Bent Road

Chapter 35

Evie closes her eyes, tilts her head toward the sky and inhales. This warm day, after so many cold, has a special smell about it. Aunt Ruth says things are greening up, so this must be what green smells like. With the sun warming her cheeks, Evie leans into Aunt Ruth, who pulls Evie close and kisses the top of her head. Aunt Ruth doesn’t have to lean down as far anymore. Lately, most often at night when she lays in bed, Evie’s shins and elbows ache. Mama says they are growing pains. Just that morning, she marked Evie’s height on her bedroom doorframe with a black pen. Since moving to Kansas, she’s grown almost an inch and a half. Mama has always said Evie would grow in her own sweet time.

Laying one hand on Aunt Ruth’s hard, round belly, Evie cradles Aunt Eve’s Virgin Mary statue in the other. In less than a month, Aunt Ruth will have a baby instead of a big belly. Evie holds her breath, waiting for a gentle nudge from Elisabeth.

“Get ready,” Aunt Ruth says, squeezing Evie even tighter.

Evie clutches the statue to her chest, presses one ear against Aunt Ruth’s stomach, and covers the other with her free hand. Near Grandma’s barn, Daniel is wadding up old newspaper as kindling for the fire Dad asked him to start in the old trash barrel. Across the driveway, Jonathon sits behind the wheel of Grandpa’s tractor, his hat pulled low on his forehead. Standing nearby, Daddy gives a nod and after a few chokes and coughs, the tractor starts up. Daniel leaves the barrel, smoke drifting up into the air and walks a few feet to stand behind Mama, Elaine and Grandma, his arms crossed, his hat pulled low like Jonathon’s.

Aunt Ruth touches the Virgin Mary’s head. “I’m glad you fixed her up,” she says, leaning down and talking into Evie’s ear so she can hear over the tractor.

Aunt Ruth wraps both arms around Evie as the tractor rolls across the drive. First, the wheels crush the tall grass that Daddy never lets Daniel mow, and when the tractor crashes into the small shed, Aunt Ruth’s chest shudders. Daddy said the wood wasn’t worth saving. He’d rather burn it and all the overgrown grass, too. He said what’s past is past and it’s time the Scott family puts it to rest. Aunt Ruth lowers her head, and when it’s over, when Jonathon has backed away and turned off the tractor, she stands straight and takes a deep breath.

“Smells like green, doesn’t it?” Evie says.

Daniel tugs on his hat when the dust settles and walks back to the barrel. Using one of the longer branches he gathered from Grandma’s front yard, he pokes at his fire. It’s going good now, burning strong, so he drops the branch, walks past Dad who is still staring at the empty spot where the shed used to be, and loads himself up with an armful of splintered wood. When he turns, suddenly feeling like he shouldn’t toss the wood on the fire, Dad gives him a nod and a pat on the back.

“Thank you, son,” he says and, lowering himself to his knees, he fills his own arms, stands and follows Daniel to the barrel. The two men stop a few feet from the fire and toss in the wooden planks. Soon their arms are empty. They stand together watching the ash and sparks float up into the air and disappear. Mama, Grandma Reesa and Aunt Ruth have gone inside to make Grandma’s fried chicken. Dad still says it’s the best in the Midwest, but mostly he says it when Mama isn’t around to hear. Jonathon has gone off with Elaine, probably so Elaine can make him write his share of thank-you notes for their wedding gifts, and Evie is sitting on the top stair with the Virgin Mary at her side. When the sparks have settled and only smoke is drifting up, Dad and Daniel return for another load.

Celia sits across from Ruth, a paper bag placed between them on Reesa’s table where she usually keeps the salt and pepper shakers. Grease sizzles and pops in the black skillet on the stove, and the chicken broth begins to boil, drops of it hissing as they splash on the gas burner. With a wooden spoon in one hand, Celia cracks an egg into the dumpling dough and starts to stir again. Reesa looks at Celia as if to tell her no more eggs but clears her throat instead and goes back to poking her chicken. Reaching across the table, Ruth touches the brown paper bag.

