While no one counted out the days for me, everyone in town knew when Juna would come of age. Some mothers sent their sons to stay with friends or relatives in the weeks leading up to Juna’s day, thinking distance would save their boys from being the face Juna Crowley saw in the well. It wasn’t Juna’s know-how that frightened the mothers of Hayden County. There have been other girls with the gift, a knack for knowing things, and once these girls ascended, their gifts ascended as well. Their know-how rounded out, became something larger, greater.
Folks were unsettled by these girls who knew more, saw more, felt more, but the girls didn’t give rise to fear. The evil living in Juna’s eyes is what prompted these mothers to pack up their sons and send them away. They wondered if the evil would ascend too. Now that Dale has disappeared and Daddy’s life is cursed, folks know for certain that Juna’s evil has rounded out. It’s larger, greater than ever before.
Irlene Fulkerson comes to the house early in the day. Her husband was the sheriff until he died two months ago, and now Irlene is sheriff. Her oldest son, Buell, who is my age and has a family of his own already, is with her, as well as a handful of other men who were good to her husband and now are good to Sheriff Irlene. She wears a gray dress that scratches my cheek and neck when she pulls me into a hug. She’s full through the chest, soft, holds me a good long time and whispers that she’ll see to Dale. All these fine folks will see to finding Dale. She smells smoky, as if she must have had a time getting her stove lit this morning. When she leaves along with all her men to get on with looking for Dale, it’s like losing my mama all over again.
Near sunset, Mr. and Mrs. Brashear and Abigail come with milk from their cow, and Mrs. Baine brings two heads of cabbage, the first of her crop. They’re scrawny, have been picked too early, but they’re likely all she has to share. The four stand on the porch, all of them swatting at mosquitoes. I look for Ellis among them, wondering if maybe he drove his mama here. But there is no truck parked outside, meaning the four of them walked. I invite them into the house, offer them coffee and a seat, and while they settle in, I pour a cup of milk for Abigail and lower the rest into the well to keep it cool.
Back in the house, I place my best folded linens on the table—snow-white tea napkins my mama hand-stitched—and four silver teaspoons, tarnished, though I polish them regular with baking soda. I serve Abigail the last biscuit to go along with her milk. I wonder if she’s slept since we first realized Dale was gone.
“You shouldn’t waste what little you have,” Mrs. Brashear says, meaning Abigail isn’t allowed.
“Please,” I say. “It’s no waste. Abigail has been such a help to me.”
Since daybreak, Abigail has been at the house, brewing coffee and digging the mud out of the men’s boots, but she won’t go outside to pick from the garden unless someone goes with her. She’s even washed the clothes Juna had been wearing when we found her in the field. Three times Abigail has scrubbed the dress as if hoping once it’s finally clean, Dale will come home.
“Go on and eat,” I say to Abigail, slipping the white cap from her head and brushing my hand over her hair.
“We seen a fellow,” Mr. Brashear says as I freshen his coffee. He leans over the kitchen table as he speaks, his long, slender frame tipped forward, and he presses one ear toward me.
“We did,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Both of us seen him. Ordinary-enough-looking fellow.”
Mrs. Brashear, short and stout to her husband’s long and lean, wears a pale-yellow dress, always pale yellow even in winter, and a white kerchief nearly the same shade as her graying hair is wrapped over her head and tied under her chin. Next to them, Mrs. Baine clings to her coffee cup with both hands and keeps her eyes lowered. I’ve always thought her like a dog that has carried one too many litters. Her long hair, mostly brown but for the many wiry gray strands, hangs down her back. She is a tiny woman with narrow hips and shoulders who must have once been bigger, stronger, because the clothes she wears have a way of hanging on her such that she’s always tugging at them and tucking them in. They must have fit her at one time, probably before all those boys of hers wore her down.
“A fellow?” I say.
“What’s that?” Mr. Brashear shouts.
“You say you seen a fellow?”
Mr. Brashear slaps the table, causing his coffee to slop over the edge of the cup and Abigail to startle. “Took a shirt right off Mother’s line.”
Mrs. Baine lifts her head, her hair falling back just enough to let me see her face.
“A fine shirt,” Mrs. Brashear says. “Good, heavy shirt.”
“Figured to let him have it,” Mr. Brashear says. “What with Abigail in the house, we don’t want no trouble. If that’s all he wanted, figured to let him have it and move on.”
Mrs. Baine, still clinging to her coffee cup, scoots forward on her chair. She is looking at Mr. Brashear. “With buttons?” she says. “And a fine stiff collar?”