Bent Road (36 page)

Aunt Ruth lowers her head. She must be crying because her shoulders are shaking but she isn’t making any noise. Uncle Ray swings around, presses the stock to his cheek and aims at Dad.

“You God damned well better tell me.”

Uncle Ray pulls back the bolt action, presses his cheek to the barrel. He is steady now, lined up, ready for a solid shot.

Daniel slowly stands, his leg unfolding beneath him. Feet shoulder width, Ian had said with a sawed-off broomstick in hand. Left foot forward. Toes pointed straight ahead. Knees slightly bent.

Uncle Ray tilts his head an inch to the right the way a man does when he closes one eye and looks down the barrel of his rifle.

“No,” Mama shouts. “Ray, stop.”

Daniel lifts the shotgun. Brings the stock to his cheek. Back straight.

“Ray, please.” Aunt Ruth is crying. She sounds far away, like she’s inside a dream.

Daniel lines up the bead sight with the notch at the tip of the gun. Something snaps. A gun is cocked. Inhale. Exhale halfway. Just halfway, Ian had said. Hold steady. Be careful of the blockers. Give them twenty feet or so. Buckshot will scatter. The target will rise up between the pushers and the blockers.

“Now, Daniel,” Mama shouts. “Now.”

Uncle Ray squares his stance. Dad lunges. Daniel fires.

 

T
here is a crack in the air. A loud pop. Celia grabs for Ruth, pulling her so closely that together they nearly fall, tumbling and tripping over one another in their matted and muddy slippers. No matter what they see now, what they saw Ray do, he was Ruth’s husband, a good man long ago. So many things led him to this moment, things set in motion twenty-five years earlier. What man would have taken a different path? Not even Arthur. Wouldn’t he have started to drink? Wouldn’t he have eventually hated the woman who could never be Celia? Wouldn’t he have tried to kill the man who took her away? No, Ruth won’t be able to live with the sight of what’s happening to Ray.

She needs to remember him through pictures. A younger man, smiling, in love with Eve. She needs to remember that he would have been a good father had life turned a different direction. She’ll love him because he loved Eve and she’ll pass on these memories, but none of that will be possible if she sees Ray now, his shirt tearing open, his blood spraying up toward the porch light, his lower skull ripped open. She could live with the knowledge, but not the sight. Holding Ruth’s face against her side, Celia pulls her backward, down the drive as Arthur dives back and away. Daniel’s shotgun echoes in the clear night air and ends with a sharp clap. There is silence.

The force throws Ray forward. He lands near Mary Robison’s feet. Steam rises up from his torn body and, like Mary Robison’s blood, Ray’s splatters across the snow that drifts near the back door. It soaks in, leaving holes and dents in the soft white mound. At the top of the stairs leading into the house, Celia checks for Evie and exhales with relief when she isn’t there, peeking through the screened door. She’ll be in her closet, huddled under the skirts and dresses. Celia screamed at her to make her let go. She screamed at Daniel, too. She told her only son to kill a man. Had there been a kinder thing, she would have done it. Standing with the wind whipping at her skirt and blowing her hair from her face, her body harder and leaner than the day they arrived in Kansas, this is what she knows. Sometimes there is no kinder way.

Daniel is the first to move. He lowers the tip of his grandfather’s shotgun and lets it slide off his shoulder. His movement pulls Arthur from the ground, slowly. He doesn’t want to startle Daniel. He has that look about him, as if he’s not quite inside himself anymore, as if he doesn’t know his own father, as if he might fire again. Staring down at Ray, Arthur nods. He is dead. So is Mary Robison. Arthur knows dead. It takes him no time to see that. Then, he walks to his son, lays one hand on Daniel’s wrist and the other on the barrel of the gun. Daniel lifts his eyes.

“It’s what had to be done,” Arthur says in a strong voice.

There was a time when Celia would have quieted him, asked him to lower his voice. Some things are best whispered, for the sake of fine manners. But she knows that Arthur speaks in a full voice so Daniel will never feel shame.

“You did a fine job, young man. Just fine.”

Daniel turns to Celia and she nods.

Fine. Just fine.

