The Driest Season Read online

  “You don’t know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You’re scared to know.”

  “No.” Helen shook her head back and forth. “I’m not.”

  “You don’t want to know reasons. Because they’ll change you.”

  “Haven’t our lives changed enough already?”

  They stood face-to-face, eye-to-eye. Neither flinched. Cielle breathed through her nose; her nostrils flared.

  “And do the reasons even matter? I’m going outside to help,” Helen said. “And you should too. Both of you. Let this go, Cielle.” She turned and walked out the door.

  Cielle looked at Hannah and picked up the phone again. She put her finger over her lips. “Don’t say anything.” Hannah nodded yes.

  The operator came on the line. “Hello, Miss Cielle.”

  “The Olsen house, please.”

  The line rang. Mr. Olsen answered.

  “Your wife knows something and she needs to tell me,” Cielle said.

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Cielle Jacobson.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, young lady.”

  “I know more than you do.”

  “You don’t know anything.”

  “What happened between her and my father? Why is she afraid to talk about it?”

  “What are you accusing her of, exactly?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “You have some nerve.” He snorted and hung up the phone.

  “You have some nerve,” she said to the empty line, and hung up.

  Hannah touched Cielle’s arm. “My father died too,” she said. “He was needed elsewhere,” she said. She believed it, and seemed at peace with it. Peace like a river, peace like quiet in the woods with nothing but leaves moving above, peace like a field of purple clover in sundown light.

  That belief in God’s will and faith that things happened for a reason was something Cielle had never had. What if she’d been thinking wrong? What were the possibilities of a God in all that was unseen, unknown, and unknowable? What if her father dying was part of something larger, like those stars in the night sky? And even if there wasn’t a God to believe in, what if there was a force in the universe that had everyone’s stories mapped out?

  The Amish men were practiced—they moved about one another gracefully, and knew where to go and what to do. Every man had a job. They raised wall frames with rope and hammered them together. The body of the barn stood sturdy by noon. Post and beam. Solid pine. A beautiful skeleton of wood with strong lines intersecting. Something new on top of something old. The old foundation was good, they said. It didn’t need any fixing. It could hold anything they put on top of it.

  At noon, one man blew a whistle and all the men and women and children stopped. They gathered in a circle and everyone fell silent.

  “What happened?” Cielle asked.

  “They’re saying the Lord’s Prayer before lunch,” her mother said.

  Heads bowed. They formed a chain and every single person held someone else’s hand. A sea of dark bodies, white bonnets, and straw hats like halos. Angels. Her mother held her hand. Cielle said the prayer to herself, in her own head, to see if she could remember it. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.

  The Amish broke the chain and went to the kitchen for the food that had been brought. Some sat under trees, and some sat in the field on the grass that had been cut but hadn’t been baled, where pieces of her father’s note still lay scattered. Cielle, her mother, her grandmother, and Helen walked around with pitchers of water, filling up tin cups the Amish had brought from home. Each person thanked Cielle for the water and she thanked them for the barn. Despite their clothes that made them look different, Cielle saw they were mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. They were families.

  She wandered and watched people. Suspenders, lace-up boots, women’s hair parted down the middle and smoothed back into buns, long beards with the mustache shaved on older men. Wet, dark patches of sweat on shirts and shining sweat on the backs of necks and foreheads. Yet no one complained, and no one spoke about the heat or being tired of the war. She felt immodest in her sundress. Young men and women watched her with curious eyes and Cielle wondered if it was envy or judgment.

  “Cielle, why don’t you sit and lunch here with me?” John sat fifty feet in front of her and patted the ground next to him. She walked in his direction and extended the pitcher of water to his cup. He nodded in thanks, took off his straw hat, and set it on the ground beside him.

  “I should get more water.”

  “You can sit,” he said. “You need to eat too. I have extra.”

  She didn’t want to be rude, so she sat and righted the pitcher on a groove in the grass so it wouldn’t tip. He was younger than she had first thought. He didn’t yet have lines on his face, and his hands weren’t aged the way her father’s hands had been, with freckled and weathered, ridged skin. Bright white half-moons rounded from the cuticles on his fingernails. Her father had had them too, and he’d said they were a sign of health. She’d wanted them on her own fingers, but only ever had them faintly on her thumbs like small faded hills.

  He noticed her gaze and held up his hand. “Rising moons,” he said. “Mine are extra-big. It’s a sign of health.”

  Cielle scratched her nose and nodded. He handed her half a ham sandwich on thick, dark bread.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Twenty-five,” he said.

  “I’ve seen you before,” she said.

  “At the farmers’ market and the viewing,” he said. He wiped his mouth on his handkerchief. “Your father was a good man. He’ll be missed.”

  “Do I know you from something else?”

  “No,” he said, and bent his knee up toward his chest and tied his bootlace. “I think there was no time but now when we were supposed to know each other. One thing ends and another begins. This is one of those instances.”

  Behind John’s shoulder, Cielle saw her mother and grandmother surveying the group, each holding a water pitcher in front of her like a shield. Then her mother spotted Cielle and made to walk in her direction but her grandmother held her back by the shoulder. John turned to look where Cielle was looking.

