Under the Same Blue Sky (13 page)

Susanna peeked around him. “Thank you for the soup, Miss Renner.”

“Sleep now, darling,” her mother said. “We’re taking you home.”

“I’m calling Sheriff Wilkes,” the judge told Mr. Allen. “We’ll start at eight o’clock tomorrow to finish the job.”
Finish the job.

“Good idea.”

When the Keystone pulled away, Mr. Allen hoisted my bicycle into the back of his truck and drove me home. “It’ll be a miracle if the whole town doesn’t get pneumonia after a day like this,” he said. “You make a good fire and rest, Miss Renner. They don’t need you at the church. Stay home.”

“Ben only meant to help. And Susanna wasn’t hurt. You saw her. She even looks better. There’s no fever.”

“That won’t matter to the judge,” Mr. Allen warned. I nodded bleakly. “And frankly, if it was my little girl, it wouldn’t matter to me, either. But she’s safe now. That’s the important thing.”

I stayed inside until Mr. Allen’s truck rounded the bend and disappeared.
Finish the job
roared in my head. Jim Burnett once said that in Judge Ashton’s courtroom, even the innocent blurted out confessions. What Ben did was foolish, even crazy, but the judge would surely impute malice. Then “justice” would trample a fragile and innocent soul.

I rode my bicycle to Ben’s shack behind the grocery. It had been
searched, of course. Muddy pawprints and footprints covered the floor, which was strewn with his few possessions: my sketch of Havana, a few penny postcards of Cuba, cheap prints of woodland scenes, a cup, plate, fork, cans of beans, bags of roots, a sack of coffee, and a cracked vase with dried flowers. If I left a note, it would be found. I rode home. His camp could be anywhere. How could I find it in the dark when dogs and search teams had failed? But they’d find it soon. The judge would wrest from Susanna enough sense of distance and direction to narrow their search. My only hope was that Ben would come to my house and I could persuade him to leave Galway by some secret route. I waited all night. He never came.

At seven thirty, I was in the church, the only woman in a murmuring crowd of weary men. All had heard of Susanna’s safe return, but the news only enraged them.

“Ben’s got to be close, we’ll get him.”

“That little girl’s lucky to be alive.”

“Don’t need his type in Galway.”

Nobody acknowledged my presence. Was I invisible? Had Ben felt like this? Had this, in his tangled mind, prompted his spying? Did he assume that he’d be as unnoticed in the brush around houses as he was on the streets?

At eight precisely, the judge entered with Sheriff Wilkes, cutting through the now-silent crowd. At the front of the church, he spoke briefly to Wilkes and then faced the men. Some stepped back slightly, straightening rough jackets. Then I knew with sickening certainty. They knew. Ben was dead. The judge had “finished the job” alone. I wanted to leave this place and mourn my friend alone, but I owed Ben to hear his end, to walk his last steps with him.

“Wilkes, tell them what happened,” the judge said. “I’m going home to my family.” We watched him leave by a side door. Then all eyes
swiveled to the sheriff, whose customary stolid calm had deserted him. He shuffled his feet as my boys did before recitations and rubbed his hands. I looked out the window and listened.

“Just before dawn, Judge Ashton called and said he meant to take Red Gorge Road and look for Ben. I asked him to wait for me, but he said it was his right to go.” A murmur of assent ruffled through the crowd. “He did find Ben. He was twitching again, walking along and talking like there was somebody beside him, looking rough, as if he’d slept outside. What the judge testified in my office just now is that he stopped the car and told Ben he’d have to come in for questioning. They were on the bridge at that time.”

“What did Ben say, Sheriff?” one of the men called out.

“He was rattling on about Cuba, not making sense. The judge tried to get him in the car, but he ran away. The judge ran after him, but Ben climbed over the railing and jumped. You all know that bridge.”

We did. Red Gorge Bridge arched fifty feet over the Monongahela River, now swollen with icy water tumbling through boulders. Any fall would be fatal. Ben’s body, once recovered, would be too battered for signs of what happened before his fall. No, it was no fall. He was pushed.

Didn’t everyone know the judge had lied? Ben was terrified of heights. Why would he jump or even look down off the bridge? But there were no witnesses. I imagined the men’s thoughts:
I’d do the same if it was my daughter.