Evie closes her eyes, tilts her head toward the sky and inhales. This warm day, after so many cold, has a special smell about it. Aunt Ruth says things are greening up, so this must be what green smells like. With the sun warming her cheeks, Evie leans into Aunt Ruth, who pulls Evie close and kisses the top of her head. Aunt Ruth doesn’t have to lean down as far anymore. Lately, most often at night when she lays in bed, Evie’s shins and elbows ache. Mama says they are growing pains. Just that morning, she marked Evie’s height on her bedroom doorframe with a black pen. Since moving to Kansas, she’s grown almost an inch and a half. Mama has always said Evie would grow in her own sweet time.

Laying one hand on Aunt Ruth’s hard, round belly, Evie cradles Aunt Eve’s Virgin Mary statue in the other. In less than a month, Aunt Ruth will have a baby instead of a big belly. Evie holds her breath, waiting for a gentle nudge from Elisabeth.

“Get ready,” Aunt Ruth says, squeezing Evie even tighter.

Evie clutches the statue to her chest, presses one ear against Aunt Ruth’s stomach, and covers the other with her free hand. Near Grandma’s barn, Daniel is wadding up old newspaper as kindling for the fire Dad asked him to start in the old trash barrel. Across the driveway, Jonathon sits behind the wheel of Grandpa’s tractor, his hat pulled low on his forehead. Standing nearby, Daddy gives a nod and after a few chokes and coughs, the tractor starts up. Daniel leaves the barrel, smoke drifting up into the air and walks a few feet to stand behind Mama, Elaine and Grandma, his arms crossed, his hat pulled low like Jonathon’s.

Aunt Ruth touches the Virgin Mary’s head. “I’m glad you fixed her up,” she says, leaning down and talking into Evie’s ear so she can hear over the tractor.

Aunt Ruth wraps both arms around Evie as the tractor rolls across the drive. First, the wheels crush the tall grass that Daddy never lets Daniel mow, and when the tractor crashes into the small shed, Aunt Ruth’s chest shudders. Daddy said the wood wasn’t worth saving. He’d rather burn it and all the overgrown grass, too. He said what’s past is past and it’s time the Scott family puts it to rest. Aunt Ruth lowers her head, and when it’s over, when Jonathon has backed away and turned off the tractor, she stands straight and takes a deep breath.

“Smells like green, doesn’t it?” Evie says.

 

D
aniel tugs on his hat when the dust settles and walks back to the barrel. Using one of the longer branches he gathered from Grandma’s front yard, he pokes at his fire. It’s going good now, burning strong, so he drops the branch, walks past Dad who is still staring at the empty spot where the shed used to be, and loads himself up with an armful of splintered wood. When he turns, suddenly feeling like he shouldn’t toss the wood on the fire, Dad gives him a nod and a pat on the back.

“Thank you, son,” he says and, lowering himself to his knees, he fills his own arms, stands and follows Daniel to the barrel. The two men stop a few feet from the fire and toss in the wooden planks. Soon their arms are empty. They stand together watching the ash and sparks float up into the air and disappear. Mama, Grandma Reesa and Aunt Ruth have gone inside to make Grandma’s fried chicken. Dad still says it’s the best in the Midwest, but mostly he says it when Mama isn’t around to hear. Jonathon has gone off with Elaine, probably so Elaine can make him write his share of thank-you notes for their wedding gifts, and Evie is sitting on the top stair with the Virgin Mary at her side. When the sparks have settled and only smoke is drifting up, Dad and Daniel return for another load.

 

C
elia sits across from Ruth, a paper bag placed between them on Reesa’s table where she usually keeps the salt and pepper shakers. Grease sizzles and pops in the black skillet on the stove, and the chicken broth begins to boil, drops of it hissing as they splash on the gas burner. With a wooden spoon in one hand, Celia cracks an egg into the dumpling dough and starts to stir again. Reesa looks at Celia as if to tell her no more eggs but clears her throat instead and goes back to poking her chicken. Reaching across the table, Ruth touches the brown paper bag.

“I did think about it,” she says. “In the very beginning.”

“Anyone would have,” Celia says, pausing for a moment before beginning to dig and stir again. “You thought you were alone.”

“But I never would have done it. Not to Elisabeth.”

Celia pushes aside the bowl, stands and takes the paper bag. “Do you want to me take care of this?”

“I never could have used it,” Ruth says, crossing her hands on the table. “Don’t even know why I kept so much.” She looks up at Celia. “Things never seemed quite so bad when no one was around to see.” She tucks her hair behind her ears, a motion that makes her look like a young girl again. “But then you all moved back, and I was so ashamed for you to know. All the drinking and the times he hurt me. You all made it”—she pauses—“more real. That’s when I knew I could never let my own child see those things.” She shakes her head and pulls two small brown bottles from her apron pocket. “These will need to go, too.”

