Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) Page 5

  She tried instead to pull up a mental image of the painting under the sheet in her studio, but instead of the face of the little Amish boy, she saw Jesse’s face. She saw Jesse sitting in the woods on a fallen log.

  The previous winter she had seen Jesse close up, had stood within a foot or so of him. Why hadn’t she told the sheriff that? Because it was months ago, she told herself, and counted back—April, March, February, January. Four months ago. Ancient history.

  The trees had been bare then, the sky gray. A chilly morning, she remembered. It sent a chill through her even now.

  Several times before that morning she had seen the boy going into or coming out of the woods. To her eyes he appeared the size of a ten-year-old, maybe four-and-a-half-feet tall, though it was difficult to be sure at that distance, but too young, she thought, to be out there alone, trudging across the far edge of the field, following the tree line before disappearing into the darkness of trunks and limbs. Too young to be carrying a shotgun that seemed as long as he was tall. It would be just after dawn, usually, while she was repositioning the easel so as to catch the coming light from the dining room’s bay window. On a few other occasions she had spotted him at dusk, when she was busy with something or other outside, sweeping leaves off the back porch or splitting wood for the fireplace, or she would be washing dishes at the sink, or just standing by the window and sipping a glass of pinot grigio. Maybe a dozen times between the fall and the spring she had watched him entering or coming out of the woods.

  But it was that very first time—that first jarring volley of gunshots, three blasts in rapid succession echoing across the field while the crows squawked and burst from the treetops—that made her begin to bristle at the sight of the boy, to always associate him with that thunderclap of violence, to birds in panicked flight.

  She had put up with those jarring interruptions for a while, though each time they sounded she reacted as if her own house had been dynamited. Went rigid with the very first decibel to reach her, stood frozen while the paint dripped off her brush or down over a wrist. It always took her a while to get her breath back and to calm the thump of her heart, but even then when she tried to work it was as if her eyes had become unfocused, and she could not capture again the clarity of the vision of the image she intended to paint. The echo of the shotgun blasts seemed to lodge just behind her forehead in a tight, heavy cloud of darkness. It would be impossible to paint for the rest of the day, impossible to lose herself in the world she was coaxing from the canvas. The next morning and several thereafter would begin with a residue of that cloud inside her head, but when dawn came and then full sunlight, and the crows did not shriek in terror, only then would her body relax and the cloud dissipate. Only then could she work for a few hours without the outside world intruding.

  Until one day something snapped in her. It was late January, she told herself. Maybe four in the afternoon. Overcast. Frigid. The sun had been nothing more than a dull ember barely showing through the gray.

  She had been standing at the sink, washing a handful of baby carrots under a stream of cool water. The last of the ahi tuna steaks, a box of eight June had sent at Thanksgiving, had been thawed out and crusted with coarsely ground black pepper. Charlotte planned to braise the baby carrots and a few brussels sprouts in olive oil, then add a tablespoon of butter and caramelize them slightly. At the last minute, she would lay the tuna steak in a very hot skillet, sear each side for less than a minute, then enjoy her dinner in front of the TV while watching Gerard Butler as the Phantom of the Opera. But the sudden jolt of booms startled her so that she dropped the carrots into the sink. Half of them went down the garbage disposal. She felt the shotgun blasts coming off the window, three icy slaps out of nowhere, as if they had exploded only inches away and not a hundred yards distant in the woods. “Goddamn it!” she screamed at the window. Then she spun away from the sink without drying her hands or shutting off the water spewing from the tap and strode into the mudroom. She grabbed her heavy Woolrich jacket off the coatrack nailed to the wall, rammed her feet into her still-new Timberlands, and with the laces flapping and dragging, she marched outside and across the snowy field. She found the boy’s footsteps at the far edge of the field and followed them into the trees, stomped on them, obliterated his boot marks with her own.

  Twenty yards into the woods, he was standing over a bird whose feathers lay scattered across the white ground, a black splash, crooked winged. Like a Pollack painting, she told herself. The snow around the bird was speckled with blood.

