Chapter 17 #2
“Does it have to do with Rodney?” Fern hated even saying his name. She didn’t understand how she could feel such fear for one brother but feel safe with the other. Safe. Had she lost her mind? Nothing about Cal was safe.
“It’s business,” he answered.
So, it did have to do with Rodney.
“Is it illegal?”
He turned his head toward her, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips. “If I say no, will you believe me?”
Fern realized the absurdity of her question and laughed at herself. “No.”
“Listen, nothing about hooch is legal, not right now, but it’s good business. Half the politicians supporting prohibition laws are making a healthy cut themselves. They know restricting something makes it more valuable. Simple economics.”
Fern knew that. The very government officials voting to dry out America were profiting off the illegal sale of alcohol, but it still left a sour wash in the pit of her stomach.
Ahead, the blue and white sign of a roadside diner stood tall on the horizon. The Bluebird Diner had several cars and a few larger trucks parked in its lot.
“I could eat,” Cal announced, downshifting as his foot lifted from the gas pedal.
Her stomach grumbled at the thought of a food, but sweat beaded on the back of her neck too.
“How about you?” he asked. “Hungry?”
The Roadster rolled into the lot, tires crunching over loose dirt and rock. The windows showed people seated in booths, looking at menus, sipping fountain drinks.
“Fern?” Cal’s voice cut through the quiet. He’d turned off the engine without her noticing.
“I’ve not been in a restaurant in… I don’t know. Years.”
Cal sighed and sat back in his seat. “Your parents didn’t do you any favors by keeping you cooped up the way they did.”
She didn’t say it had been to protect her. She knew better now than to make that excuse.
Fern breathed in. Then out again. “If I’m going to work, I’m going to have to get used to going into public places.”
She was going to have to get used to the stares, maybe even repulsed expressions, and the potential questions of what had happened that resulted in her scars.
Cal took the key from the ignition and dropped it into his pocket. “If anyone says anything, I’ll knock out their teeth.”
Fern gasped and stared at him, open mouthed. “You wouldn’t!”
He winked and opened his door. She hoped he was only joking—though secretly, she reveled in the promise that he’d stick up for her.
With an unsteady pulse and legs that felt like two strands of soft, saltwater taffy, she walked with Cal to the Bluebird Diner’s front door.
He pushed it open and stood aside for her to enter first. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, but she wished he’d gone in first. At least then, he could have been a sort of shield.
But no—she couldn’t hide behind a shield any longer.
Leaving Young Acres had been a choice, and Fern had to see it through.
A little bell chimed them in. Some truckers at the counter, seated on glossy blue and silver stools turned to catch a glimpse of the new arrivals.
Though she avoided their eyes, she saw the jerky motion of shoulders as they stopped to do a double take.
To see if they’d really seen what they thought they’d just seen.
Backs straightened as Cal took the lead, guiding them down the narrow aisle between window booths and the row of stools at the counter. Chatter slowed, then picked up again.
The smell of toast, bacon and coffee, fried eggs, onions and potatoes, filled her nose. A radio was tuned to a brass band program, and an oscillating fan above the cashier’s till blew lazy streams of already-warm air.
Cal slid into a booth. Fern took the seat across from him, the blue plastic creaking as she settled. A waitress approached their table.
“Coffee,” he told her.
“Just water, please,” Fern said. The woman quickly looked down at her notepad, scribbled their choice of beverage, then dashed away.
Fern grabbed a menu and concentrated on the sandwiches and fried chicken offered, though it wasn’t easy to ignore the way one of the truck drivers at the counter kept twisting around to stare at her.
Finally, Cal sat back, threw an arm over the booth’s backing, and blatantly stared back at him.
He wasn’t getting up to punch out the guy’s teeth, but it was an obvious demand for the man to turn around and keep his eyes on his food.
The man grasped the silent order and faced forward.
Cal glanced out the window. Across the road from the diner, a field of corn stalks stretched and rolled for what seemed like miles to the east.
“I bet you hate the countryside,” Fern said.
He looked at her. “Why do you say that?”
“You just seem like someone who prefers city life. It’s faster, louder.” Fern shrugged. “I kept thinking about how much you’d hate Young Acres.”
Cal cocked his head. “You thought about me?”
