The last thing I spelled out was over the river, to answer Ben’s question about where my ghost used to live. We had so many rivers in Ascension Parish that anybody could say they lived over one.
While Collette tried to puzzle out which river, I nudged the pointer toward ADDIO, saying goodbye so we could put the witchboard away.
It pained me to think about it being folded up and put back in its box; it was so pretty to look at that I’d have kept it out on a coffee table for people to admire.
“I wish we knew his name,” Collette said.
The pointer veered before I got it to ADDIO, and my mouth went dry. Stealing looks at Ben’s wrists, I could tell he wasn’t pushing it, and my body went numb when I realized Collette wasn’t, either. Their hands lay still as a pond, but I could feel the pull as the pointer swirled around the board.
Collette called the letters out, but I knew what it was before she finished. A tight band knotted around my heart, squeezing it painfully as I mouthed the name with no voice at all.
“Elijah.”
Cold just like yesterday’s came over me, icy seeds taking root and growing beneath my skin. Considering how hot it was, it should have felt good, but it ached instead. That was the name I would have picked—his was the only Incident we had. Maybe that fine board could read my mind; maybe I never needed to push.
The pointer slipped back and forth across the fine, polished wood, almost too fast to read, then skidded to a stop on ADDIO after finishing one whole sentence.
All three of us stared in silence at the message. It seemed too simple, too plain, to give us the chill it did.
Where y’at, Iris?
I ditched Collette and Ben at the Red Stripe and took the scenic route home. They planned to drain Lake Chicot with buckets if they had to; I didn’t have the courage to tell them I’d made that part up. I didn’t tell them about my book moving, either.
Elijah wanted to talk to me, which made it nice and even. Collette got dumb old Ben Duvall.
I wandered the edge of the road, picking butterfly weed to weave into a scarlet crown. The Incident was a haunt to me, a black fairy tale that went like this:
Once upon a time in the ’80s, Elijah Landry went to bed, and when his mama came to wake him the next day, she found an empty room and a blood-dotted pillow instead. They searched all of Ascension Parish, but nobody ever saw him again, and only God or the devil knows what became of him. Amen.
We still had echoes of him, though. His mama decided that God had carried Elijah to heaven, body and all. She bought prayers on the church steps, a hard candy for a lit candle—the end of times was coming, she was sure.
And now that he’d spoken to me, I wanted more. I could’ve made up stories about him if I’d wanted to. Elijah could have been perfect or awful, beautiful or ugly, artistic or athletic, but I wanted to know the truth. Was he friendly? Did he like playing practical jokes? Was his hair dark? Were his eyes darker? He’d been real once; someone had to know the answers.
It didn’t seem right to pester Old Mrs. Landry with questions. In her soft, sad mind, her boy was a saint, and I didn’t think I could bring myself to shake her out of that.
Miles Took at the barbershop told some of the finest yarns around, but he was practically famous for what we politely called “exaggerating.”
Down at the church, Father Rey told nothing but the gospel and the truth, but he hadn’t lived here long enough to know Elijah. Collette’s mama would ask too many questions about why I wanted to know and she’d tell Collette besides. Mr. Ourso at the Red Stripe hated everybody under thirty.
That left Daddy or the Internet, and as I crowned myself with crimson flowers, I decided it would be the latter. Daddy was plenty old enough to have known Elijah, but I didn’t figure he’d care much for me digging around in old graves. He liked to look forward, not back.
Finally home, I closed the front door quietly to keep from waking Daddy. I toed off my sandals and flopped onto the couch in our front living room. The sofa was a wedding present from Mama’s people, light blue and probably silk; it had delicate designs all over it and looked brand-new.
That, and a nameplate on a mausoleum, was all I had of her. Maybe other people kept mementos, but not my daddy. Besides the sofa, my mama’s things were gone, and according to Daddy, the sofa was too fine for sitting.
