Mornings in Two Pan

by B K Froman

  Everyone spread the announcement of the time and the date. And afterward, folks would say it was a nice service—even if Millie’s dog had howled from the back row when the singing started.

  The months that followed were the brain twisters. The numbness wore off just when it would’ve been handy to have it around to deal with wills, tax returns, and attorneys. Days ran together. What seemed like yesterday was actually a week ago.

  Time got stuck, but as anyone in Two Pan could tell you, it would eventually jar loose. Regardless of who had exited the journey, morning kept breaking, tomorrow kept arriving, and folks continued to look for rockjacks of hope.

  *

  Jiggs stood on the porch of the two-story, white clapboard house. He scanned the view, comparing it to the last time he’d been here. The lilac blooms had dried and blown away. A tangle of red geraniums trailed out of their kettle. The flag still flapped from the corner pillar.

  “You can come in, you know.” Miz Cliva smiled from her doorway. “I’ve been expecting your visit.”

  He took off his hat as he entered and sat in the rocking chair that she waved him toward. “How have you been?” he called as she left for the kitchen. He looked around for a place to set his hat, finally resting it on the floor beside his chair.

  “I’m fine, but let’s skip all that and talk about what you really want to know.” She carried a tray into the room and Jiggs stood, her etiquette lessons from third grade, poking his thoughts. “Please, sit. I expected you last week, so the brownies are a bit chewy, but the lemonade is cold.” She set the treats in front of him and picked up his straw hat, placing it crown-side down on a side bureau.

  White frost coated the mugs of lemonade. Jiggs took a gulp, unsure where to start. “So you expected me to drop by?”

  “Yes, of course. I was one of the last people to see your father alive, and I told him to talk to you. I’m guessing he may have.”

  “Some.” Jiggs nodded.

  “How are you feeling about Ox being dead?” She gave him a Teacher Look as though she’d asked him to critique Moby Dick.

  His forehead furrowed. “Honestly?”

  “I’m guessing, you’re going to ask what Ox and I talked about. We can speak around the subject, but if you want me to answer you sincerely, then you need to speak to me plainly and truthfully. Adult to adult.”

  “I’ll try, though I still think of you as my third-grade teacher.” Jiggs took a drink and then a big breath. “Honestly. I’m not sure how I feel about his passing. Mostly, it’s a comfort, and then I feel guilty for being relieved. That’s a sad thing, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all. He was a hard man to be around. Your mother talked a lot about him. You need to remember people express grief in different ways. No one is wrong. Your dad went through terrible mourning when your mom passed—though he wouldn’t admit it.”

  “He was bitter. I never saw him break down.”

  “Heavens, no.” She gave her head a tiny shake. “His way was to fix things. He knew grief was always sneaking around, but he did his best to fortify himself so it would have a devil of a time breaking in. There are no ‘shoulds,’ Jiggs. No rules on grieving.”

  “Maybe there ought to be. If he’d told me earlier about growing up hard and homeless, I would’ve been…” He fell silent, wondering if he would’ve acted differently.

  “I’ve been through four wars.” Miz Cliva concentrated on wrapping a paper napkin around the bottom of her sweating glass. She folded and creased each tuck as though it were important. “And then there was the Depression. We learned not to get attached to things. It was easier to bear when they were taken away. Ox practiced the lesson more than any of us.”

  “Did he tell you I found a skull?”

  “I urged Ox to reveal its history. I thought you could carry some of his…” she looked at him, “… story. I’m glad you came to discuss it.”

  “He didn’t tell me ma’am. We were supposed to talk that night but…” Jiggs looked out the window at a fern bush swaying in the wind.

  “Do you still wish to know?” she asked. He nodded. “Then I shall tell you. But we’ll need better comfort food.”

  She returned from the kitchen with a pitcher of lemonade and a tin of homemade chocolate chip cookies. She pulled her chair until it was directly across from Jiggs with only the span of the coffee table separating them.

  “First, I must tell you that the older you get, the more secrets you collect because you’ve outlived the others who knew them. Someday, you’ll understand what I mean. Ox told me you had found the skull. We decided he should tell you about it. You must know that it was hard for him. He’d lugged the guilt of those bones for over half of his life.”

  “There’s more than a skull?”

  “The whole body is buried there.”

