A Grant County Collection Page 24

  Sara shook her head, not trusting herself to speak. His resemblance to Jeffrey was startling.

  Nell saw the look on her face, and shooed Jared away. 'Go on, now. Take Mama's ax.'

  He shuffled back to the house, dragging the ax behind him, and Sara pressed her lips together, biting back the obvious question.

  Nell clicked her tongue and tugged on the leashes. The dogs stood at attention. 'You look like you've got something to say.'

  'It's none of my business.'

  'That's never stopped me.' Nell led the dogs around to the front of the house as she told Sara, 'Jeffrey doesn't know.'

  Sara nodded, acknowledging that she had heard her but still not trusting herself to comment.

  At the front of the neighbor's house, Nell sat on the porch with a sigh. 'Possum and I got married a few weeks after Jeffrey moved away to Auburn.'

  'You didn't tell him?'

  'So he'd come back and marry me?' she asked, petting one of the dogs. 'Not much point in that; we would've both killed each other the first week. I got on his nerves because I was always telling him he was wrong, and he got on mine because he wouldn't admit that I was right.'

  Sara could only stare.

  'He would've done the right thing,' Nell said. 'And I didn't want anybody to marry me because it was the right thing.' The dog rolled on its back, and Nell scratched his stomach. 'I love Possum. I liked him at first, but then he stepped in when Jeffrey was gone and we had Jared and Jen came later – not much later.' She gave a private smile. 'But we have a family now, a life together. Possum is a good man. He works less than five minutes away and he still calls if he's gonna be late. He doesn't mind picking up Motrin or tampons for me at the Piggly Wiggly and he's never said anything makes me look fat, even when I wore overalls for three years straight after I had Jen. I know where he is every second of the day, and I know if I fart in church he's gonna take the rap.' She gave Sara a pointed look. 'I like my life exactly how it is.'

  'You don't think Jeffrey has a right to know?'

  'To what end?' she asked, and she had a point. 'Possum's Jared's father. He changed that boy's diapers and walked the floor with him while I was passed out from exhaustion. He signs his report cards and coaches the Little League. There's nothing either of them wants for, and no reason to rock the boat.'

  'I understand.'

  'Do you?'

  'I won't tell him,' she said, wondering how she could keep such a secret.

  'It's not good for Jeffrey being back here right now,' Nell said. 'God knows I was mad at him for staying away so long, but there's too much history here. Too much has happened.' She slipped off her flip-flop and scratched the other dog with her toes. 'Jeffrey's turned out all right. He really has. There's something about him inside that's good, just like with Possum, only you have to scratch the surface to get to it. I don't know what you'd call it, but he's grown into the person I always thought he could be if he just got away from . . .' She indicated the street. 'From this place where everybody thinks they know your story and they don't give a never-you-mind about filling everybody else in on what they think about it.'

  'Reggie Ray gave me an earful.'

  'Don't listen to that old redneck,' she chastised. 'He's the worst of the lot. Keeps saying he was born again. He needs a couple of more rebirths before he turns into a decent human being.'

  'He seemed all right.'

  'Then you weren't looking close enough,' Nell said, an edge of warning to her tone. 'There's two things you need to know about this town, Sara: the Rays think their shit don't stink and the Kendalls are pure white trash.' She indicated her own front yard. 'Not that I can say much with all that crap Possum put in the yard, but at least my kids show up to school in clean clothes.'

  'Who are the Kendalls?'

  'They run the fruit stand outside of town,' she said. 'Mean bastards, every one of them.' She added, 'Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being poor – me and Possum's brought it to an art form – but that doesn't mean you can send your kids out with dirt on their faces and muck under their fingernails. You see them at the store and you have to hold your breath, they're so filthy.' Nell paused, shaking her head in disapproval. 'A few years ago, one of them showed up to school with lice. Infected the entire ninth grade.'

  'Has anyone called children's services?'