Which may have been true, but it was the coolest spot in the house. If I wasn’t really supposed to sit there, wouldn’t Daddy have put it somewhere besides right under the air conditioner?
I thought so and settled in.
chapter four
The air had a funny feel to it, heavier than it was supposed to be, hotter than usual. July got stingy with the wind, and even the birds and bugs kept their songs to themselves.
“We could ask Poseidon to raise him up,” Collette said. Her breath puffed between words as we rode our bikes out to Lake Chicot.
I said, “Maybe there’s nothing left down there.”
Ben stood on his pedals as he coasted down the hill. “We shouldn’t mess with other people’s gods, I don’t think.”
“All right,” Collette said. “We’ll ask the naiads instead.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that the naiads were a river god’s daughters. Why bother? They didn’t need me to have a conversation, so I pretended I was mute.
Ben said, “I think we’ll find something this time.”
“I bet we do,” Collette agreed.
Reaching the pier, Ben jumped off his bike and offered Collette a hand down. I managed to make it to the shore on my own.
“The cattails are thick here,” Collette said. She brushed her hand along the stalks, making their heavy heads bow before her. “Wonder if they fed on his body?”
Ben trailed Collette’s touch with his fingers. “You want me to write that down as evidence?”
“If you would, please,” she murmured.
I peeled off my sandals and sloshed ahead, breathing through quicksand. My chest was full of silt and stone, so I walked quicker. They didn’t need me around for that, either, any more than I wanted to be.
Clinging to the truth of my haunt in the graveyard, I figured I’d let them have my pushed-around lies. My Elijah, my real one, was my secret.
At the edge of the lake, the water didn’t bother moving. When I stepped in, warm algae laced around my ankles. Out toward the middle, it would be deeper and clearer, good to swim in, but I didn’t want to walk home wet.
Voices drew me down the shore. I waved when I saw a couple of girls from our class sunning on the banks. Nikki lived down in the trailers, and Carrie Anne lived right inside the bayou. She was a champion frog gigger, even better than the boys. One time, she caught two on her spear at once.
“Hey, y’all,” I said.
Carrie Anne shaded her eyes with her magazine. “Hey, Iris, what’s up?”
“Nothing. Hot, ain’t it?”
“I know, right?” Nikki sat up. “You going in?”
Sliding my hands into my back pockets, I shook my head. “Nah, just walking with Collette and Ben.”
“Collette’s here?” Nikki flew to her feet, looking past me to Collette “Oh snap, come here!”
Now, maybe I couldn’t hold Collette’s attention lately, but a good talk about French braiding and who knew the fancy twists could. I backed off, sort of embroidering the space around them until I ran into Ben.
“I don’t think they’re talking English anymore,” he said. He pulled out a silver pocketknife and started peeling a switch. Strips of bark came off, baring pale, green wood beneath.
I shrugged. “I could translate.”
“That’s all right.”
I flopped down in the dry, stingy grass. Without looking up, I asked, “You going out for baseball this summer?”
Ben streaked his knife down the switch. “Nah.”
“How come?”
“Shea’s better than me, and the scouts didn’t come to see him, so . . .” He trai
led off, shrugging.
I sat beside him. “You got time, though.”
Turning his knife, he pressed the flat of the blade against his lower lip. His gaze turned toward the distance, watching gold spark off the waves. “I don’t know if you know, but my mama’s real sick.”
I didn’t want to, but I felt bad for him. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“So it’s probably better if I ain’t going away to games, just in case.”
Twisting a wood shaving around my finger, I nodded. “Probably.”
Ben folded his knife and leaned forward, dangling it between his knees. He looked tired. All at once, like he’d gathered up shadows to wrap himself in, he blurted out, “What do you do when your mama dies, Iris?”
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks,” Ben said, quietly aggravated.
“I ain’t messing with you, Ben. I don’t remember having one. How could that be the same?”
That satisfied him, I guess, because he settled. “You ever try to call her up?”
“No.” I said it hard and fast. “I wouldn’t, ever.”