  “Holy mooing cow.” Jiggs’ eyes widened as he leaned back, forgetting he was in a rocker. “Who?” he asked as he steadied himself.

  Miz Cliva stared at her hands for a moment. Then she poured more lemonade, her face crinkling like leather as she frowned.

  “I pieced together that it wasn’t my great grandma,” Jiggs said, filling the gap in the conversation. “As a reformed, two-dollar tramp, she’s probably buried in a proper grave back in St. Louis. Great Granddad is supposed to be resting in a plot in Flora. And I doubt if it was Ox’s mother, Violet, who died giving birth. They wouldn’t have put her in a streambed. Hey.” He cocked one eyebrow higher than the other. “I understand we’re related.”

  Miz Cliva raised her eyebrow to match Jiggs’. “Distantly. Very distantly. We had Violet interred in the Spinrad plot at Enterprise.”

  “That only leaves a choice between Albrecht, his ugly floozy, or a bunch of bank robbers and strangers.” Jiggs watched to see if any suggestion got a response.

  Miz Cliva closed her eyes. “Albrecht was a kind, gentle man, walking around as though a thundercloud resided over his head. Ox wanted to put him away, but your mother pleaded for him. She made Ox build a house for him, and Albrecht promised to stop drinking. He tried.

  “It was Lisette, not your dad, who mostly dealt with him. She kept him fed, his clothes washed, and retrieved him each time he got out of the drunk cell. She could put up with a lot.

  “He had a spate of sobriety and finally got a job at a hardware store in Minam. They gave him a little cot in back so Lisette didn’t have to drive him back and forth. He kept the place neat and the shelves stocked. All of us thought he was doing so well.”

  Miz Cliva let out a long breath. Her mouth twisted into a deeper frown. She pulled a thick, yellow-paged album from beneath the coffee table and leafed through fragile pages. When Jiggs started to speak, she gave him a silencing look.

  “And then he stole a pocket knife. A pen knife, really. Just a little thing. He said he was straightening them in the display case and realized he needed one. When the owner noticed it was missing and asked about it, Albrecht sheepishly pulled the knife from his pocket. He said he planned to pay for it when he got paid. The owner pressed charges. I’m sure Ox had something to do with that.” She handed Jiggs a ragged-edged, one-inch news clipping.

  He goggled at the four lines. “He hanged himself in jail?”

  “Ox was so upset. I’m sure some of it was guilt for putting Albrecht there. Some of it was anger that his father couldn’t take his punishment like a man.”

  “He hanged himself on his own belt?” Jiggs’ voice grew louder. “Didn’t they have policies to prevent suicide?”

  “Topeka Butler was a wretched peace officer—worthless as bicycle pedals on a wheel chair. I never voted for him. He said he felt horrible about what happened.”

  “And he was still sheriff?”

  “Yes, for years, but that’s another story.”

  “So why bury Albrecht in a stream?”

  “He didn’t. Ox wouldn’t plant Albrecht’s body anywhere close to the land he’d parceled away.” She tapped her bottom lip with her finger. “I think
he’s in the Lostine cemetery. I believe that’s what Lisette told me years ago, though I’ve never looked.”

  “So the skull belongs to…?”

  “I’m getting to that. You keep sidelining me with questions.” She paused, her face smoothing into a Teacher Look with an eternal calmness that reached her eyes. “‘There is a time for everything…a time to be silent and a time to speak.’”

  Jiggs let out an audible sigh and refilled his lemonade.

  “Your mother and I were good friends.” Jiggs looked up, and she nodded. “When your mom needed a break from Albrecht, she used to ride over to Zinnia’s place. She was my niece.”

  Jiggs smiled. “I remember Zinnia Roggs. She used to take care of Pax and me.”

  “She wasn’t Roggs back then. Before you boys came along, she’d married a vicious man. Like all the Spinrad women, she was tiny with delicate skin and a bird-bone body. She got duped and found herself in-a-family-way by a hateful scalawag. One of his shoulders jutted higher than the other, and he leaned like he might fall over. He didn’t work, but maybe that was because of his club foot. When he thought no one was looking, he was most unpleasant. Even Grandpa Spinrad told Zinnia she didn’t have to marry the skunk, which was quite a shocking concession for such a moral man. But she said she felt sorry for Cal Mosley and wanted her baby to have a name.”

