This novel, 3 Lives in Jury, is delivered, a chapter or two, every Thursday.
If you want a refresher, or if it’s your first time here, this might help:
3 Lives in Jury - table of contents
For The Underworld Vents, which includes short stories and bonus material related to 3 Lives in Jury, go here:
The Underworld Vents - table of contents
The Flower
remains a Flower
Forevermore
Chapter 16
The Almas laid low once rumours of the misidentified corpse whirled through Jury. The Jury Rotary Club suspended Matt Alma’s membership, calling it a temporary measure to avoid the perception the club was choosing sides. The Jury Golf and Country Club returned Wanda and Matt’s registration fees, and Matt’s law office encouraged him to work from home.
The Almas and Lucy stayed close to the orchard and waited for the hard borders between opinions to soften. Time and the truth would work in their favour, they believed; force silent supporters and fence sitters out from the bleachers over to their side.
In the meantime, the family steered clear of cafes, pubs, parks and public gatherings. They turned orchard operations over to Samay, commissioning him to deal with suppliers and buyers. He also delivered groceries to the Alma kitchen.
Petra Kappens had trouble with patients begging off or not showing up for sessions, while others seized appointments for intelligence-gathering forays, trying to winkle out scraps from the mother of one of the Mud Valley Three.
Frank remained unrepentant. “Fucking right I killed him. I’d do it again too. I saved you all a big ol’ bag of money by not having to send that poxy bastard to prison. You should give me a medal.”
A day ago, people agreed with him. Frank had killed a creep and a pervert, but that was when he had killed John King. Now, he had murdered Lawrence Reams, a family man from Salmon Drop, not rich, but reasonably regarded.
Whit and Lucy stuck to each other’s company, there were few places they could go without causing a muttering stir. Frank dropped in and dropped out, settling for Lucy and Whit’s company when he couldn’t find friends his own age. The killing had given him confidence to up his social standing.
Whit and Lucy still walked the south road from school to Petra Kappens’ office on Wednesday for their sessions, the only adventure they were permitted.
School days were maddeningly routine and unusually subdued. Other students and many teachers established large buffer zones, out of ridiculous caution, not wanting to get involved until matters were properly sorted.
Whit worked in the greenhouse, swooped up in the meditative benefits of pruning, transplanting, watering and spraying some of the 100 or so trees living in pots, tins and pails.
The greenhouse, a green and white shack with a plastic roof at the boundary of the backyard orchard, was out of view from the house. It housed trees as tall as Whit, at most, and trees that barely scraped his knees. They had been nurtured from seeds, cuttings, or dug up from runners. The plan was to relocate them outside, one or two at a time, to fill gaps in the orchard rows as needed.
Whit came for the peace the work provided, a place to forget about the judgments of Jury, so he was wary when Lucy tagged along one day. He welcomed her company. He smiled when she laughed and liked her songs and rambling poetry, but he was nervous she would disrupt the work.
But Lucy knew how to read a room and she concentrated, watched and copied, methodically, without rushing, doing only what Whit showed her.
Soon, Whit looked forward to Lucy’s humming while she worked beside him. She’d taken to it quickly. She showed a deft touch, carefully patting earth and peat, staking trees and securing ribbons near the tops to identify varieties and dates.
“I like coming here. It’s relaxing,” she told him.
Whit gave her the idea when he told her they had to find a home for the largest tree in the shed, a gorgeous Gala apple that flourished in thick white blossoms that spring. They had no space for it in any orchard, so Whit intended to offer it around town.
“The tree is too big for the pail. It won’t live out the summer in the greenhouse.”
“I have a great place,” Lucy said. “Out at the old cemetery, I’ve been working on something.”
“What are you doing out at the cemetery?”
“Never mind that for now. I’ll show you when we get there. But this tree is perfect.”
“The cemetery won’t let us plant it out there. They don’t like the mess of falling apples.” Whit knew this from experience. His father and Samay had offered to plant trees in the cemetery before and were turned down.
“It’s not actually in the cemetery, though,” Lucy said. “It’s just outside. And I’m talking about the old Japanese cemetery by the cliffs, where the people running it actually care about making it look nice. Not that boring, windswept new place. Besides, once it’s planted, who’s going to say anything?”
