Tallgrass (32 page)

“Both the sheriff and your dad believed from the beginning that whoever killed Susan went to our farm on purpose,” Helen added.

Mr. Lee put his hand on top of Helen’s wet fingers to quiet them, and she leaned her head against his chest and began to cry.

There wasn’t any trial. Bobby’s lawyer told him that people in Ellis were so angry about Susan’s murder that if he were put on trial, he would get the electric chair; it wouldn’t matter if he’d killed Susan or not. So Bobby confessed and was sent to the penitentiary in Canon City for life.

He said he was driving to Ellis from Denver in the storm, drinking rye whiskey and smoking marijuana cigarettes, when he decided to rob the Reddicks, because he knew that Mr. Reddick kept his money in a drawer of the Hoosier cupboard in the kitchen. Bobby pulled off the hard road, intending just to sneak into the house. He figured nobody’d know he’d even been there until Mr. Reddick went to get his money, and then he’d probably blame his wife or daughter for taking it. He forgot that Susan slept next to the kitchen. When she woke up and saw him, Bobby lost his head and stabbed her. He carried her outside, where he raped her and slit her throat. Then he got into the car and drove back to Denver.

You could almost see the relief in Ellis after Bobby confessed. People said all along they knew it wasn’t any of the Japanese. But nobody was as relieved as Helen. After Bobby was sent to Canon City, Helen married Redhead Joe Lee.

I HADN’T SPOKEN TO
Daisy in a long time, until the day in 1974 when Mom’s heart finally gave out. I called Daisy, who was living in California with her husband and two daughters, to tell her that Mom had died. Daisy, along with Carl, who owned a sugar beet farm in Idaho, came for the funeral. Dad kept the casket closed, since Mom never liked people staring at her, and I spread Buddy’s remembrance quilt and Mrs. Hirano’s embroidery over it, because Mom had prized them both. The church was filled; people were even standing in the aisles. Mom drew a crowd of nearly two hundred. She would have been pleased.

A few of the Stitchers were still around, although death and ill health had decimated their ranks, and younger women like me weren’t interested in quilting. The Stitchers who were left had long ago forgotten the rancor of Tallgrass. Now, they fussed over Vietnam and Nixon and hippies. But they still pulled together in times of trouble, and those who could walk came by the day of the funeral, along with the farm women of my generation. Bringing covered dishes in a time of sorrow was a tradition that never died out. So the kitchen was filled with food, and we invited Carl and Daisy to stay for supper with the family.

Afterward, Dad drove the two of them down to the Tallgrass site, which was now just dirt roads and a few concrete slabs. Yucca and sagebrush had taken over where buildings once stood. “I wouldn’t have recognized it,” Carl said. It struck me that neither Carl nor Daisy was bitter.

Later on, Dad, Carl, Bud, and my husband, Mike, walked out into the fields. Bud had survived the German prison camp and come home, but he’d changed, and he didn’t want to be tied to a place. Since Marthalice, who’d never married, wasn’t interested in returning to Ellis, the place came to me after all. Mike had grown up on a wheat farm in Kansas and loved the rhythm of the growing seasons and the open sweep of the plains as much as I did. We built a house next to the folks’ place, and Mike went to farming with Dad. After about ten years, Dad said, “I reckon one of these times, you might make a beet farmer.” Mike said that was one of the best days of his life.

While Marthalice went inside to box up the Persian lamb coat that Dad had bought Mom after the war, Daisy and I sat in the yard, remembering when the beet workers had once rested under the cottonwoods and pointing to the spots where the pump and the clothesline had stood. “We’ve got a dryer now,” I told her.

“I should hope so,” Daisy said. “I remember how your grandmother used to quilt. Your mom taught me, you know. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

“I haven’t,” I said, and we laughed. Daisy said she still had the baby quilt that Betty Joyce and I had made for her.

“Betty Joyce was at the funeral. She’s married to our doctor. Did you see her?”

Daisy laughed. “If she hadn’t introduced herself to me, I wouldn’t have recognized her. She must weigh twice as much as she did when she was a girl.” Daisy leaned back in her lawn chair and raised her face to the sky. Then she remembered something. “Bea Yamamoto sends you her condolences. Bea’s my neighbor, you know.”

