So B. It (9 page)

I was halfway down the driveway, running with my backpack slung over one shoulder, the suitcase in one hand and the jelly beans under the other arm, when Sheriff Roy Franklin, Ruby’s husband, finally caught up with me. He’d come to pick his wife up from work.

“Please don’t take me away,” I pleaded as he closed a huge hand around the top of my arm and steered me back around toward Hilltop.

“Calm down,” he said. “Nobody’s taking anybody anyplace. I just want to talk to you.”

Ruby had come out on the front porch and was watching us walk back up the driveway. Roy carried my suitcase, and I had the jar of jelly beans in my arms. I wasn’t crying, but I was close.

“Can I call Bernie?” I asked.

“Who’s Bernie?” he said.

By then we’d reached the porch where Ruby was waiting, and she started to fill Roy in on my story.

“Bernie’s the neighbor,” she told him, “in
Nevada
. She took a bus here by herself, Roy.”

“Does your family know where you are?” Roy asked.

“Yes. But Bernie’s going to be worried,” I told them. “I was supposed to call her back a long time ago. Please can I call her now?”

“I think maybe that’s a good idea,” Roy said.

We went back inside to the little office so I could call Bernie. To my relief, there was no sign of Thurman Hill anywhere.

“Oh Heidi,” Bernie said as soon as the call went through, “where on earth have you been, baby? Are you all right? You were supposed to call me back ages ago.”

I lost it and began to cry.

“I’m at Hilltop, Bernie. With a sheriff. Thurman Hill is awful, and he won’t tell me anything. He thinks I’m somebody else. He thinks I want his money. And Mama’s not in
the files. I want to come home, Bernie,” I sobbed into the phone. “I want to come home.”

Ruby pulled a tissue out of the sleeve of her sweater and handed it to me. I blew my nose and tried to catch my breath.

“Let me speak to her,” Roy said, reaching for the phone. I handed it to him and stood there sniffling and dabbing at my eyes as Ruby handed me more tissues. Roy stretched the phone cord out and moved a few feet away, then turned his back to me and kept his voice so low, I couldn’t hear what he was saying to Bernadette.

My clothes were damp from the downpour I’d been caught in back in town, and I was shivering. Ruby went and made me a cup of instant hot chocolate in the kitchen, and when she came back, she brought her coat and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was warm and soft and smelled flowery, like Georgia’s breath after she ate a Violet.

Roy talked to Bernadette for quite a while, and I stood there drinking my cocoa and trying not to cry again. When he was finally finished, he handed me the phone.

“I think I know the answer to this already, but tell me what his eyes are saying, baby,” Bernie said. “It’s important.”

Sheriff Roy Franklin was a big man with black hair going gray on the sides and a large mustache that hung over both his upper and lower lip. His eyes were large and brown, dark, like the color of the ground beans in the drawer of Bernie’s coffee mill. When he smiled, little lines formed at the outer corners.

“Good things,” I said.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

“That’s one remarkable lady,” Roy said after I hung up. “Wants what she wants, though.”

“What did she tell you?” I asked.

He reached into his pocket. At first I thought he was going for his handcuffs and I felt a lump rise in my throat. But then he pulled out a quarter.

“Heads or tails?” he asked me.

“What?” I said.

“Heads or tails? Call it in the air,” said the sheriff as he flipped the coin, caught it, and then slapped it down on the back of his other hand and covered it.

“Heads,” I said.

He looked at it and nodded.

“Do it again. Heads or tails?”

“Tails,” I said.

Again I was right.

He did it ten times in a row, and each time I got it right.

“What on earth, Roy?” Ruby said.

“I’ll be danged, it’s just like she said,” said Roy.

“Like who said?” asked Ruby.

“Bernadette, the neighbor. She bet me this little girl could guess ten coin flips correctly in a row, and sure enough she did. Guess I’ve got no choice but to keep my part of the bargain.”

“What bargain?” asked Ruby.

“I promised Bernadette that if she guessed ten flips in a row, instead of taking Heidi down to the station like I’d planned to, I’d take her to our house, feed her a home-cooked meal, and give her a warm bed to sleep in for the night.”

“Roy,” Ruby said.

