My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (29 page)

“Huh. So she was a kind of fugitive,” Joanne said.

I started to argue. But I realized that, in a sense, Joanne had it exactly right. Mama was a fugitive from all that had made her sad and restless back in Groverton, Ohio. She’d been running
from
something. I wondered if, nevertheless, she’d found peace in Shelby, Montana.

“Well,” Joanne said, “truth be told, I came here just two years ago myself. Getting away from a nasty boyfriend who liked to pop me a few.” She pumped her fist in the air.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t like that. My daddy didn’t…” My voice trailed off. Then I settled for, “Daddy didn’t hit her. She just…got weary.”

Joanne nodded like that made perfect sense. “The name Litchfield rings a bell.” She gave a little frown. “Not sure why.”

My heart gave a small squeeze. I turned the bridal photo so Joanne could see it. “That’s her. It’s an old photo. Before I was born. About twenty years ago.”

Joanne gasped, then looked up at me. “Why, honey, you’re the spittin’ image…except the nose.” She stared at the photo again. “This is her wedding day?”

I nodded.

“But she looks sad,” Joanne said, as if it were impossible to imagine someone looking sad on her wedding day.

“Jean will know who she is and where to direct this young lady.”

Both Joanne and I looked up, a little startled, at the man from the end of the counter. He’d gotten up and walked over to us.

Joanne snorted. “Billy, why are you always listening in to other people’s conversations?”

“’Cause you talk so damn loud,” he said. He plunked down some money. Joanne grabbed it from the counter and put it in her smock pocket. The man made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go on back. Tell Jean there’s a young lady here—” he grabbed the photo, looked at it. He went a little pale. Then he swallowed hard and said more softly, “You’re right. She’s the spittin’ image of a younger Rita.” He shook his head. “Anyway, go tell Jean that Rita Litchfield’s daughter has showed up in town looking for Rita. Jean will know what to do.”

“Jean won’t do anything but yell at me if I don’t go back there with an order.”

I was hoping to spend as little money as possible, in case of some future emergency, but I didn’t see that I had a choice. “How about two bottles of Coca-Cola?”

Joanne lifted her eyebrows at me.

I sighed. “And a club sandwich.”

She jotted those items down on her order pad—like she wouldn’t remember—and went through the swinging doors back to the kitchen.

Billy was still staring at the photo.

“Do you know her?” I asked softly.

He startled from his reverie and looked up at me. Then
he shoved the photo back at me. “No,” he said. “Just heard her sing a few times.”

“Well, where was that? At the Mountain View Nightclub? Maybe someone there—”

He shook his head. “Some things are better off not knowing, kid.” He put some bills on the counter. “That’s to cover your sodas and sandwich. You can always walk away before Jean comes out.”

My heart started pounding. “Why? Why would I want to do that? If she knows my mama, she can tell me where to find her. Or maybe you—”

“She was a wonderful singer. Haunting.” With that, Billy turned and walked away, hurrying as best he could given the hitch in his step, going out the front door just as another couple came in. The couple that had been here earlier was gone. I could see the back of Will’s head through the diner’s big front window.

She was a wonderful singer…was…

Why had he said “was”? Had she left town? Stopped singing?

“So you’re Rita’s young’un.” I startled, turned, saw standing behind the counter the woman who had to be Jean. I’d expected some Montana version of Grandma, but this woman was plumper, taller, younger—and definitely more pleasant looking, although she growled at Joanne, who was standing right behind her, eager to hear what we’d say. “Get over there and take the Mitchells’ order!” Joanne looked disappointed, but hurried out to the couple.

Jean sat two Coca-Colas and two wrapped sandwiches on the counter. “Joanne says you and your brother are on a
trip and just happened through here, asking about Rita.” She pointed to the sandwiches. “If you’re on the road, figured you might want to take your food.”

“Thanks. Um, Billy, he paid for the colas and one sandwich,” I said, pointing to the money he’d left. Then I started to open my purse.

“Don’t worry about it. Where are you headed?”

“Alaska,” I said.

“Alaska?” she said. “Why?”