Hot and breathless, I squirreled through the crowd and out the door to the icy steps. I pictured Ben hungry, cold, confused, and frightened of the judge, pulled toward the black car. His voices roar. The judge is a big man. How can Ben resist? He hears crashing water. He’s dragged to the railing. He sees distant, jagged rocks. A struggle, a lift and push.
Ben falls. His screams echo down the gorge. Then silence. The judge drives away. The job is finished.

If I hadn’t saved Ben, could I at least save the truth? He meant to help Susanna when everyone else failed, when my house failed, when he feared a specialist would fail. Surely some would believe his innocence and the facts of his death. The church door opened and Jim Burnett emerged, hands jabbed in his pockets, walking grimly past me. I ran to catch him. “Ben never jumped,” I panted.

“I know.”

“He didn’t hurt her.”

“I know. I’ve seen him with my Alice.”

“So we have to do something. Judge Ashton is just—”

Jim stopped walking, speaking softly. “Hazel, you can’t judge the judge. And he owns half the town.”

“But—”

“What do you expect? That someone will testify against him? There were no witnesses. Why would people listen to you? Or do you think Judge Ashton will confess?”

Deep cold settled in my stomach. “Ben was a good man,” I said finally. “He just wanted to help.”

“He was. I don’t know what’s happening in this town anymore.” He looked at his watch. “But it’s time to open the store. Go home, Hazel, and get some rest.” Be out of sight now, he must have meant. Don’t remind people of what they were being asked to forget: that an innocent man had died.

I trudged home, boots crunching, remembering evenings with Ben on my porch, his stories and woodland gifts, how he watched seekers come to my house, stand in lines, pry off chips of paint, or help themselves to my kitchen when I was gone. He watched Susanna. He ached
for a little girl in Havana. He wanted to help Susanna and me, perhaps. For this he lost his life. If I’d helped Susanna, Ben would be here. If I’d helped nobody at all, Ben would be here. If I’d never asked for a blue house, Ben would be here.

In the blistering cold, I considered my balance of help and hurt in Galway. It swayed against me. A few healings. But more who’d gone away uncured. Jealousy had caused the Burnetts to lose friends. Yes, some children had been excited by lessons and came eagerly to the school, but now so much tainted me. “Are you a witch?” Lydia had asked. If not a witch, I was surely dangerous. See what happened to Ben after spending time at my blue house?

How long before a small town’s great wrath turned against me? There’d be no need for Red Gorge. There are many ways to expel a stranger. Stares can rake the skin. Talk at home can poison children against their teacher, making some give up a long trek to school. The dutiful would endure lessons, waiting out the days until June. I’d be just another Miss Clay. For whose sake should I stay here?

We had the Christmas pageant. Lacking rehearsal time, many players missed or fumbled their lines. Fathers who had spent long hours on search teams coughed and wheezed. After polite applause, parents hurried their children home, each with the portrait I’d finished. “Merry Christmas, Miss Renner. Thank you for the picture,” they said dutifully. In the tense and wary air, nothing felt like Christmas.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I was packing when Jim and Ellen Burnett knocked on my door. “We wanted to see you before Henry McFee gets here,” Jim said.

“About this?” I showed them my letter of resignation. I wouldn’t be back after Christmas. “Isn’t that what Henry’s coming to say, that Galway needs a different teacher?”

“Yes,” Jim admitted. “The school board met after the pageant. Ellen and I are sick about this. You were the best teacher we ever had. I’m on the board, but they voted against me. They felt it would be ‘better’ if you left.” He set an envelope on the table. “This is the rest of your year’s pay. It’s from us and Charlie and Emma’s parents. We want you to have it. Ellen and I will never forget what you did for our Alice.”

“And please,” said Ellen, “don’t think too much about the troubles here this fall or about Ben. It’s over. He’s at peace.”

I nearly cried for their kindness after the terror of these days. I took the envelope. “Thank you, and please thank the others for me. Who’ll teach now?”

“The pastor’s niece just got her certificate. She’ll come after Christmas. If you teach someplace else, we’ll be happy to recommend you.”

“I’m not sure I can teach right now.” I poured coffee. We spoke a little about Alice’s future and even shared a few stories about Ben.

“Write to us,” Ellen said. “And Alice wants to write to you.” I gave them my parents’ address and said I’d let them know my plans. When they left, winter silence wrapped my house.

When Henry took me to the train the next morning, we passed men carrying crowbars and sledgehammers. I asked where they were going. Henry coughed. “The new teacher will board with the pastor.”