“What, Rube? You don’t want her to have to bunk downtown, do you? She’s twelve years
old and a couple thousand miles from home.”

“Of course not,” said Ruby softly. “It’s just—we don’t know the whole story yet.”

“I know enough of it to know what’s best right now. As for your boss, I need to talk to him. Where is he, anyway?”

“He’s probably back in the rec room. Elly’s been having a hard time this afternoon,” Ruby said. “He’s been banging his head.”

“You meet Elliot yet?” Roy asked me.

I nodded.

“Rube’s sweet on him, in case you couldn’t tell,” Roy said. “I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to go have a word with Mr. Hill.”

“Ask him why Elliot knows my mama’s word,” I said.

Roy looked to Ruby for an explanation.

“Soof,”
she said. “You know how I told you Elliot says that a lot? Well, Heidi says her mother does too.”

“And he called me
soof
today when he saw me,” I said.

“Elliot says
soof
a lot, Heidi. It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Ruby said.

“I think it does. I think everything means
something, even when you don’t know what it is,” I said.

Roy smiled at me.

“Why don’t you two wait out in the car?” He handed Ruby the keys. “Put the heater on, Rube. She’s shivering.”

Ruby carried my suitcase this time and I carried my backpack and the jar of jelly beans out to the car, which was parked at the top of the driveway.

I got in the backseat and Ruby got in the front so she could start the engine and turn on the heater.

“Do you need me to come back there and sit with you?” she asked over the back of the seat.

I would have liked that, but I shook my head no.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked me.

“No,” I said. “Do you?”

“One sister. Jill. She lives in North Branch.”

“You have kids?” I asked.

I thought I saw a shadow cross her face.

“Nope,” she said. “No kids.”

Neither of us said anything after that. The
car heated up quickly, and the combination of the warmth and the hum of the heater made me feel drowsy. I rested my head against the back of the seat, closed my eyes, and fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until we pulled into the Franklins’ driveway and Roy turned the engine off. Even though I was awake, I sat there with my eyes still closed.

“Should we wake her up, or do you want to try to carry her inside?” Ruby whispered.

“What do you mean, ‘try’?” said Roy, pretending to be insulted. “She’s just a slip of a thing.”

Ruby laughed. She had a nice laugh. Musical, like the wind chimes Bernie and I made once from a kit she ordered through the mail.

I don’t remember ever having been carried before that, though of course I know both Mama and Bernie must have carried me plenty when I was little. Roy picked me up out of the backseat and carried me into the house, and I don’t think I breathed once the whole time, just clung tight to the jar of jelly beans, which clicked and clattered as they knocked against each other. The only other sound was the soft
soof, soof
of his shoes as he carried me carefully up the steps, across the porch, and into the house. I was sorry when he put me down, sorry to have to open my eyes. It felt so good to be taken somewhere by somebody, instead of having to get there on my own.

Roy and Ruby lived in a white house with yellow shutters and window boxes all across the front. There was a screened-in porch on the side and a white rope hammock slung between two trees in the yard.

Ruby showed me the little back bedroom where she said I could change out of my dirty clothes. Before I did that, though, I asked Roy what Thurman Hill had told him back at Hilltop.

“Nothing. He said he wouldn’t talk to me without his lawyer present, so I’ll have to go back up there tomorrow to see what’s what,” he told me. “Now go get changed, so Rube can put dinner on the table.”

I’d been changing my underwear and socks each day since I’d left Reno like Bernie had told me to, but I’d been wearing the same jeans and T-shirt and the red sweater ever since I left home. What I really wanted was a hot bath,
but I was too shy to ask, and besides, I was starving. I shoved my dirty clothes into the corner of my suitcase and pulled on some clean ones. I tried to run a comb through my hair, but I hadn’t combed it in so long, it was really tangled, so I left it. When I went back out to the living room, Roy was sitting on the couch reading the paper. Ruby came out of the kitchen drying her hands on her apron.

“If I’d known earlier you were coming, Heidi, I would have made something ahead of time. As it is, frozen potpies will have to do. I’ll make up for it with breakfast tomorrow, though, I promise. Dinner in about five, you two,” she said, and went back into the kitchen.

