Finding Esme Page 15

  “You know if you leave again, she won’t forgive you. Not this time. Every time you go, she disappears a little more. There’s not much left. You can’t see it, ’cause you don’t see anything. You will lose her if you leave again.”

  “Wow,” he said. “When did my little baby girl grow up?”

  “While you were gone,” I said. “And I was never your little baby.”

  “No, you weren’t.” He laughed. “You were always grown-up even if you came so early, and I’m sorry if somehow I made you that way.”

  “Wow. That’s profound. I didn’t think you were ever sorry for anything you’ve ever done in your life.”

  He looked away. “I’m a wanderer, Esme, that’s all it is.”

  “That’s not a good enough answer and you know it.”

  Somewhere in the distance Sugar Pie neighed, as though telling me to stop.

  “Maybe I’ll work on stayer longer this time,” he said.

  “Well, you just go on and do that, while you’re here for all of one minute,” I said sarcastically, knowing that he’d never do it, ’cause he never followed through on any of his promises, none of them, big or small.

  “I envy him.” For just a millisecond I thought he meant the professor, “Bobo,” he added. “Envy his carefree view of life. And you, Esme, you take it too deeply, always have.”

  “I’m only twelve years old, Harlan,” I said. I’m still a child and I need you.

  He turned to leave.

  “Why leave us? What do you do while you’re gone?”

  “I travel, see the world. I paint,” he said. “And I breathe. It’s as simple as that.”

  “So you can’t breathe when you’re with us?” And I thought to myself, it was true, he’d always been holding his breath when he was with us, while June Rain seemed to be slowly letting hers out.

  “It’s not you; it’s not any of you. This is about me,” he said in the darkness.

  It’s always been just about you. It always has. And none of us.

  “So just how did you lose your rainbow boots? Bo’s really sad about that, if you hadn’t noticed.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Someone I was traveling with for a few months, a man named Wilson Henry, bet me twenty bucks I couldn’t name the fifty-one states. I lost the bet and he got the boots. We parted ways not long after that. Said he was going to go find his kin.”

  “There’s fifty states,” I mumbled, feeling sick that Harlan might have led this man to us, to his death, even if he didn’t know it.

  “I guess that’s why I lost.”

  “And did he ever see your paintings, this man?”

  “Why, sure he did,” Harlan said, taking a puff. “He said my June Rain was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen and I was the luckiest man in the world. Said I should go home to her. And I thought perhaps I would. Why all these questions, Esme? Does it really matter what I do when I’m gone? Can’t you forgive your daddy?”

  He was still waiting for my answer, staring at me, but I couldn’t say it out loud. The words burned on my lips. Because you didn’t come home right away when you knew Paps had died, when you knew we’d all be hurting, and needed you. You still didn’t come home, not until you found out about the dinosaur bones. And some fragile cord, tiny and tender, that had connected us, father and daughter, snapped, and I thought perhaps I might die at that very second. He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it before walking away. I stifled a sob.

  I realized then I wasn’t alone. The professor was there behind me, leaning against his car. He’d been watching, too. “You okay, Esme?” he asked quietly, his face hidden under his hat.

  “Uh-huh,” I answered, swiping a tear. Thank goodness it was dark.

  “I’m leaving in the morning. I’ll be back in a few days,” he said as he opened his car door. “We’ll continue. Lots of work ahead of us. Lots to learn.” He paused a moment as though he was going to say more, but then got in his car and drove on down the drive.

  Chapter 19

  Bee always said our sorrows were linked together one after another. But I didn’t believe that anymore. I think God mixed our joys and sorrows together in the sweet far in-between, where they hid from us like shy ghosts, just beyond our reach.

  The next morning, laying in my cocoon bed, I thought about how the professor was leaving us for a few days. He said he would be back, and unlike Harlan, I believed him. He’d be back, and he’d take Louella Goodbones away eventually. But it was okay. She was meant to be taken away from here so we could all stay.

  I looked out the window and saw Harlan carrying a paint box and a small canvas. He headed toward the woods, and I guessed he was on his way to his cabin.

