The Buried Book (23 page)

CHAPTER 43

Do you still think about killing yourself?

After the house had quieted down and Wayne had come to bed for the night, there was a hard knock at the door. Jasper gave up pretending to sleep and watched the shadow of his uncle pass by the thin curtain.

“Evenin’, Officer. Can I help you?”

Jasper sat up.

“Good evening, Mr. Williams. I’m sorry to trouble you this late.” It was the voice of Detective Russo.

Wayne’s words of warning kicked over a nest of bees in his head.
If anyone comes here lookin’ for you, we’re supposed to tell him you’re not here.

Without making a sound, Jasper climbed out of bed and rolled onto the floor underneath the mattress. His bandaged head banged into the basket Aunt Velma had hidden there for his laundry, but he winced in silence. The bed frame squeaked as Wayne leaned over the edge to look at him down there, but he didn’t breathe a word.

“I had some questions for your brother-in-law, Mr. Wendell Leary. Is that his truck outside?” the detective continued from the front door.

“I believe it is.”

“You mind if I step inside?”

Jasper sipped shallow breaths and willed his heart to stop pounding like a drum, certain the detective could hear it.

“If you’re lookin’ for Wendell, he’s out in the barn. What exactly is this all about, Officer?” Uncle Leo’s voice faded as he stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

Wayne climbed off the bed and watched the two men out the window. He whispered to Jasper on the floor, “Whatdya think he wants?”

Jasper pressed his head to the floorboards and held his tongue, debating whether he had the strength to sneak out the window and find out. Debating whether he even wanted to know.

“Want me to go check it out?”

Before Jasper could answer, a loud crash rang out followed by shouting out in driveway. He scrambled out from under the bed to join his cousin at the window. His father was standing in the driveway in his thermals with a shovel in his hand.

“I don’t give a goddamn about your so-called investigation,” he yelled at the detective. “You boys haul me to jail, harass my family, and now you have the balls to say you need my help! You can go straight to hell!”

The detective backed up toward his unmarked car, with his left hand held out in front of him and his right hand on his gun. He said something neither boy could make out.

“She’s gone, goddammit! And she’s not coming back, you hear? File her under ‘Dead,’ you got me? She’s
dead
. It’s over. Now, if I ever see your face near me or my boy again, I swear to G—”

His father’s voice cut off the minute he saw Jasper’s stricken face in the window.

CHAPTER 44

Thank you for providing your history. Let’s move on. When did the alleged murder take place?

The snow came early that fall. A thick blanket covered the fields for miles in every direction in white silence. The animals stayed in their barn, feeding on the stores of hay and corn. No one spoke of Althea or the fire, burying the hurt as the snow buried the scarred ground. No word came from the world outside the frozen windows of the cabin, but every car that passed by on Harris Road was a reminder she was never coming back.

Every week, his father brought the chessboard to talk about strategy and logic and nothing else.

Every morning, Jasper helped Wayne empty udders and shovel snow. He trudged to and from school. He kept his head down and his mouth shut, knowing they all thought he was crazy. He kept his nightmares to himself, terrified they might be right, swallowing the screams when he’d jolt himself awake.

The cold months blurred together and eventually thawed to spring, but nothing changed.

Until June.

“Jasper?” Uncle Leo sneezed hard.

“Yes, sir?” Jasper stopped raking the hay. It had been nine months since he’d burned his grandmother’s house to the ground, but he was still waiting for his punishment. Every time his uncle raised his voice, Jasper braced himself for a blow.

“You remember your lessons?” He waved at the tractor. Jasper had been practicing driving up and down the tracks to the fields for weeks.

Jasper froze for a minute, recounting each step he’d been taught, then nodded.

“I want you to give it a try. I could use Wayne’s help down here. I want you to keep it in second gear and go real easy on the throttle. This ain’t a race. Understand?”

Jasper nodded and stared blankly at the seat. He knew there was a time he would have killed to drive the tractor. He’d been absolutely green with envy that his older cousin got to sit at the wheel all the time.

“Ain’t nothin’ to it. Clutch. First. Gas. Wayne’s been doin’ it since he was younger than you.”

Jasper just stood there.

“Wayne, why don’t you help ’im start ’er up? Then hop on down here and give me a hand.”

“C’mon, Jas! Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little ol’ John Deere. She can’t even go that fast.”

Wayne started to make chicken sounds to shake the younger boy out of his stupor. Jasper forced a vengeful smile like a normal ten-year-old might give and hopped up onto the curved metal throne and took the wheel. He had to sit at the very lip of the seat molded to fit a giant man’s backside to reach the pedals.

