June Sparrow and the Million-Dollar Penny Read online

  Indigo looked up at her from where he was nestled in her lap and gave her a gentle nudge with his snout. “I know, I know,” she whispered to him. “At least we’re both okay. I could have died in that silo.” She and Indigo both shuddered and she clutched him even tighter. “It’s just—I’d been hoping for the Big One, that’s all. But you’re right, Indigo. The main thing is that we’re together.” He rested his head on her knee.

  Bob came back with a big cardboard box and set it on the rug in front of her. “Not sure why Bridget felt she had to get rid of these things,” he said slowly. “But if there’s anything you want to hold on to that you can’t take home, you can always store it here.”

  There was an old alarm clock with a brightly colored flower appliquéd on the back that looked like her mother’s style. There was a teacup missing its handle and a key ring with a logo from Mount Rushmore, and some loose papers lying flat against the cardboard bottom. June turned these over and saw her mother’s handwriting. She quickly started scanning them.

  “These are the missing Penny Book pages,” she said. “Why do you think—”

  She stopped speaking. At the very top of a ripped-out page, in her mother’s flowing script were the words:

  I’m pregnant and nobody here understands, not even Bridget. Especially Bridget! I’ll never forgive her for what she said about Jimmy— This is the worst day of my life. Give it up for adoption—

  There were some more words scratched out so June couldn’t read them. The only words June cared about were crashing over and over in her brain: This is the worst day of my life. Adoption.

  June was out the door before she had time to read it twice. Bob yelled after her but she couldn’t hear what he said, and she didn’t stop to find out. She ran for the road with Indigo squealing in her arms, the afghan from the couch flapping around her shoulders in the dark. Worst day of my life and adoption kept ringing in her ears all the way down the lawn, under the fence, and out onto the road, which she hit at a run.

  She slipped on the new snow but kept running as if she would never have to stop. The cold air was slamming into her chest, and snow filled her sneakers. She heard a car coming behind her and ducked down into the ditch so that she couldn’t be seen. Maybe it was Bob looking for her, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything—she just wanted to get away. It had been so easy to pretend that her mother was perfect, marrying a dark handsome stranger and pursuing her dreams. A baby was supposed to make everything even more perfect. And not just any baby, June thought angrily—I’m the one who made it the worst day of her life. June clambered back up onto the road once the car went by and stomped right past Aunt Bridget’s driveway. Indigo was utterly still, so even he must be a little scared. She didn’t know where she was going, but she certainly wasn’t going back to her mother’s old bedroom.

  June stumbled and almost slipped down into the ditch, and then it hit her. It really was dark and cold out here, and she had better figure out something pretty fast. Maybe she could go into the state forest and stay with Joe and his mother, just for tonight. She wished she had his mother’s cell phone number, then remembered that she didn’t have a cell phone herself, so it wouldn’t do her any good.

  “Okay, then,” she said out loud for courage. “We’ll just keep walking till we get to Joe’s place.” Indigo whined nervously, and she pulled the afghan tighter around them both. The snow was getting thicker, and from the look of things there hadn’t been any snowplows yet. Finally June saw a green sign off to the right. It was half covered in snow and too dark to read, but she figured it must be the sign for the park. She wondered how far up the road the campground was, then remembered the little booth at the entrance. “We can stop to rest there,” she said to Indigo. “It’s not too far to Joe’s campsite.”

  If Joe’s mother was as nice as he was, June hoped she wouldn’t mind if a snow-covered girl showed up at their door, but honestly, June had stopped caring about anything except getting inside somewhere, even just the entrance booth of the state park, before they froze to death. “Drowning and freezing all in the same day!” she said to Indigo, and started laughing, but Indigo didn’t join in with that silent, shaking laughter that she knew so well. “Welcome to South Dakota!” she yelled into the swirling flakes around them, and realized she was getting kind of giddy. Could this be hypothermia? She couldn’t tell if the numbness she felt was from the weather or the shock of finding out that her mother had never really wanted her in the first place. If her mother had wanted to give her up for adoption, what did it matter what happened to her now? She laughed again in the dark, and Indigo made a growling noise in his chest the way he did when he thought danger was near. “Oh, be quiet, Indigo,” June said impatiently. “I’m fine. We’re fine!”

  But they weren’t at all fine, and June began to slow down as they continued up the hill in the dark. She wondered how far they had come from the main road. She thought they would have reached the entrance booth by now. What if she couldn’t find Joe’s campsite? Just then she saw a light flickering on and off up ahead, and she started pushing toward it. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew that she and Indigo had to get to shelter. As they got closer, she saw that the light wasn’t really flickering—it was a steady glow from a window, and waving tree branches were making the light unsteady. But that light was getting closer with each step.

  She smelled woodsmoke and began to think about a fireplace and hot cocoa and what it would feel like to be warm again. As she got closer to the light, she noticed that there were lots of strange shapes around her, half covered by snow. Squares and tubes that looked like boxes and pipes were scattered on the ground. The road narrowed to a pathway winding around all these hidden objects, and she had to be careful not to trip over anything. She passed a car without any windows, slowly filling up with snow. She was so tired that she almost gave in to the impulse to crawl inside and go to sleep on the front seat, but the yellow light and smell of woodsmoke beckoned her on.