  I was turning away from the window when I realized I could hear the low hum of another car. I could feel it in my toes. It wasn’t good, whatever it was, this car. It wasn’t good. I leaned out the window for a better look and saw it was Mr. Galloway’s shiny Cadillac.

  Bee must’ve sensed it, too, ’cause, she flew into the yard just as he was getting out.

  “I’m sure you heard the news about Esme’s dinosaur,” she said. “We’ll have the money soon, Mr. Galloway. More than enough.”

  There was a strange pleading in her voice, like she knew another sorrow was coming down to us.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. McCauley,” Mr. Galloway said, handing her a stack of papers. “Homer had mortgaged the farm, yes, but what I hadn’t remembered until I went back through the papers yesterday is that someone had sold the deed to that hill many, many years ago.”

  Sold the hill. The words sunk down deep in me, like anchors, and I closed my eyes, reeling.

  Bee took the papers but didn’t read them. “What kind of damnation trick is this?” she hollered.

  “It all came back to me yesterday. Over thirty years ago you came in, Bee, said you needed fifty dollars in gold coins, wanted to sell ‘that damn blasted hill,’ I believe were your words.”

  They both glared at each other as the morning cicadas droned around them.

  Sold the hill. Bee had sold the hill. I sank down to my knees, my head resting on the windowsill, barely listening.

  “Well, spit it out then,” Bee said wearily. The fight seemed to have gone out of her. “What is it you’ve come to say?”

  “The bank owns the rights to the dinosaur, Bee,” he said quietly, even a little sadly.

  Bo joined me. He knelt down and rested his head on one of my knees, patting the other over and over as I strained to hear. I poked my head up again.

  “We’ll fight this,” Bee finally said, her head bobbing, as though she were about to cry. “You’re taking advantage of a little girl. Taking away her dreams, the one triumph of her life. You don’t know what she’s been through. What we’ve all been through. Everyone will stand behind her. Your bank will be vilified.”

  Mr. Galloway cleared his throat. “Everyone knows what you’ve been through,” he said. “But you don’t have the money to fight the bank, Bee, plain and simple.”

  She thrust those papers at him, but he wouldn’t take them. He backed away, back into his shiny car, and drove off.

  Finally Bee’s fingers uncurled and the papers scattered around her.

  I grabbed his plastic soldiers, which he’d left in my bed, and told Bo to go play in his room. I tiptoed past June Rain’s room, then downstairs and out the back door. At the top of Solace Hill, I crawled under the tractor once more.

  “Good-bye, Louella Goodbones,” I said softly. Good-bye.

  She really wasn’t mine anymore, if she’d ever been. Bump hopped across my chest, then down to Louella Goodbones’s crest. He hopped on over her and continued down the hill.

  I found Bee sitting on the back steps, by the screen door, her face stricken. “What is it?” I asked. “Why was Paps on that hill that day with the tractor and what does it have to do with Harlan when he was a baby? And did you really sell Solace Hill? What’s it all got to do with the other?”

  She s
wallowed and looked down. “Sometimes, like I told you, something willows its way up whether you want it or not—a spirit, a ghost, whatever it is, it comes to show you something that you must know.”

  I sat down next to her and looked off into the distance toward Solace Hill.

  “When Harlan was a baby,” she continued, “a ghost would come every night, take him from his crib and walk him up Solace Hill, and then promptly at midnight bring him back down and put him back in his crib. Homer never knew, slept through it all with that loud-as-a-train snore.” Shivers went up my arms. “I’d watch that ghost light go up and down, up and down every night, afraid my baby would die out there in the cold. But there was nothing to do. I was powerless.”

  “And what was Harlan’s ghost trying to tell you, Bee?”

  “That my child was not meant to be with us, that he was a wanderer, meant to wander the earth. I begged for anything, anything to make the ghost leave, to leave my baby alone. And the ghost told me that if I buried a box of gold coins, it would leave for good. So I sold the hill, put the coins in the box, and buried it. And the ghost left. For good. And Harlan’s been leaving us just like the ghost said.” She stifled a sob.