  Nell snorted. 'Hoss has been trying to run the whole family out of town for years. The old man was horrible. Beat his wife, beat his kids, beat his dogs. Best thing he ever did was drop dead of a heart attack mowing the grass back behind the seed store.' She shook her head again. 'Still left his wife with one in the oven, and that one's the worst of all. Thank God he's not in Jared's grade. He gets thrown out of school every other day for fighting or stealing or God knows what. Punched a girl last week. Little bastard's just like his father.'

  Sara said, 'Sounds horrible,' but still, she could not help but feel sorry for the child. She often wondered if kids like that could straighten themselves out with the right parent around. She had never completely bought the 'bad seed' theory, though Nell's appraisal that the apple had not fallen far from the tree was probably shared by everyone in town.

  Nell changed the subject, saying, 'Y'all got in late last night.'

  'I hope we didn't wake you up.'

  'I was already up with Possum,' she said. 'Fool man slammed his chin against the counter at work. Don't ask me how he did it, but it gave him a toothache all night long. Tossing and turning till I about strangled him.'

  A car with a woman and a young boy coasted by the house, the woman holding a sheet of paper in her hands like she was trying to read directions.

  Sara said, 'Jeffrey had a little too much to drink.'

  Nell's surprise was obvious. 'I've never seen him drink much.'

  'I don't think it's a habit.'

  Nell studied her, like she was trying to figure Sara out. 'Was it about Julia?'

  'Who's Julia?'

  Nell looked out into the street, where the car that had coasted by earlier had backed up and was parking in front of the driveway.

  'Who's Julia?' Sara repeated. 'Nell?'

  Nell stood up. 'You need to talk to Jeffrey about that.'

  'About what?'

  She waved to the woman getting out of the car, saying, 'You found it.'

  The woman smiled as her son ran up to the dogs and threw his arms around them. 'They look just like the pictures.'

  'This one's Henry,' Nell said, indicating one of the dogs. 'This is Lucinda. Truth be told, she only comes to Lucy.' She held out the leashes to the boy, who gladly took hold.

  The woman opened her mouth, looking like she was about to protest, but Nell reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. 'This should cover the cost for having them fixed. My husband and I never got around to it.'

  'Thank you,' the woman said, the cash obviously helping to make up her mind. 'Is there any particular food they like?'

  'Anything,' Nell said. 'They just love to eat and they love kids.'

  The boy said, 'They're great!' with that enthusiastic tone children use when they're trying to convince their parents they will become future astronauts or presidents if only they get the thing they are asking for.

  'Anyway.' Nell looked at Sara then back to the woman. 'I should be going. We've got to finish packing up the house. Movers will be here at two.'

  The woman smiled. 'It's a shame you can't keep them in the city.'

  'Landlord won't allow it,' Nell told her, holding out her hand. 'Thank you kindly.'

  'Thank you,' the woman said, shaking her hand. She shook Sara's, too, then told the child, 'Honey, say "Thank you.'"

  The boy mumbled a 'Thank you,' but his attention was squarely set on the dogs. Sara watched them bound toward the car, the boy jogging to keep up with the rambunctious animals.

  Sara waited until the woman was in the car, but Nell held up a hand to keep her from speaking. 'Put an ad in the paper,' she said. 'No sense letting those dogs wa
ste away out back when there's people who know how to care for them.'

  'What are you going to tell your neighbor when he gets home from work?'

  'I guess they broke their chains,' Nell shrugged. 'I'd better go check on Jared.'

  'Nell –'

  'Don't ask me questions, Sara. I know I talk too much, but there's some things you need to hear from Jeffrey.'

  'He doesn't seem interested in telling me much of anything.'

  'He's over at his mama's,' Nell said. 'Don't worry, she won't be home for another few hours. She grabs lunch at the hospital on Tuesdays.'

  'Nell –'

  Nell held up her hand, walking away.

  After walking up and down the street twice, Sara realized she could always look at the mailboxes instead of trying to remember what Jeffrey's mother's house looked like. She found the one marked 'Tolliver' five houses down from Nell's and hoped to God no one had been watching her make a fool of herself. She felt especially stupid when she recognized Robert's truck parked in the driveway.

  In the daylight, the house looked more run-down than Sara had thought the first time she had seen it. Several coats of paint had been added over the years, giving the siding a rippled effect. The lawn was a depressing brown and the spindly tree in the front yard looked like it was about to fall over.

