Franny Parker (10 page)

“The time is coming,” Mama told me that night as she tucked me in.

“I know,” I said, sliding under my sheets. She was talking about the swallows.

“They'll be fine,” she said, pressing her lips to my forehead. “You did real good.”

I dreamed of my swallow babies that night, soaring into the stars above my house and the cabin next door. Circling over burned fields, gliding farther and farther away. But flying home again. Always coming home.

O
n Thursday morning, the doors to the potting shed were open. Jax saw it first and bounded off the porch in search of Lucas.

I found Mama staring at the woman in her painting. She set her paints down right away. We stopped at the garden to fill a basket and made our way next door.

“Lindy, may we come in?” Mama asked, peering into the dark shed.

Lindy was seated behind her wheel, her apron splattered with fresh wet clay. She smiled when she saw us in the door, but it was different. Her eyes didn't crinkle at the edges.

“We've missed you this week,” Mama said, setting down a basket of corn and beans. “Thought you might like these.”

Lindy wiped her hands on a fresh towel. “They're beautiful, thank you,” she said, bending over the basket. A faint breeze stirred in the doorway, the first breeze any of us had felt in a long time, and we all turned our faces to greet it.

“A lot has happened,” Mama said.

“Yes,” said Lindy. I wasn't sure if she was referring to the orchard fire that week or the arrival of Mr. Dunn. It seemed the torrent of events had stretched the week so thin it languished, unable to move itself forward.

Our silent questions filled the potting shed, and Lindy didn't try to swat them away. “Been busy.” She shrugged, pointing to the boxes of pottery on the kiln. “I've gotten behind on my work since Carl came.”

“Is that his name?” Mama's voice was soft and curious, the way it is when she speaks to a child or a small animal.

“Yes. I'm sorry you haven't met him yet. His arrival was, well . . . unexpected.”

Mama nodded as if she understood, but I didn't see how
she could. I didn't want her nodding at Lindy that way. I wanted Lindy to go on. There was more to tell, I knew.

“How are you?” Mama asked. Waiting for an answer, she lowered herself quietly onto a bench by the window. Mama reached over and pulled a daisy from the basket, turning it over in her hands, patiently. Not knowing what to do with myself, I sat next to her.

Lindy didn't answer right away. But Mama nodded anyway, turning the flower over and over in her fingers. She hummed a little as Lindy bent over her wheel. They sat like that awhile.

It was then I heard it. It was a silent language, rising and falling between them. I had seen this before, in the rare quiet moments of the sewing circle, in the way Grandma Rae rested her hand on a sad shoulder at church, in the gentle way a woman in the grocery store meets the eyes of a young mother with a crying baby. The gestures were soft and silent. Yet from them swelled a presence warm and thick in the room, a safe haven for secrets or confessions, fears and truths.

Lindy's hands returned to the wet clay, working the round ball more assuredly as the wheel picked up speed.

“I'll be fine,” Lindy said finally.

Will be
, not
am
, I noted. The wheel spun faster, and the ball took shape under her fingers as they danced around it.

“And Lucas?” Mama asked.

“Lucas is okay.” As soon as she said it, Lindy shook her head. “Actually, that's not really true, but I think it's just teenage stuff. He and his father, well . . .” She stopped then, a strangled hiccup escaping her throat.

Mama returned the daisy to the vegetable basket, rose and crossed the small shed to Lindy, and laid her hand on Lindy's arm. The wheel slowed to a stop, the clay went still under her hands, and Lindy looked at Mama.

“If you need anything,” Mama whispered.

Lindy nodded, wiping the back of her hand quickly across her face, a trail of red clay in its wet path.

Mama's work was done. She motioned for me to come, and I hopped up quickly, seemingly forgotten but not. We left the shed then, crossing our yard, where Mama draped her arm around me. We did not talk. I wasn't sure what I had just seen or heard, but I felt the weight of what passed between Mama and Lindy heavy in the air around us. Behind us, the potting shed hummed, the little wheel turning once again.

W
here's Lucas?” It was Ben who asked, at dinner that night. He stuffed a Brussels sprout in his mouth and looked at us.