  “I suppose you’re going to have that crow for supper now?” she said. Her voice was louder in the woods than she intended, as if her anger, coming out, suddenly expanded in the thin light.

  He jerked his head around to look at her. “People don’t eat crows,” he said.

  His voice was not loud, but she could hear the disdain in it. She had hoped to frighten and startle him as his gunshots had startled her, but his face showed no sign of fear. He knew who she was, she could see the recognition in his dark eyes. She was the rich city lady who had bought the old Simmons farm, the woman who did nothing all day but paint pictures and walk the narrow lanes and take photographs of crumbling foundations and wind-gnarled trees. She thought it obvious from the way the boy looked at her that he considered her the intruder here, the interloper. Those woods were his domain, not hers.

  “If you don’t eat them, why shoot them?” Charlotte demanded, her voice softer now, the anger slowly leaking away in the chill. “What are they hurting?”

  He regarded her boots, the laces hanging loose and crusted with snow. Only then did she become aware that her socks were soaked through, the open boots filled with snow. Her toes burned with cold. And she had rushed out of the house without mittens or a cap. She cupped her hands together and blew on them.

  The boy looked at her with sleepy eyes. His hooded gaze and small crooked smile made her aware of how ridiculous she looked, and with this recognition, she almost smiled too, almost conceded the foolishness of her actions. She had never thought of herself as an impulsive woman, had always thought things through, considered all the angles and probabilities. Now she could scarcely remember having exited the house or the brisk stiff march across the field. She felt more than a little embarrassed by this confrontation with a child. He was, she now had to admit, a strikingly handsome boy. Had he been thirty years older and a foot or so taller, he would have disarmed her utterly with those dark, sleepy eyes, the head full of lush, black hair, and a soft, full mouth with the hint of a sneer. Later that evening, in the notebook in which she gathered quick pencil sketches, half-formed ideas, and stray bits of description that might someday be rendered in strokes and dabs of color, she wrote, “Dermot Mulroney as a boy but with a glint of menace in his eyes instead of Dermot’s sparkle of mischief.”

  The boy looked at her for a full ten seconds. Then he simply turned and walked away, retracing her footsteps out to the field.

  “You’re just going to leave it lying here like this?” she called.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You’re going to kill it and then just leave it out here to rot?”

  “The other crows will eat it,” he said without looking back. “Or you can.”

  Charlotte stood motionless, watching him go. She felt the anger still inside her but now in a deep and distant place. Closer to the surface was weariness and sorrow. What makes a little boy want to kill things? she wondered. Where does such an urge come from? And then to just walk away as if the death of a living thing doesn’t matter. The thought saddened her, made her feel tired and old.

  With the side of an unlaced boot, she scraped a pile of snow over the shiny black feathers. Then she regarded the mound of snow. She knew that it would accomplish nothing. A fox or raccoon or a stray dog or cat would sniff out the crow sooner or later, drag it home to its burrow, grind up the frozen muscle and hollow shattered bones. Yet what more could she do? She turned away and trudged back home.

 
A few minutes later, barefoot, fingers and toes and ears and the tip of her nose all burning, she came into the kitchen and saw the water still flowing from the tap. She shut it off, then leaned against the sink. Slipped her hands under her armpits, hugged herself tightly, rubbed one foot atop the other. She gazed out the window, stared across the no-longer-lovely emptiness outside. “Desecrated,” she said aloud.

  When she thought about that afternoon now, some four months later, she could not remember any more of that day. What had she done with the remaining hours? What did I do with the tuna? she wondered. It was the last one. Did I eat it or not?

  7

  AFTER leaving Charlotte Dunleavy’s driveway, Gatesman turned west on Metcalf Road. As he drove, he telephoned the high school, informed Karen in the front office that he was on his way. Could she pull Dylan Hayes out of class and have him waiting in the conference room, please?

