Franny Parker Read online

  Detective Roy interrupted. “Let me get this straight. Your missing neighbor reappears last night, your barn goes up in flames, and he told you he was running away with his mother?” He addressed my father. “Any reason to suspect a member of the Dunn family?”

  Daddy looked at me, and then back at Detective Roy. “Perhaps you should talk to them, yes,” he said quietly.

  It was too much. Detective Roy pulled out a walkie-talkie, his words cutting the smoky air: arson, missing suspect, grocery store theft.

  I pleaded with Mama. “Lucas needs our help. I meant to tell you everything, honest I did. But I promised Lucas. His arm was all bruised, and then Lindy’s face . . .” I turned to the detective. “Lucas didn’t burn our barn.”

  Daddy put his hand on my shoulder. “Franny, no one’s saying he did. But there’s a lot more going on than you know . . .”

  I did know. “Lucas isn’t a thief, Daddy. He wouldn’t just steal from Harland’s. Not for himself.”

  He sighed. “Franny, sometimes people do desperate things.”

  Rescue

  We watched as police officers circled the cabin, knocking on the front door, peering through the windows.

  “Where did you last see him?” Detective Roy asked.

  I pointed to the hill. “There. Just after the fire.”

  He pulled Daddy aside. “You should take your family inside while we search the area.”

  “But he’s innocent!” I cried.

  Daddy took my hand. “In the house, Franny. Now.”

  But I couldn’t go. The secrets and the promises rattled around my head, and I just couldn’t keep them any longer. I had to tell.

  “Daddy, please,” I begged.

  But before I could speak, the cabin door flew open. Lucas’s father teetered in the doorway, fury plastered across his face. Even the detective jumped in surprise.

  “Get off my property!” Mr. Dunn yelled.

  Instantly, police surrounded the cabin, some drawing their guns. Daddy snatched me up and hurried to the porch.

  “What’s happening?” I cried. But no one answered me.

  “Let’s have some tea,” Mama said, moving us to the table, away from the scene outside.

  “Are Lucas and Lindy okay?” I asked Daddy.

  “I don’t know, Franny. We have to hope so.”

  Ben started to cry.

  We could hear the police next door, shouting orders to one another, demanding that Lucas’s father come out.

  My ears strained. Daddy covered my hand in his.

  “It’ll be okay,” Mama whispered as she put the kettle on. “It’ll be okay.” We all sat at the kitchen table. Pearl and Sidda, Ben and Mama and Daddy and me. We sat for what seemed like forever, staring at each other, afraid to move or speak.

  Suddenly there were shouts from the yard. Frantic shouts, followed by the banging of doors and more voices. And then a long, terrible silence. My stomach churned.

  Ben whimpered, and Jax got up to lick his face.

  Finally, an officer came to our front door.

  “We’ve secured the property,” he told us. “It’s all clear.”

  Mama leaped up. “The mother and son?”

  “They’re fine,” he said. “We’re taking them in.”

  And just like that it was over. Mama buried her face in Ben’s hair, and her body heaved a long time before the sobs came out. Daddy wrapped his arms around them both, and Pearl ran for the phone to call her mother.

  I had to see for myself. I ran to the porch and was halfway down the steps before Daddy caught up with me. He grabbed me by the arm as two police cars roared out of the driveway.

  “Lucas didn’t do it!” I yelled, struggling to pull away.

  But Daddy didn’t let go until we were back on the porch and the driveway was empty. Only then did he lean down and look me square in the eyes.

  “Franny, he’ll be all right.”

  “Where are they taking them?”

  He looked down the road. “To the station. They’re going to ask them questions. Find out what happened. It’s all over now.”

  But Daddy was wrong. It wasn’t over. There was one promise left that I could keep.

  Lost and Found

  As soon as the police and fire cars had pulled away, Pearl went home and we stumbled into our beds. When the house was finally still, I snuck outside and across the smoky yard.

