by catt dahman
Angel’s head wounds concerned both men, and they mentioned going to the emergency room, but after a careful check, they decided while she was certainly banged up badly, she was all right. Her pupils were normal, and her reflexes were fine; in fact, she only complained of being cold and in a little pain.
“Much harder hitting a rock and you’d be in real trouble, Angel. I’d say you barely missed a critical injury,” Bill Havilland told her. He felt the lumps again and tightened his lips. “You do know hitting your head can cause a brain injury or death, right, Angel?”
“Yes, sir, I didn’t mean to get my head smacked.”
Jill cringed.
“It could have been very bad. For the grace of God, you’re okay.”
“Yes, sir,” Angel lowered her face, “I was saved, I guess.”
“You certainly were,” Bill Havilland said.
Angel chanced an appreciative look towards Jill.
Cassie explained again that they were swimming, foolishly stayed in the water as the rain came, were caught in the floods, and had learned a valuable lesson. Each girl looked contrite.
Bill’s face softened again. Only worry had made him scold the girls, and he was glad they were safe. He decided they didn’t need a further lecture and set about filling up bowls with chili mac that the girls wolfed down hungrily, asking for seconds, not even caring that the food was steaming hot. It tasted wonderful and warmed them quickly.
“At least they like our cooking,” Mike said.
Bill watched the girls eating and laughed. “I guess they do. Good thing we made something that fills these endless pits of hunger.”
Jill smiled at her father.
After they ate, Meg, Cassie, and Whitney took turns in a hot shower where each scrubbed away the cold, the guilt, and the fear. Angel curled up on a chair, her feet on an ottoman, and fell asleep once she was full of food and warmed up.
Tiffany and Nelwynn shared the sofa and wrapped themselves in blankets, sleepy and tired, burrowing under the covers.
Samantha and Jill sat at the table with Bill and Uncle Mike and talked about the river, telling the men how wide it became and how unexpected the flood was. It unnerved both men, but Jill figured it was best to pretend that had been their biggest fear.
After hearing the story again, Bill Havilland went to watch the storm from the covered porch, one of his favorite things to do. He still loved the rain and thunder but was slightly angry at the danger the storm brought to the girls. Hell, they were kids and hadn’t known better before; they hadn’t realized how dangerous it was to be near the water, but they knew now.
“You had a big adventure,” Mike said as he, Samantha, and Jill still sat at the table.
Jill shared a piece of the buttered cornbread with Samantha; they already had eaten two pieces each. “Yes, we did.”
“It was scary,” Samantha said.
“Did you hate it or love it?” Mike asked, eyes twinkling.
“Both,” Jill said. She grinned and continued, “I didn’t like the getting-hurt part, but it was exciting.” Strangely, she meant exactly what she said, which was surprising to her. In a way, it was as if they had seen a scary movie, but not exactly.
“You are like the daughters I never had. Such strong, loyal, clever girls. Girls who do things that few others would dare. Ones that are passionate, we could say.”
Jill blinked. Uncle Mike’s words were odd. What he meant, she didn’t know. He used the word loyal, which was a little out of place.
“And everything worked out, didn’t it? Except for a few bruises and cuts? Angel was hurt fairly badly, but she was fortunate.”
“We won’t do that again,” Jill said.
“Interesting what we do and then wonder why and how we did it,” Mike said.
“Oh, yeah, exactly,” Samantha stammered.
Mike leaned over the table more as he sat in his chair, kind of indicating a private conversation between the three of them. He began again, “That knife I gave you, Jill, was my father’s knife. It’s a good one. Have you had a chance to use it?”
“Used it? Ummm. It’s a pretty knife and sharp. Thank you, Uncle Mike. I’ll treasure it forever, and it means a lot that you gave me something that belonged to your father.”
“But have you used it?”
“I. I don’t. know,” Jill stuttered. Samantha shifted sideways to poke Jill’s foot with her own.
