Bitter Sun

Bitter Sun Beth Lewis It all started when we found the body.Then nothing was ever the same.The Dry meets Stand by Me and True Detective in this stunningly written tale of the darkness at the heart of a small mid-Western town and the four kids who uncover it.In the heatwave summer of 1971, four kids find a body by a lake and set out to solve a murder. But they dig too deep and ask too many questions.Larson is a town reeling in the wake of the Vietnam draft, where the unrelenting heat ruins the harvest, and the people teeter on the edge of ruin.As tension and paranoia run rife, rumours become fact, violence becomes reflex. The unrest allows the dark elements of the close-knit farming community to rise and take control.And John, Jenny, Gloria and Rudy are about to discover that sometimes secrets are best left uncovered… Copyright (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) The Borough Press HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/) Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018 Copyright © Beth Lewis 2018 Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018. Cover illustration © Alexandra Gurtner/Bridgeman Studio Beth Lewis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books Source ISBN: 9780008145507 Ebook Edition © JUNE 2018 ISBN: 9780008145521 Version: 2018-04-24 Dedication (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) For Neen Contents Cover (#u8fee8de9-4428-5f50-a51e-f58876e479c9) Title Page (#u52746a77-1dcb-5443-a4ba-2c27dd699dc7) Copyright Dedication He walks broken … Part One: Summer, 1971 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Part Two: Summer, 1972 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Part Three: Summer, 1973 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Acknowledgements Loved Bitter Sun? Enjoy another incredible literary thriller from Beth Lewis … About the Author Also by Beth Lewis About the Publisher * (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) He walks broken. Barefoot in the dust. Middle of the road, asphalt shimmering in the heat, he walks like one of the returning soldiers. The ones with plastic legs. Limp. Shamble. Limp. Shamble. He’s too young for the jungle so he’s here. On the long road to town, rimmed with cornfields. The stalks heavy with gold on one side. Mangy and rotten on the other. A good year and a bad year, shoulder to shoulder. He’s forgotten his name. Smoke streaks across the asphalt from burning fields. Driving away the blackfly and maggots, refreshing the soil with ash. Next year will be better, they’ll say. Next year we’ll forget this ever happened. He’s forgotten his home. His t-shirt flicks in the breeze. Scarlet smears across his chest and arms, diluted to pink and brown at the hems. Thick blood thinned by dirty water. A car slows, then swerves when the driver sees the blood. Foot down hard on the gas. Gone into a cloud. The dust coats his skin and prickles his eyes but he doesn’t feel it. The road is too long, stretching endless. Sharp gravel digs into his bare soles. Threatens to cut. His head sways side to side with every step, a metronome without its tick. The blood, on his arms, his stomach under his shirt, his legs down to the knees, feels tight and sticky. He’s forgotten his family. A horn blasts behind him. A truck sidles alongside. He never heard it coming. A man leans across the empty passenger seat and winds down the window. ‘Hey, you.’ He wavers at the sound of another person. ‘Hey, don’t I know you?’ the driver says. ‘Are you all right, son?’ The voice, the life, pulls him. He turns but doesn’t see. His vision blurred by grit and glaring sun and exhaustion. He opens his mouth but the words seem to come from another throat. The air to make them from another chest. The brain to form them from another head. An innocent head. Three simple, perfect words float off his tongue and into the truck. ‘I killed her.’ PART ONE (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) 1 (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) It was a heatwave summer when I was thirteen. A record breaker so they said. Momma, my sister Jenny, and me lived on a small farm a mile from town. A house of faded whitewash boards and a three-step porch in an ocean of cornfields. Oak tree in the yard with a rope hanging off its fattest limb. Used to be a tyre on it, one from the front of my pa’s tractor, but it broke last year and he was long gone by then so the rope frayed and rotted and turned grey. Momma had let the farm overgrow in the six or so years since he left. Gone to the war, she said, and never told us more. She said the land was his and the house was hers and she didn’t give a rip about our cornfields, stunted and choked with ragweed. She made our money elsewhere, though I was never sure where. I did my best to keep the fields tidy, the corn planted and harvested, but it was only me working so the haul was always small. Still, last harvest I managed to sell the crop to Easton’s flour mill for a good price and bought myself a new pair of boots and Jenny a jump rope. It was a Friday, a few weeks before school let out for summer, that we found it, me, my sister and our friends Rudy and Gloria. Larson had dressed up to the nines for Fourth of July on Sunday, all ticker tape and flags and red, white and blue. There would be a parade, floats and cotton candy and corn dogs, then the fireworks would light up the sky. Every year Al Westin set up a shade outside his grocery store to give out free ice cream cones to the younger kids and the Backhoe diner threw open its windows and played Elvis and Buddy loud onto Main Street. Larson was one of a hundred small towns in the middle of the Corn Belt though it was on its way to being something more. Just last week a 7-Eleven shot up in the trodden-down, boarded-up laundromat, giving the place new life and a brisk trade that upset Al Westin. We’re a flyover town in a spit-on state, Rudy always said. But that was his daddy talking. Larson was full of good people who smiled on the street and wagged a finger if you dropped a gum wrapper. There was a carnival every year, the school just got a gleaming new yellow bus and the church had a fresh, young pastor who took the class for snow cones after Bible Study when it was steaming hot. We’re a big-heart town, Mrs Lyle from the post office would say. Eight in the morning, before the sun revved up its engine, Jenny and me walked the mile to school. I carried her book bag while she skipped ahead and sang and then screamed when I chased her and when I caught her we laughed. Momma didn’t much like us going to school. She said it made pansies of men, made their heads soft and their hands limp. Too much holding a pen, she said, not enough holding a woman. But school was our sanctuary, a place full of friends and learning, and there was Miss Eaves. She taught geography two hours a week, after lunch on a Monday, last on a Friday. Best part about the class was me and Jenny took it together. Jenny was a year younger but the middle school wasn’t big and both years fit in the same room. We had desks next to each other. We passed notes. Jenny loved all those countries, languages, people, currencies; pesos, francs, dirham, lira, exotic to the ear. She was obsessed with the pictures of buildings older than anything in Larson, older than anything in our United States, and her enthusiasm was infectious. That class opened up our world, made us four want to get out of Larson, get out and see it all. Though for me, that desire to up sticks stayed in the classroom, for the others, it was constant, like breathing. I loved that class for the lessons on soil and agriculture and how they grew rice in China or coffee in Brazil. I’d be running the Royal farm one day so I sucked in anything and everything that might be useful. Miss Eaves hushed the class, clicked her fingers for us to sit down. We called her Miss but she was a missus four times over, skin and bone but somehow soft. Jenny liked her. She said Momma was all odd angles and sharpness but Miss Eaves was a cloud of cotton candy, sweet-smelling like inhaling powdered sugar. The skin on her hands was folded and sagged like a bloodhound’s cheeks. She had been a big woman once, she’d told me after class once, but lost it all when her fourth Mister went off to war in ’68. Said she couldn’t eat without anyone to eat for. Momma called her loose and unnatural, four Misters and no babies? What kind of woman is that? Everyone else in class was goofing off, Jenny giggling with Gloria and Maddie-May, Rudy shooting spitballs at the back of Scott Westin’s head, but I was quiet. I didn’t have the energy to horse around. It’d been too hot to sleep for the past week and we didn’t have one of those fancy central air units like in Gloria’s house. Jenny and me shared a room and a bed up in the attic where the heat stuck. We made shadow puppets and butterflies with our hands and made them dance. I told stories of far-off kingdoms, and she’d pretend to be the princess while I roared as the dragon. Momma never woke to tell us to keep the noise down. Whiskey was her bedmate and not much could rouse her. When we were too tired to play, Jenny would ask for a story, then drift off to sleep when I was barely halfway through. That Friday, with the world turned up hotter than the Backhoe fryers, flies circled and swooped on the ceiling. We made fans of our exercise books and shifted desks to escape direct sunlight. Poor Benjy Dewitt who sat closest to the window got scorched, blisters bubbled all up his left arm. Sweat and steam rose off us, turned the chalk dust to paste and smeared ink. Even Miss Eaves was struggling. Mid-way through a talk on volcanoes, when the breeze died and the classroom started to smell keenly of sweat, she stopped, threw her notes aside and said that magic word, ‘dismissed’. ‘Get out, the lot of you, go cool down,’ she said. When we didn’t move, she clapped her hands together and shouted, ‘Hustle, hustle!’ Let out early. On a Friday. The class erupted and spilled out of the room, out of the school. Me, Rudy, Gloria and Jenny didn’t tell our parents. Momma wouldn’t care but Rudy’s dad would make him clean car parts in the salvage yard and Gloria would have to practise her piano and painting an extra few hours. I had a dozen jobs to do on the farm but we had a free hour or so to spend together and I wasn’t going to waste it on chores. We just wanted to run, arms wide like we were flying. We’d be like ducks taking off from a pond, powering their feet, getting lift and height and then up, up, up, into the blue, soaring higher where nothing mattered and nothing could touch them. That was us. That was summer. The four of us were gone, out into the sun and through the fields to the Roost. A place that was ours and ours alone. It was a wooded valley, our dip in the world, with a narrow but deep river running through it, thick with laurel and brush and creeper vines, grown dense and high like the sides of a bird’s nest. In the Roost we’d built a shack, our Fort. We’d added to it since we were six and seven and now it was a grand structure. The roof was a square of sheet iron Rudy lifted from Briggs’ farm when the old man pulled down his cattle shed. Walls were a dozen new planks left over from when they repaired the post office after Darney Wills, sodden drunk, ran his father’s truck through the front window. Then we had a broken doorbell and handle, all ornate gold scrolling on the edges, Gloria got from her father when they replaced it last year. That gave us a touch of class, we all said. We always covered the path down to the Roost with branches. It was a narrow opening between thick shrubs and trees so was easily concealed. It was far off the roads, in the middle of fields, but we wouldn’t take any chances. It was Rudy’s idea to keep it hidden. This is a peachy spot, Johnny, he said, and we don’t want any old yahoo knowing about it. But that Friday, the branches were thrown aside. ‘Did we …’ Gloria started, no doubt meaning to say, ‘Did we cover the entrance the other day?’ but we all knew we had. ‘You think someone …’ Jenny trailed off too. Gloria picked up a branch, held it like a baseball bat. ‘Do you think they’re still down there?’ ‘I can’t hear anything,’ I said, and found a stick too. Rudy picked up a branch shaped like a club and rested it on his shoulder. ‘Jenny, you stay up here.’ My sister scoffed and grabbed a stick of her own. ‘Hell to that. I’m coming too.’ Rudy grinned and saluted, knocking his heels together like he was in front of the Queen of England. Rudy tested out the weight of his club, swiping at nettle heads until he cut one clean off. ‘Ready?’ he said and we nodded. ‘No mercy!’ We barrelled down the hill into the valley, Rudy hollering out his war cry like some mad general, me right behind, branch up and catching on the trees, the girls behind me screaming. We charged to the Fort, expecting intruders to leap out and flee in terror or put up a fight at least, but the Roost was empty. Rudy stopped dead and I crashed into him, knocking us both into the dirt. A moment, a beat, while we realised we were alone and unhurt and had just yelled our throats sore at nothing, then we all four collapsed into howling laughter. We frightened nobody but the birds. ‘Check it out,’ Gloria said, the first to get up, dust herself off, and look around. The Fort’s roof was bent, our door swung on one hinge. Inside was strewn with leaves and muck, the blanket we often sat on snagged on a nail and ripped. Someone had been here. Suddenly the laughter vanished and my chest tightened. But who knew about this place? Maybe a bum? One of those hobos who rides the rails and sleeps under trees like in the movies? Or some other kids from school, maybe Patrick Hodges or the Lyle boys, thinking this was unclaimed land? Did the fuckers wreck the place when they realised it was already taken? It was a violation and we all felt it. The unrelenting, unending heat wasn’t enough, the world wanted us punished more. Maybe it was taking revenge on Rudy for stealing a pack of cigarettes from his father, or Gloria for skipping her piano lesson and making the teacher wait, maybe on Jenny and me for not being better at washing linens or placating Momma when she was in one of her tempers. ‘We should repair it,’ Rudy said, kicking a board over, insects fleeing in the light. ‘Soon as. Pick that up, clear it out and go get a rock to beat out the dents. It’ll look stellar again in no time.’ Everything was stellar to Rudy. Didi’s blueberry pie was stellar. Clint Eastwood, man, him and Telly were stellar. Swimming in Barks reservoir, now that’s stellar. Rudy was the oldest by four months and that was enough to make him our leader. A flash of his straight-as-a-die teeth and a flick of his sandy blond hair, cut like a movie star’s, and you can’t say no. I picked up the board he’d kicked. One from the post office. It was heavy, covered in mud, and he bent down to help. To most in Larson, Rudy was the bad kid, the prankster, the you-won’t-amount-to-anything boy from the Buchanan family of cons and thieves, but to me and Jenny and Gloria, he was goodness made bone and skin. The girls set about tidying the inside, repairing the blanket, setting the cobbled-together table and mismatched chairs and tree stumps right. I found a heavy rock for knocking the dents out of the roof. ‘We’ll need more nails, and a hammer,’ I said. ‘I’ll get some from McKinnon’s hardware,’ Rudy said. ‘Got a few bucks saved up from cutting his grass last summer.’ Rudy hoarded money, his Larson escape fund. Even Jenny had a few nickels under her pillow. Seemed like every kid had one, except me. I had money saved up but it wasn’t for a bus ticket, it was for old man Briggs’ second tractor. He’d promised to sell it to me when I had the cash and could reach the pedals. I was one-for-two but that kind of money is hard to come by around here. I’d have it though, one day, you can bet your weekly on it. We straightened up the roof and rehung the door and by that point, the sun and heat had eased and we’d forgotten that anyone else had ever been here. Rudy and Gloria were over by the lake when Jenny came out the Fort saying she was hungry. ‘I’m craving some fishes, Johnny.’ I smiled at the way she said ‘fishes’, the way her mouth puckered up at the sh sound. ‘Get the poles,’ I said. ‘Perch’ll be running about now.’ Jenny jumped and clapped and rushed back in the Fort to get the poles. They were nothing much, just saplings and line, but they were ours and they kept us fed. Friday meant Momma would be in Larson, at Gum’s Roadhouse, shooting pool and tequila. No dinner on the table. No one looking for us. Sometimes we stayed out here all night, lit a fire, slept in the Fort, watched the sunrise over the fields. Summer before last we’d dammed and diverted the river a few hundred yards upstream from the Fort where the land dipped in a natural, deep curve. It was Rudy’s idea. Everything was Rudy’s idea and no matter how sky-high crazy, they always felt like good ones. It’ll be our own private swimming pool, Johnny, he’d said, ten times better than Barks because it’ll be all ours. And it was up to me to make it work. I’d read a bunch of library books to make sure we got it right. It’d taken us months, all over that winter. Even when our hands were frozen and we had to dig out the planks and rocks from under a foot of snow, we kept building. By last summer it was full and we called it Big Lake. The water was clear and you could see all the details of the forest floor, like you were looking at a carpet through a glass table. In winter it froze solid and we’d ice skate and try to play hockey and fail. It was a thing of beauty, I always said. A place trapped in time, like when they flooded whole towns to build their hydro-dams. Houses and streets and rusted-up cars, all held as they were before the water came. Last year, Rudy and me hung a rope on a strong laurel branch. Shame on us but we were too chicken to swing into the water, too stuck to run and fly and let go then get that sickening moment of falling and splash. What if there were rocks we hadn’t seen? Or sticking up branches that’d skewer us dead? I wasn’t the best swimmer in the world and everyone knew it so never expected me to go first, but even Rudy was afraid, though he joked it off. Jenny stood close by me, said she didn’t want to get her dress wet and, despite the heat, despite the cloying, sweating hotness of the world, all we did was dip a toe. Except Gloria. None of us were looking for her to be the bravest, the first. We took it as certain that she would go last, she was a girly girl, rich family type. But before Rudy could turn around and tease her for it, Gloria was sprinting. A blur of red dress and red hair as she ran for the rope, kicking up brown leaves, sending them skimming the water. I remembered her swinging high, letting go, shrieking and disappearing into the lake, then popping up like a mermaid, hair dark red and stuck to her head, laughing and calling us all sissies. From that day on Rudy said you can never be sure with Gloria. Momma thought the same when I told her the story. She’ll grow up to be a quicksand woman, Momma said. Careful of that one, John Royal, she’ll have you running circles you don’t even know about. Be the death of you, she will. Gloria always did what nobody expected. So that Friday when we were fishing for perch in Big Lake, it was Gloria, wandering, not fishing because she thought it was boring, who found it. Tangled in the roots of a ripped-up sycamore, half-sunk in the flooded wood. ‘Come look,’ she shouted, stick in her hand for prodding. ‘Get over here the lot of you.’ Rudy, on the other side of the lake, ran. Jenny trailed behind me. ‘But the fish, Johnny.’ ‘It’ll just take a minute. Hook’s in the water anyways.’ Gloria pointed with her stick. It was just out of arm’s reach, the thing in the roots. But it wasn’t a thing. The closer I got the clearer I saw. Rudy stopped running. He saw it too. Gloria’s face was frowning and pale. Rudy looked back at me with hard eyes that said, keep Jenny back. It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be, not here. It was grey skin and hair once blonde like Rudy’s. It was bloated but not unrecognisable. Gloria’s stick left impressions in the skin. It was a woman and she was dead. 2 (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) We didn’t tell anyone about the body, at least not at first. A mixture of fear and fascination silenced us. It fizzed inside us, this knowledge, this secret, so colossal and strange we thought it would crush us if we put one toe wrong, one word in the wrong ear. The four of us stood silent and staring for I don’t know how long. Just as dusk was settling and the starlings began their wheel, we decided to pull the woman out of the water and roots and lay her alongside a fallen tree trunk. We thought it kinder, to have something at her back, some comfort. The woman, in my head I named her Mora, for the sycamore tree, was the first I’d seen naked. Mora’s were the first breasts, the first swatch of hair between the legs, the first bullet hole. Gloria couldn’t look at her. Jenny couldn’t stop. Rudy swore in a whisper and leaned into me. ‘What do we do?’ But I didn’t have an answer. ‘Who do you think she is?’ Jenny said but nobody wanted to guess. ‘We should tell Sheriff Samuels,’ Gloria said and I heard a tremor in her voice. Usually so steady, her tone, rich like knocking on oak, shook at the sight of death. Rudy was quiet, a deep frown clouding his eyes, as if were he to concentrate hard enough, he would bring a storm rolling across the cornfields. ‘Not yet,’ I said. It was a terrible secret, I realised. One that could change everything, and I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run home, to Momma. She’d know how to handle it, what to say, she always knew best, but I was rooted. Momma wouldn’t be home this time on a Friday night and, besides, how could I explain it? Jenny stepped closer, looked at Mora as if she’d come upon a rat snake taking in the neighbour’s dog. The serpent’s jaw dislocating and reshaping itself so unnaturally. Something that small ingesting something far too big, you can’t help but watch, a jumble of curiosity, revulsion, an urge to help surpassed by a want to know if it would succeed in its swallowing. I’d never seen that expression on Jenny’s face before. Something happened to her that day. Changed her from the girl who would lazily kick her feet in the river, breathing in the sun and scent of evening primrose, to a girl who couldn’t sit still, as if she had electricity running through her, twitching her muscles, itching beneath her skin. ‘Why’s she naked?’ Jenny asked. ‘Maybe she was swimming,’ Rudy said. ‘Swimming and then got shot,’ I said. Maybe they didn’t see the bullet hole. Maybe they thought it was something else, something innocent, and this poor woman had simply drowned while taking relief from the sun. Maybe it was and I saw a gunshot where really there was a hole made by a branch after she was already dead. I bent down and lifted a lock of hair from Mora’s face. Everything about her was grey. Her hair, between my fingers, was wet and coarse, grainy with silt. It didn’t have the softness of living hair, it hung wrong, it looked wrong. She was deflated, absent of rushing blood and air. It was human as I’ve never seen human. ‘Johnny,’ my sister’s voice, a frantic beat. ‘Johnny, look.’ The dead woman’s chest moved. I yelped, stumbled backward, hit my elbow on a rock. Gloria gasped and Rudy swore and Jenny’s eyes widened. A spike of fear pressed against my stomach. Same place on my gut as the hole in hers. ‘She’s alive, she’s alive, oh God oh God, do something,’ Gloria said, tugging on Rudy’s arm, backing away. Mora’s chest rose then fell in a strange breath. Her eyes didn’t open. Her hands didn’t move. ‘We have to tell someone,’ Rudy almost shouted. ‘We have to get help.’ Her chest rose again but lower, not high beneath the rib cage. A bulge formed at the top of her abdomen, it shifted, squirmed. The breath was not a breath. I pressed my back against the fallen tree, scrambled up. ‘Jenny, get back,’ I said. But she’d bent over, put her face inches closer to the movement. A shape formed in Mora’s skin, defining itself against the weight of her flesh like an arm stretching out beneath a heavy blanket. My pulse echoed in my ears and chest, drowned out everything but the soft squelching sound of the body. Nobody moved. Gloria still clutched at Rudy’s arm and he at hers. Jenny still stared, bent slightly at the waist, her top lip hooked up in pleasured disgust. I backed up, moss and bark flakes sticking to the sweat on my t-shirt, resisting the urge to grab Jenny and run. The pink edging the inside of the hole in Mora’s stomach pushed and turned outward, a black something appeared. Wet and shining, it forced itself free, a thin sinuous tube. I felt sick, I wanted to hurl up my breakfast, my lunch, those few biscuits I’d eaten after class, I wanted to be empty. My head told me it was an eel or catfish, my eyes said demon, devil, alien. Jenny backed away as the creature wriggled free of the hole and flopped, writhing and slick, on Mora’s stomach. ‘Kill it! Kill it!’ Gloria screamed. ‘Quiet,’ I said, harder than I should have. She was so loud, so shrill, I feared her call would bring parents and police down on us and we’d have to explain all this. The eel spasmed and jerked and fell into the leaf litter inches from my feet. I jumped onto the log, Rudy and Gloria cried out, ran halfway to the Fort, Jenny shuffled backward but she was slow. The eel flicked itself, landed on her bare foot. She shrieked as if stung, the spell of the body broken, and kicked out. I lunged for her, pulled her close to me, wrapped my arms around her shoulders. The eel landed far from the water, then as if sensing its distance, increased its convulsion. We all looked to Rudy but he was up on a tree stump, squealing worse than Jenny. The eel flicked toward us and Jenny and Gloria screamed afresh. ‘Kill it!’ they yelled. Do something, Johnny boy, get your head together and goddamn do something. I grabbed a stick, hooked it beneath the eel’s body and flicked it in a long, squirming arch into Big Lake. A breath. A beat. A splash. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ Rudy said, finally climbing down from his perch. I looked at him, big brave Rudy Buchanan, shaking like a sissy with a spider on his hand. Rudy would take down a bully in a single punch but he was quaking in his shorts at a fish? I tried not to laugh. ‘It’s just an eel. What are you so afraid of?’ He glared at me. ‘It came out of a dead body.’ ‘Johnny, come on,’ Jenny said. ‘We should be getting home.’ We shouldn’t. We didn’t have a curfew and Momma wouldn’t be wringing her hands for us. But when I looked around at my friends, my sister, I saw them all shaken. In truth, I was shaken too but one of us had to keep it together or we’d all be screaming on tree stumps. I’d gotten rid of the eel but the body, the girl, she lay where we’d dragged her and all humour drained from my mind. It changed the day. Turned the blazing sun cold. Jenny’s face showed raw confusion at what we’d found, what it meant. I saw the same in Rudy’s eyes, in Gloria’s. Hooked lips and frowns. I usually had the answers but today, I was as lost as them. The four of us left the Fort in shuffling silence. We emerged from the trees and the sticky evening heat pressed against us. I suddenly missed the cool, sheltered air of the Roost but couldn’t face going back down there. Not now, maybe not ever. ‘We have to tell the sheriff,’ Gloria said. ‘They have to find out who she is and who did that to her.’ ‘Cops won’t do anything,’ Rudy said. ‘There’s all sorts going on in this town they don’t know about. Shit, if they did, Samuels would have a heart attack.’ Gloria scowled at him. ‘I think a murder is a little more important than your dad’s chop shop.’ Rudy sneered and mimicked her voice. Gloria punched him in the arm. ‘What will they do to her?’ Jenny asked, looking back toward the trees, toward the valley and our lake. ‘Take her away,’ Rudy said. ‘Put her in a morgue. Find her parents, I suppose.’ ‘I’m going to tell the sheriff,’ Gloria said. ‘We’ll get in trouble,’ I said, a knot forming in my chest. ‘We moved her.’ ‘Yeah, we will,’ Rudy said, his finger bouncing in the air. ‘He’s right. We moved her. They’ll think we did it.’ ‘Don’t be stupid.’ Gloria’s scowl deepened. ‘All the detective books and cop shows say you don’t touch the body, Gloria, and you definitely don’t move it,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should wait until Samuels finds her himself?’ Rudy pointed at me, his arm straight out. ‘I like Johnny’s plan.’ ‘It’s a stupid plan,’ Gloria said. ‘I don’t care what you say, I’m going to tell Samuels.’ Rudy grabbed the back of his neck with both hands, his elbows stuck out like sails. ‘Just wait, yeah? Just a day. Maybe do one of those anonymous tip-offs and leave us out of it.’ His voice turned small. ‘They’ll think I had something to do with it. They’ll lock me up, Gloria. I’m a Buchanan. I got bad blood, remember, and everyone in town knows it.’ Jenny put her arm through Rudy’s, held his hand and pushed her cheek against his shoulder. ‘You’re not bad,’ she said. ‘We’ll all tell Samuels the truth. You didn’t touch her and if they think otherwise, they’ll have to go through us to get to you. Right, guys?’ ‘Right,’ Gloria said and took Rudy’s other hand. I completed the circle, put my arms over Jenny and Gloria’s shoulders, pulled the four of us into a group hug. ‘We’re like a flock of birds, aren’t we?’ I said. ‘We stick together and we protect each other from eagles and eels, hey?’ I prodded Rudy’s stomach and he told me to shut up. ‘A flock. I like that.’ Jenny patted my back. ‘We’ve got a Roost after all.’ Rudy finally smiled. ‘You and your birds, Johnny,’ he said, just as quiet, then shook his head. ‘If only we were, huh? We could all fly the hell out of here.’ ‘We will, one day. All four of us,’ Gloria said, then checked her watch. ‘I’ve got to go. Daddy’s taking me to the fairground in Bowmont tonight. Mom is at one of her Clarkesville society dinners and thank God she didn’t make me go to that. I’ll win you each a teddy bear.’ Gloria broke the circle and Rudy went with her, to see her home like he always did. Then he turned, walked backward a few steps. ‘We’re a flock, yeah?’ he shouted, the wince, the curl, the confusion still on his face, though he tried to put a mask over it. He smiled, flapped his arms like wings. ‘Ca-caw, ca-caw, Johnny. See you guys tomorrow.’ They waded through Briggs’ wheatfield toward town, waist-high in gold, as if their torsos were floating free. We walked everywhere. Jenny and me didn’t have bikes. No money for scrap metal that does a job your legs can do just fine, Momma always said. Rudy was fixing up a broken, rusted-up Schwinn but getting nowhere, and Gloria had a pink Raleigh she refused to ride because we couldn’t ride with her. I let myself smile as I watched my friends. My flock. Jenny fidgeted by my side. The calm she’d had with Rudy and Gloria had gone with them. She glanced at me, then away, then down at her feet. I couldn’t move. Behind, the Fort and the body. Away to the left, my house, empty and sweltering. Right, Rudy, Gloria and the cops. Ahead, nothing but fields and sky. The sun burned rich orange and bled into the clouds. A swarm of starlings, black spots on gold, pulsed between power lines. ‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘There is still some chicken from yesterday’s dinner.’ ‘How can you be hungry after that?’ she asked but I shrugged. Jenny squinted at me, like she did when I said something stupid. Momma did it too. Where Momma might yell at me, Jenny just turned away, sighed through her teeth, and stalked across the field. The path home was well trodden, we made shortcuts of the fields, they were our highways and backways, free of grown-ups and rules. ‘Shouldn’t we go straight to the police?’ she asked. ‘Feels wrong to just leave her down there.’ ‘I know but we agreed. We’ll go tomorrow. I guess we just try to forget about it for tonight.’ We walked together, silent, until we came to Three Points, a triangle of land made by three crisscrossing irrigation streams. Momma said it’d been there since they split up the land between us, Briggs, and Morton down the track. She said that idiot Briggs couldn’t count right and ended up short on one side. Caused a rift between the families for years and the swatch of land remained unclaimed. It was twenty strides end-to-end and covered in grass green as a lime candy straight out the jar. No matter the weather, no matter the heat, Three Points stayed alive. It was a rule, one of those known somehow by everyone in town, that you could say or do anything on the Points. It didn’t belong to anyone so no one was watching, no one was listening. Jenny slowed and stopped in the middle of the island. ‘Do you think someone in Larson killed her?’ she asked. I’d thought about it while we were walking but pushed away the idea almost as quickly as it came. ‘I don’t want to think about what that would mean.’ ‘What about the Fort? Could the person who wrecked it have killed her?’ she said; her voice had an edge of fear to it, a tremor I recognised. Her eyes darted left, right, into the trees, over the fields. ‘Could … could they still be around?’ I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘No. Whoever did it is long gone. And even if they aren’t, you’ve got me and Momma and we won’t let anything happen to you.’ The tension in her eased, her shoulders dropped. ‘I know you won’t, but her? She’d probably offer me up to the killer for a bottle of bourbon.’ It needled at me when she spoke of Momma like that. I’d tried for years to be peacekeeper between them, but the barbs kept flying, the hate kept growing and resurfacing no matter what. Now my days were all about maintaining the uneasy calm. ‘Let’s go home,’ I said, straightened up and took Jenny’s hand. ‘Momma won’t be there anyway.’ Twenty minutes and two more fields brought us to the edge of our yard. We both stopped and Jenny’s grip on my hand tightened, turned my knuckles white and sore. Faded red truck parked skewed against the side of the house with two deep tyre scars in the dirt. Fresh dent in the door. The frayed rope on the oak branch swayed but not by the breeze. Momma always flicked the rope with her finger when she got home. Her mindless habit. The sound of footsteps throbbed from inside the house. One-two, one-two, a stumble, a crash, the picture frame in the hall, dropped and broken twice this month already. A low moan, something monstrous in it, thick and slurred. A clatter of metal on enamel, the pan that cooked yesterday’s chicken, pushed into the kitchen sink. Jenny sighed. ‘Looks like you were wrong, Johnny.’ 3 (#u295ebc36-b17e-5497-a43a-22cf1b066097) There weren’t many reasons Momma would leave Gum’s before midnight on a Friday. It likely wasn’t to give us a new pa this time, as I couldn’t hear anyone else in the house. A Pigeon Pa, Jenny called them. They fly in, shit all over the place then fly out again, none the wiser. Momma alone in the house meant Ben Gum, owner of Gum’s and one of our years-ago Pigeon Pas, had cut her off. When that thought hit us both, Jenny’s grip on my hand turned iron. ‘I don’t want to go in there,’ she said. ‘It won’t be so bad. She’s just drunk. You know what she’s like when she’s drunk. You go straight upstairs and I’ll bring you dinner.’ Jenny kicked at the dirt. ‘Like that’ll help.’ I tried to stifle my sigh. ‘Just try not to sass her.’ We could turn around, run back to the Fort or go to the west field and sleep between the corn while Momma slept off hers. That would be better than seeing the anger and snarl on Jenny’s face a moment longer. But we stood by that rope swing too long. The crashing inside stopped for a sickening moment. Then the slam of the back door flung wide, the screen’s rusted spring whining. Then the slapping steps of her shoes on the dirt. Then the voice. ‘There you are, my babies,’ Momma said, slurred and breathy. ‘Look at you both, skin and bone. You hungry, my babies?’ Momma’s hair, thin curls turned white-blonde instead of gold like Jenny’s, flared wild on her head, like a storm brewed on her skull. And it did. On it. In it. She was a tornado, my momma. ‘Hi, Momma,’ I said and nudged at Jenny to say hello but she wouldn’t. ‘Come inside now.’ Momma swayed on her spindle heels and spindle legs wrapped up in tight blue jeans, her red camisole cut a half-inch too low. She caught herself on the side of the house. ‘I’ll fix you both a plate. Get in, get in.’ She pounded her fist on the whitewashed boards with every word, then hurled up her arm, half sick of us for being there, half gesturing which way to go. I felt my sister’s heartbeat thrumming through her hand. I took a step toward the house, tried to pull Jenny with me but she wouldn’t move. Her face set in a dark frown. A prickle went up my back, I knew what was coming. ‘Please, Jenny,’ I whispered but she shook her head. ‘Not when she’s like this,’ she said. Momma saw Jenny’s expression and matched it. All her slur and swagger disappeared and she turned pin-sharp. Momma stood tall and straight, her back like rebar, and set toward us. Careful steps turned ragged fast. Red whiskey heat rose in her cheeks and filled up her throat, turned the sweet words sour. ‘Look at you,’ she sneered down at Jenny. ‘That dress. Showing off those legs. You’re so dirty. Get in this fuhking house. I made you dinner and you’ll damn well eat it.’ Then she was in front of us, her hand on Jenny’s arm, pulling her toward the porch. Her eyes, blue and bloodshot, flared up bright despite the dark, red lips pulled back, lipstick on her teeth, smeared on her chin. ‘Let me go!’ Jenny tried to pry Momma’s fingers but her grip was iron. ‘I am your mother and you will mind me.’ Jenny’s shoes cut furrows in the dirt, her nails dug into Momma’s wrist. ‘I wish you weren’t. I hate you! Let me go!’ Momma recoiled like those words were a slap across the cheek. I put myself between them, one hand on Momma’s hand, the other on Jenny’s, tried to prise them apart. ‘She didn’t mean it, did you, Jenny?’ I said, keeping my voice level, calm, anything not to throw gas on the fire. ‘I meant it,’ my sister snarled. ‘I wish you weren’t my mother.’ The sharp sobriety in Momma crumbled and her slur returned. ‘You ungrateful little witch.’ She yanked on Jenny’s arm again, harder, fiercer, I thought it might pop out the socket. I was invisible to them. They sniped through me, around me, trading hurled stones and scratches one for one. Momma’s elbow dug into my side, pushed me, and suddenly her and Jenny were away. Momma dragged her around the house. Jenny cried out, scratching, swearing and saying the most awful things about our mother, calling her ugly, fat, a bitch, and all sorts else. