Soon as he said, “Hey Bernie,” I knew he was out to get my goat. And it wasn’t just the smirk on his face that told me either. My name’s Bernadette, my nickname’s Bernadette, and my pet names are all Bernadette. And Sheriff Jimmy Drake, who I wrestled to the ground sixty years ago when I was four and he was six, knew that my name was Bernadette sure as he knew that his own mother was buried by that white oak tree up on Juniper Hill.

 

I was on my way up that very hill to find the nest of a male long-eared owl I’d been hearing over the last couple of nights, hooting its soft call into the night sky. It had become my practice over the sixteen months since Hank had been gone, to take a hike every morning. I’d hike up over Juniper Hill and then down into the valley by Deer River. From there, I could walk five miles in either direction through a variety of terrain and foliage, from flat, grassy flood plains where the least bitterns hid, to woods of pine, maple and oak where the warblers would tease me with their calls from deep within dense bushes.

 

It was one such morning that Jimmy and his deputy, Ralph Krakowski, stopped me just outside my house.

 

“I ain’t seen Hank in a long time, Bernie,” Jimmy said like he was interested in passing the time, and had just observed that Hank was gone.

 

It wasn’t unusual for Hank to go missing from time to time. Three years after we were married and two months after my first miscarriage, he ran off with the cashier at the Tasty Mart who used to twirl her blond hair around her finger while she pushed the buttons on the cash register. He was gone for almost nine months. Then he came back like nothing had happened. The last time was three years ago when he and Fern Alvorson headed off to start a farm together in Kansas. She took her husband’s savings out of the watering can, and the shovel off the porch. She must have thought a shovel was a good all-around tool to start off in the corn-growing business. They had a car accident right outside of town and I guess Fern saw the error of her ways right then, ‘cause she dumped him, drunk and bleeding, on my front lawn. I took him to the hospital and they patched him up, but the doctor said it was one concussion too many. That’s when he started collecting disability. Nine hundred a month.

 

Over the years, people in town and at church got so they hardly even remarked on his disappearances anymore. Course I don’t go to church much these days. Mostly I meet up with God on my bird-watching expeditions. I quit going after I was cold-shouldered off the church bazaar committee when I asked Jimmy Drake’s wife, Betty Sue, if I could have a chisel to cut through the crust of her peach pie. There aren’t too many folks who venture to pry into my business anymore—which is just fine with me.

 

“Well, Jimmy, I haven’t seen much of him lately either,” I answered like the thought just dawned on me too.

 

“Off on one of his adventures, is he?” Jimmy said. I caught the wink he gave Ralph, though he rubbed his eye after like it was a piece of dirt that worried him. “I woulda thought he’d a taken his car, though,” he added.

 

Ralph snorted and nodded. With his sweat-stained cowboy hat pulled down almost to his eyebrows, Ralph looked like a junior Jimmy. Fact is, he couldn’t hardly wait to step into Jimmy’s size eleven brown leather shoes and pin that star to his chest. In fact, the whole town was waiting for Jimmy Drake to step down from his thirty-year role as town-swaggerer and hippie-whacker. Everybody was tired of his airs and the fact that they had to treat Betty Sue Drake like she was something special even though her shriek of a laugh could cut through steel.

 

I guess it was inevitable that Jimmy Drake would come poking around eventually.

 

* * *

 

Now, Hank coulda been dead a few days before I found him. He had moved into the shed where he used to keep his bigger tools and equipment. Just a bed, the night table, and the trunk with his clothes, were all that could really fit in there. I never went in ‘cause it smelled like the dickens, but judging from the collection of bottles I picked up every few days from the lawn under the window, I could tell what he was doing.

 

It was when I noticed that there were no bottles collecting that I started in to wondering. So I crept out there late one evening when it was neither daylight nor nighttime and the world was in its gray nightgown. I tried peeking in the only window, but it was grimy and partly covered over and I couldn’t see a thing. I knew I’d just have to open the door, and if he was waiting, hatchet in hand, I’d take my fate. The metallic thrum of the crickets covered the creak of the door. He looked like a pile of dirty clothes on the floor. He smelled like a pile of something else all together.

 

I didn’t think twice about it. I took off his gold-plated watch that he’d gotten from the sawmill when he retired. The wedding ring was stuck on his finger so I let it be. Then I took the wallet out of his back pocket. I lifted the shovel off the hook and headed out to find him a nice burial spot, somewhere the dogs and raccoons wouldn’t dig him up.

