Bones & All (19 page)

*   *   *

The cabin was old but sturdy looking, with a well and a cast-iron hand pump just off the back porch. Sully led us through a sitting room with a woodstove, a braided rug, and at least three or four deer heads mounted on the wall. A stag's antlers nearly grazed the ceiling.

“Come on in and drop your things before we eat,” Sully said as he flipped the light switch in our bedroom. There were two twin beds, each made up with a red and blue patchwork quilt. “You kids all right sharin' a room? Only two rooms for sleepin' and I get the other one, so if you'd rather you can take the couch, all right, Lee?”

“This'll be fine, thanks.” Lee dropped his pack and edged past us out of the room again. “I'm just going to have a shower, if you don't mind.”

Sully and I went outside, and he bent over the campfire pit and poked at our dinner with a long stick. “The longer you leave it, the better it's gonna taste.” He reached for a short-handled spade and gently lifted the foil package out of the ash. “If you please, Missy, there's bowls and spoons in the kitchen.”

When I returned with the utensils Sully spooned out two heaping bowls of steaming vegetables and tender meat. “Ahhh,” he murmured to himself as he brought the first spoonful to his lips. “Now here's what I call a midnight feast.”

We sat in old wooden chairs around the smoldering fire, eating in contented silence. Moths gathered and twitched around the porch light. The woods were alive with cicadas, but if I focused on the sound for a moment too long I began to feel uneasy. The forest might go on for miles, and who knew what else was in it?

Lee came out with wet hair in a clean T-shirt. Sully went back to the fire pit to fill another bowl and Lee said, “Only a little for me, thanks.”

“You from around here, son?”

Lee applied himself to the stew. “Nope.”

“He's from Virginia,” I offered.

“You goin' back there, when you see this little lady on her way?”

“We'll see how it all plays out.” Lee laid the metal bowl aside and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Why do you ask?”

Sully turned to me. “I know what I told you, that night we met: best not to make friends and all that. But since then I've been thinkin'. It's a long and lonely road, and there ain't no sense makin' it longer and lonelier than it has to be.”

Lee stifled a burp. “Well said.” I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic.

“Maybe what I'm trying to say is, folks like us, we gotta make our own family.”

I thought of my real grandfather, who drank red wine with dinner and drove a navy blue Cadillac and probably wished I'd never been born. He would never cook a meal for me or offer me a place to stay. “Thanks, Sully,” I said as I handed him my bowl for a second helping. “For this delicious dinner—and for looking out for me.” The fire flashed in the whites of Lee's eyes as he rolled them.

Sully's hair rope never made an appearance, and I wondered if he didn't want to bring it out only because Lee was there. It was pretty late anyway, so we didn't linger too long at the fire. I washed out the bowls in the kitchen while Sully stoked the fire in the woodstove. Early summer evenings could still get pretty cold up here.

Lee sat on the sofa and looked around. “You said this is your cabin, Sully?”

“Sure, it's mine.” The old man shrugged. “Sometimes when things get sticky I come back to one of my usual places, where I know nobody's gonna bother me. Here's a piece of advice from old Sully: Git yourself a place like this, soon as you can manage it.”

“When things get sticky,” Lee echoed, a little too pointedly. “Got it.” He turned in his seat to regard the wood-paneled wall, studded liberally with deer heads. “Looks like you're quite an avid hunter.”

“Those trophies ain't mine, but I do like to go stalkin' a stag every now and again.”

“Do you come up here often?”

“Now and then. Good to come right about this time of year. Ain't nobody here in summertime. They're all down by the lakes.”

Lee rose and ducked outside, then came back in with the road atlas. “I'd sure appreciate it if you could show me exactly where we are on the map,” he said to Sully. “We'd like to get to Sandhorn by tomorrow afternoon, and I don't want to waste any time.”