  The front door was wide open, the screen door unlocked, but still she knocked, saying, 'Jeffrey?'

  There was no response, and Sara walked into the house just as she heard a door slam in the back.

  She repeated, 'Jeffrey?'

  'Sara?' he asked, coming into the family room. He had a handheld propane torch in one hand and an adjustable wrench in the other.

  'Nell said you were here.'

  'Yeah,' he said, not exactly looking at her. He held up the torch. 'The pipe in the kitchen burst about two years ago. She's been washing dishes in the bathroom ever since.' She did not respond, and he motioned her back to the kitchen. 'I'm gonna finish up with this, then go over to the jail and check on Robert. I just don't buy what he said yesterday. I know there's something he's not telling me.'

  'Lot of that going around,' Sara mumbled.

  'What?'

  She shrugged, looking at the mess on the floor. He had taken apart the entire faucet just to replace the pipe. She asked, 'Did you turn off the water?'

  'That's what I was doing outside,' he told her, sitting on the floor. He took some sand cloth and sanded an end piece of copper pipe with the methodic precision of an amateur.

  Sara sat across from him, trying not to be critical of the work he had already performed. Had her father been here, he would have called Jeffrey a girl.

  There was a note of pride in Jeffrey's voice when he said, 'I went ahead and replaced everything.'

  'Hm,' she mumbled. 'Need help?'

  He cut his eyes at her, and she gathered this was something like driving in that only men did it. Considering her father had taught both Sara and Tessa safety procedures for using propane and acetylene torches before they could comfortably say the words, this was more than slightly insulting.

  Still, she let it pass, saying, 'I didn't tell you last night –'

  'About that,' he interrupted. 'I'm really sorry. I promise you, I don't usually drink like that.'

  'I didn't think you did.'

  'As for the other . . .' His voice trailed off, and Sara picked up the can of flux, needing to do something with her hands.

  She said, 'Don't worry, I'm not going to hold you to it.'

  'Hold me to what?'

  She shrugged. 'What you said.'

  'What did I say?' he asked, his tone of voice wary.

  'Nothing,' she told him, trying to open the can.

  'I was talking about what we did,' he said, then corrected, 'I mean, what I did.'

  'It's okay.'

  'It's not,' he said, taking the flux and opening it for her. 'I'm not . . .' He paused, as if searching for a word. 'I'm not usually that selfish.'

  'Forget about it,' she told him, but somehow his half-ass apology made her feel better. She dipped the brush into the flux and daubed it onto one of the elbows he had already sanded. 'I want to talk to you about the skeleton.'

  His attitude changed completely, and she could see his defenses go up. 'What about it?'

  'It's a woman. A young woman.'

  He gave her a careful look. 'Are you sure?'

  'The shape of the head is obvious. Men usually have larger skulls.' She took the measuring tape and measured the distance from the sink to the cutoff valve at the floor. 'Men's skulls are heavier, too. Usually with a bony ridge above the eyes.' She measured a length of pipe and clamped the cutter at the correct spot. 'Men have longer canine teeth and wider vertebrae,' she continued, spinning the cutter until the pipe broke. 'Then there's the pelvis. Women's are wider for childbearing.' She lightly sanded the pipe. 'Plus, there's the sub-pubic angle. If it measures less than ninety degrees, then it's male, more than ninety, it's female.'

  He put flux on the pipe as Sara slipped on a pair of safety glasses. His face remained blank as he shoved the elbow onto the pipe, and he waited until Sara had used the flint striker to light the torch before asking, 'How do you know she was young?'

  Sara adjusted the torch before waving the flame over the pipe, heating it enough to make the flux boil. 'The pelvis tells the story. The public bones meet in the front of the pelvis. If the bone surface has bumps or ridges, that means it belongs to a young person. Older people have smoother bones.'

  She turned off the torch and threaded out the solder, watching it melt into the joint. She continued, 'There's also a depression area in the pubic bone. If a woman has given birth, there's a notch where the bones separated in order to allow room for the baby's head.'

