Echo Lake: A Novel (19 page)

Richardson, Levi Richardson. It was a common name, but maybe they were related. Was he old enough to have been alive then, maybe even a child, old enough to have memories of this missing girl?

Emily closed the folder and ate saltines until her mouth was so dry she swallowed hard to get the ball of crackers down.

She planned what she would say to Levi when she went to him. She’s ask him if he remembered Connie’s disappearance. She’d tell him that she needed his help.

She went to the kitchen sink and turned the tap on and bent down to drink directly from the stream of water as she did sometimes when she stumbled into the bathroom at night from a sharp, sticky feeling of thirst, too tired to go down to the kitchen and get a cup, her hair darkening in the metal basin though she tried to hold it back and out of the water.

3

I’m sorry to bother ya’ll, Connie said, crossing her arms across her chest. I’m just on my way through. The man who had turned faced her and smiled, though the others looked down at their shoes. One said
fuck
as he exhaled smoke and threw down his cigarette to crush under his feet. She recognized one of the standing men: he worked at the General Store. He was just out of high school, a Richardson, John Richardson. His family owned most everything there was to own in town: the gas station, the general store, and a cafe between Heartshorne and Keno that served breakfast all of the time, their eggs salty and tasting of butter and bacon even when nobody at the table had ordered bacon. They just looked at her. Connie stepped forward, holding her books close to her body.

I’m sorry, she said again, I’m just trying to get by. She walked forward, hoping that they would part their tight circle in the middle of the path let her go. She wouldn’t say anything: she wasn’t a snitch, and if a Richardson was out here, maybe it wasn’t something funny after all. Maybe they were just fixing the stuck cash register.

Hey, hey, wait. James stood, letting the cash register fall to the ground and the coins inside clatter.

She stopped before him. He pushed his black hair out of his face. He was gaunt and leaned to the left, his posture unsteady. He was tall and seemed to slouch to make up for it. He had the posture of an animal that ran quickly, its belly against the ground.

It felt wrong, everything about him.

I don’t think you can go, he told her.

I won’t tell, she said, stepping backward. I just want to get to the—

Won’t tell what? James hooked his fingers in his pockets and slouched backward, rocking on his heels. You think we done something wrong?

Connie looked to the other men, looking for one who would meet her eye, that would step forward and say
cool it James, she’s just a kid
, like something from a movie, like how the boy on a motorcycle in a movie could break windows and smoke cigarettes but still wouldn’t hurt a girl; those boys were always good underneath their leather and their slang and their hair oil. But nobody looked at her. They looked at the ground or at James as he rocked and smiled slightly and waited for her to respond.

I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not gonna tell and I want to go, she said. Her anger was rising. She wondered if she could run faster than them. If she threw her books and ran back she might run into somebody at the school. There were a few scattered houses just past the school, too. She calculated in her head how long it would take: not long. She could scream the whole way.

We can let her go, Jimmy. She won’t say nothing. A man with the scars of old acne under each cheekbone and blonde, greasy hair spoke up.

She wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t in charge and hung towards the back, smoking nervously.

James shook his head. I can’t risk it.

Then what are we supposed to do with her? Another asked.

She didn’t hear the response because she had thrown down her books and started to run back toward the school.

4

Levi invited Emily inside his manufactured home. It had the appearance of stability, the same beiges and whites of any middle-class home, but when she leaned against a wall, she could feel it give beneath her shoulder.

Would you like some tea?

Emily took the tea, not sweet, as she’d expected, but acidic and bitter with lemon.

I’d hoped to see you at church. Levi sat across the kitchen table from her. In the middle of the table, a napkin holder burst with square paper napkins, each with the same autumn print she’d seen at the church dinner. His kitchen was immaculate. A list of groceries was pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet that said
Heartshorne Free Will Baptist: Welcome to the Family!

Do you need the church bus to come out there to pick you up on Sundays? He asked. He looked up from his glass, excited. Sometimes people don’t go because of transportation issues, he said, but the church family can always help.

He seemed so hopeful that she would say yes, that her lack of attendence had just been a matter of the church van not going quite far enough down the road.

No, she said, that’s fine. I’m not really—I’m not really a Christian, I suppose. He sat up straight and nodded, interested now, animated with purpose. She could feel where the conversation would go next if she didn’t take control of it.

But I am not, not anti-Christian, she said, and I understand why you would want to be. Want to be a Christian, I mean. She paused, not sure what to say next. He readied to speak, but she cut him off.

I’m sorry, Levi, I know this is important to you, but I actually came here to ask something specific, not about religion. She breathed in deeply. I need to ask you about my family.

When not in church, he seemed smaller, older, his skin thinner and more delicate. He seemed vulnerable in this gleaming, plastic house. He sipped his tea and nodded. He sank back in his seat, the energy leaving his face.

Okay, he said. Shoot.

My mother grew up here, Frannie’s neice. Her name was Connie, Connie Collins. Levi nodded.

I recently learned that she disappeared for two days in the mid-sixties, right after school one day, and was found again stumbling along highway two, near where Rod’s Swap Shop is right now. She wouldn’t say where she’d been—she couldn’t remember. But I never knew about it. She never told me anything. Which makes me think this has something to do with our whole family leaving town soon after.

Except Frannie, he said. Frannie stayed.

Yes.

He nodded. I was small when it happened, five, six. It wasn’t something I knew about personally, but I do remember. I assumed you already knew.

