“But she was his daughter. A person wouldn’t kill their own child, would they?” As the chain-smoking lady in the diner had said.
She hesitated, as if familiar with child killings and not wanting to tell me. “I imagine it’s possible, but not for him.” She looked at me, abashed. “I shouldn’t have brought this up. I’m sorry.”
No, no. “Well, but you didn’t. I did. Anyway, it’s all right; it doesn’t scare me.”
Her smile was quick, gone in an instant, like a bird lighting and flying off. “Oh, I bet it would take quite a bit to scare you.”
I took this as a compliment, as they were few and far between for me. “And wasn’t he the man that went to prison? For killing his wife?” For someone who didn’t even know his name, it struck me I was being pretty quick handing out details about him. I put on my dumb look.
“Yes.” She nodded.
“I guess everybody in Cold Flat Junction must know him. I guess you do too?”
“Nearly all my life.”
I shook my head in a wondering way. It was sincere wonder, too. To think you could stay friends all these years! I wondered if the Sheriff would still be friends with me when I was sixty, though I didn’t see how I’d ever get there. Not to mention how he would. He’d be ninety or around there. And what if Ree-Jane was still here? The two of us hanging around like Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright? The few friends I had now, like Hazel Mooma (a distant cousin of Donny and just as swaggering), I couldn’t imagine being that old. Especially when Hazel, passing Miss Ruth Porte on the street, said she’d kill herself if she ever got that old. We were all afraid of it, I guess, age and the loss of our looks and charm (what little there was). Hazel would be staggered by Louise Landis, I bet, and refuse to believe she was as old as she was. Hazel would probably say Miss Landis had been turned into a mummy ages ago and all the wrappings had preserved her. Hazel would believe this too, as she could believe anything better than that she was ever wrong, including about mummies.
I cast about for a way to bring up Fern Queen. “Mr. Stemple says Ben Queen’s wife was a Devereau from Spirit Lake.” I held my hand up toward a shaft of sunlight to see its transparency and the blood in it.
“Rose Devereau was her name. She was a beautiful girl, certainly beautiful by our standards around here, where there isn’t much of it.”
I watched her look around the room and then out of the window, as if she were trying to find even a trace of that vanished beauty, and had to report back: Gone.
“And Fern was her daughter? Hers and Mr. Queen’s?”
“That’s right.”
Then I came to the part which always made my heart lurch; it was one of those dreadful, full-of-dread things. Anything could bring it back—a black twig snapping, the yowl of a dog. It was the image of Brokedown House and that bright white light. If it wasn’t for Dwayne being there and the rabbits, I think I’d have had a harder time believing in it than in mummies. I chewed at the inside of my lip and said, “That was out near White’s Bridge where she got murdered.”
“That’s right.”
“There’s a family of Butternuts who’ve lived there for a hundred years, at least that’s what Mr. Butternut says.” But what could I say or ask to set her feet on that road or in those woods? What really was I asking? I had to admit it: I was asking for help. I could feel a welling up of my unhelped and helpless life. It took me by terrible surprise, the threat of tears.
“Are you all right, Emma? You look a little—peaked.” She did not wait for a reply, but got up and said, “I’ll get you a glass of water.”
I took this to be her way of not embarrassing me, in case I wanted to be left alone. Water. What good would that do? For once I could see the advantage of a Cold Comfort or a plain old glass of gin.
Louise Landis was back in a minute, handing me the water. I took a drink and set it on the table and then sort of scooted down in the chair, making a plane of my body. This position looks uncomfortable but isn’t; it’s mainly an unconcerned position. Anyone sitting this way could hardly be on the verge of tears or haunted by something in her mind. I twined some more yarn around my fingers and listened to Miss Landis carry on with the talk of White’s Bridge.
“I’ve been to Lake Noir a few times, when I went to dinner at a restaurant out there. The Pear Tree?”
“The Silver Pear. I was there too. A man with silvery hair owns it. Well, two men with silvery hair. Do you know somebody that lives out that way? There’s this Mr. Butternut, but he’s the only one I know.” I finished fashioning a cat’s cradle. My heart was pounding as if I were coming too close to a thing I didn’t want to see.
