Dark Coulee (20 page)

W
HEN one of the supervisors came for Jenny in her room in the juvenile detention center and told her that Pit Snyder was there to see her, Jenny was not surprised. She had been expecting him.

She had been in the center for not quite a week. They were trying to get her in to see a counselor, but she was balking. She didn’t want to talk about her father and what he had done to her. Other than that, she was trying to be agreeable and fit in. She went to the gym every day and read a lot. With no Darvocet to mute the world, she was using books to escape.

The only person she liked to talk to was her lawyer. He was a tall and lanky man who treated her like she was smart, and he was on her side. Mr. Byron was pretty sure that he could get a sentence deal, factoring in that she was a juvenile, only fifteen, that her father had killed her mother, that he had molested her and threatened her younger sister, and that at the time he was killed, he was fighting with her brother. He said if they weren’t lucky, she might have to spend a year in juvenile. But he thought there was a good chance that she would be released with counseling and probation. Mrs. Gunderson had decided to stay on for a while and take care of Nora, so she would have a home to go back to.

She went to the mirror in her room and checked her hair. She was wearing it pulled back from her face in a ponytail, and she liked it that way. It kept the strands of hair off her face, and it was tidy. She knew her mother would approve. Her mother had always told her she had a pretty face, that there was no reason to hide it. But the hairstyle made her look plain and simple. Not a bad way to appear. Then people left you alone.

She had been sleeping better in the dormitory than she had slept for years at home, even though it was often noisy. At least she didn’t have to lie awake wondering if her father would decide to come into her room that night.

She patted her hair and followed the guard down to the visiting room.

Pit Snyder sat at a table, and he stood up when she came in. Jenny liked that. It made her feel like an adult. She looked him over. He was wearing a denim workshirt and a clean pair of jeans. On his feet he had Red Wing workboots. She remembered her mom telling her that he was a contractor and he built houses. He dressed the part. Even though he was a short man, he carried himself well. It made him appear important.

He smiled at her, a smile that broke open his face and almost made him handsome. Jenny could see why her mother might have liked him.

“Hi, Jenny,” he said.

“Hi, Mr. Snyder. I thought you might show up.” She sat down opposite him at the table, and he sat down again.

“Sorry I didn’t come sooner,” he said.

Jenny leaned in close to him, even though they were alone in the room, and whispered, “Thanks for helping out Brad and me.”

“Listen, that’s what I came in to talk to you about.”

“Brad and I have already talked. We’re fine with everything the way it is.” Jenny remembered all too clearly the fight at the street dance. She had not been that out of it at the time. Right afterward, she had taken a pill to forget it. She and Brad had run into their father. He had been pretty loaded. He started making comments about Jenny, about what he did with her in bed, then he mentioned Nora. That’s when Brad went ballistic.

“I don’t want you taking the blame for what happened,” Mr. Snyder said.

Jenny was prepared for this. “My father is to blame for what happened. Don’t worry about it.”

Brad had slugged his father, and then Jed turned on him. Jenny was afraid her father would pound Brad until there was nothing left. She pulled out the knife, slashed at her father, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stab him with it. She was too afraid.

“I’m going to turn myself in,” he said.

Jenny looked at Mr. Snyder and shook her head. “No, you’re not.”

Then Mr. Snyder had appeared. He had heard what her father had said about sleeping with her and Nora. She knew this because he told her father to keep his hands off his girls. Jed called him a little prick who couldn’t keep a woman, then turned toward Jenny and grabbed her. Mr. Snyder took the knife from her hands and stabbed her father. Her father had let go of her and dropped to the ground. It had happened so fast. A few seconds of time, and everything had changed. No, she would never forget it.

“Don’t even think about it. Brad and I have decided that we won’t let you. We both agreed that I will say I did it. After all, it was my knife. If I hadn’t been trying to kill him, you would never have done it.”

“It doesn’t feel right to me.”

“Have you talked to the lawyer, Mr. Byron? You hired him; I assume you talk to him. He thinks I’m going to get off easy. So don’t sweat it. Just tell me why you did it. Why did you step in like that?”