  Jeffrey seemed to be holding his breath. When Sara did not continue, he asked, 'Did she have a baby?'

  'Yes,' she told him. 'She did.'

  Jeffrey put the pipe down in front of him.

  'Who's Julia?'

  He exhaled slowly. 'Didn't Nell tell you?'

  'She said to ask you.'

  Jeffrey sat back against the cabinet, leaning his hands on his knees. He would not look at her. 'It was a long time ago.'

  'How long?'

  'Ten years, I guess. Maybe more.'

  'And?'

  'And she was . . . I don't know, it sounds bad now, but she was kind of like the town slut.' He wiped his mouth. 'She did things. You know, touched you.' He glanced at her, then looked away. 'Rumor was she'd give a blow job if you bought her something. Clothes or lunch or whatever. She didn't have much, so . . .'

  'How old was she?'

  'Our age,' he said. 'She was in the same class as me and Robert.'

  Sara saw where he was going with this. 'Did you ever buy her anything?'

  He looked offended. 'No,' he said. 'I didn't have to pay for that kind of stuff.'

  'Of course not.'

  'Do you want to hear this or not?'

  'I want you to tell me what happened.'

  'She just left one day,' he said with a forced shrug. 'She was there one day and gone the next.'

  'There's more to it than that.'

  'I can't . . .' He let his voice trail off. 'I found this yesterday in the cave,' he said, taking something out of his pocket. Sara saw a necklace with a charm on it.

  'Why didn't you tell me then?'

  He opened the locket and looked inside. 'I don't know. I just –' He stopped. 'I just didn't want you to know one more bad thing about me.'

  'What bad thing?'

  'Talk,' he said, meeting her eyes. 'It's just talk, Sara. The same old bullshit that's been following me around since I got here. You get to a point where you're guilty of one thing and people think you're guilty of another.'

  'What do they think you're guilty of?'

  Jeffrey held out the chain. 'I showed it to Hoss. He didn't want anything to do with it.'

  Sara looked at the cheap gold heart and the pictures inside. The childr
en were still infants, probably only a few weeks out of the hospital.

  Jeffrey said, 'She wore it all the time. Everybody saw her with it, not just me.' He gave a harsh laugh. 'The thing was, nobody knew what she had done to get it. No one would cop to it, you know? She'd show up in a new dress at school one day and we'd start talking shit about who bought it for her, what she did to get it. This' – he indicated the necklace – 'she showed it to everybody. She didn't know any better. She thought it was expensive. It's not even solid gold, it's plate.' His shoulders dropped. 'There's no telling what she did for it.'

  'It looks old to me,' Sara told him. 'Not an antique, but old.'

  He shrugged.

  'What about the photographs?'

  He took back the locket and looked at the pictures inside. 'I've got no idea.'

  'So, yesterday in the cave, you knew it was her?' Sara asked, wondering why he had not said anything at the time.

  'I didn't want to think it was her,' Jeffrey said. 'I've been feeling guilty all my life for things I didn't do. Things I had no control over.' He gave a long, sad sigh. 'My parents, the house I lived in, the clothes I wore. I always felt so ashamed of everything, wanted to show people a better part of me than my circumstances.' He looked around the kitchen. 'That's why I left here, why I was so anxious to get away and never come back. I was sick of being Jimmy Tolliver's son. I was sick of walking down the street and feeling everybody's eyes on me, waiting for me to mess up.'

  Sara waited.

  'You see the better part of me.'

  She nodded, because she could not deny this, despite what reason would dictate.

  'Why?' he asked, and he seemed like he really wanted to know.

  'I don't . . .' She let her voice trail off, giving a shrug. 'I wish I could say. My brain keeps telling me all these things. . . .' She did not elaborate. 'I just feel it in here,' she said, tapping her fingers to her chest. 'The way you make me feel when you make love to me and the way you double-knot my shoes so they won't come untied and the way you listen – you're doing it now, really listening to what I have to say because you honestly want to know what I'm thinking.' She thought of the soldier's letter he had read to her what seemed like a lifetime ago, and couldn't explain it any better than, 'I guess that you see me, too.'