Finding Esme

by Suzanne Crowley

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He looked worried.

  “I think . . . I think I saw my father last night,” I said, breathing hard. I wasn’t mad anymore. Another feeling was seeping up through me. Fear. “But I don’t know.”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “Swimming across Bitter Creek,” I said. I sat down next to him and Louella Goodbones, feeling like I was going to faint. I was so tired, so, so, tired. I listened to the chorus of birds, waiting for their sound to soothe me, but something was off.

  “Maybe you were dreaming,” said Finch.

  I glanced over at Louella Goodbones. Almost half her skull was exposed now. A whole row of pointy teeth glinted in the soft light like she was smiling, as though she was glad we had found her and were releasing her from the deep dark earth.

  “Maybe,” I said. I hoped so. But the boots. The rainbow boots. I knew I hadn’t dreamed up those.

  I drifted off to the click-clack of Finch’s shovel and the songs of the birds. I was back at the creek, watching the man swim across the water. He turned, mid-stroke, his smile glinting white in the moonlight. It was Harlan. Then I was running through the woods. You missed something! Go back! You missed something!

  I opened my eyes.

  “Shhhhh.” I held my fingertip to my lips and looked up at Finch. “Shhhhh.” He stopped digging and we both listened, still as statues. And then I realized what it was. It was the low, quiet wail of an animal.

  Chapter 10

  As Finch and I ran down the hill, I wondered if I’d heard that little cry all night and just not perceived it. Finch pointed to a white blanket with tiny red ladybugs on it, tented up over something. A mewling squeal came from beneath it.

  “What is it?” Finch whispered

  I took a deep breath and pulled back the blanket. It was a baby pig in a basket with a wide handle. The pig was wrapped loosely in a gray-blue blanket, its head peeking out. We stared at it, not knowing what to do. The pig’s cries were crystal clear now and piercing. Finch took a step back.

  “Lord almighty!” he said.

  I leaned down, picked the piglet up, and clumsily held it to my chest. It was cold. Why would someone leave a brand-new baby piglet out here?

  “How long were you up there, Finch?” I asked. “Did you see anyone?”

  He shook his head no, his eyes focused on the blanket. “Couple of hours,” he finally managed to mumble. “It’s cute as a button, isn’t it?”

  “We better take it inside,” I said, and started to walk fast as I could, then realized Finch wasn’t behind me.

  I continued toward the house, glancing back a few times at Finch, who was carrying the basket as though it would break. He finally caught up with me. We made it to the kitchen door just as Bee came down the steps, tying her robe, her hair billowing around her head.

  “What in blue blazes are you doing out this early?” she asked, her eyes aflame. I saw a witching stick down by her side. She knew something needed to be found, but for some strange reason, I’d found it first. Old Jack appeared, his nose pressed into the screen door. Sometimes a dog just knows when to keep quiet.

  I held out the baby piglet. It had fallen asleep, perhaps lulled by my racing heartbeat. Bee looked down at it.

  “Well, my goodness” was all she managed to say as she quickly took the baby piglet from my arms. I looked up to see June Rain standing in the kitchen behind Old Jack, her face in the shadows.

  Finch and I gathered around Bee, looking down at the piglet. “Poor thing is shivering. It needs its mama,” said Finch.

  “Where did you find it?” Bee asked, turning to take the piglet into the house. I glanced down at the basket we’d found it in. It was expensive looking, like something they’d sell at Dyer’s department store in Paradise. Then, peering closer, I saw a silk scarf tied to the base of the handle. It had roses all over it. Rose.

  “At the bottom of Solace Hill,” I said. I wondered if she’d ask what we’d been doing there, both of us, in the early morning.

  “Esme, I think there’s an old bottle of Bo’s in the pantry. Put some milk to warm on the stove.”

  The baby piglet had started to mew and snort again. I quickly set to work, filling the bottle with the warm milk a minute later. I handed it to Bee. She pressed the bottle to the pig’s snout and it quickly started sucking, the noise filling the whole kitchen. “This is one of those expensive miniature pigs people use as pets,” Bee said, peering down at a face so ugly it was cute: white, sprinkled with soft black polka dots, with little beady black eyes.

