The Queen of Sleepy Eye (19 page)

And what about the rug? I couldn't plop a fifty pound rug into an envelope to hide under my underwear. How did she expect me to explain a Persian rug to Mom? I knew exactly where the Babcocks lived—across town, of course, in the historic district. Grecian columns and a deep porch. It was Scarlett O'Hara's Tara all over again. A constant stream of traffic flowed by the house. Did Lauren watch the house for a time when everyone, including the dog, was out? Did she carry the rug home, or did she bring her brother's wagon? And most importantly, why hadn't she chosen something lighter and cheaper to ship back? A flare of resentment warmed my face.
By sending the rug to me, she made me an accessory to a crime. Anyone who watched
Perry Mason
knew that.

* * *

“I'M MEETING BRUCE at the Lost Mine in an hour.” Mom examined her fingernails. “My nails are a mess. Amy, run the tub for me while I remove my nail polish. I smell like fertilizer and chicken feed. Put some Skin So Soft in the water.”

After Mom left with Bruce, I sat down to write Lauren a letter. First, I printed out Scriptures on index cards for her to memorize. Then I demanded an apology and a refund for having to ship the rug back to Gilbertsville. I stifled an impulse to send the Mexican blouses back to Lauren with the rug. Those I liked. Shipping the rug meant dipping into my travel money, so I let her questions about friendship go unanswered. I rolled up the letter and pushed it down the center of the rug. I taped the wrapping paper shut and made a new label to send the rug back to Lauren. For my next trick, I would get the package out of the house without Mrs. Clancy or Mom seeing it.

“Thanks a lot, Lauren.”

Each evening that week at four o'clock, Mexican families began lining the sidewalk in front of the funeral home. Somber and silent, they stood in tight familial groups. The women dressed in black with their heads veiled in lace. The children leaned into their mothers' skirts, watchful with eyes of bittersweet chocolate. The boys wore crisp white shirts. The girls wore starched dresses that billowed out from their waists. Sometimes the children gazed up at their mothers, pleading with their eyes to retreat to the shade, only to have their mothers rebuke their requests with a sharp shake of the head. The men wore dark suits with their hair slicked into place. Some had pencil-thin mustaches. They smelled of aftershave. No one spoke. I only made eye contact with several of the children who then quickly looked away.

A few minutes before five, I opened the casket, careful not to look at the man's face. I'd overheard the sheriff telling a deputy that Charles had spent most of that first night and all the next day
putting the man's face together. I wasn't all that anxious to see how well he'd accomplished his task. I snapped the lamp on.

By the time the first family stepped onto the porch, their faces glistened with sweat. They entered, one family at a time, walking past the guest book. The mother and the children stopped inside the door with their gazes to the floor. The father stepped up to the casket. I held my breath.

Is this the man's family?

With a sigh, the father's shoulders relaxed. Only then did the wife raise her gaze to meet his. He shook his head, crossed himself. The room exhaled.

And another family took their place.

When I locked the door at eight, no one complained. They stepped off the porch and walked hand in hand back to their vehicles parked up and down both sides of the street. On the fifth night, I kept the doors open until everyone in line had a chance to view the body that lay as it had all week, broken and singular. Somewhere a mother or young wife wondered where her son or husband had gone or why the check had not arrived from America. She would never know. I cried for her as I closed the casket for the last time and turned off the lamp. I slipped the guest book back in its box and placed it on Mrs. Clancy's desk along with the forms I'd been instructed to fill out for the family.

I fell on the bed and the tears flowed. “I hate this place. I hate Mrs. Clancy. I hate my mother.” The words burned my throat. “I hate death and the business of death. And I hate Cordial. I hate that somewhere a child doesn't know where his daddy is. I hate that most of all.” I ranted until my eyes felt like cotton and my rage was spent.

The shade snapped open. I turned away from the window, wrapping my head in a pillow. Mom bent over me. The scents of Tabu, White Rain hair spray, and Lily of the Valley lotion spilled over me but didn't camouflage her first cigarettes of the day. These were the scents of Mom. My throat tightened.

