Daisy Lane (2 page)

The disappearance of life from the man’s eyes was followed by a long, gurgling intake of breath, an expulsion of air from the now unoccupied space, and then his chest did not rise again. Grace felt so sorry for the man, dying with strangers around him, that she gave his limp hand one more sympathetic squeeze before she lay it down upon his still chest.

“He’s dead,” Grace said to Tommy, who was crouched on the steps just below her.

His eyes were wide as he looked from the man to Grace and back again.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Grace heard the siren and cursed inwardly, which was the only safe way to do it.

“You should go,” Grace said. “My grandpa will be out here any minute and he won’t like you being here.”

“I’m staying,” Tommy said, frowning at her. “Your grandpa doesn’t scare me.”

“He should,” Grace said.

The front screen door hit the outer wall of the porch with a bang that sounded like a gun shot. Tommy, startled, tipped over backward and tumbled down the cement stairs to land on the walkway, just as Ed came in through the gate. Ed helped him up and dusted him off.

“What in tarnation is going on out here?” Grace’s grandfather roared. “What have you done now, Grace?”

Grace scooted away from the dead man.

“He’s dead,” she said, without looking at her grandfather. “He walked up here, fell down, and died.”

Ed came forward.

“I called the EMS,” Ed said. “They’re on the way.”

“Who in the blazes is it?” Grandpa demanded. “Grace? Do you know this man?”

Grace shook her head, still looking at the steps in front of her rather than meet his gaze. Eye contact would be considered a challenge to his authority, an insult to his superiority.

“No, sir,” she said. “I heard a noise so I came outside.”

“How’d you two get involved?” Grandpa demanded of Ed.

Ed came up the stairs, checked the man for a pulse, and then stood between the body and Grace. Grace looked up at him, willed him with her eyes not to betray what she had done. Ed looked at her thoughtfully and then at her grandfather.

“I saw him walk out this way so I followed him,” he said. “It seemed suspicious to me. Neighbors have to look out for each other.”

“Hmph,” her grandfather said, which meant he believed it even if he didn’t like it.

Ed looked down at Grace and winked.

The EMS arrived and Graced backed up onto the porch. She inched her way into the far corner, where she stood in the shadow of the overgrown hedge.

“Get him out of here,” her grandfather said to the EMS workers. “He’s nothing to do with me and mine.”

Police Chief Scott Gordon arrived and conferred with Ed before addressing Grace’s grandfather.

“No one you know?” the police chief asked her grandfather.

“No!” bellowed Grace’s grandfather. “Probably some tramp, looking for a handout. Now that this country’s gone to hell in a hand basket they’ll come creeping, along with the drug dealers and prostitutes. I have to keep my gun loaded and one eye open so I don’t get murdered in my sleep.”

He held up his shotgun and Grace was impressed at how quickly Scott leaped to the top of the stairs and helped Grandpa lower the gun.

“No need for that,” Scott said. “Let’s just stay out of the way and let these people do their jobs.”

“You can’t come onto my property and tell me to do a dad-gum thing,” Grandpa said. “I know my rights.”

Grace’s grandfather, Jacob Branduff, was tall and gaunt, with a scraggly long beard and wisps of white hair floating up from his balding head. His old-fashioned glasses might have made him look like a skinny Saint Nick, but his demeanor prevented anyone from making that mistake more than once. He had on his nightshirt and overalls, his swollen feet stuck in tattered slippers. His feet were so swollen he couldn’t wear any of his shoes. When he didn’t have on his slippers, he had on ancient gumboots.

“There’s no need for that, Mr. Branduff,” Scott said to him, in a calm, reasonable voice. “As soon as they can get him off your porch they’ll leave you in peace.”

The EMTs lifted the man’s body onto a gurney, secured it with straps, and carried it down the stairs.

“That’s done then, so you all get on out of here,” Grandpa said. “All of you.”

“I need to ask Grace some questions,” Scott said.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Grandpa said. “Grace! Dad-blasted girl. Where are you? Get yourself in the house and stay there. Do as I tell you.”

Grace skittered around behind him and slid in through the doorway.

“I can do it now or later,” Scott said, “but it will have to be done.”

“If you bring a warrant down here, you can take her to jail,” Jacob said. “Lock her up and throw away the key, for all I care. It’ll save me her room and board. Otherwise leave us alone.”

Grandpa went in the house, slammed both doors behind him and yelled, “Grace! Fix me some coffee!”

Scott left the porch and met Ed and Tommy in the lane, where the EMTs were just closing the doors to the ambulance.

“No ID on him,” one of the EMTs said. “Just these.”

