Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) Page 9

  That had been a very long morning for her, and this one, she knew, promised to be even more of an ordeal. As she dragged herself away from the window and into the bathroom, she was aware of a pressure accumulating against her, as if the air itself had force and weight and was pushing against her chest and down onto her shoulders.

  In the bathroom she splashed warm water over her face and pulled hard at the corners of her eyes. The smallest, most routine movement felt alien. Nearly thirty minutes passed before she was able to prepare a half pot of strong coffee and pour it into the largest cup she could find, an old German beer stein she had saved from her college days, and then to lace up her Timberlands and pull on the tan Carhartt jacket with the quilt lining—items she had once thought of gleefully as part of her “country ensemble.” She then jammed her floppy wide-brimmed gardening hat down low on her forehead and, shuffling like an ancient crone, hands cupped around the beer mug and holding it close to her face, made her way outside and toward the lengthening line of vehicles parked along the road.

  A heavy dew still covered the ground, and the air was so cold that her ears and nose stung. The steady wind made her cheeks feel tight, and she wished then that she had taken the time to put on some makeup and conceal the damage done to her by the night.

  She estimated that there were between thirty and forty people standing around in small groups, some still along the macadam road and some already in the stubbly field, all waiting for the sheriff to put them into motion. She was aware of their eyes on her as she approached. She tried to anticipate what they must be thinking. She’s the one who would have seen him last. She’s the one who told the sheriff about Dylan. She’s the one . . . She’s the one . . .

  She looked down at the broken cornstalks, watched the water accumulate around her boots. She held the mug of coffee close to her face and felt the warmth and steam soothe her eyes. If at any previous moment in your life, she told herself, if you had made a decision other than the one you made . . . you wouldn’t be here now.

  Where would you be? she wondered, and forced herself to imagine the most pleasant alternative. You could be strolling through a souk in Morocco now. Studying the silks or the fragrant bins of spices. You could be sipping café au lait at a brasserie. You could be lying in the arms of your ceramics prof from Smith. No, she told herself, he must be in his seventies by now. Then, I don’t care, I wish I were there with him. I wish we were far away from here.

  She was still twenty yards from the last vehicle in the line when Mike Verner broke off from a small group and walked out to meet her. He handed her an orange plastic vest. “Mornin’,” he said. Charlotte answered with a grumble that she hoped would amuse him.

  But he, too, was in a somber mood and did not laugh or even smile. “Rough night?” he asked.

  She knew how she must appear to him. Puffy face, red eyes and nose—the look of somebody who has been dragged screaming over rough ground. “Couldn’t sleep,” she told him. “Sought refuge in a bottle of wine.”

  “Me neither,” he said, “except that I watched television. Same numbing effect except that you don’t feel quite as bad in the morning.”

  “Now you tell me,” she said.

  Soon the sheriff called everyone together and a few minutes later had them spread out in a line with their backs to Charlotte’s house. They stood an arm’s length apart, local farmers and retirees, Gatesman and one of his deputies and two state troopers.

  Gatesman said, “We’ll send the dogs in ahead and let them do what they do best. The rest of us should just try to maintain the line more or less and keep our eyes open. What you’re looking for is anything at all that’s not a natural part of these woods. Any signs of a disturbance in the surroundings that doesn’t look natural. I mean, hell, you all know what we’re here for. Just keep your eyes and ears open, that’s all you can do.”

  A state trooper leading a German shepherd on a leash started into the woods near one end of the line, and halfway down the line a man in coveralls and boots started in as well, pulled along by a small beagle straining at its lead. The others followed a few moments behind, trudging, Charlotte thought, like pallbearers. She imagined how they all must look from her farmhouse, gray figures in a mist, their orange vests winking behind the trees like the dying lights of huge, exhausted fireflies. Every once in a while she heard somebody murmuring to somebody else, but she could not distinguish the words. She tried to keep her attention on the ground, but the sibilance of whispers distracted her.

