Текст книги "Sweet Jiminy: A Novel"

Автор книги: Kristin Gore

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Chapter 3

Bo Waters’s back hurt from pushing a lawnmower over Willa Hunt’s endless yard. When he had done this chore for her years ago, there’d been a tractor-mower he could sit and ride on, turning the task into a relatively painless journey in the hot sun. But now he was stuck with some contraption from the last century, without an engine in sight. It was a hand-powered rotary mower meant for a much smaller lawn than Willa’s. Bo was sweating and grunting, and not even done with a sixth of his task. He’d better get paid considerably more for this. He tried to succumb to the rough pleasure of physical exertion—he’d been a decent athlete in high school but hadn’t done much since. It occurred to him that perhaps this was his first step back into shape; that maybe he should be grateful for the immense inconvenience of this stupid machine.

As he was distracting himself from his throbbing muscles by cursing the lawn mower, Bo was suddenly stopped by a timid sneeze. He looked toward the sound and saw a movement by the woodpile. Expecting a cat or a groundhog, Bo was startled to see a human form rise slowly from the other side. A female human form.

“Hi,” Jiminy said, sneezing again.

“Hi,” Bo replied, aware of the pollens floating in the air between them. He wondered how many of his curses had been overheard.

“I’m allergic to grass,” Jiminy said, by way of explanation.

“That’s a tough one to avoid,” Bo replied.

Didn’t Jiminy know it. She was allergic to dust also, and wheat, and easy human interaction, or at least it frequently seemed so to her.

“Do I know you? You look familiar,” she said, with her head cocked to the side in an inquisitive way that didn’t feel totally natural to her, but that she hoped was fitting for the moment. Her neck hurt from how she’d been sitting against the woodpile.

“You do, too,” Bo replied. “I’m kin to Lyn. I’m Bo.”

“I’m Jiminy. Willa’s my grandmother.”

They’d made their introductions, declared their affiliations. Jiminy stood waiting for some inspiration about how to continue this conversation. She wanted it to go forward, she liked the look of this guy. It wasn’t just that he was the first person younger than seventy that she’d encountered in the past week, though that probably was part of the attraction. But there was more. He had a smooth assurance to his features that made Jiminy feel calm.

“How old are you?” she blurted.

Bo stared back at her.

“Twenty-one,” he replied. “Is that old enough?”

Jiminy blushed.

“I guess so,” she replied. “Except for renting cars.”

“Who needs a rental car when I’ve got these hot wheels?” Bo replied, lifting up the lawn mower he longed to fling into the nearby river.

Jiminy laughed.

“Are you doing the whole lawn?” she asked.

Bo nodded wearily.

“I should be finished in a couple months. Do you know what happened to your grandmother’s tractor-mower? I’ll pay you a thousand dollars if you tell me where it is.”

Jiminy laughed again.

“Sorry, I don’t know where much of anything is. I haven’t been here in years.”

“What brings you back?”

Jiminy looked down, unsure of how to answer. Could she say she was running away? Should she tell Bo about her restlessness, and desperation, and how her unsatisfactory world had abruptly folded in on her? Should she mention her mother, and her nervous breakdown destiny? Or admit how random it was that she’d chosen this spot for refuge? She opened her mouth to let all of this out, then closed it again.

“Just getting a break from city life,” she managed to say at last.

Bo nodded, unperturbed by Jiminy’s awkwardness. He could tell she had plenty more to say, but he felt no urge to pry. Like anyone who wasn’t actually from here, Jiminy assumed Fayeville represented a relaxing respite from busier places, but Bo knew there was as much turmoil here as anywhere. If she stuck around, she’d find that out for herself.

“How long you staying?” he asked.

“Just taking it day by day,” she answered with a shrug. “How are you related to Lyn?”

“She’s my great-aunt. I lived with her some growing up.”

Jiminy glanced down at the book in her hand, then snapped her gaze back up to meet Bo’s.

“Do you happen to know . . . I mean, I guess you probably would . . . but maybe not, who knows how much families communicate . . . Um, was Lyn ever married, by any chance?”

