Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

“Why don’t you ask Lee? He tells you everything. Me, I can only guess.” She took my hands. Hers were hot and small and nothing like I’d thought. “Just tell me,” she said. Her eyes turned dark. “Is she all right?”

“She’s fine.”

Agnes let out a breath. Biting her lip, she started off.

“What about you?” I called out. “You ever think of leaving this place?”

“What for?” she shouted. “It’s not like anyone gets anywhere.” Before she was too far, she turned again. “By the way, Father’s asking for you. ‘She’s come back.’ That’s what he’s saying.”

“He means Myrle.”

“No, he means you.”

Lee had his fire going in the smithy. He waited in the doorway across the yard. By the time I walked in, Lee was cross-legged on the floor, his head against the wall. I could have curled into his lap, fallen asleep right there and never talked about Myrle.

“Did I see you?” he asked. “In Chicago?”

I sat next to him, tucking in my skirts. “Don’t you remember?”

He shrugged.

“You never should have been there, you know.”

Lee stayed quiet.

“Agnes told me about the gun.”

“Yeah?”

“What’d you do, Lee? You and Ray. It was the both of you, wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t the both of us anything. The man was drinking.”

“Who?”

“Tom Elliot.”

“Tom is dead.”

Lee’s feet twitched. He closed his eyes. “We paid him a visit. A couple of days after they found her, after the deputy came. He and Old Elliot were sitting at the kitchen table, as if nothing had happened.”

“Tom’s wife?”

“Gone, I guess. Took the baby with her, what with Tom acting like he was. Heard she was scared.” Lee wiped his mouth. “They weren’t saying anything, just opened the door. Old Elliot laid out four cups. It was Ray who did the talking.”

I could imagine them in that kitchen, though I knew I was remembering wrong. I hadn’t been any taller than a table the last I’d seen it. Doilies on the chairs, knickknacks and flowers. That’s when Mrs. Elliot was alive. But the way I saw it now, those doilies were dust. The knickknacks had cracked, the place running with dogs. And there were my brothers, kicking their legs like boys, the cups bigger than their fists by twice. As if everything in that place was too large.

“Crop rotations.” Lee pinched the skin on his arm. “That’s what Ray was talking about.”

“Why?”

He shrugged again. “Using corn for a spell, then oats. ‘Taking out one thing to save another.’ Ray was always going on about that. After the bottle was empty, we took our hats to go. Even me, I’d had a few cups. Can’t say I wasn’t some dizzy with it.”

“That all?”

“Ray insisted it was an accident. He was particular about that part.”

“What was an accident?”

Lee frowned. I picked at a loose thread in my lap like it didn’t make any difference what he said. Though it did. It made plenty.

“It wasn’t any cold,” he said at last. “Not after the thaw. But Ray walked home fast, and he rubbed his hands together like he was freezing. I couldn’t figure that. ‘Don’t you worry about it now,’ Ray said. Then he threw an arm over my shoulder.” Lee shook his head, but I knew what he was thinking. It’d been years since Ray had done anything like that.

“It wasn’t until the next day I figured the gun,” Lee said. “I don’t know why I left it. Ray said I’d brought it to show the Elliots, the gun being new and all. But I don’t remember thinking it needed showing. The next day, that’s when they told us about Tom.”

“Ray,” I swore. In the loft in the barn, that’s what I saw. A gun out of nowhere. One good hand on the trigger, the other good for nothing much. Or maybe Ray didn’t have to go that far. Maybe the Elliot boy just needed a little talking to. Crop rotations, sure. Taking one thing out to save another, though Ray likely said a lot more at the table with Lee forgetful and Old Elliot near to deaf. Tom was the only one he needed to hear it. Then a cocked and loaded gun left in the right spot. On the counter, by the door. Even on Tom’s bed. A plain enough message to get Tom thinking he didn’t have a choice, Old Elliot too deep in his cups to notice. And what did Tom have left? The wife gone. The farm a wreck. The loft, it was the perfect place. The kind to split a girl in half. That’s why he’d pick it. A shot like that, it would’ve sent the animals bucking in their stalls. After he pulled the trigger, I imagined Tom breathing a skip or two. I could even hear it, the way it stuttered out of his mouth. A shot that might have sounded all the way to Chicago.

“Maybe Tom deserved it,” I said. “Maybe he really did do something.”

Lee sighed. “That doesn’t forgive much.” He rubbed at his eyes, as if they hurt him. “My head was some sore the next day, I know that. ‘You don’t remember,’ Ray said. And it was true. Cups or no, these days I don’t remember lots. An eye for an eye. That’s what Ray said. And the deputy didn’t seem to care much.”

Lee’s cheeks had gone pale as the wall. The fire, it was only coals. My brother was still the one who saved spiders. In the war, I don’t think he even aimed his gun. Agnes was right. If Lee found out where Myrle was, found out his gun had taken a life for something less, even if he hadn’t aimed the thing himself, it just might kill him on the spot.

“So you’re back,” he said.

“Maybe.” I took off his hat, sat it on my head. “Ray and you, you buddies now?”

He smiled. “It’s been a long time.”

Without the fire, it was cold, but next to me Lee was a furnace. I pulled his arm around me and he drew me close. Outside, the cicadas thrummed, the fields nothing but leaves and crawlers and the river running. If we were quiet enough, we could hear that murmur against the rocks. If we were more than quiet, we could hear our own worries, his and mine.

Patricia peeked in Father’s door. “He’s asleep. We should wait.” She was more than fat, her cheeks drooping like an old cake. The woman hadn’t looked at me yet, not square in the face.

“Patricia,” Nan scolded.

“All right. All right.” Patricia opened the door.

Nan pushed at my shoulders to follow, but she stayed in the doorway herself. Patricia leaned over the bed. “He’s such a sleeper these days. Ever since they found your sister.” She clicked her tongue. “One day Lee caught him sitting on a wash bucket in the smokehouse with his eyes closed. You know what he had in his hands? A chick. Hadn’t lived long enough to even grow fuzz. Your father almost froze out there.” She busied herself straightening the sheets. “Oh, now, here he is.”

A noise from the bed. Father blinked at me and blinked again. “ Wo ist die andere ?”

“It’s Esther.”

“Poor dear,” Patricia said. “He must not know if he’s here or there.”

Father raised himself on his elbows. Patricia pinched my arm.

“ Ah, Esther ,” he said, wrapping his hand around my wrist. He held it to his chest and his eyes brimmed. “ Du bist zu mir zurückgekommen, sie aber nicht. Jetzt geh’nie weg von hier .”

“What’s he saying?” I asked.

“I haven’t the faintest.”

“You returned to him.” This was Nan from the door. She looked in with her hand on her stomach, the way it always was now. “The other one didn’t. Myrle, he means.” She stopped, raised her eyes to mine. “But you, he’s saying, you’ll never go away from here again.”

“I’ll be,” Patricia said. “He’s sicker than I thought.”

Never . The sound of it rung in my ears, no matter what Patricia said. Now she meant me when he said it, not the other girl , and that was something. Something grand. I thought of Myrle’s fingers through the crack in the door, how with a touch they’d almost burned. We’d stayed like that until the whistles from the factories went, far off. I’ll be back , I’d told her, I promise . And she’d only said, When? Myrle had never asked to come home. Those fingers of hers weren’t anything like I knew anymore. That’s what Chicago does to a girl, wringing you out until you become someone else. Maybe Myrle really was drowned, if that’s what she wanted, to sink deep in the place where she had Charlotte and Keyes and I had only pinpricks. Maybe that’s what the Elliot boy had done to her from the start.