“It’s a long story. It’s just…something I have to do for my little brother. He’s ill. Not contagious ill—that’s not why he’s waiting outside. We have a dog with us—” I stopped. This was sounding more convoluted the more I tried to explain it. “Look, he’s OK now, but he wants to go to Alaska while he still can, so I’m taking him. That’s the simple truth. And we found out that our mama is living here. At least, that she was as of about four years ago. We thought she’d died seven years ago.”

Jean studied me. I could tell she was deciding if she was going to help us or not. Finally, she shook her head and said, “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but—wait here a moment, child.”

She disappeared into the kitchen. Joanne came back behind the counter and whispered, “What did she say? Does she know your mama? Is she going to help you? Why—”

Joanne hushed and stood up straight as Jean came back out of the kitchen with a pie.

She set it on the counter. “Apple,” she said. “Noah’s favorite.” Then she looked at Joanne and demanded, “Give me a piece of paper and pencil.”

Joanne pulled a sheet off the order pad and her pencil
out of her smock pocket. Jean snatched both from her, as if she were in a hurry to do this before she changed her mind. She started scribbling and said, “This is the way to Noah’s place. Just head out on Main Street, on through town, then turn right at County Road 152. You’ll see his place on the right. Just tell him you’re bringing a pie from Jean Garfield and that she said he should talk to you.”

She shoved the little map at me and gave me a look like she wished I’d hurry up and go before she snatched the pie back and changed her mind.

“Who is Noah?” I asked.

“Noah Litchfield. My sister—God rest her soul—was married to him. She passed last spring. Anyway, Harold Litchfield was their son.”

Joanne was staring at the map. “But that’s—” she stopped. “Oh.” She gave me a sorrowful look, then looked at Jean. “Now I remember some customer telling me the story….”

Jean gave her a look. “Shush up, Joanne.”

Will and I sat in the car on the gravel path that led up to Noah Litchfield’s small wood frame house. To the west of that house, along the county road, was a cemetery. “Piney Woods Cemetery” was the name spelled out on a sign over the wrought iron gate, and in fact, the cemetery was amply filled with pine trees among the headstones.

I looked at Will, who was holding Jean’s pie in his lap. He looked a little pale.

“We don’t have to do this,” I said.

“I want to know. Don’t you?”

Sitting in Mama’s car, staring at the ramshackle house
where supposedly lived a man who had the answers about her last years, I wished I hadn’t brought up the possibility of finding Mama in Shelby. But now not knowing what had happened to her would weigh us down for the rest of the trip. I couldn’t do that to Will.

I opened my car door. “Come on,” I said.

Will followed me, carrying the pie, Trusty trotting along beside him. We went up the rickety steps, knocked on the front door, waited.

“Maybe he’s not home. Maybe we should—”

“His truck is by the house, so he’s home,” Will said.

I glanced off the side of the porch at a red, rickety pickup truck. “I’m not sure that truck even runs. He could have another truck or car and be in town, or away—”

But of course Will ignored me and knocked again, harder.

A second later, the door creaked open. An old, skinny man peered out at us. He looked at me for a second, did a double-take, then started to shut the door.

“Mr. Litchfield, Mrs. Jean Garfield said if we brought this apple pie that you would talk to us!” Will said quickly.

The man peered out at us again. “Then you might as well come on in. If Jean sent you out here to talk to me, and I don’t, she’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

We followed Mr. Litchfield into his front parlor—even Trusty, who Mr. Litchfield liked immediately. Trusty was wary of the elderly man kneeling beside him, but Will cooed at him until he let Mr. Litchfield pet him. After we settled into the dim parlor—the only light came from a fire
in a buck stove—Mr. Litchfield took the apple pie to his kitchen. I looked around, noting carved wood figurines—of animals, people, trees—dotting every surface from windowsills to the fireplace mantel. The figurines reminded me of the salt and pepper shakers in Grandma’s diner, except Mr. Litchfield had made these pieces, not just collected them. He came back from the kitchen with several slices of bologna for Trusty, who gobbled them up and then settled in front of the fire.

Then Mr. Litchfield asked us what we were doing in Shelby, Montana. I started to ask, right away, about Mama, but Will interrupted and said we were on a road trip to Alaska to see
his
land. When Mr. Litchfield laughed and looked skeptical, Will went back out to the car to get his framed square inch deed. As soon as Will went out the front door, Trusty was at the screen door, watching him.

