Tortus Bay

1.14: Digging Up Dirt

Henry tried to convince himself that the two drawings were not the same. The first he'd seen for only a second, while drunk and overwhelmed. The second, he could barely make out in the windowsill of the Bramble's kitchen. They were only leaves, above all; but somehow he was certain. Teresa bustled around, still wrapped in her colorful quilt, asking seemingly disconnected questions while she pulled various ingredients down from her shelves. How old was he? Where was he born? What was his grandmother's name? Did he enjoy the taste of peppermint?

He answered them all automatically, his mind occupied with a more important question: how could he have forgotten that he saw the journal of Mathas Bernard? At the time, it had been a half-interesting curiosity from a recently deceased public figure. Now, it seemed a lot more important. Clues to the man's death—his murder, as it now seemed—might be within those pages. And Clair had mentioned nothing about it.

Sofia, the elder of the two Bramble daughters, re-entered the kitchen with a tub of translucent paste. She handed it off to her mother, then perched by the window once more. Teresa piled the salve and her gathered assortment of ingredients into a bowl, and began mixing it all together with a large wooden spoon. "I've never heard anything quite like your situation before," she said.

"Hm?" He pulled his mind back onto the topic at hand. "Oh, right. Do you think you can help?"

"Today, I'm going to give you something topical, to help with the discomfort, but you'll have to come back to me so that we can reassess."

"I appreciate it," he said. In the windowsill, Sofia resumed flipping through her book, and try as he might to stop himself his eyes repeatedly strayed to those pages.

"I'm not promising any miracles," Teresa said. "It might take us some time to figure out what makes this thing kick."

He couldn't contain his curiosity any longer. "What are you reading over there?"

The look the girl gave him suggested that he had failed in keeping his voice casual. She flipped the book over to display a brown leather cover, complete with an ornamental brass latch. "An old diary," she said. "I like to draw."

Lola looked back and forth from Henry to her sister, mouth slightly open. He coughed. "That's great."

Teresa scooped her mixture into a small container, and pressed it into Henry's hand. "Apply this to the front and back of your wound, once in the morning and then once again before you go to sleep. Keep your bandages fresh, and it should at least ease the pain. We can go from there."

"Thank you." He pocketed the salve and pulled his shirt back on. "Do I owe you anything?"

She smiled as she took his elbow and guided him back through the hallway to the door. "The Brambles have lived here for a very long time, doing what we do. We have never charged for it. The village pays us back in different ways. Perhaps you will stick around long enough to see what those are yourself."

***

The biggest advantage to having a cashier position at Horizon Foods was the unobstructed time if afforded Henry to think. At any given moment his job was to stand behind the register, and wait for a customer to appear. This was interrupted only ever briefly by the actual function of ringing someone up, taking their money, and engaging mild small-talk. The people of Tortus Bay, or at least that subset which came in to shop that day, seemed interested solely in sly remarks about how much nicer it was to pick up their groceries now that Howie wasn't involved in the process.

Howie (or Howard, as he preferred to be called) was the biggest disadvantage to having a cashier position at Horizon Foods. The man made himself more scarce that second day, especially after learning that Henry had somehow figured out how to operate the register himself, but every five minutes in his presence felt like an hour. He'd given up the jabs at his new employee's lack of intelligence, and moved on to self-congratulatory speeches—into which he inserted long pauses to allow his audience time to produce the appropriate verbal reactions.