“Who cares?” Sidda said, pushing her fork around her plate. Since the fair and Marilee's party, Sidda had shown a sudden change of heart toward Lucas Dunn.

“He's visiting with his father,” Dad said.

Mama forced a smile.

“I seen that man,” Ben said, turning the Brussels sprout over and over in his mouth, as though trying to remember if this was one of the vegetables he liked or not.

“Where?” I asked.

“I was in the barn.”

“No, where'd you see
him
?”

“Oh. He was in Lindy's potting shed tonight. He's a real clumsy man.”

Sidda frowned. “Why do you say that?”

“Because of the noise. I was in the barn when I heard it. There was a big crash and then another one, and then he came outside with a box of Lindy's pots. All smashed up. Lindy cried, but he wouldn't let her touch them.”

Mama looked at Daddy then, her face dark and serious.

“Well, maybe Mr. Dunn didn't want Lindy to hurt herself on the broken pots. Maybe he was putting them in a safe place,” Mama said, but I could tell she didn't believe this.

“No,” Ben said. “He just threw them in the river.”

Our river, outside our house. Just fifty steps away from our dinner table. I imagined Lindy's shattered pots, glimmering on the riverbed under the stars.

“Did that man see you?” Mama asked.

“No, I was feeding Speed Bump. She was real hungry. She ate thirteen worms!”

Dad patted Ben's hand. “That's great, honey. You're taking good care of her.” He put his fork down and looked at us. “I want you kids to stay away from the Dunn house for now. I don't want you going anywhere near there, understand?”

I looked at Mama, who was nodding.

“But why?” I asked, thinking of Lindy in her shed, her worried eyes and her sad laugh.

“Because it's not a good time right now. Daddy and I will take care of this. Just promise us, all right?” Mama said. Her eyes locked on mine.

I couldn't imagine staying away from them. But the look on Mama's face filled my tummy with worry, so I promised her I would.

T
hat night, after dinner, I planted myself on the porch swing with the opossums. I may have promised not to go to Lucas's house, but I hadn't promised not to see him at mine. I was tired of waiting. It had only been a few days since the fair, but they were urgent ones, filled with need and worry, drought and fire. And something else. Something dark and troublesome coming from his cabin across the way.

At night, I no longer drifted to sleep to the sounds of the potting shed humming, but to something else. The cold chink of a beer bottle being set on a porch floor. Bottle after bottle, until I lost count and fell into slumber. Each morning, there was a long row on the railing, glass soldiers lined up that Lindy swept quickly into a garbage bag. For a homecoming, none of the Dunns looked too happy.

So while Daddy had forbidden me to visit him, I wished Lucas to visit me. It didn't take long. I was rocking the opossums, wishing hard, when the cabin door opened.

“Lucas!” I hissed into the darkness.

He froze.

Come here
, I motioned.

He hesitated, looking back at the cabin. Then, as if making up his mind, he hurried over.

“Where've you been?” I asked.

“Busy,” he said, stepping deftly around the question like it was a gaping hole in my yard. The way Lindy had done earlier.

“Look,” I said. I unwrapped the opossum pouch just enough so a pink nose stuck out.

Lucas climbed hesitantly up the porch stairs. “Wow, where'd you find these guys?” he asked, moving closer.

“Ruby Miller brought them over. She's a friend of Grandma Rae's.”

Lucas sat down beside me on the swing. “They're neat,” he said quietly.

“Mama helped me sew them a flannel pouch from one of Dad's old shirts.”

Lucas grinned at it. “It's like a little opossum sleeping bag.”

“Want to hold them?” I asked. I was hungry for him to stay, to talk to me. I held the pouch out to him like an offering. Relief filled me when he reached for it.

Lucas took the bag gently and cradled it against him. It was real natural, not like you'd expect from a boy. “They're warm,” he said.

I watched him carefully, trying to ignore the questions banging around in my brain like fireflies in a mason jar.
He's back
, my heart sang.