Maybe I didn’t remember her, but she wasn’t old bones to me. She was human and sacred and real.
“I wouldn’t either,” Ben said, and I sighed. That meant we had something in common.
It took the breath out of me when Collette pulled out the chair at her own desk to let Ben sit in front of her computer. She leaned against the corner of the chair, swaying, playing with her hair as she leaned over his shoulder.
“Where’re you gonna look?” she asked, like she hadn’t ever seen the Internet before.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, way out in Siberia, I watched Collette “accidentally” rub her arm against Ben’s as he typed. He incidentally grazed his cheek against her hair when he turned to talk to her. Huddled together, they blocked the screen so I couldn’t see, and I sort of expected I wasn’t meant to.
“I’m not finding anything,” Ben said.
Collette reached over his shoulder, typing with one finger. “Okay, hit ENTER.”
Rubbing my thumb into my palm, I considered my escape. It would be too obvious to jump out the window, and I’d have to bump all around them to get out the door. I thought if I wished hard enough, I could just astral-project and go home. My spirit, at least—my body could wait till supper to come home.
“Here’s an Elijah Landry.”
I jerked my head up, but I still couldn’t see the screen. “What did you find?”
Collette didn’t look back. “It’s not him; don’t worry about it.”
“This says there are five people in the whole country with his same name.”
I tried again. “But is he our one?”
Ben said, “Nah,” and went back to typing. They didn’t say anything else. They clicked and clicked, shuffling through Web sites and leaving me on hold.
The window looked better all the time, and I wondered if I’d get to eat nothing but ice cream if I ended up in the hospital with a broken leg.
“It seems like there should be something,” Ben complained.
“You’d think,” Collette said.
“You wanna go back to the lake?”
All off balance, I needed the ground to feel solid under my feet again, so I interrupted. I didn’t look directly at them, but I did raise my voice enough to be heard.
“If we can get a ride to St. Amant, I know a better place to look.”
Mrs. Lanoux looked like Collette, only older, her lines starker and sharper. She kept her hair up, twisted and held fast in a silver wire cage. A few curls escaped, framing her sweet tea-shaded cheeks.
She left a half-moon ring of cranberry lipstick on her glass when she put it down, pointing at us with a yardstick when we came in. “Unless you’re here to work, you can turn right back around.”
No fool, Ben backed onto the sidewalk. I stayed at the door, but Collette, unafraid, walked up to the counter. “Can you put the sign out and take us to the library?”
“I’m running a business here,” Mrs. Lanoux said, then suddenly whipped her head around. “Rooster, if you don’t quit playing in my purse, so help me . . .”
Turning her mother’s glass, Collette stole a drink from the unmarked side, then put it back quick before she got caught. “Nobody’s coming in till lunch. You have time.”
“What do you want to go to the library for, anyway?”
Collette shrugged. “Look at some books.”
Mrs. Lanoux crossed her arms on the counter and leaned forward. “You’ve got a whole room full of books at home.”
“It’s the fifteenth,” I said helpfully. I offered a bright smile and a wave when Mrs. Lanoux turned her attention to me. “They get their new books on the fifteenth.”
Catching the scent of a liar, Mrs. Lanoux arched one thin brow at me. “Is that so?”
I kept my smile going. “That’s what my daddy says.”
With a stretch, Mrs. Lanoux straightened again. “Look now. Y’all want a little, you gotta give a little. I have grease traps that need cleaning and a Rooster that needs minding.”
Collette melted against the counter, groaning. “Mama, come on!”
“How about it, darlin’?” Mrs. Lanoux disappeared behind the pie case, coming back up with her purse in one hand and a handful of Rooster’s collar in the other. She carried on with her thought even as she hustled Collette’s squirming brother from behind the counter. “I could make you work every day, like Patsy does Lonette at the gas station.”
A hand fell on my shoulder and I jumped, startled. Wound up tight, I slowly looked over my shoulder, expecting brown eyes and a laughing Where you at? but it was just Ben.
