Sweet Jiminy (3 page)

She hadn't waited up for someone to come home since her daughter was a teenager, and she felt out of practice. And a little ridiculous. First of all, waiting for her daughter hadn't ever kept her out of trouble, nor had it forged the meaningful, long-term relationship Willa had always assumed she'd enjoy with her offspring. Secondly, and more to the present point, her granddaughter was twenty-five and therefore didn't have a curfew. But she was a young, uncertain twenty-five, spending time in a place she didn't understand, and Willa felt apprehensive. Jiminy and Bo had been thick as thieves lately, but they generally called it a night at a decent hour. It was now nearly eleven. What could they be doing?

She dialed Lyn, who answered the phone sounding surprised.

“Lyn, it's Willa. Have you heard from Bo?”

“No, ma'am. What's the matter? What's happened?”

Willa felt guilty for introducing that note of panic into Lyn's night. But at least she wouldn't be the only one worrying now.

“Nothing, it's just Jiminy's not back yet and it's getting late. You don't know where they went?”

“Bo's staying at his friend's this summer, not with me. And he's grown now, so I don't ask too many questions.”

Willa knew this was a reasonable position, but still, it angered her.

Lyn waited for Willa to say something more. She could feel the tension on the line; could sense that she was being blamed for Jiminy's whereabouts. And though she liked that odd little girl just fine, there was only one Jiminy she'd ever wanted to be responsible for, and that Jiminy had been taken from her. She didn't have the energy for another, even if she was Willa's granddaughter.

She heard Willa suck her breath in between her teeth. It sounded chilly and impersonal, the whistle of an ill wind. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and controlled.

“Bo's not into any bad news now, is he?”

There was none of the loose warmth that Willa's vowels normally slid around in—they seemed mired in something cold and congealed.

Lyn took a moment to reply. Was Bo into any bad news? Of his own accord? More than the everyday bad news he had to swallow and shoulder and wade through and wear down? Nothing more than that. No, Bo wasn't into any bad news. Not the kind Willa was intimating. Lyn kept her calm.

“No, ma'am, he sure isn't. He's studying for the imp-cats, you know.”

“The MCATs,” Willa corrected testily.

Willa knew Lyn knew all about the MCATs. Knew she wasn't actually correcting her, but merely pointing out the slight speech impediment that crept into Lyn's pronunciations when she got agitated. Which was rare—Lyn was usually too disengaged to get at all riled, so her speech stayed steady. Willa felt cruel for having caused the distress, and petty for mocking its consequences.

“Yes, ma'am. Imp-cats. M . . . CATs,” Lyn said.

“I just didn't expect them to spend so much time together,” Willa continued.

She was trying to explain, but was only making it worse.

“Mmm-huh” was the reply.

“Well, I'm sure she'll be back soon. Will we be seeing you Thursday?”

“Mmm-huh.”

Willa walked herself around the kitchen to try and straighten herself out. She'd offended Lyn, she knew, and she'd confused herself even further. What could she do to make it up? Maybe a yellowcake. Lyn always loved yellowcake.

She'd just cracked an egg and shaken away the unpleasant memory of cracking a fertilized one years ago—oh, the unwelcome surprise of embryonic development when all you wanted was breakfast—when she saw the headlights turn into the drive.

 

Jiminy felt like a better version of herself around Bo. She was less shy, less nervous, more curious, more lively. She hoped he'd been enjoying himself, too, and that she was more than just a mildly entertaining diversion from dry medical texts. But they hadn't discussed how they felt. They hadn't had physical contact besides friendly shoulder squeezes and high fives on the makeshift basketball court. Which was appropriate, Jiminy knew, at least where Fayeville was concerned. Anything more than a friendship would be frowned upon—even still, even today. Even so, Jiminy had let herself imagine a romance, and recognized that anticipating the disapproval it would engender actually made it that much more tempting to her. She was annoyed at herself for this—for harboring impure motivations. She believed she should want something solely for the thing itself, not because it was surprising or controversial. Because she was falling short, she felt as tainted as the town, and this shielded her from delusions of moral superiority.

Jiminy wasn't thinking about any of this at the moment, however. She couldn't think of anything besides what she'd just experienced. In fact, she wasn't positive she'd ever be able to think about anything else again.

At her cajoling, Bo had taken her to visit the crazy old great-uncle who'd talked of his aunt Lyn's past when no one else would. Bo's Uncle Fred lived on a hilltop two counties over, forty minutes away, and he'd proven as loquacious as advertised.

“If it isn't Mr. Bojangles!” he exclaimed as they pulled up to his sprawling, chaotic abode.