Bo felt sorry for Jiminy that she had to expend so much effort to ask a simple question. What a difficult way to go through life. He had his challenges, but most of them felt imposed from the outside, not created within. And now Jiminy was looking at him fearfully, like she was worried she’d overstepped her bounds somehow.

“Aunt Lyn was married to my grandma’s brother, Edward Waters. And they had a daughter, but she died. He died, too—both a long time ago. Aunt Lyn never hooked up with anyone else, as far as I know.”

Jiminy nodded.

“She doesn’t talk about it,” Bo continued. “No one else does either, to keep from upsetting her. What I know, I heard from a drunk old uncle talking outta school.”

Jiminy nodded again. She considered showing Bo her grandfather’s diary, but decided to keep it to herself for the time being.

“Is that a Polaroid camera?” Bo asked.

He was pointing to the camera dangling from her neck. Jiminy had brought it with her from Chicago, to document her decline. She touched it now, and nodded.

“I didn’t even know they made them anymore,” Bo remarked. “I used to love those things. Such instant gratification.”

Jiminy nodded again, in complete agreement. She resisted the urge to snap a photo of Bo right that second.

“So what do people do for fun around here?” she asked instead.

“Oh, we go cow-tipping, throw crab apples at the Hardee’s billboard, make crank calls,” Bo answered.

Jiminy tried to imagine herself doing these things with any amount of enthusiasm. Maybe the crab apple thing, if she actually managed to hit the billboard.

“I’m kidding,” Bo continued. “We’re not that bad off. Though I have been known to spend rainy days in the sports aisle of HushMart. You can get a pretty good basketball game going before they ask you to move on.”

“I’m the queen of HORSE,” Jiminy replied.

It was true. She wasn’t athletic in general, but she had a preternatural talent for making basketball shots. Not while on the move, and she couldn’t dribble or pass or be sure of many rules of the game, but she could get that ball through the hoop from practically any standing position, no matter the distance.

“The queen, huh?” Bo replied.

His tone wasn’t skeptical; it was more amused. Still, Jiminy found herself resenting it. She wasn’t good at many things. She felt she proved this nearly every day.

“I’m not kidding,” she insisted, with uncharacteristic fire. “I’ve never lost a game. I’ve never been anything more than a HOR.”

Bo raised his eyebrows.

“H-O-R,” she clarified, feeling her face flush.

Bo grinned and put his hands up in surrender.

“Do you coach lesser players?” he asked.

“Anytime,” Jiminy answered, surprised at her confidence.

“I’m gonna come find you when I finish this,” Bo said, motioning to the vast expanse of unmown lawn around him. “If I live that long.”

Jiminy smiled, happy to realize she still could.

 

Inside, Lyn had been watching them through the window for the past ten minutes, thinking about when they’d first met as children. She doubted either one of them remembered it.

Jiminy had been only six years old, dropped off by her quarreling parents for an impromptu visit. She was a silent, reserved child, and she’d quickly become Lyn’s little shadow, sitting for hours on the stool in the corner of the kitchen, shyly watching her every move. Lyn had gone about her business as usual, but every once in a while she’d stuck out her tongue without warning and waggled it around, causing Jiminy to erupt into paroxysms of giggles. Just as suddenly, Lyn would resume her poker face and reabsorb herself in her task. Jiminy would giggle a little longer to herself, then wait patiently for the next show.

That was also the trip that Jiminy had taken to drinking buttermilk. Lyn had never known a child to actually enjoy the taste. She watched Jiminy first sip some by accident, assuming it was regular milk. Lyn had waited for her grimace, but the girl simply cocked her head in surprise and took a longer sip. Not realizing that she wasn’t supposed to like it, she’d started drinking it regularly.

Lyn had been watching little Jiminy pour herself another tall glass of buttermilk, and wondering if there’d be enough left for the biscuits she was supposed to make, when an unfamiliar car turned down the long gravel lane. The sight of a strange vehicle made Lyn anxious, and she reflexively reached for the big butcher knife, not entirely sure what she planned to do with it. Lyn was relieved when she recognized her late husband’s niece climbing out of the car. She watched her unstrap a toddler from the backseat—a toddler whom Lyn had previously only heard jabbering and squealing in the background of a phone conversation. A toddler who turned out to look very much like her beloved Edward: the same eyes, those same steady features. The kind of face you wanted to drink up to calm yourself down. Lyn loved Bo as soon as she saw him, even from that distance; even through a window that needed cleaning.