He handed Scott a bus ticket and a folded piece of paper so old it was soft and coming apart at the folds. Scott wanted to have gloves on when he examined it, so he dropped it into a plastic bag and put it in the squad car.

“I’ve never seen the man before,” Ed said to Scott.

“Grace said he sounded like Matt Delvecchio’s dad,” Tommy said. “He might be Italian.”

“I’ll call the bus company,” Scott said. “What are the chances I’ll be able to talk to Grace, do you think?”

“Slim to none,” Ed said.

“Her grandpa is mean,” Tommy said. “Since her grandma died Grace is not allowed to do anything but go to school and work in the greenhouse.”

“Isn’t she a friend of Charlotte’s?” Scott asked. “I used to see her over at Ava’s B&B all the time.”

“Not since Charlotte’s dad came back,” Tommy said. “After that Grace wasn’t allowed to go over there anymore.”

“That’s been over three years, now,” Ed said. “Poor girl.”

“Charlotte doesn’t want to be friends with Grace anymore, anyway,” Tommy said. “She has new friends now.”

Scott noted Tommy’s heartbroken expression. It looked like Grace was not the only friend Charlotte had discarded. Scott had observed that Charlotte Fitzpatrick’s recent change in attitude and appearance had developed when she started at the Pendleton Consolidated High School this past fall. He and Ed exchanged looks but no more was said about that.

“Does Grace have any other family members?” Scott asked.

“Grace’s grandmother died two years ago,” Ed said, “from cancer.”

“Grace’s mom killed herself back when we were in grade school,” Tommy said. “She was kind of crazy. She came to school in her nightgown once and tried to take Grace out of class, but the teacher wouldn’t let her. Grace’s grandma had to come and get her.”

“I seem to remember her mother’s official cause of death was accidental overdose. There was some talk of mental illness, but their church didn’t believe in medical treatment for anything,” Ed said. “She might have been self-medicating.”

“It’s handy having a newspaper editor as a friend,” Scott said. “How long ago did her mother die?”

“Must be five, six years ago,” Ed said.

“Jacob Branduff would not be anyone’s first choice to be a young girl’s guardian,” Scott said. “It might be time to have a social worker look in.”

“Whoever does should wear a bulletproof vest,” Ed said.

On Saturday at noon someone knocked on the door. It was a sound so rarely heard that it made Grace’s heart race. Outside on the porch stood a woman whose house her grandmother used to clean. She was one of those who was never pleased, and did not mind insisting that an old woman who walked with a stoop, whose hands were gnarled with arthritis, scrub her floors by hand rather than mop them from a standing position.

Although Mrs. Larson was a tall, strapping woman with strong features, she dressed as if she were petite and girlish. She wore her mousy brown hair in a playful ponytail with a bow, had on a twinset and pearls with her man-sized capris, and a tiny tailored handbag hung over her arm. Her choice of clothing was so mismatched to her physique that Grace felt a stab of pity for her.

The woman was looking around with an expression of disgust until she saw Grace. Then she fixed a big, insincere smile on her face.

“Hello,” Mrs. Larson said. “You and your grandfather weren’t on the list for a hunger mission dinner but we had one extra, so we thought you might enjoy it.”

Grace was not fooled by the concerned look on her face. Her mouth may have been smiling but her eyes were still mean. She was holding a basket that Grace knew held all the elements of a traditional Sunday dinner. She could smell salty ham and yeasty rolls. Mrs. Larson kept looking around Grace, trying to see inside the house.

“Thank you,” Grace said, firmly holding the screen door open only six inches. “But it would be better if the food went to someone who needed it. We’ve got plenty to eat.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Larson said. “It will only go to waste if you and your grandfather don’t take it.”

“I’m sure someone up Possum Holler could use it,” Grace said.

“Well, I’m not so sure of that,” Mrs. Larson said. “If you ask me, they’re living high on the welfare hog out there. I wouldn’t step one foot up that holler if my life depended upon it. Some meth addict would probably kill me for my pocketbook.”

There, finally, was the facial expression that matched the mean eyes; Grace was gratified to see it. Mrs. Larson then had trouble changing it back to concern. Grace decided vicious disapproval must be the woman’s dominant expression and any other was hard to maintain for very long.

“It’s a shame about this house,” the older woman said, with a look of contempt. “When my mother was a young girl, it was the Rodefeffer’s home; one of the finest in town.”

Grace knew better than to reply. With someone like Mrs. Larson no matter what you said it would be wrong somehow.

“I’m surprised it wasn’t condemned after the flood,” Mrs. Larson said.

