The Driest Season Read online

  Cielle stopped and moved from under his arm.

  He looked at the ground. “They train in Texas. I leave in a few weeks.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “I want to serve. I’ve always wanted to fly.”

  “I hate this war.”

  “Helen’s not going to understand. She wants to get engaged.”

  “So get engaged.”

  He turned and looked into the cornfield and kept his back to her. “But what if I don’t come back?”

  “I thought you wanted to marry Helen.”

  “I do, but I don’t know if I should.” He kicked the road with the toe of his shoe. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “My mother said if boys aren’t saying yes, then they’re saying no.”

  He turned back and looked at her. His eyelids seemed heavy and tired from turning these thoughts over and over. “It’s not that simple. I don’t have a job, I have no money, and I might be gone for a year or longer, or dead. It feels unfair to ask her to wait.”

  Her adrenaline spiked at the word dead. She bit her bottom lip.

  “I’m sorry to say that word,” Bodie said.

  She couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t imagine him dead. She was still working out what dead meant: gone, erased, nothing, invisible, nowhere, forever.

  “What I mean is that it’s complicated,” Bodie said.

  “It’s simple,” Cielle said. “You’re making it complicated.”

  Bodie walked ahead and she walked behind him.

  “If you’ve changed your mind about Helen that’s fine, but don’t make excuses.”

  He walked slowly and looked up at the sky as though he might find an answer there. She looked up too. The sky was a deep royal blue, a wide summer sky. A breeze rustled the leaves of the trees and sent a flock of starlings out into the air. They dipped into a dive, and rose up and over the trees. She wondered what it felt like to fly and sail and soar through air, among and into the blue. And when boys are quiet like now, it’s because you’ve said something true they don’t want to admit, she thought.

  “There are too many people dying,” she said.

  “Everyone enlisted or is getting called up. Billy, Nathan, James. Joe Downs even signed up.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Bodie shook his head back and forth and walked ahead. “Most people think this is the right thing to do.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  “You think I’m doing the wrong thing?”

  “I can’t stand the thought of you not coming back.”

  She’d never known this one thing so clearly before: people leave. No matter how many times she asked someone to stay, no matter how desperately she wanted them to stay, there was a revolving door, and people came and went. Sometimes it had something to do with her, but mostly it had nothing to do with her. The universe was in constant motion. Her own molecules and atoms were vibrating and colliding. The human heart pumped blood throughout the body. Continents drifted across the surface of the planet, and the earth spun day and night. The universe stretched and expanded, and, according to Hubble’s law, galaxies receded from each other. As did people—they came together and moved away. They never stopped moving.

  “You need to tell Helen. I’m not telling her,” Cielle said.

  They walked. Cornstalks shuffled in the wind, so dry they sounded like paper. A tractor motor hummed in the distance. She’d known Bodie since she was born. His shoulder blades moved under his shirt as he walked. His arms and neck were tan and smooth. We’re alive, she thought, and it’s a miraculous thing. She didn’t want her world to keep shifting. She knew even if he survived the war, he might not come back to Boaz or he’d come back a different person, and Helen herself might not come back. The life she knew now wouldn’t exist. It would be gone, with just a few artifacts left behind as proof it once existed.

  A black Chevrolet sedan passed, then stopped and backed up toward them.

  “Who’s that?” Cielle said.

  “I don’t know.” Bodie stood in front of Cielle. “But he’s not smart to back up on this road.”

  The waiter from the Bredahl Inn leaned out his window. “You’re Helen’s sister, from Sunday, right?”

  “I’m Helen’s sister from Sunday,” Cielle said.

  “She left her shawl at the restaurant,” he said. “I was headed to your house to drop it off. You all want a ride?”

  The waiter held out his hand to Bodie. “I’m Matthew Vorland. I work at the Bredahl Inn.”

  “Bodie Mitchell, Helen’s boyfriend.” They shook hands. “This is Cielle, Helen’s sister from Sunday.”

  Matthew shook Cielle’s hand. “It’s hot as hell, get in the car,” he said.

  Bodie went to the front passenger’s seat and Cielle got in the back.

  “We’re not far,” Cielle said. “Next farm on the right, about a mile.”

  Matthew nodded. His car was clean. No dirt, no wrappers, no nothing. The back of his neck beaded with sweat. Helen’s light blue shawl was on the front seat between Matthew and Bodie. It lifted and fluttered from the wind. Bodie picked it up and held it on his lap.

  “I’ve never seen you before,” Bodie said. “Is your family from around here?”

  “From Chicago, but my sister married one of the Bredahl boys and they gave me a temporary job at the inn. What do you all do around here?”

  “I’m almost sixteen and still in school.”

  Matthew looked at Cielle in the rearview mirror. “Almost sweet sixteen,” he said, and winked. “And you, Bodie?”

  “Enlisted. Army Air Corps.”

  “Brave,” Matthew said.

  “You’re not enlisting?” Bodie asked.

  “Can’t,” he said, “bum knees and asthma.”

  “Helen will be going to college in Madison,” Bodie said.

  “Maybe,” Cielle said.

  “What do you mean, maybe?” Bodie turned in his seat.