She had hurried out the kitchen door, wondering whether Willa would mind this unexpected visit, considering she wasn’t particularly partial to children or interruptions. But to Lyn’s relief, Willa had looked up from the science labs she’d been grading on the porch and calmly introduced herself to Edward’s niece and her toddler. And then Jiminy had appeared, glass of buttermilk in hand.

“Who’s that?” she asked, pointing her little finger at him.

“His name is Bo, Jiminy,” Willa said.

Edward’s niece had flashed a look Lyn’s way, which Lyn ignored. Yes, the girl was named Jiminy. No, Lyn didn’t want to talk about it.

“Oh,” Jiminy said. “Would he like some buttermilk?”

And she had sat down beside Bo on the grass in the sun. She tried to teach him patty-cake. Bo laughed and grabbed at her fingers and made her shriek. Lyn hadn’t known how to feel, watching them. She’d looked to Willa to break them up, or let them play. But Willa had returned to grading her papers, forfeiting her prerogative to pass judgment.

Edward’s niece hadn’t stayed long—not at Willa’s farm, not even in Fayeville. She’d already decided that her destiny lay elsewhere, and no amount of disappointment could sway her from its pursuit. No amount of responsibility, either. She simply shrugged it off, the way happiness had shrugged her.

Bo, on the other hand, had remained right there in Fayeville from then on, passed around from relative to relative, looked after by the group of them. His mother and grandmother had kept “Waters” as their last name, instead of giving any credence to the men who had dipped into and out of their lives, so Bo blended right in with the family. But he and Jiminy had never crossed paths again. Jiminy had traveled from her home in southern Illinois to visit Willa a few more times, but Lyn hadn’t had charge of Bo during those visits. And then Jiminy had stopped coming altogether once she’d become preoccupied with trying to be an adult.

But here she was now, walking into the kitchen, all grown. Lyn handed her a glass of buttermilk that she’d absentmindedly poured as she’d reminisced. Jiminy looked understandably confused. Realizing what she’d done, Lyn almost snatched the glass back, but Jiminy was already raising it to her lips.

“Thanks,” she said quizzically, taking a sip.

Just as she had when she was a child, she drank with her eyes wide open. And she still didn’t wince at the sourness.

 

Two hours later, as Lyn sat folding pillowcases by the window, she watched Bo cross the freshly mown lawn to the house. She heard him let himself in the front door, cross the entryway, and knock on Jiminy’s door. Lyn stayed in the kitchen, quiet and still.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she heard Bo say.

“I’m glad you did,” Jiminy answered, so light and free.

“Have you recovered from your allergy attack?”

“Nearly.”

“Well, I got revenge for you,” Bo assured. “That grass won’t be bothering anyone for a while.”

“Thanks, I owe you one. Are you taking off now?”

“I was gonna go see a superstore about a HORSE. Wanna come?”

“Definitely,” Jiminy replied.

Lyn heard them make their way to the door, where they must have run into an unsuspecting Willa.

“What’s going on? Is everything okay?” she heard Willa exclaim, her voice mildly alarmed.

“Everything’s fine,” Jiminy replied. “I’m headed into town with Bo.”

“Oh,” Willa answered.

And Lyn knew the exact O her mouth was making.

“Do you need anything?” Jiminy asked.

“I don’t know,” Willa replied uncertainly. “I don’t suppose so.”

“Okay, see you later then!” Jiminy replied sunnily.

Then the door closed, and Lyn heard Willa sigh deeply.

“Shit,” Willa said, thinking she was saying it to herself.

In the other room, Lyn closed her eyes and slowly shook her head.

 

A few weeks later, Willa sat anxiously by the kitchen window, shuffling Jiminy’s stack of Polaroids and peering out into the darkness every few minutes. Willa had been surprised that Jiminy just left her photos around for anyone to look at, for anyone to judge. She flipped through them again, quickly enough that she created a moving picture of her granddaughter’s last few weeks—a cascading waterfall of captured moments.

