by Leah Weiss
Bert wipes her runny nose on her arm.
Trula runs her fingers over the card. “Here”—she taps the Roman numeral X—“is the power. The number ten represents completion.” Then to the corners. “The magical winged figures in the corners resting on clouds—”
I lean in and blurt out, “Are they holding books?” and Trula nods. I get goose bumps, seeing this link between Bert and bibliophiles.
“You do not yet know your power to overcome, Bert Tucker. Today, news is good news.”
As if from some unspoken signal, Uncle Nigel’s Chrysler glides down our driveway and into the yard, and Aunt Fanniebelle and Trula Freed rise from their chairs in unison. The stack of tarot cards go back in the deep pocket, the table is moved, and Uncle Nigel helps the two ladies down the steps.
I blurt out, “But what about my tarot card and my fate?”
“Today is for Bert.”
I feel let down.
Then Trula Freed flings parting words that add to a day of mystery. “This I know,” she says. “Frankie Tender—he will turn up.”
Chapter 34
Bert: Assassination
Knowing Frankie Tender was being his sassy self somewhere else would ease my pain, but the sheriff don’t bring that good news. Hearing Wade Sully is coming home to Helen would soften our days, but that don’t happen neither. Instead, Yancy brings different news. “Y’all gotta come see,” he says from the back door.
“See what?” Daddy stands at the supper table, wipes his mouth on his napkin, and follows Yancy. We come, too, cross the yard, past the barn, to the fence. Assassin is laying on his side, like he’s sleeping.
“What happened?” Daddy says.
“Don’t rightly know, Mr. David, but he’s dead.”
“You sure?” Lydia asks.
“As a doornail.”
“Then how come his belly’s moving?”
The Browns and me lean over the fence, and so does Yancy, him with his worn coveralls over scarecrow-thin legs and dusty work shoes like my pa wears. The mule’s belly ripples like a mole under sod. Is something in there? A tape worm? When enough gas comes out his rear end to blow the hairs on his limp tail, the moving belly stops. I’d heard tell bout Assassin being a champion tooter.
“It’s not old age, because he’s got ten good years left,” Daddy ponders. “Any of the other mules show signs of sickness?”
“I check em myself first thing. Teeth is good and so is the white of the eyes. They still got their attitude. But see that white foam and them sores round Assassin’s muzzle?” Yancy points in the fading light. “That’s poison for sure. Can’t for the life of me figure how it could be, cause all the mules work and eat and rest in the same place.”
Flies crawl on the mule’s open eyes. Buzzards circle watching.
“Check his feed bag and open a new bag of feed for the others. We need Sheriff Cecil to weigh in on this thing. For now, cover him with a tarp so the buzzards can’t get at him. Don’t want to lose evidence.”
The men and Grady go to the barn and we girls to the house. We’ve been hearing about bad things going on in Mercer County, news that Irene brings home. Mr. Langley’s barn burned down on a clear night. Prize hunting dogs and milk cows are dead, and now Daddy’s mule’s been poisoned. Daddy heard tell every farmer with bad luck hired a handful of Germans. That must mean something.
At bedtime, Lu brushes her hair one hundred times. Irene cuts on mine and tries to make sense of the chopped-up mess I made in my fit of despair. “What do you think of this short hair style?” Irene points to a picture in Photoplay magazine.
The girl don’t look like me. The only thing special on me is my bangle bracelet I never take off. “It’ll do,” I say.
Lydia, who’s coming up on six in July, waltzes in and says, “Assassin needs y’all’s thinking help to find his killer.” She’s finally got her sass and smarts back after feeling puny from the sickness. Mama gave her purple honey tea every day till it ran out right when Lydia come round.
Lu keeps brushing her hair. “It’s gonna take smarter folks than Bert and me. We’ll leave it to Sheriff Cecil.”
“No,” Lydia says. “Our mule’s counting on you.” Lydia blows us a kiss and leaves. I can tell Lu don’t think we’re good enough to help with this crime, and we don’t think Weegee is so smart either, cause she thinks Larry Crumbie and Frankie Tender are HOME. But I already know who killed the mule.