Whit nodded. “Give me a couple of minutes.”
He disappeared and came rumbling up to the greenhouse riding a UTV. He pulled up at the far end of the greenhouse, where a garage door made loading and unloading easier.
He had already loaded a couple of spades into the bed of the UTV and together they heaved the tree and pail into it, secured it with straps and bounced off toward the cemetery along the lesser-used gravel roads. It was farm country, no one cared about youths driving unlicensed UTVs.
The old cemetery had been closed to new members since 1977, after engineers reported the graves at the top of the hill had a 99 percent chance of sliding off into the lake below — someday. Whether that day was next week, next year or 2050, no one would commit, so they closed the guest book and set the cemetery aside in remembrance of thousands of Japanese settlers who were among the first pioneers in the region.
Whit manoeuvred the UTV along a gravel walking path, while Lucy directed him to a large, flat stone, roughly knee-high, on the periphery of the cemetery.
Lucy jumped off. “Look. I found her.”
Rough, chiseled letters were scratched into the stone’s surface.
SAKUYA WATANABE
1937-1944
It was no official memorial stone, just a large flat rock. The original wording was plain, direct. It carried the name and the years; nothing more. But beneath it, in stenciled, painted black letters, Lucy added words of her own:
The Flower
remains a Flower
Forevermore.
“The family is over there,” she nodded toward a grouping of four headstones a few paces away. A mother, father and two others, possibly Sakuya’s siblings.
They stood a fair throw from the cliffs but Whit could see the flat blue water of Lake Charity below and the rocky hills on the other shore, where a single town, Frontier, the only community along the lake’s entire eastern bank, shone its lights back at night.
“How did you know?”
“I checked at the historical museum. They have old photos of Japanese families living in internment camps during the Second World War and that got me thinking. I looked into the archives of the old newspaper and found old clippings from that time and guess what?”
“Shit, no way.”
“Yes way. Sakuya was a seven-year-old girl who vanished from the internment camp, while the adults were out working in the orchards. Parents came back, no sign of her. According to the story, a group of older kids were left in charge but none of them saw anything.
“They carried out a big search, huge search parties, a couple of dogs, but Sakuya was never seen again.”
“But how did you know her name?” Whit stammered. “When we were walking out of the valley, you mentioned that name before you even knew this stone was here.” He didn’t believe in the supernatural, but he knew Lucy enough to never underestimate her. He believed it if she said she saw something.
“She told me. The ghost in the hole told me.”
Whit mulled it over. He knew Lucy visited the cemetery semi-regularly. She used to keep a stash of dried goods and a tarp in a tote container in the hedges and she told him she slept here sometimes. She could have spotted the stone on a previous visit.
He didn’t doubt Lucy’s sincerity, though. “Jesus,” he said. “Are you going to tell police? They’ve been trying to trace the name you gave them and verify the identity of those bones.”
She shrugged. “I don’t think they believe me and anyway, there’s no family left alive, as far as I can tell.”
“Maybe they’ll want to move the bones and bury them here beside her family.”
“Sure. It might be nice if police find any living relatives who want a ceremony. Sakuya won’t know the difference though. She’s beyond thinking.”
Lucy no sooner said this, when an inexplicable crushing fear pried at the edges of her senses. Clutching, clacking fingers, like those from Sakuya’s grave, tested the edges of her consciousness. The vestiges of a decomposed hand gripped her throat and she saw herself lying in the hole again at the hunter’s camp. The clacking, the scratching next to her ear. The stench of decay made her eyes roll white.
She felt utterly helpless. The fear arched over her head while she lie trapped, face down in the earth and then it pressed down from above, possessing her every nerve and fibre. Whit was trapped with her this time, jammed into her side. She felt his sharp shoulders, elbows and hips pressing into her and she felt his light extinguish, his last breath.
Lucy felt her life flickering too and she braced for what was to come. She waited, waited and waited for the last sigh to show itself. Then, she blinked out.
The next instant, she and Whit were cooling in a calm pool of water along the banks of a raging river, sitting on stones in the shallows, looking up at the giant fir trees, breathing in fresh, pale green scents. The mist made it difficult to see. The humidity, heat and insects made the air almost insufferable, but both of them smiled.
