The Little Giant of Aberdeen County (21 page)

“Well, why don’t we say this? Anytime you want to, you can come in here and lie down on this bed. And we won’t tell your father. It will just be our little secret.”

I watched as Bobbie weighed the consequences of this one small disobedience. “Okay,” he finally agreed, his voice cracking. He tilted his head the same way Serena Jane used to when she examined herself in the mirror.
It’s too bad he’s a boy,
I found myself thinking.
He’s such a beautiful child
. Which was, I would soon come to learn, what scared Robert Morgan the most. Boys weren’t meant to be pretty. They were meant to be sturdy, and rough, and rugged as mountains.
Why,
I thought with a tiny smile,
they were meant to be just like me.

As soon as he got me settled in, Robert Morgan stalked over to his office, double-checked that the handle was locked, then resumed his pacing. On his desk, he had flattened my sister’s note, smoothing out the creases, tracing the smudged letters over and over with his skinny index finger.
Don’t come look for me
. Like he would ever bother, Robert Morgan thought. Like he wanted her back. Still, my sister’s disappearance was a problem. It didn’t look good to have your wife making tracks. It suggested certain inadequacies in the marriage that he didn’t feel like justifying. He narrowed his eyes. It was time to call in a favor.

One of the distinct advantages to being a doctor’s son was that Robert Morgan had all his father’s colleagues at his fingertips, including Bernie Briggs, the county coroner. It took a minute to get Bernie on the phone, but soon his bristly voice filled the receiver. A few more minutes was all it took, and Robert Morgan had him eating out of the palm of his hand.

“Of course I’ll call you first if something comes in,” Bernie promised. “Just as sure as sure can be.”

“Thank you,” the doctor murmured, making sure to keep his voice dipped low. “It’s been a real trial.” That taken care of, he hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair, his arms folded behind his head. If he’d had a cigar, I’m sure he would have held it clamped right between his front teeth at that moment. But it wasn’t time to rest on his laurels yet. He still had some calls to make.

Putting his feet back down on the ground, he picked up the phone and dialed the police in Hansen—the closest law enforcement to Aberdeen. Once, during the forties, the county had considered putting a police force in Aberdeen, but, as the police commissioner had said, you don’t go pouring water over a fire that’s not lit. As he dialed the station, Robert Morgan considered this oversight to be a huge advantage. On the other end of the line, a chirpy receptionist answered. Slowly and carefully, Robert Morgan gave his name and address. He spoke distinctly, making sure the girl had all the time in the world to write down the story of his missing wife.

As for the last number he phoned, well, I could have recited it even if I’d forgotten my own name. The line jangled and echoed in the doctor’s ear, and then a voice breathed a small greeting into the other end. “Amelia,” said Robert Morgan, “how lucky you’re home. And always so quiet. I’m counting on that. I need a little favor.” Amelia had reverted to silence on the other end of the line, so the doctor continued. “I’m only asking you because I’m trying to protect Truly. What with her sister disappearing and her recent move from the farm, I’m afraid she might be too emotionally fragile. But you, well, you’re tougher than you look.”

“Get to the point.” When forced to, Amelia would use words sparingly with people outside her family. She had her father’s same low tolerance for preambles and prologues. She knew the heart of a deal came when the card was turned and not a moment sooner.

“I might need you to come with me to make an identification. You know, in the worst-case scenario.”

“Humpf.” Even without words, Amelia could always get a point across.

“What are you implying?” Robert Morgan’s voice slid like silk through the phone.

Amelia was silent, so Robert Morgan answered the question for her. “I suppose you’re wondering why I’m bothering to look for my wife when she ran away?”

Amelia breathed into the phone. It was, in fact, what she had been thinking. Logistics had never been a problem for her. Robert Morgan clenched his teeth and continued his one-sided conversation. “That’s what you’re going to help me put to rest. Wait for me to call you. And remember, don’t breathe a word.”

Amelia sighed. The doctor’s voice came out as rough as a lick of sandpaper. “If you help me with this one thing, Amelia, I will make it worth your while, I promise. But if you don’t—” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he didn’t need to. If he wanted to, Amelia knew, Robert Morgan could get his friends at the bank to call in almost every debt owed on the farm for the past fifty years, sending her and her mother out the back door with what little they owned in a wheelbarrow.