Grace just looked at her, willing her expression to be vacant and stupid.

“Well,” Mrs. Larson sniffed. “If you really won’t accept it, I guess I’ll be going.”

“Thanks,” Grace said.

Grace closed the screen door and locked it with the hook and eye. She was just about to close the interior door when Mrs. Larson spoke.

“We’re all concerned about you, Grace,” she said. “We’re praying for you.”

Grace couldn’t suppress her shudder.

“Good-bye,” Grace said.

“God bless you,” Mrs. Larson said, but her back was already turned as Grace shut the interior door.

“Who was it?” her grandfather said as she returned to the kitchen.

“A church lady delivering dinners to the poor,” Grace said, and took her seat at the table. “I told her we didn’t need it.”

There was an iron skillet, blackened with age, sitting on the table between them, with two biscuits left of the four she’d prepared. Grandpa was buttering his with margarine from a purloined fast food container, the bright yellow grease clinging to his beard.

“Hah!” he said, his mouth full of food. “Makes them feel better, I guess, to feed poor people three days per year and then spit on them the other 362.”

Grace took a bite of her own canned biscuit, a recent past-sell-date bargain from the IGA, and tried not to think about the delicious smells that had emanated from the basket Mrs. Larson had offered.

“It was Mrs. Larson,” she said. “Grandma used to clean her house.”

“One of the worst of the bunch,” her grandfather said. “Her father was a falling down drunk but to hear her tell it he was a saint in human raiment.”

“Her son goes to my school,” Grace said.

“A chip off the old block, I’d wager,” Grandpa said. “Best you stay away from that lot. Too good for the likes of us.”

From somewhere upstairs a door slammed and a cold breeze blew down the hall and through the kitchen.

“Edgar hates strangers comin’ around,” Grandpa said.

After breakfast Grace did the washing up while Grandpa worked in the greenhouses. He had sold many dozens of tulips, daffodils, and lilies around Easter time, and now he was selling roses, peonies, and irises. There were no signs out front advertising his business, but still business owners and local people came down to the greenhouse to make their purchases. He also sold flowers at the IGA in town, and in the farmer’s market during the summer.

Grace pulled on a sweater and went out the back door, pausing outside the entrance to the second greenhouse only long enough to call out, “I’m going,” before pulling an old red wagon out of the bushes and up to the first greenhouse. There she loaded tall zinc buckets full of cellophane-wrapped flowers into the wagon, wedging them together between the wooden guard rails on each side. When Grace was a small child her grandmother used to pull her to the grocery store in the same wagon. Grace remembered the safe, happy feeling she had being pulled back home amongst the paper grocery bags. It had been her job to hold the carton of eggs so they did not break.

As she passed by the front of their house she looked up and tried to imagine it the way Mrs. Larson had described it. As far back as Grace could remember the white paint on the trim had been pealing, the mortar between the bricks had been crumbling, and the whole building was sagging in the middle. The 100-year-old Victorian had three stories and an attic, plus multiple gables, porches, and turrets; that would take a lot of paint.

‘And a lot of money,’ she thought to herself.

Grace Branduff had lived in the house, seated on the bank of the Little Bear River, her whole fifteen years. Before they died, her mother and grandmother had lived there too. Her Aunt Lucy had run off as a teenager. Her father, whom she had never met, lived in another state, with a family of his own.

Just down the street was the old Rodefeffer Glassworks, with only the railroad tracks between it and the river. The Rodefeffers had built the huge Victorian house when there were very few other homes in the town. The Eldridges, who derived their fortune from timber and coal, had also built Eldridge College, and their mansion was high on the hill on Morning Glory Avenue.

For many decades the Eldridges and Rodefeffers were competing scions in what was briefly a boomtown. The glassworks closed after the proliferation of cheap imported glass took over the American market in the mid-twentieth century, and the Eldridges sold their mine interests after a series of horrific safety violations resulted in the deaths of fifty-two miners. After that the Rodefeffers moved up to Morning Glory Avenue to live alongside the Eldridges.

Recently Grace had heard a rumor that someone had purchased the glassworks and was going to turn it into a bicycle factory. Some people were excited about the prospect of new jobs. Grace didn’t get excited about rumors. She rarely got excited about anything. In her experience the optimistic combination of enthusiasm and hope was a bet that rarely paid off.

The smoothest route to the IGA lay down Lotus Avenue and up Pine Mountain Road. Grace used the street instead of the sidewalks, bunched up as they were by the tree roots growing beneath them and deep caved-in places from mine subsidence.