 

There was a great big rock in my front yard which I thought would make a fitting burial marker, but I couldn’t budge it. I went back to the shed. I had to cover my face with my hanky so as not to retch over everything. Hank had a long steel lever weighing upwards of twenty-five pounds. With the help of a smaller rock I levered that boulder over on its side. The grubs and potato bugs and worms would make nice eternal companions for my Hank.

 

I waited ‘til full dark to dig the hole. I didn’t have neighbors to speak of, but you never know when someone wouldn’t come moseying up that road toward the cemetery, and it wouldn’t do to be seen digging a hole in my front yard. The hole only had to be deep enough to fit Hank, but still the digging’ taxed my strength. I sat huffing and wheezing for a time before I went back for Hank. I dragged him by his heels over to the hole. That took some doing as he was a big man, and I was mostly holding my breath the whole time as the stink was fearsome.

 

I covered him over with dirt and rolled that rock right down over my knight in shining armor. Then I sat back and looked up at the moon winking at me. I started cashing the disability checks that very week.

 

Now here were Jimmy and Ralph smirking all over my front lawn and preventing me from getting my early start to investigate that long-eared owl.

 

“Well, Jimmy, you just let me know when you find ‘im,” I said thinking that, after sixteen months in the ground, nature would have done her work and Hank wouldn’t be much more’n a pile of bones by now.

 

I turned to head off after my bird.

 

* * *

 

I took the path that led around the south bend of Deer River. I imagined the long-eared owl perched in the tulip tree that towered over the maples and birches. Truth was, I was surrounded by a certain contentment. It was a contentment I had felt from time to time during my marriage to Hank, and it always came when he was away.

 

The Hank I knew when he was gone was the very Hank I had fallen for in my teenage years—lively and happy, full of interesting things to talk about and do. It was like one of the fairy tales I read as a child, where the prince was under an enchantment which made him a ferocious bear during the day and only at night did the true prince emerged to reveal his innermost being.

 

Hank’s innermost self was only present when his outermost self wasn’t. And it was at those times, when he was gone, that I’d pull our honeymoon photo out of the box in the closet and set it up at the kitchen table, right at Hank’s spot. It showed Hank standing a full foot taller than me with his dark eyes flashing out from under his black hair, his arm wrapped around me and both of us with great big smiles. The Niagara Falls created a background of mist so we looked like we were caught in a land of enchantment. When Hank was off on one of his “adventures” I took to keeping company with the Hank of that photo, and I was content.

 

Now I still felt his presence. It’s funny, I suppose, but the farther I got from civilization the less alone I felt. It was like Hank was keeping me company, traipsing through those woods with me. That young Hank who’d run his fingers through my hair and laugh when I blushed hot and red. I didn’t find my bird but I headed home feeling satisfied nonetheless.

 

* * *

 

After a morning’s walk along Deer River I always had a hunger for soup and a smoked turkey sandwich. I took the copper-bottom pan down from the hook on the wall. The pan had a dent in the bottom that went with the scar on my shoulder—a relic from the early days of my marriage. I poured the soup into the pan then collected the fixings for my sandwich, but damned if the turkey wasn’t turned. I shut the refrigerator door and looked out the window trying to decide which hankering in me was stronger—the one for turkey, or the one to stay home and away from the crush of the folks in town. My grumbling stomach answered the question so I grabbed my hat and headed out the front door.

 

I had gotten into the habit of giving Hank a little nod every day when I headed down my gravel driveway. It was the most cordial I’d been to him in years. But knowing that he was lying under a three foot boulder, consorting with the worms and grubs, I didn’t find him so intimidating as I once did.

 

But something about that boulder stayed on my mind, and when I got to the car I turned to look at it. It’s a fact that when I get hungry my eyes play tricks on me, but I would have sworn that that boulder, nestled amid overgrown forsythia and rhododendron, was angled just a bit different than it was when I said goodnight to Hank from my bedroom window the night before. I had to chuckle to myself. If Hank was trying to move that big old rock from the underneath, he wasn’t having much success.

 

I tried to start the car but the engine seemed to lack the energy to turn over. I almost headed back to the house. Not having a car meant not being able to drive to Cole, seven miles away, where no one knew me. I’d have to walk into Millersburg if I was to satisfy my hunger. Well, maybe Jimmy Drake would have told everyone about our talk this morning and the town gossips wouldn’t feel the need to worry me with their questions.