  Karen said, “Hold on just a second, Mark. Let me check something.”

  Fifteen seconds later she spoke again. “Dylan’s off on a field trip with Mr. Lewis’s class. Science center in Harrisburg.”

  “All day?” Gatesman asked.

  “I wouldn’t expect them till way after dark. They’re doing the science center, then, let’s see, a nature film at the IMAX. Then dinner at a place called Nala’s.”

  “Middle Eastern food,” Gatesman told her.

  “Sour grape leaves and crackery bread? Yeah, that’s going to be a big hit with the kids.”

  “Might expand their horizons a little.”

  “What do you bet they stop at McDonald’s after dinner?”

  “I’d give it a fifty-fifty chance.”

  “I’d say it’s a certainty.” Then she asked, “Were you wanting to talk to Dylan about Jesse Rankin being gone?”

  “Thanks for your help,” he told her, and snapped his cell phone shut.

  He slowed the vehicle to forty miles an hour. All right, now what? he asked himself. He had passed the Rankins’ trailer less than a quarter-mile back, and though he could not think of anything concrete to be gained from speaking with Livvie again so soon, he felt compelled to do so. Whether for his own sake or hers, he did not know. At the next driveway, he pulled in and made the turn.

  Except for the single-wides in the Sunset Springs retirement village out by the interstate, or the even older ones recycled to hunting and fishing camps throughout the county, Livvie and Denny Rankin’s trailer was one of the last of its kind. He could think of no other family that actually lived in one of the long, narrow boxes. Even the unemployed dopers throughout the county had HUD double-wides. Denny and Livvie could have had one, too, if Denny weren’t so stubborn and prideful. Livvie, too, Gatesman thought. She’d never take anything from anybody.

  He pulled into the driveway and parked behind Livvie’s battered Datsun. Still no sign of Denny’s pickup truck.

  Within seconds, Livvie had the door open and was standing on the threshold, looking out at him with red eyes as he approached. Eyes, he thought, both hopeful and fearful.

  “Nothing yet,” he told her. “I just came to talk a bit.”

  She stood aside, then closed the door behind him. “Nobody’s seen him?” she asked.

  “Not a soul.”

  “Where in the world can he be?”

  There was such plaintiveness to her voice, such frailty to the way she carried herself, as if even the slightest movement ached, that Gatesman could not help himself; he took her hand and led her to the sofa, sat down next to her, patted the back of her hand twice, wanted to hold it longer but then finally let it go.

  “How about if we go through it again,” he said. “Everything you saw and did when you got home yesterday morning.”

  She sat hunched forward slightly, hands locked together atop her lap, fingers dovetailed. He noticed that she was wearing the same jeans and plain gray sweatshirt she had had on yesterday. Probably slept in it, he thought. Not enough energy to look after herself.

  Her head made little jerking movements back and forth. She blinked, squinted at the floor with its pattern of green and red tiles, then looked up at him as if he had spoken in a forgotten language.

  “Take your time,” he told her. And he thought, I know what you’re feeling now. You can’t breathe, can’t get any air into your lungs. You can’t keep a straight thought in your head. You haven’t eaten anything all day, can’t stomach the thought of food. You’d rather just die than feel this misery.

  “It must’ve been about a quarter after eight or close to it,” she finally said. “That’s when I always get home. Denny’s truck was gone and I just figured . . . he put Jesse on the bus and then went off somewhere.”

  “And that’s fairly typical?”

  “It is,” she said.

  “But Denny didn’t mention anything to you the night before? He had a job somewhere or . . . whatever he had planned for the day?”

  Her head moved back and forth, a barely perceptible answer.

  “Has he had any work lately?”

  “Three days last week. A big warehouse of some kind over in Carlisle. Fifty-two hundred square feet, he said.”

  “Must be well heated to seal concrete at this time of year.”

  She made no movement, offered no reply.

  “And you have no idea where he is today? No phone call yet?”

  “I haven’t seen or heard from him since the day before yesterday.”