  Then June Rain held out her hands. Bee and I looked at her in wonder. June Rain took a step toward us. Finally Bee handed her the baby piglet and the bottle. June Rain, with the piglet in her arms like a newborn, turned and floated upstairs. And I couldn’t help but think, that piglet was hardly bigger than a shoe, like I’d been.

  I lay back in my bed a few hours later, listening for that piglet, but I couldn’t hear anything. I crept down the stairs and peeked in the kitchen. Apparently Bee had already gone to the store, probably the Walmart in Paradise, which opened early. There was a big box of baby formula on the counter and preemie diapers. June Rain sat at the table, the piglet in her arms. My stomach turned a little.

  “Did June Rain ever hold me back when you snatched me home?” I’d asked Bee once.

  “Of course she did, Esme. A mama always holds her baby,” she’d replied.

  But I didn’t think so.

  Bo was kneeling on the chair next to June Rain, looking into the piglet’s face. Old Jack was under the table, his ears slunk low.

  Bee was on the phone. “I can’t think who’d have left it—the last thing I found was not anything anyone would pay me for.”

  I thought about how I’d saved Rose Galloway’s bird. Rose was the only one with an allowance, only one who could buy such a pet.

  “Anyway, you’ll just have to come over and get it,” Bee continued, “at least come and see it, it’s the cutest thing ever . . . but it’s gonna have to go to a shelter.” Five minutes later, Sweetmaw’s pink Buick came roaring up the drive.

  The screen door flung open with a whap! Sweetmaw walked right over to June Rain and peered down at the bundle in her arms. “My lord,” Sweetmaw gushed. “Is that not the most darling thing ever? But it’s gonna have to go to the animal shelter. Bee’s right. That thing is gonna need constant care.” She reached out her arms to hold it. June Rain pretended she didn’t notice and kept on feeding it.

  “June Rain,” Bee said quietly.

  June Rain held the piglet even closer. Bee and Sweetmaw exchanged looks.

  “Best not come in for a few days, honey,” Sweetmaw said to June Rain. “Vera Godly’s madder than a wet hen. Gotta wait for it all to die down, and her hair to grow back. She’s got a bald spot bigger than the moon and had to order a wig from Dallas, thanks to you.” And you, I smiled to myself, thinking of how Sweetmaw hadn’t stopped it.

  “Well then, I’ll be taking care of the baby anyway,” said June Rain quietly.

  Bee and Sweetmaw exchanged another glance.

  “Well, I best be going,” Sweetmaw said in an overbright voice. And then that piglet started to wail.

  June Rain scooted away from the table and calmly walked outside, the piglet cradled in the crook of her arm.

  “Do we get to keep it?” Bo smiled. “June Rain wants her for us.”

  Old Jack came out from under the table, wagging his tail. A worry tickled across my heart. June Rain called it a baby, as though it were real. All that time I’d worried about June Rain’s long drought, I just didn’t realize it could be followed by a flood.

  When Harlan was a little boy, he wandered away from home while Bee was picking peaches. He was there one moment swinging around the trunks of the trees, singing “Oh my darling, Oh my darling, Oh my darling Clementine!”—and gone the next. Bee says all it takes is an instant, and your child can disappear forever. But really Harlan’s been dripping away from
us like Bee’s thick honey forever. Bee grabbed a witching stick and found him a half hour later at the beehives, mesmerized by their humming and darting.

  I ran through the woods, my hair flying, my fingers tingling and tingling. You missed something. You missed something. The image of June Rain, holding out her hands for that piglet, and Sweetmaw and Bee’s worried looks flitted through my mind. I stopped, leaned against an oak tree to catch my breath. I snapped off a thin branch, bending it in the middle. It felt different than a peach tree witching stick.

  I walked for a long while through the woods, letting the oak stick lead me, my trembling fingers barely holding it, my feet tingling more and more. Bitter Creek gurgled in the distance, and I knew I wasn’t far from where I’d been last night. I startled some doves and they flew up into the trees cooing. My heart raced.

  And then I came upon it. What I was supposed to find. A tiny cabin, squatting in a circle of maple trees. I approached slowly, as my witching stick lost its power, its hum dissipating, and pointed down low. I paused a moment before opening the door. I should have knocked, but I didn’t.

