Then all was silent again.
“Guess you’ll have to kick me out after all,” I said.
Simon didn’t answer. He pushed his chair back and headed to the jukebox. He studied the selections, then slid a coin in the slot and punched some buttons. The machine whirred and clacked; a record slid into place.
It was soft rock from the sixties, a hit from before I was born. But it was timeless, and I knew it well. This was the more recent remake, the same version Terri and I would play in our dorm room at Hokona Hall whenever we pulled an all-nighter or just wanted to cut loose.
Don’t worry, baby—everything will turn out all right. Don’t worry, baby . . .
I smiled, and Simon looked pleased. We listened to it together without speaking, and when it was over he sent me back out the door.
Good Night Air
I tugged Laurel’s nightgown over her head. Her hair was damp from her evening bath, the ends rolling like tiny sausages. She could use a trim.
Before she slipped under the covers, she pulled a thin book from the nightstand and handed it to me. Jessie had borrowed it from the library in town. Laurel was too old for it, really, but she loved it. So did I. It was comfort reading, the book equivalent of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.
After the book ended, after all the familiar “good nights” were said, Laurel was still wide-awake, watching me solemnly from her pillow.
“Mommy, are we living here now?”
I set the book on my lap.
“For a while, sweetie. Do you like it here?”
She nodded, rubbing one eye with her knuckles.
“But are we staying? Is this forever?”
“Well, forever’s a long time,” I said.
Laurel’s hand dropped to the covers and she leveled a look at me even more solemn than before. It was a piercing, knowing look, and I’d never seen it come from such a young face before. Especially hers. It gave me the distinct impression she knew something I didn’t. And knew she knew, and was only waiting for me to catch up.
I set the book back on the nightstand.
“Laurel, honey,” I said. “Do you remember the day we got here?”
She squinted at me, puzzled.
“I woke up,” she said. “And I was here.”
“Here?”
She jiggled her feet under the covers and smiled.
“Here. In bed. Miz Jessie brought me strawberries.”
I brushed stray hair from her temple.
“And what about before that?” I tried to keep my voice light. “Do you remember Mr. Simon bringing us here?”
She thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“And before that?” I asked even more lightly than before. “Do you remember Daddy? Out on the road?”
This time her eyes were fixed on me intently.
“Do you?” she asked finally.
I couldn’t tell if she was being curious or trying to prod my memory. Either way, it was disconcerting.
“No,” I said. “Maybe you can help me remember.”
She shook her head once more.
“I can’t.”
Can’t? I thought. Or won’t?
How old does your child have to be before she starts keeping big secrets? I felt a pang of guilt. Maybe that was something she’d learned from me.
Laurel yawned and stretched, settling deeper under the covers. “Mommy?” she asked.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“I heard Tinkerbell today.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Wh-what?”
“She was barking. Up on the Mountain. I think she’s trying to find us.”
In a flash I was back in our yard in Wheeler, Tinkerbell scratching at the shed door, Jim heading inside with the shovel . . .
“That . . . that’s just not possible, Laurel. If you heard a dog, it could have been any dog. They sound alike from far off.”
“No, Mommy. It was Tinkerbell. And we gotta go get her.”
I stood up from the bed, rattled to the core. I wasn’t going up on that mountain. And certainly not to hunt for a dog I knew full well I’d never find.
“Time to go to sleep now,” I said.
“But, Mommy . . .”
I stooped for a quick kiss to her cheek, then switched off the table lamp.
“Good night.”
Bee in a Thunderstorm
Not long after Laurel told me about Tinkerbell, Jessie said a few ladies from town would arrive the next morning—they were holding a bee to finish up a wedding quilt for the local schoolteacher. She invited me to join them, and pressed till I felt no choice but to accept. She looked pleased when I did.
“It’ll be fine weather for it,” she said. “These old bones know.”
Olin was behind her at the dining room table playing dominoes with Laurel. He looked up at me and winked.
* * *
Early the next morning came a menacing rumble. I glanced out my bedroom window to see heavy clouds crowding in from the east. A gust of wind lashed the bedroom curtains. You could smell the storm brewing.
Wooden deck chairs already sat under the oak tree, arranged in a tight circle that Olin had set up the night before at Jessie’s instruction. But it seemed the ladies were about to get rained out.
Then I noticed Jessie in the vegetable garden below, standing between rows of tomato plants. Her hands were on her hips and she was glaring. She raised the skirt of her apron and waved it, the way she does to chase off a stray hen.
“Shoo, now! Shoo!”
But there was no hen in sight, and Jessie wasn’t looking down, but up—up at the storm clouds.
Another rumble, a louder volley than before. She shook her head and retreated back inside.
We didn’t eat breakfast at the outside trestle table, but at the little oak one in the kitchen—all but Olin, who said he had business in the fields.
He’d been outside all morning, but had been vague about where or why. Earlier, I’d spotted him off in the distance—as still and straight as a soldier at inspection, far outside his fieldstone fence. He had faced east, too, just like Jessie.
I almost called out to him then, but something stopped me. Somehow it felt like an intrusion. Now here he was again, running off.