Heat seared her neck and then quickly, her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to admit that, not to herself and most certainly, not to him.
Fern fiddled with the corner of the menu. “A little, I suppose. I wondered if you were okay, after what happened, of course.”
Concern for him made sense, didn’t it? The last time she’d seen him, he’d been bleeding. Dying. Muttering about a person named Bets.
“Who is Bets?” she asked abruptly.
She’d wondered who he was, and why he’d been on Cal’s mind as he was slipping into unconsciousness.
Cal went still. His eyes skated up from the menu and sliced into her. Instantly, Fern knew she’d said something wrong.
“Where’d you hear that name?”
She licked her lips, suddenly parched. “When you were in Dr. Levy’s office, you weren’t lucid, and …you were calling out for someone named Bets. Asking them not to leave. I just was curious…”
He closed the bifold menu. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
Fern’s stomach swooped low. Her. Oh. Bets was a woman.
A woman who’d left him. She dropped her attention to the menu in front of her, fighting the draining sensation in her chest. It shouldn’t have been this much of a shock to realize that he’d been in love with a woman before.
He was a man, a handsome one, and powerful.
He was a gangster, and flappers would have certainly taken a shine to him.
It didn’t matter. None of that did. Fern closed the menu and pushed it away.
“What happened after you left Dr. Levy’s?” she asked, hoping to steer the conversation in a new direction. “The Jacky Boys intended to…to kill you?”
Doubt still lingered in her mind about her father’s role in instigating the drive-by shooting at Harris Looms. If he’d arranged for Cal to be taken out, and if Cal knew it, Fern didn’t understand how he could be sitting here with her so calmly. Why would he want to?
His expression stayed firmly placid, even as the waitress returned with the ceramic mug of steaming coffee and a glass of water. Cal ordered an egg salad sandwich, and Fern quickly picked something off the menu, a turkey club. She didn’t know if she’d be able to eat more than a few bites, though.
Another minute passed, and just when she thought he was going to ignore her question—maybe he was still angry about her bringing up Bets—he finally replied, “I’m not so easy to kill.”
It wasn’t boasting or pride. There was no arrogance attached to the statement. It was simply fact.
“Others have tried?”
He sipped his black coffee and nodded. Of course, they had. Cal ran with a dangerous crowd, doing illegal, dangerous things. She’d known that from the beginning. He made people angry, her brother and father included.
“When my father finds out I left Young Acres with you…”
He shook his head and set his mug back down. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Worry about me.”
“Why can’t I?”
He didn’t have an answer to that. Or if he did, he wasn’t willing to part with it. Instead, after another minute of silence, during which Fern sipped water through a paper straw, and Cal stirred a cube of sugar into his coffee, he looked out the window again.
“You’re wrong. I like the countryside,” he said. “Better than the city, in fact.”
“I never would have imagined that.”
“I prefer quiet,” he added.
“Maybe you should have stayed at Young Acres.”
Surprise transformed his face, a grin stretching so wide his teeth showed. A bark of laughter split through the roadside diner, directing more heads and eyes their way. Cal ignored them. So did Fern.
Their lunch plates were delivered, and when Cal peeled off the top of his sandwich to squirt ketchup on his egg salad, Fern balked.
“What are you doing?”
He replaced the top slices of bread, ketchup dripping down the sides. “Eating.”
“Ketchup on egg salad?”
Cal took a bite and frowned. “Can’t knock it ‘til you try it.”
She shook her head and picked up her turkey club. But he wouldn’t let it go.
“Come on, one bite. You’re gonna love it.” He pushed the plate across the Formica table. He’d consumed half of his sandwich so far, leaving the second triangle-cut half free for her to pick up.
Something told her she’d never hear the end of it if she didn’t accept the dare, so Fern let out a sigh and grabbed the sandwich. Ketchup dripped onto her fingers as she leaned forward and took the smallest of bites. She’d expected to gag but was pleasantly surprised.
“Actually,” she said, her mouth still full, “it’s not bad.”
“See?” He laughed as she put it back on his plate and finished chewing.
Fern used her napkin to clean the ketchup off her fingers, and then Cal tapped the corner of his mouth to let her know she had some there as well.
