The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (27 page)

Chapter Fifty-four

They drove again for a long time. All of them in the front seat, Joey in the middle. Father still hadn't said where it was they were going. It was like the Mystery Bus story in Claire's old reading book. The people were going on a trip, but they had to guess where. They were going to St. Ives. The driver whistled a song about St. Ives to give them a hint. Father Doucet was singing in the night, but it couldn't be a hint, because her and Joey couldn't understand French. Claire didn't think they were on their way to France!

Wherever it was, she hoped they'd get there soon. Although it wasn't so bad, being able to do nothing but sit and look out the window, not to have to think about Ma being sick or Sam and Jake being in jail.

Father slowed down when they went through a town, but most of the time they went like the wind. Joey gabbed away, about his model farm, and playing the fiddle, and not liking school, but Claire just looked out the window. It was the prettiest place Claire had ever seen; hilly, with open pastures and giant trees. Maybe she'd be an artist someday, and paint pictures that looked like this. She'd need a hundred different colors of green.

Father didn't say much. He smoked an awful lot. He had a thing under his dashboard to put cigarettes in, and when you wanted one, it just popped out and automatically lit itself, so you didn't have to take your hands off the wheel. He said it was a Prestalight.

They went down a long hill so steep that it made Claire dizzy. There was a town at the bottom. After a couple of wrong turns, they stopped next to the place Father was looking for. Thank goodness it was a café. Claire was starving even after both long johns.

The place was crowded, and Claire was embarrassed about her too-big shorts and her bare feet. She was still wearing what she had on when she went to Mia Thorsen's house to call the ambulance. It seemed like it was ages ago that Ma had said to go, “immediately if not sooner,” and she'd taken off running, but it was only yesterday.

Most of the people in the café were dressed up, and that's when Claire remembered that today was Sunday. Father Doucet should be in church now. It seemed funny to be in a restaurant with a priest on Sunday morning. Father didn't have on his black outfit, so nobody would realize he was a priest and should be in church, unless he surprised them all and got up to preach a sermon!

They could have sat in a booth, but Father told the waitress he wanted a table by the window, so they had to wait for it to be cleaned off. Claire thought a booth would be more cozy, and people wouldn't be able to look at her, but Joey liked the table because there was a train depot across the street, and he hoped he'd see a train come in.

They ordered eggs and sausage and toast, and pancakes, too. The waitress brought a whole pot of coffee for Father Doucet, and he let Claire have some. They were just starting to eat, when Claire looked out and saw a lady come out of the train depot and start across the street. It was Sister Jane.

Chapter Fifty-five

“There's irony for you. Pacifist Reuben Hofer sharing his final earthly resting place with a shotgun.” They were the first words Mia had spoken in the twenty minutes they'd been sitting on the front steps of the Black Creek Schoolhouse.

“The one that killed him.” McIntire had to say it aloud once more, had to try to comprehend the preposterous. “The one that his youngest son used to kill him.”

Mia leaned forward her head in her hands, and spoke to her knees. “My brain might know it's true, but that doesn't mean I'll ever really believe it.”

“Joey. Why?”

“He spent all that time playing by the drain pipe. He heard every word that was said in that kitchen.”

“But what could have been said that would lead a small child to kill his father? How could such a thing even enter his mind?”

McIntire had to lean close to catch the muffled reply. “Mary Frances Hofer was preparing to die. She said she'd told Father Doucet that she was tempted to do away with Reuben herself, that she was horrified at the idea of dying and leaving her children at his mercy. Of course she was exaggerating, and half joking—she said she'd do it by rolling on him in bed—but Joey couldn't have understood that. He knew his mother was going to die, and, if she squished his father, she'd go to hell.”

“Did he think he was Hell-proof?”

“Yes. He was too little. Sin was for when he was more grown up. His mother wanted his father dead, and who knows what he might have heard from his brothers? The whole family hated Reuben, but Joey was the only one who could get rid of him, because he was too little for sin.” She demanded, “Why do people tell kids things like that? If that's normal eight year old boy thinking, why aren't more parents dead?”

“Normal eight year old boys aren't sharpshooters.”

“God.”

“So Joey saved himself and his siblings from slavery, and his mother from eternal hell-fire, in one fell…shot.”

Mia twisted her pigtail. “I don't think it wasn't so much the slavery, even if that was the core of it. Mrs. Hofer couldn't bear seeing what was happening to her children, the kind of people life with Reuben was turning them into. People who hated.”

McIntire couldn't make sense of it. There was no point in trying. “What can we do now?”

“Wait.”

They waited. It was growing dark when Father Adrien Doucet charged into the yard and stopped a few feet from the door.

Mia went down the steps with the leaping pup and opened the car door to escort the barefoot girl into the house.

McIntire repeated her action on the driver's side. He was less solicitous. “Get out of the car.”