There was Bo holding a basketball at HushMart, and Bo pointing to a diagram of the human heart with a mock-serious expression, and Bo lying on his back in the field behind the barn. There were a lot of Bo. There were a few of Willa, too—looking up from her crossword with a questioning expression, coming in the door with an armful of azaleas, sitting in her porch chair smiling. And there was Lyn baking biscuits, and carrying a stack of towels, and gazing out the kitchen window. But mainly the Polaroids were of Bo. Willa looked up from them and out into the night again, willing headlights to appear.

She hadn’t waited up for someone to come home since her daughter was a teenager, and she felt out of practice. And a little ridiculous. First of all, waiting for her daughter hadn’t ever kept her out of trouble, nor had it forged the meaningful, long-term relationship Willa had always assumed she’d enjoy with her offspring. Secondly, and more to the present point, her granddaughter was twenty-five and therefore didn’t have a curfew. But she was a young, uncertain twenty-five, spending time in a place she didn’t understand, and Willa felt apprehensive. Jiminy and Bo had been thick as thieves lately, but they generally called it a night at a decent hour. It was now nearly eleven. What could they be doing?

She dialed Lyn, who answered the phone sounding surprised.

“Lyn, it’s Willa. Have you heard from Bo?”

“No, ma’am. What’s the matter? What’s happened?”

Willa felt guilty for introducing that note of panic into Lyn’s night. But at least she wouldn’t be the only one worrying now.

“Nothing, it’s just Jiminy’s not back yet and it’s getting late. You don’t know where they went?”

“Bo’s staying at his friend’s this summer, not with me. And he’s grown now, so I don’t ask too many questions.”

Willa knew this was a reasonable position, but still, it angered her.

Lyn waited for Willa to say something more. She could feel the tension on the line; could sense that she was being blamed for Jiminy’s whereabouts. And though she liked that odd little girl just fine, there was only one Jiminy she’d ever wanted to be responsible for, and that Jiminy had been taken from her. She didn’t have the energy for another, even if she was Willa’s granddaughter.

She heard Willa suck her breath in between her teeth. It sounded chilly and impersonal, the whistle of an ill wind. When she spoke again, her voice was tight and controlled.

“Bo’s not into any bad news now, is he?”

There was none of the loose warmth that Willa’s vowels normally slid around in—they seemed mired in something cold and congealed.

Lyn took a moment to reply. Was Bo into any bad news? Of his own accord? More than the everyday bad news he had to swallow and shoulder and wade through and wear down? Nothing more than that. No, Bo wasn’t into any bad news. Not the kind Willa was intimating. Lyn kept her calm.

“No, ma’am, he sure isn’t. He’s studying for the imp-cats, you know.”

“The MCATs,” Willa corrected testily.

Willa knew Lyn knew all about the MCATs. Knew she wasn’t actually correcting her, but merely pointing out the slight speech impediment that crept into Lyn’s pronunciations when she got agitated. Which was rare—Lyn was usually too disengaged to get at all riled, so her speech stayed steady. Willa felt cruel for having caused the distress, and petty for mocking its consequences.

“Yes, ma’am. Imp-cats. M . . . CATs,” Lyn said.

“I just didn’t expect them to spend so much time together,” Willa continued.

She was trying to explain, but was only making it worse.

“Mmm-huh” was the reply.

“Well, I’m sure she’ll be back soon. Will we be seeing you Thursday?”

“Mmm-huh.”

Willa walked herself around the kitchen to try and straighten herself out. She’d offended Lyn, she knew, and she’d confused herself even further. What could she do to make it up? Maybe a yellowcake. Lyn always loved yellowcake.

She’d just cracked an egg and shaken away the unpleasant memory of cracking a fertilized one years ago—oh, the unwelcome surprise of embryonic development when all you wanted was breakfast—when she saw the headlights turn into the drive.