Pit tilted back in his chair. “Because of what he was saying to you. I couldn’t stand it. The idea of him molesting you.”

“But why do you care so much?” Jenny wanted to know. She felt like this man had a connection to her life that she had never understoood.

“Where to start? Did you know that your mom and I went out together in high school?”

“Yes, she told me.”

Pit’s face lit up. “She did?”

“Oh, yeah. She would kind of brag about you.”

“Really? Oh, that’s nice. Then you probably know that after I went off to Vietnam, she married your father.”

Jenny nodded. She wondered where he was going with this story.

“After Brad was born, your parents had some problems. Your father could be cruel to your mother sometimes. And I wasn’t married at the time. Rainey came to me and told me how bad things were. And, well, we started seeing each other again for a while.”

“You did?” Jenny was surprised by this information. Her mother hadn’t mentioned this. “You mean like you were sleeping together?”

“Yeah—it was all my fault. Your mother was in a vulnerable position, and I took advantage of her. I should have tried to help her out more, but I loved her.”

“I’m glad. I’m glad Mom got some more time with you. It probably was good for her. My dad could be a real prick.”

“Yeah, well, I hope it was good for her. But then she went back to your father. And you were born not too long after.”

Jenny didn’t say anything. She was watching Mr. Snyder. He seemed very uncomfortable. He wouldn’t look at her, and he was twisting a piece of paper in his hands. She felt like grabbing it away from him.

“Then I met Ruth and married her. Your mother and I didn’t see each other, except in passing. Until four years ago. Right before your mother died. She called me and asked me to help her. She wanted to get away from your father and take all you kids. And she told me something else.”

Pit stopped again. He was sweating. Obviously, this was hard for him. Jenny was getting very puzzled. What was he talking about?

“She told me something that I didn’t know what to do with, but I feel I need to tell you.”

“What?” Jenny felt like screaming at him, but she asked it as quietly and politely as she could.

“It looks like I’m your father.”

Jenny stood up. Her chair fell over backward. She turned away from Pit Snyder. She had to think. Her father wasn’t her father. The world was spinning around in a way she had never thought it would. What had been up was down. Left danced with right. Brad and Nora’s father was not her father. She felt released. She could take more steps away from that man. It would be okay to hate him. She could love him a little less and hate him a little more.

Jenny turned around. “My father?”

Snyder nodded. His eyes were squinted into thin lines. “What do you think?” he asked, his voice breaking.

Jenny couldn’t help it. She had to ask him. “What do you think?”

He spoke without taking a moment to think about it. “I’m absolutely thrilled. I’ve always wanted a daughter.”

Jenny looked at this short, pudgy man and wondered what they might find to talk about or what they might do together.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I always believed I had a real father somewhere.”

The quilt hung on the wall in the living room. Ruth said that her grandmother had done it. Claire couldn’t believe how lovely it was—a creamy white with the smallest stitches imaginable, a floral design all around the edges and a checkerboard in the middle. Some parts of the quilt looked padded. She reached out a finger and touched it. What a treasure.

“I’ll never be able to make a quilt like that.”

“Well, certainly not right away. It’s good to start small,” Ruth said as she showed Claire another quilt. “This is the first quilt I ever did. That was about fifteen years ago. Even though it’s small, it was fairly ambitious with the appliqués.”

Claire held up the quilt. A white background with two kittens in the middle and pussy willows sewn around the border. “It’s so sweet.”

“I thought I might use it as a crib blanket. Then, after I married Pit, I found out I couldn’t have children.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Claire looked at the stitches on the quilt. “Your stitches are so even.”

“Thanks—on that piece they weren’t very small. There’s about five stitches an inch. Now I can do closer to ten. I do all of my piecing on the machine, but I hand-stitch all the parts that will show. Have you done anything like this before?”

“I embroidered when I was in high school, especially my last year, when I was doing a lot of baby-sitting. It was in style. Workshirts with embroidered collars. I like to hand sew.” Claire remembered that year well; she had given everyone in her family embroidered shirts for Christmas.

