The Driest Season Read online

  Mrs. Mitchell gathered Cielle’s pile of beans and put them into a pot. “Let’s get these cooked and let’s eat.” She put her homemade butter and wheat bread on the table.

  Mr. Mitchell took three glasses and a bottle of whiskey out of another cabinet. He poured the whiskey and handed a glass to Cielle’s mother and one to Mrs. Mitchell.

  They ate with little conversation. The sounds were of silverware on plates, chewing, bread ripping, and glasses clinking. Bing Crosby sang “Black Moonlight” over the radio. Mrs. Mitchell got up and put a raspberry pie on the table. Cielle accepted a large piece and ate every bite. She was ravenous, and as she filled herself, she felt her body and mind come back to her and she felt exhaustion. Her eyes were heavy. Her whole body was heavy.

  “Whenever you’re finished,” Mrs. Mitchell said, “please be excused. I put you and the girls together in the guest room.”

  Cielle’s mother smiled. “Thank you, Dorothy.”

  The music cut out and a sonorous newsman’s voice came over the radio. “On this day, July 19, 1943, the Allies bombed Rome,” he said.

  “What a shame,” Mrs. Mitchell said.

  “They have to do what they have to do,” Mr. Mitchell said.

  “But to destroy so much history.”

  “It might be the only way to stop the madness,” he said, and Cielle caught Mr. Mitchell’s nod at Bodie, as if this were a matter only men could understand, as if destruction and death were the only ways to restore peace and set things right.

  Bodie had talked about the Army Air Corps because he loved planes and wanted to fly them, and he wanted to help restore freedom and save lives, but Helen wouldn’t have it. Boys were leaving and weren’t coming back. Two boys from Boaz had already died in the war.

  “That’s foolish,” her mother said.

  “What’s that?” Mr. Mitchell asked.

  “War,” she said. “Dying.”

  “Sometimes it’s necessary,” Bodie said.

  “You’re too young to know what’s necessary,” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Bodie said.

  “I don’t think you do,” her mother said.

  “Maybe we need war for peace,” Bodie said.

  “There’s no such thing as peace. Never has been.” She shook her head back and forth quickly. “Never.”

  “Well—” Bodie began.

  “That’s enough,” Mr. Mitchell said. “That’s enough. It’s late.”

  That night, Cielle shared a queen-sized bed with Helen and her mother. Helen was in the middle and they had nothing but a sheet over them. The night air was hot and utterly still and the heat wrapped around them. The window was open and the crickets were loud. Within minutes Cielle heard her mother snoring lightly.

  Helen turned on her side toward Cielle, and she touched Cielle’s cheek. “Did you see him?”

  There was a half-moon casting dull shadows into the room, and the wrought-iron bed frame was a delicate curving black silhouette at the foot of the bed. Cielle felt a pressure on her chest she hadn’t felt before, something running and bearing down inside her. She pressed her hand just under her breast, at her heart, feeling for irregularity. She pressed harder and felt better, as if that might keep her heart in place, beating slower, as it should.

  “Go to sleep,” her mother said.

  “Did you see him?” Helen asked.

  “Stop talking,” her mother said. “Erase it from your mind and go to sleep.”

  “You can’t say that,” Cielle said.

  “I just did.” Her mother turned on her side and faced away from them.

  Cielle wished her mother would wrap her arms around her, and hold her feet in the wells of her ankles or between her thighs, the way she did when she and Helen were small. Cielle knew she was too old, but she felt small and in need of being held, in need of being her mother’s daughter and of being loved. She didn’t make a noise or shake. Tears simply emptied from her eyes, and she let them wet her face and the pillow. She cried for her father being gone forever, and for not knowing who in the world would love them and take care of them the way he had.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CIELLE STOOD at the back of the room at the funeral home while men and women in black suits walked up the aisle and paid their respects. The top of her father’s head rose up just above the wood of the coffin—his nose, his dark hair in place, and his white and waxy forehead. She wondered if he looked more like himself and considered walking up so she could wipe out the image of him hanging from the rafters. But she stood her ground, her arms tightly crossed over her chest, a small white calla lily pinned to her black dress above her left breast.

  The rest of her family sat in folding chairs in the front with their heads down. It was a Saturday, five days past, and throughout the morning people from town came to say they were sorry. There were people she had known her whole life and some people she’d never seen before, and there in the third row in the middle she saw Darren Olsen, whom she thought she could love. She’d had a crush on him for years. He sat next to a woman who must have been his mother. His mother was a counselor, who, she had heard, had studied psychology in Chicago and was now helping returning veterans. Cielle had never met her before. The Olsens kept to themselves, although Darren’s grandfather, Old Mr. Olsen, was well known. He owned most of the land in the area—it was land he’d bought from people during the Depression and leased back to people to farm. Many families wondered if they’d ever be able to afford to buy their land back, land that had been in their family for generations.

  Darren wore a dark gray suit; she’d never seen him dressed up before. He turned and looked at Cielle, as though he’d felt her eyes on him. He nodded. He was handsome and she was glad he was there. His mother turned and she gave Cielle a small smile, put her hand on Darren’s head, and they turned back around. His mother was pretty despite the smudged mascara beneath her eyes. She pulled Darren closer and he leaned his head to hers. He had the same dark eyes as his mother.