“I’d forgotten all about her.” I chuckled, recalling how just after V-J day, Miss Ord had stopped by our farm, and said, “Do you remember I told you I’d let you in on a secret? That was the day the Elliot girl picked a fight with you.” Her silver eyes sparkled. “Here it is. I’m married to the Yamamotos’ son, Jim. He’s in the army. After his folks were sent to Tallgrass, I took the teacher position in Ellis so that I could watch after them. Of course, I’d have been fired if anybody had found out. Are you surprised?” I was. Nobody had suspected she was even married, let alone the wife of a Japanese man.

When we heard the men coming back to the house, Daisy touched my arm and grew serious. “Your Mom once read me a passage from the Bible about the Lord giving His people a vine out of Egypt. She said it wouldn’t be long before He gave a vine to Amy Elizabeth and me. I thought about that Scripture during the hard times. I couldn’t help but believe it, because your Mom was so sure about it.” A car drove past on the Tallgrass Road. The driver honked, and I waved, although I couldn’t recognize him. Daisy waited until the car had disappeared. “Not a day goes by that I don’t remember your mother, that I don’t think how much I owe her. I want you to know that.”

After Carl and Daisy drove away, Bud went with Mike to do chores while Dad and I sat on the porch of the folks’ house, the way we used to in the old days, after the supper dishes were done, looking down the Tallgrass Road. The road had been widened and paved and now was a four-lane highway. I liked it better when it was dirt.

“Carl and Daisy don’t look that much older, just a little grayer,” Dad said. “I wonder how that happened.”

“How did you get bald?”

He chuckled. “What would I do without you, Squirt?”

“I expect you’d sell the farm and live the life of Riley.”

“Oh, I guess I wouldn’t do that. I’m as much a part of this place as a fence post.”

We were quiet, listening to the evening sounds—the kids’ horses moving around in the corral, a tractor working off near the old Reddick place, the rumble of voices inside, where Marthalice was watching TV. Then I said, “I suppose you know Daisy named her girl Mary, after Mom.”

“Your mother liked that.”

“She owed Mom. She just told me so,” I said.

“That’s about right.”

Dad had always been comfortable with silence, and we moved back and forth in the swing, not talking. After a bit, Dad said, “I was looking at Daisy just now, Squirt. She’s still as strong as a horse, always was, even after that first baby of hers was born—Amy Elizabeth. And you remember how weak your mother was back when she had that heart trouble. She couldn’t hardly heft herself.” He reached into the pencil pocket of his overalls and pulled out a licorice stick, which he handed to me.

I peeled off the cellophane wrapper and bit off a third of the licorice. A truck sped down the road, reminding me of our old truck. Dad had forgotten to put the emergency brake on Red Boy twenty years back, and it had run down a hill and crashed into an arroyo, where he’d left it. Kids played in its rusted-out carcass now. Dad replaced the truck with a new one, but I never felt the same way about Red Boy Junior.

Dad spread out a little on the swing and put his arm on the back of the seat behind me. He chuckled. “I always wondered if that sheriff was fool enough to believe your mother when she said she’d stabbed the Spano boy? Or do you think Hen Watrous knew all along that it was Daisy?”

“I didn’t know that.” I leaned forward and turned to look at Dad. “I never knew for sure whether it was Daisy or Carl. I thought most likely Daisy, because Carl was on the haymow ladder when I went into the barn. But I never was sure.” I smiled at Dad. “You know, it was almost a week before it hit me that Mom wasn’t strong enough to push any beet knife into Danny Spano, that there was no way she could have killed him.”

Dad thought that over, rubbing the back of his hand over his forehead. “Your mother was sorely tested by having to tell that lie. Lying wasn’t part of her nature, any more than killing was. All she ever wanted was to live an ordinary life.”

“Well, she wasn’t an ordinary woman, Dad.” I leaned back in the swing and moved in rhythm with my father. I added, “She was a good woman.”

“By Dan, I reckon she was.” He looked off down the road in the twilight. “An awful good woman.”