The River Widow(11)
Adah walked up to Jesse, tears blooming in her eyes. Despite her dislike of Les’s family, it was still an awful thing to have to give them bad news. “I haven’t seen him since the river . . .”
“The river what ?”
“The river . . . it rose so high, so fast. We’d let out the livestock, but the poor milk cow went in the wrong direction. We were trying to save her . . . and then the river took both of us down.” Adah almost believed her own story now.
His narrow eyes never left hers, and he shifted his weight. “Are you telling me my brother is gone?”
“I was hoping he’d already made his way to you. He can’t be gone, I know it. You haven’t heard anything?”
He stared off, and Adah was pretty sure he was fighting tears. But Branch men would never cry. When he turned back to face her, however, there was an unexpected hardness to his face, his mouth a stern, tight line. “Not till this morning, when I heard about you. We been waiting for word and asking around. Ma and Pa have been pacing the floor. Nobody could sleep.”
“Have you checked at other places? I’ve heard people are scattered everywhere.”
Jesse’s face paled and his eyes reflected shock, as if the gravity of the situation was deepening and gripping him even tighter. “I just told you we ain’t heard nothing till this morning—and it’s only ’bout you. Where the hell is my damn brother?”
Adah wrapped her arms around herself. She remembered why she was subjecting herself to this. Daisy’s face floated unbidden in her mind, and Adah resisted the urge to bring her up so soon. If her story were true, her only concern now would be finding her husband. “Maybe he’s hurt. Have you checked at the Clark School? I heard the sick and injured are there.”
“I been checking everywhere.”
He kept staring her down, searching, apparently not the least bit interested in how she had survived. She must have looked a fright. Still wearing Chuck Lerner’s jacket over her dirty dress, unbathed, unshod, covered with scratches and bruises she evidenced no reason to doubt her story. It was obvious to anyone that she had been in the river. And yet Jesse’s eyes showed doubt. He tossed his cigarette into the mud, then ground it under his boot, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Get in the truck, then” was all he said.
He drove with his hands clenching and unclenching the steering wheel, steely eyes focused on the road ahead. The veins on his large-knuckled reddened hands were bulging.
They crossed a land of moving, ghostlike mists; spindly trees swaying with the wind; winter-bare fields; icy creeks; frozen ponds; slick roads; and the occasional inviting farmhouse, yellow lights in its windows and curls of smoke from its chimney.
“How’s Daisy?” Adah finally asked, unable to wait any longer.
“Fine and dandy,” he answered in a flat voice.
Adah focused ahead. What would she be doing if her story were true? What would she be talking about? “Can we go to some of the other places Lester might be? I’m dying to see Daisy, but we can’t stop looking for Les.”
He breathed out slowly, as if fighting every ounce of this release. “You and I both know my brother is dead.”
“No,” she said. “If I got out, he could get out, too. He’s stronger than I am. I just know he’s alive. Have you looked around our place?”
He didn’t respond for a long time. “We cain’t get there yet. Water’s too high.”
“What about the police?”
His head jerked in her direction. “You think we’re idiots? Of course we been to the police and the sheriff’s department, too.”
The skies were drifting down snowflakes that stuck to the windshield and turned to ice. Jesse exhaled audibly again and spoke to the road. “If he got out, I would’ve found him by now. Where you been all this time?”
“I made my way to land, slept in a barn, then got on the roof. That’s where they found me.”
“When was the last time you saw my brother?”
“When the water hit us.”
Jesse wiped his brow with the back of one hand and then gripped the steering wheel again. He looked as if he was restraining both grief and rage. “So now I got to go tell the folks their youngest is gone.”
“I don’t think we should do that. He could be anywhere, even farther downriver. I’ve reported him missing, so others’ll know to keep on the lookout. He could be fine but have no way to get word to us. Everything is such a mess right now. He has to be okay, I just know it.”
He drove the rest of the way in silence, and Adah sensed true grief emanating from her brother-in-law. Jesse and Lester had competed for their father’s favor, but for people like the Branches, blood was everything. They stuck together. When one of the Lone Oak farmworkers took off with tools and a good quarter horse, Lester had joined his father and brother to hunt the man down. If not for the intervention of a nearby county sheriff, the Branch men would’ve lynched the thief.
Despite it all, Adah’s heart went out to Jesse. She had taken away his only brother and a son from his mother and father. A sob rose in her throat, and Adah made no attempt to suppress it.
Jesse seemed aware of her silent crying but made no comment. Adah could tell he was still sorting things out in his head. Still letting it sink in that his only brother was likely dead. Maybe for the first time something in his life had struck him deeply, into a vulnerable space that he’d always protected.