 

Jiminy felt like a better version of herself around Bo. She was less shy, less nervous, more curious, more lively. She hoped he’d been enjoying himself, too, and that she was more than just a mildly entertaining diversion from dry medical texts. But they hadn’t discussed how they felt. They hadn’t had physical contact besides friendly shoulder squeezes and high fives on the makeshift basketball court. Which was appropriate, Jiminy knew, at least where Fayeville was concerned. Anything more than a friendship would be frowned upon—even still, even today. Even so, Jiminy had let herself imagine a romance, and recognized that anticipating the disapproval it would engender actually made it that much more tempting to her. She was annoyed at herself for this—for harboring impure motivations. She believed she should want something solely for the thing itself, not because it was surprising or controversial. Because she was falling short, she felt as tainted as the town, and this shielded her from delusions of moral superiority.

Jiminy wasn’t thinking about any of this at the moment, however. She couldn’t think of anything besides what she’d just experienced. In fact, she wasn’t positive she’d ever be able to think about anything else again.

At her cajoling, Bo had taken her to visit the crazy old great-uncle who’d talked of his aunt Lyn’s past when no one else would. Bo’s Uncle Fred lived on a hilltop two counties over, forty minutes away, and he’d proven as loquacious as advertised.

“If it isn’t Mr. Bojangles!” he exclaimed as they pulled up to his sprawling, chaotic abode.

There was a house amid the clutter, but you had to look hard for it. A tree was growing through Fred’s front porch, and a couch and coffee table sat in the yard. There was an inside-out feeling to the whole place, as if it had been scooped up by a tornado, churned around, and spat back out in no particular order. Plants, animals, and furniture spilled all over one another. It was almost a caricature of a backwoods eccentric’s lair.

“And who’ve ya brung?” Fred bellowed. “Who’ve ya brung with ya, Mr. Bojangles?”

“Hey, Uncle Fred. This is my friend Jiminy,” Bo answered.

Fred had rushed toward them, surprisingly fast for a man so frail and gnarled, and peered intently at Jiminy’s face.

“There’s only one Jiminy,” he said finally. “You must be someone else.”

Jiminy had been holding her breath without realizing it. She exhaled then, keeping her gaze steady. Fred’s eyes were rheumy but bright.

“I must be,” she agreed.

And then the three of them had sat in Fred’s outdoor living room, surrounded by strutting peacocks, and talked for hours.

Now, as the car rolled slowly homeward, Jiminy’s head was stuffed with more of a story than she knew what to do with. She felt it pressing against the back of her eyes and welling up in her throat, threatening to overwhelm her.

“You okay?” Bo asked.

Jiminy considered. What a question, given what they now knew. How could she be, really? How could anyone? She could still hear Fred’s words echoing in her head.

“They hunted ’em,” he’d said. “They hunted Jiminy and Edward and they got ’em. Ran Edward’s car off the road and drug ’em out and shot ’em. Threw ’em in the river, burned their car. Don’t know who exactly—thing is, it coulda been any of ’em. It coulda been all of ’em. That’s the way things were.”

Listening to Fred, Jiminy had cried long, stringy tears and felt herself unraveling.

“But why?” she’d asked.

Fred picked some mites off a peacock chick while he let the question hang. It took a full minute of silence before Jiminy had understood its significance and regretted her question. There was no attaching rationality to such a thing. Darkness knew no bounds.

As they were saying their goodbyes a little later, Fred had offered Jiminy a handkerchief.

“She shone too bright is why,” he said, before ducking back into his falling-down, inside-out home.

Jiminy pondered this now, twisting Fred’s handkerchief between her fingers. She didn’t realize that she was shaking.

“J?” Bo asked, lightly touching her arm. “You okay?”

She pulled herself together.

“As okay as possible,” she replied.

Bo nodded, looking older than he ever had. He turned off the road into Willa’s long driveway, careful to slow down for the gravel.

“You need any more company?” he asked quietly, as he pulled up to the house.

Through the window that looked like it needed cleaning, Jiminy could see her grandmother in the kitchen and was struck by how powerfully she resembled her mother.

“I’ll be all right,” she replied, as she climbed from the car.

She was already out before it occurred to her how selfish her shock had made her. Bo had more reason to be upset, after all. She bent her knees and leaned into the open window.

“Oh God, what about you?” she asked, her voice full of concern.

Bo smiled a smile that seemed more a part of the frown genre.

“I’m okay,” he said.