Mike smiled, “Oh, you might have had a chance to carve with it or something. Yeah? It’s sharp. Be careful because it could hurt or stab someone.” He studied his fingernails and didn’t look at the girls. “You’ll want to clean it.”
“Clean it?” Jill asked weakly.
“The water will rust it. Clean it and oil it, right? I’ll help.”
Jill wondered if there were blood trapped in parts of the handle. Of course, it might be. Her head felt light, and she had to take a few breaths.
“Are you okay, Jill?”
“Yes, Uncle Mike. My leg was aching all at once. It’s better. Just a few sharp pains because I turned it.”
Samantha shifted uncomfortably.
Uncle Mike looked up brightly, startling them and said, “Guess what? I brought graham crackers and chocolate bars, and we have marshmallows. You know what that means even though we have to use the fireplace because of the rain.”
“S’mores,” Samantha grinned.
“Indeed, I thought you ladies might want them the last night you were at the campfire. Even if you had just finished roasting wieners and had hotdogs, I thought you might want some. I brought the stuff over to the camp, but I guess I never made it exactly into camp.”
“You were there?” Samantha asked. Her fingers gripped the edge of the table and turned white. Her body language made her look guilt-ridden. Jill thought that had Samantha testified for Jill about what she did to John, Jill would have been sent to prison because Samantha showed too much reaction with her body and pale face.
“I wasn’t spying,” Mike laughed softly. “I was on my way, but for some reason, I stopped. Maybe it was something I heard. I guess I just stood there a while. After a while, I came back here and left all of you alone. You were all so intense. And busy.”
Jill thought quickly. After they had eaten, they had talked about Angel. And after that, they had made plans. Jill felt her dinner flop in her belly. “You heard?” She knew he had. He knew the whole thing.
“I apologize for listening. I also want to say that had it been me, I would have done far worse than roll a boy in an ant hill,” Mike whispered.
“We didn’t see them anyway,” Samantha said. She was the worst liar.
“Them?”
“Him. Him. Rex. Oh, Uncle Mike, you can’t imagine, it was two of them that showed up and not just the one. And the other was a grown man who showed up!” Jill blurted.
He held a hand up and looked at both girls. “I don’t wish to know. As I said, you are ingenious girls. I have a feeling that everything went south and didn’t go as planned, but I hope that everything is taken care of. If you embark on a journey, you must see it to the end. If you prune a rose bush, you finish it and don’t leave bits unclipped. If you do anything, you finish it. You take it back to the base of the issue.”
“I think we did, but some journeys end pretty horribly, don’t they?” Jill asked. “Or just this one?
Mike nodded and said, “The Donner Party’s journey ended in madness, freezing, murder, and cannibalism. But they finished the journey, at least some did. Those who were strong were pruned and came back tough; those with the mental ability and fortitude did survive.”
Jill didn’t know what to think of his talk about the Donner Party, but what she did know was that Uncle Mike had heard them and their plans. He knew, and he still gave her the knife. What did that mean? She petted Lucy who was always at the cabin with Mike and thought hard before she spoke, “Uncle Mike, it’s been a long time, but remember when those boys hit Lucy and wanted to shoot her?”
> “I remember it well.”
Jill went on, “ See, in the long run, it wasn’t because of Lucy really because bad people are bad people, and they never change, but Lucy did get her justice today.”
“I see. A grown man showed up, too. I can put facts together well, and I’m following,” Mike said as he sighed twice. “Well, let me tell you this. Long ago, my wife was married for a year to another man. She married him because she was unhappy with her family after her father died. She was sixteen, and he was twenty-five.”
She left the husband after one year and worked at the five-and-dime store where I met her. I’d make up reasons to go to the store for things so I could look at her and sometimes even get a few seconds to talk to her. She kept away from men and didn’t date, but I persisted, and it took near on two years before she’d take a walk with me, get a soda, take in a movie, or get some dinner.”
