Mary White - The Qualities of Wood

‘It’s cold in the morning,’ Nowell said. ‘There’s no sun back here. I wish you’d leave the windows alone.’

‘I opened them in the afternoon, when it was warm.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘It’s your room.’ She perched on the edge of his desk. ‘I’m going to head into town now. I’m going to the newspaper office and having lunch with Katherine. She called earlier.’

He moved some papers to the side. ‘Are you sure you’re comfortable driving the truck?’

‘I think so.’

The night before, he adjusted the seat and brought a pillow from the house for her to sit on. It seemed demeaning to her, like a booster seat for a child, but she was determined to drive the thing.

She climbed into the cabin as effortlessly as possible given its height, started the truck, and backed it slowly down the driveway. As she turned onto the road, she glanced up at the house, looking for Nowell in the windows. She felt sure he was watching, to see how she’d do.

Vivian had no trouble driving to town and finding the newspaper office. The Sentinel was tucked between two squat office buildings, its white-painted brick façade standing stubbornly between the modern structures. She walked through the double doors at the front and a bell tied to the doorknob jangled, reminding her of Christmas. The woman at the desk looked up and smiled. Above her, a wooden placard that said ‘Customer Service’ hung from the ceiling under two thick cables. She had a double chin that protruded underneath her first chin. Bulbous and jiggling, it extended down in a rounded curve to the opening of her shirt. ‘Hello there,’ she said.

Vivian tried to focus instead on her eyes, which were dull green but friendly. ‘My husband and I just moved here,’ she said, ‘and we’d like to receive the newspaper.’

‘Surely.’ She took a sheet of paper from a plastic tray at the side of the counter. ‘Just fill out this form.’

Vivian set her purse on the counter. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but could I borrow a pen?’

‘Surely. Take mine and I’ll fetch another one.’ The woman made slow movements to disembark her chair, which was a high, backless stool pushed up close to the counter. She turned to the side and scooted forward a little, then straightened her torso so that her rear slid over the edge of the seat. Finally, she landed with a grunt on the floor, her neck shaking up and down.

‘There are three different kinds of subscriptions,’ she explained when she came back with the pen. ‘There’s every day service, which includes every day of the week except Tuesday and Thursday. We don’t print those days. So the ‘every day’ title really means every day we print. Then there’s Monday, Friday, and Sunday service. Basically that excludes Wednesday and Saturday. Then there’s Sunday only service.’

‘I’ll take the second one.’ As the woman checked the paperwork, Vivian looked around the office. Behind the counter, two desks sat side by side, each cluttered with papers. A doorway at the back of the reception area opened to a larger room. Two people were working in that section. A man leaned on the corner of a desk, talking to a woman and smoking.

‘I see you’re out on the main road,’ the woman said.

Vivian looked back to her milky green eyes and nodded.

She lowered her voice. ‘Did you hear about the girl they found out there?’

Vivian answered in her normal speaking voice. ‘Yes. She was found near our house.’

The woman’s eyes widened and as she lowered her head, her neck creased into white and pink bands. ‘Right near your place, you say?’

‘Practically our backyard.’

‘Goodness! How terrifying for you!’

Vivian didn’t like her conspiratorial tone or the way she had lowered her voice.

‘You poor thing,’ the woman continued. ‘Your husband’s out there with you?’

‘Well, yes. Why?’

She looked at Vivian curiously. ‘For protection.’

‘The sheriff seems to think it was an accident.’

‘That’s not what I heard.’ At once, the woman changed her posture, straightening her back. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Well, I can’t…’

Vivian leaned forward. ‘What did you hear?’

The woman contemplated for a moment then squinted, her eyes catlike. ‘I heard it’s not a foregone conclusion.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They say the girl fell, right?’

Vivian nodded.

‘And hit her head on the rock?’

‘Yes.’

The woman paused, puckering her lips. ‘Say you’re running and you trip on something and fall. Where would your hands be?’

‘My hands?’

‘You’re running and your feet hit something and you fall forward.’

‘I don’t know.’

The woman shook her head irritably, then glanced over her shoulder again. ‘Your hands would be up, near your chest or your face, depending how far they got.’ She demonstrated. ‘You would try to break the fall, by instinct. That’s why kids on roller-skates are supposed to wear those wrist things, because they break their wrists more than anything else.’

‘So?’

‘Chanelle Brodie’s hands were at her side, like this.’

Vivian peered over the counter to see the woman’s arms, pressed to her sides like a soldier at attention.

‘Weird, isn’t it?’ the woman said.

‘I guess.’

‘Like an execution,’ she almost hissed.

They concluded their business and Vivian thanked the woman. Outside, the morning brightness was a shock. She locked the truck and started down the street toward the restaurant Katherine had suggested, thinking about the conversation with the woman at The Sentinel. What she had said about instinct seemed reasonable. Small children often fell on their faces, cutting their lips open or bruising their cheeks, but after a certain age, injuries happened more to limbs. Older children scraped their knees and elbows, broke arms and fingers. It seemed logical that if a seventeen-year-old girl had fallen in the woods, her hands would have gone up to break her fall.

Vivian passed a toy store and a women’s clothing boutique. The streets were quiet for mid-morning, most businesses still closed. She lowered her sunglasses to read the sign on the door of a flower shop: Open weekdays at eleven. Most of the places were the same. She was meeting Katherine at eleven-thirty, and still had an hour to kill. She reached the plaza with the statue of William Clement, sat on a red-painted bench, and opened her complimentary copy of The Sentinel.

There were two articles about Chanelle Brodie, the first one on the front page: Local Girl, 17, Found Dead. The article was short, just covering the most basic facts; that the body was found face down, on a large rock, and that the death was believed to be an accident. More information would follow after an autopsy, it said. The other article, buried on page six, talked about an impromptu memorial service that took place at Chanelle’s high school. The entire fence surrounding the football field was threaded with flowers. The formal services would be held in a few days.

She wondered again what Chanelle had been doing in the woods behind their property. Vivian thought about a small box she buried in her backyard when she was young. The box contained mementos: notes she had received from a boy, a plastic multi-colored bracelet, a picture of her mother as a teenager. Between the gnarled roots of an old, dried-up tree, she dug a hole and covered the box with a thin layer of dirt. She thought: Maybe Chanelle had a hiding place in the woods; that would explain why she went there alone. Then again, maybe she did most things by herself, being an only child. Vivian could relate to that.

‘Hey there!’