Bent Road (7 page)

Arthur’s home is a half mile away. At the top of the hill that separates their two houses, Ruth slows. This is where she stops every Saturday morning and scans the tightly knit rows of winter wheat sprouts that etch the fields, hoping for a glimpse of Julianne Robison. Tattered yellow ribbons tied to a dozen fence posts along the road by the high school kids in the early days following Julianne’s disappearance remind Ruth how long the child has been gone. Too long. But still Ruth watches for her from the top of the hill.

There are other reminders besides the yellow ribbons. The flyers with Julianne’s black and white picture, wrinkled and faded, that still cling to the telephone poles along Main Street. The car wash that the Boy Scouts held a month ago. They gave the money to Mary and Orville. Mary said she would tuck it away for a rainy day. The abandoned well that James Williamson reported last Sunday. Floyd Bigler and a half dozen of the town’s men gathered around the hole while their women gathered at the church just in case. But the men found nothing and backfilled the hole with crushed rock and cement.

Careful to avoid the soft ruts carved by the truck that drove past, Ruth walks to the edge of the road and fingers one of the yellow ribbons. On her next trip to Arthur’s house, she’ll bring along some yellow fabric scraps and tie them over the tattered plastic ribbons. She scans both sides of the road, counting the ribbons so she’ll know how many to cut. And then she hears it. Yelling, shouting. It sounds like Arthur. She walks to the center of the road and from there she sees them.

Arthur is running down the hill, away from Ruth. He is waving and shouting at Daniel, who is running along the other side of the road, trailed by Evie. Between them, Olivia the cow weaves left and right, first toward Arthur and then toward Daniel. Near the bottom of the hill, where gravity seems to get the better of him, Arthur tries to slow down but slips in the mud instead. He stumbles, arms shooting up into the air, both feet flying out from under him, and lands on his hind end. Daniel stops, coming up a few steps short of his father, and leans over, resting both hands on his knees. This gives Evie time to catch up. Arthur holds up one hand as if to quiet them and pushes himself off the ground. He shakes the dirt from his boots and stands straight, his muddy hands hanging at his sides.

As the commotion settles down, Olivia stops a few feet in front of them. She drops her head and nuzzles something on the ground. Everyone seems to be resting until Arthur suddenly breaks into a sprint, slipping and stumbling for several strides before finding his footing. Olivia startles, jerks her head, throws her hind legs into the air, kicking up mud and gravel, and begins to run. Daniel and Evie duck, both holding their hands over their faces and run after their father. Ruth hugs her bread and laughs. She laughs, without making any sound. She laughs until tears pool in the corner of each eye. She laughs until she hears another truck.

 

U
p ahead, Jonathon drives around the curve in the road. Daniel stops running, leans forward and props himself up by bracing his hands on his knees. Jonathon parks his truck at an angle, blocking the road. Through the windshield, Daniel sees Elaine sitting in the center of the front seat, nearly in Jonathon’s lap. Since the afternoon Jonathon loaded Olivia in his trailer and followed Uncle Ray to Grandma Reesa’s, he has been at their house almost every day. He comes straight from work and stays for dinner, always talking about the house he is building from scraps and spare parts. He’s been around so much that he has become Dad’s extra set of hands. Before they moved from Detroit, Dad said that the farm would turn Daniel into a man, that it would roughen up his hands and put hair on his chest. Instead, Dad found Jonathon, who is already a man, and Daniel is still Mama’s extra set of hands.

Elaine is smiling as Jonathon slowly and quietly opens his door and slides out of the truck. She follows, both of them stifling their laughter so they don’t startle Olivia, who has stopped in the center of the road. The truck has confused her or maybe she is plain tired out.

“Give you a hand, Arthur?” Jonathon says, tugging on his gray hat.

“We’ve got her from this side,” Dad says and motions Daniel to close the gap between them and the cow.

“I’d say this old gal has had about enough.” Jonathon bends to look into Olivia’s face. He takes two steps forward, reaches out with one hand and grabs her neck strap. “Yep, good and tired.”

“How many times is that, Dan?” Elaine says, standing next to Jonathon and hooking a finger onto one of his belt loops. “Three?”

“Why’d you get so made up to go fishing?” Daniel says as Dad walks over to take the lead from Jonathon.