Another battery of thunder; the storm was drawing nigh.
“A pity about your bee,” I told Jessie. “You could always bring it inside.”
She looked at me thoughtfully. “We always have it outside. Never you mind.”
The ladies arrived soon after breakfast. Liz LaGow was dark and sturdy—not tall, but vigorous. She was carrying a thick bundle wrapped in cloth and trussed with twine. Her dark, probing eyes took me in from ponytail to sandals. I knew she and her husband owned the general store. She arrived with her sister, Molly Knox, who was taller than Liz, and slimmer, with finer features. She had a coil of brunette braid at the crown of her head and eyes that were less penetrating than her sister’s. Molly owned the hotel in town.
Like Jessie, the sisters wore simple belted dresses hemmed a prim distance below the knee. I couldn’t get a handle on how old they might be—they seemed ageless, but had the same bold energy as Jessie. For some reason, I could clearly picture the three of them marching hundreds of miles alongside Conestoga wagons, raising children on hardscrabble farms on the frontier.
The teacher, though, was altogether different. Bree Wythe was younger than I—petite and lively in jeans and a sleeveless blouse of coral silk. She wore a string of small turquoise nuggets around her neck. Her hair was ash blond, styled to her shoulders. Her smile was warm as she took my hand.
“I’m so happy to meet you,” she said in a voice with slight Southern notes. She linked her arm through mine as we followed the others through the house toward the back door. “Thanks for helping on the
quilt—I don’t know about you, but I’ve never finished a stitch in my life.”
We stopped just inside the kitchen, where Jessie and the sisters stood at the open doorway to the backyard, staring at a bank of black clouds that now nearly eclipsed the sky. Wind whipped the branches of the old oak. Lightning crackled; thunder growled.
The three women exchanged grim looks, then without a word forged ahead into the yard. The wind smacked their long skirts about their legs and tore at their hair, pulling it loose from buns and braids.
I paused in the doorway with Bree and stared after them. I expected Bree to be as rattled as I was, but she only smiled and tugged on me until we were heading for the oak, too.
Liz was loosening the twine around her bundle, drawing out a large quilt. The others opened small sewing bags to withdraw scissors, needles, thimbles and spools of thread. Deftly they stretched the quilt into a four-legged frame, then settled back in their chairs. Bree and I took our seats, and the five of us tucked into the quilt as if the wind weren’t howling or the clouds about to split open.
The scene was so outrageous, so surreal, I couldn’t speak.
Molly handed me a needle, spool and thimble, and Jessie did the same for Bree. Numbly I snipped off a length and bent to thread the needle, but of course it was impossible with the wind whipping the thread, and though it was only midmorning, it had grown as dark as dusk. I was about to give up when Molly passed me the needle she’d just threaded, apparently with little trouble.
Conversation would only have been drowned out, so the women bent to their own work, needles darting.
Thunder exploded directly over our heads in a long, furious roar that rattled the windows of the house. I could taste the electrical charge.
“We should go inside!” I shouted.
The women paused long enough to stare at me, then shook their heads. Molly leaned in close. “This is nothing, Joanna. Just wait.”
Thunder again, followed hard by lightning. I stared about, my heart in my throat.
Then, just as I was about to bolt for the house, everything abruptly changed.
The banshee noise broke off as suddenly as flipping a switch. The thrashing branches of the oak eased till they were rocking like cradles. A rift began to open in the clouds directly overhead, wider by the second, splitting apart to expose a strip of cobalt blue sky. Shafts of yellow sunlight cut through the rift and hit the oak tree.
“There, now,” Jessie muttered with a sigh. “Much better.”
She and the sisters laid down their needles and calmly began to tuck their hair back in place. I watched them, stunned. I could only guess we were in the eye of the storm, although I’d never heard of thunderstorms having eyes. But they must, for this storm was clearly far from over.
On every side of us it still raged, hammering down the grass all along the bowl of the valley, whipsawing the trees. Fields of corn and wheat rolled like great waves. Clouds boiled, black and green and sickly yellow. In the distance, rain fell in flat unbroken sheets. Lightning flashed—not in single jagged bolts but in branching spectacles that lit up the sky. Thunder bellowed, but it wasn’t rattling the windows anymore.
There was chaos all around while we sat undisturbed in an acre of oasis.
Liz began to rub her shoulder as if she’d strained it. “About time,” she muttered. “Couldn’t hear myself think with that racket.”
“I . . . I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s happening?”
Liz frowned at me dismissively, then turned to Bree. “Honey,” she said, “tell us about the wedding. At the hotel, is it?”
Bree looked relieved to lay down her needle. “Middle of December. Reuben says it’s a slow time at the ranch. Joanna, you’re more than welcome.”
I stared at her, still confused. December was a long way off—I couldn’t imagine still being in Morro by then. Bree was just being polite.
“Thank you,” I managed finally. “If I’m still here.”
Jessie dropped her hands to her lap and stared toward the barn just as Olin emerged with a deck chair under each arm, Laurel trailing behind. “Speak of the devil,” she muttered. “What’s that old fool up to now?”