Embarrassed, Fern tried to clear it away, but he shook his head.
Then, taking a paper napkin from the aluminum dispenser on the table, he reached across and dabbed at her cheek.
“There. Now you don’t look like a vampire,” he said with a wink.
Fern tried to pretend the gesture hadn’t affected her as he ate the rest of his sandwich in three ravenous bites, but it had. Something about it had been strangely intimate. Fern caught a few furtive looks from him as she ate her sandwich and wondered if he thought so too.
The waitress dropped the check at the table and cleared their plates, and Cal got up to settle the bill at the counter.
Only then did Fern feel the warmth of her face and the lovely ache of smiling too much.
She didn’t always like to smile, considering the movement sometimes stretched her scars in an ugly way.
But she hadn’t thought of that at all until then.
“Ready?” Cal came back toward the booth. She nodded and started to slide out from the bench seat.
He reached over the table to the small, glass vase next to the napkin dispenser and plucked one of the thin daisies that were sitting in water.
As Fern stood, he held up the flower and tucked it behind her ear.
She dragged in a breath, startled. She wasn’t sure what to think as he led them from the diner, but she did know that her mind wasn’t on the eyes lifting from lunch plates to look at her as she passed by.
Her whole attention stayed pinned on Cal as he held the door open for her, the steamy summer air wafting into her face as they crossed the pebbled lot toward the Roadster.
He opened the passenger door, and she slid inside, uncertain what any of the last few hours had meant. What any of his attention meant.
As they drove northwest, Fern tried not to think too deeply about any of it.
“This acquaintance you’re meeting,” she said, wanting something else to focus on. “How is he involved in your business?”
Cal hesitated. Maybe she’d asked something he couldn’t reveal. But he was bringing her along, so she couldn’t imagine it was too much of a secret.
He drove with his right hand on the wheel, and his left elbow propped on the door sill trim of the open window. “He operates one of our stills,” he answered. “Got a barn on his farm. Our runners load up at his place every week or so.”
“Are we picking up anything?” She hoped not. When he answered, she let out a breath.
“No. I just need to talk to him. Name’s Tom. There’s a rumor he’s thinking about cutting free.”
“Maybe he knows it isn’t safe,” she suggested.
Cal shook his head and drummed his fingers on the wheel. “Man’s got a family to take care of and a farm to pull up out of the dirt. He doesn’t care if the work is dangerous. Nah, if he wants out, there’s another reason.”
Fern thought back to their visit to the Pier, and Cal’s cryptic talk with the pretzel seller. A few of his gin runners had been shot, and he’d seemed to think the pretzel seller knew something more than he was willing to share.
“Does this have anything to do with that Pretzel John fellow?”
Cal winced. “It might. That was a few months ago, but we’ve been hit a couple times since then.”
“Maybe Tom is being threatened,” she said. “Or his family is.”
Cal turned contemplative and went quiet.
The sun started to slip in the west, gilding the tops of the endless fields of corn. Farmhouses, silos, and barns were silhouetted against the horizon, the structures sometimes spread miles apart from one another, and other times clustered together in small communities.
They passed through a few sleepy, small towns, their main streets lined with hardware stores, diners, beauty shops, grocers and druggists.
Some towns were more run-down than others.
In each one, Fern wondered what it might be like to live and work there.
To be one of the women hanging out the wash to dry in a dusty yard, chickens darting between her feet and children playing nearby.
The rural towns and roads of northern Indiana had a sad, desolate quality to them, but the setting sun cast them in a golden light that seemed to promise better things.
Though for some places, it already looked to be too late.
They passed a small house with boarded-up windows, and a little farther along, a weathered barn with a Coca-Cola advertisement painted on the broad side facing the road.
The next few farms looked essentially the same, and the fields began to blur as her mind wandered.
When Cal let up off the gas, and the Roadster slowed, Fern blinked and looked ahead. “Why are we stopping?”
He’d come to a slow roll, still in the middle of the road. There weren’t any other cars on either horizon, just a weathered farmhouse and barn up ahead.
“That’s Tom’s place,” Cal said.
A green Ford truck sat parked in the yard, along with a maroon Buick and a black Ford. They looked familiar. Fern had seen them before, outside the Lion’s Den.
Rod was here.