Roy looked at me and smiled.

“She’s no slouch in the kitchen,” he said.

“Did you ask Thurman Hill how come Elliot knows my mother’s word?” I asked.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.” Roy laughed. “Bernadette teach you to get right to the point, did she?”

I shrugged.

“Did you ask him?” I said again.

“Tomorrow, Heidi,” he said in a tone I knew—when Bernie used it, it meant not to ask again.

We ate at a round wooden table in the kitchen. There were place mats with pictures of horses on them, and the paper napkins had flowers printed around the edges and were folded into triangles under each fork. I sat between Roy and Ruby. The potpies were filled with turkey and vegetables, the thick buttery crusts oozing gravy from little tear-shaped slits cut through the top. There was salad and cottage cheese and little bowls of applesauce sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

I was so hungry, there was hardly a second my mouth wasn’t stuffed too full for me to talk. For dessert Ruby dished out three big bowls of strawberry ripple ice cream, but I only made it halfway through mine before I ran out of steam.

“You look bushed,” Roy said.

“It’s no wonder—she’s been sleeping on a bus for the past three nights. I’ll run you a bath, Heidi, and then you can go to bed,” Ruby said.

“Can I call Bernadette first?” I asked. “I’ll call collect.”

“Of course,” said Ruby. “You show her where, Roy.”

Ruby went to run the bath and Roy took me into his den to use the phone. We only talked for a minute. I told Bernie that Ruby and Roy were being really nice to me and that I was going to take a bath and go to bed. She seemed relieved to hear it.

“I’m not going to worry about you tonight, Heidi-Ho,” she said. “Sounds like you’re in good hands.”

Mama called for Bernie in the background.

“I’m coming, Precious,” she called back. “Your poor mama’s had a headache all day long today. The worst one ever.”

“Kiss her for me,” I said, adding, “and tell her that I love her, Bernie.”

Since
love
was not one of the words that Mama said, it wasn’t a word I used very often either. For some reason that night, though, maybe because of the longing Roy had stirred up when he’d carried me in from the car, I wanted Mama to know that I loved her.

“I’ll tell her,” Bernie promised.

When I came out of the den, Roy was waiting for me.

“You got something to sleep in, or do you need to borrow something? I’ve got a big old flannel shirt that might do, or Rube’s probably got something frillier you could borrow if you want.”

I told him I had something in my suitcase and started to go back to the little bedroom where I had changed earlier. Roy stopped me.

“Heidi, does the name DeMuth ring a bell at all?” he asked.

“DeMuth?” I said,

“Diane DeMuth. Ever hear that name?” he said.

“I don’t think so. Who is she?” I asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Ruby’s been running those taps for a while now. You’d better run along now and get ready for your bath.”

I went to my room and opened my suitcase, digging around until I found the nightgown I’d packed. I fished my toothbrush out of the pocket of my backpack and went down the hall to the bathroom.

Ruby had run the bath so hot, steam was floating up out of it, and she’d put in enough bubbles to make it foam up like whipped cream. I’d seen pictures of bubble baths in magazines, but I’d never actually had one. Once when I had chicken pox Bernie put oatmeal in the bathwater to help with the itching, but that was lumpy, not like the bubble bath at all. I spent a long time soaking, and when my fingers were completely pruned and the bubbles had died down to a thin soapy film, I got out and dried off. I brushed my teeth and put on my nightgown and tried to comb through my wet hair, but it was even more tangled now than it had been before. I gave up. At least it was clean.

Roy and Ruby weren’t around when I came out, and I felt too shy to go looking for them or to call out their names, so I went back to the little bedroom and dug my notebook and pen out of my backpack. I carried them over to the wooden bed and lay down on top of the covers. Then I flipped through the pages until I found the “Things I Don’t Know About Mama” list.

What is soof?

was all that it said. Below that I wrote:

Why does Elliot know Mama’s word?

I was too tired to write more, so I closed the book and slipped it under the pillow. Then I pulled back the covers and slid down between the crisp, cool sheets. I turned off the light and was already halfway asleep when there was a soft knock on the door and a wedge of pale light unfolded into the room. Ruby stood in the doorway.