  For several minutes the routine continued without change. Then suddenly the little beagle made a quick movement to its right and pulled its handler out of his easy step. A little gasp caught in Charlotte’s chest when she saw where they were headed—straight toward the fallen tree where she had first come upon the boy, the place where he used to sit.

  “Slow, deep breaths,” June used to advise her. “Sloooowly in through the mouth. Then blow it out just as slowly. I know you feel like you’re suffocating but you aren’t. You can control this, don’t let it control you. Slowly in . . . slowly out. That’s all there is to it.”

  Charlotte had thought she’d left that sniveling, panicked version of herself behind. Thought she’d left her behind as a ghost in June’s office. But now she watched the beagle sniffing all around the log, pulling its handler in a wide, erratic circle. The pain radiating through her chest and crushing the air from her lungs made her think that this time, truly, the heart was in real danger, overtaxed and insufficient.

  But a minute later the beagle stopped sniffing at the wet ground. It looked up at his handler. The man said, “Let’s go then,” and pulled the dog back toward the center of the forest. Only then did Charlotte realize that she, too, had come to a stop, she and half the line on both sides of her, all waiting for the moment of discovery, the surprised call of either tragedy or relief. Now, with the dog moving again, the others resumed their pace as well.

  Every now and then someone fell out of the ragged line to look closely at the ground, to scuff away the leaves from a shallow depression, or to stoop and squint into a fallen log. When this happened, all the searchers in the vicinity slowed and waited, all hoping for the shout of discovery. But their were no shouts, no voices raised. They moved on solemnly, eyes scouring the leaf-matted earth, every step a little heavier now.

  Only by turning her head to the left or right could Charlotte get a full picture of the woods. The woods seemed to her far denser than they actually were, close on all sides and dark around the edges in a way they had never been. Ever since the searchers had entered the woods, her field of vision had become constricted, her breath shallow and leaden, so that she felt herself to be walking down a tunnel made of trees, a tunnel walled in by darkness and holding insufficient air. She thought of Pissarro’s Path Through the Woods with its walls of trees and its blind turn in the narrow path, but then told herself, no, those trees were heavy and black in their leafiness, but there are no leaves in these woods, no path; the limbs here were bare and black unless she lifted her gaze into the canopy where the reddening buds made a domelike roof, a porous cover backlit by the rising sun so that the sky glowed like a fresh bruise.

  She thought of the painting she could make of this scene, all grays and black, people and trees, bodies leaning slightly forward, all eyes on the ground, three-fourths of the canvas somber and colorless, only the topmost section brighter. But then she told herself, Stop it. How dare you? and she brought her eyes down to the ground again, brought her attention back to the damp brown earth.

  After a while Charlotte could see the light through the far end of the tree line, a clouded yellow glow. She had never walked the entire way through the trees before, had never been interested in what lay beyond the trees—another field, the road, the houses, the town—but only in the woods themselves, the hushed silence and the cool ensconcing shade. But now, just as they were about to step out of the trees on the far side and into the adjoining field, something she had been holding on
to with every breath now broke loose in her. She started shivering and sobbing and was helpless to hold it back. Mike Verner moved close and laid a hand on her shoulder, then rubbed his hand in a circle on her back, the plastic vest crinkling with the movement of his hand. Only when she had managed to get her sobbing under control did he lift his hand away from her. Then, without speaking, he stood there with the others as they watched the dogs sniffing at the broken cornstalks.

  Between her own soft sobs, Charlotte could hear other women weeping too. Every once in a while a whimper, a sniff. Somebody blew his nose. One man, as the group stood facing the sun rising far across the road and the distant hills, the woods at their backs, softly recited the Lord’s Prayer.

  Charlotte watched him until he had finished. Then she looked for the dogs again, but they were being held on shortened leashes now as their handlers and the state troopers and Gatesman and his deputy stood together in a defeated huddle.

