Page 7 of The River We Remember

Over the years, Quinn had hired numerous men to work for him part-time, some of them young and hoping to save enough money to buy a farm of their own one day, some already small farmers in their own right who supplemented their income working for the big Irishman.

The Quinn farm was seven miles south of Jewel, along the banks of the Alabaster River. When Brody turned up the lane off the county highway, he could see activity near the barn, where Quinn kept a small herd of beef cattle. As Brody drove between the young fields—corn to his right, soybeans to his left—he watched three men trying to run down a big black bull that was making a mess of Quinn’s tidy crop rows. Brody pulled into the yard and parked between the farmhouse and the great array of outbuildings. He stepped out, walked to the fence, leaned against the top rail, and watched the chase in the cornfield. He considered offering to help, but he knew about bulls, knew they were cantankerous creatures, and he figured he’d just stay put and see how things played out.

“Big Bastard.”

He turned and watched a girl of fourteen cross the yard and come to where he stood. She was tall for her age, with dark red hair, which she wore long. She had on jeans and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled above her elbows. Her name was Colleen, and she was Quinn’s daughter. She leaned against the same rail as Brody and looked where Brody had been looking.

“Big Bastard?” Brody said.

“The bull,” she replied. “That’s what J.P. calls him, anyway.” She nodded toward her brother, who was one of the figures chasing the animal. “He hates that bull. Daddy named him Big Black, but I like J.P.’s name better. Fits that critter perfect.”

“Looks like he’s trying to make a break for it.”

“He does that sometimes. He wants to get at the cows over there.”

Colleen lifted a hand toward the herd milling about in the big cattle yard behind the barn.

“Always this hard to get him corralled?”

“Not if Daddy’s here. Him and Big Bastard, they’ve got an understanding. Or that’s what Daddy claims.”

“You don’t help?”

“Men’s work,” she said. “Are you looking for my father?”

“Your mother, actually.”

“She’s in the house, resting.”

“I need to talk to her. It’s important.”

“Come on then.”

Colleen took one final look toward the mayhem going on in the cornfield, turned, and led the way. There was something melancholy about the girl, and Brody thought that maybe anyone whose father was a man like Jimmy Quinn and whose mother was bedridden might be prone to darker moods.

The farmhouse was an enormous two-story clapboard painted white, with gingerbread trim and green shutters. It was a good house, sturdy, built by Quinn’s grandfather before the turn of the century. It had been modest then but had been added to and refined over the years, as the prosperity of the Quinns increased. Once inside the house, the girl offered him a seat in the parlor, then she mounted the stairs. On the mantel of the fieldstone fireplace sat an antique-looking clock flanked by framed photographs. One was of Jimmy Quinn alone. He was a huge man, with a great shock of red hair, hard green eyes, and enormous hands like an ape. He wore a three-piece suit and was posed in a way that might make one think of those great robber barons who so horribly misshaped America’s history with their greed and hubris. A lot of farmers came into town in their faded, patched, and soiled biballs or dungarees, their boots crusted with barn muck. Not Jimmy Quinn. He claimed to be descended from Irish kings, and he always rolled into Jewel looking like gentry. The other photo was a family portrait with him and Marta and their children. Conspicuously absent was any evidence of Jimmy Quinn’s first wife and the two children she bore him.

Through the doorway to his left was the kitchen, and in that doorway stood a girl eyeing him silently.

“Hello, Bridget,” he said and smiled.

Quinn’s youngest daughter was only eight. Like her sister and her father, she was a redhead, with long pigtails and deep-sunk eyes, which regarded Brody with a look he couldn’t quite decode. Was it interest? Apprehension? Did his uniform intimidate her?

“I’m Sheriff Dern,” he said. “Remember? I talked to your class last fall about what policemen do.”

“I remember,” she said, but that didn’t change her demeanor. “Do you want some Kool-Aid?” she asked in a flat voice.

“No, thank you,” he said.

She continued to stand in the doorway and eye him in a way that was, frankly, unnerving.

He heard boards creak, and a moment later Colleen appeared on the stairs, helping Marta Quinn descend. They came slowly. The effort it took was clear, and Brody offered, “We could talk upstairs, Marta.”

She looked up from where she’d been considering each stair carefully before placing her foot. “No, this is fine, Sheriff.” She still, after all these years, spoke with a thick German accent. “Just give me a moment.”

She wore a pink housecoat buttoned nearly to her chin. On her feet were pink slippers. Her hair, Brody could tell, had just been brushed, probably with Colleen’s help, so that she would not appear in complete disarray before her visitor. She wore no makeup, and her face, once quite beautiful, was pale and drawn. She wasn’t even forty yet, but her illness made her seem a decade older.

She fixed Brody with dull eyes. “It’s about James, isn’t it?”