  The mailbox was up ahead. “That’s our driveway.” Cielle leaned forward and pointed. Bodie raised his eyebrows and Cielle raised her eyebrows back at him.

  “Does Helen feel all right?” Matthew asked.

  “From choking on a potato? She’s fine,” Bodie said.

  “She was upset,” Matthew said.

  “Her father just died,” Bodie said. “Of course she was upset.”

  “She’s all right,” Cielle said. “It just scared her.”

  “That seems natural.” Matthew slowly turned into the driveway and parked.

  “You’re a waiter,” Bodie said, “and a psychologist?”

  Matthew turned and smiled at Bodie. “I’m just returning her shawl,” he said.

  Bodie picked up the shawl and lifted it in the air like a drink. “Yes, you are.”

  “Be safe and come home alive.” Matthew held out his hand to shake, but Bodie turned and stepped out of the car.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Bodie said, and walked toward the house.

  There were five men cutting and loading what was left of the barn’s wood onto the flatbed of a large truck. The boards were splintered and long. Dust hovered and floated in the low afternoon sunlight.

  Cielle got out and leaned down toward Matthew’s window. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Thank you,” she said, even though she felt sorry for all sorts of things.

  “What happened to your barn?”

  “Tornado.”

  “You’ve had a hell of a summer.”

  “Bodie’s a nice person, just confused right now.” Cielle looked toward the house. She adjusted her satchel and cradled her violin case in her arms.

  “Forget about Bodie.”

  “You seem smart to me. Too smart for a waiter.”

  “I’m waiting tables while I study for the bar exam.” He squinted up at her and tapped the car door.

  “To work in a bar?” Cielle asked.

  Matthew laughed. He had st
raight, white teeth. “To practice as an attorney,” he said, “although I wouldn’t mind learning how to mix a few drinks.”

  Matthew looked beyond Cielle and waved. Cielle turned, and Helen stood at the screen door inside the kitchen with her shawl.

  “She better go to college,” Cielle said.

  Wooden boards boomed as they were dropped onto the truck’s flatbed.

  “We all end up where we’re supposed to somehow.” Matthew tapped the side of the door again. “Take care, Cielle, almost sweet sixteen,” he said, and shifted the car into reverse. “I’ll see you around.” He slowly backed out of the driveway.

  Cielle stood by the screen door and listened to Bodie and Helen bickering inside.

  “I see you, Cielle,” Helen said. “You told Bodie I might not go to college?”

  “Why wouldn’t you go?” Bodie asked Helen.

  Bodie’s footsteps paced the kitchen.

  “Cielle, get in here,” Helen yelled.

  Cielle walked in. “I didn’t do anything,” she said, and put her satchel and violin case on the kitchen table.

  “You two. I can do whatever I want.” Helen pointed at her own chest.

  “Do you want to stay here for Matthew?” Bodie asked.

  “Who?” Helen said.

  “The waiter who saved you,” Cielle said. “His name is Matthew.”

  “I didn’t even know his name. What does he have to do with this?”

  “It’s obvious he likes you,” Bodie said.

  “He saved my life and returned my shawl, give him a little credit,” Helen said. “Don’t turn this around. If I decide to stay home for a year to help my mother with our farm, then I will.” She bit her lower lip, threw her shawl at Bodie, and went upstairs.

  Cielle raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Cielle, I already know what you think,” Bodie said. He handed the shawl to her on his way out the door.

  “Bodie, the hay,” Cielle said.

  “Not today.” Bodie walked into the field to go through the woods to his house. On the way, Cielle saw him pick the grass and survey the field from all sides as her father had done. She knew it was ready to cut and bale.

  Her grandmother came up from the cellar and peeked from around the door. “That was a commotion,” she said.

  “I know it,” Cielle said.

  Her grandmother carried a wooden crate full of canned preserves.

  Cielle put her satchel and violin case by the door and noticed her father’s work boots on the floor, unlaced and caked with dirt as if he’d just taken them off.

  “Were those there before?” Cielle pointed at the boots.

  “I imagine so.”

  “Where are you putting those jars?” Cielle asked.

  “Might try to sell them at the farmers’ market. It might be a way for your mother to make pocket money. She’s good with canning and pickling.”

  Cielle saw her father’s green coffee mug on top of the icebox. She took it down, and there was half a cup of cold coffee in it. She set it back.

  “Hand that over, and I’ll wash it,” her grandmother said.

  “Leave it,” Cielle said.

  “It can’t sit there forever.” Her grandmother reached for the cup and looked into it. “There’s coffee in here.”

  “Put it back,” Cielle said.

  “Cielle, sweetheart.”

  “Put it back.”

  “There are all sorts of things we’re going to have to sort through.”

  Cielle took the mug from her grandmother. “Don’t touch anything, don’t move anything, don’t throw anything away.” Cielle put the mug back on top of the icebox.

  Upstairs, Cielle washed her face and the cold water felt good. Her father’s razor sat on the edge of the sink in the bathroom, dark hairs still on the porcelain underneath the blade. Her face was red from the heat, red as an apple, so she wet a towel and went into her bedroom, lay on her bed, and placed the cold towel on her forehead.