  Livvie Rankin’s trailer was visible fifty yards away on the opposite side of the road. Charlotte turned sideways to the sun and put her right hand to the side of her head so that she could see the trailer more clearly. It seemed to her a wretched place to have to live.

  She calculated the trailer’s length at maybe twenty-five feet, its width half as much. Hardly bigger than my living room, she thought. The exterior was a faded yellow accented with one broad stripe of brown around its middle. The roof had been tarred so many times and so carelessly that great gobs of hardened tar hung all along the roof’s edge. In the distance the tar glinted wetly, still damp with dew, so that it looked as if it were melting. The screen door hung open, torn away from the topmost hinge, which made it dangle lopsided above the two concrete steps. The yard was small and brown and unhealthy, the grass brown and sparse. A pale blue concrete birdbath sat just a few feet off the stoop, and though Charlotte could distinguish a small, dark shape inside the birdbath’s basin, she could not identify it. She only knew that it was not moving, it was not a living thing.

  “Okay, everybody,” the sheriff called, and when he said nothing more, the searchers, until then still strung out in a loose rendition of line, began to coalesce toward him.

  Finally he told them, “Listen, folks. I’ve been talking with the state boys and the dog handlers and everybody agrees that there’s not much use in going back through those trees again. Between Livvie and me and all of you good people, we’ve covered every inch of it at least a couple of times. If Jesse was anywhere in those woods, we’d know it by now.”

  “So what now?” a man called out.

  “Now you folks go on home or back to your work,” the sheriff told them. “We appreciate all of your help. And just keep praying for him. We’ll find him yet, I know we will.”

  Charlotte wondered if he really meant that or if it was just part of the script. She watched him then as he went up the line collecting the plastic vests, thanking everybody individually. She noticed that his fingertips inadvertently touched hers when she handed him her vest.

  “Sorry to take you away from your work,” he told her. She winced, reminded of her earlier thought, so hateful, so selfish, and she answered, “This is way more important than anything I do. Or will ever do.”

  He regarded her curiously for a moment. She felt uncomfortable under his gaze and looked away. Quietly the sheriff moved away from her. She turned slightly and saw Mike Verner grinning.

  He said, “Did I see a spark of electricity just now?”

  “If you did,” she told him, “it’s because your brain has shortcircuited.”

  He laughed softly and touched her shoulder as she moved away from him, out toward Metcalf Road and easier walking. Mike fell into step beside her. “I’ve got that fertilizer I promised you in my truck.”

  She was grateful for a change of subject, a return to normalcy or at least the attempt. “Is it too early to be putting it on?” she asked.

  “If you can work the soil, you can put it on.”

  “Would you mind dropping it out beside the garden?”

  “Happy to,” he said. “You want me to drive up to the barn and haul back some of your store-bought manure for you?”

  “I guess I’ll deal with just the fertilizer today. How much do I owe you for it?”

  “Including the tax? Zero dollars and zero cents.”

  “Mike . . .”

  “I get it wholesale,” he said.

  “So how much do you pay for it?”

  “I get it in bulk. I had that bag already.”

  “And how much did you pay for it?”

  “Charlotte,” he said, then looked down at her and smiled, “stop being a pain in the ass, okay?”

  “You’re the pain in the ass,” she told him.

  He kept smiling as they walked. They stepped over a shallow drainage ditch and onto the macadam. A minute or so later he asked, “You going to be okay?”

  She stared straight ahead down the road. “It’s not me that matters right now.”

  “Jesse might turn up yet. You never know.”

  “Mike,” she said, but nothing more. A familiar bubble of despair was ballooning in her chest now, cutting off the air.

  “It doesn’t look good, I agree. Still . . . You just never know about these things. I’ve always believed it’s best to stay optimistic until there’s no other choice.”

  No other choice but the awful truth, she told herself. She felt her eyes beginning to sting again, felt the congestion rising in her head and her lower field of vision start to shimmer. Without turning to face him, she put her hand out and squeezed his arm once before increasing her pace. “Thanks for everything, Mike,” she said, and with two quick strides she pulled away from him. He smiled and nodded and made no attempt to detain her.