“No.” She shook her head. “One time I did go for a walk along White’s Bridge Road. It’s quite beautiful. It seems pristine, almost. You know, untouched and uninhabited.”
I just looked at her over my fingers. Untouched? She sure didn’t know Dwayne. Uninhabited? She really didn’t know Mr. Butternut. He was inhabiting all over the place. He was born nebby. “How far down that road did you walk?”
“Not far. Why?”
I pulled my fingers apart to tauten the yarn. “Did you see that old, falling-down, worn-out house back in the woods to the right? They call it Brokedown House?”
“No, I didn’t,” she said, frowning slightly, as if worried she’d missed something important. “Why? What’s there?”
“Oh, nothing. I just noticed it, is all. Mr. Butternut and I went there, but he doesn’t know who owns it. Nobody lives there; it would make a good haunted house.” Again the image of that blinding light rose up before me. The more I thought of it, the more strange and mysterious it became, until I was almost ready to believe the house was a figment of my imagination. But Mr. Butternut and Dwayne, they weren’t figments, that’s for sure.
She smiled. “You weren’t frightened, though.”
I wasn’t? Tell that to my feet that felt like two cement blocks, as in a dream when you want to run. “Me? Oh, no.” I held my hands before me again and pulled at the cat’s cradle.
“Whose house it it? Or was it?”
“Mr. Butternut says some people named Calhoun lived there once. But what was Fern Queen doing in that place? That’s what the police wonder.”
“You seem to wonder, too.” I shrugged, which was kind of hard to do in that position, but I managed. We were silent for a moment. “Did you know Rose Devereau’s sisters?”
“I knew of them. I know the little niece drowned. That was terrible.”
I was glad she brought it up instead of me trying to work my way around to the subject. It was like digging with a shovel; it was hard work. “Mary-Evelyn.” And as usual when I spoke it, I felt that weighted sadness. I kept my eyes on the cat’s cradle for fear of giving more away than I wanted to.
“I remember, now. She apparently went out in a rowboat and the boat capsized. But it sounds strange, doesn’t it? Why was she out at all and dressed the way she was?”
I stared at Louise Landis. Here was another person who had really thought on the matter. “She didn’t have any shoes on, either. And the Devereau sisters left it until morning to report it. But Ben Queen—” I stopped.
Now it was her turn to stare at me. “Ben Queen?”
“I ... nothing.” But Ben Queen (I’d been going to say) said it was an accident, too. The boat had a leak in it. But of course there’s no way I could know that unless he’d told me.
It was in my mind to say it would make a good hideout, and I sat up and dropped my hands. The cat’s cradle went limp. I was thinking again about who’d been in Brokedown House. It was the Girl or Ben Queen and I couldn’t see him shining a light in my face, since he knew me. But she might have wanted something from me, or maybe she wanted to scare me away.
I stood up. “I didn’t know it was so late. I’ve got to get back to the hotel and wait tables. I really, really enjoyed talking to you, Miss Landis.”
She rose too and walked with me to the door. “So did I, Emma. I wish yo
u’d come again.”
I think she meant it, too. “Well, I’ll tell my brother that the orphans would like to see the show.” Will would kill me.
“And some piano playing, too,” she said.
I nodded. Mill would kill me.
“Both,” she said.
“Both.”
They’d both kill me.
24
Tracking poachers
At seven-thirty the next morning I was in the big kitchen heating up sausage patties and pouring pancake batter on the griddle.
Walter wasn’t in yet, so there was nothing to do but eat, which was fine with me. Mostly when I eat, I eat, prefering not to talk so I can enjoy the food without distraction. I’m not sure why the sour taste of real buckwheat cakes appeals to people who know their pancakes; maybe it’s that the syrup supplies a little pool of sweetness for the sour taste to rest in.