“You look just like Rita,” Mr. Litchfield said.

I made myself hold his gaze. “I’ve been told. Except for my nose. Like my daddy’s.”

Mr. Litchfield nodded. “I only met him once. He came here, looking for your mama. She and my son were staying with us then. I want you to know that Rita never mentioned that she had children. Or a husband back in Ohio. If we’d known that, we’d have never let her and Harold stay here. He told us they’d met and married before getting here.”

My throat tightened.
She never mentioned us.
And then I thought,
Daddy must have come here when he said he was going to Florida to check on Mama
.

“Is she…does she…live nearby still?” I asked as Will came back in, holding his deed.

Mr. Litchfield studied me for another long moment.
“Darlin’, this isn’t a pretty tale. Are you sure you want to hear it? Or have your little brother hear it? If you think that you’re going to meet your mother and she’ll pull you both into her arms and tell you she loves you and that there will be a sweet reunion, I have to tell you that that is not how life works.”

Will came back in as Mr. Litchfield was talking. “We know that,” he snapped.

Mr. Litchfield stared at him then.
Assessing,
I thought. Deciding.

Then he sighed. “All right. We hadn’t seen our son, Harold, in years, not since he shipped off with the army in World War Two.

“And then, about seven years ago, he showed up with Rita McKenzie. Said he’d met her in Ohio, before the war, scouting talent for the Chicago record company where he worked. On a road trip, he happened in to where she was singing—the luckiest day of his life, he said. After the war, he got his old job back and he looked her up again. They went to Chicago for a while, and he set up a few singing sessions for her, but things didn’t work out. Then he lost his job. We never heard why, but I’m guessing he had too many wild nights and didn’t make enough money for his company.

“He told us that they were married and that they were going to be in Shelby just for a little while, stay with us until they got back on their feet. Then her husband showed up—that was a shock. She’d written him, asking for a divorce because she wanted to be free to marry Harold. I only met your dad once, but I felt sorry for him. He begged her to come back with him, talked about the two of you, but she said no. She’d rather die, she said, than go back to Ohio. She
was staying with Harold, and soon they’d go back to Chicago, where she could sing.”

Mr. Litchfield shook his head. He picked up a figure of an owl from the end table, thumbing the top of the owl’s wooden head as if it were a worry stone. “It about broke my wife’s heart, learning that our only son had taken a woman away from her husband and children. Mine, too. I wouldn’t talk to them after that. Or give them money. I kicked them both out.”

I swallowed hard. “Did they go back to Chicago, then?”

Mr. Litchfield stared into the fire for a long time. I looked at Will, tried to read in the dim light how he was taking this news. He looked tired but then he turned his gaze to me.
I’m fine,
his expression said. I nodded.

“Mr. Litchfield, please tell us the rest,” I said. “Did they go back to Chicago?”

Finally, he shook his head. “No. Harold worked here, odd jobs. Rita sang at several different clubs. I never heard her, but I heard talk that she had a lovely voice. I also heard talk that they really did get married. That’s when my wife wanted me to go see them, talk to them, but I was having none of it. Then one day the sheriff came out here, told us they’d been out driving in Harold’s truck. The sheriff said it was hard to tell from what was left, but it looked like your mother was driving, tried to cross the railroad track, even though the guard crossing bar had come down, but they didn’t make it across in time. They died instantly.”

He looked up at me, said softly, “Rumor has it that Rita had just found out she was, well, expecting a child. But no one seems to know if that’s true.”

Then Mr. Litchfield stared out the window. “They’re
buried out there. Maureen, my wife, insisted on it. And now she’s buried there, too. I don’t think she ever forgave me for not speaking to Harold and Rita after your father was here. I think she always thought if I had, they’d be alive. Maybe if I had, she’d be alive. Doctor said last year she died of emphysema. I think it was mostly from a broken heart, though.”

He looked down at the wooden owl, as if just then aware that he was holding it. I wondered if he’d started carving after Maureen had died.

Will and I walked to the cemetery before nightfall. We asked Mr. Litchfield if he’d like to go with us, but he told us no.