“That’s right.” Wayne nodded. “Push in the clutch. Slide ’er to first. Now give ’er some gas.”

The great green beast roared to life. The two-stroke engine rumbled under Jasper’s seat so loudly he was certain it would shake his teeth loose.

“Okay! Now giv—s—th—s!”

Jasper couldn’t hear a thing over the twenty-five horses churning under his ass, but Wayne was making a turning motion with his hand. Jasper nodded and turned the wheel to reposition the tractor for another run down the field. He gave it some more gas, and the giant machine lurched forward, almost throwing him off the seat. His hand jumped off the throttle, and the tractor jerked to a stop hard enough to make Jasper hit his head on the steering wheel.

“Will you two stopping playin’ around up there?” his uncle bellowed. “Radio’s calling for rain. We got to get this field cut before supper.”

“I don’t know, Pop. Maybe I should do it,” Wayne called back.

“No. Jasper here needs to learn somethin’,” Uncle Leo insisted. His uncle was always trying to find ways to get Jasper engaged in something productive. His aunt and uncle gave him a pained look every time they caught him staring off into space or slumped against a tree. When they thought he couldn’t hear, they’d discuss what should be done about him.

He had to make a bigger effort to laugh and pal around with Wayne. He hated making them worry. He always finished his chores and schoolwork on time, earning top marks in both, but it wasn’t enough to ease their minds. Or his. It would never be enough.

Jasper threw the tractor into gear. The green beast lurched forward again, but this time he was ready for it and held tight to the wheel. The rig slowly swung around and inched its way forward, a bit unsteady but moving nonetheless.

“That’s it,” hollered Uncle Leo. “Now p—her up—econd!”

Jasper nodded and pushed in the giant clutch and slid the lever up a notch. The machine chugged slightly but then continued on a bit more quickly. Wayne slapped him on the shoulder and then hopped off the side. It was just him and the John Deere.

Driving straight was no problem. He just kept one hand on the throttle and one on the wheel. Everything was fine for three hundred yards, but he felt his arms tense as the end of the hay field drew nearer. He eased up on the gas and began to turn the wheel. The tractor ran off course a bit, so he turned the other way, but the corn tufts at the edge of the run were approaching fast. Using both hands, he cranked the wheel over. The tractor made a sharp turn. Too sharp. It began to roll up on one side.

A voice shouted from behind, but he couldn’t make out the words as the tractor tipped. Sheldon’s son had been killed the year before when his tractor rolled.
Never get caught under a tractor, boys.
His uncle’s words had been beaten into his head. And now it was about to happen.

Jasper cut the throttle and climbed up the tipping deck to jump. For a split second he hesitated and willed the tractor to pull him under, but he could feel its momentum shift. Just as he lifted his feet, the giant machine slammed back down on the lifted wheels, launching all seventy pounds of him into the air.

The landing knocked the wind clear out of his lungs. Colors flashed. He could smell smoke. He closed his eyes and was back in the old farmhouse, lying on the floorboards, bleeding. He could hear the horrible grinding of metal on metal.

A pair of boots marched over to him lying there on the attic floor. A gun hung over his head. The point of a boot raised up to kick him. He braced for impact. Somewhere above him, he could hear screaming.

Then he heard laughter.

“That was quite a ride, huh?”

Jasper snapped his eyes open to see his uncle’s boots. Leo reached down and pulled him off the ground. “You alright?”

“I—I think so,” Jasper heard his disoriented voice answer after the air came back to his lungs. He regained his footing, moving each arm and leg cautiously. Nothing seemed broken. His back was sore where he’d landed, but that was about it. He blinked the fog from his eyes and focused on the rows of corn stretching out to the horizon.

“Man! I never seen anybody fly like that before! That was amazing!” Wayne came running up, beaming. “You’re lucky we weren’t pulling the baler!”

“Lucky, my foot. I’d never let a greenhorn driver pull that.” Uncle Leo swatted his son’s head. “Soft ground, light load, it’s just how you learned, boy.”

Wayne chucked Jasper in the arm. “I never got to fly like Superman, though.”

Jasper tried to smile back.

“So now, Jasper.” His uncle grabbed him firmly by the shoulder. “You ever gonna take a turn that fast again?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s what I thought.” His uncle wiped his red nose with the handkerchief. “Now get back up there and drive. Don’t forget to downshift at the turn. I want you taking those slow as molasses in January. Understand?”

