All Your Pretty Dreams (16 page)

“
I like the look of that
cause myself,” said another, laughing.

Jonny snatched the paper,
crammed it in his pocket, and spun to leave. Giggling followed him.
A high-pitched voice cackled: “You scared him off, weasel. Run,
Forrest, run!”

——

Isabel turned to the swarm
of students by the bar. The male students fit right in, all
laughing, drinking beer from green bottles. To think she’d once
tried to keep them out of here. The girls were on overdrive,
teasing, flirting with anything and anybody— even scarecrow Walter
and greasy Terry— as if there was a race and they were in
training.

Alison caught her eye.
“Smoke’s coming out your ears, Izzie. Smacked down by your new
object of affection?”

“
Take a chill pill,”
Maddie shouted. “It’s Friday night.”

“
Okay,” Isabel said.
“Right after I call the cops and tell them you are all underage and
drinking again.”

“
Aw, don’t be like that,”
Alison said, pouting. “Then we’ll get sent home and you’ll never
finish your lovely bee study.”

“
That would be a shame,”
Kate teased.

“
Two more fricking weeks?”
somebody said.

“
I got stung on my left
ass cheek today,” Andrew said. “Now it matches my right
one.”

“
At least it missed your
plumber’s crack.”

“
If only
we
could.”

“
You,” Isabel said,
struggling to control her temper, “are a bunch of adolescent
slackers who wouldn’t know how to finish a sentence, much less a
college degree. I could do better with a bunch of
chimpanzees.”

The bar went
silent.

“
Hey,” Terry said. “You
calling us monkeys?”

Isabel took a deep breath.
If they all got mad and quit she would be in big trouble. Several
girls leered at her, others twisted their hair and looked
sideways.

“
Of course not. I’m just—
Hey. Have a great time tonight. Just remember we’re working
tomorrow.” Moans and protests. “Be at the bus at six-thirty. If you
are on time and work hard, we’ll quit in time for that party next
door. If not, well, there’re bees to count.”

Isabel walked double-speed
back to the motel. It wasn’t far enough to really work off her
anger but it helped. The air was thick with insects and pine. How
did she get stuck babysitting these cretins? They didn’t care about
science, or the environment, let alone the future of the feral bee.
Why had she thought they would— or should? They were day-workers,
temps. She was the one who cared. That was all that mattered. She
would get this study finished, the data collected, and get out of
this town that was making them all nuts.

As she rounded the last
corner the cell phone in her pocket vibrated. That would be
Professor Mendel, checking up on her organizational skills. Isabel
had made the mistake a few days before of confessing her concerns
about some of the field crew and gotten a lecture on people
management for scientists. She should have listened. Soothing egos
and motivating the troops were not her forte. She dug out the
phone. Too dark to read. The ringing stopped.

She hated the damn cell
phone. Her father had gotten her number and kept leaving cryptic
messages about her grandfather. He was on oxygen, he had a fever,
he came to and recognized his daughters for a second. She hadn’t
returned any of her father’s calls. They’d all see each other soon
enough.

The car was unmistakable,
even in the gloom of the motel’s gravel parking lot. Red, sexy,
classic, her father’s vintage Corvette stood out from the student
cars, a princess among the paupers. But it wasn’t her father
standing next to it.

“
There you are!” Daria had
her arms crossed, her tight jeans, satiny tank top, and high-heeled
sandals an odd sight this far from the city. “Why don’t you answer
the phone?”

“
What are you doing here?
Has something happened?”

“
No. Still hanging by a
thread, poor old goat.” Daria frowned at the rundown motel with its
burnt-out bulbs, ladder propped to the roof, old screens in a heap.
“What are
you
doing
here
?”

——

Jonny sat on the edge of
his bed. His mother’s bedroom light shone from under the door but
he hadn’t knocked. He listened for his sister and heard only the
old house settling in for the night, creaks and pops as it sank
into the prairie earth.

A strong urge flooded him,
making his heart race.
GET OUT
while you can
. He had to
leave Red Vine, leave this house, leave his family— or— or he would
drown. He would become one of them. He shook his head. He
was
one of them. That
would never change. But he could be someone else too, someone who
wasn’t afraid, who was smart and strong enough to be different, to
take a solitary path if necessary, to see the world or at least a
larger corner of it.

Oh, fuck it.
Nothing was holding him back but his own stubborn
refusal to move on. He would figure it out, piece by piece, step by
step, until whatever was waiting smacked him in the face and
said,
Bubka, this is
real
.

As he slipped under the
covers he remembered the note. Maybe it would make him feel a
little better, that for some reason he was honey to a hive of
bee-counting blondes.

He dug the paper out of
his jeans. A drawing, a map. Isabel or someone had drawn a little
map in blue ink, the highway north out of Red Vine, then west on
Sycamore Road a couple miles then right on State 62, a crummy strip
of blacktop last patched in the fifties. On the top of the note,
about five miles out, sat a star with
Anderson
written in a tight, small
hand.

He turned it over.
Nothing.

A treasure hunt? A secret
rendezvous? There was no date or time listed. He stared at it a few
minutes, trying to remember the Anderson farm. He couldn’t place
it. It was just one of dozens of small family places in the county.
What was so special about it that she had to give it to him in the
bar in front of all those girls? With that same look of contempt
and boredom she always wore.

He flipped out the light.
She was an odd one all right.

