The Red Garden - Alice Hoffman [86]
“Shoot it,” Jesse urged in a whisper. “Go ahead, brother.”
The bear smelled like leaves and mud. He was so close that his musky scent was already clinging to Frank’s clothes. The bear hadn’t seen the other two, flattened against the Jeep’s roof. He was just looking at Frank.
Frank thought of the way the snow had been falling when he was walking down the road before the car spun out and hit him. He thought of how the cold water in the Eel River had been such a shock to him when he dove in with Simone and Rose, floating in dreamtime. He felt ready to be over with something, although he wasn’t sure what that something was. All at once, there in the buggy twilight, he felt intensely awake.
“I know this place is yours,” he said to the bear. “I’m just passing through.”
The bear stayed on for a moment, then went in the other direction, rambling up toward the meadow, where there were dozens of honeybee hives in the fallen oak trees. Frank waited in silence for several minutes, then he climbed onto the roof of the Jeep. The three of them looked up at the sky.
“Los Angeles, here I come,” Jesse said.
Tia and Frank didn’t say anything. They watched the stars appear. Frank took out a joint, which they shared, and afterward Jesse fell sound asleep.
“He talks about you a lot,” Tia said. She was lying between them, her arms crossed behind her neck, cushioning her head. “He says you’re the good one.”
“He’s wrong,” Frank said.
Tia raised herself on one elbow and kissed him. It was the most delicious, hot, crazy kiss Frank had ever experienced. He felt as if he could fuck her right there on top of the car. He wanted her so much he felt certain he’d become the victim of temporary insanity.
Soon, though, he pulled away.
“He’s right about you,” Tia said. She kissed him again, but it wasn’t as good the second time because they both felt guilty.
They slept on the roof with Tia sandwiched between the brothers. In the morning, Frank found the keys in the grass. Tia and Jesse were covered with bug bites. They couldn’t get out of the woods fast enough. Frank drove into town with them. When they got to the house, his mother cried and hugged him and his father took him aside and told him he was glad Frank had gotten it all out of his system and had snapped out of it at last. Frank took a shower and let his mother wash his clothes. He was sitting at the desk where he used to do his homework, staring out the window, when Tia slipped into his room. She came to sit on his lap even though he was naked and the whole family was downstairs. They kissed for a while. They did things they shouldn’t have done. It seemed like a dream and then it didn’t.
Frank told her to wait, he’d be right back. He went downstairs and got his clothes from the dryer. He dressed right there in the laundry room, then went out the back door. He remembered that his brother always stole his best clothes. It was easy enough; they’d been the same size. Frank had never cared; he’d felt honored that Jesse wanted something he had. That was back when they were brothers. Now he walked three blocks and made a left on Main Street. He kept going until he got to the house where René had grown up, and as fate would have it, she was waiting at the door.
THE RED GARDEN
1986
BLACKWELL HAD ALWAYS HAD A PROBLEM with flies. They appeared every spring, swarms rising up from the cold water of the Eel River and the rushing eddies of Hubbard Creek in such great numbers that some of the women in town covered their windows and doors with garden netting during the first two weeks of April, the kind you throw over blueberry bushes to protect the fruit from bears.
Louise Partridge didn’t remember that there’d been