“I did think about it,” she says. “In the very beginning.”

“Anyone would have,” Celia says, pausing for a moment before beginning to dig and stir again. “You thought you were alone.”

“But I never would have done it. Not to Elisabeth.”

Celia pushes aside the bowl, stands and takes the paper bag. “Do you want to me take care of this?”

“I never could have used it,” Ruth says, crossing her hands on the table. “Don’t even know why I kept so much.” She looks up at Celia. “Things never seemed quite so bad when no one was around to see.” She tucks her hair behind her ears, a motion that makes her look like a young girl again. “But then you all moved back, and I was so ashamed for you to know. All the drinking and the times he hurt me. You all made it”-she pauses-“more real. That’s when I knew I could never let my own child see those things.” She shakes her head and pulls two small brown bottles from her apron pocket. “These will need to go, too.”

“Celia’s right, child,” Reesa says. With a teaspoon, she scoops a dumpling and dips it into the simmering broth. “Any sane woman would have done the same. You were taking care.”

Celia picks up the bottles, holds them in one hand and raises her eyebrows because a smile doesn’t seem appropriate. Ruth gives her a nod, and Celia carries the bottles and the bag from the kitchen.

Walking across the gravel drive toward Arthur and Daniel, Celia wonders when wedge root is in season. Ruth must have gathered it months ago. Surely it didn’t grow under the cover of snow. No, she must have thought ahead. In the early weeks, when she considered how she could end her pregnancy, she could have found the plant growing along every ditch in the county, but by the time her plan changed and she needed to gather enough to kill a six-foot-four-inch 220-pound man, the wedge root must have been harder to come by. How much wedge root did it take to boil out enough oil to fill these two small bottles? When Ruth pulled the bag and bottles from her suitcase, Celia never asked her how she would have done it or if it mattered that Ray wasn’t the one who killed Julianne Robison. Would she have seeped the wedge root with Ray’s morning coffee over weeks and months until it eventually killed him? Would one strong dose of the oil, maybe mixed with the base of a nice chicken stock, have done the trick? No, Celia never asked.

Outside the screened door, Evie sits on the top step, cradling the Virgin Mary to her chest. As Celia passes by, she touches the top of Evie’s head. Evie hugs the small statue with both arms and slips inside before the screened door falls closed. Walking toward Arthur and Daniel, she thinks that there was a time when she would have asked Daniel to step away. When he was a boy, just a year ago, afraid of the monster at the top of Bent Road, she would have asked him to leave. But not today, because now he is a man.

It’s still there, that lazy bend in the fence line a quarter mile northeast of Reesa’s house, except the fields are no longer empty like they were on the night that the Scott family arrived in Kansas. That spring, the short sprouts that had lain dormant all winter began to grow and when the weather warmed and the spring rains came, those sprouts grew and became shiny, green stalks that carpeted the fields. More time passed, and under the summer sun, the green stalks faded to yellow. The bristly heads are heavy and soon the farmers will harvest their golden crops, leaving the fields bare once again. As autumn draws closer, the tumbleweeds will begin to dry out. Their woody stems will turn brittle and break near the ground. They’ll tumble and roll and the curve at the top of Bent Road will scoop them up.

Celia knows now to slow near the top of that hill. She edges toward the shoulder in case of oncoming trucks that she might not see in time. She knows where home is and which way to turn should Arthur’s truck slip over the top of the next hill unseen.

Sliding in between Arthur and Daniel, Celia rolls down the top of the paper sack until it’s closed good and tight. Heat spills out of the barrel, keeping the three of them at a distance. The wood crackles and hisses as it burns and smells of sweet cedar. Arthur slips an arm around Celia’s shoulders, and saying a quiet God bless you to the memory of Aunt Eve, she tosses the bag into the fire.