 

The trip from my house to the town of Millersfield is like walking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars. Up near my house, halfway between the center of town and the cemetery on Juniper Hill, the world is wide open—just the trees and the birds providing all the company a person could want. Half a mile from my house the dirt road comes to be covered with black tar that in the summer feels like Hell is located just underneath. Next thing you know you’re on a sidewalk and the wide world is covered over with buildings and benches, bus depots, and parking lots. People come in and out of stores and you have to jump from side to side to avoid crashing into someone every few feet.

 

Well, wouldn’t you know that the first thing I saw as I walked past the Post Office was Mildred Sawyer having a smoke next to the door at the top of the stone steps. I looked away in the hope that she’d let me be, but that was like hoping that the squirrels wouldn’t eat the seeds off your sunflowers before you could get to them.

 

“Well if it ain’t Bernadette,” she said. I looked up and gave her a nod, all business, and kept on moving. “Yoo hoo. Don’t run off like that. I haven’t had a word with you in ages, and I’m just dying to catch up.” She dashed after me with her hips swinging and her cigarette held over her head like she was walking a tightrope.

 

“Hi there, Millie.”

 

“How you been, Bernadette?”

 

“I’m just dandy.”

 

“I ain’t seen Hank around lately. He been laid up?”

 

“I ain’t seem him for quite some time either, Millie, so I can’t say whether he’s laid up or no.”

 

I could see Ted Phillips peeking out from behind a forest of rake handles leaning up against the window on the inside of his hardware store. Behind Ted, Stu Amati was laughing and glancing over at me, too. They were waiting to pounce on Millie soon’s she was done with me, to find out what she learned.

 

Millie sucked in on her cigarette and looked around for inspiration to get me talking. “Well, you heard about Sally Ann’s girl, I guess,” she finally said.

 

I couldn’t figure why Millie might think I could be stalled with gossip about Sally Ann Stevenson and her pack of brats. “No, I ain’t heard nothin’ about Sally Ann’s girl, and I don’t guess I’m going to.” I walked off after my turkey ‘cause my stomach had no time for Millie and her nattering.

 

It was when I was on my way out of town with my turkey that a strange thing happened. I was walking past the Autoglass with my head down so as not to attract conversation, when I heard “Bernie!” coming out of the depths of the Autoglass. Now if I don’t recognize my own husband’s voice then I’m a loon. It was Hank all right. I stopped at the door of the Autoglass and poked my head in. Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that the place was empty except for Rufus standing behind the bar with the newspaper spread out in front of him. He looked up at me. “Hey Bernadette,” he said. “Hank ain’t here.”

 

“I know. I’m just looking,” I said backing out to the sidewalk. I guess it’s not just my eyes play tricks on me when I’m hungry.

 

* * *

 

The first night I slept in the shed it was after I’d been out on one of my rambles. It had been a good day. I’d seen a rare Mississippi Kite, and I’d managed to fill my canvas bag with spiceberries to add to my applesauce, and some poor man’s pepper for my dandelion salad. Eating this way, I hadn’t had to go in to Millersburg since the summer.

 

As I tramped past the shed I remembered that I had never cleaned up after Hank. I opened the door. The smell wasn’t so strong anymore. I tossed a stale bottle of whiskey out on the lawn. Some clothes that looked like they had provided a nest for a family of field mice went out, too. I shook out the sleeping bag Hank had used instead of linens, and then I spread it back down over the mattress. The room had a cozy feel and I thought I could smell a little of Hank’s musky scent. I lay down on the bed and next thing I knew, the screech of an early morning jay woke me.

 

Over time I found myself in the shed more than in my own big house.

 

* * *

 

It was our anniversary that made me go back to church. I hadn’t been since Hank died. Of course I wasn’t paying much attention to dates, but the soft fall air and the deep red of the burning bushes at the cemetery brought to mind my wedding day and I knew the date was close. I woke one morning to the sound of the church bells calling me. I thought of the rose window that had shone over Hank’s head on that day I walked down the aisle holding my bouquet of carnations in shaking hands.

 

It was a mistake to go to church, though. People’s staring eyes prevented my mind from traveling back to my wedding. I felt like an insect under a glass and I was anxious to return home. The choir warbled their last note and I heaved a great sigh, nodded to the folks that ventured to extend their blessings on me, and headed toward the open air. But Jimmy Drake stopped me just outside the big front doors of the church.

