Sara Paretsky - Sisters on the Case

Denny told things in spurts. He’d have told them better, Mary thought, if they’d had a tune to them- how the men on the wagon took the pitchfork away from him and made him load the sheaves by hand. ‘‘I couldn’t get the hang of it, you see. They said I’d be murdering them.’’ And Mrs. Rossa’s pies: ‘‘The look of them made your mouth water. Only she’d made a mistake and put salt instead of sugar in them. You should’ve seen Donel. I thought he was going to hit her. But he put his arm around her at the last minute, and told the men, ‘I’ll make it up to you,’ and he sure did. Two bottles. He told me after he was taking an awful chance. One of the ones he didn’t know could’ve been a spy, a Revenue agent.’’

Rossa had kept Dennis a day and a night after the combine pushed on to the next farm, and to hear Denny tell it, nothing as wonderful had ever happened to him before. He discovered Rossa’s collection of guns that he kept locked in the harness room. Rossa was a hunter. He showed Denny how to load and carry a shotgun, and had taken him out at dawn that very morning to shoot at the crows where they were cleaning up grain left in the harvest stubble.

‘‘I told him about the gun in Norah’s storeroom. You didn’t even see it, I bet.’’

‘‘I’ve seen it,’’ Mary said.

‘‘It’s a shotgun, Donel says. I knew that myself when I seen his. He says if Norah would let me borrow it, he’d help me clean it up and oil it. And he’ll take me hunting with him in the fall. They hunt small game with it-squirrels and rabbits. He told me you can make a better rabbit stew than Mrs. Rossa.’’

‘‘Once in my life,’’ Mary said. ‘‘Once in my life. Donel skinned it for me and I pretended it was an old rooster.’’

Denny pulled his chair closer to hers. He wet his lips. ‘‘Would you ask Aunt Norah for me?’’

She should never have taken him over there, Mary thought, but she’d been all over that with herself. And she ought not to have made fun of Norah, blurting out that she was in love, though she didn’t believe it for a minute. From the way Norah was carrying on since, Mary wasn’t sure what was going on with her.

‘‘I’ll have to think about it,’’ Mary said. She’d begun to feel sorry for her sister, the boob, the big, blubbering boob. ‘‘There’s enough to do in the onion patch to keep you busy. And for God’s sake take off the clothes you’re wearing and soak them in the tub.’’

‘‘I will,’’ Denny said. ‘‘I sweated a lot. Donel says we should keep the gun ready just to fire off and scare the Revenue men if they come snooping around. He says they might.’’

‘‘I said I’ll think about it,’’ Mary said.

How many times in those three days had Norah said, ‘‘How dare she!’’ and attacked with fury every chore she could put her mind to. She scoured the kitchen and bathroom sinks, the toilet bowl, the front steps. She finished the last of the schoolgirls’ dresses, folded them, and called round for them to be picked up. Her anger fed on memories of one good thing after another that Mary had spoiled for her. Even the piano. The dead piano in her parlor- Mary’s joke.

But her anger and her feeling of shame wore down, and that morning when she heard Rossa’s truck pull up to the barn, she looked out through the crack of daylight between the blind and the window frame, and watched Denny’s return. She pulled up all the blinds and boiled an egg for breakfast.

‘‘I could have done this myself,’’ the girl said, wanting to hand in the dress without a hello or how-are-you when Norah opened the door. Margaret surely taught her better.

‘‘Come in and let me look at you,’’ Norah said.

‘‘Dad’s in a terrible hurry.’’

‘‘No, dear. You are.’’ Norah smiled and backed into the house. ‘‘I know your father.’’ Tom Dixon was a great talker. Mary got to know more about what was happening in the town from an hour with him than Norah learned reading a month of the Hope Valley News .

The girl had little choice but to follow her indoors.

‘‘If you had more time,’’ Norah said, ‘‘I’d ask you to play your latest piece for me.’’

‘‘When I pick up the dress, maybe,’’ the thirteen-year-old said. She was even less fond of Norah’s piano than of the one at home. She could kick hers and the place she’d kicked wouldn’t show.

‘‘You’ll have to put the dress on, dear, if I’m going to pin it up.’’

‘‘Mother said…’’

Norah stopped her. ‘‘Elaine, I know how to alter a dress.’’

The girl took the dress into the bathroom and put it on.

Why they named her Elaine, Norah would never know. From a poem Margaret had read, she remembered. Or was it after someone in Tom’s family? He was English. She certainly wasn’t Norah’s notion of an Elaine. No wonder they called her Lainie.

What was her hurry? Norah wondered when she let her out of the house and watched her lope across the way. Did the girl hate her that much? Norah did know she was fonder of Mary and her ramshackle house. It struck her then: Denny.

Lainie burst into Mary’s kitchen. ‘‘She’s spooky!’’

‘‘That’s enough,’’ Tom said.

Mary chuckled. ‘‘I think it myself sometimes.’’ She turned up her cheek for a kiss. ‘‘Is it you that’s growing or me that’s shrinking?’’

‘‘Where’s Denny?’’ the girl asked.

‘‘Didn’t I tell you?’’ Tom said to Mary. He was right. The girl had reached the age where one word said it all: boys.

‘‘I’ve fixed him a jar of tea. You can take it down to him in the far field and make him share it with you.’’

‘‘You have the devil in you, Mary,’’ Tom said.

She gave that rattle of a laugh. ‘‘Sure, it’s broad daylight.’’

And the blinds were up next door. Wouldn’t Norah be watching with the frozen heart of a chaperone? Mary pushed their tea things out of the way. ‘‘I’ve a question or two for you, Tom. You’re wearing your badge, I see.’’

‘‘If I didn’t the sheriff would take it from me.’’

‘‘I thought maybe something was up. The Revenue men going round, say. Or is Donel filling Denny’s head with goblins?’’

‘‘I’m on the side of the Feds. I have to be,’’ Tom said. ‘‘It’s the law.’’

‘‘Would they be after Donel, do you think?’’

‘‘I’m not in their confidence, Mary.’’

She let it go. ‘‘Wouldn’t you think they’d have more to do in this country than put and take laws like that one?’’

‘‘It’s a country for and by the people,’’ Tom said. Scratch a veteran and find a patriot. Mary could beat time to it.

‘‘You know Donel’s put down money on a building in town,’’ he added.

‘‘Is that a fact?’’ she said, all ears.

‘‘I’ve heard he’ll be opening a business of some sort, a big one.’’

‘‘And quitting the farm?’’

‘‘The farm’s quitting a lot of us these days, Mary.’’

Mary envisioned the main street of Hopetown as she had last paid it attention. Vacancies galore.

‘‘What kind of business, do you think?’’

‘‘It’s a ways off,’’ Tom said.

‘‘He plans ahead,’’ Mary said. She was thinking of Donel’s palaver about the horse and the truck. ‘‘And he has money. Sure, that’s what makes the mare go, Tom. Money makes the mare go.’’

‘‘I’ll put the dishes in the sink for you,’’ Tom said, getting up.

‘‘Leave them. There’s something I’d like you to do for me while you’re here: Give Denny a hand with a cupboard he’s to bring over from Norah’s.’’

She made her way to the telephone and gave it a mighty crank.