Читать книгу The Qualities of Wood - Mary White Vensel - Страница 12

The storm had pushed soggy leaves against the house and left a puddle directly below the porch steps. Broken branches lay scattered about, their leaves still green and beneath the bark, clean white fiber gleamed. Vivian kicked off her shoes, the damp grass cool between her toes as she gathered the debris. In the shed next to the well, amidst rusty gardening tools and bags of old potting soil, she found a straw broom. She swept the porch and gathered everything into a black garbage bag. By mid-morning, the grass dried into scented vapors and the dirt driveway lightened, strip by strip, as the sun moved higher over the trees.

Nowell was in his airless study, hidden behind the curtain like a sick ward. Vivian’s mind had started to believe that the divider was solid and soundproof; it gave the illusion of complete separation. Nowell’s touch on the keyboard was light. She seldom heard any sounds from the room. If she strained, sometimes she could make out a soft, steady tapping, like raindrops on a distant roof. Most of the time, she forgot he was in the house.

She telephoned her parents but reached their answering machine, her mother’s staid, succinct recording. Then she went to the study.

‘Nowell? Can I come in?’

‘Hey, Viv,’ he called back.

She pulled aside the curtain, an old sheet with delicate baby blue stripes, and stepped down. ‘It’s so stuffy in here,’ she said without thinking.

This was a continual disagreement between them, at their apartment and now here, at Grandma Gardiner’s house. Nowell kept windows sealed; Vivian liked to air things out, even in the winter.

‘It’s cold in the morning,’ Nowell said. ‘There’s no sun back here. I wish you’d leave the windows alone.’

‘I opened them in the afternoon, when it was warm.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘It’s your room.’ She perched on the edge of his desk. ‘I’m going to head into town now. I’m going to the newspaper office and having lunch with Katherine. She called earlier.’

He moved some papers to the side. ‘Are you sure you’re comfortable driving the truck?’

‘I think so.’

The night before, he adjusted the seat and brought a pillow from the house for her to sit on. It seemed demeaning to her, like a booster seat for a child, but she was determined to drive the thing.

She climbed into the cabin as effortlessly as possible given its height, started the truck, and backed it slowly down the driveway. As she turned onto the road, she glanced up at the house, looking for Nowell in the windows. She felt sure he was watching, to see how she’d do.

Vivian had no trouble driving to town and finding the newspaper office. The Sentinel was tucked between two squat office buildings, its white-painted brick façade standing stubbornly between the modern structures. She walked through the double doors at the front and a bell tied to the doorknob jangled, reminding her of Christmas. The woman at the desk looked up and smiled. Above her, a wooden placard that said ‘Customer Service’ hung from the ceiling under two thick cables. She had a double chin that protruded underneath her first chin. Bulbous and jiggling, it extended down in a rounded curve to the opening of her shirt. ‘Hello there,’ she said.

Vivian tried to focus instead on her eyes, which were dull green but friendly. ‘My husband and I just moved here,’ she said, ‘and we’d like to receive the newspaper.’

‘Surely.’ She took a sheet of paper from a plastic tray at the side of the counter. ‘Just fill out this form.’

Vivian set her purse on the counter. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but could I borrow a pen?’

‘Surely. Take mine and I’ll fetch another one.’ The woman made slow movements to disembark her chair, which was a high, backless stool pushed up close to the counter. She turned to the side and scooted forward a little, then straightened her torso so that her rear slid over the edge of the seat. Finally, she landed with a grunt on the floor, her neck shaking up and down.

‘There are three different kinds of subscriptions,’ she explained when she came back with the pen. ‘There’s every day service, which includes every day of the week except Tuesday and Thursday. We don’t print those days. So the ‘every day’ title really means every day we print. Then there’s Monday, Friday, and Sunday service. Basically that excludes Wednesday and Saturday. Then there’s Sunday only service.’

‘I’ll take the second one.’ As the woman checked the paperwork, Vivian looked around the office. Behind the counter, two desks sat side by side, each cluttered with papers. A doorway at the back of the reception area opened to a larger room. Two people were working in that section. A man leaned on the corner of a desk, talking to a woman and smoking.

‘I see you’re out on the main road,’ the woman said.

Vivian looked back to her milky green eyes and nodded.

She lowered her voice. ‘Did you hear about the girl they found out there?’

Vivian answered in her normal speaking voice. ‘Yes. She was found near our house.’

The woman’s eyes widened and as she lowered her head, her neck creased into white and pink bands. ‘Right near your place, you say?’

‘Practically our backyard.’

