“You know I hear things. Can’t help it sometimes.”
More than once, Ryce has come to school and not been able to sit because of getting whipped for spreading his daddy’s business. That’s what happens when the sheriff is your daddy. About the time Ryce reached the sixth grade, he figured how to keep his mouth shut and mostly tries not to hear what his daddy tells his mama at the supper table.
“You telling me your daddy said a Holleran killed Mrs. Baine?”
“Hush, Annie.” Ryce rolls his bike forward and leans close. He’s still young enough to do what his mama tells him to do, so he smells like soap and a line-dried shirt. “That ain’t what I’m saying. It ain’t what my daddy’s saying. Not necessarily. Makes folks nervous, is all. A Baine dying on your day. Makes them remember Juna. You’re the same age she was.”
“You telling me your daddy thinks I killed Mrs. Baine?”
From behind Ryce, Daddy walks out of the shed where he disappeared a few minutes earlier, Grandma’s old rocking chair hoisted over his head. He had carried it around the house and into the shed after having told Annie he figured the old rocker needed some work, seeing as how it was making so much noise. He asked if Annie thought a few days would be enough time to fix it up. Annie said she thought a few weeks would be better, and Daddy nodded and said he’d see to it, even though they both knew nothing was wrong with that rocker. Daddy didn’t believe in the know-how, never had, and it didn’t scare him the way it scared Mama.
“Morning, Ryce,” Daddy says, shutting the shed door and dropping the latch that keeps the wind from pulling it open. “Got a long day ahead today. You come to call on Annie, have some breakfast?”
“No, he did not,” Annie says. She stands, and then remembering she has ascended and should do such things, she brushes the wrinkles from her skirt.
More and more, Daddy and Abraham Pace, and sometimes Mama too, tease Annie about Ryce Fulkerson. Time and again, Annie has reminded them that Lizzy Morris is the one who saw Ryce down in the well, so if anyone deserves teasing, it’s Lizzy Morris.
Annie wants to remind Daddy of this again but won’t with Ryce standing right here. Instead she starts to say Ryce was just leaving, but stops and turns when Daddy pulls off his hat and nods off toward the main road.
“Looks like your daddy,” he says to Ryce.
“Yes, sir,” Ryce says. “It sure does.”
The car coming up over the hill is white with black stripes and squared-off lettering on the side. It’s the sheriff’s car. None other like it in the county.
“Guess I’d better be going,” Ryce says. “I’ll be seeing you, Annie.”
Annie says nothing until she looks up to see Daddy staring down on her. All it takes is a nod and Daddy’s intentions are clear.
“Thank you for stopping, Ryce,” Annie says, failing to temper her nasty tone until another look from Daddy convinces her to try harder. “Pleased to see you again.”
“Crop looks real fine, Mr. Holleran,” Ryce says as he leans over his handlebars and lifts his hind end off the bike’s seat. Pumping his pedals as fast as they’ll go seeing as how his front tire is crooked, he gives his daddy a quick wave and pedals on past before he can get out of the car. Ryce might imagine himself growing up to be a sheriff just like his daddy, but he doesn’t much care for the man. Or maybe his daddy doesn’t much care for Ryce. Or maybe that’s just the way it is between fathers and sons.
9
1936—SARAH AND JUNA
ALL NIGHT AND into the next day, the men come and go, more of them as the hours pass. They promise, every one of them, to find Dale straightaway. Folks bring food, what little they have managed to grow in their gardens. I am better with a garden than most, but folks share what they can—cucumbers, tomatoes, thick stalks of rhubarb. Someone brings eggs, only a few so they’ll stay fresh and because it is likely all they have. I fry those eggs in a spoonful of lard until there is no run left in the yolks and feed them to Juna so she’ll feel strong again and tell us about Dale. The men, most visitors too, leave straightaway because they’re afraid to be in a house with Juna, and with Daddy and me as well. Word has traveled from our house to theirs that a curse has taken Dale from us.