“Celia’s right, child,” Reesa says. With a teaspoon, she scoops a dumpling and dips it into the simmering broth. “Any sane woman would have done the same. You were taking care.”

Celia picks up the bottles, holds them in one hand and raises her eyebrows because a smile doesn’t seem appropriate. Ruth gives her a nod, and Celia carries the bottles and the bag from the kitchen.

Walking across the gravel drive toward Arthur and Daniel, Celia wonders when wedge root is in season. Ruth must have gathered it months ago. Surely it didn’t grow under the cover of snow. No, she must have thought ahead. In the early weeks, when she considered how she could end her pregnancy, she could have found the plant growing along every ditch in the county, but by the time her plan changed and she needed to gather enough to kill a six-foot-four-inch 220-pound man, the wedge root must have been harder to come by. How much wedge root did it take to boil out enough oil to fill these two small bottles? When Ruth pulled the bag and bottles from her suitcase, Celia never asked her how she would have done it or if it mattered that Ray wasn’t the one who killed Julianne Robison. Would she have seeped the wedge root with Ray’s morning coffee over weeks and months until it eventually killed him? Would one strong dose of the oil, maybe mixed with the base of a nice chicken stock, have done the trick? No, Celia never asked.

Outside the screened door, Evie sits on the top step, cradling the Virgin Mary to her chest. As Celia passes by, she touches the top of Evie’s head. Evie hugs the small statue with both arms and slips inside before the screened door falls closed. Walking toward Arthur and Daniel, she thinks that there was a time when she would have asked Daniel to step away. When he was a boy, just a year ago, afraid of the monster at the top of Bent Road, she would have asked him to leave. But not today, because now he is a man.

It’s still there, that lazy bend in the fence line a quarter mile northeast of Reesa’s house, except the fields are no longer empty like they were on the night that the Scott family arrived in Kansas. That spring, the short sprouts that had lain dormant all winter began to grow and when the weather warmed and the spring rains came, those sprouts grew and became shiny, green stalks that carpeted the fields. More time passed, and under the summer sun, the green stalks faded to yellow. The bristly heads are heavy and soon the farmers will harvest their golden crops, leaving the fields bare once again. As autumn draws closer, the tumbleweeds will begin to dry out. Their woody stems will turn brittle and break near the ground. They’ll tumble and roll and the curve at the top of Bent Road will scoop them up.

Celia knows now to slow near the top of that hill. She edges toward the shoulder in case of oncoming trucks that she might not see in time. She knows where home is and which way to turn should Arthur’s truck slip over the top of the next hill unseen.

Sliding in between Arthur and Daniel, Celia rolls down the top of the paper sack until it’s closed good and tight. Heat spills out of the barrel, keeping the three of them at a distance. The wood crackles and hisses as it burns and smells of sweet cedar. Arthur slips an arm around Celia’s shoulders, and saying a quiet God bless you to the memory of Aunt Eve, she tosses the bag into the fire.

I owe tremendous thanks to Dennis Lehane and Sterling Watson. Together, they introduced the Eckerd College Writers in Paradise Conference to St. Petersburg, Florida, and have inspired and educated countless writers, myself among them. For your generosity and boundless commitment, I thank you. My deepest gratitude also to Christine Caya and the rest of the WIP writers group.

Thank you to my wonderful agent, Jenny Bent of The Bent Agency, for your professionalism and belief in this book, and many thanks to Judy Walters for plucking me from the slush pile. To my editor, Denise Roy: Your dedication to the craft of writing and commitment to your profession are an inspiration, and I thank you for your guidance. My appreciation also to the entire team at Dutton for their support of this book.

To my dear friends Karina Berg Johansson and Adam Smith, thank you for setting the high bar and for sharing so many laughs. Thank you to the following people who have inspired and supported me all these many years: to Kim Turner for being my first reader; to Stacy Brandenburg, for sharing stories over coffee; to Lisa Atkinson, Chris Blair, and Scotti Andrews, for your guidance in the early chapters; and to my parents, Jeanette and Norm Harold, and my in-laws, Evelyn and Orville Roy. Thanks, also, to my reading group of eleven years.