‘Goodness! How terrifying for you!’

Vivian didn’t like her conspiratorial tone or the way she had lowered her voice.

‘You poor thing,’ the woman continued. ‘Your husband’s out there with you?’

‘Well, yes. Why?’

She looked at Vivian curiously. ‘For protection.’

‘The sheriff seems to think it was an accident.’

‘That’s not what I heard.’ At once, the woman changed her posture, straightening her back. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Well, I can’t…’

Vivian leaned forward. ‘What did you hear?’

The woman contemplated for a moment then squinted, her eyes catlike. ‘I heard it’s not a foregone conclusion.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They say the girl fell, right?’

Vivian nodded.

‘And hit her head on the rock?’

‘Yes.’

The woman paused, puckering her lips. ‘Say you’re running and you trip on something and fall. Where would your hands be?’

‘My hands?’

‘You’re running and your feet hit something and you fall forward.’

‘I don’t know.’

The woman shook her head irritably, then glanced over her shoulder again. ‘Your hands would be up, near your chest or your face, depending how far they got.’ She demonstrated. ‘You would try to break the fall, by instinct. That’s why kids on roller-skates are supposed to wear those wrist things, because they break their wrists more than anything else.’

‘So?’

‘Chanelle Brodie’s hands were at her side, like this.’

Vivian peered over the counter to see the woman’s arms, pressed to her sides like a soldier at attention.

‘Weird, isn’t it?’ the woman said.

‘I guess.’

‘Like an execution,’ she almost hissed.

They concluded their business and Vivian thanked the woman. Outside, the morning brightness was a shock. She locked the truck and started down the street toward the restaurant Katherine had suggested, thinking about the conversation with the woman at The Sentinel. What she had said about instinct seemed reasonable. Small children often fell on their faces, cutting their lips open or bruising their cheeks, but after a certain age, injuries happened more to limbs. Older children scraped their knees and elbows, broke arms and fingers. It seemed logical that if a seventeen-year-old girl had fallen in the woods, her hands would have gone up to break her fall.

Vivian passed a toy store and a women’s clothing boutique. The streets were quiet for mid-morning, most businesses still closed. She lowered her sunglasses to read the sign on the door of a flower shop: Open weekdays at eleven. Most of the places were the same. She was meeting Katherine at eleven-thirty, and still had an hour to kill. She reached the plaza with the statue of William Clement, sat on a red-painted bench, and opened her complimentary copy of The Sentinel.

There were two articles about Chanelle Brodie, the first one on the front page: Local Girl, 17, Found Dead. The article was short, just covering the most basic facts; that the body was found face down, on a large rock, and that the death was believed to be an accident. More information would follow after an autopsy, it said. The other article, buried on page six, talked about an impromptu memorial service that took place at Chanelle’s high school. The entire fence surrounding the football field was threaded with flowers. The formal services would be held in a few days.

She wondered again what Chanelle had been doing in the woods behind their property. Vivian thought about a small box she buried in her backyard when she was young. The box contained mementos: notes she had received from a boy, a plastic multi-colored bracelet, a picture of her mother as a teenager. Between the gnarled roots of an old, dried-up tree, she dug a hole and covered the box with a thin layer of dirt. She thought: Maybe Chanelle had a hiding place in the woods; that would explain why she went there alone. Then again, maybe she did most things by herself, being an only child. Vivian could relate to that.

‘Hey there!’

Vivian opened her eyes. The sun glared through her sunglasses.

Katherine moved over, blocking the light. ‘I thought that was you. I drove by a minute ago.’

‘None of the stores were open,’ Vivian said. ‘I thought I’d read the paper and enjoy the sun a little.’

‘I keep telling Max that we should open later like everyone else, but some people like to drop off their cleaning on the way to work.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘Feels like another hot one, doesn’t it? July is going out with a bang, I swear.’

They walked across the plaza, over the jagged shadow of William Clement and horse.

Katherine said, ‘This place has a great salad bar, and it should be pretty fresh since we’ll get there before the lunch crowd.’

Vivian looked up and down the streets, which were clear but beginning to show a few sporadic signs of life. She couldn’t imagine any type of crowd anywhere on this street, lunchtime or otherwise. There was a pregnant stillness, like a suspenseful movie. Any moment, a mad gunman would burst from the bank or someone would scream and fall from the top of a building.

‘Those kids were a handful today,’ Katherine said.

‘What grade?’

‘Third. Eight and nine years old. They’re hard to handle during the summer. It’s like the heat gets to their little brains.’ She laughed, pleased with herself. ‘What did you think of that storm?’