He stopped in a patch of grass well within our sight and set the chairs side by side facing the western end of the valley, which was now bearing the brunt of the storm. Then the two of them took their seats to watch as calmly as if they were in a movie theater.
Liz was bristling, clearly feeling provoked. Molly was stifling a smile.
“Pay him no mind,” Jessie said airily. “Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
Olin pulled the caps off two pop bottles and handed one to Laurel. It was then I noticed Bree studying me curiously.
“Joanna, summer’s about over,” she said. “School’s starting soon. Will you be enrolling your daughter?”
The question caught me off guard. The last time Laurel had left school, she’d brought home her first-grade certificate, launching our escape.
I shrugged, feigning indifference. “I haven’t made any plans.”
I was sure Jim had alerted Laurel’s school by now, and they’d let him know about any request to transfer her records. Enrolling her anywhere else would be firing off a flare.
“If it’s a matter of documents, I wouldn’t worry,” said Bree. “I’d never turn a child away because of paperwork.”
“And don’t forget,” said Jessie. “We’re not county. We do things our own way out here.”
“But there must be a school board,” I protested. “Officials to account to.”
“Honey”—Jessie gestured around the circle—“most of the school board is sitting right here.” She looked meaningfully at Liz and Molly, who nodded in return. “All right, then. It’s settled.”
Apparently the discussion was over. And Laurel was enrolled in school.
“You been to town yet?” Liz asked. “No sense putting it off,” she said when I shook my head. “We don’t bite. Come on up and visit the store. We got everything you need, and most everything you’d want.”
“Check out the hotel, too,” Bree urged. “A lovely old Victorian. High tea on weekends. Very authentic.”
“Yes, indeed.” Liz smirked. “Authentic.”
Molly’s cheeks reddened. “And why not?” she said. “George has been very helpful.”
Liz and Jessie said nothing.
“Who’s George?” I asked finally.
“Oh,” said Jessie. “He’s Molly’s gentleman caller.”
“George is from Bristol,” Molly said stiffly. “England.”
I didn’t ask how they’d managed to meet, but couldn’t imagine it was through any online dating site. In fact, I couldn’t picture Molly—or her sister or Jessie—on a computer at all. Jessie didn’t keep so much as a microwave in her house.
What I could picture—quite suddenly and with utter clarity—was one or the other placing a lonely-hearts newspaper ad. I could see photos exchanged—formal poses in sepia tones—then letters back and forth over many months, many years. The progression of their courtship washed over me with surprising surety.
Jessie laid down her needle and gazed about. “Storm broke.”
It had broken long ago over our heads, of course, but now it was breaking in earnest over the rest of the valley. Lightning streaked soundlessly far off to the west, where thunderheads were in galloping retreat.
I paused, too, taking in the aftermath. The valley appeared to be standing still, catching its breath, set loose from time and space. It felt as if every clock in the world had wound down and suddenly stopped.
Even the air was motionless, leaving the valley as composed and vivid as a diorama. As wild and reckless as the storm had been, so profound now was the calm that followed it. The lull was contagious—it washed over me and through me in a wave of warmth. I’d never felt so a
t peace. I didn’t want it to end.
None of us spoke. None of us moved. We sat together in stillness and silence under the oak tree, caught up in a consecrated moment.
A second passed. Then another. And with the next, the clocks began to tick again. Rain began to drip from the leaves and the rooflines. Birds stirred in the branches, and in the distance Willow Creek rushed noisily from the downpour.
The valley felt purged. Revived.
“Well, ladies.” Jessie sighed. “Gather up.”
Sewing bags opened up again, and back went needles, thread and thimbles. Liz and Molly unframed the quilt, folded it and slid it back into its fabric bag.
Olin still sat with Laurel at the far corner of the barn. He turned toward me and raised his pop bottle in salute.
And I knew what he was telling me: You’re welcome.
A Still, Small Space
After the storm, after the sisters had left with Bree, I packed the last of the deck chairs back in the barn and stood alone in the open doorway. Dusk was falling, and lights were switching on in the farmhouse. Scraps of voices drifted outside, rising and falling in conversation. The radio broke into a twangy two-step, something about “Too Old to Cut the Mustard.”
I stared about me at every homely and familiar object, every bit of landscape, as if they had suddenly become alien to me. As if at any moment they could transform into something else altogether, or vanish outright. Plow, tiller, scythe. Fence, tree, house. Even as I turned from one to the next, they seemed to pulsate, their lines blurring. I blinked, and they were back.
It was then I realized that the question I’d been asking—How did we get here?—was painfully inadequate. Suddenly it was almost irrelevant that I couldn’t remember what happened that last day in Wheeler, between the frantic sprint toward Albuquerque, the flashing lights in the rearview and waking up in that bed upstairs.
This wasn’t just a matter of recall.
It was a matter of here itself.
My stomach heaved and my knees buckled. I slid down the doorjamb, pushing off to land on a ladder that was lying along the barn wall. I closed my eyes and sucked in deep breaths, willing every particle to be very, very still.
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