  “This is a strange place,” she murmured to Indigo, as she passed what looked like an empty refrigerator, and she thought she heard the sound of someone playing the violin. At this she began to think that she must be hallucinating from the cold, but the music didn’t stop even when she told herself that it was all in her head. She vaguely wondered if it was coming from the house with the yellow window, but who would leave their refrigerator outside? And could that black cone on her left really be a huge pile of car tires tilting over like the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

  She stumbled the last few steps toward the light, and the music got louder. She saw the door to a little cabin and thought to herself that this was a strange hallucination indeed, for it looked just like the cabin built onto the back of Moses’s truck. If this was all a mirage brought on by hypothermia, June was past caring. She couldn’t feel her feet anymore, and Indigo was wriggling inside her shirt, digging his trotters hard into her stomach to keep her from collapsing in the snow. She walked up to the door of the cabin and knocked hard.

  It opened wide and there was Moses, sitting in his wheelchair, violin in hand.

  “June!” It really and truly was Moses. She didn’t know how or why, but it was Moses and this was his truck with the cabin on the back. He stared for a long moment, as if he couldn’t believe it was June, then reached out a hand to help her clamber up inside the cabin without asking any questions. He plopped her into an armchair in front of a glowing woodstove. She sat like a wooden doll as Moses pulled off her shoes and socks, then rubbed her bare feet with a towel until they started to tingle. Then he took a lump of beeswax that smelled like menthol and rubbed her feet and ankles hard before putting them into a pan of warm water that hurt at first, then felt like the loveliest bath she had ever had the pleasure to enjoy.

  The scent of honey and mint filled the cabin as Moses went back and forth, wrapping her in rugs and blankets. Indigo wriggled as close as he could to the fire, wrapped in another blanket that Moses tucked around h
is shoulders. All this time Moses didn’t ask any questions, and June didn’t need to do anything but watch as he bustled around the cabin, which was decorated floor to ceiling with hand-woven rugs from the shop. Her brain was so tired and her heart was so wounded that she couldn’t make sense of anything anymore. She didn’t think she would ever feel strong and brave again. Moses pressed a mug of hot soup into her hands and put a small bowl in front of Indigo, who lapped hungrily. June took a sip and felt her insides expand with gratitude. It was her favorite: chicken soup with rice.

  “Where are we?” she asked when she finished her first mug and he filled it for a second time.

  “This is the town dump,” Moses said. “This is where I live.”

  “I thought this was the road to the state park! I was looking for Joe.”

  “That’s a bit farther down the road,” Moses said, and she could tell he was worried. “Good thing you turned in here.”

  “And you play the violin?” June asked. “I thought I was only imagining . . .”

  “Not the violin,” Moses said; “the fiddle.” He took the instrument back out of its case and picked up the bow. He began to play the tune she had heard outside in the snow, and it sounded familiar though June couldn’t imagine where she had heard it before. It sounded as haunting and comforting as firelight itself, and she and Indigo listened as their bones warmed up and the steam rose off both of them in the flickering light from the woodstove, where the logs shifted next to each other and embers glowed below.

  Finally, June began to talk. Moses’s eyes widened when she told him about the silo accident, and they widened some more when she told him about what she had seen written in her mother’s Penny Book.

  “I’m not going home tonight, or maybe ever. I can’t, Moses. I can’t be in that house anymore.” She finished and there was a long pause as they both looked into the fire. For the first time in her life, June didn’t see dancing figures in the flames. She only saw logs burning away into ash.

  “You can stay here tonight,” Moses said. “But we have to go to your aunt’s house and tell her where you are. She must be worried sick about you in this storm, and I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “Do we have to?” June began, but one look from Moses made her stop. She knew he was right. “All right,” she said. “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

  “Nice thing about having your home on the truck is that you don’t really have to go out to leave home,” Moses said. “You sit right here while I drive over there.”

  “Okay.” June was feeling sleepy now, and she couldn’t imagine going back out into the storm. Indigo couldn’t even open his eyes.

  She pulled her chair up next to a fold-down table that latched up onto what looked like a real tree trunk built into the wall, with a couple of small branches sticking out. There were two coffee mugs and a few tiny ornaments hung on the branches, sort of like a combination cup holder and Christmas tree. There was a heart carved in the center of the tree trunk. June leaned in closer. Inside the heart were two sets of initials: “R.A. + J.S.”

  June looked once, looked again, and then looked up at Moses.

  “J.S.? Those are my initials.”

  “They’re also your father’s,” Moses said. “Jimmy Sparrow. Roseanne and Jimmy were married right here in the truck on New Year’s Eve, almost thirteen years ago.”

  “My parents? You knew them? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “Your mom always loved making up riddles. I figured she wanted you to figure out the riddle of Red Bank on your own. I’ve been waiting for the right time to tell you, and I guess that’s now.”

  June reached out and touched the heart. “They got married here? Why?” She stared at her parents’ initials. It all seemed like a dream.