Jiminy was unconvinced.

“Really, I’m okay,” Bo repeated, making an effort to sound more reassuring. “I’m good.”

Jiminy sighed. Whatever their emotional state, she agreed that he was. Which was saying something, in this world.

 

Willa wiped some flour off her arm and tried to compose her face into a mellow arrangement, away from its mask of worry.

“Hi,” Jiminy said, as she walked into the kitchen.

“Oh, hello,” Willa replied pleasantly. “I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to make a yellowcake. It’s Lyn’s favorite.”

Jiminy nodded, but Willa felt like her granddaughter was staring right through her, out somewhere behind her body, beyond these walls.

After a long moment, Jiminy focused her saucer eyes back on her grandmother’s.

“Tell me about Edward and Jiminy,” she commanded.

Willa felt a tightening in her chest, and reached behind her for the counter edge to sink against.

 

Jiminy was waiting for Lyn when she pulled into the drive Thursday morning. Waiting outside, sitting on the stump of the oak tree that a storm had taken down two summers ago. Willa had planned to get it removed before observing that it made a convenient chair. For shucking corn or snapping beans or just letting the breeze soothe some of your day, Lyn thought, as she climbed slowly out of her car. Not for someone looking to bother her before she’d had her coffee.

“Get any worms?” Lyn asked, as Jiminy jumped up and moved toward her.

Jiminy looked confused. Lyn didn’t feel like explaining her early bird joke, even when Jiminy began looking behind her and nervously dusting off the seat of her jeans.

“Did you talk to Bo?” Jiminy asked.

Was that what this was about? Lyn wondered. She didn’t think it had gotten to that stage yet with these two, though it was surely headed there, if someone didn’t intervene. Whether Lyn or anyone else liked it, she could see it hovering, waiting to be.

“Not about anything special,” Lyn answered.

“Well, can I talk to you?” Jiminy asked.

Lyn looked at her expectantly.

“You may not want to discuss this and I may be out of line,” Jiminy continued a bit breathlessly. “But I heard something that I want to ask you about.”

“Shoot,” Lyn said, and wondered why the girl winced.

Jiminy took a deep breath.

“I heard about what happened to your husband and daughter,” she said.

It was Lyn’s turn to breathe deep. Here was the abyss, suddenly at her doorstep.

“I heard how they went missing, and how they turned up killed,” Jiminy continued. “And I am so sorry. I don’t know the words to say how sorry.”

Lyn didn’t say anything back. She sank down onto the stump Jiminy had vacated, setting the paper bag of potatoes she’d brought with her on the ground and letting her purse slide down her arm to keep it company.

“She had my name,” Jiminy blurted.

“You have hers,” Lyn replied quietly.

“Right, of course, I have hers. I didn’t mean . . . My mother knew her?”

“Your mother worshiped her.”

“How uh . . . how old was she when she passed?”

Bo’s great-uncle hadn’t been completely sure. He’d said around fifteen. Willa had said nearly eighteen, though she really hadn’t wanted to say much about it at all.

“She didn’t ‘pass,’ she was shot in the head and thrown in the river,” Lyn said evenly. “There was nothin’ gentle or natural about it.”

Jiminy kept her eyes trained on the ground, but Lyn saw they were leaking tears.

“She was seventeen,” Lyn continued. “Smarter than all get-out. What I lived and breathed for.”

Besides Edward, Lyn added in her head. She’d lived and breathed for him, too.

“And your husband . . . ?” Jiminy asked.

“Edward was shot in the back. Thrown in the river, too.”

They weren’t very good swimmers, not that it would have mattered by that point. Still, it was something that had tormented Lyn, the thought of their souls trying to leave their bodies and not knowing how to swim to the surface. She had to imagine they’d left earlier. She had to imagine that, or she’d go insane.

“Do you know who did it?” Jiminy asked softly.

The only answer that would make any sense to her was some demon up from the underworld, something that sucked and snorted pure evil.

Lyn was shaking her head. Which is what Willa had done, and Bo’s uncle before her.

“They really never caught them?” Jiminy asked incredulously.

Lyn raised her gaze to meet hers.

“You act like they even tried.”