Jasper nodded. He climbed back up into the driver’s seat and surveyed the damage. The crushed sprouts of corn where he’d fallen left only the smallest scar in the endless field of green. Behind him he could hear his uncle and cousin laughing, replaying his amazing flight over and over. He put a smile on as he started the engine.

In his mind, a pair of black leather boots were still staring him right in the face.

CHAPTER 45

Can you describe the victim?

That evening, Jasper was playing in the barn with his baby goat, Timmy, when the storm rolled in. The low rumble of thunder sent the kid scrambling back to his nanny. By the time Jasper had the loose goats all penned back up, the wind was whistling in through the siding boards at a deafening pitch. The cows shifted their feet and bellowed restlessly. Jasper agreed with them. The air crackled with the feeling that something was about to happen.

He tried to ignore it and wandered back behind the feed bins the way he did every night. It was a penance now to look for his mother’s diary. Once again, he retraced the path of its flight from where he’d thrown it. As he searched for the spot where it had landed, he mentally flogged himself for being so careless.

“You got ’em all secured?” Wayne shouted from the doorway so Jasper would hear him over the wind. “Pop says this one looks like a doozy.”

His cousin trotted inside and double-checked the cow stalls. Jasper had learned in his months on the farm that milking cows produced the vast majority of the family’s income. He came out from the feed bins and followed behind Wayne, checking water dishes and securing the milking hoses. When both boys were satisfied, they latched the barn door and trotted back to the cabin.

“All the stalls locked?” his uncle asked. He was standing on the porch, nailing boards over the windows.

“Yes, sir!” both boys answered.

“Then get your butts inside.” Jasper could hear the anxiety in his uncle’s voice. He didn’t like thunderstorms. “That lightning is nothin’ to mess with. It can demolish a solid barn in minutes, and don’t you forget it.”

Sheldon’s barn next door had burned down thirty years earlier when it was struck by lightning. They all had lightning rods now, but Uncle Leo still brought it up during every major storm. It had nearly ruined that family.

Once they were in the safety of their room, Wayne whispered in Jasper’s ear, “Did you know Sheldon’s father hung himself the day they finished building the new barn?”

“He did?”

“No one knows why either.”

Maybe he just couldn’t bear having anything left to lose,
Jasper thought to himself but said nothing.

Outside their bedroom window, the world had gone deathly quiet. Not even the birds were chirping. Jasper stared out and saw an unnatural green glow in the sky. A shelf of purple clouds hung out over the fields a half mile away.

“You ever see anything like that?” Jasper asked Wayne.

His cousin pulled off his shirt and gazed out the window. He’d grown into more of a man than a boy. His voice had dropped over the winter, and he towered over Jasper’s shoulder. He let out a low whistle. “That’s somethin’. This could be a real big one.”

“What should we do?” Jasper thought of his baby goat hunkered down in the barn and felt a pang. A bolt of lightning struck a field a mile away. Not a second later, its thunder shook the cabin.

“There’s nothing we can do besides watch.” Wayne sounded more fascinated than scared. The green sky grew dark as night. Bolts of electricity jumped between the clouds. The wind picked up just as Uncle Leo finished boarding up their window. It grew steadily louder until it seemed to suck every inch of air out of the house. Not being able to see outside made it even more frightening every time the tiny cabin shuddered.

Jasper had never heard anything like it. The roaring wind was louder than ten freight trains. The window sashes began to quake. The stand of trees outside flapped like a million panicked birds.

A large hand grabbed Jasper by the shoulder and pulled him away from the rattling window. Uncle Leo shouted something that Jasper couldn’t make out over the screaming wind. His uncle grabbed him and Wayne each by the arm and dragged them into the kitchen and forced them under the table. They huddled there together with Wayne’s lanky frame draped over Jasper as the cabin lurched and trembled. Pots and pans fell from their hooks with a faint crash. The dishes tumbled from their shelves. Broken shards rained to the ground around them.

Jasper peeked out from under Wayne’s arm and tried to find his aunt and uncle. All he could see was the front door. The wind had ripped it open. It banged violently against the porch wall. Outside, the rain blew past sideways. His uncle’s truck had tipped over. Trees were being ripped up by the roots.

Another hard gust of wind slammed the door shut. The electric lights went out, and the house went dark. Jasper huddled under Wayne in the pitch-black as the wind tore open the world around them. He couldn’t hear his own thoughts. A thunderclap ripped through the house, and the wind forced its way inside. The table above them flew away into the abyss. An instant later, Jasper was falling through the sky.