“Tell her to never mind. My brother’s gonna take us. Come on,” he whispered.
Before I could answer, he bolted off. Left to make up an excuse, I scratched a mosquito bite on my ankle and said, “Collette. Collette!”
She rolled her eyes and her body, twisting around to face me. “What?”
Using all my psychic powers and a good, strong bug-eyed look, I commanded her to play along. “We can go later. I just saw the mail truck, and Uncle Lee said he was sending me some catalogs. You wanna go see if they’re here?”
Collette stared blankly for two seconds, then kick-started. “Oh, those candy ones?”
“It better be candy ones,” Mrs. Lanoux said, turning a place mat over and slapping down some crayons for Rooster to draw with.
Me and Collette had both learned the meaning of the word confiscated when Mrs. Lanoux caught us with one of Uncle Lee’s novelty catalogs. She didn’t think farting piggy banks were too awful funny.
I backed against the door to open it. “They are, swear.”
Mrs. Lanoux waved us off with her yardstick.
As she passed me, Collette said, “Nice save. Now what?”
Cars never died in Ondine; they just got handed down. Shea Duvall’s ancient station wagon wasn’t pretty or quiet, but it ran, and that was all that mattered.
For two dollars each, Shea volunteered to ferry us two towns over to the library, and for one dollar more, he didn’t even ask us why we wanted to go. He didn’t care; he just wanted the extra dollar.
“I’m not made of money,” Collette huffed as she handed the hush money over the backseat.
I settled in against plastic seats that had gone soft in the sun and radiated an oily perfume. The engine droned so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves talk. The sound of it echoed in my ears, even after Shea had dumped us in front of the library.
The librarian stopped shuffling magazines when we walked in. Drifting back toward her desk, she looked suspicious, or maybe curious—like she knew we had other places to be in the middle of the summer, so why weren’t we in them? By the time we got to her, though, she just seemed professional again.
“We want to look at newspapers,” I said when she asked if she could help us. “Old ones.”
She picked up a pen and scrawled a note. Offering it to me betwe
en two fingers, she said, “Take that to West; he’s shelving in the back.”
Waiting until we got out of her line of sight, I turned the note over and read it to Collette and Ben. “Microfiche, June through July, 1989.”
“How did she know?” Collette asked softly.
I answered with a shrug, leading her and Ben like I knew where I was going. Straight back, and then we rounded the corner to find one of the juniors from St. Amant reading against a library cart.
His plastic name tag said WEST—VOLUNTEEN—I CAN HELP! but with his hair in his face, he didn’t even see us until Collette dipped down and waved at him.
“The librarian told us to find you,” I said, and gave him the note.
He read it, then shoved it in his pocket. Jerking his head to get us to follow, he kept stealing glances back at Collette. “Y’all looking for Elijah Landry?”
Collette smiled. “How did you know?”
I exchanged a quick look with Ben; I almost felt sorry for him. He had this pinched look, and I think he woulda said something if West hadn’t lifted a box from a file cabinet and handed it to him.
“It’s either old people doing their family tree,” West said, handing me a box, “or people who think they’re gonna solve a mystery nobody else did. Y’all ain’t old.”
“Old enough,” Collette said.
Ben shook his box. “How does this stuff work, anyway?”
I’d expected to spend an afternoon sweltering in some back room, wheezing over old, yellow newspapers. Microfiche turned out to be movies, sort of.
West threaded one of the spools into the machine and flipped on a light. He turned the knob, and like a miracle, a whole newspaper page jumped onto the screen.
“You take care,” West said when I turned the knob too hard. “I have to tape ’em if you break ’em.”
Collette shot me a funny look, but I promised we’d be careful. West lingered behind Collette’s chair another minute, until Ben made a specific point of thanking him for his help.
Once West was out of earshot, Collette leaned over to whisper, “He was nice.”
Shadowed Summer Page 3