  14

  SHE spent the rest of the morning in what she thought of as a state of collapse. For more than three hours she lay nearly motionless on the La-Z-Boy in the living room. She had removed her boots and gardening hat in the mudroom and had unbuttoned her coat as she walked through the house but then fell into the chair without removing the coat. The room grew warm with sunlight. In contrast to her limbs, which felt too heavy to move, too weak and spiritless, her mind thrashed wildly with a mad tumble of thoughts. Again and again she tried to order those thoughts, to lay them out in a coherent chronology of the past two days, but they would not surrender to order; they shuffled and looped through her mind in random clips and fragments.

  She slept for a while, then awakened with a start, thinking she had heard a gunshot. She sat up, gasping for air. The house was silent. Her hair was damp with perspiration. She felt the sweat between her breasts and under her arms. She heeled down the footrest and stood and wrestled the heavy coat off and let it fall to the floor, then stood there panting, blinking, rubbing the sweat off the back of her neck. She could hear and feel the blood hammering in her temples, could feel the thump of her heart. “Do something,” she told herself. “Or you’re going to go crazy.”

  She turned sharply and crossed toward the stairs, pulling her sweatshirt off along the way. Then her T-shirt. Then the bra. All fell behind her on the stairs. At the top of the stairs she wriggled out of her jeans. Shed her panties. Her socks. Then she stood beneath the cold spray of the shower until she was shivering, and until she could breathe again, until the tunnel relented and allowed in some light.

  15

  IN the early afternoon Charlotte stood at the post office counter, handed Cindy a ten-dollar bill, then pocketed the change and the book of twenty stamps. She was aware of Cindy chattering as usual, aware of Rex out from behind his display case this time, hanging bags of beef jerky on a rack, aware even of herself being aware of it, but there seemed a distance and an unreality to everything she saw and heard, as if she were watching herself in a play on a stage.

  Charlotte: So apparently our search of the woods this morning didn’t turn up anything important.

  Cindy: Which in itself is important, don’t you think? Nothing must
mean something, seems to me. As many times as that boy has been in those woods, and for those sniffer dogs to come up empty? Sounds suspicious to me. Rex? Am I right or am I right?

  Rex, working hard to keep his eyes averted, to not be caught in the act of admiring Charlotte in her loose khaki slacks, the pale blue blouse, the expensive loafers he knew he could never afford to buy for her but would do so anyway if ever she asked: This isn’t CSI, you know.

  Cindy: Evidence is evidence. There’s always something left behind. There’s always a scent trail.

  Enter a skinny little lady with a stiff blond bouffant; she speaks the instant she steps over the threshold and continues talking as she cuts a glance at Charlotte then crosses quickly to the meat display case: You have any good T-bones, Rex? I need a couple of T-bones, you know how I like them, and a pound of ground chuck. How you doing there, Cindy? Looks like spring might be coming after all, doesn’t it?

  Rex: Coming right up.

  Cindy: Mrs. Dunleavy and me was just talking about the search this morning. About how those dogs couldn’t find a darn thing.

  Bouffant Lady: Donnie said the rain will do that. All that rain and soft ground. They should have had those dogs out on day one.

  Cindy: Donnie would know, I guess. (To Charlotte) Donnie teaches at the Vo-Tech. Body shop.

  Bouffant Lady: That was him and Bailey this morning.

  Charlotte: Bailey?

  Cindy: That cute little beagle.

  Rex: Best rabbit dog in the county.

  Bouffant: It’s like Donnie says, though. You can’t expect even a prizewinning nose like Bailey’s to perform miracles.

  Rex: I hear that state police canine was all but worthless.

  Bouffant: You can say that again. Just leave out the “all but.”

  While Bouffant Lady pays for her order, Charlotte pretends to be interested in the post office’s latest philately tacked to the wall, three mounted and limited photos of the Philadelphia Eagles, with accompanying stamps.