Irene says, “How’s that look?” and when I see myself in the mirror, I look better than I should.
“You done a good job with the mess I made,” I say, sweeping up hair clippings to save for a pincushion.
“It was easy, Bert. You look pretty without trying.” Byron Toots is softening her heart.
Lu and me get in bed with the lights out, and I say, “I know who done it.”
“Who did what?”
“Killed your mule. It was the Nazis.”
“What are you talking about?” Lu gets up on one elbow. “Why would you say such a thing? When would they have had time? And why would they kill an innocent animal?”
“When I take water to their dinner table, that first day in the barn, they call me a donkey. Maybe they don’t like donkeys or mules. Maybe that’s why they killed him.”
Lu is quiet for a moment, then giggles.
“Why you laughing? I know what I heard. It might be a clue.”
“He didn’t call you a donkey. He was saying thank you in German. Danke.”
“Oh. I don’t know that. How could I know that?”
The morning after Assassin gets murdered, we start harvesting the second load of beeswax for the government, and it’s a gang of us working. Me and Lu and Daddy got bee suits on and are gonna take the honey racks outta the hives. Grady keeps fires going under fifty-gallon oil drums filled halfway with rainwater he’s already toted. Wolf and Gertie will cut the comb out of the frames, extract honey, and throw the wax into the heated rainwater where it will melt and rise to the top. It’s sticky, hot work, and I’m getting wore out. Then the dinner bell rings.
Lu catches my eye, us getting out of our suits, and says, “I got an idea. I want us to look for a pile of wood chips.”
“Now? But I’m hungry and need to pee. Can it wait?”
“It’ll only take a minute.” She grins, “We’re looking for wood chips made by a mean-hearted whittler.” We check the back of the barn and look inside the stalls before heading to the hayloft. At the top of the ladder, I go one way and Lu the other. Then I see what she was hoping for. In the shadows. By the three-legged chest. “Over here.”
Lu comes to stand beside me. “Would you look at that.” A pile of wood chips.
Forgetting all about dinner, we get Daddy from the yard. When he sees the wood chips, he says, “Well, I’ll be… Good work, girls. I’ll call Sheriff Cecil,” and I feel smart.
Yancy found ground poke berries and stems mixed in with Assassin’s food. Now, thanks to good detecting by super sleuths, we have a prime suspect. Little Lydia says, “Told you so,” and makes us puff up.
Later that day, the sheriff questions Terrell Stucky about his whereabouts the day before, but he’s got an alibi: he says he was fishing with Tater and Spud. Even Mr. Otis recollects the men bought bait from him. The sheriff tells Daddy he can’t arrest a man with an alibi over wood chips, even if that somebody whittles all the livelong day. Cause of that stupid alibi, Terrell Stucky gets a stupid warning. But me and Lu know he done it. We don’t ask Weegee for help. We figured out The Case of the Ass Killer all by ourselves. Lydia calls us heroes.
Chapter 35
Lucy: Slur
Assassin doesn’t get dragged into the woods to mutate into a pile of bones. He waits in the distance beside a massive hole that Cornell and Sammy dug at the tree line. Lydia has organized his funeral, and the family and Yancy come, and so do
es Sugar. She carries a bunch of Houstonia caerulea that everybody calls bluets. Uncle Nigel brings Aunt Fanniebelle, and she wears that elaborate shawl with beaded peacocks she got thirty years ago in the French Quarter in New Orleans. They bring Trula Freed dressed in somber finery. Black feathers have been added to her midnight-blue turban. She carries a brass box that dangles on a chain. She opens the hinged top, lights the contents, and refastens the hook. Sweet smoke spirals upward. The smoke is the color of Assassin’s coat. She hands the chained box to Lydia to carry, and my little sister says with authority, “Y’all git behind,” and we make a line.