  The door creaked as I stepped inside the potting shed. Nothing looked different. Lindy’s kiln squatted in the dark corner like a potbellied old man. Her vases and bowls lined the shelves, and the workbench was covered in shipping boxes. I scanned the shed floor. What had Lucas meant? I wondered. It was when I turned to leave that I noticed it. It was sitting behind the door. A small zippered sack, the name “Harland’s Market” printed on its side. Oh, Lucas, I thought.

  I wheeled my bike out from under the porch and pedaled quickly down the driveway, the sack in my basket. Despite all that had happened, it was only eight in the morning. The town center was empty, eerily quiet. Turning onto Main Street, I passed the library, the feed store, and town hall, their windows dark and their shades pulled down like sleepy eyelids. Shafts of sunlight spilled over rooftops and crept across shadowed buildings, casting a golden glow. At the north end of the green, Grandma Rae’s church steeple sparkled like a beacon, guiding me down the street. I pedaled along the green, its grass dew-glistened as morning mist rose lazily into the air. Something was different. The August-baked air was dappled now, cool and moist with storm droplets. The rain had washed away the dust, the specks of dried earth, and the caked soil, leaving everything rich and moist and slick in its wake. Now, a fertile smell met my nose: the scent of earth, the scent of life.

  Harland’s was still closed, but the lights were on in back as I pedaled up. Amid the rain-washed scent in the air was something else, something homemade. Baked bread. The smell of it filled the air, making my mouth water something fierce. I’d have to sneak by the early-morning bakers.

  I parked my bike against the building, behind a green Dumpster, and pulled the sack from the basket. This was my chance.

  There were two bakers in the kitchen, the younger one whistling loudly as she worked. They kept their aproned backs to me as they loaded a nearby cart with steaming loaves of bread.

  I edged the door open with my toe. Inch by inch I crept inside, slipping behind a stack of plastic crates.

  “Roll these out,” the gray-haired baker barked. “And make it fast.”

  Her younger partner sighed and pushed the wheeled rack out of the kitchen into the store.

  Which way was the office? I wondered. I tiptoed from behind the crates and slunk past the baker. Silently I made my way across the back of the store, searching. Having no luck locating the office, I was heading back in the direction of the bakery when I dropped the sack in the middle of an aisle.

  Suddenly there was the squeak of wheels. The bread cart rounded the corner. The younger baker was back. There was no time to get the sack.

  I jumped into the nearest aisle, pressing myself against a display of spaghetti sauce jars. The cart wobbled by, a pair of worn-out sneakers stomping behind it. The sack was right in its path.

  “Bread’s out,” the young baker called. She stopped there and wiped her brow. The sack was now directly in front of her cart. Had she not seen it?

  “Well, hurry up,” called the other baker from the back. “You’re slower than a wet week.”

  The young baker sighed and shook her head. “Slave driver,” she muttered.

  I stared at the white sack. If only I could reach out far enough . . .

  The cart wheels squeaked to life as she turned toward the bakery.

  I held my breath.

  She ran right over the sack. Bump, bump, went the wheels. But the baker kept on pushing, never once looking down. With the noise and the rattling cart as a shield, I reached out behind her, grabbed the sack, and scooted around the corner.

  The door in t
he corner was closed, the word “Office” engraved on a plastic gold sign. I breathed a sigh of relief and tried the handle. Locked.

  What now? From the front of the store voices erupted, along with footsteps. The morning workers were arriving. I clutched the sack. I had to find the right spot. Not just anywhere. Somewhere obvious, somewhere safe. The footsteps pounded down the aisle, the voices growing closer. I ran for the back door.

  Hope

  Later that morning, Mama packed us all off to Grandma Rae’s, “to check on the animals,” she said, but I suspect it was just as much to get away. No one had noticed my disappearance earlier, as I’d returned to find all the members of the family seated with their shock in their own parts of the house.

  When Mama rounded us up, Sidda and Ben and I crowded into the car with Jax. It was Ben who glanced back as we pulled away. One look at his face, and I knew what he was seeing. I didn’t turn around.

  Grandma Rae and the Bees must’ve known we were coming. No sooner had we pulled up to the front door than Izzy came flying off the porch, plucking each one of us from the car as if she hadn’t seen us in years.