There was a house amid the clutter, but you had to look hard for it. A tree was growing through Fred's front porch, and a couch and coffee table sat in the yard. There was an inside-out feeling to the whole place, as if it had been scooped up by a tornado, churned around, and spat back out in no particular order. Plants, animals, and furniture spilled all over one another. It was almost a caricature of a backwoods eccentric's lair.

“And who've ya brung?” Fred bellowed. “Who've ya brung with ya, Mr. Bojangles?”

“Hey, Uncle Fred. This is my friend Jiminy,” Bo answered.

Fred had rushed toward them, surprisingly fast for a man so frail and gnarled, and peered intently at Jiminy's face.

“There's only one Jiminy,” he said finally. “You must be someone else.”

Jiminy had been holding her breath without realizing it. She exhaled then, keeping her gaze steady. Fred's eyes were rheumy but bright.

“I must be,” she agreed.

And then the three of them had sat in Fred's outdoor living room, surrounded by strutting peacocks, and talked for hours.

Now, as the car rolled slowly homeward, Jiminy's head was stuffed with more of a story than she knew what to do with. She felt it pressing against the back of her eyes and welling up in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her.

“You okay?” Bo asked.

Jiminy considered. What a question, given what they now knew. How could she be, really? How could anyone? She could still hear Fred's words echoing in her head.

“They hunted 'em,” he'd said. “They hunted Jiminy and Edward and they got 'em. Ran Edward's car off the road and drug 'em out and shot 'em. Threw 'em in the river, burned their car. Don't know who exactly—thing is, it coulda been any of 'em. It coulda been all of 'em. That's the way things were.”

Listening to Fred, Jiminy had cried long, stringy tears and felt herself unraveling.

“But why?” she'd asked.

Fred picked some mites off a peacock chick while he let the question hang. It took a full minute of silence before Jiminy had understood its significance and regretted her question. There was no attaching rationality to such a thing. Darkness knew no bounds.

As they were saying their goodbyes a little later, Fred had offered Jiminy a handkerchief.

“She shone too bright is why,” he said, before ducking back into his falling-down, inside-out home.

Jiminy pondered this now, twisting Fred's handkerchief between her fingers. She didn't realize that she was shaking.

“J?” Bo asked, lightly touching her arm. “You okay?”

She pulled herself together.

“As okay as possible,” she replied.

Bo nodded, looking older than he ever had. He turned off the road into Willa's long driveway, careful to slow down for the gravel.

“You need any more company?” he asked quietly, as he pulled up to the house.

Through the window that looked like it needed cleaning, Jiminy could see her grandmother in the kitchen and was struck by how powerfully she resembled her mother.

“I'll be all right,” she replied, as she climbed from the car.

She was already out before it occurred to her how selfish her shock had made her. Bo had more reason to be upset, after all. She bent her knees and leaned into the open window.

“Oh God, what about you?” she asked, her voice full of concern.

Bo smiled a smile that seemed more a part of the frown genre.

“I'm okay,” he said.

Jiminy was unconvinced.

“Really, I'm okay,” Bo repeated, making an effort to sound more reassuring. “I'm good.”

Jiminy sighed. Whatever their emotional state, she agreed that he was. Which was saying something, in this world.

 

Willa wiped some flour off her arm and tried to compose her face into a mellow arrangement, away from its mask of worry.

“Hi,” Jiminy said, as she walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, hello,” Willa replied pleasantly. “I couldn't sleep, so I decided to make a yellowcake. It's Lyn's favorite.”

Jiminy nodded, but Willa felt like her granddaughter was staring right through her, out somewhere behind her body, beyond these walls.

After a long moment, Jiminy focused her saucer eyes back on her grandmother's.

“Tell me about Edward and Jiminy,” she commanded.

Willa felt a tightening in her chest, and reached behind her for the counter edge to sink against.

 

Jiminy was waiting for Lyn when she pulled into the drive Thursday morning. Waiting outside, sitting on the stump of the oak tree that a storm had taken down two summers ago. Willa had planned to get it removed before observing that it made a convenient chair. For shucking corn or snapping beans or just letting the breeze soothe some of your day, Lyn thought, as she climbed slowly out of her car. Not for someone looking to bother her before she'd had her coffee.

“Get any worms?” Lyn asked, as Jiminy jumped up and moved toward her.

Jiminy looked confused. Lyn didn't feel like explaining her early bird joke, even when Jiminy began looking behind her and nervously dusting off the seat of her jeans.

“Did you talk to Bo?” Jiminy asked.

Was that what this was about? Lyn wondered. She didn't think it had gotten to that stage yet with these two, though it was surely headed there, if someone didn't intervene. Whether Lyn or anyone else liked it, she could see it hovering, waiting to be.