  Amish men and women sat still and upright, their hands in their laps, or stood silently among the crowd. Every year, her father had hired Amish men to help with the cutting and baling of hay, and every season a boy not much older than Helen helped with the cows, pigs, and harvesting of crops.

  “Honey.” Her grandmother put her hand on Cielle’s elbow from behind. Her hand was cool and soft.

  “I can’t look,” Cielle said. “I already know he’s dead. I don’t need to be reminded of it.” The room was stuffy and perfume smells made Cielle light-headed and queasy. Her palms and neck were damp with sweat.

  “Your father was good on the farm.” Her grandmother coughed. “Always careful. This is such a shame.” She wore her graying hair in a neat bun, and smelled powdery and brassy.

  Her grandmother had been the daughter and wife of a farmer. She’d had six children, and now Cielle’s father was the second to die.

  A flute played and Mr. Skaar, the funeral director, opened the doors to the outside to mark the end of the viewing. The near-noon light came in like a flash and Cielle squinted. Her grandmother nodded at the front doors and the outside light and said, “I need some air.” Cielle walked with her down the cement steps that were covered in green felt carpet.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” Cielle said.

  Her grandmother turned away. The ground where they stood was full of dried tufts of grass. Cielle shifted her stance. People trickled out of the funeral home and her grandmother turned back, tears falling down her face.

  “I haven’t cried in three years,” she said. “Not since your grandfather died.” She wiped her face on her sleeve and mascara blotted her silk shirt like a pen leaking ink. “I hate crying.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Cielle’s mother and Helen came out of the funeral home and waved at them. Then a young Amish man left his circle of people and approached her mother. He took off his hat and looked at the ground. He looked familiar. Her mother patted his forearm, said som
ething, and he nodded and put his hat back on. Then Cielle remembered where she’d seen him before—at the farmers’ market in Richland Center.

  At that farmers’ market the June before in Richland Center, the June when life still had a solid shape, normalcy, and comfort to it, Cielle remembered her mother had pointed to him and said, “See that young man?” He’d waved to them and Cielle thought he waved because he was Amish, friendly, and used to people staring and pointing.

  “That young man,” her mother had said, and smiled, “you can tell he’s unmarried because he’s clean-shaven. He’s a handsome young man, isn’t he?” Her mother had taken her by the elbow, as her grandmother had, and pulled her toward his market stand. “Why don’t we buy something from him? We’ve pointed and waved, for God sakes.”

  “Mother, don’t embarrass me,” Cielle had said.

  “Don’t be silly,” she’d said.

  When they were close to him, only feet away, Cielle noticed the gray stitches that sewed his shirt together, like stitches in a wound. Like knowing what held a person together and kept them from falling apart. Wide, gray stitches in his navy blue shirt and suspenders.

  “Good morning,” he said, and tipped his hat.

  “This is my youngest, Cielle,” her mother said, pushing Cielle forward by the small of her back.

  “My pleasure.” He shook her hand and Cielle blushed. “I’m John.”

  “Cherries?” her mother asked.

  “Not yet, they’re almost ready. You’ll have to come back next week.”

  “Then I’ll come back next week,” she said.

  “I’ll set some aside for you, Mrs. Jacobson.”

  “That would be fine,” she had said. “We’d like that very much.”

  Across the funeral home lawn, her mother and the young man parted ways, and then Helen and her mother drove away toward home. Her grandmother was busy looking in the other direction and wiping away her tears, so Cielle said she’d forgotten something inside and that she’d meet her at the car.

  Everyone was gone from the building except her father lying in the open coffin at the front of the viewing room. She made the sign of the cross over her face and chest. His skin was pale, clean-shaven, and smoothed out with makeup. His chest was puffed up in his navy pin-striped suit. There was a faint line of bruising under the collar of his shirt from where the rope had pulled tight, held all his weight, and took the life right out of him. She touched his forehead, saw a gash on the left side of his temple she hadn’t noticed before. He was cold, and his skin didn’t feel like skin. It was hard and rubbery, like chilled chicken skin.

  His hands lay one crossed over the other, the way they put all dead people’s hands—quietly respectful, resting. She put her hand on his. It seemed a wonder how many people lived as long as they did, how they ever survived as a brittle pile of bones covered with such fragile skin.

  His pants leg was wrinkled, so she smoothed it down and his leg felt hard. She lifted the pants leg and it was wood from the knee down. It was filler. Half his leg was gone. Her breath caught. A man cleared his throat from the back of the room and it startled her. She pulled the pants leg back down to his sock. She turned to see Mr. Skaar.

  “You’re surprised?” he asked, and shook his head. “The accident took it from the knee down.”

  Cielle didn’t say anything.

  “Your mother forgot to leave money for the service and upcoming burial,” he said.

  “How much does she owe?”

  “She’ll know.” Mr. Skaar took a step toward Cielle.

  “Okay,” Cielle said. “I’ll let her know.”