  Gatesman nodded. He looked into the little kitchen area. Everything was spick-and-span, not so much as a dirty coffee cup. He wondered how many dozens of times in the past twenty-four hours she had wiped off the counter and tabletop. How many times she had rearranged the soup cans in the cupboard. She could clean the place a hundred times but not remember to change her clothes or brush her hair.

  Of course there was another reason for it too, he remembered that as well. You blame yourself for what has happened. You want nothing to do with yourself. Maybe you intend to punish yourself by showing your own body disrespect, by not feeding it or keeping it clean, not brushing your teeth. What you want is for your self and its goddamn consciousness to disappear.

  Gatesman remembered it all. He had done laundry. Day after day after day. Patrice’s and Chelsea’s underclothes. First the whites, then the bright colors. Patrice’s and Chelsea’s socks. The shorts. The jeans. The cotton items. The synthetics. He ironed everything whether it was wrinkled or not. Folded the items and put them in the drawers. Everything done, he started again.

  “So you came home from the generating plant,” he said, “about a quarter after eight that morning. And then what? What’s the place look like when you get here? I’m sure it wasn’t as clean and neat as it is now.”

  “Jesse’s cereal bowl is all,” she said. “On the kitchen table there. The bowl and the spoon. I washed things up and put them away. Then I went to bed to get a few hours’ sleep.”

  “You didn’t happen to take a quick look in Jesse’s bedroom first, see if anything was out of place or, I don’t know . . .”

  “Not then,” she said. “Why would I?”

  “You wouldn’t. There’d be no reason to. You thought he was at school.”

  “He keeps his door closed usually. I always told him it’s his space and only his.”

  “That’s something kids need, I think. Something everybody needs.”

  “Even after I got up,” she told him, “it never occurred to me that something was wrong. I made myself a sandwich, drank a glass of milk. I was at Mrs. Shaner’s place by 12:30. Finished up there and got back here in time to meet the bus.”

  “Which is usually around 3:10 or so.”

  “Give or take a few minutes either way.”

  “I know you already told me all this, Livvie. I just need to hear it all again.”

  “The bus didn’t stop,” she said. “Never even slowed down when it went by.”

  “Which has happened before, though.”

  “A few times, yes. She gets distracted or som
ething, you know. Misses the stop.”

  “So you’re thinking she’ll let Jesse off down at the Conners’.”

  “And I go out and get in the car and drive on down, so he doesn’t have to walk the whole way back. And that Nolan Conner, he’s in the same homeroom as Jesse, when the bus starts pulling away I call out to Nolan before he gets into the house. And he tells me that Jesse wasn’t at school all day. Lori stopped the bus out front, beeped the horn. Jesse never came out, so she just drove on by without him. So now I’m thinking, okay, he’s playing some kind of game with me. He’s back home hiding under the bed or something like that. Plus, he knows he’s not supposed to be playing hooky anymore. He and I were both told that if he misses any more classes, he’ll either have to go to summer school or they’re going to hold him back.”

  “But when you get back to the house, that’s when you find his backpack down between the bed and the wall in his room.”

  “And his lunch bag is inside it. Inside the backpack. So obviously he took it out of the fridge in the morning and put it in his backpack the way he always does. But then, I don’t know. He must’ve just decided he wasn’t going to school that day.”

  “And that’s when you discover his father’s old hunting jacket and the shotgun missing.”

  “That’s the first thing I think, that he must be out in those woods again.”

  “Because nothing else of Denny’s is missing, right? Nothing to indicate he’s been here and gotten a few things and left with the boy?”

  She said, “When Denny’s been here and gone, I can always tell.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Because the place either smells like sealant or old beer. And if it’s sealant, then his dirty clothes are piled up on top of the washer. And if it’s beer, Jesse’s lunch money is all gone from the cupboard where I keep it.”

  “But that wasn’t the case yesterday.”

  “Denny wasn’t here,” she said.