The Driest Season Read online

  “It should be the right amount.”

  He kept his finger on the envelope and nodded his head up and down. Cielle stood so still she felt all her weight on the bottom of her feet.

  “I knew your father. He was a good man.” He shifted in his chair and tightly laced his fingers together on top of the desk. “Is there anything you want to tell me about his death?”

  “He’s dead,” she said. “There’s nothing left to tell.”

  He pursed his lips together and looked to his right as if someone were there to give him direction. He stood and pulled open a cabinet drawer. He shifted files and lifted a yellow one out and laid it on his desk. It was labeled with her father’s name, Lee Gustave Jacobson. “What I’m wondering,” he said, and put the file on the desk and opened it, “is if this was a suicide made to look like an accident, or something else?”

  She felt light-headed and thick, like the day she found her father in the barn. She heard the air pass in and out through her nostrils, and felt her pulse in her eardrums. What could he do? He’d already examined and embalmed the body and let it go into the grave.

  “By law, I’m required to report suicide or foul play,” he said.

  “You reported an accident,” she said.

  “Out of respect.” He tapped the file. “But these photographs tell another story, and it’s been eating at me.”

  She didn’t know what he wanted right then: to know the true story for himself, or report something to the police or Old Mr. Olsen. Would it matter what she told him, if she told him anything? Her eyes met his. Outside, crickets trilled. The golden summer sun streamed through the window and glittered on the floor like light coming through water.

  “He’s dead and you have your money,” she said, and there was nothing more to say.

  She stopped at Five Points Cemetery on the way home. She walked to her father’s grave, where the mound of dirt was fresh, with his body in the ground, and not far away there were mastodon bones in the ground, and other people from other times, and Indian bones and more arrowheads scattered and covered—layers of life in the earth—all of what had come and gone. One day she’d be gone, but she didn’t know where she’d be or what ground would claim her.

  She lay on her back on the grass next to him. She watched the clouds shape-shift and told him what she saw: a fish, a dragon, a heart, a winged angel. “I’m sorry you were sad and I didn’t know it,” she said. She reached out and put her hand on the dirt. “Things have gotten messy. Secrets are dangerous, hurtful things.” She stayed there a while longer, watching the sky and not saying anything. She shut her eyes and imagined the spin of the earth, and thought of the greatness of the unknown.

  That night, Cielle lay in bed wide awake and fully dressed. She watched the shadows from the porch light that projected swaying tree branches on her walls and ceiling. The shadows calmed her. The gray-black branches swayed and slipped. She turned on her side and there was a white moth at her window. Its wings fluttered and glowed along the dark edge of the frame. The moth hovered as though it wanted to come in. Everyone wanted in, she thought, they wanted to be home, to know what they couldn’t know and not be afraid in the dark. Then the moth latched on to the screen and sat still with its wings closed. It hung on, with its tiny little legs as thin as strands of hair; it hung on, a little white dot in the dark.

  Outside, it was darker than the feathers of a crow. It was close to midnight, and there was no moon, only hazy smudges of starlight behind the cloud layer. Cielle rode her bike back to the funeral home while Boaz slept. A few porch and barn lights shone sturdy and still in the distance, proof of life. She came to a stretch of road surrounded by woods. The air cooled, and in front of her was a tunnel of black, where the definition and shape of the world disappeared, and she felt she was falling into a well, reeling through dark matter, waiting to hit bottom.

  She parked her bike behind the building. She took a flashlight from her satchel, clicked it on, and held it under her armpit, then pulled a hairpin from her pocket, bent it straight, and jiggled it in the back door’s lock until it opened. She went to Mr. Skaar’s office; the door was unlocked and she found and lifted out her father’s yellow file from the cabinet. She put it in her satchel and left the way she came in.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE NEXT MORNING Cielle’s grandmother had her up and outside by seven. The tractor rumbled and sputtered. The diesel exhaust caught in the back of her throat.

  “Climb up,” her grandmother said. She kept her hands on Cielle’s lower back as Cielle climbed into the tractor seat. Her grandmother had cut and baled hay before; she’d done it most of her life. The seat vibrated from the rattling motor and tickled Cielle’s legs. Her grandmother hoisted herself up and rolled her sleeves to her elbows.

  “Shove over. We have to share this seat. Are you too big to sit on my lap?”

  “I don’t know.” Cielle positioned herself on her grandmother’s thighs.

  “You’re tall, but light as a bird. I’ll be the feet and shifter. You steer. I could do this in my sleep.”

  “Which way?”

  “Straight. At each end do a full turn to start a new row. We cut first, bale later.”

  The tractor bumped along; the spinning shears cut the alfalfa grass and left it in place on the ground. The grass smelled bitter and pungent like cut spring onions.

  It took close to two hours to cut half the field. Cielle and her grandmother were hot and sweating. Her grandmother leaned in close to her ear and said, “Time for a water break, do one last row.”

  Cielle nodded and stood to make the last turn in time. Her pants were damp and clinging to her thighs, her butt, and her waist. The tractor jolted over a bump, and Cielle pitched forward. She struggled to regain her stance and held on to the wide, round steering wheel for balance while her grandmother grabbed her at the waist. Out of instinct, Cielle patted her pants pocket but it was turned inside out. Air escaped her lungs. She turned as the folded note tumbled behind the tractor, into the shears.