“
Fofa,
you slept in your dress? You'll have to launder it today.”

I'd drifted in and out of sleep since seven, my usual wake-up time.

“I'm late for work,” she said. “And Mrs. Clancy will expect the funeral home to be spotless by the time she gets here.”

I spoke into the pillow. “I'm tired.”

“Are you sick?”

“I'm tired.”

“I'll come home at lunch to check on you.” Her shoes tapped out her retreat. She stopped at the door. “Don't lie in bed too long. I think the old biddy is still upset about your song. We can't chance making her mad again.” And she was gone.

After she left, I rolled onto my back. The full force of the sun's optimism stung my eyes. That wouldn't do. Down came the shade, and I stepped out of the dress and pulled a nightgown over my head. The sheets had barely chilled. Before I fell asleep again, I considered reading the final chapters of
The Good Earth.
Wang Lung was a miserable little man.
Forget him.
My guitar leaned in the corner. Straw had loaned me a John Denver songbook. Maybe a little “Rocky Mountain High”? My arms felt leaden. Lauren had written to say she wasn't pregnant and to ask why she hadn't heard from me. I would write her later. I turned to the wall and disappeared into sleep.

The squeal of the kitchen door's hinges woke me. “Amy? Are you here?” It was Mrs. Clancy. I kept my eyes closed and slowed my breathing. The bedroom door opened and closed. The kitchen floor groaned under her footsteps as she clicked light switches and made coffee before clomping toward her office. The quiet settled on me, and I dreamed of swimming in a sparkling blue lake.

“Wake up!” Feather said, shaking my shoulder. “We're kidnapping you.”

“I'm tired.”

Another voice. Male. “Are your eyes always that puffy in the morning?”

H?
I covered my head with the sheet. “Get out of here, both of you.”

“Go wait for her on the porch,” Mrs. Clancy said. She sat on the bed. Either I rolled into the valley she created in the mattress, or I sat up.

“They're gone,” she said. “You can come out now.”

I sat up and pushed hair from my face.

With her hands in her lap, she cocked her head to smile. “It's been a tough week for you. You could use a little fun, so H and Feather
are taking you floating down the canal. It's what I used to do as a girl when life got too burdensome. My brothers took me. It'll be good for you.” She patted my leg. “Come on, get out of bed. You don't want to miss this day.” At the door she turned and threw a garden hat onto the bed. “You'll want to wear this—freckles, you know.”

* * *

H BENT OVER an inner tube that lay half in the water. “I'll hold the tube while you sit in it, and then I'll push you into the current. It's easy.”

“But how will I get out?” I asked.

“I'll let you know when—”

“How?”

“I won't be that far behind you. You'll be able to hear me. And I can jump out and help you.”

“Water makes me nervous,” I whispered only for H to hear.

“I know. If it wasn't safe, I wouldn't let you do it.”

“I'll go first, H,” Feather offered.

“Do you think that's wise?” I asked H.

“We'll only be a few feet apart. I can be out of the water in a second if there's a problem.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Every spring, back in Gilbertsville, bulbs sprouted like green noses out of the black earth along Market Street. I walked past the planters twice a day on my way to school and back home again. After the initial shock of seeing anything green after a long, colorless winter, the tulips grew their sword-like leaves and meaty stems without much notice from me. But when their blood-red flower cups exploded, Lauren and I celebrated by eating warm donuts and drinking hot
chocolate in Baumgartner's Bakery. We sat at tiny café tables, breathing in the scents of butter and yeast and chocolate. We gossiped about classmates and admired each other's chocolate mustaches. Sadly, horticultural miracles had held our attention for only three nanoseconds. But I remembered that shock of color and the hope it birthed in me. That's how I felt being with H just then. The change in him was that noticeable. One day he had been an oaf full of false bravado. That day, with his new strength, he surprised and reassured me.

Feather set her inner tube on the canal bank and climbed in. “Push me,” she demanded of H.