She hung up the phone, her heart racing. She didn’t have a choice in this matter, she knew, but maybe she could up the stakes a little. Maybe she could wrangle some sort of permanent work out of the doctor. Maybe she could settle her remaining debts once and for all. In situations like these, Amelia had learned, where the deck was stacked against you, the best thing you could do was to take the next card, play your hand anyway, and keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.

Alone in my room the first night, I ignored the television set propped on a chair in the corner and slid my few pairs of dungarees and shirts into a drawer in the dresser. I put my toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste on one night table and then fussed with Bobbie’s flowers on the other. Finally, I reached into the bottom of my battered suitcase and withdrew my familiar cardboard box. After settling myself on the creaky mattress, I opened the worn flaps and rummaged inside for the wad of bills that I’d rolled into a tight tube. Over the past few years, as all of August’s horses had either died or been taken away, I’d added less and less to the bundle, but there was still a sizable amount of money in my hand. I’d never counted, but it was enough to strain the rubber band, enough to make a gambler’s heart beat fast. What would I do with it, though? Especially now that I was bound to the doctor and Bobbie, with his strange stare and skinny arms, missing his mother?

I replaced the money and fished around again for my old deck of cards, soft at the edges and quiet in my fingers. I hadn’t had them out of the box since August’s death, but here, in this new setting, they seemed tatty and lifeless, so I put them back. Only my old familiar photographs of my parents and Serena Jane were left. There were no photographs of me in the box and none of the Dyersons. There had never been any occasion for any to be taken. People like us didn’t make history, even among ourselves.

But maybe that can change,
I thought, nestling under Tabitha Morgan’s handiwork in the dark. I felt the quilt’s cotton batting settle around my bulk and imagined myself covered with the botanical network. Everyone on earth left something behind, I reasoned, even if it was just bone dust. August had left his bow-backed horses, Tabitha her sewing. Serena Jane had left me her son, even if she was just gone from Aberdeen, and my mother had left me. What would my legacy be?

I tried to think further, but a breeze outside set the leaves to rustling, a sound that reminded me of the Dyersons and their farm, and before I knew it, I was pulled away from thought and down into a deep and dreamless sleep like thread passing through a needle.

Chapter Thirteen

A
fter just two weeks, it was as if I’d been bustling around Robert Morgan’s house for the better portion of my life. It was astonishing to me, really, that a man I barely knew could so quickly become a source of routine for me, but that was Robert Morgan for you.

Everything in the house was just the way he liked it. Order was the most important thing for him, and along those lines, the doctor had instituted a panoply of domestic rules that could make your head wobble. We ate sweet butter, not salted, drank skim milk, not whole, bought our bread intact and sliced it ourselves, and strained the pulp from our orange juice with a miniature strainer. Bacon was supposed to be served crispy but not burned, the newspaper was supposed to be folded back up into thirds and left on the corner of the kitchen table, and if I got the yolk too hard in his egg in the morning, he’d chuck the whole mess in the trash and refuse to eat again until lunch.

As for the doctor’s wardrobe, most of his shirts were solid colored, although he had some checkered ones for the weekend, and he wanted all of them pressed with starch. He liked his socks sorted in his drawer according to color, and every Friday he left his shoes in the hall for me to polish.
It’s a wonder all Serena Jane did was run off,
I thought as I ran the iron around yet another pointed shirt collar
. I’m surprised she didn’t commit murder first
.

“Truly,” Robert Morgan’s voice rumbled through the open back porch door and into the kitchen. It was my second Saturday with the doctor, which meant him catching up on paperwork in his office and me ironing and tending to a slow-roasted dinner none of us would really want to eat. “Can you come on out here for a minute?”

I blew a strand of hair off my forehead and set the iron upright. “I’ll be just a minute, Robert Morgan,” I called. I looked at the clock. Two. Bobbie had gone to visit a nursery with Marcus. They wouldn’t be back for another hour. Time in the house without Bobbie was heavier, it seemed. The clock trudged instead of ticked, as if its hands were as big and heavy as mine.