  Harlan’s been leaving us just like the ghost said.

  “And then Paps found the bill of sale for the hill,” she continued. “Took him about a week before he got the whole story out of me. He didn’t believe the part about the ghost but believed me about the box of coins. That’s what he was doing, Esme, trying to dig up the box to save the farm; those gold coins would be worth a fortune now. And maybe he thought by bringing it up, he’d bring Harlan home, too.”

  “But I found the box, Bee, and there was only one coin in it.”

  “When Homer drove up that hill, I didn’t know it’d been cleaned out.” She shook her head, confused. “Only thing I can think of is Harlan. I told him the story years back; I felt he needed to know he was born that way, a wanderer. And that he couldn’t help it.”

  “Well, what’d he do with the money?” I asked after a moment.

  “Probably paid off some gambling debt, who knows.” She snorted.

  Harlan. He could have helped to save the farm, way back before it had gotten so bad. Way before Paps drove his tractor up the hill.

  Bee put her head in her hands and started to cry. And knowing that even Bee didn’t know what to do made me feel a tenderness toward her that I thought I’d never feel in a gazillion years. I heard the soft tinkling of Jewell’s bell behind us through the screen door and knew June Rain was listening.

  Bo was playing outside with a stick, Old Jack chasing after him, later that afternoon. Harlan’s truck was still in the drive. I figured he was off in the woods painting, oblivious to everything going on back here. Sweetmaw was in the kitchen sipping coffee with Bee, both silent, those papers laid out in front of them across the table. I thought of Professor T. and his patient hands showing me how to work on the bones. He was probably already on the road back to Dallas, but I could still feel him here with us, with Louella Goodbones. He’d be back; I knew he would.

  “I’m real sorry, honey,” Sweetmaw said to me as I plopped down at the table. “I made some calls; it appears the bank does own the hill.”

  I looked at the two of them, those sisters who’d been held apart for so many years. Now united over all our sorrows.

  I caught eyes with June Rain as she drifted by with the coffeepot. She briefly laid the tips of her fingers on my shoulder, and a tender shiver went up my back.

  We all seemed to notice the shadow in the screen door at the same time. Harlan stood there. June Rain set the coffeepot down and stood on the other side of the door. She lifted her hand for just a second, and he stood still as a statue, with a sadness that seemed to say I can’t help it, I can’t help it.

  Later I went upstairs and found June Rain sobbing in her bed. I crawled under the covers with her, rolled up to her, and laid my head on her shoulder as she continued to sob.

  After a while she said, “You were so small. They told me you weren’t going to make it. I couldn’t risk losing you, too, that’s all. Bee saved you, made sure you lived, but by then my heart had already broken.”

  Maybe I no longer needed to worry about the suitcase.

  In the middle of the night, Bo had joined us, and at some point curled up under her arm like a doodlebug.

  I whispered to June Rain, “Did you know him? Wilson Henry? Was he your Uncle Hen?”

  For a long time she lay quiet. “That was his name, yes. I think it must have been him. Come to find me, somehow, some way. He wasn’t a good man, Esme. And my family was not good either.”

  Bo started to stir. When I opened my mouth to ask another question, she put her finger on my lips to quiet me. Then later, in the early morning dawn, I crept out of June Rain’s bed. I pulled the covers up and over her and Bo and went downstairs. As I was tiptoeing down the back hallway, I saw Harlan standing in the doorway of Paps’s room. I stood there watching him. I saw sadness perched there in his eyes. Bee says sometimes our regrets are squashed down so deep we don’t know them anymore. Harlan walked past and handed me something, then went on down the hallway. A moment later, I heard the screen door slam. I waited a few seconds before looking down. It was the photo of June Rain in the prairie dress. I guess Bee had given it back to him, so he’d see his regrets. I went out the back door, got on my bicycle, and rode toward town.