  “Food’s on,” she announced, setting her straw hat playfully on Ben’s head. She’d kept it simple, one white rose solemnly in the center.

  Inside, the table was set, a heaping platter of eggs and bacon and hotcakes.

  “Brunch,” Grandma explained. “To start the day over.”

  Faye and Dotty and Grandma scurried about, spoons and saucers flying from all directions. None of us were hungry, but we couldn’t stand the thought of any more pained expressions or hurt feelings, so we passed the plates and picked up our forks.

  Afterward we sort of spread out. Ben took a comic book out to the porch and Sidda sprawled on the rug in front of the television with Daddy. Mama lowered herself onto the couch and seemed to take a nap behind Grandma’s embroidered pillow. While Grandma Rae and the Bees cleaned up, I found myself wandering around, unsure what to do. My body ached with a tiredness so fierce I thought I would collapse. But my arms and legs just wouldn’t hear of it. They jittered as thoughts of Lucas and his mother scampered in and out of my head.

  Grandma Rae found me at the window. “Have a little rest,” she said, draping a blanket on my shoulders. “You can lie down with this.”

  The colorful quilt spilled onto the floor, familiar squares of green and blue. The Bees’ quilt. A lone tree burst into the pale blue sky, its branches reaching for the clouds. And in those branches bobbed animals, animals I recognized. A turtle with a crooked yellow stripe, a whiskered mouse, three opossum babies. Suspended dreamily in a giant tree, my own tree of life.

  “When did you . . .?”

  “We have our ways,” Grandma Rae said, heading back to the kitchen.

  And so I stood, branches wrapped around me, in the hallway of Grandma’s parlor, staring at the framed ancestors in the black-and-white photos. My people.

  “A rough-looking bunch, aren’t they?” Izzy said, coming to stand behind me.

  I nodded. “They look like I feel.”

  “Worse. Those were some tough times, living on the farm in those days.”

  I didn’t say anything. I looked at the drawn faces, the unblinking eyes. Even the family sheepdog stared purposefully from behind two barefoot boys.

  “You think you’ve got it bad now?” Izzy shook her head. “They saw it all. The Dust Bowl of 1936 just about ruined them.”

  “Ruined?” I asked. I’d heard about the dust bowls, as had every kid growing up in Oklahoma. It was as much a part of our blood as it was the country’s history.

  “Nineteen thirty-six ruined most,” Izzy replied. “Dust storms tore right over the panhandle, ruining the crops and covering houses and farms with dirt. Yes sir, that year was the worst. It left the farmers with no crops to sell and left the country with no wheat. People were poor, Franny. Families had no money, no food. Bellies were so empty mothers cooked root soup month after month.”

  “Root soup?” I’d never heard of it, but it sounded bad.

  “Sure, potato and turnip, whatever you found in the root cellar. I remember it. My poor mama gave us kids the vegetables, and she sipped the broth.”

  I stared at Izzy. This wasn’t the way Grandma Rae told it. Grandma had always spoken of the hard work, the strong will. I’d known farm life was tough; just the ribby horses strapped to heavy plows told that story. But Grandma had never mentioned the empty bellies.

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “Well, this part of the country knew hard times. We’d weathered droughts before, but not like that. You can’t imagine it. There was economic depression, sickness, and starvation. Farmers folded, took what little belongings they had, and headed west for places like California.”

  Izzy paused, her eyes traveling over the faces on the wall. “A lot of families gave up and moved. But not my family. And not the Parkers.”

  “How’d they get by?” I asked.

  “With new farming methods. And the first tractor in the county. Your great-grandfather saw to it.”

  “He did?” I looked at the overalled man in front of the barn.

  “Yep. Hadn’t seen anything like it around here before. People thought he was crazy. Of course, with many of the farmers selling off or being forced out, it was an uncertain time. But he was a fighter and he had a vision, and that tractor was his ticket. Came all the way from Iowa, a steel-wheeled crank-start contraption that was god-awful to drive, but it mowed those wheat fields. Harvested twice the fields in half the time. Why, the neighbors were in awe. Soon they were putting up their best horses and cows as down payments on tractors of their own.”