  Jiggs took a cookie and nodded. “I think I remember Dad talking about him. Guy looked like a rat? Cut off the water flow, trying to get gold out of the creek?”

  “That’s him. One day, Zinnia was at your mom’s house, visiting. The time got away from them. She knew Cal would be cussing-mad about his dinner being late. But when she got home, he never said a word. He watched her fix the meal. They ate, and he didn’t say a thing. When she stepped out back to throw the dishwater on a rose bush, there was her cat hanging from the eave. He’d strung it up by the neck with fishing line. Dead! And then he said to Zinnia, quiet-like, ‘Don’t ever be late again.’”

  Miz Cliva leaned forward, grabbing her knees for support. “It got worse after that. He didn’t want Zinnia to go anywhere. Your mama and I didn’t see her for a while. Finally, Lisette rode her horse through the pastures, so Cal wouldn’t see her coming. Zinnia was sitting on the back porch step, crying. All she had on was a bra and a dish towel wrapped around her for panties. That barbarous devil had taken a knife to the few clothes she had, so she couldn’t leave the place.

  “Lisette brought her underclothes and a couple of work dresses. Zinnia wore them if Cal wasn’t around, but when she’d hear his old Chevy coming down the road, she’d run to the outhouse, take off the clothes, and hide them in there. He never used the privy—preferred the woods like a wild animal.

  “One day Zinnia wasn’t fast enough getting to the outhouse. He saw her dressed, but he didn’t beat her. She was big and round with the baby by then. Instead, he burned her clothes, knocked the privy apart, and sold it as firewood. What kind of sick so-n-so does that?”

  “Why didn’t she leave him?” Jiggs asked.

  “Yes, why didn’t she?” Miz Cliva’s face twisted, each word becoming more exasperated. “Because Cal threatened to kill her, her baby, and anyone who took her in. Zinnia wouldn’t put a family in that kind of danger. I told Topeka Butler—that sloth with a pointless badge. He did nothing! He said he couldn’t arrest Mosley for being mean. He had to assault someone first. Animal and wife cruelty were nothing back then.” She took a hard bite out of a cookie, and then fanned herself with the rest of it as she sat back in her chair.

  Jiggs rubbed his forehead, pulling his eyebrows back into place. He could see where this was going and why Ox had stepped in.

  “When it got to be Zinnia’s time, we started riding over to check on her every day. Fortunately, Cal hadn’t been there for a while. He often took off and showed up days later—which was a blessing. So on the night he drove in, Zinnia pushed us out the back door of their tiny shack and told us to leave quickly. But we didn’t. We crouched in the dry creek, watching them through the window.

  “He started in on my niece right away. Why wasn’t supper ready? What had she done today? Zinnia began frying the hamburger hash we’d brought her. He cussed and threw a plate against the wall right over the stove. She jumped like she’d been shocked with a cattle prod. He laughed at that. Quick-like, she dumped the hash into a pie tin and slid it onto the table. Behind her back, she picked up the meat fork—as though that was going to keep him away. Your mama was mumbling under her breath, urging Zinnia to grab a butcher knife. It was like watching a horror movie.

  “Finally, some Spinrad part of Zinnia woke up. She yelled, ‘I’m about to have a child. I’ll be busy. So you’d better get used to food not being on this table the moment you drive in!’

  “He sat at the table for a moment, and then his arm shot out and punched her right in the stomach. Heaven help us, I’ll never forget it. I put bruises on your mama’s wrist to keep her from tearing into that shack. I thought I was going to yank her arm out of the socket, dragging her to her horse. I shook her to get her to hear me. ‘Go get Ox. Tell him to bring his gun!’”

  Jiggs scrubbed his hand through his hair, staring at the floor. “Now I see why Dad—”

  “No, you don’t see a thing. As I ran back toward the shack, I picked up the shovel leaning against a tree. Zinnia was holding her belly with one hand, but still clutched the meat fork behind her. Cal was yelling, ‘Whatta you doin’ over there?’ She dropped the fork, white-eyed, and didn’t move. He stood, knocking his chair over. ‘You wanna try somethin’? Here I am.’ He opened his arms wide and stuck out his chest, but only for a moment. Then he grabbed her neck.

