Mother Lode

  “Why not?”

  “My sister. With Ma dead, how could I leave?”

  “When did you first decide to take your ma on that ride?”

  Jorie frowned. “I’m not sure. Some time that week, I think.”

  “Then it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing.”

  “No.”

  “Why did you want to do this?”

  “I’ve tried to remember.” Jorie held his head in his hands. “I think she’d been asking me that week to take her for a country ride.”

  Earl Foster shook his head. “You’ve had a lot of trouble with your mother. You wanted to have her committed, remember? Failing that, did you think the only solution was for her to die?”

  Jorie was following a spider’s journey along the edge of the floor. “It’s getting dark inside my head.”

  Earl sighed. “Well, when the sun comes out, enlighten me, too.” He rose. ”I brought you some reading material.”

  Jorie brightened.

  “This is your mama’s diary. One of them. I probably shouldn’t be letting you have it, but I’m going to. Seems like your mind jumped the track, boy. Maybe reading this will help bring it back.”

  Jorie was silent.

  “You have a go at it, all right?”

  Jorie lay back down on his cot.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your reading, while there’s still some light.”

  Earl set the parcel on the end of Jorie’s cot, and took his leave. He didn’t know if he’d done the right thing or not, though he suspected the boy had already read the diaries. Why else were they in his room? And he wasn’t sure leaving it would do any good, but it was worth a try.

  Jorie stared at the book a long time. It was like a thing alive, waiting with a strong presence, commanding his attention. He’d taken the two diaries from an old trunk in his mother’s closet several months ago, but couldn’t bring himself to read them.

  Now the parcel just sat there, waiting, would wait with infinite patience, until he picked it up. He wanted to hide it — from himself. There was not even a drawer to put it in. Why hadn’t he told the sheriff he didn’t want it?

  When he looked away, the bundle seemed to bore into him with invisible eyes, daring him to open it, daring him not to. Like a cat poised to pounce its prey, it waited silently. For an hour he lay on his cot, resisting the voice: Go ahead, read it. It’s yours now.

  He considered putting it under his bed, but he knew that would be admitting its ominous effect. There was no way to escape it.

  Even now, she was defeating him.

  With quick darting movements, as though touching hot coals, he loosed the string, gingerly removed the brown paper the sheriff had wrapped it in. The thick volume was closed with a strap and locked. Possessing no implement with which to dislodge the closure, Jorie attacked it. The tired leather put up little resistance, yielded easily to his will. Before him was his mother’s hand, younger than the one he knew, but unmistakably hers.

  He opened it at random. The brittle, yellow sheets fairly crackled as he turned the pages.

  And there she was before him, open and inviting as she’d always been.

  February 9, 1888

  For many weeks now, it has been most difficult to sleep. Again tonight, after lying awake for hours listening to Thomas’ snoring, I left the warmth of the bed, went shivering to the kitchen where a few embers from the stove still gave off heat. Here I took pen to paper, recording my thoughts. It is strange, but somehow when finished, it is as though I have taken a sleeping powder, for then my hand, my head and heart can finally come to rest.

  Jorie turned a few pages and read:

  I touched Thomas’ shoulder gently, ran a finger gently up and down his spine, but he never turned to me. It has been so for several months now.

  He snapped the diary shut, tucked it under his thin mattress. This was no business of his—had never been. He would read no more. But like his mother, the balm of sleep did not come.

  The turnkey admitted Buck Boyce, and the cell door slammed shut.

  “I’m not going to play games with you," the prosecuting attorney told him. “You can save that nonsense for the jury. Now you and I both know what happened to your mother.”

  Buck Boyce’s hard stare was returned with Jorie’s cool, patient one.

  “How’s my sister?”

  “Your sister’s fine and dandy and I’m not here to talk about her. Your hearing’s coming up, boy, and I want you to give me some real straight answers. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, then.” Boyce placed one foot on the chair, took a pencil from his pocket and flipped open his pad.

  “Tell me what you were thinking that day you set out for a joy ride in the blizzard.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “I thought it was a fine day for a ride in the country — blue sky, with a few cumulus clouds, a soft breeze shaking the golden aspen leaves, the smell of autumn fires. Somebody must have been burning a pile of leaves, though it smelled more like hay. You could almost taste the apples in the nearby orchard, but I couldn’t say what kind they were. Macintosh, probably.”

  Bud Boyce snapped his note pad shut. “That’s enough of that nonsense. You told the sheriff that a man with a lantern helped you look for your mother.”

  “Who was he?” Jorie asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “I remember he had huge feet — left much bigger footprints than mine.”