Ruth led her back to the sewing room. “Would you like to try to do some stitching on the piece I’m working on?”

Claire loved the room they walked into: three large windows looking out over the backyard and a small pond, one whole wall of shelves full of material in all colors and patterns, a large table to work on, and a sewing machine on the opposite wall. A large overstuffed chair had a quilt curled up in it. Ruth held the quilt out to Claire.

“Are you sure?”

“Why not? I can use all the help I can get.”

Ruth showed her how to put the piece in a quilting hoop and how to hold it in her lap. Then she threaded the thin needle for her and gave her a demonstration of how to move the needle quickly in and out of the fabric. She would pile up about four stitches on the needle, then push it through, then do it again.

Ruth handed it to Claire, and Claire tried to follow her example. She could only get a couple stitches on the needle before she needed to push it through the fabric. Her stitches were more than twice as long as Ruth’s.

“This is harder than it looks.”

“You’ll catch on. You have the basics down. I’ve taught women who have never held a needle in their hand before.”

Claire tried it a little longer and then handed it back to Ruth. Ruth started stitching away on the quilt, and Claire loved watching the easy rhythm of her hands.

“What’s going to happen to Jenny?” Ruth asked.

“It’s not completely clear yet. But they are still working on the deal. I have a feeling that she won’t do much more time at the juvenile center than she’s already done. The elements of the case are all in her favor: her age, the abuse, the threats. I just hope the kid gets some help.

“Good.”

“It’s been really nice to Pit of hire a lawyer for her.”

“Well, I think Pit feels he has a kind of responsibility to the kids, because of his relationship with their mother. There’s a chance that Pit and I will become foster parents for Jenny and Nora. Brad’s going to be leaving in the spring. I think he’s pretty sure he’s going to enlist in the army and get some training. Pit went and helped him harvest the rest of the sunflowers. They talked.” Ruth put her quilt down and looked at Claire. “I think he wants to get away from here.”

“Yeah, I don’t blame him.”

“Do you think Jenny will be able to get over what happened to her?”

Claire thought about the thin teenage girl who had stood up to her father in the most brutal of ways. “She won’t get over it, but maybe she’ll come through it.”

A few weeks after Jenny Spitzler was arrested for murdering her father, Rich got a call from Claire. She mentioned that Meg had gone to stay with her aunt Bridget for the weekend and wondered what he was doing that night.

“Would you like to come over?” she asked.

He was surprised to find he wasn’t sure. He had fallen in love with Claire, but now he wasn’t sure she was someone he could trust with that love.

“Rich?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Are you thinking about it?”

“I am, as a matter of fact.” Questions roiled around in his head, and finally he asked, “Did you think I would just wait for you?”

“I hoped.”

He softened. “I suppose I could come for a drink.”

“We can see what happens, right?”

“We can see.”

After he was finished with all his nightly chores, Rich showered and shaved and put on clean clothes. He decided to walk over. It was only half a mile’s walk, and that way the neighbors would see no car in the driveway.

Night was falling quickly, and by the time he was close to her house, he was walking in darkness. The stars were blurred spots in the sky. The wind blew through the trees and rattled leaves.

When Claire answered the door, he saw that she had her hair down and was wearing a pretty soft blue sweater and jeans. He wanted to gather her up in his arms, but he resisted.

“Come on in,” she said. “I made an apple pie, and I thought hot rum toddies might go good with that.”

“You made an apple pie?”

“I got State Fair apples from the orchard on my way home. They’re an early apple.”

“I know.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot you’re misto I-know-everything-about-the-country man.” She moved in close to him and poked him in the side.

“You don’t get to poke me.”

“Why not?”

“Because we haven’t made up yet.”

“Whose fault is that? I’ve declared a truce. Invited you over, made pie, and you won’t even give me a kiss.”

Accepting the challenge, he pulled her close and kissed her. He could swear he tasted nutmeg on her lips. She must have sampled the pie.