We sat like that awhile, listening to the peepers. When Lucas didn't say much, I did. I filled the strange emptiness
around us, plucking every funny or sad detail I could think of out of the last few days, until the cold worry that was between us was crowded and colored with the life of it all. I told him about the new patients I'd gotten, how Pearl and I had run home from the pool under the smoke that Monday, how the black skeletons of the orchard trees reached eerily up to the sky.

As I talked, I could feel him relax on the seat next to me, a warmth that spread through the wood and into my own limbs. The tight corners of his mouth unraveled.

“He found us,” he said, finally.

“But you said . . .”

“I know what I said.” He sighed.

I stiffened. Lucas had lied to me.

“He's no good around us,” he said, softly.

Suddenly it became clear to me. Their few belongings, the places they'd moved from, the freshly painted name wiped off their mailbox. Lucas and Lindy did not want to be found. “You're not moving again, are you?” I asked, afraid already of the answer.

“I don't know. We don't have enough money to go anywhere just yet,” he said.

There were so many things I wanted to ask, but I didn't want to scare him off the porch, away from our yard again. “My family's worried about you and your mama,” I whispered.

“Well, tell them don't be. I'm going to take care of it. Soon.”

The cabin's screen door swung open, and Lucas jerked beside me.

“I've gotta go,” he said. Quickly, he passed me the opossums. As he did, his sleeve caught on the porch swing. It rolled up over his forearm, his warm skin brushing against my own. He gasped.

I looked before he could cover what I saw. A blue trail of bruises wrapping around his wrist, purple blotches rising off his skin. “Lucas!” I cried.

He jerked his shirtsleeve down. “Don't,” he warned, his voice angry at first. Then, softly, “Please don't.” And then he disappeared into the twilight.

“I won't,” I promised the empty seat beside me. And so I sat, shaking on the swing. It was worse than I'd thought, worse than I'd ever imagined.

Just beyond the porch, Sidda's voice poured through our open bedroom window. Through the screen door, I could hear Ben's giggles as Dad read him a story in the family room. It seemed impossible. Two houses side by side along the same bubbling river: one brimming with warm voices that spilled from its windows, one aching with a sadness that rippled from its shingled roof like rainwater.

Don't
, he'd said.

Don't what? Don't ask questions? Don't tell what I'd seen?
My stomach churned. It didn't matter which he meant. I already knew; it was a promise I couldn't keep for long.

W
here's that firecracker of a friend of yours?” Izzy asked Mama. She lifted a blue square from the table, setting it into place in the quilted sky.

Mama sighed and walked from her easel to the window, the gray eyes of her painted lady following her warily. A hot gloom had settled over the Friday Bee. Mama yanked open the windows, but that just seemed to let more heat in. The curtains rested quietly against them, not even the faintest breeze to stir the air.

“Is Lindy ill?” Grandma asked, watching Mama over the rims of her eyeglasses.

“No. Just not around lately,” Mama replied.

Izzy met Mama's eyes, and the look that passed between them took me back to the kitchen, back to Izzy's words.
A river of sadness, that one
.

“Well, come sit,” Grandma scolded Mama. “You've been pacing around here like a cat in a room full of rockers. You're making me nervous.”

Mama joined the women at the table, taking a seat by Dotty, who gave her a little pat.

Grandma eyed me. “Aren't you sewing with us? You could use the practice.”

I shook my head, busily counting the Animal Funds. Sixty-three dollars, after the formula and seeds Daddy had picked up
at the pet store for me. “Have to feed the new opossums,” I told her. “Your friend Ruby brought them. Found them behind the church.”

“Opossums?” Grandma Rae asked, her mouth twisting in distaste. “Ruby Miller did that?”

“Churchgoing opossums,” Ben told her. “And they play dead, too!” He rolled over on the rug, legs up in the air to demonstrate.

“Oh, they're something,” Izzy said, dropping a dollar in my can. “Clever little devils, playing dead like that. Think people would leave me alone if I rolled over on the ground?”

“Really now,” Grandma said, but everyone else laughed. They were still laughing when Faye Wakeman lumbered in, red and stooped.

“Faye,” Mama said. “Are you all right?”

We watched as Faye plunked down in her rightful chair by Grandma.