  “I’m licensed to marry folks,” Moses said simply. “Another one of my sidelines. People around town know that, and every few years a couple comes along that wants something different from a church wedding. Your mom wanted to be married inside a beehive with all that sweetness around. They got married right here in the truck, just about where you’re sitting, as a matter of fact.”

  June didn’t say anything.

  “They loved each other,” said Moses. “They got married for love and for life. And I’m pretty darn sure they were hoping to have children someday.”

  June forced herself to ask, “Then why did she write that in her Penny Book, Moses? How come?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I do know they loved each other, and I know they loved you too.”

  “But I don’t,” June said very quietly. “I don’t even know them anymore. Not really.”

  “Sometimes we don’t get to know everything all at once,” said Moses.

  June wouldn’t look at him. Sometimes we never get to know anything, she thought.

  “Let’s go up to your aunt’s place so she doesn’t worry, and then we can get back up this hill before the snow gets any deeper.” Moses reached for a hook at the back of the cabin and unlatched a small door that led directly into the cab of the truck.

  “What’s that?” June asked.

  “Another special feature,” Moses said. “Since I live in the back of the truck, I got them to cut a door in between the front and the back so that I can hitch myself back and forth without having to go outside. I keep one chair back here and one chair behind the driver’s seat.”

  It was pretty ingenious, and Moses transferred himself from his wheelchair to the front seat by pulling up on a couple of handles on the ceiling. But for once June watched without saying anything. She couldn’t think anymore about great inventions and initials and mysteries. She just wanted to get it over with, then come back home with Moses and fall asleep in front of the woodstove. Moses reached down to swing his legs over to the other side, then pulled the little door shut behind him. She heard him settle into the driver’s seat and start the engine. June wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t stop looking at the initials carved into the wood in front of her.

  Everybody knew her parents but her.

  Strangely enough, nobody was home at Aunt Bridget’s house when they pulled up. The Cadillac was there and the lights inside the house were on, but nobody was home. June left Indigo inside and ran back out to the truck. Moses looked worried.

  “She’s probably out looking for you,” he said.

  “But the car’s here,” June said. “Maybe I should just leave a note.”

  “You can’t just leave a note when people are out looking for you in the snow,” Moses said firmly. The wind had dropped a bit but the snow was still falling steadily, and the sound of Moses’s truck was muffled even though June was standing right next to it.

  “Look at those tire tracks.” Moses pointed to the driveway. “She must be out looking with Bob Burgess. Listen, June, they may be out for a little while, so I’m just going to pull off down the road past the bottom of the driveway, where it’s flat. You wait for them inside, and after you explain things to your aunt, come down and we’ll go back home together. I don’t want to leave the truck on this incline. Not good for Floyd.”

  “Isn’t he—they—asleep?” June asked doubtfully.

  “Sure are, but we all sleep better when we’re flat out.” He smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you. Just getting down off this hill before I get stuck in the snow.”

  Moses slowly drove the truck back down the long driveway, the lights from the little cabin tilting as he bumped along. June ran into the house, where Indigo was waiting for her in front of the gas heater. She put her hands out toward the blower and realized her sneakers were dripping onto the rug. She carried them upstairs to see if she could find some dry clothes in her mother’s closet.

  It didn’t feel the same walking into the bedroom now that she was determined to leave. She threw her wet clothes and shoes in a pile and grabbed a dry shirt and pair of jeans out of her mother’s bureau without caring what they looked like. At least there were plenty of
pairs of dry socks, and she layered on two, just in case. In the back of the closet was a pair of red cowboy boots with white piping that would probably fit, but June didn’t allow herself to admire them. Nothing that belonged to her mother felt good anymore.

  She grabbed one of her mother’s suitcases from the closet and started to pack her things. Maybe she could borrow enough from Moses for a bus ticket to New York. She would go to her favorite places and find a way to sleep there. She would sneak into the stacks at the New York Public Library or sleep inside the Great Canoe at the American Museum of Natural History. Anywhere but here. She pulled her fancy dress off a hanger in the closet and reached under the bed to grab her purse. It was still lying open from the last time she’d looked in it, and the case with her birthday penny skittered across the floor. Indigo ran to pick it up for her, and June heard a sharp crack as he grabbed it in his mouth. Indigo spit the hard plastic case out indignantly, and two pennies rolled out onto the floor.

  Two pennies. Not one.

  June stopped packing. There must have been two pennies, one stacked on top of the other, inside the broken case. Why did her mom do that? June picked them up. One was the 1965, but the other one had a wheat design on the back; only the older pennies had that. June turned it over and stared at the date: 1943. Her hand started shaking. Bob had told her that her mom had cashed it in to start the company!

  June pulled open the drawer of the night table, where she had seen a small horseshoe magnet along with a magnifying glass, some paper clips, nothing special. Now she got it—these weren’t random items; her mother had them next to her bed for a reason. June took the magnet out of the drawer, hardly daring to breathe, and held it up to the penny. It didn’t stick. It was copper. She took out the magnifying glass and looked at the date again: 1943.