Crooked River: A Novel Read Free Page A

the lean-to at the edge of the apiary where he kept his tools and supplies and where Ollie and I stood waiting.
    Here was where I should have told Bear everything. It would have been easy enough: We found a woman floating in Crooked River, we found a woman dead. Then she got caught up in the current and drifted away. We found a dead woman and now she’s gone and maybe we should tell someone so she can be found again and we think this jacket might be hers, too. He was the adult—this should have been his burden. Here was where I should have told. But I kept my mouth shut. Because he was close enough now for me to see two scratches on his right cheek, stretching parallel from the outside corner of his eye to the top of his beard. Two scratches, bright red and raw. Two scratches that hadn’t been there yesterday.
    He stopped in front of us and narrowed his eyes when he saw the jean jacket draped over my arm. Before I even had a chance to ask, he said, “I found that in the woods.”
    He tapped the hive tool against his leg. “I thought it belonged to one of you.”
    Ollie leaned into me. I shook my head and shoved the jacket toward him. “It doesn’t.”
    He didn’t take it. Instead, he asked, “Do either of you want it? I think Franny might be able to get that stain out.”
    This was the first summer I was tall enough to look Bear in the eyes without having to tilt my head up, but when I did so now, he dropped his gaze to the ground.
    “We don’t want it,” I said.
    He shrugged and took the jacket, draping it over his shoulder. “I’ll leave it with Franny, then,” he said. “She can drop it at the church donation box next Sunday.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
    A bee flew right up close to us, darting back and forth, making a nuisance of itself. Ollie shrank away from it and swatted the air.
    “They smell fear, you know,” Bear said. “You can get stung real quick that way if you’re not careful.”
    Ollie sucked in her breath and puffed her cheeks out huge.
    The bee flew off, leaving the three of us standing there in a broken circle. Ollie and I watched Bear, Bear watched us, no one saying a word. Then he walked past us, swinging the hive tool at his side, and for the first time I noticed how thick the metal was, how blunt the edges, how weightless he made it seem. It wasn’t very big, barely a foot long, but the potential was there. Lift it above your head, tilt it at an angle so the edges hit first, swing it fast enough and hard enough, crack a woman’s skull, bludgeon her to death.

 
    2
ollie

    T his night is made of ghosts. One stands behind me, at the edge of firelight and just out of reach. One sits beside my sister. Both wait for someone to look up and see.
    I see.
    I see things no one else does.
    I see them there and wish I didn’t. I want to tell and can’t.
    I try because my sister needs to know what I know about the jacket and this man we call Bear, who sits beside me, who is our father. I try, but my sister says I’m being a baby and she’ll only listen if I use my words. But my words are gone and I’m afraid they’re never coming back.
    Bear throws another piece of wood onto the fire. Bright sparks leap, but they lack the spirit to become stars and fade before reaching the black-ink sky.
    He stares across the hot red coals and smoke at my sister, who sits apart from us. “You’re awfully quiet tonight.”
    She shrugs.
    “You and Ollie both.” He looks at me and winks.
    But he doesn’t say I’m crazy.
    The day we got here, Grandma pulled me close and pressed her dry lips to my forehead and said to Bear, “I’m worried about her. Maybe she should see a doctor. There’s still time for Al and me to cancel our trip. Stay here with the girls instead.”
    Bear told her I’d be fine, he’d look out for me. “Give the kid a break, Judy,” he said. “She’s been through a lot the past few weeks. We all have. She’ll start talking again when she’s good and ready.”