  Paintings. I knew them instantly. They were Harlan’s. Harlan’s “ain’t-no-picture” paintings. And he’d even painted the walls. Everywhere June Rain’s face was peeking from the glops of paint, amidst flowers and hearts, and trees, and swirly-swirls. There was an easel with a half-finished painting propped on it. I walked over to it. Surprisingly, it was a painting of my face, my ears big and wide like Dumbo, flowers dancing out of them, my eyes big but beautifully rendered. I stifled a sob and pressed my finger to the paint. It was dry. I went around the room and touched the other paintings. They were all dry. Dry as dirt. He hadn’t been here in a good long while.

  But then I noticed a sleeping bag. That didn’t mean anything, though. It could have been here forever. It didn’t mean he was here now. He’d headed up north, that sheriff had told me. But June Rain’s postcard was from Arizona, meaning he had skipped over Texas, skipping over us like he always did. I lingered in the cabin a long time, taking in his artwork, all that he’d done without us, in secret.

  Then I stepped outside, shut the door, and walked home, my witching stick forgotten.

  Later that afternoon I sat up on Solace Hill waiting for Finch. I sat next to Louella Goodbones trying to sketch her skull. Carefully I ran my fingers over every tooth, every groove and indentation, then sketched as best I could, adding arrows and notes about my observations, looking carefully at the different drawings of dinosaurs in the library books. I wanted to get Louella Goodbones just right. It had crossed my mind that the Professor Abramanov I’d seen in the newspaper clipping might know what she was, and maybe I’d send the drawings to him. But it made me sad to think she’d ever leave Solace Hill. So maybe I wouldn’t send them.

  Finch appeared, coming up the hill. He looked like he had been crying. He sat down next to me and peered over my shoulder. He actually smirked at my drawing, but it was nice to see him smile again at least.

  “Here,” he said quietly. “Let me finish her.”

  Finch could draw fine and perfect like an architect. One of his drawings of some sleek skyscraper in New York City once won a blue ribbon at the state fair. He took my pencil and notepad and started to erase and fix what I’d done, leaving the cartoony eyes. We smiled at each other, looking at those eyes; they resembled my big eyes a little and looked like the ones Harlan painted. We sat side by side for a long time as Finch’s drawing beautifully came to life.

  “What are you going to do with this?” he asked quietly. “After we finish it.”

  “I was thinking of sending it to that professor,” I told him. “But I’ve changed my mind.”

  Suddenly Bump scurried off of Louella Goodbones and hopped under the tractor. Bee always said animals know things before we do. I stood up. Someone was coming up the hill. Old Jack bounded up to me, licking at my legs, as if he was apologizing, and then there was Bo right behind him.

  “It’s not fair, Esme,” he said loudly in his not-in-church voice. “You’re never in your bed anymore when I come to snuggle with you.”

  My eyes grew even bigger, my teeth clenched in a fake smile, hoping he’d look at me and Finch, hoping he wouldn’t notice. But no. His eyes traveled down to the hillside and slowly, ever so slowly, over to Louella Goodbones, who looked like she was smiling in the semidarkness. Then he looked back at me.

  “What is it?” he whispered in wonderment. “Is that what I think it is?”

  I kneeled down in front of him, gently gripping his shoulders. “Yes, Bo. She’s some kind of dinosaur and she’s very special. But we must keep her secret for now.”

  A few minutes later we all went back home, Finch waving good-bye with the sketch tucked carefully in the dinosaur book under his arm.

  Chapter 11

  Later that morning June Rain took the piglet to work ’cause Bee said she wasn’t going to take care of a pig; she had things to do, for God’s sake. Vera Godly, wearing a scarf around her fried hair ’cause her wig hadn’t arrived yet, had been telling everyone in Hollis about what June Rain had done and to stay away, but as soon as word spread about a fancy pig over at the Just Teasin’, business perked up.

  I paid a visit to the salon. There were ladies in every chair in various stages of getting their hair done, and three ladies cooing over the pig, who June Rain had dressed in baby clothes complete with a lacy bonnet tied under its chin. Every few minutes or so, someone would peer in the window, hand shielding eyes to get a better gander. I focused on the pig and realized they were my baby clothes, my incubator butter bean clothes.