“Not about anything special,” Lyn answered.

“Well, can I talk to you?” Jiminy asked.

Lyn looked at her expectantly.

“You may not want to discuss this and I may be out of line,” Jiminy continued a bit breathlessly. “But I heard something that I want to ask you about.”

“Shoot,” Lyn said, and wondered why the girl winced.

Jiminy took a deep breath.

“I heard about what happened to your husband and daughter,” she said.

It was Lyn's turn to breathe deep. Here was the abyss, suddenly at her doorstep.

“I heard how they went missing, and how they turned up killed,” Jiminy continued. “And I am so sorry. I don't know the words to say how sorry.”

Lyn didn't say anything back. She sank down onto the stump Jiminy had vacated, setting the paper bag of potatoes she'd brought with her on the ground and letting her purse slide down her arm to keep it company.

“She had my name,” Jiminy blurted.

“You have hers,” Lyn replied quietly.

“Right, of course, I have hers. I didn't mean . . . My mother knew her?”

“Your mother worshiped her.”

“How uh . . . how old was she when she passed?”

Bo's great-uncle hadn't been completely sure. He'd said around fifteen. Willa had said nearly eighteen, though she really hadn't wanted to say much about it at all.

“She didn't ‘pass,' she was shot in the head and thrown in the river,” Lyn said evenly. “There was nothin' gentle or natural about it.”

Jiminy kept her eyes trained on the ground, but Lyn saw they were leaking tears.

“She was seventeen,” Lyn continued. “Smarter than all get-out. What I lived and breathed for.”

Besides Edward, Lyn added in her head. She'd lived and breathed for him, too.

“And your husband . . . ?” Jiminy asked.

“Edward was shot in the back. Thrown in the river, too.”

They weren't very good swimmers, not that it would have mattered by that point. Still, it was something that had tormented Lyn, the thought of their souls trying to leave their bodies and not knowing how to swim to the surface. She had to imagine they'd left earlier. She had to imagine that, or she'd go insane.

“Do you know who did it?” Jiminy asked softly.

The only answer that would make any sense to her was some demon up from the underworld, something that sucked and snorted pure evil.

Lyn was shaking her head. Which is what Willa had done, and Bo's uncle before her.

“They really never caught them?” Jiminy asked incredulously.

Lyn raised her gaze to meet hers.

“You act like they even tried.”

Chapter 4

J
iminy began sneezing
immediately upon entering the Fayeville Public Library. There were no other patrons inside the tiny two-room building to object, but the librarian behind the counter looked startled.

“May I help you?” she croaked.

Jiminy wondered if she was the first person to whom the librarian had spoken all day.

“Yes, thank you,” Jiminy replied, sneezing again. “Sorry, I'm allergic to dust.”

The librarian looked offended. Jiminy forged ahead.

“I'm trying to find information on something that happened in Fayeville in June of 1966. Do you have newspapers from that year?”

The librarian blinked once, twice, three times. Jiminy wondered if this was some physical manifestation of her mental process. Maybe she was flipping through options in her brain, clicking them forward with her eyelids like an old-fashioned slide show. Finally, she spoke.

“Nothing besides the
Fayeville Ledger
. You gotta head to the big city library for the big city papers.”

And the fast-talking, big city gals, Jiminy added to herself. The librarian didn't seem to be using these terms with any sense of humor, but they struck Jiminy as fake, like they'd been written in a script to be used when outsiders came a-callin'.

Was she an outsider? Jiminy felt connected to this town through her family, though she'd really only spent a little over four months of her life here, all totaled up. She'd been raised elsewhere—not too far away, but definitely elsewhere. Her mother hadn't ever wanted to come back to Fayeville, even before her breakdown.

“I'm Willa Hunt's granddaughter,” Jiminy offered, to prove that she wasn't completely out of place here. She felt it was important to make that known.

Sure enough, the librarian softened.

“Your grandma's a good woman,” she said. “Taught me biology, matter a fact.”

Jiminy knew that Willa had been a schoolteacher, but she still had trouble picturing it.

“She encouraged me to be a doctor, actually,” the librarian continued. “Said there was no reason a woman shouldn't be. Said she'd always dreamed of being one herself, but it wasn't meant to be.”

This was a surprise to Jiminy. She'd never thought of her grandmother as someone who harbored unfulfilled dreams.

“You said June 1966?” the librarian queried.

Jiminy nodded, realizing she'd been mutely preoccupied with her inner monologue. Her tendency to do this didn't do wonders for her social interactive skills. She goosed herself to speak.