As I ate my highly spiced sausage patty, I thought about my new freedom. Freedom can make a person lightheaded. But freedom brings a lot of anxiety with it, for to spend my time doing whatever I wanted made me feel responsible for myself. If I frittered my time away I would have only myself to blame. I reminded myself I didn’t have complete freedom, for there was always Miss Bertha three times a day to attend to, so I could still blame her if things went wrong, which was a relief.
Still, in a way it was good having guests in the place, for without any, there’d be just me and Aurora Paradise, who I don’t think would be handy at getting rid of an intruder. Will and Mill are just as useless, as they wouldn’t know there ever was an intruder unless he went up to the Big Garage to audition.
Walter isn’t live-in help. He lives in a big un-Walterish house, a big blue-and-white-painted Victorian with a wraparound porch and a lot of gingerbread detail around the roof over the porch. It looks as costly as any of the important houses in Spirit Lake, and I wonder if Walter is secretly wealthy. I like the idea of Walter having suitcases full of money. I like thinking he isn’t beholden to the Hotel Paradise for his living (though I can’t understand why anyone would work here if he weren’t).
Halfway through my pancake stack (which was pretty high), my thoughts turned to White’s Bridge. I wondered if Mr. Butternut knew Dwayne. Dwayne was around there a lot, but as he was poaching, he wouldn’t be dropping in on people to pass the time. He must live somewhere near there, though. The Sheriff would know, as I suppose Dwayne might have had one or two encounters with the law. How could I ask the Sheriff, though, without him suspecting anything?
I tried to make short work of Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright’s breakfast, but I didn’t get very far at it, with Miss Bertha complaining about that rude man who waited on them the night before, and why was it my mother was taking off for exotic places when she had guests to feed, and how could I cook her eggs the way she liked them if I couldn’t do anything else right?
I stood my ground and tried not to yawn (the buckwheat cakes having made me drowsy) as every so often Mrs. Fulbright put in, “Now, Bertha,” making me wonder again how Mrs. Fulbright had stood it all of these summers they’d been coming here. I put their breakfasts together—boiled eggs and toast and sausage (which Miss Bertha had said she’d never eat again, after the sausage had nearly poisoned her) and the thanks I got was that Miss Bertha poked the egg all over her plate, saying it was tough.
Well, I took it for as long as I could, and finally told them Walter would be bringing more coffee, as I would be late for Bible class if I didn’t leave right then. Even though Miss Bertha is a church person (for all the good it does her), she still managed to slow down my leaving by complaining about the camp meeting grounds over across the highway and its members, “a bunch of heathen dimwits.”
I went back to the kitchen and asked Walter to please take more coffee in and pay no attention to her, and Walter just said, “the old fool,” and picked up the coffee pot.
Delbert drove me into La Porte, thinking he was funny saying things like, “You oughta have your own cab, number of times you go back and forth.” Ha ha ha ha. I answered, “I’d put Axel out of business.” Ha ha ha ha. I asked to be dropped off at St. Michael’s Catholic Church.
Although I seem to do a lot of it, I really do hate to lie when it comes to religious matters. I don’t think this is because I’m so respectful of religion; it’s more that offending God makes me nervous. Also, Father Freeman might be around. He’s another adult I really like, though I keep forgetting about him since I’m not Catholic or a churchgoer. I wondered if my mother could be blamed for being lax in my religious training.
What I intended to do was just sit in a pew for a minute and apologize for not coming here right away after Bunny didn’t tell the Sheriff about our trip to the Silver Pear, which was a miracle if there ever was one. I also apologized for giving Bible class as an excuse to get away from Miss Bertha. I could have stopped on a street corner and delivered up this apology, of course, but there is a lot more to look at here in the church. The stained-glass windows are beautiful.
Finished with apologizing, I exercised my face muscles by pulling my mouth back and trying to move things around in a kind of circle. I had heard a woman guest at the hotel telling another one that your face will fall if you don’t exercise the muscles. Think of women singers, she said—Lena Home, for example. You won’t catch her face falling, not with all the singing she does.