  “Now where did you say she came from?” someone hollered over their dryer.

  Sweetmaw, who was on the phone, did one of those little waves, meaning she would answer in a minute, but had no intention of doing so. Miss Vera, not being one to miss such a spectacle, was hovering over the pig. She said, “Well, I guess it’s cute; it’s one of those expensive things that the movie stars buy, isn’t it? Never seen one of them around here.”

  I thought the piglet was a little ugly now that I could see her in the light. Wouldn’t be long before some sharp-eyed Hollis woman put two and two together and figured out that June Rain thought it was a real baby. Texas women aren’t dumb. But maybe they’d play along for June Rain’s sake. Maybe they knew this was what she needed.

  “She should have one of those knitted caps for newborns, keep her head warm,” Lottie Broadway offered with a nod.

  “What’s her name?” someone else asked.

  Everyone peered at the piglet again, appraising that little pink face and piggy snout under the lacy bonnet. The pig started to squeal and June Rain picked her up and patted her on the back. “Not sure yet,” June Rain said. “Still thinking about it.” The piglet whimpered.

  “Put her back in her carrier where she feels warm,” someone suggested.

  “She’s hungry, where’s her bottle?” Miss Vera asked.

  “Put some of Bee’s honey in it. That’ll calm her down.”

  “Honey’s not good for a baby, has salmonella in it.”

  And then June started to sing, softly at first, then with a voice like a songbird and everyone, including the piglet, hushed, “Sweet child of mine, I’m going to let you shine.”

  Sweetmaw bustled back to work, but I saw her discreetly wipe a tear away. Seeing June Rain like that, holding that piglet and knowing she never held me, or sang to me, made me really sad, too. Sometimes when we watched Saturday morning cartoons with Bo—me in front of her on the floor, she sitting in Paps’s old chair—she would braid my hair. Those are the only times she’s ever touched me. Sometimes I’d tell her I didn’t like my braid pinched, so I could feel her fingers in my hair one more time.

  “Her name is Jewell,” June Rain suddenly proclaimed.

  I walked out the door.

  I rode my bike over to the Aberdeens’ loaded up with a heavy basket. Finch must’ve been watching out the window because he came outs
ide as soon as I walked onto their porch. The sweet cinnamony smell of Red Hots wafted in the air, but I didn’t feel like asking Finch to share this time. I knew well enough to leave it alone. He pushed his glasses up and looked at me.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at my basket.

  “Peaches and honey, and Black Draught for Spoon, in case.” Bee always made it when Spoon’s been on a bender.

  He looked away a moment, then bit his lip. “It’s Granger,” he said. “He’s been missing. Daddy’s sure he’s gotten himself into some mess and that’s why he’s disappeared, and Mama keeps saying Granger’s a good boy, doesn’t get into trouble.”

  I swallowed hard, thinking maybe I should’ve told him about the moonshining business Granger was caught up in, and that’s why he’d been giving Finch new money for candy and toys and ugly clothes. “How long’s he been gone?” I asked.

  “Since yesterday. He’s been disappearing for a few hours here and there lately, but not usually overnight. Daddy doesn’t want to call Sheriff Finney yet. He’s hoping Granger will just show up on his own. He says he’s gonna give him a whuppin’ when he does. I think that’s why Granger’s lying low.”

  It was just like Finch to hope for the best. I had a feeling there was more to the story, and my toes vibrated for just a moment like a lawn mower being turned on then fluttering off.

  “I’m real sorry to hear that,” I said, shifting my weight, looking away from him. “You coming to help with the bones tonight?” I asked, and his face brightened.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “If I can sneak out.”

  “You finished the drawing?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said, looking away. “Still working on it. Might be a while.”

  Finch’s mama called from inside the house somewhere, her voice weary. I handed him the provisions and he shut the door.

  After dinner I knocked on June Rain’s door. I found her in her usual spot, sitting by the window, the piglet sound asleep in the bassinet June Rain had brought down from the attic. I stood behind her, still as a statue. I thought about that piglet and how June Rain had sung to her and named her Jewell, a gem, a thing to be prized. Why wasn’t I prized? Was it because I came too early and worried everyone? Was it because I was funny looking? Why did June Rain even stay with us—why didn’t she go back to her own family?