H shoved her off and the current pulled her away. She squealed. I pulled Mrs. Clancy's garden hat to my eyebrows and scooted my inner tube closer to the bank. H all but lifted me into the water. The inner tube bounced below the water's surface, dunking me up to my chest. The cold water shocked a gasp right out of me.

“Look at H!” Feather shouted over her shoulder.

H cannonballed into the canal, holding the inner tube over his fanny. He disappeared under the water and bobbed to the surface. “Oh, baby, that feels good.”

Feather used her hand like a rudder to face me. “This is fun.” Seeing that she possessed some control in the water helped me relax. I leaned back and lifted my face to the sun. Freckles didn't scare me.

“That's more like it,” H called.

I smiled to myself. I could be such a worry wart.

Feather called out, “Check out the adorable goats.”

A trio of goats munched stubbles of hay in the field. The goats reminded me of the Hubbard sisters with their identical bobbed hairdos and a preference for Mr. Baumgartner's sticky buns.

“Goats are not adorable,” H muttered.

“Where's your sense of wonder?” I asked him.

“I have plenty of wonder. I just happen to save it for things worth wondering about.”

“Like?”

“Like how many touchdowns I'll make my first year on the football team.” And yet, H remained H.

“Oh yes, football, the beginning place for all wonderment, like black holes, the northern lights, and a baby's first step. H, you need to dream bigger. Build a taller skyscraper. Discover a vaccine for chicken pox. Develop the safest working boot in history.”

A spray of water drenched my hat. I caught the current with my hand to face my attacker. Before I could retaliate, I was spitting canal water, the home of ducks and fishes and too many unknown things that emptied their bowels into the water. I covered my face. “Uncle!”

The canal wound along the base of Logan Mountain, bouncing us gently off the grassy banks and spinning us at will. We passed cattle too busy grazing to notice us. In an apple orchard, young trees bent under the load of green fruit on their branches. The sky was a herd of disorganized clouds in a forget-me-not sky.

“This is where Falcon lives,” Feather called out.

My head snapped up. Men and women in overalls and broad hats harvested squash and tomatoes with a twist and a pull. Row upon row of beans, carrots, and marijuana—lots and lots of marijuana grew in arrow-straight rows.

“I'm not supposed to go there,” Feather said. “Butter says they're different.”

How they were different was obvious. Butter didn't even allow alcohol on their farm. But knowing that Falcon lived there made me curious. “How are they different?”

Feather shrugged.

H hooked my inner tube with his feet and back-paddled to widen
the distance between us and Feather. “I can tell you how they're different,” H whispered. “They're a bunch of dopers, for one. They let their kids run around naked. And they aren't too discreet about … I mean, it's not unusual to …”

“H, what are you trying to say?”

“You've heard of free love, haven't you? Well, they invented it right there.”

H released my inner tube, and I paddled to catch up to Feather. When I did, I turned to look back at what H had called New Morning farm. Besides a weathered farmhouse and barn, there was a school bus with a stove pipe and mismatched curtains and a smattering of outbuildings no bigger than garages, cobbled together with odd lengths of timbers and boards. A stand of teepees filled a paddock.

That shouldn't be too hard to find again.

We floated by another farmhouse with a bright-red barn. The owner had draped a rope to give his barn a smile to go along with two windows that served as eyes and a hayloft nose. After that, pastures of grazing cattle and horses stretched below us. I closed my eyes, only to see the faces of the Mexican women waiting to see their son or brother or husband.

H ran by me on the bank. “Amy, get out! Feather's having a seizure!”

Feather arched her back, her mouth agape, and flipped out of her tube. H grabbed her shirt and pulled her out of the canal. The current pulled me past them as I clawed at the grass to heft myself out of the water. By the time I ran back to H and Feather, H held her head in his lap. Her arms and legs jerked rhythmically.

Jesus!
“Shouldn't we put something in her mouth?” I asked.

“Run back to the house we just passed. Ask them to call for help.”