  Her grandmother braked and turned off the engine.

  “What was it?” her grandmother asked.

  “Move.” Cielle jumped down to the ground and onto her hands and knees behind the shears. She picked through the grass for the pieces of paper. Tears fell from her eyes. The ground blurred in greens and browns and specks of white.

  “What was it?” A strand of white hair was matted against her grandmother’s forehead like a streak of paint.

  “I’ll find it all,” Cielle said.

  “It’s gone.”

  “It’s here.” Cielle pulled as many pieces of paper as she could from the shears. The grass and dirt were warm from the heat. She stuffed torn paper into her pockets. Some pieces were blank or had a word or two. Some were smeared with black grease and green grass stains.

  She’d been carrying the note as if her father were always just about to tell her something. As if his last words hadn’t yet been spoken. As if he were far away and sending news from a different part of the world.

  Her grandmother lowered onto her hands and knees next to Cielle. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “This was my fault,” Cielle said.

  “No, it wasn’t. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “How could I?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Cielle saw movement. Her mother ran out from the house toward them.

  “Shit,” Cielle said. She’d never seen her run so fast before.

  “Oh, hell.” Her grandmother stood with her arms out, hands up. “We’re okay, Olive, slow down.”

  “I told you it was too dangerous,” Cielle’s mother yelled, out of breath.

  “We just dropped something,” her grandmother said. “We’re okay here.”

  “Stand up, Cielle,” her mother said. Cielle stood. She looked Cielle up and down and grabbed her wrists. “Open your hands.”

  Cielle held them tightly shut. Her mother squeezed harder and dug her nails in a little. “I need to
count fingers!” She pried Cielle’s hands open, and bits of paper fell to the ground. Her mother bent over and held ripped pieces of paper. One scrap had two words on it in blue ink. Her eyebrows raised and Cielle knew she recognized the curve of the letters. “You had this?” She turned the paper over and held it up in front of Cielle. Forgive me, was written. “Do you know what this letter said?” she asked.

  The sun was like a piece of burning metal in the sky. Salty sweat stung at the corners of Cielle’s eyes and everything was too bright to look at: the pieces of paper in her mother’s hands were blindingly white.

  “Well?” her grandmother asked.

  Cielle set her jaw and bit on the tip of her tongue. She shifted her eyes from the house in the distance back to her mother. “I was saving it.”

  “For what?” her grandmother asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cielle said. “For when I was ready.”

  “It was just a piece of paper,” her mother said. “It was just paper and ink.”

  Her grandmother bent down to pick up the pieces that had fallen. “The last thing my son wrote was not just paper and ink.” She spat on the ground. “And I don’t know what you did to make it look like he had an accident, but you have some explaining to do.”

  “Do you want people knowing your son committed suicide?” Cielle’s mother said. “Do you want people calling him chickenshit or crazy, or for your granddaughters to feel shamed in this town for having a father who chose death over them?”

  “I don’t want any such thing. I just want the truth.”

  “Suicides get no funeral, they get no sympathy. Covering this up is self-preservation. About a future for my daughters.”

  “I’ll be in the house,” her grandmother said. “When you’re ready to sit down and talk, I’ll be ready to listen. I’m his mother and I deserve to know. So do his daughters.”

  Trucks were getting ready to take away the last of the lumber and beams from the barn. Her mother handed the scraps of paper back to Cielle. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to know this.”

  “I already knew. I found him in the barn. You don’t remember?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I’ve known all along.”

  “I wish you hadn’t seen that. No one should see that.”

  “Too late,” Cielle said, and put the pieces of paper in her pocket. “I saw it.”

  A woodpecker knocked on a hollow tree nearby.

  “Foolish birds,” her mother said, “banging their heads on trees. Is that tractor’s parking brake even on?”

  Her mother checked that the tractor wasn’t going to move on its own. “Someone will have to put a tarp over this thing since our barn is gone, and what’s a farm without a barn? Not that we’ll get any more rain this month.” She walked toward the men at the trucks.

  “How do you know?”

  “The almanac says so, and I can feel it. The last ten years were good; we were due a dry spell and that tornado. It’s nature’s way.”

  “It wasn’t just paper and ink,” Cielle said.

  Her mother stopped but didn’t turn around. “You want to talk about the note?” Her hands were on her hips and each elbow made a perfect triangle of open space.

  Cielle did, and she waited.

  “Come on,” Her mother reached her arm back toward Cielle, but didn’t turn to look at her. “Let’s go have a talk after we deal with these men.”

  Workmen stood about the driveway smoking cigarettes, and one stepped out toward them as they came up from the field.

  “Everybody okay?” he asked.

  “We’re fine,” her mother said.

  “We have some items for you here.” He pointed at a canvas tarp. He crushed his cigarette on the bottom of his boot and put the cigarette butt in his pants pocket. He lifted the tarp and kept his eyes on the objects below. There was a wide-brimmed leather hat, a pair of canvas work gloves, black suspenders, a coil of rope, and a wooden beam with engravings on it that read, Helen loves Bodie, and, below it, Lee loves Olive. Her father’s engraving looked fresh, the letters light-colored and soft where the knife had carved into the wood-flesh.