  “Who will watch after your mother?”

  “She’ll watch after herself.”

  He nodded.

  “She expects us to leave, you know. We’re expected to have a separate life.”

  “I know,” he said. “We’re expected to stay and care for one another.”

  “That’s good you have people all around you, no matter what.”

  “We all need looking after.” He ate the last of his sandwich and crumpled the waxed paper into a ball. “I’ll be checking in on you and your mother.”

  He looked at Cielle and ran his hands through his dark blond hair. His eyes were light blue. He was so familiar. He took a bite of his sandwich and nodded at the barn. “This will be a good structure. This will last you hundreds of years.”

  “You know, Old Mr. Olsen will likely keep this land. So this barn will be for him.”

  “He won’t be keeping this land.”

  She picked at the grass.

  The whistle blew. John drank the rest of his water. He knelt on one knee and dusted off his hat. He stood, settled his hat onto his head, and tied his tool belt around his waist. He held out his hand for Cielle. She took his hand and he pulled her up.

  “My father and I have worked something out with your mother,” John said. “We’re going to farm your land, and you stay in the house.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand, Cielle, except that this is going to be a beautiful, beautifu
l barn.”

  She walked to the house with her empty pitcher. Her mother stood by the door. “They put these barns up fast, don’t they?” Her mother leaned over and adjusted the strap of Cielle’s dress—she untwisted it and straightened it on her shoulder. With both hands she turned Cielle’s head away from her and took out the elastic in her hair, smoothed her hair down, and ran her fingers over her scalp and neck like a comb. Cielle’s head tingled and her face relaxed. Her mother hadn’t fixed her hair in weeks. Cielle eased her shoulders and shut her eyes as her mother’s fingers combed around her temples and ears and the base of her hairline, and gathered her hair back into a neat ponytail.

  Her mother patted her head to let her know she was finished. Cielle turned back. Her mother looked ahead, as if she were able to put the barn together by the sheer will of envisioning it finished. The hammering began again. There was the lifting and shifting of boards, and the scrape and zip of saws ripping through wood.

  “I like him,” Cielle said.

  Her mother nodded yes.

  “He reminds me of Dad,” Cielle said.

  “I know it.” Her mother smiled.

  In a corner of the living room, Cielle assembled her father’s belongings: his black-scuffed work boots that smelled of leather and polish, his straw hat, his green coffee mug, his razor, his farming journal with his angular handwriting. How could she save her father’s words, knowledge, and comfort that the world was a good place, but also a place where things would happen that you never expected to happen? How could she save her father’s smell of fresh soap on pillowcases, the stubble-itch of a kiss on the cheek, his blue eyes that were Helen’s eyes, and his birdcall?

  She’d miss their walks through the sun-dappled woods looking for hidden treasures like arrowheads and archaeological remains. Maybe we’ll discover another Boaz mastodon, he’d say. Look hard, look closely for bones, for any sign of life once lived. They had talked about finding a species no one ever knew existed before and made up possibilities: winged stallions, giant pigs, purple-feathered birds that could breathe underwater, alligators with emerald eyes, and bluebirds with feathers made of silk and bones of silver and gold. It’s been said the bluebird carries the blue of heaven on his back and the rich brown of the freshly turned earth on his breast, he had said as they walked past wild wood sorrel, scarlet trumpet honeysuckle, and wood and maidenhair ferns, looking for lives before their own, looking for clues about how life was lived and to how to live their lives. She took his things and placed them in a box. She’d put them away, safe, for the memory of his life lived. She set the box in her bedroom. She’d carry it for the rest of her life.

  The Olsens’ fancy Cadillac pulled into the driveway. They drove right up as if they deserved to, were important, and knew her family well. She knew it wasn’t to help build the barn. Mr. Olsen swung out of the car with a fury in his eyes. His face was red, as if he’d held his breath on the drive over. Mrs. Olsen followed him, her eyes on the backs of his knees as he walked toward the door. Cielle went downstairs and outside.

  “Who’s in charge of Cielle?” he asked.

  “She’s mine.” Her mother stepped forward and stood in front of him.

  “It ends today.” He pointed a finger at the ground. “Right now.”

  “If this is about your father and the land . . .” her mother said.

  Some people stopped working to listen, but mostly the building and hammering continued. Darren put down his hammer and took off his gloves. Mr. Olsen scanned the property and pointed at Darren. “You. Get over here.” But Darren didn’t move. When Mr. Olsen’s eyes found Cielle, he pointed at her. “And you. I’ve had enough of you.”

  “I’ve had enough of you,” Cielle said.

  “You little bitch,” he said, and balled his fists.

  Darren moved toward his father, but Cielle’s mother stepped in front of him and stood between Darren and his father. “You are on my property and the way you’re speaking to my daughter is ticking me off.”

  “You don’t know what she’s done.”

  “I’m sure it would make me proud.”

  “She blamed my wife for your husband’s death.”

  “Why would she do that?” her mother asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Cielle said.

  “You implied it,” Mr. Olsen said.

  “She should have known something was wrong,” Cielle said.

  “No,” Mrs. Olsen said. “I couldn’t have known.”