I hesitated, feeling responsible for Feather.

“Go,” demanded H. “We'll follow when she stops.”

I worried I had run past the house when I recognized the roof in the trees. I bent to ease my way through a barbed-wire fence, but a barb caught my T-shirt, ripping a hole and cutting my arm from my shoulder to my elbow. I ignored the pain to run through a pasture. Cattle moseyed out of my path without looking up. When I got within shouting distance of the house, I yelled for help. Only a few chickens pecking at the lawn acknowledged me. I pushed through the gate and pounded on the back door. I moved to a window, pounding and yelling, “Is anyone here? I need help! My friend needs help!” I ran to the front door. No one answered. I looked up and down the road. No houses. I rang the doorbell. “Please help me.
Please!
”

I rested my forehead on the door. “Lord, please, let Feather be okay. Bring help.”

I turned the doorknob, and the door opened. I walked in. “Hello? I'm not a burglar,” I said, scanning the room for a telephone. “I'm here to call an ambulance.” I walked through the silent living room to the kitchen where I opened and closed drawers looking for a telephone book. Inside a wall cabinet over the telephone, a list of phone numbers had been taped to the door.

I dialed the ambulance.

* * *

FEATHER LAY ON the clinic bed in a tight ball. “My head is killing me.”

“Do you want me to rub your back?” I asked.

“Would you?”

I sat on the bed. Feather's shoulders relaxed under my touch. I couldn't say anything to ease her physical pain, but I was more
disappointed that I couldn't think of one solitary thing to offer her hope. “I'm so sorry, Feather.”

Feather wiped tears from her eyes. “I know.”

I tilted my head back to let my tears run down my cheeks to my neck where they collected on the collar of my blouse. I ran my hands up the sides of her spine and circled the bony hills of her shoulder blades.

“Are you crying?” she asked.

“A little.”

“There's tissue on the nightstand.”

“Do you want one?”

“Sure.” Feather sat up to wipe her face and blow her nose. “Butter's real upset. She called her mother. I'm not supposed to know, but Mule told me. I can't remember the last time Butter called her.” Feather threw her arms around me, and I pulled her onto my lap. Her tears soaked my shoulder. I sniffed to keep my snot out of her hair. The clock on the wall
tick, tick, tick
ed. Butter looked in on us, gave me a weak smile, and closed the door.

“I knew you'd be my best-ever friend the moment I saw you,” Feather said.

I deeply regretted not being a world-class brain doctor or rich enough to employ one. Her hair tickled my nose, so I patted it down. “Feather, when I'm scared, I say a prayer.”

“I don't know any prayers.”

“I can pray for you.”

“Will it help?”

“It will, but I don't know how. We'll have to watch and see.”

Feather searched my face with sea-glass eyes. “I get it. Prayer is like a vitamin.”

A vitamin?
Oh boy, I didn't know if prayer was anything like a vitamin or not. “Prayer is talking to God and asking for his help.”

“And he helps?”

“Yes, but he's more like a parent than a Santa Claus. He listens to our requests and then does what's best for us anyway.”

Feather laid her head on the pillow. “Maybe later, then.”

* * *

MOM ADDED A casserole of
pudim de fiambre
to the picnic basket, a sort of ham bread pudding that Lauren always asked for when she spent the night. “The ham is not so good as Uncle Eusebio brought your
avós.
” She crossed herself. “May the Lord have mercy on their souls.” She looked me up and down. “You're filthy. Go wash up and put a cool cloth on your eyes. They're puffy. And change your clothes,
fofa.
We're going to a softball game. It will do you a world of good. You can't sit around here worrying about Feather.”

Of course, I can.
“Mom, really, a softball game? I'm not in the mood. My arm hurts.”

Mom embraced me, stroking my hair. “You are a good friend to the girl, but only her mama and papa can help her now. She will be better soon, and then the two of you can read your books together. The softball game will take your mind off your troubles. The coal miners are playing the hippies.”

“So Bruce is playing?”
And Falcon?

“Maybe.”