“Was that you and your sister I saw at the creek?” he asks, coming closer and closer.
“No, Your Honor, no, it wasn’t.”
“How odd,” Papa says, acting comically confused. “I could’ve sworn I saw the two of you lying beneath the weeping willow tree when I came out of the barn.” His hands are clasping me right below the Speranza watch that Sam Moody gave Mama. How could I have been so careless? I got so worried about being late that I forgot to put it back under my pillow when Woody and I got home.
“Are you referring to the big willow tree?” I ask. “The one with the cracked stump? Is that the one you mean?” I pretend to consider that. “No, uh-uh, sir. That wasn’t us. But speaking of the creek, you remember Mr. Clive Minnow, don’t you? Our neighbor? Virgil from the grocery found him lying dead in the water and so now his old dog, Ivory, is all alone and… do you think I could go get him? You know how Woody loves dogs and-” I’ve gone and trapped myself. I can tell by how crafty Papa is smiling that he’s figured that out, too. Before he was a judge, he was a prosecuting attorney known for persecuting witnesses. I’ve seen lawyers for the defense go whiter when they found out the one they’d be going up against was the great Walter T. Carmody.
He says smoothly, “Perhaps you’d care to explain to me how you heard about Mr. Minnow’s unfortunate passing?”
“I-”
“Your shorts are damp. Did you and your sister take the stepping stones into town when I expressly forbade it? Is that how you heard about Mr. Minnow’s death?”
“No, sir. Woody and I did not go-”
He lets me loose and drags his dirt-packed fingernail along the bottom of my cut-offs. I swing my hands behind me, slip off Mama’s watch, and push it deep it into the back pocket of my shorts. “If you weren’t down by the creek then why are-” There’s a ruckus in the hallway. Papa cocks his head and calls, “Jane Woodrow?”
My stomach shrinks up the way it usually does when he calls out her name. Please, Lord, do not let it be Woody come looking for me.
There’s more clattering. A few clanks. “Yoodihoo. It’s me, Your Honor,” Lou calls from the hall. My knees buckle in relief, knowing it’s not my twin. “Lunchtime. I got all your favorite-”
“Leave the tray,” Papa says. If I wasn’t looking straight at him, I’d swear I was hearing Grampa. Or Blackie, he’s got that sneering tone as well.
“Did Miss Shen tell ya about your neighbor?” Lou prattles on. “Yessir. Your brother came by earlier to… ah… let ya know that your horse needs new shoes soon. He told me and the girls all about Mr. Clive bein’ found dead. Ain’t that a cryin’ shame?”
As much as I wish it were, barging in like this is not an attempt on Lou’s part to rescue me. It’s just her roundabout way of reminding me to keep my mouth shut about her loving up my uncle and she’ll do the same about Woody and me escaping from Lilyfield this morning.
Papa’s voice bounces off the bedroom walls. “You’re dismissed.”
I’m hoping so bad that he means me that I try leaving. “Your sister?” he says, clamping down with his hands. His law school graduation ring is digging into the bone at the top of my right shoulder. “Where is she? And why are your shorts wet if you weren’t down at the creek?”
“She’s… I… we’ve been waterin’ the gardens so they look nice when Grampa comes,” I lie. “It must’ve been somebody else you saw under the willow or-”
“I was down to the creek this mornin’ pickin’ flowers for your mama’s room,” Lou hollers from the hall. She has not come into view, it’s just her voice. “Got a nice bunch of those lilies she likes so much right downstairs on the-”
“Louise.” Papa uses his quiet voice that is much more frightening than his loud one.
“Sir?”
“Get… back… into… the… kitchen. Now. There’s work to be done before my father arrives.”
I hear Lou scurry away, mumbling yessirs and hoodoo words to keep herself safe from the wrath of Papa, and I so badly want to run after her. He’s pressuring me much harder than I’m sure he’s meaning to. “You and your sister were up in the fort the night your mother disappeared. The moon was full. What did you see?”
I knew he’d ask me. It always comes down to this even though I’ve told him countless times what I saw that night.
Most of it anyway.
Colonel Button’s Thrills and Chills Show sets up their rides and games in Buffalo Park, which is on the other side of Honeysuckle Hill, a stone’s throw away from our place.
Woody and me were sleeping up in the fort that night because I just love the sound of folks having fun. All that hooting and hollering-it makes me feel like part of the greater good.
We’d had such a swell time at the carnival. We each got a teddy bear and rode the Tilt-a-Whirl and laughed to tears at how wavy we looked in the Maze of a Million Mirrors. Dreaming of all that fun is what must’ve been giving me such a nice slumber, but it wasn’t doing the same for my sister. She woke me up after midnight, babbling, “Mama… mama… gone.”
I tried ignoring her, and when she wouldn’t let me, I groused, “Did ya eat too many Red Hots? You’re having a bad dream. Lie back down and go to sleep.”
Woody plastered herself against me, which I usually love, but her hands were sticky with cotton candy. I rolled away, but she came after me. “Papa… Papa,” she moaned, and that’s when I heard him, too.
He was thrashing about in the woods, bellowing, “No… no. How could you?”
And then all went still, except for Woody’s whimpering and Mars, the dog, barking and the strong man bell ringing faintly from over at the carnival. I thought Papa had passed out, but when I pressed my eye to the fort peephole I could see him weaving our way. Somebody else was back there, too, but I couldn’t make out who and I stopped caring when I heard our father’s cursing effort to get situated on the fort steps. Woody grabbed onto my neck when he hollered up the trunk, “Your mother… she’s… get down here.” Knowing better than to tangle with him when he got like that, Woody and me stayed right where we were, which proved to be for the best, because a little while later Mars quit barking and gave off a blood-curdling yelp and Papa went back to the clearing, nearly crawling.
At the time I thought to myself, Papa needs to stop trying to match his father and brother drink for drink. I got so ugly with my sister for interrupting my sleep. “Quit bein’ such a titty baby,” I snapped at her. “You know he acts and talks foolish when he’s soused. You know that. All we got to do is wait him out. Mama’s around here somewhere. She’s not gone. She’s got nowhere to go.” I looked up at the house to make certain. I’d often catch our mother peeking out the curtains, like she was expecting somebody or maybe she was just watching over Woody and me, I don’t know. But that night, their bedroom window was dark and empty. So with a leave-me-alone grunt, I curled back up and was almost to sleep when Woody whispered into my ear the last words she’s spoken since that night, “Mama… gone.”
That’s when I recalled how little our mother enjoyed the carnival no matter how hard Papa and Grampa tried to force her to. And how later on in the evening, I got mad because she didn’t give Woody and me the money to see the Oddities Show but she was taking a ride on the merry-go-round with our friend Sam Moody. He was straddling a white horse and Mama was a few rows back in a swan. They should’ve been smiling, but they looked like they’d just lost their best friend. Good, I thought, I’m glad they’re sad, because I was still feeling so het up about Woody and me having to crawl under the tent to see the freak show like some poor children.
When that merry-go-round memory came back to me up in the fort that night, I didn’t even bother pulling on my sneakers, just a balled-up shirt and shorts. I reached for my flashlight and hissed at Woody as I undid the get-down hatch, “You’re actin’ like Sarah Heartburn, but since it looks like you’re gonna go on and on and not let me get a minute’s sleep until I do so, I’ll go look for Mama. She’s gotta be around here somewhere.”