“Wow,” Samantha said.
“At the three-year mark, she was nineteen, and I asked to court her proper. I asked for her hand, but still, she was scared of me, and it took another two years before she agreed to become engaged to me. A year later, she and I married. Six years I waited for her. Over those later years, she quietly told me why she had been so afraid.”
“Why?” Samantha was tenderhearted.
“I treated her like a queen and never raised my voice to her. I was never even angry with her, but the fool she married before was a bad sort and had broken nearly every bone in her body before she was able to finally leave his sorry ass. Her jaw, her arms, legs, fingers, ribs, almost all of her bones. He beat her right before she left him for good.”
Samantha sniffed.
“That time he hit her in the stomach and caused her to lose the baby she was carrying. That was when she knew he would kill her the next time he was drunk and in a foul mood.”
Samantha had big tears in her eyes, and Jill felt her throat aching as if she were about to cry.
“She wasn’t able to have a baby after that. It hurt her badly that we never had children. It hurt me as well. It was a long time later, a few years anyway, but that man received his payback,” Mike said with a wink. “Oh, he received all the torment and pain he had dealt. He knew how she felt. He knew before he died.”
Jill felt a chill run down her spine.
“Died. What. Oh,” Samantha stuttered.
“You know my wife died later of something else that I couldn’t repay,” Mike said. “I can’t repay illness.”
Jill nodded.
Mike went on, “When you girls were very little, there was a bad man in town who liked to touch little girls in ways that were inappropriate. He did that a lot. One day he was repaid.”
“And there was a woman I knew who lived close to me, and she was one who beat her children badly; one almost died; he was left as a half-wit anyway. They never arrested that bitch because she vanished, but she received her payment as well. This I assure you.”
“Did you….” Samantha couldn’t get the words out. She had never had such a grown-up discussion before.
“Secrets are secrets, Samantha. I have a few, and you girls have a few. We may not like when we are forced to be judge and jury and condemn a person to receive punishment, but sometimes fate forces our hands, and we do what we have to. We take those secrets, we put them away in our minds, and we go on. We do the best we can with what life hands us.”
“Why?” Jill asked.
“It’s how things are. We are rough carbon, and God sends us through life where there are trials and tribulations, and slowly, we change. Some of the carbon people fall to bits under the pressure because the original matter is weak quality. Under extreme pressure, strong carbon becomes diamonds. More trials polish diamonds. Is there anything prettier or stronger than a diamond? Only several diamonds. Eight diamonds.”
“Are we becoming diamonds?” Jill asked. She wasn’t sure she understood Mike.
“And rosebushes. You cut them back, you prune, you work on them, and then they bloom more beautifully than ever, don’t they?”
Jill nodded slowly. She knew that Mike wouldn’t answer her questions any more than she would answer his. He wanted to use metaphors or whatever they were. Some secrets had to be put away as he had said. She asked, “Does it get easier? I mean to put the secrets away?”
“It does. As you become like the diamond or the blooming rose, yes, you become better with secrets. They always haunt you, but it gets much easier. “
“What’s the big topic?” asked Bill Havilland as he returned.
“Uncle Mike was telling us about roses, diamonds, law, juries, and judges. We were talking about justice mostly, I think.”
“All that? Diamond, flowers, and law?”
Jill smiled and nodded.
Mike smiled and said, “I was telling them about how I support the death sentence.”
Chapter 8
Bill and Mike drove the girls home while a steady drizzle peppered the cars, but none of the girls really cared, nor did they complain that the rain ruined part of their weekend. That they were quieter caused Jill’s father to think they were sore and tired from their ordeal in the river; he was glad none of them had been seriously hurt. He still held back and didn’t launch into his big lecture, but he would commence the very second if the girls became lively.
When they got home, the only odd behavior exhibited by the girls was that Angel hugged each of her friends as if she would never let go, and then Nelwynn clasped Jill to her and held her for a second and whispered.