“I'm looking for any write-ups about something that happened that month. A couple of murders,” Jiminy replied.

“Well that woulda been front page news, so it should be easy to find,” the librarian answered. “I don't remember hearing about anything like that though. You sure you got your facts right?”

Jiminy nodded.

“All right, the old papers are over there.”

The librarian directed Jiminy to the
Fayeville Ledger
archives, which consisted of a stack of cardboard boxes filled with yellowed newspapers in various stages of decomposition. Jiminy found the “1966–68” box and sneezed her way through to June. Since the
Ledger
was published biweekly, there were only two thin copies from that month, and neither had any mention of Edward and Jiminy Waters.

There was an opinion piece that caught her eye, though. It was titled “Coon Season” and it was written by Travis Brayer. She assumed he was related to Bobby Brayer, who was currently running for governor. The Brayer family owned a huge old cotton plantation just outside Fayeville. Jiminy didn't pay much attention to politics, but a person couldn't help but notice the billboard at the edge of town that read, “Fayeville: Proud Home of State Senator Bobby Brayer.” Several “Brayer for Governor” signs had colonized the patch of grass beneath it, along with most of the yards in town.

According to Travis Brayer's article, he was upset about the “Negro uprising” happening in a neighboring state and felt compelled to warn the citizens of Fayeville that such dangerous unrest could spread to their own backyard if they didn't stand guard and tamp it down. He made reference to “that uppity Meredith boy” and urged his fellow townspeople to stay vigilant.

Jiminy closed her eyes and tried to remember what she could about the Meredith Marches of 1966. She knew they had something to do with desegregation, something to do with voting, something to do with Martin Luther King, Jr. Unable to come up with anything more, she opened her eyes and looked around for a computer, but there was none to be found. Fayeville's dearth of Internet connections was simultaneously charming and inconvenient. Jiminy reached for the encyclopedia set on a nearby shelf, feeling very old-fashioned.

Forty minutes later, she better understood that the summer of 1966 had been one of inflamed passions, of galvanization and conflict, of the South near its boiling point. This apparently had made for a place and time when innocent people could be slaughtered and forgotten. But really? Could they really?

She checked the July issues of the paper, and the August and September ones, just to be sure. There was no mention anywhere.

“Find what you're looking for?” the librarian asked between bites of the salad she'd brought for her lunch.

Jiminy shook her head.

“No, actually. There were two brutal murders of people who lived right here in Fayeville, and there's not a single mention of them anywhere.”

“You must have your dates wrong,” the librarian replied. “You can check the 1965 box if you like.”

“It was 1966. Lyn Waters's husband and daughter, Edward and Jiminy, were murdered that June. They were driving back from a leadership seminar Jiminy had won an essay contest to attend and they went missing. Two weeks later their car was found stripped and burned on the banks of the river. Their bodies washed ashore nearby.”

The librarian's expression changed as Jiminy recited these facts. She put down her fork.

“Those aren't the sort of deaths the
Ledger
covered back then,” she said evenly.

“Do you remember hearing about them?” Jiminy asked.

The librarian met her gaze.

“I remember hearing that Lyn's husband and daughter had gone and got themselves drowned. I didn't ask any questions. We don't talk about things like that.”

Jiminy stared back, then sneezed powerfully, grateful that her body instinctively rejected such attitudes. Unfortunately this town seemed rife with them, and she was beginning to feel allergic to simply being here.

She took her leave and exited into the bright sunshine of the courthouse yard, where, slightly dazed, she made her way to the nearest tree and sank into its shade. With one hand on her diaphragm and the other propped beneath her head, she lay on her back, closed her eyes, and focused on her breath. She began to count how many heartbeats she could fit into one inhalation and had just stretched herself to three when she sensed someone standing over her. Her heartbeat surged as her eyes flew open. It was Bo.

“You looked so peaceful,” he said.

“It's a good disguise,” she answered.

His grin was easily unfurled. She gazed at his white, white teeth and thought of sails on Lake Michigan.

“Do you wanna go get some food or something?” she asked.

It wasn't like her to usher an invitation, but she'd come to realize that spending time with Bo delighted her. Her life had been short on delight and she felt greedy for it now.

Bo's grin tacked starboard as he shook his head.

“I'd love to, but I haven't earned it yet,” he answered. “I've got a long date with the lymphatic system,” he said as he held up his MCAT book. “Maybe later?”

“Lymph node hussies,” Jiminy muttered.

Bo laughed.

“You sticking around?” he asked. “This is my favorite spot to study.”

Jiminy thought about it.

“No, I've got things to do, too,” she replied. “But call me later?”

“Will do.”

His promise flapped in the air between them, crisp and clear and healthy.