The Year the Swallows Came Early (9 page)

H
ere's the good thing about living in a small town: You get to know most everyone. Here's the bad thing about living in a small town: You get to know most everyone.

So when we peeked through the window at the bank, I was relieved to see that I had definitely not met the man who was sitting behind the desk where the safe-deposit boxes were. Because I was in no mood to explain to anyone who knew me why I wasn't with my mama, or my daddy, visiting the bank.

Marisol and Felix waved good-bye and started across the street toward their father's restaurant. I heard Felix talking the whole way. “Do you think she'll find gold? Do you think pirates put it there? Do all pirates know about banks?”

Marisol didn't answer.

I stood on the corner of the pink stucco bank building, gathering my courage and making a plan to get into that box. The sun beat down hard in yellow blurs, spreading mirage waves along the sidewalk and reflecting from the huge bank windows onto my face.

I thought about Daddy and how we'd been here together last summer. We'd come after a Saturday morning at the dog races because he'd needed to put some things away so they'd be safe. I remembered how he'd told me over and over, “Groovy, a safe-deposit box is the best place for important things.”

That's when it came to me.
What if Daddy had secretly put all of Great-grandmother's money in the safe-deposit box? What if Mama'd been
wrong all along? After all, she probably didn't even know about Daddy keeping important things there.

I felt overwhelmed with relief. That had to be it. Daddy hadn't really
lost
all that money on a bet. He'd put it in the safest place possible. People all over the world were probably doing the same exact thing this very minute.

Feeling this sudden happiness, I noticed the sky's perfect blue color, the way the birds on the electrical wire above me were singing so perfect. The way the smell of seaweed and salt floated even more perfectly through the warm air.

I smiled and walked inside the bank. I imagined saying to anyone who stopped me,
Oh yes, I'm here to get into my safe-deposit box again, like I was last week
.
I get into it all the time. You might have seen me before because of all the times I am here.
I made my way to the safe-deposit box area, like a person does when they bring the lunch count and roll call up to the school office for their teacher. With authority.
And slightly on a mission.

“Hello, Groovy.” Pastor Ken suddenly stood in front of me, holding a large envelope marked
PETTY CASH
.
“How are you today?” He smiled his usual big smile.

I looked around quickly to see if anyone else I knew was inside that I hadn't seen through the window. “Fine,” I told him.

He smiled again. Then he said, “How are you and your mother getting along since…well, since your father's been gone?” He stepped closer to me. “Luis mentioned what happened.”

“We're fine,” I said. I thought about how Daddy would be getting out of jail as soon as I showed Mama the money that'd been inside the safe-deposit box all along.

“Why don't you bring your mother with you to church when I get back in a few weeks? I'm leaving next week for our annual mission trip to Mexico with all this money we've been collecting. Our best year yet for donations.” He held out the envelope.

“I'll try,” I said, knowing what Mama would say about that.

He smiled even bigger then. “You might want to think about coming with us for a week next year when you're older. We go over spring break. Luis is considering coming with Frankie next year. There's always a lot to be done, painting, cleaning. You could even help with the food like you help Luis at the Swallow.”

“Maybe I could,” I said in my most polite voice that meant I would think about it but that Mama would probably say no.

He nodded. “I'll see you when I get back then.”

“Okay,” I told him. I watched Pastor Ken stroll out the door and down the street. When I was certain he was far enough away, I walked toward the man sitting behind the desk.

“May I help you, young lady?” he asked me. He had a reddish face with some sweat on his forehead, and wore a blue suit and tie with a gold name tag pinned on his left pocket, which
read,
MR. HUGHES
. And he was looking at me through glasses that made his eyes look twice as big as normal. Being the kind of important man he was, Mr. Hughes had papers and files all over his desk.

“I need to get into box number one hundred seventy-three, please,” I said. “It's important.”

“Hmmm,” said Mr. Hughes, and he looked me over.

“I have a key,” I replied, extra nice, and reached into my pocket, pulling it out to show him it was true.

Mr. Hughes's nose scrunched up as he looked at the key, leaning forward just a little. He pushed his glasses back into place.

“That does indeed appear to be one of our safe-deposit box keys,” he said finally.

I let out a sigh of relief that traveled through the air between us, lifting up the front strands of his hair just a little.

He frowned and matted his hair back down with his hand. It stuck to the beads of sweat that
he smeared across his forehead.

“What did you say your name was? We'll need you to sign the signature card before you can get into the box,” Mr. Hughes explained.

I followed him to the table by the file cabinet. He walked extra slow. Like the heat was making him do things at half speed. Then he pulled open a large drawer that had hundreds of white cards in it, like the old card catalog drawers at the library that tell which shelf each book can be found on.

“Eleanor Robinson,” I told him. “Would you like to see my ID? I have one from school with my picture on it.” I handed him my key. I thought,
Don't tell him too much. The secret to lying is to not tell too much.
But I couldn't stop. “Yeah, my mama sent me down here to check on some papers. She wants me to make sure they're still safe.”

“Miss Robinson,” he said, “you keep the key to open your box, and I will get the matching key to assist you. And you may show me your picture then.”

“Oh,” I answered, feeling embarrassed. “See, well, we've got some important information I need to take a look at in there. It's about, well, it's about something very important.”

He thumbed through the white cards.

“My mama has one-fourth ownership in the beauty salon up the street—you may have heard of it, the Secret Styling Hair and Nail Salon—and she wants me to verify her name and vital information on those papers.”

“Hmmm,” Mr. Hughes said.

“She would come herself, but she's pretty booked up and all. Saturdays are her busiest day. She's actually done a movie star just recently. So you can imagine her schedule.”