  “I thought . . .” the man said.

  “Yes, thank you.” Her mother reached down and picked up the rope. “But get rid of this.”

  He handed it to one of his men and they threw it in the truck as if it were a hot potato. “We made a pile of good wood under the oilcloth tarp, if you want to keep any of it for rebuilding.”

  “We won’t be rebuilding.”

  He lit another cigarette. “We’re done, then.”

  “You’re done.”

  “Storm did most of the work.” He picked at his teeth for loose tobacco with a dirty fingernail. “Except for the foundation, hay, and bird shit, it’s like a barn was never here.”

  “Watch your language when you’re speaking to women.” Her mother pulled the tarp back over the objects.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  Cielle looked at where the barn had been just over two weeks ago. The foundation was like an open wound—bare, exposed, unprotected.

  “Any fool would know a barn had been here,” Cielle said. “A good barn. This is a farm and there’s a giant foundation and a hole in the ground.”

  The men snickered and kicked at the dirt.

  He raised his hand to shake her mother’s but she didn’t move, so he tipped his hat and turned on his heel. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Jacobson.” The men climbed into the truck, the engine coughed to life, and they drove away.

  Cielle sat at the kitchen table while her mother was on the phone.

  “Yes, Mrs. Olsen,” her mother said. “I’ll talk to the girls and we’ll get back to you.” She hung up.

  “What did she want?” Cielle asked.

  “To help.”

  “She’s a drunk.”

  “Cielle.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Don’t you spread that rumor.”

  “Just saying what I’ve seen.”

  “She thanked us for returning their mailbox and offered her professional services for free. She said she’d come talk and help you through your emotions.”

  “She doesn’t want to talk to us.”

  “No, she wants you to talk to her.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Her mother took utensils out from drawers. “That’s fine. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t want to talk to a stranger either. I have to make a cake for your sister’s birthday tonight. Get the flour and sugar down for me. She wants a white cake with coconut frosting. I’ve been stocking up the rationed butter and sugar for months.”

  “Where’s Helen?”

  “I don’t know where your sister goes half the time.”

  “Besides, can’t we just talk to you about how we feel?”

  “What is it you want to say?”

  There was a creak on the stairs. Her grandmother stepped down from the bottom step and crossed her arms. She’d bathed and her hair was wet, and her face was still flush from the heat and sun.

  “She wants to know about the note, Olive. She wants to know what had been going on, and how you feel about all this. I want to know too.”

  “The note gave nothing. No reason, no excuse,” her mother said.

  “Then what did it say?” her grandmother asked.

  “It said, I’m sorry; it said, I love you.”

  “Does Helen know anything?” Cielle asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Her mother reached for the heavy bowls on top of the icebox. Cielle noticed her father’s mug was gone.

  “Where’s the mug?” Cielle asked. “I said not to touch the mug.”

  “I washed it out, Cielle. It had old coffee in there.” Her mother placed two clay bowls side by side on the wooden island. “And besides, I didn’t want to look at it every day.”

  Cielle turned to look for the boots by the door. They were still there, dusty and crumpled side by side. “Do not remove those.” She pointed at the
boots. “Do you hear me?”

  “You’re very loud.” Her mother opened a drawer and took out a whisk and measuring cups.

  “Do you understand?” Cielle asked.

  Her mother busied herself measuring ingredients and ignored her.

  It was the small things that stuck in Cielle’s mind. The photos lined up on the porch held down by stones. The coffee mug. The boots. Objects in and out of the house as if he’d return the next day or the day after that. These were the artifacts he left behind, proof of his life, things she could use to piece together the meaning of his time on earth. It had been the unread note—words not yet spoken, words waiting—that made her feel as if he could be alive somewhere, somehow. Paper and ink gave the dead a voice. The note wasn’t enough and never would have been enough. She knew that. But it had been something, and now it was gone.

  “Mother?” Cielle asked. “Do you hear me?”

  “Quit this nonsense,” her mother said.

  “He had to have said something more in the note,” her grandmother said.

  “He said, My head is a throbbing ache as I write this, my nerves worn out. I am a beaten man.”

  “He said that?” Cielle asked.

  “He was sick, Cielle. He didn’t let you see it, but he carried a darkness inside. He felt heavy and lost. Life was hard and complicated for him. He’d been that way his whole life.”

  “Why didn’t he go to the doctor for medicine?”

  “There isn’t any medicine for sadness.”

  “It’s true,” her grandmother said. “Lee always had a nervousness and sadness about him.”

  Her mother cracked another egg into the bowl and whisked the eggs. She measured the sugar and stirred it in hard and fast.

  “What’s done is done,” her mother said. “That’s what I think. That’s how I feel. For some things there is no reason, no explanation or answer, and you have to move forward. Life goes on.” She poured the flour into the bowl all at once and a small cloud of dust rose, and she shut her eyes.

  “I don’t know if I can accept that,” Cielle said.