“I see.” My blue house didn’t serve Galway anymore. People would see it and think of their unhealed pains, of a young girl stolen, and a troubled soul dead in Red Gorge. I imagined stories about me and my house winding through the town, whispered as warning, embellished, or twisted to suit the teller: a teacher who once had a healing gift and lost it. “What happened to her?” strangers might ask. “She went back to the city,” someone will say.

CHAPTER 8

Looking for Margit

W
here does one go when dreams turn sour and promises become pain? Of course I went home, if only to gather strength for leaving again. But if someone on that train had asked who I was, I wouldn’t have known how to answer. Healer, fake, teacher, witch? One who came to a peaceful town and found no peace? Had Margit done the same?

Did I even fit in Pittsburgh? What did our quiet flat know of frightened children, bloodhounds, bodies smashed on rocks, or houses torn down? It was Christmastime. My mother would have made her festive cookies: macaroons, cinnamon stars,
butterplätzchen,
ginger-rich
lebkuchen,
and anise-spiced
pfeffernüsse
. Rich and heavy loaves of
Christstollen
would be ripening for friends and fortunate customers. On Christmas Eve, we’d walk to midnight service, lit with candles and sacred with ancient story. We’d pass the kiss of peace and pray for peace in our Fatherland.

Why should I poison these solemn days with my story, or churn faithful hearts with what I’d done and the black unknowing of what lay before me? My father would already be anguished for the terrible war
losses this fall. Nobody dared hope that the magical, spontaneous soldiers’ Christmas Eve “armistice” of 1914 would be repeated this year; there would be no singing of “Silent Night” across No Man’s Land, each side in its own tongue, no soldiers climbing out of the trenches to share photographs of home, cigarettes, wine, and chocolates with men who would be enemies in the morning but
that
night were comrades.

No, I’d wait until after the New Year to confess what I’d done in Galway. Perhaps by then I’d know where I must go next to repay the damage done by pride and ignorant innocence.

“We’re so glad they painted your house, Hazel,” my mother said as we sat at the familiar table, waiting for my father to close the store. “That shows they respect you, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so.” I swerved our talk to the schoolchildren: our pageant, Alice’s grave manner and clever mind, how Charlie’s eyes flashed when he solved a difficult problem in fractions.

She spoke of war. “Your father says poor Bulgaria is surrounded by Allies. He worries about every town in Germany. And I worry about him. How much sorrow can one man take? I hope you can distract him.”

“I hope so, too.” Once it seemed I held the pain of Galway, but that was a little town. My father carried the weight of millions.

“Could you do your magic on my shoulder, Hazel? The cold makes it worse.” She couldn’t know the pain of this request or the desperate hope for one last tremor of healing. I tried. Nothing. She grimaced when I moved her awkwardly. So I’d even lost the solace of massage.

“What does Dr. Edson say?”

“That I might feel better in the spring. Meanwhile, just be patient.”

Patience, yes. Could I have been more patient, not pushing for a blue house, not hurrying to “fix” the scratching and twitching that may have somehow calmed Ben’s voices? Why hadn’t I sought the help of those whose true work was healing? Rev. Collins and Dr. Bentley were rooted
deeply in the town. I was an outsider. “Don’t tell people how to raise their children,” Jim had warned. Visit. Listen. Let parents
choose
to trust me with their children. Suppose I’d been as patient with my house?

My mother stopped these fruitless cogitations. “Never mind, Hazel. Just sit with me. It’s good to have you home.” I choked back a sob. She spun around to grip my hands. “Hazel! What’s wrong? Tell me.”

“I can’t. I’ll tell you after Christmas. Please, don’t ask me now.”

She wouldn’t ask, but what pain this waiting must cost her. At last my father came upstairs. I remember that first home meal, the clean warmth of potatoes, tang of onions, and savor of sausage. My father spoke of war contracts and workers from the South flooding into Pittsburgh, where making bullets paid far more than farming, mining, or any work of peace.

The next days passed quietly. I helped in the store, shopped with my mother, and visited Luisa, saying little about my work or plans. Early on Christmas Eve, my family exchanged gifts: my drawings of Galway, a fine hand-turned wooden bowl made by Horace’s father, jars of my fruit preserves and apple butter. They gave me a muffler and mittens, a plaid woolen dress, an illustrated history of European art, and a newly hammered tin of a forest scene titled “A Quiet Kingdom.”