“I don’t think it’s necessary,” I say. “Juna, she’s confused, is all.” And then, to Sheriff Irlene, I say, “Evening, ma’am.”
Sheriff Irlene was probably just finishing up supper when John came knocking on her door and likely left her children, the three young ones, to do the cleaning up and putting away. She wears a blue blouse tucked into a full beige skirt that skims the toes of her boots. Her hair is done up in a tight knot at the base of her head. Even now, at long past dusk, it looks as fine as it would at Sunday morning services.
“Sarah,” Sheriff Irlene says, taking hold of my hand and patting it, “let’s get you home. How about that? How about that, Sarah?”
Sheriff Irlene tries to draw me from the doorway with a hand to my shoulder. When I don’t move, she gives a squeeze, and in a quieter voice, she says, “I’m worried for you, dear. You really should get home. This is no place for you.”
“Boy won’t be long for this world unless we get him to town,” John says, nodding so I’ll know he agrees with Sheriff Irlene.
“He didn’t do nothing,” Mrs. Baine calls out from inside the kitchen. She still stands near her stove, a rag wrapped around one hand.
“Be for your own safety, Joseph Carl,” John says. “Folks going to want to talk to you. Better they do it in town.”
John grabs onto my forearm, and much like Sheriff Irlene, he tries to draw me outside, but I want to stay and wait for Ellis. He’ll take care of Joseph Carl, and he’ll see me here, finally see me like he doesn’t at church or in town or on the road when he’s got himself wrapped around me. But John holds on, not with a tight grip but a grip that’s not letting go.
“We ain’t got much time,” he says when I don’t move. Then he looks to Sheriff Irlene, who gives a nod.
“You’ll come along with me now,” she says, “won’t you, Joseph Carl? We’ll have a hot meal for you. Take real good care of him, Cora.”
Joseph Carl is still sitting at the table, his hands resting in his lap, when I step onto the porch. In the last letter he sent me, he told about the dust. He said it was all the time in the air and that every green thing had died. The grasshoppers came next, and if something did manage to grow, they seized it and ate it, and when the living things were gone, those grasshoppers took to chewing the wooden handle right off a rake. Right off a rake, he wrote. He and the other fellows hung snakes, white bellies toward the sky, over their fences in hopes of inciting a decent rain. Didn’t work. And there were rabbits. Rabbits like you never seen. They rounded them up on Sundays, a circle of folks beating sticks on the ground, and when the circle was good and tight, they took the sticks to the rabbits. They cry, you know. Those rabbits cry when someone gets after them with a stick. The dust was all the time in his eyes and between his teeth, and God damn it all, he was hungry. Wasn’t everyone so Goddamn hungry?
10
ANNIE WATCHES UNTIL Ryce disappears over the rise and she can no longer hear the squeal of his bike. Sheriff Fulkerson is watching too, and when he turns to greet Daddy, the sheriff is shaking his head like he doesn’t know what gets into that boy. Mama sometimes shakes her head the same way at Annie.
“Why don’t you come on with us,” the sheriff says to Annie when she starts up the stairs to go inside and help Grandma in the kitchen.
Daddy gives a nod, which means he thinks there’s no harm in it, so Annie calls out to Grandma that she’ll be back shortly and follows Daddy and the sheriff.
“You keep a sharp eye, John,” Grandma shouts from the porch. Since breakfast, she has repinned her hair, and her apron hangs straight now. “Keep a sharp eye on Annie.”
Partway up the hill that’ll lead them to Grandpa’s tobacco barn, Annie stops because Daddy and the sheriff stop. She knew they would. Visitors always do. Especially this time of year. This is the spot-halfway between the house and the tobacco barn-where folks take a break, usually saying they need to rest even though it’s not such an uphill climb. They brace themselves, feet planted wide apart, hands on hips, and look across the land that rolls down toward the house and lifts up again and stretches to the horizon. As far as a person can see in most any direction, rows of lavender, swelled to their full size, run side by side. They’re evenly placed, four feet on center, precisely, exactly, every one of them, as only Daddy would have it. It’s a trick of the eye and the work of distance that draw the rows closer and closer as they travel toward the horizon until eventually they meld into a single field of lavender covering the hills. There aren’t many prideful moments in growing lavender, so says Daddy, but this is one of the few.
Standing next to the sheriff, who can only shake his head at the splendor of it, which makes Annie wonder if he was shaking his head at the splendor of Ryce, though she doubts it, Daddy takes off his hat, slaps it against his thigh, and nods along. It’s about the proudest a person will see Daddy. He never walks folks around to the other side of the house and to the top of the rise that looks off in the other direction. There, the lavender has already been harvested. It’ll be distilled into oil and so is always taken before it breaks into bloom. It’s not such a pretty sight once the slender lavender-tipped stems have been hacked off, leaving behind only a jagged mound of greenery.
Like folks always do, the sheriff lays his head back and inhales. Usually, Annie doesn’t notice the sweet smell because she, and the rest of the family too, lives with it every day. It builds slowly over the season, little by little, and so is never fresh or new, but when a visitor comes along, like the sheriff, Annie is reminded of it by the look on his face.
Just this last week, she’s felt like a visitor might. The smell has been stronger, sweeter, thicker, like new again. She should have known it was a sign her life was about to change-same as she should have known the one warped board on the porch, and the star she saw falling from the sky last Tuesday night, and the shiver that woke her this past Saturday all meant death was closing in.
“Beats the hell out of growing tobacco,” the sheriff says as he takes one deep breath. His large belly lifts up and out, his eyes close, the lines around his mouth soften, and he exhales long and slow. Then he slaps his hands together, gives Daddy a wave, and they continue on toward the barn.
By the time they reach the top of the hill, Sheriff Fulkerson is red-faced and can’t talk for breathing so hard. He mops his forehead with a limp white kerchief and rests a hand on his belly, which swells up until his shirt gaps between his buttons. Ryce is already taller than his daddy but is a good bit smaller around the middle.
“This where you crossed over?” the sheriff says without looking at Annie. His voice has changed. It’s slipped lower, and he’s likely not smiling anymore. Grandma says Sheriff Fulkerson spends too much time politicking. This is the voice he saves for discussing serious matters with serious men. He’s not politicking just now. Waiting for an answer, he leans over at the waist and looks down the length of the rock fence. Maybe he’s looking for rocks knocked loose or oversize footprints, or maybe he’s admiring what Grandma calls fine Irish fence building.
“Yes, sir,” Annie says, looking for some sign that Ryce hadn’t been entirely truthful and that his daddy does think Annie killed Mrs. Baine. So far, the sheriff is being friendly enough. “Best I can tell,” she says, glancing at Daddy. He gives her a nod that means keep on. “It was dark. Crossed over right about here.”
“Just jumped on over?” Now the sheriff gives her a smile and his voice lifts a bit higher. He’s politicking again, and that’s Annie’s first warning that the sheriff isn’t altogether trusting of what she’s telling him. “You can do that? Girl small as you?”