While they conferred at the kitchen table I took out Mrs. Harmon's yarn and needles and curled up on the sofa under a rawhide lampshade. I managed to cast on twenty stitches, but when I tried to knit into them on the next row I got hopelessly mixed up, so I put down the needles and went poking through the end table. In the drawer I saw a deck of playing cards, a book of Mad Libs,
The Midwest Bird-Watching Guide,
and a handful of jacks. When I opened the cabinet underneath I found a basket much like Mrs. Harmon's, with a crochet hook tucked into a skein of bright red acrylic.

Soon afterward Sully wished us goodnight. I took a long-overdue shower and got ready for bed. Lee closed the door and turned the key in the lock.

“Well?” I asked. “How'd you like your hobo stew?”

“Hoboes give me indigestion.”

“Har har.”

“He cooked enough food for all three of us, and then some. How did he know he was gonna have company tonight?”

I drew up the patchwork quilt over my shoulder, the ET plushie tucked under my chin. “You're getting paranoid,” I said.

“I like to think I was pretty darned polite.”

“You were awfully…”

“Awfully what?”

“Awfully inquisitive.”

Lee shot me a look as he turned out the bedside lamp. “I learned that from you,” he said. “You don't know if you can trust somebody 'til you've worn them out with questions.”

*   *   *

In the morning Sully's truck was gone.

MISSY:

There's eggs and bacon in the fridge, help yourselves. Why don't you come back once you found your daddy and I'll teach you how to fish?

See ya soon,

SULLIVAN

I felt Lee reading over my shoulder. “Why is he always calling you Missy?”

I smiled. “It's short for Maren.”

Again he shot me a look. “No, it's not.”

We helped ourselves to breakfast, taking our coffee in the rocking chairs on the front porch to soak up the creak and hum of the forest. The bumpy dirt track led away from the cabin, vanishing in the distant trees like a trail of breadcrumbs.

 

8

The hours it took to get to my dad's hometown were the quietest we'd ever passed together. It felt like Lee didn't want to talk, like he was nudging me away because we might be headed in separate directions this time tomorrow. It might take me a while to find my dad, but when I did I wanted Lee to stay too.

Sandhorn wasn't too far from Lake Superior, and on the way in we passed lots of roadside shops advertising summer boating charters and holiday cabins with tranquil water views. Another small town, a main street, a white church at the edge of a tidy green lawn. Lee pulled up to the curb beside a phone booth. “Moment of truth,” he said.

Maybe one of many. I got out with my notebook and change purse and shut myself in the booth, and with trembling fingers I flipped to the back of the phone directory. There was only one entry.
Yearly, Barbara
.

The address, the phone number. It was so simple.

*   *   *

I found my father's mother as she was mailing a letter. She stood at the bottom of her driveway in a gray shawl cardigan and natty shearling slippers, lifting the flag on the mailbox with a long white hand. As I approached she pulled her cardigan collar snug around her neck and shuddered, as if I carried storm clouds in my wake. It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon, but she was dressed for November.

As I opened my mouth to greet her she turned and walked briskly up the driveway, her slippers scuffing against the asphalt. “Wait,” I called. “Mrs. Yearly? My name is Maren. I've come to talk to you.”

She paused, her hand on the railing, and turned on the top step to face me as I hurried up the walk. Barbara Yearly looked me over and, satisfied that I was the right age to be the person she suspected me to be, said: “How did you find me?”

I unfolded the birth certificate and held it out to her, and as she peered and read my name her eyebrows went up. “They gave you our name.”

What other name would they give me?
But I said, as neutrally as I could manage, “My parents were married.”

“Yes.” The woman handed me back my birth certificate. “Yes, I know. I suppose you have a few questions for me. You'd better come inside.”

I followed her through a living room dominated by a fireplace of rough gray stone. The shades were drawn on the windows to either side, so that the only light in the room came from the narrow slivers the blinds cast on the brown shag carpet. In a darkened corner I glimpsed a tiny bar, two leather-cushioned stools, and shelves of overturned sherry glasses lightly filmed in dust. I wondered if I would meet my grandfather, or if he was still at work.

