And unlike Bee, who I’d never seen wear as much as even a hint of lipstick, Sweetmaw’s face was always perfectly done up, her eyelashes like furry caterpillars, her chubby cheeks pinked with blush.
June Rain put out dessert plates and forks and Bo came running in just as the pie was cut into pieces and we were all sitting down. Bee wouldn’t take one bite of hers and just peered at Sweetmaw. The rest of us ate our slices and asked for more. Bee and Sweetmaw didn’t say one more word to each other. Not one word.
Later, when Sweetmaw was leaving, she lingered on the steps, looking back into the house. I was on the way to my room but stopped in the hall to listen.
“I’ve heard it was one of our pies that won him over Bee,” Sweetmaw said to Bee through the screen.
“You’ve forgotten I was a Hennessey. The recipe was mine, too,” said Bee, sounding like a teenage girl.
“But not the bees,” Sweetmaw said.
“They don’t belong to anyone, Sweetmaw. They’re bees. They followed me the day I married Homer, followed us as we walked from the church.”
“Everything just happens, Bee. It just happens, right?” Sweetmaw sounded sad now, so unlike her.
“I didn’t steal him,” said Bee as the screen door slapped shut. And then I heard a soft good-bye, Bee’s voice cracking. A minute later when I peeked into the kitchen, Bee still lingered at the door, her face pressed into the screen, her hand up in a wave. Then she turned and threw the remains of the pie in the trash.
My daddy Harlan loved the bees. They were restless, just like him. He made them new hives every year with two-by-fours. He’d nail his paintings of large colorful flowers on the sides. He put the hives in the woods, seeming to know where the bees wanted to be. When he moved the hives to a new spot, he called them with a cowbell, and like a big black cloud they followed him to their new home.
Even though I was afraid of the bees, Bee insisted I come with her to the hives the next afternoon. She’d been taking care of them since Harlan left.
“Why do I have to go?” I said, following behind her, sulking. She didn’t say a word, just walked stiffly on, and I stuck my tongue out at her back. A flock of ravens flew over us. I thought about that bee swarm following Bee and Paps as they left the church. What else had she taken with her when she’d married him? The way Sweetmaw acted, it was as though Bee had taken the whole world with her.
“It’s time,” Bee said after a little while. “We need the money.”
We need the money. Each summer we usually collected four or five gallons of honey. Bee drove all over the county selling Bee’s Honey and it was well prized in the kind of shops that sold soap with leaves and sticks floating in it, and incense, and cute porcelain pigs. Bee was carrying a small bucket with a butcher knife and a fork. I carried a long stick with wads of cotton, scraps from her quilting heap, wrapped in a ball on the end. When we finally reached the hives, I stood a ways back, rubbing my sore arm, which Bee had fixed up with a soft bandage and salve.
“You ain’t ever gonna conquer your fears unless you face them head-on,” Bee said over her shoulder as she worked at prying the lid off the first hive with a hammer. When I didn’t move, she tilted her head in that cut-it-out gesture she gives to me and Bo sometimes. So I stepped forward, keeping my eyes averted from what she was doing, which was basically opening up Pandora’s Box. I focused on one of Harlan’s purple flowers. A hyacinth. I blinked and leaned in closer. He’d painted a tiny image of June Rain’s face peeking out from a petal as though she were a fairy tale princess.
“Did you really steal Sweetmaw’s bees?” I asked, looking away from the painting and down at my feet.
“They were leaving anyway, just like me,” Bee responded. “Those bees just followed, that’s all.” She lit a match, and I lifted the stick so she could light the ball of cotton.
“Then why have you and Sweetmaw been so mad at each other if it wasn’t about the bees?”
She waved the flame around the hive like a great enchantress. The smoke made the bees retreat deep into the recesses of the honeycomb. Bee reached into the hive with the fork and pulled a huge ball of honey out, letting it drip into the bucket. Then she carefully nailed the lid back on the hive and we moved on to the next one. She never answered my question, but I knew she wouldn’t. I thought about what she’d said about the McCauleys’ sorrows, linked together one after another like our honeycombs, and wondered if we’d ever be happy.
After the trip to the hives, Bee kept me busy with more chores. It was like she knew, she knew, as she always knew things, that I wanted to escape.
Old Jack wandered into my room after dinner and nudged me. Paps had found him on the bank of Bitter Creek, looking like he’d been spit up from the river. Once Paps nursed him back to health, he didn’t look old; he just had those eyes that said, I’m old; I’ve seen everything. So Paps named him Old Jack.