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. The noise, the hate, it all hurt too much to hear. Then I followed them around the house, begging them to stop but they wouldn’t. It felt like they never would. At the step up to the back door, Momma finally let go and Jenny fell, landed hard on a rock, but Momma didn’t see. ‘You stupid, stupid girl,’ she hissed and went to grab her but Jenny scrambled away and I was between them again. Behind me, Jenny whimpered, clutched her knee. ‘Momma, please.’ I took her by the shoulders and held her wavering gaze. Same as Jenny, the best way to calm them both. ‘Jenny’s just tired, she doesn’t know what she’s saying. She doesn’t mean it.’ Momma’s eyes, red-rimmed with drink, welled with tears. ‘She breaks my heart, that girl, just breaks my heart.’ ‘I know. Please go inside, Momma. I’m so hungry and I’d just love some of that chicken. I’ll talk to her, okay? She’s sorry, she’s really sorry and so am I. Please?’ Keep it calm, John Royal, keep the eye contact, keep the tone light, keep the platitudes coming. Momma wasn’t Momma when she was drunk. She was a beast of ups and downs and harsh words she didn’t really mean. At least, I hoped she didn’t. I prayed neither of them did, else what hope was there for us? ‘She needs to learn respect,’ Momma said, voice like a dry kettle on the heat. ‘She needs her momma’s teaching, she can’t be dressed so loose.’ ‘I know, Momma. I know.’ Momma put her hand, soft and warm and trembling, on my cheek. ‘You’re such a good boy, John. My perfect boy.’ Her hand fell away and her gaze drifted. ‘You look hungry. I’ll fix you a plate.’ Then she went inside and let the screen door bang. The only sound left in the world was Jenny’s anger, her sharp breaths and tiny scratches of her nails in the soil. I went to her, knelt down beside. ‘Jenny,’ I said, soft as cotton, put my hand on hers. ‘Are you all right? Let’s go inside now.’ Tears mixed up with dust, streaked down her face. Her hair, gold blonde and perfect, was rucked up and twisted. She shook. Hands on her knee, a trickle of blood down her shin. ‘We have to,’ I murmured, distracted, eyes on the blood. The image of the girl, the body we found, hit the back of my eyes. Jenny wiped her face hard with the heel of her hand. A bruise blossomed on her arm. ‘No. I won’t go in there.’ And she broke, wept hot tears into her hands. I wrapped my arms around my sister and sat until her sobs eased and the last of the evening light faded to night. I teased my fingers through her hair, tamed it down best I could without hurting her. A speck of rage grew in me that Momma had let this happen and Jenny had let this happen and a few stupid words had blown up into a fight that would linger for days. I wished I could say to Jenny, it wasn’t all Momma, was it? You said some nasty things too. You hurt her feelings too. You made her cry too. Why can’t you both just get along? Why do I have to be stuck in the middle all the time? But I clenched my jaw, swallowed down the blame, and tried to soothe my sister. ‘It’ll be worse if you don’t go in,’ I said. Then, as if it made it all right, ‘You know she’s only like this when she’s drunk.’ I met Jenny’s eyes, raw and blazing. ‘I meant every word.’ She slapped away my hand and scrambled to her feet. ‘Please, Jenny, just come inside,’ I said but she wouldn’t hear it. ‘You go, Johnny, you go be with her, she’s got your stupid chicken.’ Before I could say I’d share, she ran. Just turned and ran. ‘Jenny!’ But she was away, into the night, into the fields. I whipped around to the house and to those three steps up to where my mother waited, wrapped in her own hurt. I heard her move inside, the clinking of glass as she poured another drink. Those sounds mixed with the rustle and crackle of Jenny’s footsteps running through dry grass. I was stuck in the back yard, between Momma and sister. I didn’t stand a chance of catching up with Jenny but I knew where she would go. She was like those starlings, darting and weaving, the best runner in our class. Mr Escott, our phys-ed teacher, said it was a good job I could read and work a corn huller because I wasn’t much good for anything else. The rest of the class had laughed. I’d stared at my skinny arms and legs, my too small gym shorts, and watched the others cross the finish line. ‘John?’ Momma said, gently from the back door. ‘Come on inside, baby.’ She smiled, that full smile that lit up her face and eyes, rosy and glowing with whiskey. The snarl and sneer was gone, like it had never been. A flipped switch and there was my momma again, reaching for me. ‘Dinner is on the table.’ This wasn’t the woman who’d said those things to Jenny and dragged her across the yard. It just wore her face, spoke in her voice. It was the drink. It was the sickness. Not my momma, not really. I went inside and sat at the kitchen table. Jenny would be fine. I’d never been able to truly calm her after a fuss like that, I’d never be able to get her to come home if she didn’t want to. Besides, if she was still riled up the fight would start fresh soon as she walked in the back door. It was best for them and me to wait it out, let the anger subside and then find her, cradle her, let her sob it all out onto me instead of watch her beat it out of herself. I knew where she’d go, I’d find her. Momma sat down beside me at the kitchen table, smoking a Lucky Strike. She reached to me, brushed my hair back, then flicked out her ash into a chipped cup. ‘How was your day, baby?’ ‘Fine.’ It wasn’t fine. We found a dead body. But I wasn’t ready to say that. It was still too mixed up in my head. Momma went quiet as I ate. Her eyes flickered every now and then, like she was thinking of something, wanted to say it, but chickened out. She bit on her lower lip. Jenny did that when she was worried. ‘Is your sister all right?’ ‘I don’t know. I guess,’ I said. ‘She will be.’ Momma stubbed out the Strike and rubbed her forehead, tucked her hair back, laid her hand over her neck, fidgeted like she had ants crawling all over her skin. ‘That girl makes me so mad sometimes, the way she talks to me. If I’d have spoken to my mother like that, ooh she would have kicked me out of her house so fast it’d make your head spin. You heard what that girl said, didn’t you?’ She shook her head, finally her eyes went to mine, eyelids drowsy with drink. ‘You’d never talk to me like that, would you, baby? You’re my prince. What a good boy you are.’ She cupped my cheek with her hand. Soft skin. Sweet smell of tobacco and old perfume on her wrist. ‘My temper sometimes, I don’t know,’ she said, waving her arm, dismissing it as nothing. Then she snapped back to me. ‘Oh! I almost forgot.’ Momma went to the family room, to the cabinet behind the couch. She pulled out a package wrapped in brown paper. A rectangle, about two inches thick, tied up with string. ‘I got this for you,’ she said, skipping back over to me and setting it down on the table. She moved my still full plate and pushed the package closer. ‘I saw it in the thrift store on Lexington a month ago and I thought, my John will just love that, so I had them wrap it up and then I went and forgot all about it, can you believe it?’ A fire lit in my chest. A present. For me? It wasn’t Christmas and my birthday was way back in March and we didn’t have the money for throw-away spending. ‘What is it?’ I said. I traced the edges with two fingers, felt a ridge on the right side and a fizz of electric went through me. A book. Momma made a dopey face. ‘Open it and see, dummy.’ I untied the string and ripped the paper away in one tear. My eyes went wide and my mouth dropped open and I couldn’t quite believe it. The cover, a pale beige cloth, said, Birds of North America, then smaller at the top, A Guide to Field Identification. Below, three vivid, multi-coloured birds perched on a bright green branch. ‘Do you like it?’ Momma said, her hands clasped below her chin. ‘You used to love watching the crows steal the corn and you’re always out gawking at those starlings.’ ‘I love it,’ I said. I flicked through. Pages and pages of exact, perfect drawings and information on habitat and nesting and migration. I couldn’t stop staring. Some birds I recognised immediately. Wrens. Tanagers. But there were so many more. So much more to learn. I wanted to devour it then and there and go searching for them in the fields and trees. ‘Are you sure, baby?’ I looked up at Momma, her eyes on me like she was nervous. Scared she’d got me wrong, that I’d hate it, hate her, but I never could. I went to her and threw my arms around her neck. ‘Thank you, Momma. I love it. I love you. It’s the best thing.’ She hugged me back, hard, and held on for a few seconds before releasing me. She grabbed my face in both hands and kissed me on the forehead. ‘I love you too, my little prince.’ Then she let me go, said something about her programmes, and disappeared into the family room. A moment later I heard the television blare out The Partridge Family. I cleared my plate while pawing through my book. Stopped when I got to the cardinal. A striking red bird, Jenny’s favourite. We’d seen one, a year or two ago, when we’d gone camping with the Bible Study class down at Fabius Lake. A sharp prick of guilt hit my chest and I closed the book and took it upstairs, hid it under my side of the bed. I didn’t want to tell Jenny about it. She’d be upset that Momma hadn’t got her anything and it would spiral into another fight. As I came back downstairs, I listened for Momma’s movements but just heard David Cassidy’s warbling, then I snuck outside. I found Jenny down at the Roost, staring into the tiny ripples on Big Lake. With her golden hair and in her pale yellow sundress, she shone in the dark. ‘I knew you’d come after me. Eventually,’ she said, but she didn’t seem sad or angry, just glad I was there. Her voice was calm as the lake, quiet as the water. She stared, trancelike, as if red-eyed on Mary Jane. Blood streaked down her shin so I ripped a swatch out of my t-shirt and dipped it in the cold water. ‘Here,’ I said, ‘let me clean that.’ The blood diluted and ran down to her foot, soaking pink into her bobby sock. Jenny didn’t look at me or seem to notice what I was doing, her eyes fixed on a point across the lake. ‘It’s so quiet here,’ she murmured. Only chirping crickets and the soft lapping of water. No shouting or screaming or hurt feelings. No whiskey slur in Momma’s voice. Just us and our breathing and the darkness. It was like the feeling you get when you duck underwater, everything muffled and thick. The water holds every part of you, keeping you buoyed and enclosed, safe, for a time. You know the world is still out there but it can’t touch you except when you come up for air. ‘Do you think she’s lonely?’ Jenny said and I wondered if she meant Momma. Then I saw where she was looking. Something shifted in that moment. Jenny turned to me, our eyes met. The moon and starlight broke through the canopy enough to highlight the water, define the shapes of the trees, and her, pale against the black. Jenny took my hand and we went to Mora. ‘It’s so strange. She looks like she’s sleeping,’ I said, and felt something squirm inside me. You shouldn’t be here, Johnny boy. It’s a goddamn dead body and you’re, what, visiting with it? My dinner, chicken and mashed potatoes and carrots, churned and swirled in my stomach. ‘We should go home,’ I said. Jenny knelt beside Mora and pulled me down. ‘We can’t leave her here alone. Look at her, she’s beautiful.’ She picked a scrap of dead leaf from Mora’s forehead and flicked it aside. I don’t know how long we knelt there, staring into those dead eyes. I’d never seen a smile like that on Jenny’s face before and it scared me. That change, that jitter in her bones that Mora sparked had fanned to a dark flame and I didn’t know what it meant. I checked around us, suddenly aware of what this picture might look like to anyone watching. And a creeping cold in my bones that whoever did this to her, this poor girl, could still be around. But it was empty, silent, I saw everything through moonlight, all silver and black and not quite real. This wasn’t quite real. How could it be? ‘Death is special, isn’t it, Johnny?’ Jenny said. ‘It’s like the way the Pastor Jacobs talks about God. Death is a kind of god. It’s terrible and powerful but if you treat it right and have faith, it’s love. Behind the fear, death is love, isn’t it, Johnny?’ I swallowed burning bile. Jenny lay down beside Mora and I had no choice but to lie down too. I couldn’t leave my sister here, alone, with a killer on the loose, and she wouldn’t go home yet. So I stayed, despite the nausea, despite the strange, sour smell, despite the gnawing pain in my head. But Jenny seems calm, John. She seems happy. And that’s good enough for now. Jenny fell asleep quicker than she had in weeks but I couldn’t. I lay on the ground, stones and twigs poking into my back, replaying every word of the argument until the movie reel reached the gift Momma gave me. The bird book. Light beige cloth. A dozen shades of blue, red, green, every colour filled my head, blotted out the pale white body beside my sister. I fell asleep in those colours, to the sound of cooing birds and gently ruffling feathers. Jenny and I woke to warm sunlight and a fuzzy voice on a radio. I opened my eyes, squinting. We didn’t have a radio at the Fort. Could have been a dream or some kind of birdsong, I didn’t know. Then it came again. Then a close, clear, hundred-per-cent real voice said something back, bzzt ten-four. My eyes adjusted to the sun and my insides turned to snow. Jenny woke too and immediately tensed and clutched my arm. Standing over us was Sheriff Samuels and a dozen of his deputies. The way they looked at us. Their eyes wide, their mouths set in grim frowns. One was chucking up his breakfast far off and I hoped it wasn’t in Big Lake because it would make swimming gross. Samuels made Jenny and me get up. Made us stand there and wouldn’t talk to us. Would barely glance our way. Most of the deputies looked away. A few of Larson’s lookie-loos up at the top of the valley were fixated. In front of the police tape, far upstream, Rudy and Gloria stood with a skinny cop taking notes. They weren’t looking at us. Maybe didn’t see what the cops saw. Maybe saw everything. Jenny and me got one last look at Mora before they laid a tarp on her. That’s when the rumours began, starting almost before they took us down to the station. Murmurings of ‘freaks’ and ‘perv kids’ floated through the valley. The radios crackled and came alive, descriptions of the scene were repeated, again and again. Responses came: you shitting me, Miller? Say what? There were kids with the body? Jesus Christ, the missus’ll never believe that. And so it went. Through the fuzzy connection, the news of what the sheriff’s men found by the lake spread to all of Larson. 4 (#ulink_215055ba-b750-5dcf-9c69-0c4eba0c4ecc) They put Jenny and me in the back of Deputy Miller’s patrol car. An old Plymouth with rust blooming at every join and a cage between us and the front seats. Three bolts were missing from the left side and I reckoned I could kick out the rest, get into the front, get us free and clear if I needed to. The radio crackled. A shotgun stood upright, locked to the dash. Ripped seats spewed out dusty yellow foam. A bare spring pressed into my back. Make sure you got a plan, John Royal, my momma once told me, if you’re ever snatched by the pigs. Make sure you’ve got your story right in your head and, if you don’t have a story, make sure you tell your lie before the other guy tells his. I held Jenny’s hand. We had no need for a lie but adults sometimes see a different truth in what kids tell them. It was barely past eight but the sun was spinning up its wheels, getting ready for another record high. Miller had left the windows open front and back but there wasn’t a breeze. The air inside the car was thicker than outside, full of dust and old cigarette smoke, so dense the fresh air couldn’t get in. Criminals aren’t fit to breathe clean. Jenny squeezed my hand. ‘I’m scared.’ ‘We haven’t done anything wrong.’ I turned to her, smiled. ‘They just want to ask us some questions because we found her. That’s all.’ The heat rose with the sun, ticked up a degree or two every minute, multiplied by ten for sitting in a metal box. The sweat popped from my skin. My shirt, my legs below my shorts, the backs of my arms, stuck to the seat. We’d been in the car half an hour. Another half and we’d be fork-tender. They’d be able to pull us apart with a spoon. I hung my head out the window, breathed out the dust and in the scent of the elders. Thought about all the chores I had to do on the farm. Weed the west field, tend the corn, check the fences near Morton’s boundary, and a dozen others. In the trees, a wren or maybe a warbler sang, undisturbed by the scene on the ground. Birds don’t care. We’re big, slow lumps to them, always looking up while they’re looking down. ‘John,’ Jenny tugged on my shirt, pulled me back inside the oven and nodded out of her window. Emerging from the track down to the Roost, we saw them. The skinny deputy with Rudy and Gloria. The cop had hold of Rudy, tight by the arm, like he was chief suspect and they’d caught their man. Gloria walked freely alongside. Rudy had a black scowl on his face, red-eyed and resigned to the treatment. He’s a Buchanan, I imagined the sheriffs saying, course he’s got something to do with this mess. ‘Hey,’ I shouted, climbing over Jenny to get to the window. ‘Hey, you guys. What’s going on?’ Gloria jogged over, got halfway before the deputy barked at her but she kept running. ‘They want to take our statements. That’s all.’ She came right up to the window as the skinny deputy put Rudy into another car. He called her again but she paid no attention. ‘I thought we were going to wait,’ I whispered, ‘we were going to tell them together.’ Gloria looked down, wincing apologetic. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I got home, changed and went out with Daddy but Mandy had my laundry. She asked why my dress was so muddy and why it smelt so strange. She kept asking and asking and it just all came out.’ ‘It’s okay,’ Jenny said and reached out, took Gloria’s hand. Gloria took the comfort for a moment then frowned. ‘They’ve made a real mess down there.’ ‘Miss Wakefield,’ the skinny cop shouted from the other car. ‘See you at the station,’ Gloria said, then ran over to the skinny cop who opened the car door for her. She got in the back seat with Rudy. Rudy waved, held up his hands and shouted, ‘They didn’t cuff me this time!’ The skinny cop banged on the roof to shut him up, then got in, cranked up the engine. The tyres chewed the ground as they tried to get a grip, chunks of dirt flew up behind. A flock of birds exploded from the nearest tree. Skinny cop punched the gas and the car popped out of its dustbowl, skidded over the grass. He swerved, wild to the left then the right before getting control, then snailed the car onto Briggs’ farm track. They disappeared into a dust cloud and left Jenny and me staring after. It was another half hour of swelter before Samuels and Miller trudged up the valley. Samuels with his light blue shirt turned dark from sweat, red-faced like a cartoon pig, said something to his deputy. Took out a handkerchief, wiped his forehead, his cheeks, under his chin, back of his neck, then started again from the top. Miller, loose roll-your-own hanging out his mouth, dropping flakes of tobacco and ash, hitched up his belt and spoke around the joe, puffing out smoke and losing more strands. Samuels’ round little eyes met mine. I felt headsick from the smell of the car. Headsick from the smell of death and dirt on my skin. Headsick from the mutterings of ‘freak’ and ‘perv’. From the grim, disgusted looks. And from Jenny. From that strange, serene expression she wore last night when she lay down beside the body. Gloria and Rudy would be at the station by now. Answering questions. The skinny cop would be telling everyone what they found. The rumours of weird kids sleeping next to a body would spread through Larson like locusts through corn. Come on, sheriff, waddle that gut over here and take us to the station, get this over with. But Samuels kept staring. Kept wiping. Samuels nodded along to something Miller said, chins appearing and disappearing with every bob of his head. Rolls of flesh. A shiny, pink ocean of it, wave after wave, nod after nod. ‘What’s taking so long?’ Jenny threw herself against the back seat and pulled her knees up, tucked into her chest. The red scratch livid on her shin. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But they’re going to ask us a lot of questions.’ ‘So? We didn’t do anything wrong.’ I shifted on the leather seat, arms and legs sticking. ‘They won’t see it that way.’ ‘They’re idiots.’ ‘They are. But we need to agree what to tell them.’ ‘What’s to tell?’ Jenny’s arms tightened around her knees. She did that when she was embarrassed, held herself close like she would split apart if confronted. Momma used to do it too, before Pa left, before the Old Milwaukees and the whiskey, but Momma didn’t get embarrassed any more. No sense in shame, John Royal, she said, shame comes from other people and who gives two sweet fucks about other people? Jenny elbowed my side. ‘Johnny?’ ‘Sorry.’ A few more deputies appeared at the top of the valley, crowding behind Samuels. One, his uniform soaked through with sweat, held a handkerchief over his mouth like he was going to hurl. Samuels turned to him, patted him on the shoulder, and the cop turned and retched into the dry grass. Jenny nudged me again. ‘What do we tell them?’ ‘We tell them the truth but we don’t say anything about you and Momma arguing. That’s family business. We say we were worried about foxes or dogs getting to the poor woman before the police could come so we went down there to keep watch. We fell asleep. That’s it.’ ‘That’s not the truth, Johnny.’ Outside, Samuels’ voice boomed. ‘Wrap it up, boys.’ He slapped Miller on the back and lumbered toward us. ‘It’s close enough,’ I whispered. ‘You remember it?’ Jenny nodded, arms tightened up around her shoulders. Samuels and Miller both got in the car, the axles groaning under their new weight. The sheriff inched the Plymouth out of the field. As soon as we got onto the track, he put his foot down. Fresh air flooded the car, prickled my skin, blew away the stink of cigarettes and leather. It would take about twenty minutes to get to the station. Jenny held my hand as I hung my head out the window. The wind and sun pulled at my eyes, stung tears from them. I let them blur, enjoyed the haze. The world had become too real. Too stark and bright white, all sharp edges and hard stares, and I didn’t know what would be waiting when we arrived at the station. For a few more minutes, at least, it was just a car ride. I heard a rumble of a big engine on the road behind and turned against the wind, hair flicking in my eyes. I blinked the tears away but the haze didn’t lift. The heat transformed the asphalt to water, shimmering, wavering like a mirage, made the car almost invisible. The car, a light blue or grey, kept its distance, too far away to see its details, but close enough to hear the engine, feel the thunder of it in my chest. I could tell a car’s badge from a glance but nothing much else. I knew it was a Ford but didn’t recognise it from around town or school pick up. This was a back road, a shortcut into Larson locals used. Outsiders didn’t know it. My chest vibrated with the roar of the engine, like I stood too close to a booming speaker. The shimmer grew. The grey paint job, so pale, like no colour I’d seen, didn’t reflect the light, seemed to absorb it. Seemed to pull the colour out of the world, suck it up and devour it. ‘Johnny?’ Jenny’s voice. The grey car swerved, took a right and disappeared. ‘John! My hand.’ I turned to my sister. I’d been clutching her fingers, my knuckles white. 5 (#ulink_c0f556f7-110a-5ab9-aacc-e4ac4a1fb9b5) Samuels parked at the back of the station and led us through the cops’ entrance. Thoughts of the grey car faded and all but disappeared with one step through the door. Just someone lost on a back road, nothing strange, the heat playing tricks. Get your head on straight, John, this is about Mora. A blast of frigid AC hit me, hardened my skin, turned my outsides into a shell. Too hot to too cold, one hell to the other. Samuels took us through a mess of desks used by the deputies and junior officers. One wall was glass and looked out onto a corridor spotted with doors. Some marked IR1, IR 2, some unmarked. Interrogation rooms. Observation rooms. Cuffs. Locks. Would there be a spy mirror like in the movies? Once they get you in, you don’t get out. Samuels walked us into reception. Brown carpets dotted with orange triangles made my stomach churn. The receptionist, Mrs Drake, watched us. Everyone knew Mrs Drake. The witch woman, one in every town. Old, thin, with a loose grey bun on top of her head, arcs of escaped hair framing her face like claws. A mole on her jawline sprouted white whiskers. Her eyebrows arched. She touched a crucifix around her neck. The deputies at the Roost had radioed all about what they found the Royal kids doing. Freaks. Was she looking for signs? Horns erupting out our foreheads? Forked tongues? Would everyone in Larson look at me and Jenny like that from now on? The churn in my gut turned to a tide, swelling and burning up my throat. I imagined it fizzing through my flesh, turning me to mush on the inside. What was Samuels going to say? Would he take Jenny away into one of those rooms? She’d be scared. My sister would be scared and I wouldn’t be able to help her. ‘Sit,’ Samuels grunted, pointed to a row of chairs by the front wall. I hadn’t noticed them, nor who was sat on the far end, head down, under the leaves of an overgrown pot palm. ‘Rudy!’ Jenny dashed over. He looked up as Jenny sat next to him. ‘What took you guys so long?’ I nodded at Samuels who leant against the reception desk. ‘He drive as slow as he runs?’ Rudy asked. ‘You betcha,’ I said, took a chair beside my sister. ‘Where’s Gloria?’ Rudy slouched so far in the chair he was almost lying down. ‘She’s in there.’ He pointed to a glass-walled office. Through the blinds, I could just make out Gloria and, beside her, filling the room, her father. Her knees bounced, her head bowed and staring, look of shame on her face like she’d disappointed her father, rather than angered him. Mr Wakefield was nice, a lawyer who worked all the time but he took Gloria on trips, bought her pretty dresses, played Frisbee and tennis in their back garden, knew how to laugh. Not like her mother. Gloria might as well not have a mother for all the attention she paid her. She’s more like a distant aunt, Gloria said once. ‘What’s going on? Have they spoken to you yet?’ Jenny asked. I kept my eyes on Gloria, hoping she’d look this way. See us. Know she wasn’t alone. ‘Nah,’ Rudy said. ‘Been waiting for Poppin’ Fresh over there to get back.’ Samuels glanced over like he heard us, said something to the receptionist, still clutching her necklace, but didn’t take his eyes off us. ‘What are they talking about?’ Jenny whispered. ‘He’s telling the Drake to get your mom down here.’ ‘What about you?’ I asked. Rudy gave a tight smile. ‘My old man is on his way. The Drake said he sounded worried on the phone and would rush right down but you know that’s crap. Hell, I’m just enjoying my last few moments of living before he gets here.’ I shuddered at the thought of seeing Rudy’s dad. The notorious Bung-Eye Buchanan. I crossed my fingers Jenny and me would be gone before he arrived. I glanced at Gloria but could see only Mr Wakefield. Grim look on him. Arms folded over his chest. Black moustache set in a straight line. White shirt, beige suit-jacket on the chair behind him. Called out of work, even this early on a Saturday. No wonder Gloria looked so upset. Samuels, still at the reception desk, took out a handkerchief, swept it over his face and the back of his neck. It came away limp. I could see why people called him a joke. Bad genes made him too pale for a place like this. Waxy white skin and blotchy red cheeks, he couldn’t run a hundred yards without wheezing. He was mashed potatoes. He was rice pudding. All starch and sugar stuffed into a straining blue uniform. ‘Stay put,’ the sheriff said as he strolled past, small black eyes tagging us, one by one. As he opened the door to the office, Mr Wakefield surged upward and his voice, like a warning siren, too loud, shrill edge to it, filled the room. ‘About goddamn time, Len.’ Mr Wakefield’s eyes locked on us, narrowed at Rudy. He paused, just a second, then, as calm as he was angry a moment before, said, ‘I’m sure you have good reason to call me in here on a Saturday. How can my Gloria help?’ Samuels closed the door and the sounds muffled. Gloria sat rigid the whole time and me, Jenny and Rudy had no idea what to say to each other. My attention flitted from Gloria, her now smiling father, to the Drake, dialling, tutting, then resetting the telephone. She tried a few more numbers. Momma was known to go to Gum’s and spend the night there when she was too sauced to drive. The Drake asked for our home number and I called it out to her. I gripped my hands together in my lap, prayed there’d be no answer, prayed Momma wouldn’t be woken by the phone and storm down here, still sodden, and take it out on Jenny the moment we were alone. After the third try, the Drake crowed, ‘Where’s your mother? She int home or drinkin’.’ She was home, I knew, just sleeping it off. Wake the dead more likely than waking Momma on a Saturday morning. ‘Why don’t you try the church?’ Jenny said. ‘Don’t the Gardening Society meet on a Saturday morning?’ I flinched at the cruelty in Jenny’s voice. Momma didn’t set foot in church, and the Gardening Society? Mrs Ponderosa and Momma hated each other, old classmates, beauty queen rivals. A stolen boyfriend here and there and the whole town knew it. Those women say Patty Royal is about as likely to rise early on a Saturday to talk God and rose bushes as a snake growing legs. The Drake stared for a moment then picked up the receiver and dialled. Jenny smirked. Rudy nudged her. They sniggered. ‘Stop it,’ I said and Jenny looked stung. I almost told Mrs Drake to ignore her, Momma would be sleeping is all and wouldn’t hear the ringing, but the call connected before I could. ‘Yes, hello, pastor,’ she said, and turned away, cradled the phone, spoke quietly so we couldn’t hear. A few minutes later, the Drake put the phone down and the reception went quiet. No more dialling. No more clipped, disdainful remarks. Just muffled voices from the office. Samuels and Wakefield. Not a peep from Gloria. I rested my head on the wall. Watched the clock. Jenny and Rudy chatted about something, school maybe or plans for after. Getting out of Larson, how, when, where to? Pretty much all Rudy and Jenny talked about when they were together. I’d heard it all before. LA. Movie star. A million bucks and a beach house. Won’t it be great, Johnny, you can all come on vacation and we’ll go swimming in the ocean. Fat chance, bucko, I thought, I’ve got all the swimming I need here in Big Lake and Barks reservoir, who wants the stinking, salty ocean when you’ve got good, rich Mississippi run-off? Good enough for my fields, good enough for me. Can’t grow corn in salt, after all. The office door opened. The muffle cleared. ‘Thanks for coming down,’ Samuels said, one hand on the door, one held out to Gloria’s father. Mr Wakefield shook it. ‘Anytime, Len, anytime. Glad to hear nothing more will come of this. Gloria is a good girl, despite her choice of friends.’ Gloria scowled at her father but he didn’t notice. I smiled at her tiny defiance, that’s our Gloria. Then my smile faded. What had she told them? Was she in trouble? Was it our turn now? Mr Wakefield’s eyes squinted again, moustache curled on one side. ‘Up for re-election this year, right, Len?’ He spoke slowly, as if each word was heavy and full like a water balloon Samuels had to catch. ‘I am.’ Mr Wakefield nodded, released the sheriff’s hand and took his jacket from the back of the chair. The three of them stepped out of the office. Gloria kept her head down, her gaze away from us, only occasionally looking up to her father. My teeth clenched. I felt Jenny shift through the chair. ‘Good luck with it, Len, you know you’ve got my vote,’ Mr Wakefield said. ‘Let’s hope that poor girl and this whole sorry affair is put to bed as soon as possible. We can’t have anything derailing your campaign. An unsolved murder is a bitter pill for voters to swallow.’ ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Mr Wakefield,’ Samuels said, smiling tightly. ‘This one’s a nasty case for sure, but cut and dry all the same. It’ll be easy to wrap up.’ Samuels clapped Mr Wakefield on the shoulder. Mr Wakefield folded his jacket over his arm, kept that smile and that squint. ‘That’s good, Len. Real good.’ I looked at Jenny. Something sparked in me. Did they know who did it? Who killed Mora? Easy to wrap up. Maybe they already had suspects. Maybe they already had a guy in custody, behind one of those closed doors, and we were just witnesses. They just needed us to fill in some blanks so they could nail the bastard against the wall. I leaned in to Jenny, these new thoughts burning through me. ‘Everything is going to be okay.’ She tried to smile but I knew she didn’t believe me. Mr Wakefield put his hand on his daughter’s back. ‘Time to go, honey.’ Gloria finally looked at us, opened her mouth to speak, but her father made a soft zzt sound and guided her toward the door. Before they got halfway, the door opened and Pastor Jacobs strode in, straight to reception. ‘Morning, Mrs Drake. How is your Walt doing? I hear he’s finally got that ’39 Lincoln up and running?’ The pastor’s thick voice, heavy and rich enough for a church, filled the reception area. ‘Up, running, and bleeding us dry,’ she said. The pastor laughed, said something I didn’t catch but it must have been sweet as the Drake’s cheeks lit up red. ‘You called about John and Jenny Royal,’ he said. He saw us a second later, said his thanks to the Drake and walked over. He passed by Mr Wakefield, the man stuck in his spot since the pastor walked in. Their eyes met. Held. Then broke apart. ‘Well,’ Mr Wakefield said, then turned back to Samuels, ignored the pastor. ‘If there’s nothing else, Len. We’ll be going.’ Samuels shook his head. ‘I’ll be in touch if there’s any follow-up.’ Mr Wakefield left, Gloria trailed behind. No more parents, just the pastor. A swell of relief rose up in me. If Momma had burst through that door, we’d be ear-clipped and screamed at. We’d feel it worse when we got back to the farm. My kids, Momma would say, don’t end up in the sheriff’s station. My fuhking kids don’t go playing with dead bodies, I raised them right, I raised them good. And on and on. Jenny would get the worst. She always did. But it was Pastor Jacobs, here, now, for us. He knelt in front of Jenny, between Rudy and me, all concern in his eyes. ‘You two okay?’ We nodded. ‘How about you, Rudy?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ Rudy replied. ‘They called my old man.’ Jacobs made a face. ‘They got through, huh?’ ‘He’ll be here soon, I reckon.’ Jacobs patted Rudy and me on the knee. ‘You hang tight here a minute, let me find out what’s going on.’ He strode to Samuels. Low voices but sharp. I caught words like parental supervision, and questioning minors, a barked unacceptable. A film of sweat covered the pastor’s forehead, a huge slab of light tan skin made worse by dark hair cut too short. It was swelter outside and the poor man had to wear his black shirt buttoned up to the throat. He had a square jaw and stubble but somehow always looked neat and well-presented. He’d only been our pastor for two years, shipped over from somewhere out east, and right away shook things up. The young radical, some of the old ladies from the Gardening Society called him. Mrs Ponderosa said he was a dish and if she was ten years younger. Ladies like to think kids aren’t listening but we are. They file into the church hall after we clear out from Bible Study. They gossip. We linger. We hear it all. Mostly they say Pastor Jacobs is nice. Friendly. He even gave a good sermon on one of those few Sundays Momma got us up and dropped us off at service. You go to your church, John Royal, and I’ll go to mine. Then she’d gun the truck toward the interstate. Jacobs broke away from Samuels and came back to us, stood right in front of Jenny again. ‘He just wants to ask a few questions. You feel up to that? I’ll be right there with you.’ Jenny looked at me. Rudy looked at me. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, all my nerves and worry gone. ‘Good.’ Seriousness cracked, relief shone through. ‘Jenny, would you like to go first?’ She nodded and Jenny, the pastor and Samuels went into the office. Door closed. And me and Rudy were alone. He hopped into Jenny’s empty chair. ‘This is messed up, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Sure is.’ Rudy shuffled in his seat. ‘Spill, Johnny. Why’d you go back to the Roost?’ ‘Doesn’t matter. It’s stupid.’ ‘Try me.’ I sighed through my nose. A little lie, that’s all it would be. I couldn’t really explain what Jenny was thinking last night because I didn’t know and Jenny would hate me to be telling tales about her, even to Rudy. ‘Momma was drunk,’ I said and he nodded. ‘We didn’t much want to be at home, figured we’d sleep down at the Fort like normal. But it was weird there, you know, with the body. I was afraid animals would get to her before the cops so we stuck around. I don’t know, we just fell asleep.’ Rudy nodded along with me as I spoke. ‘Makes sense. I thought about doing exactly the same. Perry, man, he was being a Grade-A asshole last night, kept flicking his cig ends at me, still burning too, the fucker. Crushed a beer can on my head an’ all. I could’ve gone for a night under the stars. Should’ve. Felt hinky though. You’re braver than me, Johnny.’ Then he started talking about something else. Riding in the cop car or what would happen when Bung-Eye got here. I wasn’t listening. I had all my attention on Jenny. Through the window, sitting where Gloria had sat. Pastor Jacobs had his hand on the back of her chair, angled himself toward her, head going from her to Samuels and back. ‘Johnny, earth calling Johnny.’ Rudy waved his hand in front of my face. ‘What?’ ‘I was saying I hope they question my dad.’ ‘Why?’ He laughed but only half because nothing to do with Bung-Eye was wholly funny. ‘Because if anyone knows anything about some dead girl, it’s him. Shit, that bastard probably did it and dumped her there himself.’ ‘That’s dangerous talk for a place like this,’ I said, lowered my voice. ‘Your dad would whip you bloody if he heard it.’ Rudy threw up a hand, slumped back in the chair. ‘Screw him. Like he’ll even show up. I’m going to be here all day.’ The office door opened and Jenny stepped out. No tears. No red eyes. No fear tensing up her body. She was okay. ‘John? You’re up, buddy,’ the pastor called and I went. I’d tell the truth, at least most of it, and what’s there to fear in that? Jenny took my seat next to Rudy. Her feet dangled and she kicked them back and forth like she did in the river, lazing on the bank, face turned to the sun. All calm now. Inside the office, I took the chair across the desk from Samuels. The pastor rested his hand on the back of it like he had with Jenny. Like he would his own child, if he had them. ‘Am I in trouble?’ I said because nobody else was speaking. Samuels’ too-small eyes darted between me and the pastor, landed on me. ‘Should you be?’ ‘Come on, Len,’ the pastor said, looked at the sheriff like he was looking at a tiresome child. I liked him more and more. Samuels picked up a pen. ‘All right, let’s start with an easy one. Why were you on Hayton Briggs’ land?’ ‘Mr Briggs’ name is Hayton?’ Samuels straightened, cocked his head to the side. ‘That funny to you, boy?’ I shrank. ‘No, sir.’ ‘No, sir, it ain’t. Now answer the question.’ ‘We were just you know, hanging out. The Roost – I mean Mr Briggs’ valley – is just where we go sometimes. It’s not farmland, so Mr Briggs doesn’t mind. I don’t think he minds.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ scribble on the notepad. ‘What were you doing down there yesterday?’ Same tone. Round, piggy eyes blazing. ‘I … we were just going for a swim, some fishing too. It was hot, you know.’ ‘And which one of you found the body?’ ‘Gloria. It … she … was tangled up in the sycamore roots.’ ‘And whose bright idea was it to move her?’ I opened my mouth, gaped. Couldn’t remember. ‘All of us. We all decided it would be … nicer for her.’ Samuels looked up from the paper, to the pastor, then back down. He wrote something else. Pastor Jacobs put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re doing fine, John. Just tell the truth.’ Samuels shot a look to Pastor Jacobs. ‘Tell me something, kid,’ Samuels leant on the desk, blue shirt straining against his bulk. ‘Why didn’t you and your friends tell anyone about it until the next morning? Why didn’t you march straight down here and knock on my door and say, sheriff, we’ve found a body? Huh?’ My eyes darted around, trying to land anywhere but Samuels. ‘I don’t know.’ ‘You don’t know?’ Samuels sat back in his chair, one hand on the desk, tapping the pad with the pen, growing a field of black dots with every strike. ‘Most people,’ he said, ‘would call 911 when they witness a crime. You know what kind of person don’t call 911, boy?’ Nerves bunched up and crackled inside me. All sense of calm gone. I knew where this was going. I tried to swallow down a dry lump in my throat but it wouldn’t budge. ‘Guilty people,’ Samuels carried on. ‘See, I don’t get why you and your friends wouldn’t have said something. Makes me think you four have something to hide. Now, I can’t see Miss Wakefield or your little sister doing anything to that girl, but you? The Buchanan boy? Well now, that’s a whole ’nother ball game.’ ‘Sheriff, I don’t—’ Pastor Jacobs started but Samuels held up his hand. I opened my mouth to say, no, you’re wrong, but nothing came out. ‘Why’s your shirt ripped, son?’ the sheriff said. The question came out of nowhere and stunned me. My t-shirt. Ripped? I looked down and saw a swatch torn out. ‘That’s blood right there.’ Samuels pointed with his pen to a small smear of reddish brown at my side I’d not noticed. ‘If I test that, is it going to be the dead girl’s blood?’ All words stuck in my throat except one. ‘Jenny.’ ‘John?’ Pastor Jacobs put his hand on my shoulder and snapped me out of it. ‘It’s Jenny’s blood. She … she fell over and cut her leg. I tore a piece off my shirt to clean it up.’ ‘Well ain’t that convenient,’ Samuels was relentless. ‘We found you by the body, with blood on you. Can you see what that looks like? Maybe you slept down there to make sure no one else found out what you done? That sound about right to you? You and the Buchanan boy plan it together? Was he going to come back in the morning and watch her today? Were you going to bury her?’ ‘No!’ I leaned forward in my chair. ‘This is crazy. I didn’t do anything, neither did Rudy. We just found her in the lake. That’s it. We didn’t do anything. We found her like that. Jenny has a cut on her shin, go check for yourself.’ My heart beat frantic in my chest and my eyes jumped from Samuels to Jacobs and back and forth and to that stupid notepad and those lies he was scribbling and I wanted to lunge at them, rip them up and make him write the truth. ‘Len,’ Pastor Jacobs said, firm enough for the sheriff to lean back in his chair and raise up his hands in mock surrender. ‘We have to explore all kinds of theories, son, you understand.’ He paused for a moment, then asked, ‘Do you know the dead girl?’ ‘No,’ I said, just as firm as the pastor. ‘Never seen her before. Who is she?’ He ignored my question. ‘You live in that farm, huh, the old Mitchell place before they upped it and headed east, right?’ I nodded. ‘That’s about a mile from the valley. Were you “hanging out” down there on Monday evening?’ Monday. Monday? My mind emptied of anything useful. The day was blank in my head and Samuels was staring and waiting, his brow scrunched up, blotches of red blooming on his neck and sweating. My crackling nerves stung, wrapped around my bones and tightened. It was only a few days ago. Come on, Johnny boy, get your head together, the sheriff is going to throw you in a cell if you don’t. ‘It’s okay, John,’ Pastor Jacobs said, leaned into me. ‘I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning. If the sheriff here asked me, I’d be looking just like you are. I find it helps to start at something you will remember, like, what was your last lesson at school on Monday?’ Samuels sighed, muttered something about wasting time. I thought back, the grey block of time in my head coloured, came into focus. Monday. Mr Alvarez. ‘History,’ I said. ‘Good,’ the pastor smiled. ‘So after the bell went, what did you do?’ ‘Uh …’ then it hit me, a freight train of a memory. All my words came out in one long stream. ‘We watched football practice after because Rudy always says he wants to play running back for the Lions when we start high school so he needs to study the plays. He’s going to be so famous, he says, people would be all, “Superstar Mark Easton, who?”’ I smiled, then caught the red glare from Samuels. Get to the point, that look said, or its bars and biscuits for you tonight. ‘After practice, the four of us went to Gloria’s house. Mandy … that’s Gloria’s housekeeper, she’d lit the grill and was in a pretty bad mood.’ Samuels raised both eyebrows. ‘Why’s that?’ I pictured Mandy, in Gloria’s back yard, hands on hips next to the flaming grill, plate of charred steak on the patio table. She filled up my flicker reel. As soon as she saw us, she threw up her arms, shouted that she’d had enough. Mandy was always fit to burst, full of hot anger. She was an Ozark mountain woman sprung right out of the stone, impossible to soften and you wouldn’t want to. ‘Mandy said that Gloria’s dad had asked for steaks for dinner for him and some of his work friends and he wanted it on the grill, ready for when they got back at six sharp. She’d done it but he hadn’t shown up and it was past seven. Gloria said he was probably caught up with a case. Sometimes, Gloria said, when her dad’s law firm gets a big case, he can forget the time.’ Samuels scribbled it all down. ‘How long did you stay at the house?’ ‘A while. Mandy let us have the steaks. Then we watched Bandstand.’ ‘When did you leave?’ Samuels sighed out the question, getting impatient, writing it all down as if it would be useful one day. ‘Nine. Maybe a bit after.’ ‘Had Mr Wakefield returned by then?’ I shook my head. An exchange of looks between pastor and sheriff. A few seconds of silence. ‘Is … Did I say something wrong?’ I asked. Like a click of the fingers, Samuels changed direction. ‘So what were you and your sister doing down at the – what’s that you kids call it?’ he checked the paper, ‘the Roost, last night?’ Everything in me clenched, talons around soft marrow. ‘Nothing.’ ‘Nothing?’ Samuels said, leant forward. ‘You were found sleeping beside a corpse, son. You really sitting in my office, trying to tell me that’s nothing? I’m the sheriff here, I’ll be the one deciding what’s nothing. Now you answer my question. Why in God’s name would you do something like that?’ I wanted to tell him he wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t get it. I didn’t get it. Only Jenny really knew, but I had a lie. I just hoped it matched Jenny’s. ‘John, are you okay?’ the pastor said. ‘We were making sure nothing happened to her. Animals, you know.’ ‘Sorry, son, but that smells like bullshit to me.’ ‘It’s true!’ Wasn’t it? Was that what Jenny had told him too? Oh God, what if she hadn’t? My bones felt like they’d crack under the tension, my muscles split and frayed like old rope. ‘Come on, son. You were all but spooning that girl. Did you get some kind of thrill out of it? Did you like being that close to a naked girl?’ ‘Enough,’ the pastor shouted. Samuels stopped. I opened my eyes and he threw the pen onto the desk. ‘That’s enough, Len. He’s just a kid.’ ‘I need answers to my questions, pastor, and you’ll do well not to interfere.’ ‘Not to questions like that,’ the pastor said, as fierce as the sheriff, matching him for volume. ‘John didn’t have anything to do with this girl’s death and you know it. Yes, maybe he and his sister did something a little strange, but that’s not what this investigation is about. This isn’t a witch-hunt. He told you why they were down there, so did Jenny, and they’re both telling the truth. You got your explanation so we’re done here.’ I stared at both men. Stunned. I hurt on the inside, bruised and shaken, but Jenny had told the right story and the relief soothed me like ice water on a burn. ‘If you say so, pastor,’ Samuels said in that careful, heavy tone Mr Wakefield had used. ‘I say so.’ ‘Well I guess you and your sister can go.’ Samuels threw the pen down. ‘I’ll be calling on you, John, if I have any more questions.’ ‘And I’ll be here too for any follow-up interviews, right, sheriff?’ the pastor said and stood up, motioned for me to follow. Samuels didn’t see us out. Didn’t shake the pastor’s hand like he’d done with Gloria’s father. Jacobs closed the door behind us but stopped me from joining Rudy and Jenny. ‘John. Are you all right? Samuels was out of line.’ First time in a long time anyone had asked how I was. It softened the bruises, returned my sense of calm. ‘He’s just doing his job I guess. I’m okay.’ ‘No offence, bud, but I’m not buying it. You’re pale as potatoes, as my mother used to say, and I don’t think you’ve begun to understand what you’ve been through. Seeing a dead body, that can mess with your head. I’d like to talk to you some more about it, if you want to. I know how close you are with your mother and sister, and your friends, but sometimes it helps to speak to someone else. Someone outside your group.’ I glanced over to Jenny, still chatting away with Rudy. I thought back to last night and how she’d acted down at the lake, the way she’d looked at Mora’s body. That strange fascination in her eyes. For the first time in my life I didn’t understand my sister and that scared me. Maybe talking would help. The pastor knew his stuff and had God on his side. If anyone could help my head sort out this mess, it was them. ‘I think I’d like that.’ ‘How’s Tuesday? I’ll write you a note to get you out of your last lesson,’ he winked. Study hall. ‘Yes, sir, that’ll be fine. Thank you, again, pastor. For sitting with Jenny too. She’d have been scared on her own and I hate her being scared.’ ‘Anytime,’ he said, looked at me like he was watching a bird with a broken wing take flight. I went back to Jenny and she jumped up. ‘Can we go?’ ‘Yeah. Rudy, you coming?’ Rudy shook his head. ‘Not until dear old Dad comes to get me so I can have my turn in the little glass room. Won’t that be just stellar?’ Rudy slid down the chair, folded his arms and stared at the far wall. Wide eyes. He was trying to keep it together but fear always shows. It’s a black shape behind tissue paper. Rudy was all tissue paper when it came to his father. ‘See you later?’ I asked. Later meant after dinner, down at the Roost, with a couple of Camels and Gloria’s portable radio. ‘Wouldn’t miss it,’ Rudy said. Something in his tone made me think he wouldn’t come. Made me think I wouldn’t either. ‘Don’t worry,’ the pastor said and sat two chairs down from Rudy. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him until his dad arrives.’ Jenny and me said our goodbyes and left the station. Stepped out of cool central air into thick heat and the smell of Main Street. Exhaust fumes and greasy steam from the Backhoe diner, the occasional floating scent of flowers from Al Westin’s grocery store. Noon sun prickled my scalp and the top of my nose and I didn’t realise how dry my mouth and skin had become. Shrivelled up in the cold, false air. Jenny took my hand when we got half a block from the station. Already slick with sweat. ‘That was scary.’ Before I could respond, reassure her, I caught sight of a battered Chevy tow truck driving too fast up Main. I knew that truck. A rusted hook swung from a cable off the boom. The hood was faded yellow but the rest of it was blue. On the door was the chipped decal, half missing from a replacement back panel. Buchanan Auto Salvage. Inside, Rudy’s father sucked on a can of Budweiser, eyes on anything but the road. ‘Shit,’ Jenny said, watching the truck, and this time, I didn’t snap at her for cursing. The truck swerved across Main, cut up a station wagon. Its horn echoed down the street. Bung-Eye flipped the driver the bird and chucked the empty can out the window. Then the truck passed us. Bung-Eye’s good eye found us. The heat disappeared from the sun and chills went up my back. He pointed out the window, right at us, and formed his hand into a gun. Bang, he mouthed and winked his milky, dead eye. Then he took a left and disappeared into the back of the sheriff’s station. I shook off the chill. Shook off that look in his eyes. That look that said, I know who you are. I know what you’ve been doing. ‘Should we go back?’ Jenny said. ‘No, we shouldn’t,’ I said and she didn’t argue. I didn’t want to be in the same room as that man. Everyone knew Bung-Eye and knew to stay out of his way. Rudy didn’t come to the Roost that evening but we all four met up at the Backhoe first chance we could. Sunday afternoon. The diner windows were thrown wide and the streets lined with people watching the parade, waving flags, blowing whistles, cheering as the Fourth of July floats slid down Main Street. The high school marching band following behind the last float – the Larson Lions, decked out in blue and gold uniforms and shining helmets – tooting ‘Oklahoma’ and twirling batons. The fireworks were set to go off from the football field at nine but the four of us didn’t feel much like banging the drum. Rudy showed off a shiner and a limp from his father so Gloria bought us two milkshakes to share as apology for telling Mandy about the body. Our momma, when she found out, didn’t much care, never even scolded us. I felt for Rudy, always did when he turned up bruised. Momma could make a slap sting to high heaven and her words could crack bones, but Bung-Eye was something else, some horror kicked right out of Hell for bad behaviour. We got through it. We didn’t talk about it, not really, and that was for the best. It didn’t matter, not in Rudy’s big-picture thinking, because it wouldn’t last. The four of us were on a fast track out of Larson, that’s what Rudy, Gloria and Jenny kept saying. Few more years and it’d be sayonara to all those fists and snipes. Only snag in Rudy’s great escape plan was me. I didn’t want to leave. The diner was jammed. The four us squeezed around a two-person table, Jenny and Gloria sharing a chair, Rudy on a stool. Gloria said something but it was lost in the noise from the band passing. ‘I said we should do something!’ ‘About what?’ Rudy shouted back. We leaned over the table, heads almost touching, the only way to be heard. ‘You know …’ she said, leaned further in, ‘about her.’ ‘What can we do?’ I asked. It felt wrong to be talking about this. Here. The person who killed her was probably in this diner, or on the street, or in the parade. I choked back a mouthful of milkshake. ‘We could …’ Gloria’s words were lost as a dozen mill workers poured into the diner singing and spinning football rattles. Behind them, Gloria’s mother appeared in a tight red dress. The mill workers whistled, spun their rattles faster. She ignored them. Her eyes found Gloria and she waved, holding a paper flag, her hand laden with rings and bangles. ‘I’ve got to go,’ Gloria said, stood up then ducked back down to whisper. ‘Come to my house tomorrow after school, I have an idea.’ 6 (#ulink_0b8ccd7d-c3c7-529f-9007-22dada628b94) School on Monday buzzed with talk of the body. Whispers filled the halls and corners of the yard at recess. Even the teachers were gossiping between classes. The four of us were attacked with questions soon as we stepped through the doors. What’s a body like? Did you touch it? Does it smell bad? Who was she? How’d she die? And on and on. The worst though, was the one they murmured behind our backs, the one that changed the way they looked at us; did they kill her? Through the day, the rumours swarmed, gained life and solidity, they grew into full-blown accusations and theories that, somehow, Jenny and me had killed the girl, dumped her body and then gone back to admire our handiwork before the cops found her. At the final bell, the doors to school flung wide and we poured out onto the front lawn where parents would be waiting. Some kids ran but slowed down to pass me and Jenny. They stared. I stared back. ‘Freaks,’ someone shouted and everyone laughed. A collective roar of giggling and jeers. Freaks, losers, weirdos. ‘Johnny, let’s go,’ she said, grabbed my arm. Then I saw little Timmy Greer, runt of the class, try to make his name. He picked up a rock, wound back his skinny arm and hurled it at Jenny. I grabbed her, turned her away, and the rock struck my back. I cried out. The little shit had power. But the pain disappeared when I saw, across the lawn, away from the doors, Rudy and Gloria staring at us. They’d left by the side door, right where Gloria’s locker was. Another rock hit the back of my leg and with it a chilling cry, ‘Killer!’ That stung the worst, the first time it’d been said out loud, given breath and life. Then Jenny screamed as a rock caught her shoulder. They all joined in. Laughing and shouting. ‘Freak!’ ‘Perv!’ ‘Murderer!’ Tears burned my eyes. They threw stone after stone and Rudy and Gloria didn’t move, like they didn’t believe what was happening. Neither did I. Jenny dropped to the floor and me on top of her, covering her, protecting her best I could. It was hail. It was storm. Crack after crack. Sticky feel of blood in a dozen places. My head, my hands, my legs. Make it stop. Make it stop. Every time Jenny yelped, heat rose in me. Rage. Anger. The rocks kept coming, handfuls of gravel from the path, every strike cut my breath short. Then mercy. The voice. ‘Stop it! Hey! Cut it out!’ Rudy. Charging in. A god in middle school. ‘Leave them alone!’ The laughing kept going but the rocks stopped. Caught doing something wrong, the pack scattered, a few parting shots but nothing hit hard. Just another school day done. An act of violence giggled through, it’s okay to throw stones when the targets are freaks and weirdos. Ain’t that right, Mom and Dad? Make me a bird, I thought, that I may drag them all sky high and let go. Who would be laughing then? Rudy helped me up. Gloria helped Jenny. My face stung in a hundred places. Jenny had cuts about her arms and legs but, mercifully, her face remained untouched. ‘They’re saying all sorts about you both, the bastards,’ Rudy said. He tried to sound older, like a pa telling off his boy, but the worry on his face at the blood on mine gave him away. ‘I heard,’ I said, my ears ringing with killer, murderer, my eyes boiling with tears. ‘They don’t know shit.’ Gloria picked out a piece of grit from Jenny’s arm with one hand and held her hand with the other. ‘Mandy will clean you both up,’ she said. On the walk to Gloria’s house, a mansion by Larson standards, she asked the question I’d been dreading. ‘Why did you go back to the body?’ I stared at her, stunned, and then my eyes darted to Rudy. His were lowered. He knew I’d think he told her and he hadn’t. Unless he had and they didn’t believe me. Jenny, limping from a deep gash in her knee, answered. ‘Because it was a hundred times better than being in that house.’ The harshness in her tone shocked me and our friends. I don’t think either Rudy or Gloria knew how bad it was for Jenny until then. In truth, neither did I. Sharp, drunken words were one thing but since when was a cold dead body better than a warm bed? Better company than a real live mother? I swallowed down grit and tried to understand it but I couldn’t. Gloria put her arm around Jenny, Rudy didn’t say anything, he didn’t have to. He’d spent nights in the Fort on his own when his dad got heated. Better a dirt floor than Bung-Eye’s backhand or belt. Rudy put his arm around my neck, a friendly headlock. Gloria and Jenny walked in front, entwined, their heads resting together. They never asked about that night again. Plenty of people did, over and over, rumours sprouted like weeds after the first rain, but between us four, there was nothing more to be said. We waited in Gloria’s kitchen. One single room bigger than my whole house. Gleaming white and red tiles, like a picnic blanket draped on the walls. Mandy tutted and shook her head at our injuries. Rudy leant against the cabinet holding but not drinking his glass of lemonade. Ice clinked. Condensation beaded and ran. Gloria fretted in the corner, pacing, talking about mess, impatient to tell us her big idea, only to be hushed over and over by Mandy. Jenny sat with Mandy at the table, getting cleaned up while the woman muttered about who did it and why and if Jenny were her daughter, oh you wouldn’t be sniffling over nicks like this if you were my girl, she said. I waited my turn, standing awkwardly in the middle of the tiled floor, like a statue put in the wrong place. Mandy had all but raised Gloria and the pair had a tense, parent–child relationship the like Gloria never had with her real mother. Mandy was the one telling her to pick up her shoes, clean her teeth, eat her cabbage. Real Mother dressed Gloria in bows and made her twirl. I doubt Gloria’s mother knew a thing about her daughter other than what colour dress best matched her eyes. Mandy didn’t care about any of that. She was ruddy-faced, skin scorched and bloomed from years over a steamer iron, her thin blonde curls made lank from the heat. Her body was a pillow lined with steel. Tree-limb arms, stump legs and hips spread wide from six babies of her own. Jenny hissed, cried out. Mandy dropped a chunk of stone onto the table. Red, ferrous streak in the granite. My sister’s blood. My blood. ‘Hush your whining, whey girl, just a scratch,’ Mandy said. Thick, Ozark accent. Straight down from the mountains Mandy came, like an avalanche. Jenny sat at the kitchen table, leg on the big woman’s lap, while Mandy dabbed and cleaned the cut on Jenny’s knee. Deep. About an inch long. Every time Mandy took a cotton wad to it, took off all that red so the edges of the cut were clear, Jenny’s blood would well up again, spill down her leg, drip onto the floor. ‘You ain’t got no sticky in you,’ Mandy said, talking more to the blood than my sister. ‘Idiot body of yours, needs the sticky to gum all this up and stop the running. Here,’ she handed Jenny a folded-up kitchen towel, ‘hold this against that hole long as you can while I tend your shoulder.’ The mound of cotton wool, clean and white on one side of the table, shrank and transformed into gore. Wool stained red and wet, slapped every time Mandy threw a used piece on the wood. Despite her grumblings, she was gentle. Carefully sluicing away the grit, responding to Jenny’s wincing and yelps. Every time I heard Jenny’s pain it was an electric shock through me, a tiny charge that made me want to leap forward. ‘Lemme see that hole,’ Mandy said, placed her hand over Jenny’s and pried the ruined cloth away from her knee. The old woman smiled. ‘Ah, there it is, the sticky done gummed it up. No more running away with you.’ Jenny smiled along with Mandy’s words, the music in them, so quick and up and down and lulling. Gloria said she’d sung her lullabies as a baby and my insides turned green. I didn’t know any lullabies. Momma wasn’t the singing type, unless it was on a table in Gum’s or humming Patsy Cline in the bath. Bandaged up, limping but mostly undamaged, Jenny was on her feet. She took the untouched lemonade from Rudy and drew down half the glass. Then it was my turn with Mandy and her thick, hard hands. ‘You telling who did all this to you chickies?’ she said as I pulled my ripped-up shirt off over my head and sat down. Gloria stopped pacing and locked eyes with Rudy and Jenny. Then me. A minuscule shake of her head. Mandy was a talker, we all knew, and no one liked a snitch. ‘We were up at Barks,’ Rudy said before I could think of a lie. ‘The cliff side, you know Fisher’s Point? The Evel Knievel twins here got too close to the edge. Scared the shit out of us.’ ‘Hush your nasty tongue,’ Mandy snapped, ‘don’t be cussin’ in my ears.’ Rudy met my eyes, winked. If there was anything Mandy hated more than a torn sock she had to darn, it was foul language. Piss, shit, fuck, all would shut her up quicker than a drunk can pop a bottle cap. Dozens of small cuts and bruises covered my back and shoulders, but none as bad as Jenny’s knee. It took Mandy most of an hour to clean me up. Wet wool, dab dab, then the sting of Bactine. It pulled tears from my eyes and I couldn’t stop it, I tried, but it was tiny spikes all over my body, stabbing, piercing, deep down into my muscles. Be a man, John Royal, I heard Momma’s voice in my head, but it hurt, all kinds of hurt. Each spike was a reminder of the stone that made it, the hand that held the stone, the kid that threw it. Classmates. Friends. ‘You all done, mister man.’ Mandy gathered the soiled wool in one arm and the bowl of red water in the other. ‘Shoo shoo shoo,’ she said until Gloria moved away from the sink. ‘Go on now, go play outside.’ Gloria wasn’t allowed boys in her room. The only place me and Rudy could be with her was outside. The house was a great whiteboard castle with red shutters and columns at the front pulled straight out of a Roman history book. Gloria said her father had the shutters repainted every year. Nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make you forget the troubles of the past year, he said. Sand them down, paint them over, good as new, it’s like those rain storms never happened. The house sat in private gardens, surrounded on three sides by thick trees. Rose bushes ringed the front grass. A gazebo in the back. The back lawn was pristine, as if nobody had ever stood on it. Table and chairs on the patio. Pots of plants that had no business growing in this part of the world dotted all over. Going to Gloria’s house was like going on vacation. We’d be brought lemonade. We’d be cooked dinner. Me and Jenny never wanted to leave but Rudy never wanted to stay. He shuffled and fidgeted until we were outside. A bad kid in a good house never quite felt comfortable, he’d say. He always said he was bad. Bad stock, bad blood, bad name. A Buchanan through and through. A name isn’t anything, I told him once at the edge of Big Lake, you can change it like you change your shoes. You can be anybody. He liked that but he didn’t believe it. On the far side of the back lawn, the trees crowded, came together like secret agents protecting the president in one impenetrable line. We weren’t allowed on the lawn, Gloria’s mother was particular and Jerry, her gardener, would take the blame if we rutted the grass. We went slowly, Jenny still limping hard on that right leg, across the flagstones to the edge of the trees and through. Gloria strode ahead, kept telling us to hurry. The Roost and Fort weren’t our only spots. A wall encircled Gloria’s property way back into the trees. There was a break in the brick from when a beech dropped a branch two winters past. Too expensive to repair, thank you very much Gloria’s father. It was our exit. Doorway to our secret. One step outside that wall and Rudy was Rudy again. A stopper pulled out of his back and the poison air hissed out. ‘Come on, Jenny,’ he said softly and helped her over the broken wall. Rudy settled Jenny on the ground then held out his hand for Gloria, as if asking the lady to dance. We sat with our backs to the outside of the wall, dried-out leaves beneath us, bright green life above us. No matter the steaming summer day, beneath the canopy our skin prickled and cooled, natural air conditioning. ‘So I’ve been thinking,’ Gloria started but Rudy held up his hand and shushed her. ‘No serious talk before a smoke. You know the rules.’ Gloria huffed but didn’t argue. Rules were rules. Rudy took a crumpled pack of Camels from his back pocket and a matchbook from his front. He tapped out a joe and lit it up. Only one between us. They were precious, worth far more than money. ‘Took these off my old man,’ he said, took a drag and passed it to me. ‘He won’t notice. If he does, he’ll blame Perry. Big bro is always swiping off the bastard.’ I breathed in the smoke, let it fill me up and heat me from the inside. Then out, in one long delicious breath. I didn’t smoke much and Jenny never touched it. Both of us too scared Momma would smell it and show us Pa’s belt. But when I did partake, it was old man Buchanan’s Camels, lit with a proper match, not one of those gas lighters. Rudy was particular about that, which meant we were too. I passed the butt to Gloria who took a short puff, followed by a cough. She never quite got the hang of it. We didn’t bother offering it to Jenny, she always said no. But today, Jenny snatched the joe right out of Gloria’s hand. Took a drag. Too long, too deep. Blasts of grey smoke, one, two, cough up your lungs, then she spat. Rudy’s eyes bugged. Gloria cough-giggled. And I just stared. ‘Momma will smell it on you,’ I said. In response, Jenny took another pull. The orange tip blazed. ‘Don’t care,’ she said, coughed some more. The buzz was back in her bones. She shifted, tried to get comfortable on the ground. Raised her cut leg, rested it on a flat rock, then decided not and drew her knees to her chest. Rudy plucked the joe from her fingers and showed her how to hold it, how to breathe it in. If anyone should be showing my sister how to pull on a joe, it was me but I didn’t move to take over. I was still wary of Jenny, still confused by her behaviour, felt like for the first time in our whole lives, I didn’t know my own sister. Gloria refused another drag, tapping her foot with impatience. Rudy noticed and, with a smile, kept the conversation away from her. ‘Heard you’re seeing the pastor tomorrow,’ he said to me. ‘Heard right.’ ‘What are you going to talk about?’ he asked, ground the butt out on a rock and tucked the end in his shirt pocket. Rudy didn’t litter. He said it made the world ugly. ‘The body I guess,’ I said. Rudy laughed. ‘Watch he don’t quote Bible at you. Did that to me once, some Sunday. He took me outside after, asked me where my old man was. I said he was working but you know that’s a lie.’ Nobody quite knew what Rudy’s dad did, one job one winter, another through the summer, selling, buying, this and that. Can’t quite put your finger on it. Ask around Larson what Bung-Eye Buchanan was up to and they’d walk the other way. One of those Town Truths everybody knew, like the secret of the Three Points. ‘Pastor Jacobs took me round the side of the church, away from people, then squatted down beside me like he was readying a shit. He asked me if I knew where my dad was this Sunday. When I said no, Jacobs, he said,’ Rudy shuffled, raised up his hands, took on the pastor’s mannerisms, ‘he said, “Rudy, one day you’ll tell me the truth. The more you lie, the longer the devil’s roots grow inside you. Proverbs teaches us that a false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish.”’ Rudy laughed, Jenny said the pastor was a creep. I bit my tongue. ‘I won’t forget that,’ Rudy said, ‘long as I live. Every time he sees me he asks about my old man, he’s got some kind of obsession with him,’ another laugh. An almost beautiful sound but for its sour edge, a strawberry picked too early. ‘He asks after your dad too,’ he said to Gloria and she sighed, arms crossed over her chest. ‘Maybe he’s got a thing for old Wakefield,’ I teased, ‘wants to hold hands and kiss him.’ Rudy made smooching sounds and Gloria punched him in the arm, called us both gross. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he said, ‘must be Mrs Wakefield. That red dress she had on at the parade raised a few eyebrows.’ Jenny laughed; it sounded hot and strained from first-time smoke. ‘Not just eyebrows. Gloria’s mom walking down Main Street in those dresses of hers raises a whole lot else, especially with Mayor Wills.’ She wolf-whistled and grinned wide. ‘That’s the least of it going round town about dear Mother,’ Gloria said with another sigh. ‘Your mom’s got more lipsticks than a New York tranny, and the jugs to match.’ Rudy slapped his knee and filled the forest with laughter. Birds fled their perches and I waited for Gloria to skin the boy alive. ‘You’re a jerk, Rudy Buchanan, you know that?’ she said. ‘But you love me still.’ He puckered up and planted a fat kiss on her cheek. A red blush spread over them both. ‘I hereby declare it, Gloria’s got half my heart,’ then he jumped up and grabbed Jenny’s hand, kissed it. ‘Jenny has the other half and Johnny has my whole butt!’ Then he pulled his shorts down, showed off his backside. We all screamed and fell about laughing. Rudy the charmer. Rudy the handsome prince. Rudy had more hearts carved into trees around Larson than anyone, at least that’s what he said. But it was never a brag. He could say, I’m the best-looking guy in three counties, and you’d nod along. There weren’t any girls in Larson carving a heart around my name. ‘Enough bullshit, you guys. Can we talk about what we came here to talk about?’ Gloria said. ‘Rudy, tell them what you told me earlier.’ Rudy went quiet, all the joking gone. ‘After you guys left the Backhoe yesterday, I stuck around. After the parade, everyone went to the football field for the fireworks. That’s when Samuels and that skinny one, Robin or Roberts, whatever, came in for their two-dozen doughnut snack. That sheriff, man, two bites and poof, no more doughnut, now you see it,’ Rudy waved his hands like a party magician, ‘now you don’t.’ ‘So what?’ I said. ‘Samuels is a lard-ass, that isn’t a secret.’ ‘Shut up. Point is the place was empty and they didn’t see me at the next booth, just minding my own with my chocolate shake. They were talking hush hush but I could hear them.’ ‘What did they say?’ Jenny asked, rapt. Rudy leant forward, like we’d be overheard out here. Ears in the trees, eyes in the leaves. ‘They were talking about when they found the girl,’ his eyes flicked to me. ‘Robin said the doctor who examined the body said she was maybe sixteen or seventeen.’ Four years, if that, older than us. I felt a lump grow in my throat. Gloria nodded along to the story. ‘Shit,’ I said, ‘that it?’ ‘Messed up, huh?’ ‘Do they know who she is yet?’ Jenny asked. ‘If they did, it’d be all round town,’ Gloria said. Jenny shuffled closer to me, awkward with her leg. She scratched at a smear of dried blood on my t-shirt. ‘I can’t believe they don’t know her name.’ ‘It’s awful, just awful,’ Gloria said. ‘She’s just … nothing,’ I said. ‘Without a name they can’t do anything. They can’t tell her mom or dad, or have a funeral without anything to put on the headstone. But it’s just a couple of made-up words, they could give her a new name if nobody claims her.’ ‘Names are everything, Johnny,’ Rudy said with a scowl. ‘Those made-up words are all some idiot needs to brand you a no good thief or a pussy. Sure you can sign a piece of paper and change it, but that’s just like putting on a pair of pants. You still got an arsehole underneath. Bet some folk in town think all sorts about the Royals, especially now you’ve been sleeping with dead bodies.’ Rudy, all flashing smiles and eyes, threw a twig at me. I threw one back. ‘Shut it, Buchanan.’ Gloria snapped her fingers like old Mr Frome did when we were horsing about in biology class. ‘Shut up both of you. Rudy, keep going.’ He stuck out his tongue at her then carried on. ‘The sheriff said the doctor reckons she’d only been in the water two or three days but dead for four or five. At the most.’ ‘How did she get in our lake? Who knows it’s even there?’ Jenny said. ‘She must have been dumped elsewhere and, like … dislodged her upstream.’ Gloria raised her hands. ‘Samuels hasn’t got a clue.’ ‘Get this,’ Rudy said. ‘Samuels said something about paint. He said they couldn’t find a match to the green paint they found on her back. Did you guys notice any paint?’ We shook our heads. We hadn’t seen her back. We’d dragged her and laid her out face up. Maybe she’d been lying in spilled paint that mostly got washed away. ‘It gets worse,’ Gloria said. Rudy leaned in, pointing and stabbing at the air with a twig for emphasis. ‘That lardo’s too lazy to even go looking for her. It’d take too much time away from stuffing his face. Samuels said, word for fucking word, “Let’s check the missing person notices, if there ain’t nothing there, fuck it.” Fuck it, he said.’ Disgust transformed Jenny’s face. ‘He’s going to give up? That was a bullet hole, right? Someone killed her, didn’t they?’ Gloria punched the ground. ‘Exactly.’ ‘How can nobody care?’ Jenny rested her head on the wall, puffed out a sigh. None of us had an answer to that. It deflated us. Maybe some cop in Mora’s town was fretting, wringing his hands and sticking her picture on a pin board while our cops were scratching their balls. Gloria stood up, brushed off her skirt. ‘That’s why I asked you here. We are going to solve the murder.’ ‘What?’ I asked. This was the big idea? The plan she couldn’t talk about in the Backhoe? Gloria nodded. ‘We have to find out who she is and who hurt her. Someone has to.’ ‘Stellar!’ Rudy jumped up. Jenny’s eyes widened. ‘I’m in.’ ‘If Samuels can’t find out who she is, what makes you think four kids can?’ I said. I didn’t want to go digging, I didn’t want to see pictures of Mora, I didn’t want more rumours circulating. I didn’t want to see what that would do to Jenny. ‘Samuels isn’t looking,’ Gloria said. ‘He’s just ticking boxes. If he really wanted to find out what happened, he could. Everyone in this town knows everyone’s business.’ ‘She’s right.’ Rudy stuck his hands on his hips. ‘Someone will know something. People don’t talk to cops.’ ‘People don’t talk to kids either,’ I shot back. Then Jenny pushed herself up. ‘We have to, Johnny. She can’t be nothing. She can’t be nobody.’ ‘This is stupid.’ Jenny folded her arms, just like Momma did when she was about to shout. ‘It’s not stupid. You’re stupid. What kind of people are we if we do nothing?’ Bad people. Just like Samuels. Just like whoever did it. I clenched my teeth. Three pairs of eyes on me. Waiting. ‘Fine. Fine.’ Rudy let out a whoop. ‘Let’s do this! What’s first?’ The question was directed at me. ‘Oh right, you want me to solve the murder?’ I glared at them, at Jenny. ‘You’re the practical one, Johnny,’ Gloria said, nudged my shoulder with a smile. The others had the ideas, I worked out how to make them happen. It was me who drew up plans, with a stick in the dirt, for constructing the Fort, me who worked out how to dam the river and make Big Lake. Now it was me they looked to again. Identify a dead body, solve a murder, catch a killer. Easy as that. Jesus. I rubbed the back of my neck, slick with summer sweat. ‘In the books the detectives always go back to the beginning.’ ‘Where’s that?’ Jenny asked. ‘Where all this started,’ I said. ‘Big Lake, of course. We should follow the river upstream and see if we can find the place she was dumped. Maybe we’ll find something the cops missed.’ ‘When?’ Gloria asked, looked at Rudy and Jenny. I stole a look at my sister. She was almost trembling, her fingers working in the dirt, clawing thin furrows, raking at broken leaves. She didn’t seem to notice her nails darkening with mud. After the rock fight, and now Jenny itching in her skin to investigate a murder, I didn’t have the heart for searching tonight. But I couldn’t say, my sister is going mad, I need to get her home. So I made an excuse. ‘It’s too late now. We’re out of daylight. Tomorrow, after school. I’ll meet you outside when I’m done with the pastor. Jenny and me have to get home now.’ Jenny frowned, went to argue but thought better when she saw my expression. ‘Momma will be waiting,’ Jenny said. ‘Tomorrow then?’ Gloria nodded. I sighed out the word, ‘Tomorrow.’ Jenny and me left Rudy and Gloria as the sky turned gold. Must have been close to eight when we cut through the forest onto the back Barton road, the dirt track that ran behind Wakefield land. Word was the road led all the way to Paradise Hill, through the scrubland east of Larson. There were all kinds of hidden roads around here, all kinds of paths you could take and never be seen. We turned west on Barton without having to think. You don’t go east. Another one of those Town Truths. We went slow because of Jenny’s leg. ‘I don’t want to go through town, Johnny,’ she said, halfway along the track. ‘Me either. We can loop up to the railway line, cross up by the Hackett place.’ She held out her hand for me to help her. I took her weight, just as blood began to seep through the dressing on her knee. I hurried us, the starlings would soon be flocking. This route home would take us an hour longer than going through town but it was worth it. The Hackett land had a hill, a rare and precious feature in Barks County. It was the Island, salvation in a sea of wheat. Our path took us right up and over. From the top of the Island the land swept down onto a flat plain. The view always reminded me of that moment when you lift and flick a blanket to lay it neatly on the bed. The moment it curls upward, the perfect, effortless curve, made by the air and the weight of the cloth. The top of the hill gave one of the only full views of Larson for miles. The white, bulbous water tower dominated the east side of town, the Easton grain elevator rose up in the north, and spiked in the centre of town, the wooden church spire. Then Larson spread out in squares, Main Street and Monroe and Cypress, until it gave way to swaying corn and fences, hemming us in. But up here, on the Island, it was as if the world had fought back and drove a fist up through the rock and soil, made this little piece unworkable, unchangeable, left it for the wildflowers and meadow grass to flourish. I stood at the top with my sister and breathed in the higher air, like I was breathing in a taste of another world. ‘Johnny,’ Jenny grabbed my arm, ‘Johnny look, the birds.’ I turned to where she was pointing, down the slope, far off to where the field met the road. There, above power lines and fences, a great flock of starlings pulsed in the sky. Dark specks wheeled across the field, outstanding against the colour of the evening. They dipped down to the top of the wheat then surged upward as one. A rolling boil of wings and thrumming bodies. It was gasoline flicked into water, the swirling pattern of it changed with every blink, every ripple. ‘I love them,’ I said. ‘I do too.’ ‘Why did you go back to the body?’ A sudden burst of nerves grew in my gut. Why did you say that, Johnny? Where did that come from? You know where. Jenny turned to me, cheeks reddening, squirming embarrassment in her eyes. ‘I …’ ‘I’m sorry. I just … I need to know.’ Her jaw clenched. ‘I wanted to see …’ tears rolled down her cheeks, every word was forced, ‘I wanted to see what would happen to me if a fight ever … if she drank too much … I don’t know. It was dumb. Forget it.’ She turned away from me and back to the birds. I hated what she said, it hurt some primal part of me and my instinct was to round on her. How can you say that? How can you think that? She loves you. She loves you more than you realise. You’ll see. But I stood still, silent, and a deep sadness washed over me. I took my sister’s hand and held it tight. The flock danced for ten or so minutes then settled on a nearby stand of ash trees, foregoing the pylons and fence poles, instead filling the branches. A great big screw you to human handiwork. With them settled, and unmoving, the sky was dull again, the land just flat and my sister seemed calm inside, smiling like the girl I knew. We started down the hillside, another mile and we’d be at the edge of Royal land. 7 (#ulink_520d442c-bbfb-505a-84a2-284505e35726) When we got home the house was quiet. Momma’s truck was parked where it should have been instead of skewed in the middle of the yard. The dent from last week knocked out by some friend in town. Moths swarmed around the porch light and, inside, only the family room lamp was on. I opened the front door to the yeast stink of beer and a gentle, rhythmic snoring from the armchair. Jenny, still angry at Momma, made quickly for the kitchen. She poured a glass of water with a couple of ice cubes from the freezer box, then hobbled upstairs. She didn’t care about making noise. Momma wouldn’t wake. I got myself a glass of water and, once Jenny was safely upstairs, I went to check on Momma. The TV fizzed on a blank channel and a line of smoke trailed up from the armchair. Momma lay with her head on her shoulder and half a Marlboro burning to ash in her fingers. An empty six-pack of Old Milwaukee tall-boys on the floor. ‘Hi, Momma, I’m home,’ I whispered, trod lightly to her, picked the butt out of her hand. The pillar of ash collapsed onto the floor. An hour later and they’d have been scraping charred Momma off her chair. When I shut the TV off she stirred. Didn’t open her eyes but knew I was there. ‘Hi, baby,’ she said, slurred and thick with sleep. ‘Hi, Momma.’ I took her empty hand in mine. ‘Let’s get you up to bed.’ ‘Mmhmm.’ She let me pull her to standing. Put her arm around my shoulders and leaned hard on me but I could take it. She was my momma, my bones were built for carrying her. I don’t think she opened her eyes the entire way down the hall, up the stairs, into her room. ‘You’re such a good boy, John Royal,’ she said as I sat her down on the edge of her bed. ‘You’re my best thing.’ I knew Jenny could hear, right above us, and I knew Momma’s words would be like those stones hitting her all over again. The selfish part of me didn’t care and was still upset at Jenny for acting so strange so I didn’t try to hush Momma. I kissed her on the forehead and guided her head to her pillow. It was too hot for blankets but I draped a sheet over her up to her waist. Momma always said she couldn’t sleep without her ass covered, even if she was sleeping in jeans. As I turned to go, Momma found my hand. Eyes still closed, she shuffled over in bed and pulled me down beside her. Arm over me, her heat on my back, her breath on my neck. Smell of beer and sweat but I didn’t hate it. It was Momma smell. ‘I love you, John Royal. My best thing,’ she murmured right up close to my ear. Jenny couldn’t have heard that. ‘I love you too, Momma.’ Then she squeezed me tight and we lay like that. Her breathing soon turned deep and slow, her arm became dead weight over me, pressing me down into the mattress. A creak from the upstairs floorboards said Jenny rolled over in the bed we shared. I was giving her room, I thought, to stretch out her leg and not be bothered in the night. I fidget. I kick out sometimes. If I caught her knee with my heel I’d never forgive myself. Really, it was for the best I sleep down here. It was hot as Hell that night and Momma’s sauced-up body heat doubled the sweat on me. But I didn’t move. I must have slept because I remember waking up. Momma’s snores in my ear and the blue dawn light in my eyes. And Jenny. Standing in the bedroom doorway, blazing. The bandage on her leg was red through and a river ran down her shin. Then she was gone and her footsteps, uneven with the limp, trailed off down the stairs. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath of Momma, then, despite myself and all my will, I drifted back to sleep. When I woke again Momma was gone. Sound of running water rushed up from the kitchen. I sprang out of bed, sticky and hot, and ran upstairs. No Jenny. Her leg needed attention, I needed to help her before her and Momma got into another fight. Where was she? Downstairs, into the kitchen, and there. With Momma. I froze. Momma had filled up a basin and got some clean bandages. Jenny sat up on the kitchen table, wincing through a smile, while Momma redressed the wound. ‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ Momma said when she saw me. She pinned the fresh bandage to Jenny’s knee then, to my shock and Jenny’s too, dipped her head and kissed it better. ‘You’ll have a hell of a scar to show, sweetpea,’ she said, not a hint of slurring or hangover. I couldn’t move. Jenny and Momma, getting on, kindness and pet names. It was like I woke up and stumbled right into the Twilight Zone. That one with Barry Morse and the player piano that made people act strange when a roll was playing. I almost listened for the music. Don’t question it, Johnny, you’ll spook them. ‘Go on now, both of you,’ Momma said, ‘get ready for school. I’ll drop you both in.’ Jenny and me looked at each other then to Momma. Surprise must have been clear as glass in our faces because Momma clicked her fingers and said, ‘Go on, get.’ ‘Thank you, Momma,’ Jenny said and I think she wanted to hug her then but something stopped her. Years of memories maybe, a survival instinct or something like it. Instead she slid off the table and we both got ready for school. Momma drove us. Dropped us by the front doors. ‘Have a good day, babies,’ she said, hanging out the car window. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ we both said, climbing out the truck. ‘Be careful of strangers, you hear? After they found the poor girl by the lake, you don’t know who might be a killer in this town.’ Her eyes fell on Jenny. ‘The thought of anything happening to my babies …’ She shook her head, almost welled up, then waved to us and drove away. I could count on one thumb the number of times Momma drove us to school. When she was gone, I couldn’t speak. This wasn’t the other side of the coin, this was a whole new coin on the spin. ‘What …’ Jenny started. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘She was …’ ‘I know. What did you say?’ Jenny shrugged. ‘She found me in the kitchen trying to change the bandage and, maybe the blood freaked her out, I don’t know.’ Whatever this new Momma was, we didn’t want to jinx it. We didn’t say anything else about it, just went to class, and carried the tender feeling with us. 8 (#ulink_efe3263d-2e55-57cb-a0e5-b650997b430b) All through school, ignoring the gossip and sharp looks, the question after question, the shouts and stifled giggles at the cuts on my face and arms, two thoughts rolled around in my brain. First, what I’d say to Pastor Jacobs and second, how the hell I was going to solve a murder. Come three o’clock, when I finally got to the church, my head emptied of anything useful. I even thought about asking the pastor how to identify a dead person but quickly shook it away. I didn’t like Pastor Jacobs’ office, tacked onto the back of the church like a toenail ripped but hanging on. The tang smell of damp and the uneven floor set my stomach rolling the moment I walked in. Momma told me it was a trailer from Paradise Hill a few miles out of town, that trash land where the junkies and dirty women lived in double-wides. They say the previous owner, one of those fire-and-brimstone congregants, donated his home in his will. The man slipped away in his armchair, Momma said, it was a week before they found him, took them a month of airing and four deep cleans to get the smell out. ‘Where was it?’ I asked. The pastor, still standing at the door after letting me in, said, ‘Where’s what?’ ‘The armchair.’ I scanned the room, looking for some sign of it, four depressions in the carpet from the corners, a stain maybe. Jacobs lowered himself gently into his chair, a big leather thing a kid could get lost in. He rolled up the sleeves of his black shirt, adjusted his stiff white collar. His eyes darted across the map of cuts on my face but he never asked about that. ‘Ah, the rumours,’ he said instead, warmth in his words, ‘I’ve heard several so far. A man was murdered for a pack of cigarettes and wasn’t found for a month?’ Something in me sunk. Had Momma just told me a beer-soaked tale she’d heard at Gum’s? ‘Mrs Ponderosa from the Gardening Society said a jealous wife poisoned her husband in this trailer. Left him and ran away with the Clarkesville sheriff who covered up the whole thing. Or maybe the old guy killed himself, I can’t remember. Probably he just died of disease or age, if he died at all. Which did you hear?’ I felt stung, foolish, still standing in the doorway. ‘Momma said the man died in his armchair.’ ‘The Paradise Hill church man. That’s a good one,’ he smiled and it was a real smile and that sting of foolishness in me disappeared. ‘Personally, I prefer the one about the man who killed his neighbour over a can of dog food. You hear that one?’ I shook my head. ‘I’ll tell you sometime.’ He gestured to the wooden chair on the other side of his desk. ‘Grab a seat, son.’ I did and the strangeness of the trailer faded. It was just a room. Just an office, painted and decorated to the best it could be. Despite the damp smell and the heat my chair was comfortable. The pastor pulled off his white collar and dropped it into his desk drawer. ‘Don’t tell anyone I did that,’ he said and winked at me. ‘I’m meant to be on duty and in uniform at all times.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, unsure who I would tell anyway. Momma? God? He was younger than I thought. I saw that now he was in his own place, relaxed as he could be in that black shirt. The deep lines and shrunk-back hair seemed more from hard living than long living. He studied me, tapping a pen on his desk, like he was working out how best to ask about Mora and us sleeping down at the Roost with her. The longer he was silent, the more my nerves fizzed. ‘Johnny.’ He paused. ‘Can I call you Johnny? Do you prefer John?’ Nobody had ever asked me that. Momma and Jenny and Gloria and Rudy called me Johnny but never asked if I liked it. ‘John is fine,’ I said and he smiled. He wasn’t the same as the other day in the station. There was none of that victorious lion I’d seen with Samuels, he was calmer, relaxed. That feeling of safety came back and a deep sense of calm settled over me like a blanket on a cold night. I had my farm and my pastor and my God, and that’s a mighty army to have at my back. I sank into my chair. ‘So …’ ‘So,’ he said, fingers playing on the desk, not catching my eye like he didn’t know where to start, what to say. The clock ticked on the wall and, outside, I could hear two women chatting on the sidewalk. He felt it too, I could tell, the awkward silence, so he half laughed and blurted out, ‘You’re not in trouble, okay, John?’ I smiled, wanted to laugh a little at his nerves but I guess it was the first thing he thought of. Grown-ups say stuff like that when you’re so deep in shit you can’t swim your way out. ‘I know,’ I said and he went back to tapping his fingers. My eyes went to the wall behind him, scanned a poster showing off the birds of Barks County, a Dodge car calendar stuck on April, and a map. The whole world laid out flat, every country a new colour, with strange lines and numbers all over it. He followed my eyes to the posters, the chair creaked as he turned. I thought he’d explain the map. Miss Eaves did that when she saw a student staring, she’d go, ‘Good eye, that’s the Mississippi delta’, and launch into a talk about drainage basins and steamboats. Pastor Jacobs didn’t. I kept staring, averting my eyes every time he tried to catch mine, suddenly thinking this was a mistake, I should be home working on the farm or in study hall with my friends. The calm ebbed away. I hoped he would take the hint and let me go, stick true to his you’re not in trouble words and forgive me for saying I’d come here. While I waited for him to speak, in my head, I reeled off the names of the birds on the poster. Such wonderful names, they rolled around my brain like snowballs. I knew them all without looking at their labels. Golden Plover. Kestrel. Redstart. Baltimore Oriole. Green-Winged Teal. And that one, the Lincoln Sparrow, I’d learned from the book Momma gave me. Name them all, Johnny, and a hundred more until this hour is all used up. ‘Hang on,’ the pastor said and his change in tone made me look at him. ‘We’re not doing this right, are we?’ Jacobs stood. He wasn’t that tall but with the trailer’s low ceiling, he was a smiling giant, ballooned into the space. ‘It’s hot as the devil’s shit in here,’ he said and whipped his hand to his mouth. ‘Don’t tell anyone I said that.’ He looked like a schoolboy caught with his hand in the jam, giggling, red-faced. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’ He swerved around his desk and past me, flung open the door, but there was no cool relief, only more swelter, more heat, and the buzz of insects attacking a butterfly bush. ‘You know, John, the summers here are something else.’ As we walked, he took a white handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. The sheen returned a second later. ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ I said, then clamped my mouth shut. Don’t go telling a grown-up what to do, Momma said, especially a pastor, or he’ll put you on a fast track to Satan. He glanced down at me, dabbed the cloth on his upper lip. ‘Do what?’ ‘Wipe it away,’ I said, pointing up to his forehead. ‘It won’t get a chance to cool you down if you get rid of it.’ I’d told Jenny the same last summer. I’d wanted to tell that joke Samuels a few days ago. Sweat’s there for a reason, the body knows what it has to do, we just have to listen to it. ‘Is that right?’ Jacobs said and I saw that kindness in his eyes I’d seen in the station. ‘I’ll bench the handkerchief from now on. Thank you, John.’ I swallowed. Unsure how to respond. But when I looked up at him again he wasn’t the looming giant sending me to Hell, he was a man who helped me and my sister by fending off the sheriff. He was a man who listened and the more I talked, the more he seemed to listen. But I wasn’t sure I knew what to say yet. I still hadn’t unravelled it all in my head yet, not Mora, not Jenny, not the way it made me feel, because I didn’t know how it made me feel except sick. Except scared. But not of a dead body. Of my sister. Could I really tell him that? Could I let him think bad of Jenny? Royal business stays on Royal land, Momma said. But my mind kept flipping. One moment, I’d have spilled my guts the second he asked, in the next I’d clam up and want to get the hell away from him. Maybe Pastor Jacobs was only talking to me because he was a gossip like the kids at school and wanted answers, not because he truly wanted to help. The heat, the man, the conversation, all combined inside me. Sharp fluttering filled my insides. Felt like birds on my bones. Out of the back of the churchyard, we crossed into the fields. A path cut through the wheat and led up to Barks reservoir. Older kids went swimming there after church on Sundays. Momma said it was too deep for me and Jenny, we’d drown no question. Now I’ve told you that, Momma said with a smile, it means that if you go there and you die, I won’t be crying over either of you. ‘Look, John, check out that beauty,’ Jacobs said, squatting down beside me, arm on my shoulder, pointing. A hawk, a northern harrier, one of my favourites, hovered above a spot in the middle of the field. Held there, as if on a wire straight from God. The bird stared, tiny movements of its wings kept it level in the breeze. ‘You see that white patch on its tail?’ Jacobs said and I knew he was about to tell me what it was. I kept quiet, let him tell it. ‘That’s a northern harrier. He’s spotted a mouse.’ So intent, measured, patient, and yet, with one turn of his wings, he could strike, quick as a bullet out of a gun. We watched for a few more seconds, then, as the pastor shifted, muttering about his bad knee, the harrier dove. Into the gold wheat, gone for a second, then up into the air, a twitching tail caught in its talons. Jacobs clapped. ‘Just magnificent.’ The hawk landed at the top of a tree and ripped apart the mouse. I couldn’t take my eyes away. In seconds, tear, crunch, gone. That was all it took, a strike, a shot, and the mouse was ruin and wreck just like Mora. One second, one bullet, and she was a body, not a girl. ‘That’s a hell of a bird,’ Jacobs said, standing up and leading me away, back to the path. ‘The British just named a jet plane after it,’ I said and the pastor looked at me, one eyebrow raised. I clammed up. Momma always said no one likes a smart-ass. ‘They did, huh?’ I nodded, waited for him to question me like Momma would have. Where did you hear that? Was it that teacher who told you? ‘Well,’ Pastor Jacobs said, ‘that doesn’t surprise me in the least. It’s a beauty.’ And he smiled at me and accepted what I said and that was new for me and it felt good. Really good. I kept my eyes on the harrier until we passed through a stand of trees and into the next field. Jacobs kept quiet for a while as we walked, until the hawk was far out of sight. ‘As much as I’d love to,’ he said. ‘We aren’t here to talk about birds, are we?’ Cold flooded up my bones. He picked a length of wheat and twirled it in his fingers like those baton girls at school. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked. ‘Not really.’ ‘That’s all right. We can talk about something else for now. But eventually, we’ll tackle the big stuff.’ The Mora stuff. The Jenny stuff. Black worms squirmed in my gut. It felt strange to be out there with just him, despite wanting to, despite agreeing to it. I felt exposed, like walking bare-ass through nettles and poison oak. The rest of Larson was in school. Rudy, Gloria and Jenny were in study hall without me, talking about the Civil War and President Lincoln and some amendment. We had a test on Friday and I didn’t know my dates and I was here instead of there. I squeezed my eyes shut, balled up my fists at my sides, kept walking, hoping Jacobs wouldn’t notice. Jenny needed me. She always forgot how to spell Gettysburg. Why did I have to miss school, miss her? I suddenly hated myself for agreeing to these stupid sessions. Nobody else was out of class, just me. Just the freak John Royal. And when this hour was up I’d have to go back there, to the Roost, to the lake, to that depression in the dirt where the body lay and I lay. ‘John?’ Pastor Jacobs put his hand on my shoulder. It felt wrong, too heavy, too hard, like an iron bar pressing into my skin. Then he knelt down on his bad knee, stared right into my eyes, just like in the sheriff’s station. Did he see a soul? Was that what pastors did? ‘This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come here. I need to be at school.’ My breath caught, heart galloped. I needed to get away. ‘Calm down, count to ten with me. Come on, nice and slow, one-one-thousand,’ he nodded at me and I took a deep breath, repeated the number. ‘Good. Two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand …’ All the way to ten-one-thousand. The redness cleared. My fists relaxed. Breathing came easier. Gloria knew how to spell Gettysburg. She would tell Jenny. She would make sure she remembered. I was in a field, the sweet smell of the wheat, on a well-trodden path turned to dust by hundreds of running feet. A picture of Jenny running through the dark corn flashed behind my eyes, then finding her pale and staring down by Big Lake. ‘Do you get upset like that often?’ Jacobs said. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just when …’ when I’m scared of my sister for wanting to sleep next to a dead body, ‘when I need to help Jenny and I can’t. We have a test.’ ‘Next time you feel panicked, before you do anything else, count to ten, just like I showed you. Will you do that for me?’ ‘Yes, sir. I will.’ The calm edged back, slowly, as if afraid to show its face all at once. I couldn’t help Jenny now, out here, while she was back there. Something ached inside me at the realisation. Sometimes I wouldn’t be there. Sometimes she would be alone. Like she was alone at Big Lake before I found her. What had she done before I got there? I shivered in the heat. ‘You can call me Frank, you know,’ he said. ‘I’ve never felt much like a “sir”.’ I nodded and tested the word. ‘Frank.’ It felt strange on my tongue. I’d never heard anyone else, young or old, call him that. I smiled. ‘Yes, Frank.’ We carried on toward Barks but he didn’t say anything else. Maybe my panic had scared him, made him think I wasn’t worth helping, and now he wanted to use the hour up as quick as he could so he could be rid of me. John’s fine, Mrs Royal, I don’t need to see him ever again. As we walked, I prayed not. I wanted to feel what I’d felt in the station, like I had a guardian, something like a father who wouldn’t fly away. Frank – the name sounded odd, even in my head – wanted to talk about Mora but he was dancing about the subject. I’ll talk about it, I decided, if that’s what it takes. I’ll talk, but only to you. I stared up at him, waiting for the questions, studying every bit of him. He wasn’t an old guy, not really, though everyone is old when you’re thirteen. Much older than Momma, but she’d forced us out too young she said. His hair was still rich brown, he didn’t have all that many lines around his face, not like old man Briggs – Hayton! – or Mrs Lyle from the post office. Momma said Pastor Jacobs had a jaw that could lever open a paint can. That’s how you can tell a man is from good stock, John Royal, Momma said, I should have had you by that pastor so you’d have a jaw that could take a hit. I had a weak chin, Momma said, it’d crack like a peanut shell under a good right hook. We reached the southern edge of the reservoir. The beach was bigger than it should have been for this early in July. The summer was too hot, too long, drying us all up to husks and draining the reservoir too quickly. A few kids playing hooky splashed about, laid out on towels, a blue cool box full of Cokes between them. I swallowed down dust and ached for one of those Cokes. Hiss and pop of the cap and wonder in a mouthful, fizzing down my throat. ‘Think they’ll share?’ Frank nudged me, sweat shining on his forehead. He didn’t take out his handkerchief, didn’t wipe it away, not even with his sleeve. He squinted against the sun to make out the truant faces. Then he shouted, ‘Mark Easton, is that you? And Tracy Meadows? You kids have a free period or should I be calling parents?’ The four of them, all juniors a few years up from me, spun around. The two on the beach scrambled up, dusted off the sand, Mark and Tracy. The two in the water ducked down so just their heads showed. One of those in the water was Darney Wills. He wrecked his father’s truck in the post office when he was fifteen but he was on the football team and his father was mayor of Larson, so nobody much cared. Accident. Just kids larking about. No one got killed, after all. I stepped behind the pastor as we walked down onto the beach. Wanted to hide from them. The two on the beach whispered, laughed, pointed. ‘Hey there, pastor,’ Mark Easton, the boy on the beach, called out. Even Mark Easton didn’t call him Frank. A tiny bud of pride blossomed in my chest. Frank got close, me trailing behind. I wanted to speak up, say let’s get the hell out of here, but we were too close now. Contact made. Questions asked. The girl, Tracy, looked right at me, not even a glance at the pastor. I was a sideshow. Rumours grew up fast and strong in Larson, then went rampaging through town in hobnail boots, leaving marks, making holes, twisting and expanding every time a new idiot jumped on its back. The girl nudged Mark. I wanted to bury myself in the sand, let me get eaten by those hawks, let me be ripped up and devoured. All better than those looks and whispers. Mark joined Tracy in staring, smiling, a look out to that beast Darney Wills and whatever poor girl he’d dragged into the water. ‘You should all be in class,’ Frank said, ‘and you sure don’t look sick.’ ‘Aw come on,’ Mark, said, ‘we’ve only got a week of school left, finals are done.’ ‘I tell you what, you give me one of those Cokes and I’ll forget I saw you.’ ‘Deal,’ Mark said, reached down into the cool box. So slow, his eyes always on me. Stop it, stop looking at me. I wanted to be home. I wanted the farm, the isolation of the fields, the silence of the corn. Pastor Jacobs accepted the bottle, twisted the cap and handed it straight to me. I took it but didn’t drink it, not in front of them. In the water, Darney stood, started wading to shore. The girl still cowered beneath the surface. ‘Coach Ray got you back in practice for the summer?’ Jacobs asked Mark. ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘You boys best keep that defence tight next season. God loves football but he loves a state champ more.’ Darney whooped on his way from the water. ‘We’ll destroy Trenton next year, pastor.’ Mark smiled, held Tracy’s hand. Mark was a modest hero to the town, never brash like Darney or wild like Perry Buchanan. He was all things to all people. The Light of Larson they called him. Football star. Baseball star. Star grades. Star smile. Star fucking attitude. My teeth ground together the longer I was near him. Larson treated Mark like a god, as if touching him or getting his attention would somehow bless their narrow lives. He was like a son to me, they’d crow, and everyone would listen slack-jawed and gawking. Mark Easton, the boy with a hundred fathers. John Royal, the boy with none. Until now. I looked at the pastor. They kept talking, Mark and Pastor Jacobs. Mark showed off his throwing arm and his form. The pastor lapped it up and I felt my insides shrivel. ‘You boys work hard this summer,’ Frank said. ‘Yes, sir,’ Mark said. ‘We’ll sure do our best to get to playoffs next season. Maybe you can have a word with the man upstairs for us.’ Jacobs nodded, winked, told the four of them that he didn’t want to catch them there again during school hours. I strode ahead, every step away was one less clenched muscle, one less tight heartbeat. I looked back once. The four of them were on the beach, talking, looking, smaller and smaller until we turned and entered the fields again. My mood lightened the further away we got. The day’s heat cooled and clouds grew over the sky. A few spots of rain hit my forehead, puffed up dust on the path. My teeth clenched. Rain. Nothing worse for corn than too much rain. I checked the sky. No black storm clouds bleeding their load, no taint of ozone in the air. Just a shower. And with that, the rain stopped, beat back by the sun. Frank wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and I with my sleeve. I gave the Coke back to Frank, untouched, and, after frowning at it, he couldn’t resist long. He gulped down a quarter of the bottle and handed it back to me. I took a sip. Wonder. Fizz. Cold on my tongue. Soon the bottle was empty and Jacobs let me keep it to return to the store for the nickel. I held onto that bottle like it was a gold bar. ‘You got nervous around those kids,’ Frank said halfway through another field. I didn’t say anything. ‘People like to talk in this town, don’t they?’ he said. ‘There’s nothing else to do.’ He let out a small laugh. ‘You’re not wrong there. But hey, those guys are gone now. Just you and me. The talk will die down eventually. I’ve heard some of it myself. Like the kind of questions Samuels was asking you.’ He paused, raised an eyebrow to see if I knew what he meant and the gossip echoed in my head, I heard John Royal killed that girl. I flinched and tried to smile. ‘Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows you didn’t do anything.’ I’d have to prove it. Rumours were as good as a signed confession in this town. I clutched the bottle. A mix of feelings inside me, like when you throw too many colours together and get muddy brown. I was full of different measures of relief and embarrassment and sadness and guilt for thinking bad of myself and Jenny for what we did and something close to admiration for this pastor, even a dash of enjoyment at being here and talking to someone who talked back to me like a grown-up and painful anger that anyone thought I could have killed Mora. All those colours churned up in my stomach and made me feel sick. ‘You know,’ he said after another long silence. ‘I saw a dead body once, when I was about your age. My father.’ He waited for my reaction but I didn’t know what it should be. I barely remembered my real pa. I wished I’d seen him dead, at least then I’d know for sure where he was. ‘He died of liver cancer when I was twelve,’ the pastor kept going. ‘Back in Virginia, where I’m from.’ I turned to him then. I knew where Virginia was. Miss Eaves quizzed us on all the states. I didn’t do all that well, though Jenny and Gloria aced it. Jenny would have been fifty for fifty but she mixed up the Dakotas. The pastor didn’t have the voice of Virginia. Virginia was tobacco and moonshine and you could hear both in their words. Frank spoke carefully, each syllable said as it was written down, didn’t cut off any ends or soften his Ts. I wondered if he was lying but as soon as I thought it, guilt shot through me. Frank was a man of God and the Bible and people like that don’t need to lie. I wasn’t sure, at thirteen, if I truly believed in Heaven or Hell but I believed in Pastor Jacobs. Believed his goodness and accepted his help, his attention. Bathed in it, soaked it in. ‘John, are you listening?’ I nodded and he resumed. The body looked like his father but it wasn’t truly him. His soul was with God. Death is just a journey. He looked so peaceful at the end. My head filled up with pictures of Mora, forever sleeping by Big Lake. I saw the way Jenny had looked and smiled and calmed, the electricity in her bones dulling for a time, like the lights in a thunderstorm, dimming and flickering out, then flaring wild when Samuels woke us. Seeing the body brought my sister peace, like seeing his father had given the pastor peace. Hadn’t it? ‘Why were you in the valley?’ Frank asked and I only then realised we were almost back at the church. ‘It’s where our Fort is.’ ‘Why were you there so late?’ I shrugged. I couldn’t say it, not out loud, not to a grown-up, not yet. ‘Do you sleep there often?’ ‘Sometimes.’ ‘When things are bad at home?’ ‘No,’ I said quickly. To a question like that, a moment of hesitation meant yes. I wouldn’t let him think badly about my family. Things weren’t roses and cream but that didn’t mean he could take guesses and think the worst. Jenny thought the worst, thought Momma would hurt her one day. I shuddered, and shook my head. ‘Momma sometimes gets a temper. It’s just the drink, that’s all. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s always forgotten about the next day.’ I was telling myself, and Jenny, as much as I was telling the pastor. Jacobs nodded, picked another length of wheat from the field. ‘Does she hurt you?’ ‘She just shouts sometimes is all. She gets mad at Jenny if her dress is too short or if she gives back-talk or sass, but Momma just tells her off.’ She’d never really hurt her, I knew it like I knew my name. I’d agreed with Momma a few times in the past. Jenny’s dresses and shorts were sometimes too high on her legs, especially after we’d been swimming. She had Momma’s lip that was for sure and didn’t have to be drunk to use it. Besides, Momma was being kind, tending wounds and kissing foreheads and driving us to school. Any hurt or darkness was gone for now. I put aside thoughts of Momma, changed the subject back to Mora, which suddenly felt more comfortable. Besides, Gloria would kill me if I didn’t find out all I could. ‘Do they know the girl’s name yet?’ Jacobs narrowed his eyes at me before answering. ‘No. The sheriffs are doing all they can to find out who she is.’ ‘I don’t think she was from Larson. We’d know her face.’ Pastor Jacobs tilted his head to the side like he was considering what I’d just said. ‘You’re right. Cross your fingers and toes, John, we’ll catch whoever did it.’ ‘Do they have any ideas? Could it have been someone from here?’ ‘I’m not all that sure. But they’re working on it. We have to let the sheriffs do their job and keep out of their way.’ I scuffed my shoes in the dirt, didn’t move when he started walking again. ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he asked. I looked up at him, squinting against the sun. ‘They don’t really think I did it, do they?’ Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/beth-lewis/bitter-sun/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.