 

“Bernadette, could I have a word with you?”

 

“Have a word,” he said. And no “Bernie” either, just my name, Bernadette. That was official talk.

 

We headed down the stone steps of the old church, and stood on the grass next to the walk that led to the parking lot.

 

“How’re you doing, Bernadette?” His face looked strained.

 

“I’m doing just fine, Jimmy. Thanks for asking. You look a might ill, though.”

 

“No, no. Say, I was going to come out to your place tomorrow. Got something to talk to you about.”

 

The congregation flowed around us like we were rocks in a stream. All except Millie Sawyer who sauntered by rummaging through her purse and lingering within earshot. I glared at her but she took no notice.

 

“It’s just, Bernadette . . . It’s just that we ain’t seen Hank in longer’n usual. It’s been years since he last took off and to tell the truth, I just didn’t think he had another adventure like that in him.”

 

“Listen to that,” I said.

 

“What?”

 

“It’s a Carolina Chickadee. Sweetest sound on God’s green earth.”

 

The look Jimmy gave me was much like a bird’s look, with his head a little cocked to one side like he was listening for a worm underfoot. It seemed like a full minute before he said, “What I need to know, Bernie, is just where Hank has got to.”

 

A whiff of smoke carried over the cool breeze, giving Millie away. I turned to find her leaning up against the oak tree that drops acorns on the church roof. She was puffing away on one of her extra long cigarettes.

 

“And just what do you have to say for yourself Miss Millie?” She might have jumped out of her three-inch heels for the start I gave her. Jimmy nodded her off and she sashayed over to join Betty Sue. My eyes followed her toward the crowd that had not yet left the fellowship of the parking lot. A black head of hair stood out among the stragglers. It was hair I knew very well and it started my heart to pounding. I watched that head expecting any second to see Hank’s dark eyes look toward me and give me a wink. I felt sure he was telling me not to give over to worries about the gossip of townsfolk.

 

“Isn’t that right, Bernadette?” Jimmy was saying.

 

I looked up at him then back toward the parking lot, but I couldn’t see Hank anymore.

 

“Bernadette, Mitch, from the bank, called me on Friday,” Jimmy said. “It seems you’ve been cashing in Hank’s disability checks for him, these past months.” He glanced at me then took to studying his shoe, though I couldn’t see what was so interesting about it.

 

“Well he can’t cash ‘em, can he?” I wanted to see Hank again and I was losing patience with Jimmy Drake.

 

“That’s just it, Bernie. We’re all wondering why Hank can’t collect ‘em hisself. Where’s he got off to? If you know, I think it’s time you start telling.”

 

I thought of Hank heading home ahead of me. I was anxious to get going, hoping to catch up to him on the road. “Why I was just talking to him this morning, it so happens,” I said.

 

Jimmy looked skeptical. He probably knew that Hank and I didn’t do much talking in normal times. “That’s real good, Bernie.” He squinted at me. “Mitch wants to talk to Hank. How about if I let him know that Hank’s been poorly but that as soon as he’s right again Hank’ll come on by the bank?”

 

I remembered how proud I used to be of my Hank when he first started coming ‘round to call on me. I was the luckiest girl in Millersfield when Hank Forman took notice of me. Weren’t folks surprised to see that I could dress up so fine. How I used to love to show him off, and myself, too.

 

I smiled at Jimmy. “No, no, Jimmy Drake. You bring that bank man by after lunch and Hank and I will serve you up a nice cold glass of lemonade. And bring your pretty wife.”

 

He looked at me like he didn’t remember what lemonade was. But he nodded all the same and said, “Okay, then.”

 

* * *

 

It was after I had left the town and the church behind and was on the dirt road toward home that I heard that old familiar voice.

 

“Bernadette!”

 

I turned, and there he was coming out from among the mock orange bushes alongside the road—Hank. He was slim and smiling. It was my Hank—young and handsome—the Hank that I’d fallen in love with from afar when I was twelve. The Hank who could laugh so’s anyone nearby had to laugh too, just to share with him that little bit. It was the Hank who sat with me by the river when I was sixteen, and braided dandelions into my hair and kissed the back of my neck.

 

“How’s my girl?” he said giving me a squeeze.