Doucet alighted with less than his customary flair, but hardly looked the worse for what must have been a mighty long thirty-six hours.

“Taking off with somebody else's children is known as abduction, and crossing a state line makes it a federal offense.” McIntire wished more of the anger he felt showed in his voice.

“What makes you think I've crossed a state line?”

“Call it a hunch.”

Doucet bent his head for a moment. Praying for deliverance? He didn't look that worried. “There's nothing criminal about fulfilling a sick woman's request that her child be taken to his grandmother to be cared for.”

“Or to hide out?”

“He's an eight year old child.”

“He's committed pre-meditated murder.” Saying it aloud for the first time, McIntire still couldn't believe it.

“I know that.”

Did the man's infuriating smugness ever stop? “Murder,” McIntire repeated. “First degree homicide. He can't just get away with it.”

Doucet shook the last of his ever-present cigarettes into his hand and crushed the pack. “If he was prosecuted, found guilty, what would happen to him?”

McIntire wasn't sure such a thing had ever happened before. “Reform school, I suppose. He'd be out in a few years. At least they'd let him go when he turns eighteen.”

“He won't be getting out of Prairie Oak before he's eighteen, probably not ever.”

The logic was ludicrous, but flawless. McIntire spouted the timeworn, “You're not a judge or a jury.”

“No,” the priest admitted, “and I'm damn glad of that.”

That made a peculiar kind of sense, too. He owed nothing but to his own conscience, unlike McIntire, paid the odd fee by the citizens of St. Adele Township to do their dirty work. “Did his brothers put him up to it?” he asked.

Doucet put the unlighted cigarette in his shirt pocket. “I wouldn't go so far as to say that. They might have influenced him. Indirectly, I think we all put him up to it. He was too young to be punished for his sins, or his crimes. I led him to believe it.
I
believe it. How could any of us have known he had the capability of…How's Mrs. Hofer?”

“She died early this morning.”

He looked toward the door the girl had disappeared through, but didn't move. “Am I going to be arrested?”

“Soon as Koski figures out what to charge you with.”

“So I got time to get some sleep first?”

“Go ahead.”

He slid into the car. “Where are the boys?”

“Gone with Ellie Wall, to start arranging their mother's funeral.”

“Forrest Brothers?”

At McIntire's nod, the priest turned the key to his dusty Buick and sped off, not in the direction of his church and home in Aura, but on the road to Chandler.

Chapter Fifty-six

They'd been both sitting on the steps, blinking in the car headlights, looking like twins, Mia Thorsen and John McIntire. They both got up and came to the car. Mrs. Thorsen opened the door before Claire had a chance to get out. The first thing she said was, “Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

Claire did, but she could wait. She shook her head and scooped Spike up in her arms.

John McIntire went to the other side of the car to talk to Father Doucet. He did look sort of sick, so her plan must have worked.

“Come inside then.” Mrs. Thorsen wasn't smiling, and she didn't look happy to see her. Her hair was messy and she looked tired and gray like Ma did sometimes. It made her look more like a witch than ever. Thinking about Mrs. Thorsen being a witch made Claire remember about Joey, and she felt like she might start bawling again.

Father said it was the best thing for Joey, and she had to be brave enough to let him go. He said that Ma wanted him to go to Prairie Oak because she was too sick to take care of him, and that Joey would be happy there. He was probably right—at least he wouldn't have to go to school. But Joey didn't look happy when he walked away with Sister.

Mrs. Thorsen made her go into the living room and sit next to her on the davenport. First she asked if Claire was hungry, and then she told her that Ma died in the night. While her and Joey were driving away with Father Doucet, Ma died.

Everything was just too sad for Claire. She wanted to go to sleep and forget about it all. She ached from sitting in the car for a whole night and a day. She put her face on Spike's neck. He licked at her face, but then wiggled away and jumped onto the floor. She wanted to cry, but was ashamed with Mrs. Thorsen there. She stood up. “I do have to go to the bathroom.”

She went out through the back door so she didn't have to pass by Father Doucet and John McIntire, but when she got out, Father's car was gone and John McIntire was sitting on the steps again.

She stayed in the can for a long time, but they didn't come to look for her. Maybe if she stayed there long enough they would forget where she was, and she could sneak out and run away.

But it was pitch dark, and she didn't have the energy for it.

She went back inside and straight up the stairs to her and Joey's bedroom. Somebody had shut the window; it was hot and didn't smell very good. Maybe she could sleep in Ma's room now.

Mrs. Thorsen came up the stairs. The room was too low for her to stand up in, so she sat down on the bed. “You can come home with me. I'll help you get your stuff together. Tomorrow we can decide what to do.”

Claire didn't want to go. She wanted to crawl under the covers and stay there for a long long time. It wasn't going to do any good to argue, though, so she just said, “I'll get my clothes.”

