Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

Cloninger joined him in the foyer, and inspected a loose coat hook made of antelope antler and tightened it to the one-by-four in which it and several other coat hooks were affixed. The hooks were waist-high and homemade by Cloninger himself for his children.

“You don’t look so hot, Pete.”

Pete grinned again, looked at his shoes, and scratched behind his ear.

“I’ve been better.”

Cloninger asked if it was the drug raid that was on his mind. Getting arrested. It’d been in the little Tenmile paper, talked about on the porches and storefront galleries. His name.

“Oh sure,” Pete said, as if to say his arrest was but one of many things bothering him.

Cloninger clasped his hands together below his belt buckle, as though expecting Pete to say more, but Pete did not.

“We’re getting a few more crazies every year,” Cloninger offered. “But don’t you forget that you’re about the only one who’s up here helping out. The kids especially.”

“You help too.”

“Yeah, well.”

Out the screen door and across the road, the forest was alive with wind, pine limbs waving in all directions like a distressed band of tree people.

“A lot of folks come up here to get away,” Pete said. “I know I did. But most of us just wind up bringing our particular trouble with us.”

Cloninger nodded gravely, even though Pete was trying to joke.

“I’s more talking about guys like that Jeremiah Pearl we had living up there,” Cloninger said, pointing a thumb up the dirt road that ran past his house and toward Fourth of July Creek.

Pete’s mouth fell open. He could kick himself for not asking Cloninger earlier. If things hadn’t gone south with Cecil, if he’d just visited to patch things up—

“You know the Pearls?”

“Oh sure. He and his family’d come down. Supper or to work on his truck or something. We’d run up there from time to time too. Helped roof his house.”

“Fuck.”

Cloninger pursed his mouth. Pete apologized.

“Sorry. I just should’ve asked you sooner,” Pete said. “So you know the whole family.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you have any idea where they are now? The wife and the other kids, I mean.”

“They talked about heading to Alaska after he and his wife were arrested.”

“They told you about that?”

Cloninger laughed.

“It was about the only subject of interest to Jeremiah. But they ain’t up at their place now, are they?”

Pete explained how Benjamin had wandered into a school. Just the boy alone. He told Cloninger how he’d managed to get Pearl to trust him enough to let Pete check on them, but not enough to tell him where the rest of his family was.

“That’s strange,” Cloninger said.

“Why?”

“You don’t think it’s strange?”

“Yes, of course I do. When was the last time you saw them?”

Cloninger gazed up toward the brim of his John Deere cap, trying to remember.

“A couple weeks after he and Sarah had been arrested, I reckon. Pearl brought an elk he poached down to butcher. The whole lot of them come down because our storage freezer had about ten inches of ice built up in it, and Sarah and her kids set what all was in the freezer out on the garage floor and then she put ’em all to work chipping ice out of it.”

Cloninger hit Pete on the shoulder with the back of his fingers, amused at something.

“They even made snow cones. Got some of them paper oil-change funnels I had laying around and chipped ice into ’em and shook a little Kool-Aid from the packet. Presto.”

“And this is when they said they were going to Alaska.”

“Oh, I dunno. That was just something they was liable to say. Maybe it was that time, maybe another.”

Just then there was a noise from the back of the house — a bump, a voice — and Mrs. Cloninger got up from her sewing machine at the kitchen table and went to check on the children.

“Step outside with me a minute?” Pete asked. “I don’t want Katie to know I’m still here.”

Cloninger opened the screen door for them and they went out and crossed the yard to the gate and then through it to where the judge’s car was parked. The American flag whipped in the wind. A thunderstorm was coming on, and a churned gray wave of clouds banked and bunched over the mountains. A tumult of thunder within them grumbled throughout the racing air.

“So when was this?” Pete nearly shouted over the wind. “When you saw them, I mean.”

Cloninger started to take down his flag, the pulley knocking against the flagpole like a bell tone.

“Spring before last. Maybe April. We didn’t hear from them after that. It was probably almost fall when me and the kids drove up to see how they was doing. The place looked cleared out. Everything grown over. No vehicles. The windows all dusted up. The wife, she kept a clean house, so we knew they’d been gone awhile.”

Cloninger unhooked the flag and nodded for Pete to take up the end with the stars. They folded the flag in half lengthwise.

“They didn’t say anything about their plans? What they were going to do about the court case or anything?”

“Fold it in half again.”

Pete did, and then Cloninger took one corner on his end and neatly folded it over.

“They didn’t say they had any plans. It was a good day. The kids played together. Pearl got his elk butchered and put in the freezer and we cooked up some steaks.”

Cloninger folded the flag corner by corner until he arrived at Pete and then took the flag from him and folded it into a tight triangle and tucked it under his arm.

“You might be the last one who saw them before they cleared out,” Pete said.

“I s’pose so.”

Cloninger shifted the flag under his other arm.

“Is there anything you remember about that last visit?”

“Not really.”

“Any fights or discussions—”

“The younger boy, Benjamin, got in a heap of trouble with his mama. He was watching TV with Toby. The Pearls don’t allow TV. No cartoons or nothing. She paddled him and made him sit out here on the fence, and he didn’t get a snow cone. That was about the high drama of the day.”

A limb cracked somewhere in the woods, and the wind sounded all around like a great surf. Cloninger clapped Pete on the shoulder.

“Well, better get out of this before it rains.”

“Sure. Thanks again for taking Katie.”

They shook.

“I should thank you. We’ll keep her. Long as you need. We got her.”

“I’ll check back.”

Pete climbed in the Monte Carlo. Compared to the mess of his own car, the inside of the judge’s vehicle seemed almost naked. Pellets of rain spotted the dusty hood and windshield. Cloninger was now coming back out of the house, jogging toward the drive. Pete started to get out.

“Is Katie asking for me—?”

“Nah,” Cloninger said. “I just remembered something.”

“What’s that?”

“I saw the boy. Benjamin. After the last time.”

“Where?”

“He come down for something. Just him. A cup of sugar, like. But not that. Something for his mama, he said. Some herb or something. Like Epsom salts, but not that.”

“Just him?”

“Yeah. It was honey maybe? Something like that. I’ll have to ask the missus.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Hold on.”

“What?”

Cloninger looked at the churned sky, frowned.

“It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“It’s all right. Call me if you remember.”

Cloninger lit up. The sky cracked open and started to dump on them, pounding on the car, the woods, and Cloninger’s roof and drive.

“Oil!” Cloninger shouted.

“Oil?”

“He said his mama wanted olive oil!”