“So, what?” Annie says, not bothering to stand from the porch step where she sits. She draws all her hair over her shoulder like Caroline is all the time doing and pulls it through her two hands, smoothing it because it’s likely the sort of a thing a girl should do once she’s had her day.
The smell of lavender hasn’t yet been stirred up, and instead a spicy scent fills the air. Grandma likes to whisk the cloves, ginger, and cinnamon into melted butter, says it keeps the spices from floating on top and ruining the cake.
“So, who’d you see?”
“You’re making a habit of this, Ryce Fulkerson. You smell home cooking? That what brought you?”
“Told you, ain’t looking for food.”
“Shouldn’t you be working?” Annie thinks to cross her ankles because it’s the thing a girl, a young woman, should do.
“Going soon enough. Just wondering who you seen, is all.”
“How do you know I went?”
“Everyone knows you went. Everyone knows about Mrs. Baine too.”
“And just what does everyone think they know?”
“Know she’s dead,” Ryce says. “Think maybe a Holleran killed her.”
“That’s a damn fool thing to say.”
As hard as Annie is trying to do as a girl should do when she has ascended, the nastiness works its way through.
“Wasn’t me who said it,” Ryce says. “Just heard talk, is all.”
“Barely washed the breakfast dishes and you’re telling me folks are already talking?”
“You know I hear things. Can’t help it sometimes.”
More than once, Ryce has come to school and not been able to sit because of getting whipped for spreading his daddy’s business. That’s what happens when the sheriff is your daddy. About the time Ryce reached the sixth grade, he figured how to keep his mouth shut and mostly tries not to hear what his daddy tells his mama at the supper table.
“You telling me your daddy said a Holleran killed Mrs. Baine?”
“Hush, Annie.” Ryce rolls his bike forward and leans close. He’s still young enough to do what his mama tells him to do, so he smells like soap and a line-dried shirt. “That ain’t what I’m saying. It ain’t what my daddy’s saying. Not necessarily. Makes folks nervous, is all. A Baine dying on your day. Makes them remember Juna. You’re the same age she was.”
“You telling me your daddy thinks I killed Mrs. Baine?”
From behind Ryce, Daddy walks out of the shed where he disappeared a few minutes earlier, Grandma’s old rocking chair hoisted over his head. He had carried it around the house and into the shed after having told Annie he figured the old rocker needed some work, seeing as how it was making so much noise. He asked if Annie thought a few days would be enough time to fix it up. Annie said she thought a few weeks would be better, and Daddy nodded and said he’d see to it, even though they both knew nothing was wrong with that rocker. Daddy didn’t believe in the know-how, never had, and it didn’t scare him the way it scared Mama.
“Morning, Ryce,” Daddy says, shutting the shed door and dropping the latch that keeps the wind from pulling it open. “Got a long day ahead today. You come to call on Annie, have some breakfast?”
“No, he did not,” Annie says. She stands, and then remembering she has ascended and should do such things, she brushes the wrinkles from her skirt.
More and more, Daddy and Abraham Pace, and sometimes Mama too, tease Annie about Ryce Fulkerson. Time and again, Annie has reminded them that Lizzy Morris is the one who saw Ryce down in the well, so if anyone deserves teasing, it’s Lizzy Morris.
Annie wants to remind Daddy of this again but won’t with Ryce standing right here. Instead she starts to say Ryce was just leaving, but stops and turns when Daddy pulls off his hat and nods off toward the main road.
“Looks like your daddy,” he says to Ryce.
“Yes, sir,” Ryce says. “It sure does.”
The car coming up over the hill is white with black stripes and squared-off lettering on the side. It’s the sheriff’s car. None other like it in the county.
“Guess I’d better be going,” Ryce says. “I’ll be seeing you, Annie.”
Annie says nothing until she looks up to see Daddy staring down on her. All it takes is a nod and Daddy’s intentions are clear.
“Thank you for stopping, Ryce,” Annie says, failing to temper her nasty tone until another look from Daddy convinces her to try harder. “Pleased to see you again.”
“Crop looks real fine, Mr. Holleran,” Ryce says as he leans over his handlebars and lifts his hind end off the bike’s seat. Pumping his pedals as fast as they’ll go seeing as how his front tire is crooked, he gives his daddy a quick wave and pedals on past before he can get out of the car. Ryce might imagine himself growing up to be a sheriff just like his daddy, but he doesn’t much care for the man. Or maybe his daddy doesn’t much care for Ryce. Or maybe that’s just the way it is between fathers and sons.
9
ALL NIGHT AND into the next day, the men come and go, more of them as the hours pass. They promise, every one of them, to find Dale straightaway. Folks bring food, what little they have managed to grow in their gardens. I am better with a garden than most, but folks share what they can-cucumbers, tomatoes, thick stalks of rhubarb. Someone brings eggs, only a few so they’ll stay fresh and because it is likely all they have. I fry those eggs in a spoonful of lard until there is no run left in the yolks and feed them to Juna so she’ll feel strong again and tell us about Dale. The men, most visitors too, leave straightaway because they’re afraid to be in a house with Juna, and with Daddy and me as well. Word has traveled from our house to theirs that a curse has taken Dale from us.
While no one counted out the days for me, everyone in town knew when Juna would come of age. Some mothers sent their sons to stay with friends or relatives in the weeks leading up to Juna’s day, thinking distance would save their boys from being the face Juna Crowley saw in the well. It wasn’t Juna’s know-how that frightened the mothers of Hayden County. There have been other girls with the gift, a knack for knowing things, and once these girls ascended, their gifts ascended as well. Their know-how rounded out, became something larger, greater.
Folks were unsettled by these girls who knew more, saw more, felt more, but the girls didn’t give rise to fear. The evil living in Juna’s eyes is what prompted these mothers to pack up their sons and send them away. They wondered if the evil would ascend too. Now that Dale has disappeared and Daddy’s life is cursed, folks know for certain that Juna’s evil has rounded out. It’s larger, greater than ever before.
Irlene Fulkerson comes to the house early in the day. Her husband was the sheriff until he died two months ago, and now Irlene is sheriff. Her oldest son, Buell, who is my age and has a family of his own already, is with her, as well as a handful of other men who were good to her husband and now are good to Sheriff Irlene. She wears a gray dress that scratches my cheek and neck when she pulls me into a hug. She’s full through the chest, soft, holds me a good long time and whispers that she’ll see to Dale. All these fine folks will see to finding Dale. She smells smoky, as if she must have had a time getting her stove lit this morning. When she leaves along with all her men to get on with looking for Dale, it’s like losing my mama all over again.
Near sunset, Mr. and Mrs. Brashear and Abigail come with milk from their cow, and Mrs. Baine brings two heads of cabbage, the first of her crop. They’re scrawny, have been picked too early, but they’re likely all she has to share. The four stand on the porch, all of them swatting at mosquitoes. I look for Ellis among them, wondering if maybe he drove his mama here. But there is no truck parked outside, meaning the four of them walked. I invite them into the house, offer them coffee and a seat, and while they settle in, I pour a cup of milk for Abigail and lower the rest into the well to keep it cool.