Chapter 12

Hattie, the ancient
waitress at Sid’s Coffee and Pie on the town square, filled Jonny’s
blue plastic go cup with coffee. Main Street was quiet. Birds in
the trees chattered. Saturday morning at seven was not his usual
roaming time. He hadn’t been able to sleep. The restless burning in
his legs, the thumping of his heart, that voice telling him
to
get out:
hard
to sleep through that.

The harsh glint of sunrise
reflected in the rearview mirror as he turned onto Sycamore Road.
He adjusted it and saw the white van behind him. No one else on the
roads, unless you counted a tractor, turning over a field.
Potatoes? Sugar beets? He’d never been able to identify crops on
sight.

The van turned onto State
62 behind him. He glanced at the odometer and counted out two,
three, four miles, slowing. Draping branches from a clump of trees
in the ditch surrounded the Anderson’s lane. No farmhouse visible.
No crops, no equipment. As he pointed the Fairlane down the hill
the van roared by on the highway.

The incline was the bank of
a dry creek followed by a rickety bridge, emerging in a field
pocked with boulders and pothole ponds. The lane curved around
rocks piled into a haphazard wall, then a barn came into view.
Small outbuildings in various states of collapse emerged from high
weeds. The house was a small, white one-story with a lopsided
porch. The only vehicle in the yard was the hulk of a jalopy with a
sunflower growing through the missing windshield.

Jonny turned off the car.
Why had Isabel sent him here? Across the yard, beyond a wall of
thistle and milkweed, stood an apple orchard. Someone was still
taking care of it. Fat green apples hung from the branches. That
would be why Isabel and company was here, counting bees, but what
did that have to do with him?

He was getting ready to
take a look around when the screen door of the house slammed. On
the front steps stood a young man, thin, with blond hair disheveled
like he just got up. He raised a hand to Jonny.

“
Morning,” Jonny said,
walking past the rusty auto body and— look at that— a flower
garden, fenced and tended, blooming in purples and pinks and mixed
with a tomato plant and a zucchini. “Mr. Anderson?”

The man winced. “That’s my
dad. I’m Lowell.” He stuck out his hand.

Jonny introduced himself.
“Weren’t you a year or two ahead of me?” He would never have
recognized Lowell, who had aged dramatically. Good old farm
livin’.

“
You’re Artie’s brother?
Play the squeeze box?” Their high school careers didn’t offer any
other conversational gambits. Lowell had stringy dirt-blond hair,
cracked lips, a concave chest. He looked lean to the point of
emaciation. “I’d ask you in for coffee or somethin’ but the place
is kind of a wreck.”

“
I’m coffee’d up, thanks.”
Jonny looked around again. “Lowell, did some college kids come out
here counting bees in your orchard?”

He nodded slowly, maybe
still groggy with sleep. “Few days ago.”

“
Did you talk to
them?”

“
Just the one. Short hair.
The leader?”

“
Isabel?”

“
She came into the barn
when I was milking the cow. Just got the one these days.” He looked
down at his bare feet, pale and bony. “Things ain’t so great around
here.”

“
Not just your place,
Lowell. All the farmers are having a hard go.”

“
If I had a wife, you
know? Can’t afford help. A woman would make things
easier.”

“
You didn’t pick out one
of those college girls?”

Lowell snorted, looked at
Jonny twice, and laughed. He was missing a few teeth. A wife might
also recommend a dentist.

“
Did the girl ask you
about anything in particular?” Jonny asked.

Lowell rubbed one eye. “Let
me get my boots.”

The grain bin was not a
beauty. Set on a high piece of land, directly on the peaty ground
without a foundation, one side had sunk into the earth. Slabs of
rock had been wedged under the base, and rust had set in, creeping
in ugly streaks from the roof down and the base up. Fourteen feet
across and twelve at the walls, the roof was amazingly
intact.

Lowell seemed positive he
had no use for it. The cornfields had been done over into apple
orchards in the fifties. His father once tried to raise hogs in it
but only one season.

“
Don’t know how you’d move
it.” They stood inside, peering up at the light coming through the
cracks. The scent of mold and manure was almost sweet. “Probably
fold up on ya.”

Jonny leaned against the
side, testing its strength. It was surprisingly solid. He walked
the inside perimeter, then the outside. The rust appeared
superficial. The galvanized metal had held up well considering how
many wet Minnesota winters it had weathered. “How much would you
take for it?”

“
Take? It’s worth
nothing.”

“
How does fifty bucks
sound?”

“
It ain’t gonna save the
farm, Knobel. Take the eyesore. It’s yours.”

“
You’re sure?”

Lowell snorted again. “Get
it the heck out of here.”

——

Daria knelt beside the
blueberry bush and focused the lens of the camera on a fat blue
mason bee on a low branch. Two rows over Isabel watched. Her sister
had donned the beekeeper’s helmet and veil reluctantly and showed
no fear of being stung. Plus she had agreed to play photographer
for the day without a hint of complaint. Here she was, mucking
around in the slick morning dew, clicking away. In wrinkled cargoes
and Isabel’s rundown running shoes, no less.

Last night Daria looked the
part of the Chicago socialite in stilettos and gold. She’d brought
a bottle of tequila and a bag of limes and they’d done a couple
shots sitting on the sagging mattress in the motel. She never
stopped talking except to suck on a slice of lime.