Since my eyes were tight shut, I didn’t see Father Freeman standing there until he said hello. Then I jumped and said hello to him. I hoped he hadn’t seen me exercising. He was smiling and leaning on the pew in front of me. Father Freeman always gives the impression of having all the time in the world, which makes him very relaxing to be around.
“Mind if I sit down a minute?”
I told him of course not, and he sat down in front of me, twisting around to face me, his chin on his fist, the way I do in the Pink Elephant when I feel too tired to hold my head up on its own.
“How’s your mother, Emma? I wish I saw her more.”
“Fine.” Then, surprising myself, I said, “My mother and Mrs. Davidow and Jane have all gone to Florida.” I said this in a rush, as if I were admitting to something awful, maybe the kind of thing people admit to in confession. It was almost as if I were ashamed I hadn’t been invited.
Father Freeman looked at me and (as he always does) thought for a few moments before he said anything. I like that; it makes me feel I’ve said something deep, something deserving of thought. Finally, he said, “You know, it’s my experience vacations never turn out to be as good as you expect. It’s really thinking about the places you want to go, reading about them, imagining them that’s the great thing. You don’t actually have to go. Really, you could be better off not going.”
To this I listened openmouthed. He seemed to have read my mind. He seemed to have been looking over my shoulder, down there in the Pink Elephant. “No kidding? Do you believe that?”
“Absolutely. At least, that’s how I am.”
I thanked him sincerely and left, feeling lighter than I had when I got there.
When I walked into the Rainbow Café, Shirl was perched on her cash-register stool, smoking. Through a puff of smoke she leveled a look at me that said she couldn’t place me but hardly cared. I said hello to her, and she nodded, uncertainty shading off into suspicion. Then Charlene called to her for a couple of Danish and Shirl slipped from her stool to reach into the pastry case and slide two apple Danish onto a plate. I offered to carry the plate to Charlene to save Shirl from exertion and she was glad not to have to walk the six steps to take it herself.
There was never much talk in the Rainbow on mornings except for ordering breakfast, and even that was very subdued. Throat clearing, cigarette smoking, and checking themselves in the long mirror to see what bad humor looked like took the place of wisecracking and giving Charlene a pat on the behind. Everyone seemed sore at morning for making them go through it all over again. As the day wore on, the customers would loosen up and by lu
nch be downright jolly, kidding around and telling bad jokes. It was kind of like the progress Mrs. Davidow made through her martini pitcher.
Maud, though, was always the same; she didn’t have a morning person who differed from her afternoon one. You could always depend on Maud. Right now she was taking orders in the rear booths while Charlene worked the counter.
The Sheriff would have been in probably by seven A.M. What I was hoping was that he’d come back, and I’d no sooner thought it than he walked in the door. More than anyone else I know, the Sheriff walks with authority written all over him. He placed his visored cap on the pole between the booths, sat down, and asked how I was.
I felt something beneath the innocent question and decided to jump right in. “Did you find her? That poor girl who was lost?”
“Nope. No one’s notified us.”
He was obviously not worried, but I’d rather he’d move his not-worried blue eyes from mine. I had to look away. I shrugged and said, “I guess she must’ve been found.” I crinkled up my forehead to show the difficulty I had working my way to this conclusion. But when I looked up again, the blue eyes were still with me. It probably was not wise, but the only other thing I could think of was Ben Queen. Casually, I said, “I guess you don’t know any more about the man you think shot that woman? The one out near White’s Bridge?” I added, as if there were so many shot women around he might have trouble identifying this one.
“Ben Queen.”
“You know, maybe it’s better just imagining you caught him than to actually do it.” I realized as soon as I’d said it that vacations and catching killers didn’t exactly go by the same rules of imagination.
“Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
He just went on looking at me and I sighed and buried myself in the menu, which I never did because it never changed. Once I flicked a look his way to find the blue eyes hadn’t faltered. I felt like a snowman melting under a hard blue sky. I suddenly realized I might work on his sympathy. “Guess what? My mother and Mrs. Davidow and Ree-Jane have all gone to Florida. I bet it’s really nice there.” I looked really sad. He would have to sympathize.
Cold Flat Junction Page 16