We cross the pasture—watching where we step—and we circle the mule’s final resting hole and wait. The smoke from the brass box drifts over Assassin’s body and lies like a wispy blanket. Lydia, Sugar, and Cora start singing “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain,” and we join in, taking our cues from Lydia, who sings mournfully about six white horses and chicken and dumplings, and ends with “We’ll all go out to greet her.” We sing six choruses for Assassin’s passing. Lydia nods at Sugar, who throws the bluets into the grave, then my little sister blows a tin horn that sounds like a familiar toot. It’s done. No mule has ever received a more regal send-off.
Cornell and Sammy finish burying Assassin and we head to the house to eat cookies. Lydia sets her sight on Captain Toots so she can spring Everett’s latest riddle. “You know how to make a witch into a itch?” she says, and he looks like he’s thinking hard but he gives up pretty fast. I know the answer is “You take away the W,” and I’m always surprised at how good minds don’t think in a straight line.
Captain Toots showed up for the funeral and acted dignified through it all. I’m happy he has a decent singing voice, because Irene’s voice is beautiful. Every evening he’s away from camp is spent at our house. He and Irene always wind up in the swing, even if it’s cold or rainy. Bert and I are obsessed with this romance, and we eavesdrop because we’re good at it.
Our bedroom is on the second floor, and our window looks out on the porch roof. The window tracks are greased with lard, so they glide with ease. Loose floorboards have been nailed down. We couldn’t ask for easier targets.
The evening of Assassin’s funeral, after supper and after story time, the couple sits in the swing and we crawl to the open window. “I’ve got a situation,” Byron says as the swing creaks with their united weight. With those magic words, we pay closer attention.
“A situation?” Irene speaks kindly to Byron. She’s only started using that gentle tone.
Love Rule #1 I learned from Mama: Speak kindly.
“It’s hate trouble.”
“Hate? Against whom or what?” Irene shifts in the swing, likely facing Byron.
“A daily problem is that pest Stucky—”
“Terrell Stucky?”
“He still sits outside the prison all day long, whittling wood for no reason. When he catches your eye, he pretends he’s slitting your throat with that switchblade, and it’s getting tiresome. Nobody likes him being there, but he’s not on government property, so I can’t do much about him. But the bigger problem is the prisoners. Two of them painted German words on the side of the mess hall that can be seen from the street. Probably nobody in Riverton reads German, but that’s not the point. Private Jenkins knows German, as do a lot of the other guards. That’s why they’re assigned here. Jenkins translated the words.”
“What did it say?”
“Jews and Dogs Stay Out.”
“Why would they post that? There’s only one Jewish man in all of Mercer County, and he keeps to himself. And what do they have against dogs?”
“I don’t know why they wrote it, but it doesn’t matter. Bottom line, these prisoners are not allowed to hate on my watch. At least not publicly.”
“What did you do?”
“The guards inspected hands and clothes for paint traces. They found two culprits with incriminating evidence on them, the morons. We’ve put them in separate holding cells until we decide what’s next. Obviously, they’ll clean up the mess they made, but what do you think we should do?”
Love Rule #2 Mama said: Always show respect.
“The trick is to make the punishment carry a lesson, don’t you think?” Irene sounds like Mama. “Begin to change them at the basic level if you can.”
“How would I do that?”
“Well, they’ll have to paint over the cruel words…but could something go there in its stead? Maybe something like ‘Hate Is a Choice,’ but in German. You don’t want them thinking hate is their birthright or that it followed them across the sea.”
Love Rule #3 I added on my own: Make her giggle.
The creaking swing stops. Irene laughs. I think Byron is kissing her neck. He says, “You are not only beautiful and intelligent and clever, you’re also cunning,” and his words drift over the tin roof and through the screen of our open window.
Bert sighs, and I rib her with my elbow to keep quiet, but the action on the front porch has dulled Byron’s and Irene’s hearing. We crawl away from the window and get in bed. This unrest Byron shared doesn’t bode well for the Germans adjusting to Riverton or for the lone Jewish man who’s causing trouble without trying.
I’ve never given much thought to Mr. Asher Cohen, because I’ve never seen him up close. He doesn’t come to town or the market or to the farm to buy honey. He lives on the fringe of our lives in a solitary place on the river, and I don’t even have a clear picture of what he looks like. How did the prisoners find out about him? Why would they hate a little man with simple ways? What did he ever do to them?