Old Jack nudged me again, then put his paws up on the windowsill, looking out toward Solace Hill. “Okay, Old Jack. We’ll go. We’ll go,” I said.
Tiptoeing past Bee’s room, I stopped when I saw the door was ajar. I listened a moment, then slowly opened it and stood there taking in all her smells—cotton puffs, some awful stringent bath soap, and the faint tinge of dust and forgotten things. Her room was sparsely furnished—an old twin bed hardly better than a cot, a side table, and bureau—old junky pieces that looked like they’d lived most of their life disintegrating in an attic. The only nice thing she had was the rocking chair Paps had rocked me in as a baby, back when I’d been snatched from Paradise. Back when I was just a translucent butter bean.
I walked straight over to the bureau. Old Jack waited for me at the door, whining. Something told me to open the left drawer. Maybe that gold coin was in there, that delicate gold coin Paps had had in his hand when he’d died. I opened the drawer and fumbled around in the ancient buttons and reached underneath an old scrap of quilt and touched a small folded-up piece of paper. It was a telegram from Harlan asking for bail money from some town in Louisiana. It was dated a month ago. I tucked it back in the drawer when I heard Bee stir down in the kitchen and I ran out of the room wondering if she’d helped him or let his butt rot.
The night my baby brother Bo was born, the sky was a strange violet-tinged blue. Although he showed up late, smelling of beer and tobacco, Harlan was there, and when he got a look at his new son, his perfect son, so unlike me, I thought this time, this time, he’s gonna stay. And I think June Rain thought so, too, for she was smiling so sweetly, like I’d never seen before. But Harlan left a week later, sure as salt, and June Ran hadn’t smiled like that again.
And just then, just as I was thinking about Harlan and Bo and June Rain, I found it. At the base of one of the trees, right where I’d seen June Rain, there were three small cigarette butts. I picked one up and held it to my nose. Old Salems. Harlan’s brand. I dropped it like it had burned me. Someone had stood here under the trees, long enough to smoke these, watching the lit windows of our house. Old Jack sniffed at the butts, then barked. A cold wave washed over me as I turned and ran on toward the hill.
Old Jack and I trudged up Solace Hill as the light from the setting sun slanted down in wondrous purple rays. I’d brought along a small shovel and pick I’d found in the storm cellar, and a lantern. A chorus of crickets sang, and I could hear Sugar Pie snorting from her pasture. Miss Lilah’s geese squawked behind the newly fixed fence, their heads straining through the wire
to chew on our grass.
I got down on my knees and started looking for the bone and panicked that it had all been a dream, a nightmare, or perhaps only a wish. But then a burst of sunlight illuminated the slope, silently, swiftly, and my feet tingled when I saw the beautiful glimmer of white in the dirt. Old Jack bounded up to it and wagged his tail.
I pulled out the shovel.
Chapter 5
Bump the toad joined us, and I could swear he was eyeing me. Old Jack whined, his tail wagging slowly back and forth. My toes hummed, vibrated. I knew whatever was down there was going to change my life forever. I took a deep breath and dug softly, reverently, filled with dread that I was unearthing a holy grave. The dirt, softened by the rain, gave beneath my shovel and I threw one large clump over my shoulder. I dug faster and faster. My heart began to race as I cleared away the soil and more and more dusty white came into view. I stood back a moment to catch my breath.
It was huge, whatever it was. Huge.
Enormous. Relief poured through me. It wasn’t the bones of a person, but something else. I took another deep breath and stared at it. I knew uncovering it was going to take a very, very long time with my little shovel and pick. Maybe months, even. But something told me I’d found something spectacular on Solace Hill. And something had lead me to it. The ghost, the spectral, the fireflies? Paps? I continued to dig, more slowly now, more reverently. I didn’t want to hurt or damage it, whatever it was.
Hours later, just when Bee started calling for me to come in for bed, another clump of dirt fell away and I could see the outline of one long, very long, angled tooth. Surprised, I quickly tried to stand but fell back on my rear instead. My heart began to thump wildly. I heard the crickets sing and Sugar Pie neigh. I blinked. I blinked again. Old Jack, who’d been sleeping soundly a few feet away, opened one eye. I leaned forward, studying the tooth. Bee hollered again. It was big, this tooth. At least three inches long—a long triangle with a sharp point on the end. It was like the shark teeth some of the boys at school wore around their necks on leather cords, but lots bigger.
Finding Esme Page 4