Just as she started to turn uphill she saw a small child running down the narrow alley next to the brick wall surrounding Eldridge College, a dirt track called Daisy Lane. The child left the alley where it ended and continued on downhill toward the river, followed by a pack of barking dogs.

Grace hitched the front wheels of the wagon over the curb and took off at a run.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Stop!”

Her heart was pumping blood so hard her head hurt by the time she reached the alley. As she flew down over the wet grass of the hill that sloped toward the river, she slid and almost lost her balance. When she righted herself and looked up, the boy had disappeared.

“Oh no,” she gasped, her lungs heaving.

He couldn’t have reached the fast-moving water that quickly, could he?

The dogs were in a stand-off beneath a gnarled and twisted sycamore tree that had been half uprooted by a flood three years before. As a consequence of this upheaval, the limbs on one side were low enough for a small child to clamber up into the tree, which is exactly what the small boy had done. With relief Grace saw his bare feet dangling beneath the limb he now clung to.

A Siberian husky and a border collie had their backs to the tree, fending off a pack of three mangy-looking strays. Grace grabbed a rotting limb off the ground and advanced on the strays, hollering and swinging. When they turned, snarling and snapping, the other two took advantage of their divided attention and attacked from the rear. Two injured strays yelped and took off down the river bank toward the rail trail. The third one bared its teeth at Grace and advanced on her.

The husky took a run and lunged at the dog, rolling it over while the border collie stood his ground beneath the tree, guarding the child. Grace sidled around and then backed downhill toward the tree as she watched the two fighting dogs. The skinny stray didn’t have the strength to fend off the well-fed, muscular husky, and without his buddies to back him up he soon found himself pinned by the neck to the ground, helplessly flailing his legs.

“Are you okay?” Grace asked the child as she got close enough to the tree to see him.

She was afraid to get too close because the fur on border collie’s spine was standing on end, and he was still licking his bared teeth in the direction of the fight. He was also making an anxious moaning sound punctuated by short barks. The child had his legs wrapped around a twisted limb, his bare feet and ankles scratched and bleeding from clambering up over the peeling bark of the tree. His eyes were wide and his face was flushed, but he seemed more excited than scared.

“Me Sammy,” he said. “Me bweedin’ but me not hurt.”

From somewhere uphill a man whistled and yelled, “Jax, leave it!”

Grace looked up to see a man loping awkwardly down Daisy Lane. Jax gave the stray one last shake before he let go. The wounded dog took off after his buddies down the rail trail.

The border collie made as if to chase the stray but the man yelled, “Wally, down!” and the dog immediately lay down beneath the tree.

“Him’s me’s daddy,” Sammy said. “Him’s name’s Sam.”

Sam slowed his stilted, running walk and finally stood, a few yards away at the end of the alley. He put his hands on his knees and bent over to catch his breath.

“The grass is wet,” Grace called to him. “Be careful.”

Sam came down the wet hill sideways, grimacing as he did so.

“Daddy!” yelled Sammy as he clambered back down the tree and ran to him. “Them’s dogs fighted Jax and Wally! Me went up the tree; me bweedin but me not hurt!”

Sam swung his son up into his arms and walked slowly toward Grace. She could tell by the wince that shot across his expression, the pronounced limp, and the sweat that ran down his face that he was in pain, but trying not to show it.

The dogs swarmed around Sam as he reached Grace.

“I saw it happening,” he said, “but I couldn’t get to him in time.”

Grace saw the anguished pain in the father’s eyes before he looked away, blinking rapidly to gain control of his emotions. She didn’t know what to say. She felt tongue-tied in the presence of so much feeling, so much love.

“You’s the flower lady,” Sammy said to her. “You’s gots a wagon like me’s.”

Sam stuck out his hand.

“I’ve seen you around town but I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Sam Campbell and this is my high-blood-pressure-inducing son, Sammy.”

When Grace shook his hand she could feel it trembling. Sam was still sweating profusely, and it seemed to be an effort for him to stand upright and hold his son. He swayed a bit and reached out to steady himself against the branch Sammy had been clinging to.

“I’m Grace,” she said. “My grandfather owns Branduff’s Greenhouse.”

She wanted to reach out and take the child from his arms, to give the man some relief, but she was afraid to. Impulsively, she said, “Sammy, would you like to help me deliver my flowers to the IGA? You could help me pull the wagon.”

“Yes, yes!” Sammy said, and wiggled down out of his father’s arms.

To Grace’s surprise Sammy grabbed her hand, looked up at her and said, “Me do it! C’mon!”

“What can I do to help you?” she asked Sam.