Bill Havilland thought it was all because they had been scared badly in the storm.
Monday, the girls noticed that Rex’s desk was empty. None of the students said a word, they didn’t discuss the incident, and they ignored the lone desk. None of their other classmates particularly noticed and didn’t say anything except in history class when a boy whispered that Rex was probably hung over from the weekend.
Whitney and Jill were both on crutches and had to have their friends help them with books. The planning took almost all their attention as they figured out which friend was in which class and could carry extra texts.
After Samantha and Jill told the other girls about the conversation they had with Uncle Mike, there was no more reason to talk about the boys. It was a secret that they put away even though they worried that at any moment Meg’s father and his deputies might show up to handcuff them and arrest them for murder.
On Tuesday, a few more remarks were made about Rex and John Wisdom being missing, and some people said that they had probably skipped town for good. The boys had frequently been in trouble for underage drinking, fighting, smoking pot, drag racing with loud mufflers, and general mischief. There was never serious bad behavior, but the consensus of the kids in school was that the town had lost little if the boys had left town.
“Their own parents don’t seem concerned,” Meg’s father said as her family ate dinner together. Her father came home to eat quickly and planned to go search again after dinner. “I guess no one cares much about the boys.”
Meg ate her peas, shrugged, and then said, “I didn’t hang around Rex. Yuk.”
“Good. I certainly wouldn’t have let you date him,” Meg’s mother said.
Her father left after dinner to help search, saying he might have a lead, but he wasn’t sure since few people were searching for the boys anyway. “I’ll have to follow the lead alone, I guess.”
Lying propped up on pillows next to her mother, Meg read a book while they waited for Don Connors to return. At midnight, Meg went to her own bed and slept. She was allowed to go to school at lunch after she was less tired and sleepy.
That afternoon on Wednesday, there was an explosion of news; all the kids found out and shared the news. The gossip was that Rex Wisdom’s and John Wisdom’s bodies were found in the river, far downstream from where their car was located. Everyone said the boys had been swimming, gotten caught in the rain and flooded river, and had been swept away. Kids whispered that the
bodies were beaten, broken, and almost torn apart. It was said almost gleefully, the way young people often recount bad news.
Meg’s father investigated the boys’ deaths, but he said he thought the boys had been goofing off and were accidentally killed. The coroner did a rush job, hardly examining the bodies because the bruises and broken, twisted bones were clearly from the flood. That there were no signs of drowning only told him they hit their heads or died of shock before they could drown; the boys’ bodies were buried in closed caskets. Very few people attended the funeral for them on Friday afternoon.
Some said that Old Man Wisdom was half drunk and smirked through the service and rolled his eyes during the short sermon, but that was hardly surprising. Samantha said her father’s church raised the money for the funeral because as she said, “That old bum of a dad they had wouldn’t cough up anything and said he’d as soon dig a hole in his backyard for them. Can you imagine?”
“Did he cry?” Tiffany asked.
“Not even once, but he did gripe about who was going to do the chores out at his place now,” said Samantha as she tightened her lips.
“That’s terrible,” said Tiffany.
“Daddy said Mr. Wisdom cursed a lot,” Samantha said.
Cassie and Samantha spent the night with Jill Friday night, and they ate burgers with Jill’s parents. Her parents asked a few questions about whether the girls knew Rex well or how the kids felt and tried to fend interest, but Jill said, “ We hardly knew him since he was a rebel, and no one we hang out with talked much about the deaths. We heard those boys were wild.”
“Isn’t it crazy that it happened just downstream from where you girls were? That’s scary,” Nancy Havilland said. “It was probably right when you girls got out of the water. Lower on the river, it gets rougher and more dangerous.”
“It’s creepy,” Samantha admitted. “I guess we were all foolish that day, and they were unlucky. That’s scary to think about…how they were so close to us…well a half mile at least, right?”
“The truck was. The boys were found several miles downstream.”