“Get over here, Dan,” Dad says, giving Elaine a second look. She is wearing a lavender dress and her brown hair hangs in soft waves the way it does when she sleeps in rag curlers. “You two catch anything?”

“Daddy, don’t be silly,” Elaine says. “Who fishes in the rain?”

“Daddy fishes in the rain all the time,” Evie says, smiling up at Jonathon. He tugs one of her braids.

“Caught a lot of fine fish in the rain,” Dad says, holding onto Olivia and studying Elaine. Olivia snorts and tosses her head. Dad jerks her lead. “Hold up there, girl.”

Daniel thinks maybe Dad will forget to ground him since Elaine is too dressed up for fishing.

“We went to my mother’s for breakfast, sir,” Jonathon says, patting Olivia’s jowl. “She enjoys the company.”

“Good enough,” Dad says. “Daniel, get this animal home.”

“Yes, sir,” Daniel says, wrapping both hands around the leather lead.

“Are you coming to Grandma’s for lunch tomorrow?” Evie asks Jonathon. She twirls a braid around her finger, the same braid Jonathon tugged. “She makes fried chicken. Daddy says it’s the best ever.”

“Imagine so, squirt,” Jonathon says, giving Evie a pat on the head and turning on one heel to leave.

“Don’t forget to latch the gate, Dan,” Elaine says, laughing and still hanging onto Jonathon’s belt loop as they walk back to the truck.

While Dad directs Jonathon so his truck won’t get stuck in one of the muddy ditches, Evie waves goodbye and Daniel pulls Olivia until her head turns toward home. Thinking he’ll check for mail because Mama says his old friends are sure to write any day now, Daniel stops at the mailbox, tugs open the small door and looks inside. Empty. Not a single letter since they moved. Already, every Detroit friend has forgotten him. He shakes his head, gives Olivia’s lead another yank to get her moving and looks up. There, at the top of the hill, he sees them.

“Hey, Dad,” he says, squinting up the road. “Isn’t that Aunt Ruth up there?”

At the top of the hill that separates Aunt Ruth and Uncle Ray’s house from their house, Uncle Ray has parked his truck and is standing next to the passenger side door, which is open. At first, Daniel thinks Uncle Ray has come to help catch Olivia, too—that Dad has called out the whole county to run her down. But then he sees Aunt Ruth standing at the side of the road. Her shoulders are hunched forward as if she is carrying something and she looks no bigger than Evie from so far away. Uncle Ray motions for Aunt Ruth to get into the truck but instead she stares down the road where Daniel stands with Olivia. Daniel looks over at his cow. Her chestnut coat is slick and shiny, her breath comes in short, heavy snorts. She hangs her head, then looks up at Daniel with her brown eyes and bats her thick, black lashes.

When Daniel looks back, Aunt Ruth is gone. The truck door is closed. And Uncle Ray is walking back to the driver’s side. He pauses as he passes in front of the truck, waves down at Daniel and his family and slips inside the cab. Evie jumps up and down, waves her hands over her head. Dad watches as the truck rolls backward down the far side of the hill. He is looking for something, though Daniel isn’t sure what.

Breathing in the cool morning air that ruffles her kitchen curtains and still smells of rain, Ruth crosses her legs, Indian style as Evie would say, and rearranges her skirt so it lies around her on the floor like a halo. Pieces of broken glass scatter as she settles into position. On the stove, a small saucepan sets inside a larger one that is filled with two inches of boiling water—a homemade double boiler. A cheesecloth draped over both traps the heavy, rising steam. On the counter, where it will stay cool, waits a small brown bottle.

From her spot on the floor, Ruth glances at the clock sitting on the stove and dips a teaspoon into a box of baking soda, levels it by dragging it under the box top and drops it into a small glass dish. Using a tight whipping motion, she stirs it into the water already in the bowl and, thinking the paste isn’t thick enough yet, she adds another scoop of soda. She taps her spoon on the side of the glass bowl. Still not thick enough. As she adds a third spoonful, a truck pulls around the side of the house and parks near the garage. A door slams followed by footsteps that climb the outside stairs. Ruth pulls her knees to her chest, cups the small bowl in one hand and stirs the baking soda paste with the other.

The screened door rattles in its frame.

“Ruth. Ruth. You in there?”