Lucy breathed — twice. And they were back in the cemetery.
“Lucy?” Whit shook his head and rubbed his eyes. His vision blurred and halos formed like sundogs at the periphery. He felt a headache coming on and he was struck by the feeling they’d been here too long. It felt like they arrived days ago.
“What?”
“Let’s get to work on that tree.”
Lucy nodded and they dug the hole half a metre deep, removed the tree from the pail with the roots encased in a large cylinder of earth. Whit scored the cylinder around to break the crust of the dirt. Lucy chopped the bottom of the hole to loosen the ground. They set the tree down and covered it, packed it loosely. Whit had brought a five-gallon container of water and poured it out.
“Every couple or three days, you need to dump three jugs on it.” he said. “Water deep, take your time and let it soak in.”
“OK.”
Lucy thought about asking Whit if he had seen the visions too, but what would she say? That she’d seen them both die? What would be the point? She guessed there must be an infinite number of pasts and futures in which they die horrible deaths and what she had just seen was only one of them. It didn’t mean anything.
She wondered if Whit felt the agony when his other selves died. Did he feel it when his skin peeled away from his body? Did he sense the endless scraping, the maddening rasping by things trying to get at the kernel, at his essence?
“You OK?” Whit watched her. She was being weird and he guessed she must have felt something similar to what he had experienced. He had been struck by a sensation of being back in Mud Valley but that was all he knew. Whit kept a freezer in his head and he shut himself into it when anxiety started to build. The feeling passed before long and he resumed his day.
Lucy nodded. “I’m fine.” She couldn’t tell him. They didn’t have that kind of relationship.
They arrived home to a police welcome.
“We have a few more questions we’d like to ask.” It was the officer with the mustache who had previously interviewed them. Constable Fields, Whit noted the name on his shirt this time.
“Did either of you talk to Frank Kappens yesterday, or earlier today?” He started the questioning right in the driveway.
“No,” both replied.
“Fine, fine.” Fields pause to carefully phrase his next question. “I want to ask you a little more about the incident in Mud Valley. I am trying to learn more about what you were thinking, your state of mind at the time.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” Whit said. “Stuff was just happening.”
Lucy agreed.
“OK, but specifically, what about Frank? What did you notice about his demeanor? Maybe the tone in his voice, or something he said.”
“I remember he was fucking scared like us,” Lucy said.
“Um-hum, good, but did you notice anything else?
“No,” said Lucy.
“No,” said Whit.
Matt stepped up, ready to interject. Fields held up his index finger.
“Give me one minute.”
He returned to Whit and Lucy.
“Have either of you ever seen Frank Kappens display remorse about the death of Lawrence Reams?”
“Fuck you.” Lucy flipped her hands at him, a show of dismissal. “It’s not like Frank was out looking for trouble. Is that what you’re implying? Do you really think he went along with us and had a plan to kill someone?”
“Well, did he?” Fields asked.
“He saved us. He fucking saved us.”
“Did he seem to like it, or enjoy it a little too much, though?” Fields held up a thumb and index finger to show what a little might be.
“No.” Whit jumped in. “We’d be dead without him. What happened in Mud Valley was self-defence. Frank likes to brag about it, but that’s because he’s a fucking hero.”
Fields pretended to consult his notes. “We’re trying to find some answers, that’s all.”
“What answers?” demanded Whit.
“Well, for starters,” Fields rocked his head from side to side. “How is Frank so good with a knife? He’s a small kid and he brought down a big man with one clean move. The coroner called it surgical.”
“He’s always talking about self-defence books and secret service videos,” Whit offered.
Fields laughed. “Are you trying to tell me he learned how to do that from reading a book and watching videos? I am telling you right now: no sir, that did not come from any book.”
“Don’t ask if you don’t want an answer.” Whit walked away.
“I’ll ask whatever I please.” Fields shouted as Whit disappeared inside the house.
Matt placed his hand on Fields’ shoulder. “This ends now. It’s over. Please leave and if you need anything else, we’ve given you our lawyer’s number, so all future contact is to go through Mr. Armstrong.”