Mr. Hughes leaned closer to the cards, squinting through his glasses.

I started to worry that it wouldn't be under my name after all. My foot tapped the floor.
Please be there. Please be there.

“Ahh…here we are, Miss Robinson, your signature card. Your name does appear to be on
the account,” he said
finally
, and placed it on the table. He handed me a pen and pointed to where I should sign.

“Thank you.” I smiled to be polite.

I looked at the card. There were two signatures on it. The first was the same that had been on the letter written to me from Great-grandmother. I knew right away it was her writing. And I realized then that my signature and the one on the card, written by the original Eleanor Robinson, had to match. Otherwise Mr. Hughes was not going to let me into that box. I knew this from going with Daddy last summer to see his coins.

The second signature was Daddy's. He'd signed his name in black ink under Great-grandmother's.

I leaned over the card, carefully studying my great-grandmother's writing. It was much fancier than my own writing. I worried that I could not make my handwriting match hers. So I lifted the pen over her signature to get a feel for it, to trace
it in the air, but Mr. Hughes cleared his throat real loud to hurry me along.

“Sorry,” I told him.

Then I just signed my name, in the fanciest way I could, with loops on the
E
and the
R
, and a big curve up at the end that curled around into a half circle. Kind of like the swirls in peppermint candy. “There!” I said, and put the pen down on that table with a bang.

Mr. Hughes picked up the card and looked at it up close.

“Is it okay?”

He held it to the window, letting the light fall onto my handwriting.

I'm here to tell you that I could barely breathe while I waited for him to make up his mind.

“It appears to be in order,” Mr. Hughes finally answered. “Let me show you to the safe-deposit boxes.”

Well, I knew my signature wasn't anything like Great-grandmother's, with hers having the self-confidence that comes from being a famous
writer for many years, and mine being from just a girl in sixth grade. So I was thankful that Mr. Hughes must not have been able to see real good, even with his glasses.

I followed him into the small room.

“Here we are, Miss Robinson,” Mr. Hughes said. “The safe-deposit box room.”

“Thanks,” I told him, looking around. There were rows of boxes along all four walls, in three sizes: small, medium, and large. In the middle of the room there was a table with a chair. I found Daddy's box on the back wall, number 1199, the smallest size.

Mr. Hughes showed me to my box then, which turned out to be the medium size. We put our keys in the locks at the same time. Then he told me to turn my key to the left while he lifted the box out from the wall, setting it on the table.

I put my hands on top of it and sat down in the chair, smiling. I'd been so caught up in everything that I'd forgotten about important things
needing to go into a safe-deposit box. I pictured myself telling Mama how it had all been a big misunderstanding.

“Take your time, young lady,” Mr. Hughes told me as he walked out of the room. “We don't close until four
P.M.
”

H
ere's what was in the box: nothing. Well, nothing good at least. There wasn't any money—not even
one
dollar bill. Instead, I found seven lottery tickets, each with all the numbers crossed out, a newspaper showing more numbers circled in red pen, and a bank book that had $25,000.00 subtracted to only one number: zero.

I stared at that bank book.

I breathed in deep.

I stood up from the chair.

I sat back down again.

I studied the lottery tickets.

I read over the newspaper.

I wiped my hands on my shorts.

I knew Daddy's side now, without even talking to him.

I thought and thought about him. All I knew about him, and my feelings for him. And suddenly, everything that was in that box came falling down all around like a cold February storm onto my memory of who he was. Mama had been right. He'd taken the money and gambled it away. The evidence was right in front of me.

“How come you did this?” I asked him, knowing he couldn't hear me.

The feelings started real slow, like tiny raindrops that can't make up their minds if they're going to pour from the clouds, or pass through with the breeze.

But then the more I looked at his handwriting in the bank book—the zero scratched in black pen—the faster those drops fell, until it felt like I was sitting in a big, blowing thunderstorm. And just like those storms that can be so sneaky, I
didn't see it coming. And before I knew it, I felt soaking wet, with nowhere to go.

So I sat there for a long time, until I shivered from all the cold swirling around me.

And then it happened. It started coming up into my toes, staying there for a minute, waiting to see if I would push it away.

But I didn't.

So it crept up past my knees, and then into my stomach, finally finding its way to my heart. Where it stopped and settled in deep.

And here's what I thought: I wished I'd never found what was in that box because feeling mad at Daddy was a million times worse than feeling sad.

I
must've been in that room for a long time. I couldn't say for sure because there's no way to track time while trying to understand something completely different about a person you thought was someone else. Especially after years of me saying to people,
Oh no, my daddy's not like that. My daddy's this, or my daddy's that.

I'd gone around my whole life believing what he'd told me, like what he'd said was just how things were. Mama had said he'd taken the money, that he'd lost it on a bet, but it wasn't until I saw his handwriting in the bank book that it seemed
real to me. It wasn't until I saw for myself all his
different
ways of trying to win money that I knew how much he'd been lying to me and Mama.

So when Mr. Hughes knocked on the door and stuck his head in the room, I couldn't believe what he was saying.

“Only twenty minutes until closing, Miss Robinson.” He tapped his watch.

“Okay,” I answered. I knew he was going to make sure I followed the rules, so I started to pack up everything real fast.

He waited for me outside the door so he could lock up the room. “Is everything in order?” he asked.

“Sort of,” I answered. But I didn't think I should tell him about the stolen money, being that he was in the bank business and all. So I started to walk toward the front door, pushing my key deep into my pocket.

I knew I needed to get out of that bank fast because the climate in there was even worse than the middle of an El Niño storm.