As Barbara Yearly padded into the kitchen I caught a whiff of something ripe and faintly greasy, as if she hadn't washed her hair in weeks. It was dark but threaded with gray, pulled tightly into a knot at the nape of her long white neck. A few loose strands fell limply into her collar.

“I've never been to Minnesota before. It must get awfully cold here in the winter. Lots of snow?”

“It's cold all the time,” she said.

Always winter, never Christmas.
I shivered.

With an open palm Barbara Yearly offered me a chair at the table. I sat. “Well,” she began. “I certainly wasn't expecting this.”

I searched her face, but I couldn't see anything of myself in her. “You never knew my father had a child?”

She shook her head. “The last I heard from your father, he was going to marry Jeanette, I think her name was. She's your mother?”

I nodded. “Janelle.”

The woman shrugged. “I didn't think much of it. Figured it wouldn't last. Summer romances seldom do. I know that must sound unfeeling of me, but you might as well learn that now, and spare yourself the trouble.”

I cleared my throat. “Well, I'm sorry to surprise you.” I folded my hands on the tabletop, aware that I was trying to make myself look as innocuous as possible. “I guess I was afraid to call ahead.”

“Afraid? Why?”

I shrugged. “Afraid you wouldn't want to see me.”

Instead of answering she turned to the faucet, filled two glasses, and set one at my elbow. I thanked her as she sat down across the table, took a delicate sip, and waited, her eyes on the blank Formica between us.

“You're my dad's … mom?” I couldn't bring myself to use the word
grandmother
. I didn't have the nerve.

Mrs. Yearly folded her hands and looked me in the eye. “We took him in when he was about six years old.” She noted the look on my face and asked, “Your mother never told you?”

I shook my head.

“Where is your mother? Did she bring you?”

“No.”

“Does she know you've come here?”

“Sort of.”

The woman gave me a sharp look. “What does that mean?”

“She's not here,” I said. “She's in Pennsylvania.”

“Do you mean to tell me you ran away from home?”

I shook my head. “My mother thinks I'm old enough to live on my own now.”

I could almost hear Barbara Yearly's jaw creak as it fell open, and I saw the muscles in her throat working as she struggled to come up with an answer. After a moment she collected herself, took another sip of water, and said, “If you're looking for a home with your father, I'm very sorry to tell you, but that will not be possible. Frank has been institutionalized for some time now.”

Just like that, I lost the way to my castle in the sky. For what felt like a long time I sat staring at my hands in my lap, thinking,
Don't cry don't cry whatever you do don't cry
.

Then Barbara Yearly cleared her throat and I thought,
Maybe he's not that sick. Maybe when I come to see him he'll be happy and get better and we can still listen to
Revolver
while he fries the bacon.
I took a deep breath and decided on a new course. “I came for answers,” I said. “That's all.”

“What did your mother tell you?”

“Nothing, apart from the birth certificate. She … I guess she didn't like to talk about him.”

I caught a flash of irritation in her eyes. “I never met your mother,” said Barbara Yearly. “Frank sent us a picture and invited us down for the wedding, but we couldn't attend. My Dan wasn't well.”

Where was her husband? The house felt so cold and empty, I guess I didn't have to ask. “Mr. Yearly—is he…”

“He died almost nine years ago. Throat cancer. Your father was already in the home by that point.” She took a deep and quavering breath. “Still, it gives me a great deal of comfort to think that Dan and Tom are together now.”

“Tom?”

“Tom was our little boy.” Barbara pointed to a black-and-white photograph hanging above the light switch. “You can see him there. We took him to the portrait studio on his third birthday.”

The child was perched on a tricycle before a blank background, all rosy cheeks and dimpled wrists. I didn't dare ask her how he'd died. “You must have been devastated when you lost him.”

“More than you could ever imagine.”

“You adopted my father after Tom…?”

Barbara lifted her chin and nodded. “We knew the boy had been found under mysterious circumstances, but on reflection, I suppose we were too eager to overlook it.”

Suddenly it
was
cold in here. I felt the gooseflesh rising on my arms. “What do you mean, ‘mysterious circumstances'?”