  The attorney’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

  “But they were covered by the snow faster than we could make new ones.”

  “Go on.”

  “It came down so hard I could hardly see my own.”

  “You lost the big footprints.”

  Jorie looked up, surprised. “No, my mother’s. My mother has very small feet.”

  When the prosecuting attorney left Jorie wondered what kind of gibberish he’d spouted. It just came out that way — he didn’t know why. They’d probably think he was insane. Well, maybe he was.

  Chapter 31

  Earl knew Cora didn’t like all the time he was spending away from home. She kept reminding him those visits to the jailhouse weren’t his job. She didn’t understand that he had to. He’d started this ball rolling, and he had to get it sorted out.

  “You haven’t spent a bit of time at home,” she complained one morning. “Even when you are here, you’re not here, if you get my meaning.”

  “I do.”

  “I had a nice mutton roast ready for you last night, fixed up the way you like it, with parsnips and onions. You never came home for supper and never sent word, neither.”

  “We’ll enjoy it tonight, though, won’t we?”

  She sighed. “It’s not the same, warmed over.”

  “I’m sorry, Cora.”

  “What’s gotten into you? Do you think the world hangs in the balance while the great Earl Foster deliberates this case?”

  “That’s enough.”

  “He’ll have his hearing, and it will all turn out in the end — however it’s supposed to.” She softened her voice. “Can’t you let go, Earl, a little bit?”

  Once more he was on his way to see the lad. Despite her resentment at the time Earl was away, she had wrapped a piece of cornbread. “Take it to the boy.”

  “I won’t be so late. If you behave yourself, we could spend the evening together.” He patted her ample fanny.

  She pushed him away, but he knew she was pleased.

  “Watch your step out there. It’s icy. I nearly fell going to the privy.”

  As he walked across town, a freezing rain descended, adding to the already frigid atmosphere. He could hear the tinkling sound it made hitting the bare elms, encasing them in ice. Tiny pellets stung his eyes; he wound his muffler around as much of his face and neck as he could. He should have taken the buggy, but Bigot didn’t like the ice any more than he did.

  Shaking as much prec
ipitation as he could from his wraps, he descended the stairs of the courthouse, noting the echo that followed each step in the quiet depths of the building. He found Jorie staring at the ceiling again, probably studying the spider webs.

  “Have you had your breakfast?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anything you need?” Earl asked.

  “I’d like some books.”

  “The diary is about all the reading material I can allow you for now.” He handed the cornbread to Jorie. “Courtesy of Mrs. Foster.”

  “That was kind of her.”

  Jorie ate part of it, wrapped the rest up for later.

  “How’s Eliza?”

  “Mrs. O’Laerty says she’s doing fine. Did you read the diary?”

  “Some of it. The part about the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery?”

  Earl snapped the rubber band on his wrist. “She had you keep a punishment journal.”

  Jorie colored. “How’d you know about that?”

  “It’s in the second diary.”

  “Oh.”

  “How’d you feel about having to keep that journal?”

  “I hated it!” Jorie struggled to keep his feelings under control.

  “Where is it now?”

  Jorie dropped his voice. “I burned it.”

  “When was that?”

  “After. . .she died.”

  “Look, lad, they’re going to decide if there’s sufficient evidence to bind you over, and if you’re sane enough to stand trial. I can’t help you, unless you cooperate.” Earl waited. “We don’t have much time, boy.”

  “You want me to say I killed my mother.”

  “We certainly have probable cause. Enough to go to trial. Perhaps the charge will be reduced to manslaughter if you explain to the court why you took her out there.”

  “I don’t know! I just don’t know, I tell you!”

  “What about the inheritance? Did you get your ‘sizeable sum’?”

  “I—I, no!” Jorie rubbed his sweaty hands on his trousers. “Not yet.”

  “You must be pretty upset about that.”

  Jorie turned to face the sheriff. “Yes. But if you think I’d kill for it, you don’t know me very well, Mr. Foster.”

  It was Earl’s turn to color.

  When the sheriff left, memories flooded in like the spring run-off in the hills behind their home, insidiously seeping into the crevices, pooling in the dark recesses of his mind. But they were as ephemeral as his mental state. Like some fairy-tale cupboard that sometimes offered sweet pies and cakes, he might get worms and snakes the next time. He wasn’t sure of anything; nothing was as it seemed.

  If he could only connect with his star line, he thought he could find the answers, but there were no stars, only clouds.

  Sometimes he remembered, no, felt all the love he had for his mother, how close they’d been. At these times he absolutely knew he’d never harm her.

