Sophie Littlefield - Banished

“ No, don’t b’lieve so,” she said indifferently .

More murmuring as the man gestured insistently while his companion glanced around. She edged back into the corner between the refrigerator and the wall and flattened her body into the small space so that she couldn’t be seen from the front of the store .

“ No, never,” the cashier repeated. “But then again, I ain’t from town. I live twenty miles down to Casey, so I wouldn’t probably know her, now would I. ”

The man tucked the photo away-because that was what it had to be, wasn’t it, a photo of the girl-and slid a bill onto the countertop glass, then flipped a card on top of the money .

“ Call if you remember anything later,” he said in a louder voice. Her heart pounded as she watched the two men turn and make their way out of the store .

So, he hadn’t waited, then. He might have believed the story she gave him last night, her terrified attempt to convince him that finding out about the girl meant nothing more to her than good news for the research. He might have believed her lies, but it hadn’t stopped him from sending the men down to Gypsum. Clearly he was determined to move forward immediately .

She had to stop him. But she couldn’t just go bursting into the house and demand that the girl leave with her-not when there was no telling what the old lady had told her .

No-first she had to build trust .

She looked at the cheap trinket in her hand and slowly slid it back on the hook .

A gift wouldn’t help. Bribery wouldn’t help. Neither would demanding or threatening or pleading or begging .

She poured a cup of stale coffee with shaking hands. She paid the cashier, who barely looked at her as she counted out the change, then stood in the parking lot drinking the bitter liquid before she got back into her car and drove the once-familiar streets to the house where she had grown up, a place she had hoped never to see again .

She had a near-impossible task ahead of her. And the only weapon she had was the truth .

AFTER RATTLER DROVE AWAY, I stood outside for a minute and waited for my heartbeat to slow down to normal before I went into the house. I said hello to Gram, and she grunted in my direction. Judge Judy was blaring from the television. Chub was on his stomach, scribbling with a fat crayon in a coloring book. When he saw me, he jumped up and ran over and threw his arms around my legs like he did every day, hollering, “Hayee!”

I usually loved that moment. It was the best thing in my day, getting home and making sure that Chub was safe and knowing that there was one person in my life who was always happy to see me.

Today, though, it was hard for me to return his hug without letting him see how shook up I was. I got Chub a snack and drank a glass of milk, and then I settled in with my homework, though it was almost impossible to concentrate. I kept thinking about the men in the car, and Milla and Sawyer, and Rattler. Afternoon faded into evening and I fixed dinner and gave Chub his bath. I toweled him off and dressed him in his pajamas, but it was a little early for him to go to sleep. I knew I ought to read to him, but I was still feeling upset and distracted, so I did something to help me calm down: I visited the words.

I’d found them a few years ago, carved with care into the wall of the closet in the bedroom I shared with Chub. You couldn’t see them unless you actually went inside the closet, and since Gram used to keep it jammed full of junk, I didn’t find them until I got old enough to organize the closet myself. I had taken everything out and was washing the walls one Saturday when I found the words, near the bottom of the wall, carved into the old wood paneling.

CLOVER PRAIRIE

Those two words sparked something inside me, almost like recognition. I wondered what they meant-I imagined a field full of clover, swaying gently in the breeze, the sun shining brightly.

But even as I pictured the scene, I knew it wasn’t right. I traced the words with my finger; someone had taken care, maybe using a penknife or a sharp screwdriver, going over the blocky letters until they were grooved deeply into the wood. I wasn’t the first person to trace them, I could tell. The edges were smooth, without splinters or rough edges.

I returned to the words almost every week. Something happened when I touched them, some small peace entered me, calming my anxiety and my fears.

I let my fingertips drift down the wall until they rested on the baseboard. But something wasn’t right. The piece of baseboard, extending only two feet or so along the left wall of the closet, was loose. It separated slightly from the wall, wobbling under my fingers.

I tried to shove it back, feeling for the nail that had popped out, thinking I’d get a hammer and fix it.

But there was no loose nail. Instead, the bottom came away from the wall, and I realized that it wasn’t nailed at all, only kept in place by the tension between the other walls.

In fact, this board wasn’t mitered like the others. I tugged at it, and it came away in my hands. As I felt along the edge, I realized I’d come upon a hiding place: the paneling had been cut away in the middle, making a little hidey-hole about a foot long and a few inches deep. How had I never noticed this before?

I reached cautiously inside the hole and touched something, and the strange sensation of familiarity got stronger. I knelt down and shined the flashlight into the tiny space. With my cheek pressed to the floor I could see that there was a bundle wrapped in cloth, and papers rolled and tied with a ribbon. I took everything out and spread it on the floor in the room, where the light was better. Chub had crawled up on my bed and was turning the pages of his favorite board book, humming and running his fingers over the pictures; he could entertain himself that way for hours.

I picked up a tarnished metal frame containing a picture of a young, smiling, black-haired woman. It was one of those photos from a long time ago, when they first started printing pictures in color. The colors were all too bright: the yellow of her shirt, the red of her lips. Her hair was done in an old-fashioned style, curled close to her face, but her skin was smooth and unlined and her eyes sparkled as though she had just heard something funny.

I turned the frame over and there was handwriting on the back: Mary 1968 . She didn’t look like anyone I had ever met, but at the same time she was somehow… familiar. I set the frame down and unfolded a piece of fabric that had gone yellow with age.

Inside, a rectangle of white lace had been carefully rolled around a necklace. Hanging from a silver chain was a multi-faceted red stone surrounded by fancy silver scrollwork. It was beautiful and it looked very old.

The rolled pages were delicate, made of a yellowed paper that felt rough to the touch, and covered with rows of flour-ishy writing. The handwriting was faded, and it looked like it had been written with a brush or a fountain pen. I couldn’t read all the words-there were women’s names and dates on one side, and on the other side were a few lines of writing in some language that wasn’t English.

I studied the names. They started with Lucy Hester Tarbell and the year 1868. I read through the names: Sarah Beatrice Tarbell, Rita Joan Tarbell, Helen Davis Tarbell… When I got to the end I sucked in my breath at the final name: Alice Eugenie Tarbell, 1961.

I stared at Gram’s name until I realized what was wrong: if these were birth dates, it meant that she was… forty-nine years old. But that was impossible. Gram was bent and arthritic and had trouble breathing and getting out of a chair. True, she’d never told me her age, but I’d always assumed she was eighty or something, as old as I could imagine.