  “Your mother’s a busy woman and you’re a big girl, so you might want to bring it by for her. Save her the trouble.”

  “It’ll get to you.”

  “You might also tell her Mr. Olsen was inquiring about the details.”

  “Old Mr. Olsen?”

  “The land man, who lives down in Muscoda. Tell your mother he’s asking questions and looking for facts.”

  She looked back at her father and wondered what bigger mess was coming.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Cielle,” Mr. Skaar said. “It’s not fair when people leave us.”

  Cielle’s grandmother drove her wide black sedan to their farmhouse. She drove slowly, and wound up the hill on the skinny road. The road was shaded and darkened by the trees as if they were passing through a tunnel, and there were brief bright clearings that opened to houses and sweeping fields.

  “Is your mother worried about the farm?” her grandmother asked.

  “I imagine so.”

  “This has been a hard dry spell. It’s been twenty years since I’ve seen it this bad.”

  Cielle tilted her head out toward the window. When the sun hit her face, her brown hair blew back and whipped around her chin, and there were traces of red in the light.

  “Maybe there’s nothing to worry about,” her grandmother said.

  “I doubt that,” Cielle said.

  “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  “Maybe.” One thing she knew from the time she was a little girl was that she wanted to be seen and known. She wanted recognition. She wanted to be noticed. She wanted to be strong.

  Cars and trucks crowded the driveway. Their house looked as it always did: crisp and clean with the black shutters against the white clapboard, and despite the drought, her mother kept red and pink potted geraniums on the front porch, and blue hydrangeas bloomed along the house and in the side yard. The lawn was cut short, and was yellowed and burned in spots from the drought and the sun, but nothing looked out of place.

  The barn stood off to the side and she had a hard time looking at the structure. The rush in her chest returned, she felt a small sharp pain in her back, and she had to catch her breath. For the first time she was aware of the uncertainty of everything.

  Her cousins threw a baseball in the front yard and aunts and uncles carried food and drinks, and set up the picnic table in the side yard under the tree. Her relatives hadn’t been together in one place since her grandfather’s death three years earlier. They all lived within two hours’ driving but never planned reunions, and so here they were, brought together by grief and loss.

  Cielle took two deviled eggs from a tray on the counter and walked to the front yard. Her older cousin Katherine had the croquet set next to her, her hands on her hips, waiting for their male cousins to quit throwing the baseball on the front lawn and move out of the way so she could set up the course.

  Cielle stood just behind her, took a bite off the end of one egg, and said, “I’ll help you set up.”

  Katherine jumped. “I didn’t see you, you scared me.”

  “The back yard is good for catch,” Cielle said to the boys. “It’s flatter.” The boys shuffled around to the back yard, mumbling.

  “In a few years they’ll play with us,” Katherine said.

  “I know,” Cielle said.

  Katherine was the oldest of the cousins, and was easy and kind. She was a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and studied literature. She spread the equipment out on the grass—metal hoops, colored wooden balls and mallets.

  “We’re short a mallet or two,” she said. “Yellow and red.”

  They were in the barn. Cielle could picture the corner where she and Helen had put them after their last game.

  “All right,” Cielle said, and ate the other deviled egg. “I know where they are.”

  Cielle walked straight toward the barn as if her legs weren’t beneath her, as if she floated there. It’s just the barn, it’s just the barn, she chanted to herself. When she was at the door her chest was tight again and impossibly heavy. She stood, stuck. Open the door. Walk through the door. Get the mallets. Walk out. Cielle looked toward the house. Her mother stood there very still, with a drink in her hand, watching her.

  Cielle unlatched the hook, slid the barn door open, and shut it behind her. She held her breath, kept her eyes dow
n, and moved toward the mallets, but then stopped and looked up and around the whole place: soft dirt, bales of hay, flies buzzing through the musty hot air, and a swallow chirping above. It was just a barn, nothing more. She knew she shouldn’t be afraid of it. She took a deep breath and sat on the hay bale closest to her, in the quiet, the voices outside muted.

  Before her best friend Jillian moved to St. Louis in April, Jillian had said, “My mother keeps telling me to remember what’s important, that this isn’t the end of the world.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cielle had asked.

  “That life goes on,” she had said, and shrugged. They sat on Cielle’s bed and looked at each other.

  “I guess,” Cielle had said. “I guess it’s not the end of the world.”

  Jillian had run her hand over Cielle’s bedspread, and tears had fallen from her eyes. “That’s what she says.”

  Cielle missed Jillian and wished she were in Boaz. Cielle was friendly with her classmates, but Jillian had been her one good friend. Cielle had always been shy and a loner, and she hadn’t expected her sadness when Jillian left. She didn’t know why adults made leaving people and moving on sound easy, like the natural order of things. What did others do when their loved ones left, especially when they weren’t ready for them to leave?

  There was a knock on the barn door and it slid open. Cielle’s mother stuck her head in. “Why are you in there?” she asked. She kept her body outside of the barn walls.

  “I’m looking for the croquet mallets,” Cielle said.

  “You don’t look like you’re looking for anything.”

  “I took a minute to sit down by myself in the quiet.”

  Her mother looked the barn up and down, her nose wrinkled.