She waited to give Mia Thorsen time to go downstairs, but she just stayed on the bed, so Claire had to get out the box that her and Joey used the first time they went to Mia's, and put in her new socks and underpants. She opened the closet and took out the two dresses that Sister made. Joey's first communion suit was still hanging there, waiting for him. She touched the shiny white buttons.

Mrs. Thorsen said, “Maybe we could send it to him.”

Claire shook her head. “He won't have first communion at Prairie Oak, so he wouldn't get to wear it.”

“We could try dying it.”

It was a good idea. Claire folded it down the middle and put it in the box.

“We can come back tomorrow,” Mia Thorsen said. “We can pack up everything Joey might need and send it to him.”

That was a good idea, too.

Claire wanted to get her treasure box from under the floor, but not with Mia Thorsen watching. It would have to wait until tomorrow, too.

Mia Thorsen was so tall she had to practically go on her hands and knees to make it to the stairs. Claire carried the box herself.

When they got downstairs, Claire put the box on the davenport. She didn't know how they were going to get back to the Thorsen's house. She hoped not in John McIntire's car.

Mia Thorsen picked up the lamp, the one Pa made. “Maybe you'd like to take this with you.”

Claire held it in both her hands. It was smooth under her fingers, and heavy. Pa had carved it long ago. It was a joke, Ma said. He chained it to his leg to pretend he was a convict. But he really did get to be a convict, and now he was dead and Ma was dead and Joey was far away and Sam and Jake were in jail.

Suddenly Claire had never been so mad. She heard a roar like a freight train in her head, and she felt like it would explode. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, and she howled, and she threw that lamp as hard as she could against the wall. The light bulb smashed and the wooden ball gave a thwack when it cracked in half, spurting sand out over the floor.

John McIntire came charging into the room. “What's happened?”

“It's okay,” Mia told him. “The lamp broke, that's all.” She picked up the shade and squatted down and started gathering the pieces of wood. Then she did get on her hands and knees. “John,” she said, “what do you suppose this could be?” She reached up and handed him something too small for Claire to see.

He held it up. “I'd say it's a fish hook. A two thousand year old fish hook.”

Claire didn't know what he was talking about, but Mia Thorsen kept digging through the sand and picking our pieces of rocks and bent-up metal. Claire went to the kitchen for the broom.

The spilled coffee was cleaned up, and Ma's magazines were stacked up on the table. Claire grabbed the broom and went back out.

Mia said, “Look at this,” and gave her something that looked like a little moon. “They're Indian relics, from hundreds of years ago. Can you find something to put them in?”

Claire went for her treasure box. Sheriff Koski had asked if Pa had Indian stuff, and it turned out that he did. Maybe Ma knew about it. Maybe that's why she kept the lamp, even when Pa was away in California and in prison, but Claire didn't think so. She probably kept the lamp because it was Pa's, and he made it. He might have told her, “This is just between you and me. Don't lose it,” just like he'd said to Claire when he gave her the wheel.

Claire swept the sand, and Mia and John McIntire put the Indian things in her wooden box.

Then she sat on the davenport with it on her lap while John McIntire took the box with her clothes in it out to his car.

Mia Thorsen picked up the broken halves of the lamp and sat next to Claire on the davenport. “Claire, I think you need to talk to Mr. McIntire.”

“Why?” He was the last person Claire wanted to talk to. Ever again in her life. She didn't want to ride in his car, and she didn't want to talk to him. She didn't want to ever see him again.

“In the sauna, the smoke could have killed him. If he hadn't found a pipe to breath through, he would have died.”

“My mother died! He put Sam and Jake in jail and made my mother have a heart attack. He killed her!”

“Claire, I'm so….” Mrs. Thorsen didn't finish what she was saying. She had tears running down her cheeks, and Claire looked away. After a while she wiped her nose on her sleeve and said, “What made you think—? Claire, your brothers aren't in jail.”

“Then where are they?”

“They went into town with Mrs. Wall. They're making plans for your mother's funeral.”

Claire was tired, tired of having to think, tired of the way things were all scrambled in her brain. “He came and took them away. He had the sheriff's car and his police dog.”

“Mr. Koski just talked to them. Mr. McIntire brought them home later.” Mrs. Thorsen touched her hand. “You have to tell Mr. McIntire you're sorry.”

Claire wasn't one darn bit sorry. Sam and Jake might not be in jail, but it was too late to take back Ma's heart attack. She was glad she'd made the man who did that sick. The sicker the better. But she didn't think the smoke would kill him.

“I thought it would just make him sick.”

“Well,” John McIntire came in the back door. “It did that.”

He looked worn out and sad. He was Mia Thorsen's childhood sweetheart, and Mia Thorsen was an old woman, and she was crying. Claire was too tired. She lied again. She said, using a polite company voice, “I'm sorry, Mr. McIntire. I'm sorry I almost murdered you.”