 

My laugh sounded like a teenager, I was that glad to see him. I told him about our guests. He looked a little concerned when I told him about Mitch, the bank man. “Whatcha going to tell him, Bernie?” he asked me.

 

“Well, I won’t have to tell him anything, will I? You’ll be there to do the talking,” I reminded him.

 

He seemed just fine with that, so I took his hand and we walked back to the house together with him sheltering me from the gusty fall breeze that blew my hair across my cheek and dropped leaves under our crunching feet.

 

When we got home I told Hank to just stay put on the front porch while I got things ready. I admit that I had some tingling throughout my body at the thought of entertaining guests. It had been years since Hank and I had had visitors. I thought I’d put on my light blue blouse with the flowers embroidered on the placket over the buttons. I hadn’t worn that blouse since Hank and I got back from our honeymoon and we had that romantic dinner at Sal’s Eatery in town.

 

I had to think about where to have my guests sit. Hank and I once had big plans for the front room we called the parlor. Hank was going to build shelves alongside the windows and we had already picked out the matching furniture from Harrelson’s in Cole which we intended to buy once we had saved up the cash. In fact, I had been putting away the money from Hank’s disability checks with just that project in mind. Truth be told, though, Hank and I didn’t have much need for a parlor during the forty-five years of our marriage. Hank always did his entertaining at the Autoglass or in motels in Cole.

 

It was to be the front porch. We had a swing that just needed a pillow to make it comfortable, and I could bring out two of the kitchen chairs. If Jimmy decided to bring along more people, well, I’d just have to make do.

 

I swept the fall leaves off the porch, scooting Hank out of my way, and brought out the chairs. There was a small wooden table in the parlor that would be perfect for setting the lemonade on. I could keep filling glasses as my guests finished them up and we would probably sit and chat for hours that way. The only problem was that I didn’t have any lemons to make lemonade. Instead, I pulled out a handful of mint leaves from the plants that had taken over the grassy area behind the house, and crushed them with a hammer. With the right amount of sugar and ice water they would make a refreshing drink.

 

I thought about what Hank should wear. Before he died his belly had outgrown most of his old shirts, but I thought it likely that a shirt from his younger days would fit him nicely now. The red and black flannel shirt that he wore when we rode horses near Niagara Falls would be perfect. It brought out the sparkle in his eyes and made his teeth seem to shine extra white when he smiled. I took it out of the box and shook it to get the musty smell out. Then I went outside to get Hank. He was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t in the house either. Wasn’t that just like him. I hadn’t cried in many years, but I could feel some pressure behind my eyes. The crush of knowing he had disappeared again was too heavy for me to bear. I sat down on the top step of the porch and stared over the browns and oranges of the woods by Deer River. I studied two blackbirds intent on bringing misery to a soaring red-tailed hawk, until an idea brought a smile to my face.

 

I stood up and went out to the shed. I got the lever that I had used eighteen months ago. It was a struggle to roll that boulder over but I eventually had success. I huffed a few breaths before heading back to the shed for the shovel. The soil was packed down but Hank wasn’t too far under it, so after a few good shovelsful I hit bone. I moved more carefully then. I didn’t want to hurt him. I dug the last bits with my hands, gently wiping the dirt off Hank’s grinning skull. He had a warm smell of earth and decaying leaves. I cupped my hands around the smooth bone and lifted him by the head. It came off in my hands leaving the rest of the bones behind. This was something I hadn’t anticipated. I thought about trying to piece him together somehow but there seemed no way to do that. I’d have to make do with the head. After all, that was what people came to see. I found a long stick. Not as long as Hank but that was for the best because we’d be sitting and it wouldn’t do for him to tower over us. I filled a bucket with dirt and set it on the porch. Then I stuck the stick in it and placed Hank’s grinning head on the stick. Once I draped the shirt around the stick and held it in place with pins, Hank looked presentable.

 

Course, I looked a right mess. I was starting to fret about time. After-church lunches would soon be over and my guests could arrive at any time. I hurried through a shower, and got dressed as quickly as I could. I took my time with my hair, though. Having long, full hair requires extra care but it’s worth it to see it shine. Hank always liked my hair.

 

I put the mint refresher and six glasses on a tray and carried them out to the front porch. There was Hank right where I’d left him, glad as he could be to see me looking so pretty. I gave him a lady-like nod and set the tray down on the little table then I sat down in the chair next to Hank and looked out over the road.