  And then a couple of weeks later, in the beginning of July, God proved me wrong and finally gave us a joy, a joy after all those honeycomb sorrows. I was sitting at the table eating a slice of meat loaf that Bee was making me eat because I hadn’t been able to eat dinner. Bee’d been on the phone for a while, wrapping the cord around into the hallway so I couldn’t hear.

  After she hung up, Bee sat down across from me, shaking her head real slow in disbelief. “Seems the will’s been read and Lilah left Miss Opal the land and the house and enough to live on the rest of her life.”

  “That’s great,” I said, but Bee held up her hand.

  “There’s more. She left Finch ten thousand dollars. With the provision that Finch uses it to go to college and his family can’t touch it. She left you a thousand dollars. I guess she figured Finch was going to need it more.”

  I knew that was true.

  “And is there a provision on my money?” I asked, stunned.

  “No, no provision,” Bee said. “You can do what you want.”

  “Is that enough for the farm?”

  “It’s enough to buy back Solace Hill after the dinosaur’s all gone,” Bee said. “If that’s what you’d like.” I opened my mouth to speak but she interrupted me. “There’s more news. Violet Galloway’s been furious with her husband, it seems. Says they have enough money. Hired a lawyer to look into it all. You have finding rights, Esme. You found it straight and square. It would have never been found without you.” And without Paps, and Bee’s gift, and perhaps Harlan after all, or else Paps wouldn’t have been up there in the first place digging. “The bank is going to offer you a nice sum of money. A finding fee.”

  “And will that be enough?” I asked her. “For the rest of the farm?”

  She nodded her head and a warm shiver of relief spread through me. “But don’t you want to go to college?” she said.

  I thought about what I’d asked the professor, about getting all those degrees like him. Of digging in the earth someday, honoring it and loving it like he’d said.

  “We’ll solve that problem when we get there,” I said. “Let’s use it to save the farm, to save us.”

  Chapter 20

  Bee always said life was about leavings and comings, but I think it’s also about those who stay. Harlan painted up a storm of “ain’t-no-picture” paintings the rest of that summer that were strangely absent of June Rain, then one day he left. I was picking the last of the peaches when he rolled his truck to a stop nearby. His arm rested on the open window, his fingers tapping to the beat of “Raindrops Keep
Fallin’ on My Head” blaring from the radio. It was all over between him and June Rain. But I knew that wasn’t why he was leaving. He’d been leaving us forever, since that ghost took him up and down Solace Hill.

  “Bye, Esme,” he said, giving me a little salute like handsome men do in the movies when they’re going off to war. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t grow up too much this time.”

  I wanted to ask him what he’d done with the buried coins, but it didn’t matter now. He waited a moment more, perhaps for me to say something. Then flicked a cigarette butt out the window, and gunned the motor, and drove away. I watched till he was out of sight, not knowing if I felt anything at all about him anymore. I looked at the fading cigarette ember, then stepped on it, extinguishing it.

  I put the peaches in a basket, then started for the house. Old Jack joined me in the early morning chill, whining and licking my hands. Then he ran off and I followed him till we reached the bottom of Solace Hill. This small bump of a mountain that had held so many secrets for millions of years, then finally released them to the world. It was so empty now.

  The professor’s crew had to remove Paps’s tractor to take Louella Goodbones away. Bee said I could keep it, so we put it in front of the fence to block where Lilah’s geese always get out, and so we could see it every time we pulled up the drive. Bee said we could decorate it with hay bales and pumpkins and at Christmastime drape a strand of twinkle lights on it.

  The professor had come and gone all summer, even after school started in September, working with his crew, me quietly by his side, handing him tools. Bee invited everyone in for dinner at night, and I’d sit mesmerized as they told stories of digs in faraway places and mysterious fossils brought up. I peppered them all with a thousand questions as Bee went around the table topping off their sweet teas and plopping second helpings on their plates.

  And then one day we watched the crew carefully load the very last bone onto a huge flatbed truck. Professor T. and I stood reverently at the bottom of Solace Hill watching. He held his safari hat at his chest.