  “I just want to be normal,” she said softly. “I want life to be normal.” Cielle’s limbs loosened and her back settled into the mattress. She heard footsteps.

  “Too late for that,” Helen said.

  Cielle tilted her head and looked at Helen from the corner of her eye.

  Helen lay down on her stomach, propped up on her elbows. “If you were me, what would you do?”

  “What are your choices?”

  “Madison or home.”

  “I wouldn’t give up what was important to me. I would go to Madison.”

  “You’re important. Bodie’s important. The farm’s important.”

  “Don’t stay home. You’ll get stuck here,” Cielle said.

  Helen turned onto her back and pulled her knees to her chest. She took Cielle’s towel and put it on her own forehead. “I’m afraid of making the wrong choice.”

  “You won’t make the wrong choice.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Fear isn’t a good reason to do or not do something.”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “Sounds like you’re afraid of what you don’t know, and you’re thinking of staying home because it’s what you do know.”

  Helen bit her pinkie finger and her eyes watered. She kicked the bed with her legs. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I’m not going to make you.”

  “What are you going to wear to the fair tonight?” she asked.

  “My yellow sundress.”

  “Get dressed, then.”

  Cielle dressed and then Helen knelt on the bed behind her and brushed her hair. The brush on her scalp and Helen’s hands on the base of her neck and around her ears made Cielle want to fall asleep sitting up.

  “It’s so hot; you should wear your hair up.” Helen brushed Cielle’s hair up into a ponytail. Then she dabbed on some of her jasmine perfume behind Cielle’s ears and smudged berry-colored lipstick on her lips.

  It was close to five o’clock, and the summer sun had hours before setting. Cielle sat on the couch by the window and waited for Darren while her mother, grandmother, and Helen ate at the table. At six o’clock, Darren still hadn’t shown. The table was cleared and the dishes cleaned and put away. Her mother and grandmother sat in chairs across from her, resewing buttons onto a dress and needlepointing.

  “Maybe he thought you were meeting another night,” her mother said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Maybe something happened at home and the phone line was tied up.”

  Cielle’s upper lip beaded with sweat and she wiped it with her dress strap.

  “That’s ladylike,” her mother said.

  “Who cares?” Cielle said. “We need to cut and bale hay this week.”

  “I’ll call Jim.”

  “I want to do it.”

  “It’s too dangerous for a girl.” Her mother’s fingers nimbly wove thread through buttonholes.

  “She could do it, Olive,” her grandmother said. “There’s nothing too dangerous for a girl.”

  “I don’t need my daughter mangled by a tractor.”

  “We’ll do it together. We’ll clean up those fields.” Her grandmother clicked her needles together. “You need to teach these girls how to take care of things and how to take care of themselves.”

  “How long are you staying?” her mother asked.

  “I’m staying until I know things are running smoothly around here,” her grandmother said.

  “Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”

  “I haven’t needed to be anywhere my whole life,” she said. “I choose to be where I am, and right now that’s here.”

  “Might someone need you somewhere else?”

  “We’re family,” she said.

  Helen walked downstairs wearing a cornflower-blue sundress with her hair curled.

  “Look at you,” her mother said. “You have a date too?”

  Helen took Cielle’s hand and pulled her up from the couch.
“We’re going to the fair.”

  Cielle groaned and rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to.”

  “We’re dressed. Get your things and get in the truck.” Helen straightened the strap of Cielle’s dress and patted her on the butt. “Let’s go.”

  Helen backed out of the driveway. What was left of the barn’s wood was neatly stacked for the men to pick up and haul away the next day, and then all that would be left was the foundation. The house was dark except for a string of low sunlight that shone into the living room where her mother and grandmother sat in chairs quietly working their fingers over cloth, her mother mending something old, and her grandmother creating a picture of something new.

  The Olsens’ mailbox had been put back out and Helen pulled onto the grassy shoulder of the road right in front of it.

  “Helen, please don’t do this,” Cielle said.

  “Let’s go see what happened here,” Helen said.

  “Nothing happened. Don’t embarrass me.”

  “It’s rude to stand people up and keep them waiting.” Helen slid out of the truck and walked to the mailbox, where the red flag was up. “Mrs. Olsen told us to come back. Relax.” She opened the mailbox lid. Cielle walked up beside her. There was one letter sitting in there. Helen looked at Cielle and smiled. “Take it,” Helen said.

  “You take it,” Cielle said.

  Helen reached for the letter. “Christian Olsen. Washington, D.C. Who lives there?”

  “Christian Olsen.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A relative?”

  “I’m short-fused tonight.” Helen lifted the skirt of her dress and tucked the letter into the back of her underwear.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m sick of liars and people who hide the truth.” She adjusted and straightened her dress.

  “So you steal their letters? I can tell you have something under your dress.”

  Helen ran her hand over her lower back to feel for the envelope and shrugged her shoulders. “You stole a letter,” she said, and walked toward the Olsens’ house. Lights were on inside. This time the curtains weren’t shut and the front door was open.

  “What letter?”

  “The one Mom had the night of the tornado.”