Bitter Sun. Beth Lewis
home,’ I said.
Jenny knelt beside Mora and pulled me down. ‘We can’t leave her here alone. Look at her, she’s beautiful.’
She picked a scrap of dead leaf from Mora’s forehead and flicked it aside.
I don’t know how long we knelt there, staring into those dead eyes. I’d never seen a smile like that on Jenny’s face before and it scared me. That change, that jitter in her bones that Mora sparked had fanned to a dark flame and I didn’t know what it meant. I checked around us, suddenly aware of what this picture might look like to anyone watching. And a creeping cold in my bones that whoever did this to her, this poor girl, could still be around. But it was empty, silent, I saw everything through moonlight, all silver and black and not quite real. This wasn’t quite real. How could it be?
‘Death is special, isn’t it, Johnny?’ Jenny said. ‘It’s like the way the Pastor Jacobs talks about God. Death is a kind of god. It’s terrible and powerful but if you treat it right and have faith, it’s love. Behind the fear, death is love, isn’t it, Johnny?’
I swallowed burning bile.
Jenny lay down beside Mora and I had no choice but to lie down too. I couldn’t leave my sister here, alone, with a killer on the loose, and she wouldn’t go home yet. So I stayed, despite the nausea, despite the strange, sour smell, despite the gnawing pain in my head.
But Jenny seems calm, John.
She seems happy.
And that’s good enough for now.
Jenny fell asleep quicker than she had in weeks but I couldn’t. I lay on the ground, stones and twigs poking into my back, replaying every word of the argument until the movie reel reached the gift Momma gave me. The bird book. Light beige cloth. A dozen shades of blue, red, green, every colour filled my head, blotted out the pale white body beside my sister. I fell asleep in those colours, to the sound of cooing birds and gently ruffling feathers.
Jenny and I woke to warm sunlight and a fuzzy voice on a radio. I opened my eyes, squinting. We didn’t have a radio at the Fort. Could have been a dream or some kind of birdsong, I didn’t know. Then it came again. Then a close, clear, hundred-per-cent real voice said something back, bzzt ten-four. My eyes adjusted to the sun and my insides turned to snow. Jenny woke too and immediately tensed and clutched my arm.
Standing over us was Sheriff Samuels and a dozen of his deputies. The way they looked at us. Their eyes wide, their mouths set in grim frowns. One was chucking up his breakfast far off and I hoped it wasn’t in Big Lake because it would make swimming gross.
Samuels made Jenny and me get up. Made us stand there and wouldn’t talk to us. Would barely glance our way. Most of the deputies looked away. A few of Larson’s lookie-loos up at the top of the valley were fixated. In front of the police tape, far upstream, Rudy and Gloria stood with a skinny cop taking notes. They weren’t looking at us. Maybe didn’t see what the cops saw. Maybe saw everything. Jenny and me got one last look at Mora before they laid a tarp on her.
That’s when the rumours began, starting almost before they took us down to the station. Murmurings of ‘freaks’ and ‘perv kids’ floated through the valley. The radios crackled and came alive, descriptions of the scene were repeated, again and again. Responses came: you shitting me, Miller? Say what? There were kids with the body? Jesus Christ, the missus’ll never believe that. And so it went. Through the fuzzy connection, the news of what the sheriff’s men found by the lake spread to all of Larson.
They put Jenny and me in the back of Deputy Miller’s patrol car. An old Plymouth with rust blooming at every join and a cage between us and the front seats. Three bolts were missing from the left side and I reckoned I could kick out the rest, get into the front, get us free and clear if I needed to. The radio crackled. A shotgun stood upright, locked to the dash. Ripped seats spewed out dusty yellow foam. A bare spring pressed into my back. Make sure you got a plan, John Royal, my momma once told me, if you’re ever snatched by the pigs. Make sure you’ve got your story right in your head and, if you don’t have a story, make sure you tell your lie before the other guy tells his.
I held Jenny’s hand. We had no need for a lie but adults sometimes see a different truth in what kids tell them.
It was barely past eight but the sun was spinning up its wheels, getting ready for another record high. Miller had left the windows open front and back but there wasn’t a breeze. The air inside the car was thicker than outside, full of dust and old cigarette smoke, so dense the fresh air couldn’t get in. Criminals aren’t fit to breathe clean.
Jenny squeezed my hand. ‘I’m scared.’
‘We haven’t done anything wrong.’ I turned to her, smiled. ‘They just want to ask us some questions because we found her. That’s all.’
The heat rose with the sun, ticked up a degree or two every minute, multiplied by ten for sitting in a metal box. The sweat popped from my skin. My shirt, my legs below my shorts, the backs of my arms, stuck to the seat. We’d been in the car half an hour. Another half and we’d be fork-tender. They’d be able to pull us apart with a spoon.
I hung my head out the window, breathed out the dust and in the scent of the elders. Thought about all the chores I had to do on the farm. Weed the west field, tend the corn, check the fences near Morton’s boundary, and a dozen others. In the trees, a wren or maybe a warbler sang, undisturbed by the scene on the ground. Birds don’t care. We’re big, slow lumps to them, always looking up while they’re looking down.
‘John,’ Jenny tugged on my shirt, pulled me back inside the oven and nodded out of her window.
Emerging from the track down to the Roost, we saw them. The skinny deputy with Rudy and Gloria. The cop had hold of Rudy, tight by the arm, like he was chief suspect and they’d caught their man. Gloria walked freely alongside. Rudy had a black scowl on his face, red-eyed and resigned to the treatment. He’s a Buchanan, I imagined the sheriffs saying, course he’s got something to do with this mess.
‘Hey,’ I shouted, climbing over Jenny to get to the window. ‘Hey, you guys. What’s going on?’
Gloria jogged over, got halfway before the deputy barked at her but she kept running. ‘They want to take our statements. That’s all.’
She came right up to the window as the skinny deputy put Rudy into another car. He called her again but she paid no attention.
‘I thought we were going to wait,’ I whispered, ‘we were going to tell them together.’
Gloria looked down, wincing apologetic. ‘I know, I’m sorry. I got home, changed and went out with Daddy but Mandy had my laundry. She asked why my dress was so muddy and why it smelt so strange. She kept asking and asking and it just all came out.’
‘It’s okay,’ Jenny said and reached out, took Gloria’s hand.
Gloria took the comfort for a moment then frowned. ‘They’ve made a real mess down there.’
‘Miss Wakefield,’ the skinny cop shouted from the other car.
‘See you at the station,’ Gloria said, then ran over to the skinny cop who opened the car door for her. She got in the back seat with Rudy.
Rudy waved, held up his hands and shouted, ‘They didn’t cuff me this time!’
The skinny cop banged on the roof to shut him up, then got in, cranked up the engine. The tyres chewed the ground as they tried to get a grip, chunks of dirt flew up behind. A flock of birds exploded from the nearest tree. Skinny cop punched the gas and the car popped out of its dustbowl, skidded over the grass. He swerved, wild to the left then the right before getting control, then snailed the car onto Briggs’ farm track. They disappeared into a dust cloud and left Jenny and me staring after.
It was another half hour of swelter before Samuels