  Jorie tried to sleep. That way he wouldn’t be tempted to read the diary. With the sleet beating against the small window, whipped up by sudden gusts of wind, the pane rattled like a madman trying to get in, a demon come to torture him. He slept fitfully all day off and on until the turnkey brought his supper.

  Prisoners weren’t allowed candles. In another hour it would be too dark to read — if he could just hold out.

  He hated his weakness.

  The page he opened to was about the silkie stories from Scotland that she told him—how they’d act them out together when he was small.

  He is so precious, and oh, so earnest in the parts he plays! A more bonnie lad I could not wish for.

  How had these games gotten as out of control as a runaway horse? What was it trying to edge its way into his consciousness?

  He turned back to the diary.

  August 1, 1888

  Jorie awakens frequently with nightmares that started after that awful business with Walter.

  He put the book down and tried to evoke some picture of that time so long ago. He remembered Walter was always trying to frighten or hurt him as a child, and that one time he’d dumped a pile of coal on him. He thought that was probably when his step-brother was sent away.

  He comes to our bed, and not wanting him to wake Thomas, I pull him to me and quiet his sobs. I am frightened for my boy. I know Thomas will not tolerate his bedwetting for long. My poor lad.

  Jorie closed the diary. As the past elbowed its way in, the specter of his father hovered over him. Involuntarily the muscles in his buttocks contracted.

  Boys like you have to be punished, do you understand?

  “You all right in there?”

  From down the hall the night turnkey’s voice broke through his reverie. Jorie could hear the night watchman coming toward him, see his lantern swinging at his side.

  He covered the diary with his arm, pretended to be sleeping. He heard the lantern clank against the iron door, knew the man was peering in at him.

  When the turnkey left he turned on the narrow cot. What else had she to say about his bedwetting? Did she remember it the way he did?

  Thomas, drawing Jorie’s confession from him over breakfast, looked at this regression as a deliberate act of sloth and defiance, and marched him upstairs.

  Jorie closed the book, rammed it under his mattress, and lay on his stomach. The acrid odor of urine from former occupants invaded his nostrils, heightening his memory of those days — his father, the villain, and his mother, the heroine who tried to rescue him. Tossing and turning half the night, finally he fell into a fitful sleep.

  He heard the thump, thump, thumping, turned and twisted, trying to escape the blows. They were harder now, and his mother was in the doorway screaming ‘Stop!’ But his father applied the strap ever more vigorously.

  Jorie awoke in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. He flipped over on his back, lay listening. The thumps were coming from the hot water pipes above, which provided steam heat to the building. He was drenched in sweat and out of breath. He sat on the edge of his cot and tried to rein in his wits.

  When he’d managed to calm himself, he attempted once again to go inside. What was it he wouldn’t let himself see? Had he really committed this most outrageous of crimes? It seemed sometimes he had, and others he hadn’t. Every time he thought he was close to the truth, a veil would descend and he could see no more.

  With another unruly drunk in the next cell kicking the wall, plaster again fell on Jorie’s side. Maybe he could draw with it. The walls were light green, or used to be. One had a barred door, the opposite a small barred window. He chose a surface with nothing on it, except a lot of boot prints.

  He didn’t want to think about what kind of picture he’d make. He’d just let his hand move where it wanted to. Perhaps the picture would tell him something.

  He drew until it was too dark to see. But there was barely anything on the wall; the piece of plaster was not a good medium.

  The storm had stopped. Light from the streetlight found its way through the cell window, casting its eerie glow below. Shadows from the window bars pushed their way to the pool of light on the stone floor, surrounding him. The bars of imprisonment were everywhere.

  Chapter 32

  Earl scratched his hand and turned the page. In the second diary he was reading the account of the night Jorie broke the door down and Catherine called him over.

  Poor Earl Foster is not the brightest light, but he was a comfort to me last night. And I believe he convinced Jorie that he should remain at home and take care of us.

  Humph! Not the brightest light! Well, he’d known she didn’t have any particular affection for him, but this was putting it plainly.

  She ended with: I shall have to be clever to think of ways to make my Jorie stay. Those to whom you give your love have no right to abandon you. This is where he belongs, and I’ll do whatever I must to keep him here.

  He dabbed at the blood on his hand, wondering if he’d done the right thing, persuading him to stay with h
is mother. He knew Thomas would have liked to see him at the University, but if there wasn’t any money. . .

  He continued reading. Her tales got more and more bizarre. He could hardly believe she’d had an affair with an itinerant worker. Did Thomas know about this surveyor, or did he have his own secrets? There was that Redson woman he’d seen him with a couple of times. He wondered how many other people in Hancock had been unfaithful to their wives or husbands.