Then I wonder if it’s Asher Cohen they hate at all. Maybe the prisoners hate the idea of Jew. Like Helen hates everything foreign. Like Terrell Stucky blames everybody for his misery. Like we hated our German Nazis before we laid eyes on them.
I do know this—and I spend some of my ten-dollar words to make the point: hate is incendiary, provocative, dangerous. Can Byron hope to eliminate it? Or even keep it at bay? Or will it lie in wait like a glowing ember ready to ignite when the wind shifts?
Chapter 36
Bert: Stolen Things
I been watching the calendar, and today’s the day: June seventeenth. One year back, I come to this place in a storm and got turned into a bibliophile and an apiarist. Now I read and write and tend bees. I play a fair game of marbles with Lydia. Some days, I forget who I was.
But this morning nobody says a dang thing. I thought they’d remember without me saying. I thought Mama’d make me a pecan hotcake with whip cream on top. When that don’t happen, I wonder if my coming is as big for them as it was for me. Lu and me walk to the garden to weed, and I finger the bangle birthday bracelet on my wrist I don’t take off and say, “Today’s one year.”
“Since what?”
“Since I come here through the storm.”
“It’s came. Since I came. Good grammar isn’t rubbing off on you at all.”
“Whatever. Anyway, you forgot.” I’m cranky cause she forgot and cause she called me on my words.
“It’s been a year already? I didn’t forget on purpose. I stopped counting days I guess cause you’re one of us. That’s all.” She can tell she hurt my feelings. We sucker tomatoes and tie up beans and all the while stay quiet. That’s how me and Lu fight. We don’t say what’s right in front of us, so I think today’s the day I see if Lu’s my true best friend. I say, “Wanna see my treasure box?”
“The one Trula Freed saw was on your mind?”
I nod but get a scared thud in my belly. If I show Lu my treasure box, she’s gonna find out things she won’t like. She’ll know I can’t never be a real Brown. To prepare her, I say, “I ain’t good.”
“Who says you aren’t good?”
“Me. I say it. But let me show you… Then you’ll know.”
I leave the garden with Lu behind and head to the
hayloft. I go to the dark corner stacked with broken chairs, crates, and a three-legged chest. The place we found Terrell Stucky’s pine chips. I wiggle open the warped drawer and pull out the cigar box tied with twine, then we shuffle over to the light and sit on a bale of hay.
Lu don’t rush me. I like that bout her. She knows this box holds ghosts. I say, “I used to think it was important stuff in my box so I could hold on to something good when things got bad. But…well, you’ll see.”
I untie the string and lift the cardboard lid with the faded gold on top. The first thing I take out is a woman’s pin missing some of the red glass. “I stole this from Memaw,” I say straight out. “I took it off her dresser when she lay dying. Slipped it in my pocket easy as pie to remember her by. It was the only piece of sparkle she had. Memaw’s sister and Ma looked high and low for this pin. I never told em I took it, but they knew I done it.” I set the brooch on the hay between us.
“This tiny bottle was Ma’s. It’s got her smell, but it’s mostly gone. And this here button come off your mama’s dress that first day. When it got loose, she put it on the window ledge to keep it safe. I took it when you won’t looking. I fingered it in my pocket those next days, looking for comfort.”
I keep my head low in shame.
“And this here green marble—”
“You stole from Trula Freed?”
“I was thinking I never saw such a pretty place and might never get to come back.” I sound righteous. “I know she saw it slip into my pocket.”
“It didn’t slip into your pocket, Bert. You put it in your pocket. Stop blaming the object when it’s you doing the bad deed.”
Her words stab me. Why am I showing her these things? Why did I think she could understand? The quiet is heavy until finally she says, “Go on and finish. Show me everything.” And I do.
“This here pocketknife belonged to my grandpa, and it always lived in Pa’s pocket. I stole it one wash day and put it in my box cause I had need for it. Pa never could find the dang thing, and I didn’t help him look for it cause I knew where it was.”