  I could see it, the waving wheat under a yellow sun, my great-grandfather stationed at the seat of the tractor. Row after row falling away beneath him.

  “Some people say it was the tractor that saved our county farms, some people say it was the man who brought the tractor. I say it was hope. These people on the wall, your people, they had hope in their bleakest hour. And that hope runs in a family.”

  “It does?”

  “Sure. Can’t you feel it coursing through your veins right now? You’re a Parker, Franny. Parkers don’t quit.” Izzy slapped my behind with a dish towel and returned to the kitchen.

  Outside, I hurried past Ben to the shed behind the house where the animals were. I swung open the door, revealing the cages Grandma had carefully stacked. She’d even filled the bowls with fresh water.

  Speed Bump ducked her head in her shell. I bent down real close and looked in the turtle’s eyes. I pictured my great-grandfather in the dust-filled fields, bumping grimly along on his steel-wheeled tractor, while others packed their bags and shook their heads.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” I told the animals, trying to sound like a Parker.

  Aftermath

  Lindy was the first to exit the police car when they rolled into the driveway that evening. She stepped out of the passenger side and glanced tiredly at the cabin. Ben and I held our breath at the window. We watched the hefty officer lumber around to the back. When he opened the door, Lucas stepped out.

  There would be no charges. At least for Lucas and Lindy. The whiskey bottle from the barn fire was enough to cause the detective to hold Mr. Dunn. They’d found hay from our barn’s loft on his clothes. And the scorched toe of his left boot was further proof of his presence at the scene. So he made a half-drunken confession, saying he fell asleep while having a smoke, which he tried to take back when he sobered. But it didn’t matter. Later, fingerprints on the bottle would match his. And arson was just the beginning. Lindy would eventually come forward with the rest.

  As for the search warrant, it wasn’t necessary. The police asked Lucas about the missing money, but it turned out the money wasn’t missing after all. The truth was Lucas had no idea how three thousand dollars ended up in the banana case, right in the front window of Harland’s Market. Mr. Harland had arrived at work as usual, stopping to read the strange new s
ign: “Bananas on Sale.” And just below, the crisp bills, all three thousand dollars, were neatly stacked among the fruit. It was a mystery, one that would cause a lot of talk around town, and a few raised eyebrows in the Parker house, but a mystery nonetheless.

  For those last weeks of summer we pretended things were back to normal. And though it didn’t feel quite the same, I was sure it would soon. And so I waited. I waited as summer prepared its surrender, as the green gush of late August gave way to the first yellow promise of fall. I waited as Pearl won second prize for the Aubree Library reading contest, even though she’d done it with a little help from Mable’s picture books. I would’ve thought her mother would have been real put out, being that it wasn’t the gold trophy. But she placed the silver one smack-dab in their front window, sparkling for all to see, and Pearl promptly arrived on my doorstep with the second-place check for fifty dollars.

  “For your Animal Funds,” she said.

  “But it’s yours,” I told her. “You earned it.”

  Pearl shrugged, looking a bit embarrassed. “We all need help,” she said.

  And soon things did feel normal again. Almost. On the day Lindy finally threw open the doors of her potting shed once more, I was sure my waiting was over. But it wasn’t what I’d wanted. Lindy began to pack.

  We gathered in the potting shed while Lindy told us the news. The secret she’d been keeping.

  “It’s your chance,” Mama told her, smiling through her tears as she picked up a jade-green pot. We were seated on the floor staring at the cardboard boxes surrounding us. Sidda, Mama, Lindy, and me. One by one we gently tucked the pots into beds of tissue and foam for their long journey to California. To a gallery where they would be displayed, not far from the university where Lindy would work in the art department as a teaching assistant.

  Everything she deserved, Mama said.

  And yet I could not bring myself to feel happy.

  “This is my favorite,” Mama said, passing Lindy the jade pot. “It reminds me of the fields.”