Ruth lets her legs fall down into a crisscross position again and uses the back of her spoon to mash the paste against the side of the bowl.

“Ruth, it’s Arthur. You home? I saw you out there on the road. You and Ray. Olivia got out again. Did you see? Damn cow. Everything okay in there?”

The screen creaks as it opens. Arthur knocks on the wooden door loud enough that Ruth feels it through the floorboards. She closes her eyes, actually only her left eye, and holds her breath, bracing herself. But the vibration beneath her is not enough to stir up the pain. She’ll feel it tomorrow.

“Thought you might have something to eat in there,” Arthur says, shaking the locked doorknob. “Eggs are cold at my house. You in there?”

Ruth sets aside the glass bowl and, supporting herself with one hand, she stretches toward a silver frame that lies barely within reach. She hooks the frame with one finger, pulls it toward her and sits straight again. Because the glass is broken, she slips off the cardboard backing, removes the picture and sets it on the floor next to her. A spot of blood drips off the palm that braced her when she reached for the frame. The blood lands on the center of the picture just below Eve’s right eye. First one drop and then another. Eve was fifteen when the picture was taken, maybe sixteen. A few years before she died. Ruth pulls a small shard of glass from her palm and presses her hand against her skirt to stop the bleeding.

“Ruth, hey, Ruth.” Arthur knocks again. “Celia says to come on over for coffee. She’s got those white beans ready to go. Thought you’d like a ride.”

Heavy footsteps cross the porch, pause and walk back. The door rattles in its frame as Arthur tries it again.

“You in there?”

Once the bleeding has stopped, Ruth dips a corner of her skirt into the baking soda paste and begins to polish the silver frame. She starts at the top, scrubbing in tiny circles, a white haze marking her path. The frame had been a wedding present. She polishes it every month, sometimes with baking soda, sometimes with toothpaste. The tarnish is quick to gather in the scalloped edges. Cheap silver, Ray always says.

Having finished the top, Ruth adjusts her grip, folding her hand over the jagged edges of glass clinging to the frame. The pointed shards prick her fingers. She changes position, shifting her weight from side to side, her back beginning to ache where he kicked her. Something cuts into her hip. Another piece of glass, she thinks. All around her, glass lays shattered. Crescent-shaped pieces of wine-glasses never used, cleared out of the china hutch with one swipe of Ray’s right hand. The frame had been an accident. It bounced across the wooden floor and came to rest at Ray’s feet. From inside the silver frame, Eve’s shattered face, her eyes bright, smiled up at him from under the brim of her best Sunday hat.

He had stood for a moment, staring at the photo, his clenched fists at his side and without bothering to look at her, he called Ruth a whore, a God damned whore with no business sneaking off like she did. A God damned whore wearing a pink band in her hair who had no business feeding the folks who thought he stole their girl. He had seen those Wichita men down at Izzy’s café. Thought he’d have himself a decent God damned breakfast for once but then he sees those men with Floyd. Those God damned Wichita men tipped their hats at him, told him what a pleasant wife he had and what good coffee Ruth brewed up for them. Whole damn town is talking about it now. Everyone talking about how much that girl looked like Eve, talking about it like it means something. Ruth couldn’t lie when Ray asked if they’d been to talk to her but promised him that she only told those men the truth—that Ray’d been home all night, eating meat loaf and strawberry pie. The truth is all. Ray had stood for a long time, his good eye staring at Ruth before he kicked the silver frame across the floor into the kitchen. As Ruth crawled after it, glass crackling under her knees, he lifted the same boot and kicked her in the back and again in the left side of the head. When Ruth woke, he was gone.

A door slams and Arthur’s truck fires up. Gravel crunches beneath his tires as he slowly backs up and starts down the driveway. The truck stops when it passes the front of the house, idles there for a moment, and the sound of the engine fades as he drives away.

Celia stands at Reesa’s stove, a place she finds herself now every Sunday after church services, with a teaspoon in hand and a checkered apron tied at her waist. Using her forearm to brush the hair from her eyes, she inhales the steam rising off a pot of simmering chicken broth, turns her head and coughs. The others sit behind her at the kitchen table. They are watching her, waiting for her, crossing and uncrossing their legs. The vinyl seat covers squeak as they shift positions. Someone drums his fingers on the table. Someone else sighs. Someone’s stomach growls.