  Her mother stepped closer to Mrs. Olsen. “Look at me.” She snapped her fingers. Mrs. Olsen looked her in the eye. “Why should you have known?”

  “He came to me for help.”

  “He what?”

  “Counseling.”

  “How long?”

  “Six months.”

  Cielle’s mother looked beyond Mrs. Olsen, but remained standing close to her. “You see what’s going on here?” her mother asked. She was so close to Mrs. Olsen she could have kissed her. Mrs. Olsen did not budge. “There’s a new barn going up where the tornado took the old one down.”

  “I see that,” Mrs. Olsen said.

  “And here’s me and my girls.” She fixed her eyes back on Mrs. Olsen. “Lee’s supposed to be here but he’s not.”

  Tears fell down Mrs. Olsen’s cheeks. “I didn’t know this would happen.”

  “I’ve got a fifteen-year-old trying to make sense of her father’s death. What she doesn’t understand yet, because she’s a girl even though she thinks she’s a full woman, is that for some things there is no sense.”

  Mrs. Olsen nodded in agreement. “I know.”

  “I know you know that, because you’re a mother. Do you understand that, Mr. Olsen?” He stood with his arms crossed and looked at the sky and puckered his lips.

  “I have a fifteen-year-old girl trying to figure out her daddy’s dying,” Cielle’s mother said. “Do you hear me?”

  “We all have our struggles,” Mr. Olsen said. “We’ll leave you to yours if you leave us to ours.”

  “All right?” her mother asked Cielle.

  “Yes, Mother,” Cielle said.

  “We all have our own hurt to carry,” her mother said.

  “Come on, Darren,” Mr. Olsen said. “Get in the car.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Darren said. “I’m staying right here and building this barn.”

  And at that his parents turned and left.

  The construction continued through the evening. The barn was finished in three days. On the fourth day it was painted red, and it was beautiful. Cielle requested an outside barn light in the same place as the last one, so she could find her way home in the dark.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CIELLE AND HER FATHER had a collection of arrowheads they’d found near Mill Creek. Most were made out of plain rock, and a few made of smoky quartz or black obsidian. They’d found eleven altogether. Her father kept them in an old blue tobacco tin on a shelf in the cellar. She brought the tin upstairs, rinsed the arrowheads off in the kitchen sink, and laid them out on a towel. Her father’s favorite was the black obsidian arrowhead with smooth, shiny grooves leading toward its sharp point. She kept that one for herself.

  She divvied up some of the others to give away to her mother, Helen, her grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell, Bodie, and Darren. She would bury the rest in the garden, and put them back in the earth from where they had come, treasures of an old world for others to find.

  Some thought taking arrowheads was bad luck, but her father had said he believed things were left behind to be found. That what we found was left so we could understand and remember. “Arrowheads are good luck,” he said. “They point us in the right direction and protect us.”

  Direction and protection were things she thought they could all use.

  It was a Monday, the twenty-third of August. She chose a quartz arrowhead for Bodie. She wrapped it in a cotton handkerchief that had belonged to her father. Cielle, her mother, and Helen drove to the train stat
ion and waited on the platform. When Bodie and his parents arrived, Bodie had nothing but a duffel bag and the clothes on his back. Cielle did not want to say goodbye, but it was better than saying nothing.

  Bodie dropped the bag at his feet. Mrs. Mitchell stood behind him and put her hands on his shoulders, squeezed, and didn’t let go.

  “Train takes three full days to San Antonio,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

  “Long,” Cielle said.

  “He’ll get to see some of this great country,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Forest, plains, mountains, and desert.”

  Cielle’s mother went to hug Bodie. “Be safe,” she said. “Come home.”

  Cielle felt her cheeks get hot. The train’s engine began with a loud chug and sputter.

  Bodie fluttered his hands at Cielle. “Come on,” he said, “come here.” He opened his arms.

  She practically tripped into him, and put her head against his chest and her arms around his waist. He was so warm; she felt his chest rise and fall. His arms were tight around her. Then he squeezed three times.

  “I love you,” he said, and kissed the top of her head. She looked at him and he looked at her, and she knew she’d always love him, no matter where he went or what happened.

  She held out the handkerchief. “It’s an arrowhead. It’s for direction and safety.”

  He put it in his breast pocket and patted it. “Thank you.”

  There were other families on the platform saying their goodbyes, sending sons off to war, taking good looks for what might be the last time. Cielle thought, You never know if you’ll see someone again. You never know how your life might change in an instant. You don’t know how you’ll miss them until they’re gone. She could imagine the missing if it was anything like missing her father. It was a missing that couldn’t be filled. It was a space like an empty piece of sky that followed her around.

  Helen and Bodie held on to each other, exchanged words she couldn’t hear, and kissed and cried. When they pulled apart, Bodie kissed Helen’s hand and she touched the side of his face with an open palm. Then she walked straight toward the parking lot and didn’t look back, and Cielle knew it was because she couldn’t look back and Bodie didn’t want her to. And then Bodie was on the train and the train was gone, and this person she’d known her whole life was gone. And she knew again that the world was full of things she’d never know or be able to understand.