‘Windy, wasn’t it? I filled a trash bag with leaves and branches.’

Katherine grabbed Vivian’s upper arm. ‘I still can’t believe it. One of the teachers at the school heard that Chanelle had been missing for almost three weeks. She has a friend who knows Kitty.’

‘Kitty?’

‘Mrs Brodie, Chanelle’s mother. Her name is Katlyn but she’s always gone by Kitty.’ She made a clicking sound with her tongue. ‘She had a hard time raising that child alone. Chanelle was a magnet for trouble.’

‘More trouble than most teenagers?’ Vivian asked.

‘That’s a good question. It’s been so long since I was one myself.’

They were seated at a table on the restaurant’s patio, and when they were comfortable with iced teas, Katherine resumed the conversation. ‘Chanelle was a very pretty girl and arrogant about it. I think it’s a special time, and a dangerous one, when a young girl discovers her sex appeal. Don’t you?’

Vivian flushed slightly. ‘I guess.’

‘She had a way about her. Arrogant, but sad. She wasn’t going to let anybody tell her anything.’

‘Did she have brothers or sisters?’

Katherine shook her head as she sipped from her straw. ‘Kitty had her real young, in high school.’ She set her glass down. ‘You should know that in a small town, everybody goes to the same school and knows everybody’s business. I swear, it’s almost intimidating sometimes, knowing you can never get away from yourself. You can never change, not really. People are always reminding you who you are.’

Vivian hadn’t lived in her hometown since she moved away to college. She hadn’t ever thought of it in those terms, but she did like the anonymity of the city. ‘Were you and Kitty friends in high school?’ she asked.

‘No. She was a year back, and hung around a different crowd.’

Vivian smiled. ‘Let me guess. She was a cheerleader and you were a diligent student.’

Katherine chuckled. ‘Something like that. She never was a cheerleader, but boy, she wanted to be. She pestered the in-crowd until they had to let her in. She was very pretty. Still is.’

‘So that’s where Chanelle got her looks.’

Something passed over Katherine’s face. Vivian thought that maybe it hurt her feelings, remembering how she and Kitty differed in high school.

‘I see kids around here,’ Katherine said, ‘well, they have no fear. I’ve seen Chanelle riding around at night, six or seven of them in the back of a truck. Cruising up and down the main street, trying to make something happen.’

‘The street with the statue of William Clement?’

‘Yea.’ Katherine paused. ‘I can’t explain it, but they act like they own the town. I was never completely fearless, even at my worst.’

Vivian envisioned the circular plaza surrounding the statue of Clement. ‘That’s probably the turn-around point,’ she said, ‘where the statue is.’

‘You sound like someone who’s done some cruising yourself.’

Vivian shrugged. ‘Maybe once or twice.’

‘There’s something else.’ Katherine lowered her voice. ‘About a year ago, Chanelle and two local boys got arrested for stealing a car from the mini-mall parking lot. They were raging drunk too. Lucky for them, Sheriff Townsend is an old friend of Kitty’s father. They all got bailed out and the charges were eventually dropped. I think they got some kind of probation.’

‘What about the owner of the car?’

‘She used to work for the sheriff when he owned his construction company.’ She winked. ‘Everything worked out.’

Their salads arrived and for a few moments, they ate in silence.

Katherine sighed. ‘I think Chanelle had a lot of boyfriends, that sort of thing. Pretty much like her mother in that way. But she was still in school. She could have done something with her life, especially with that stubborn streak. Life takes perseverance, doesn’t it? It’s a real shame.’

Vivian set her fork down. ‘I saw the story in The Sentinel.’

‘You know,’ Katherine said. ‘It doesn’t give the exact location. People won’t know it was near your place.’

‘Do you think they’ll want to leave flowers at the site or something?’

‘No, I just thought you wouldn’t want people bothering you.’

‘People? What people?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They can come over and look if they want to,’ Vivian said. ‘Why? Do people think that we know something, do they…’

Katherine waved her hand, bracelets sounding an alarm. ‘Oh, no, no, no. There are all types, that’s all. The curious, the downright nosy.’

Vivian hadn’t once imagined the possible implications of the girl being found on their property. She had been thinking only of their safety.

‘The man who owns this little cafe is so nice,’ Katherine told her. ‘His father designed the fire station, and the county office addition…’ As she talked, Vivian stayed alone in her thoughts, which weren’t about office additions or salads but instead were vivid contemplations about Chanelle Brodie and the nature of her final moments.