Page 30 of Everything You Want Me to Be
“A what?”
“I’ll explain it to you when you come in. Pick up some Dairy Queen, will you?” And he hung up, the little shit.
I’d known the Reevers since they’d found out they were pregnant with Mary Beth. The whole town could spot them coming a mile away—John hustling to open doors and lift grocery bags, Elsa rolling her eyes at him with one hand hugged to her belly, both of them well into their forties and grinning like fools on their first date. Happiness like that was polarizing—it either drew you in or pushed you out, and in those years after the war, I didn’t know how to be drawn in. I was a patrol cop, which was the only thing I was good for then—handing out tickets and laying down the law, everything in black-and-white—and it got to be whenever I saw the Reevers coming down Main Street, I found something that had to be done on the other side. It wasn’t until I pulled John over for speeding a few years later, Mary Beth bouncing and babbling in her car seat, and John looking bashful, saying, “It makes her giggle” that I found myself laughing, standing outside their Pontiac on the shoulder of Highway 12. I finally got drawn in.
“Why, Del, what brings you out here?” Elsa answered the door, wearing an oxygen line in her nose and looking like a mild breeze could knock her down. She’d been fading more and more ever since John died.
“I’m looking for Mary Beth.”
“Oh, she’s over at Winifred’s.” She braced a hand on the doorjamb and squinted toward the woods that separated the two farms.
“I don’t think so. I stopped by there and saw her leave.”
“Oh?”
“Looks like her truck’s in the driveway.”
The evidence of it seemed to confuse her, so I switched gears.
“I met your son-in-law up at the play yesterday.”
“The play.” She said it like she was trying to bring a memory into focus. “I think we were supposed to go see a play this weekend.”
“Must be nice to have some extra hands with the farm.”
“Mary Beth does it all. He doesn’t do enough around here to fill a thimble.”
“The fields and the animals, huh? That’s a lot for one person.”
“No, she doesn’t work the fields. We rented them out when John passed on. Just the chickens and the gardens.”
“Nice to have fresh chicken on the table.”
“Exactly.” Elsa pointed at me, inexplicably vehement. “That’s what any regular man should say.”
“Mind if I check around for her?”
“Go on ahead. I better not. She gets after me when I try to pull this oxygen tank through the mud.”
I touched my hat and headed across the way, poking my head in a few buildings until I found Mary Beth in the chicken barn collecting eggs. A group of hens pecked around her feet, some white, some brown and orange, all of them scratching and clucking away. They weren’t packed in like I’d seen in some farms, where you could barely see the floor through the sea of animals. This flock looked more like a mismatched extended family gathered around their matriarch.
“Mrs. Lund?”
She yelped and jumped about a foot out of her skin, scattering the chickens in all directions, but managed to hold on to her basket. She had the look of her dad, now that I knew who she was—fair and sturdy, the kind of bones built for weathering storms, and it seemed like she was in the middle of one right now. The basket trembled on her arm and her breathing didn’t quite settle down, even after she saw me.
“Sheriff. My God.” She put one hand over her heart and checked her harvest for breaks.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“That’s okay,” she said without looking up.
“How are things going out here?”
“Fine.” She wasn’t the chatty type, apparently. Mary Beth had never been a troublemaker growing up, so I didn’t know her too well. I think she played volleyball in high school and had been in the paper for National Merit Scholar things now and again.
“I was just up at the house talking to Elsa. She said you do most everything around here these days.”
“I do what I can. I’m not my dad, that’s for sure.”