Emily shook her head. I was told nothing. So, the general store was called Richardsons, the place where she was found by. Was that your family’s business?

He nodded. Cousins, though. We didn’t have much to do with them. They were Pentecostals, he told her, as way of explanation.

Your mother really never told you anything about this? He asked. He looked at her, his eyes assuming a look his parishioners must have known well—a moist, focused concern.

She shook her head. I only know that my family left sometime in the sixties. I know they scattered, but we didn’t keep in touch. My mother didn’t keep up with her sisters and brothers, her parents, anyone. Emily laughed. Honestly, don’t take this personally, but the only things she had to say about Heartshorne was that it was a pit—a place you get sucked down into and can never escape. She hated it.

I can understand that, he said. Some people find life here too quiet—they want bigger things. Maybe she was one of those people.

Emily looked down into her tea. Her mother had always wanted something bigger, but she had never gotten it. Probably because she was never sure what she wanted, only what she did not want.

I don’t feel the same way she does, Emily said. I like it here, even if I don’t quite know how to live here yet.

Levi nodded. I bet it’s hard, not knowing anyone. Not having any family.

Emily nodded. That’s what I’m here to talk about, she said. I just want somebody to tell me the truth, she said. What happened with my mother, as far as you know? What did you hear? Anything is more than what I have right now.

He sighed and leaned away from the table. I was so young, he said, that nothing I knew came firsthand. I’d hear my mother on the telephone with her sister, or the things my father said after going out on his visits to parishioners. It was big news then, the biggest we’d had in a while. Your mother was a regular, decent girl—that’s why everyone was surprised when she didn’t come home. There wasn’t a boy, not as far as anyone knew. She was just gone.

I think that’s what scared everyone most, he said. And when she came back, she wouldn’t say a thing. Levi stood up abruptly, interrupting himself. He walked over to the kitchen and and brought out a dishtowel. He wiped the rings of condensation from their glasses and then wiped the sweat from the bottoms of sides.

I’m sorry, he said, folding the towel on the table by his glass. I like to keep things neat. He smiled. I don’t really believe that cleanliness is next to Godliness, but I do try to keep my spaces in order. He shrugged.

Emily got the feeling that people didn’t always react well to his neatness.

So, anyway, he said, taking his seat again, your mother, she was a good girl. And when she came back, everyone was happy, it seemed to me, though nobody knew what had happened. I don’t remember much until a week or two later, when the boy went missing. Then talk started again.

Emily sat up straight. Missing? Like my mother? She hadn’t read about anyone else missing. Levi shook his head. He wasn’t a boy, really—more like a young man. In his twenties. I remember my Mother on the phone, saying that it had something to do with that Collins girl, that it was payback. My Father wouldn’t talk about it. He called it gossip and said
it’s a tragedy, whatever happened, when young people go astray
. I remember that specifically.

I remember the day we heard about your mother, he said. My father had come home from visiting a widow, a woman with her teeth missing and a foot swollen from diabetes, too sick to make it to church. Back in those days, older women without family needed somebody to take care of them or they’d end up with twenty cats and nothing to eat. That’s what the church did. He came back from the visit full of gossip that he’d heard from her, not to dispense, mind you, but to teach us something. He wouldn’t tell us the details, but he said that the Collins girl was missing and there were rumors of her running off with some boy. He said that nobody but God knew what had really happened to the Collins girl, that gossip was malicious. My mother nodded along with him and then went and told her friends the very next day.

And then, soon after, after your mother came back safe, the Collinses left, soon after the man went missing. I know it got bad enough around town—apparently they had a falling out with somebody, or people just didn’t like the fact that Connie wouldn’t tell— that my father visited them to see if he could mend the rift. They wouldn’t speak to him. They were packing their things to leave when he visited. Connie, your mother, she wouldn’t speak. She didn’t talk at all to strangers for a while, that’s what my father told us.

So they left then, after a man disappeared?

Levi nodded. The boy died—it was probably in the paper, if you want to look it up. They left soon after that. All but Frannie, who had a job at the diner and was engaged to a man here in town, though nothing ever came of it. She never married.

The kitchen clock, a red cat, the plastic tail hanging down and ticking the seconds, suddenly sounded the hour.

I’m sorry to keep you for so long, Emily said.

It’s nothing. Levi shrugged. I’m not that busy today. I don’t have quite so many widows as my father did. Everybody lives much longer, now, and fewer people want the church to visit them at home. They think I’m there to sell them something.

If you don’t mind, I have one more question, Emily said. I don’t understand about the man who died, or disappeared. What did it have to do with my mother?

Levi leaned forward again, fixing her with those practiced, pastor eyes. I’m going to be honest with you, Emily. People believed then that your family killed that man. And that he deserved it, for some reason, and that it had something to do with your mother’s disappearance. There were never any official charges against anyone regarding your mother, but it didn’t matter what happened officially—everybody seemed to know something I didn’t. My parents were quiet and hushed when the subject came up, afraid to give us bad dreams or fuel for telling tales, I guess. And that’s why your family had to leave. They were driven out, I guess you could say. Not literally, but by all of the rumors, the whispering, the way people looked at them. It was probably impossible for them to go back to normal life after that, despite their guilt or lack of it. Things like this happen, and they’re kept quiet, but for some reason, your family couldn’t keep it quiet.

Emily wrapped her hand around the glass of iced tea and took a sip to occupy her mouth and hands as she tried to understand what Levi was telling her. He offered her another glass and she shook her head.