I couldn’t get over how like Serena Jane Bobbie was. Too like, actually, for I was beginning to notice some peculiar aspects about him. For one thing, he seemed to be having problems fitting in with Aberdeen’s other boys. I was hoping it was just because he was new to Aberdeen. He’d just started school, and it was clear that he wasn’t used to the mores and means of a small town.

“Where’s the rest of it?” he asked, wrinkling his forehead in confusion, when I walked him up to the schoolhouse. Miss Sparrow stood on the front steps with her hands folded. Her hair looked whiter than I remembered, and upon closer inspection, the knuckles of her hands were as gnarled as old fruit branches, but she still had the same ramrod posture, the same iron set to her neck.

“This is all of it,” I answered. “This is the whole school. There aren’t that many children in Aberdeen, so you all attend class together. Later, when you’re a little older, you’ll get bussed over to Hansen, but when I was little, we went here all the way through high school—your mother, and Marcus, and Amelia, and me, and your father, too.”

Bobbie’s eyes brightened. “Really? That lady was my mother’s teacher? Do you think she remembers her?”

I grimaced but tried to make it look like a smile. “Oh, I’m sure Miss Sparrow remembers all of her students, but maybe”—I peeked over to confirm Priscilla Sparrow scowling heavily in my direction—“it’s better not to bring up the past. Why not just go in there and let her love you for you?”

Bobbie threw his arms around my knees. “Thanks, Aunt Truly! I’ll see you back home at three, okay?”

I watched Miss Sparrow’s eyes narrow as Bobbie approached, then her mouth split in half like an overripe melon, and I realized she was smiling. “Why, if it isn’t little Bobbie Morgan,” she simpered, sizing him up. “Back fresh from Buffalo. My, my, how time flies. Just yesterday, it seems, I was teaching your father geography. Why don’t you come inside?” She held the door open wide, and then, because it was still so hot, she lingered a moment, relishing a last blast of air. “Where do you want to sit?” she asked, sweeping her arm to the rows of desks, and Bobbie hesitated before sliding over to the girls’ side of the room and plopping himself down next to a very small child with beribboned pigtails. Inwardly, I sighed.
Please,
I thought,
let him get up and go to the other side of the room
. Miss Sparrow’s eyes flickered for a moment, but she took her hand off the door before I could see anything else, letting it slam shut.

Bobbie stayed in the seat he’d chosen, and he didn’t prove popular with the other boys because of it. He was a will-o’-the-wisp to their thunderclouds, a dented tin soldier to their cavalry. He couldn’t kick or throw a ball quite like the other boys, couldn’t run as fast as them, and didn’t find the same thrill in hanging out of trees. After school, he walked home alone, relieved to get back to the safety of the kitchen, and if it had been a particularly bad day, I always knew because he went straight up to his room without eating the snack I fixed. I figured he must be missing his mother, but I had no idea how to bring her up, so we just let the memory of Serena Jane hang between us, as thick and tantalizing as the ghostly scent of night jasmine.

“Truly!” Robert Morgan’s voice crackled through the kitchen again, a little crosser than before. “I’m out here waiting on you ten minutes already! Did you forget?”

“Coming, Robert Morgan.” I hung up the shirt I was working on and switched off the iron, then smoothed my dungarees over my hips and started across the porch, wondering if I should bring up Bobbie’s school life with the doctor. Probably not, I decided. From what I had seen, Robert Morgan was mostly a Ten Commandments kind of father. He laid down the letter and line of the law and didn’t seem too interested in any problems you had following it.

“What do you need?” I poked my head around his office door. Out here, things were even more severe than in the house. I vaguely remembered the office and examining room from my visit as a child, but Robert Morgan had put some new equipment in and updated the lighting with fluorescent bulbs, with the result that even the healthy patients looked half-dead against the white walls.

Robert Morgan sat behind his desk, his back perfectly straight in his big old chair, so that walking up to him felt like approaching a pharaoh. All he needed was the headdress and a little goatee, I thought, but he settled for spectacles. He peered over them as if he were surprised to find me there in front of him, when wasn’t he the one who’d been hollering the walls down for the past ten minutes, telling me to get my butt across the porch? I folded my arms across my chest, glad for once that I was big and that he had to crick his neck to talk to me. He swept an arm out in front of him. “Please, sit.”