  “It was dark outside and your mama ran past me before I could get hold of her, so I followed waving my shovel. She crashed through that door, screaming, ‘You bastard!’

  “Cal was surprised only for a moment then lunged and grabbed Lisette by the neck, too. He couldn’t do much with both hands full of women, so he started shaking them like rags. I hauled back to smash my shovel in his face and…Boom! Right before my eyes, a hole erupted in the back of his neck. I saw the broken shaft of his spine as his head flopped over. I can still see it.” She gave a tiny shake as though knocking the image loose. “He thudded flat on the floor. Took both women down with him.”

  She took a breath before continuing. “Lisette was the first to get up. She shoved a pistol in my hands so she could pull Zinnia to her feet. The barrel was still warm. I pushed it onto the cabinet with a, ‘Where did you get this?’”

  “ ‘Saddlebag. Ox insists I carry one when I ride.’ She was looking at Cal as she said it. His head was cranked in an unnatural angle. ‘It’s to kill snakes. Unfortunately, he grabbed me before I got it raised. What with him shaking me around, I was afraid I’d hit Zinnia or you. So I jammed that Peacemaker in his throat and…’

  “ ‘Grab that other leg.’ We hardly recognized Zinnia’s voice. She already had Cal by his dirty boot. ‘I want him out of my house. Out of my life.’

  “ ‘And do what with him? It was self-defense. We’ll let the sheriff take care of it now,’ Lisette told her.

  “But Zinnia was having none of it. She kept repeating, ‘That’s not the way it works here, and you know it!’ In fits and jerks she tugged Cal’s body toward the door. She wouldn’t let go. To get her calmed down, we helped drag him out back. He left a crimson trail across the floorboards. She growled at me. I barely understood what she was saying, ‘Go back in, Cliva. Get the shovel.’

  “Lisette spoke to her like she was calming a child, ‘Settle down now. We won’t go to jail for killing him.’

  “The light from the back door shadowed part of Zinnia’s face, but the half we could see looked like a crazed being. Her voice sounded deadly, as though she were threatening wolves if they came closer. ‘So what if we go through a trial? Even if we’re acquitted, tongues will wag every time we walk into a store, a restaurant, or church anywhere in this county—for the rest of our l
ives.’ She pointed at me. ‘You think the school board will let you continue teaching after your name has been connected with a murder?’ She was right and I knew it.

  “ ‘And you.’ She pointed to Lisette. ‘How do you think the Daughters of Two Pan will treat a killer? If you ever have kids, they’ll have to fight, defending their mama—the gun woman. And why should you shoulder any blame for my problem? Or for doing what the sheriff should’ve done a long time ago? I’m not giving Cal the chance to foul up any more lives.’

  “ ‘Zinnia, I understand,’ Lisette told her. ‘You’ve lived in terror. You’re angry. Let’s wait until we’re all thinking more clearly.’”

  Miz Cliva stopped speaking. Jiggs looked up. The old woman was gazing out the window, after a while she said, “Poor little Zinnia. She’d always been so quiet and docile. I can’t imagine the brutality she must have suffered to have changed her like that.” Miz Cliva shook her head. “But it turned out Zinnia was the clearest thinker among us that night.”

  “For Every Time There Is A Season …”

  —Ecclesiastes 3:1

  MIZ CLIVA SPOKE slowly and quietly as though she were peeking from behind a tree, watching a wild animal. “Zinnia was on her knees in the sand, digging with her hands. When she finally spoke, her voice was merciless and sharp, ‘This is where it stops. We tell people he beat me and lit out. He’s nowhere to be seen. That’s it. Nobody else is going to be bothered by him. Either help me or get out.’ So…we buried Cal. The rocks on top were supposed to keep him there.”

  “Good grief.” Jiggs rubbed his hand over his chin and mouth. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Zinnia was having hard cramps by then and we convinced her she needed a doctor. Lisette and I promised we’d come back later and clean up. We would’ve promised anything to get her into the only vehicle around—Cal’s truck.

  “We left our horses tied out back. By the time we got to Lisette’s house, Zinnia was sweating and yelling. Lisette told Ox the blood on our clothes was from hemorrhaging. It was actually Cal’s, but men don’t ask questions about women’s blood. Ox took off for the barn like all men do when intimate female issues transpire.