“I been wondering, Juna,” she says, that hand still resting lightly on the top of the lantern’s glass chimney. “How is it you figured the fellow you seen was headed toward the Baine place?” She pauses and glances in Juna’s direction. “Why, the fellow may as well have been headed to John Holleran’s place. Or just passing through. How is it you figured he was headed to the Baines’?”
Juna sits at the small wooden desk pushed up under the room’s only window. Wrapped in the blanket we brought from home, she has taken no notice of the silence or the sobs. Since we arrived, she has sat, head hanging, hands in her lap. Every so often, the blanket has slipped from around her shoulders, exposing her cotton underthings, and I’ve tugged it back in place and tucked the ends into her hands. Each time, I have asked in a whisper . . . You’re certain. You’re certain Joseph Carl done this? Now Sheriff Irlene is wondering the same.
“Juna?” Sheriff Irlene says when Juna gives her no answer. “Why the Baines’ place? Why not some other place?”
Juna continues to stare at her hands and makes no sign of having heard Sheriff Irlene’s question.
Eventually the other Baine brothers will make their way here. They’ll hear from their mama what’s happened and what’s become of Joseph Carl. That’s why Abraham sits out on the porch, his shotgun resting on his lap. That’s why a half dozen of Sheriff Irlene’s deputies do the same. They are all waiting for the Baine brothers.
“Don’t you think that’s odd, John?” Sheriff Irlene says to John Holleran.
John glances at Juna and then me but says nothing.
“And it’s odd too that Joseph Carl would wonder about the river.” Now Sheriff Irlene is talking to John. “Juna said he asked was the water deep enough to wade in. He’d know, wouldn’t he, seeing as how he lived here most all of his life? Odd too, don’t you think?”
“Deeper certain times than others,” John says.
Sheriff Irlene nods. “I suppose.”
The silence from behind the door leading into the back room has lasted longer than any other silence in the past few hours. Over and over, Daddy has been telling Joseph Carl that everyone knows he took Dale. Only question now is what did he do to the boy and where is he. Where’ll we find him, Daddy keeps asking. But now the room is quiet.
“You done the right thing, Irlene,” John Holleran says. “Bringing Joseph Carl here was the right thing.”
Sheriff Irlene returns to her chair still pushed up against the front door. She sits on the chair’s edge and closes her mouth up tight into a thin straight line, as if to let John Holleran know she’s not quite so certain she’s done the right thing, and maybe so we won’t think she’s troubled by what might be heading toward her small office at this very moment.
From where I sit in the chair nearest Juna so I can tend her blanket, I try not to look at John because I know he’s doing something kind, something I should be grateful for. He believes Juna, though maybe not so much after what the sheriff said. John doesn’t live with Juna day after day, doesn’t see how her mind is all the time working out how to twist and wring things just so. And he’s trying his best to see Joseph Carl treated fairly. At the very least, he thinks I believe Juna and so he’s doing it for me.
But if I look at him, if I look at John Holleran, and if our eyes meet for even a glance, I’ll be beholden to him. I wish I could care for him, and knowing that I don’t makes me too much like Juna. I don’t care for him because he cares too much for me. It’s childish. It’s wanton, and if he knew this, he’d pity me. But all I can think of is Ellis Baine and where is he and when will he come and bring an end to all of this.
“Same would have come about had it been Harold here,” John says to Sheriff Irlene. “This is all that could be done for the boy. Your Harold would have done the same. Juna’ll answer to you when she’s feeling up to it. Don’t you think, Sarah?”
I nod, though I don’t think it at all. Juna won’t answer because she’ll have no answer. Something has become of Dale, but Joseph Carl had no hand in it. Juna likely did.
“I sure hope you’re right, John,” Sheriff Irlene says.
Sheriff Irlene’s skin has a glow about it and is still smooth but for the lines around her eyes and those that frame her mouth. She’s too young to be a widow, but she’ll be one the rest of her life. She’ll likely never remarry. Too young to be a widow. Too old to be a new bride.
She’s about to say something more, maybe something about what a good man her husband was, but a scream stops her. Not a sob like those that came before but a scream. She jumps from her chair. I stand too. John Holleran pushes off the wall and grabs for the door’s latch. Daddy had been slapping at Joseph Carl with a pair of leather gloves. That’s what we had figured by the sound of it. But there’s no more slapping coming from that back room. No one is stumbling across the floor, being shoved up against a wall, tripping over an upended chair. It’s quiet except for that scream. John yanks on the door, rattling it in its frame, but it won’t open.