Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) (13 page)

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.

S
HE 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.

I
N 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.

Cindy: Those can be a good investment. The kids love them. You don't have any kids, Mrs. Dunleavy?

Charlotte
(wincing slightly)
: No, I don't.

Cindy: I've got some other ones for girls too. Ballerinas, I think.
(And she starts digging around in her filing cabinet drawers.)

Charlotte: Maybe around Christmas, okay? Don't bother for now.

Cindy: I'll remind you, come about Thanksgiving.

Charlotte smiles, then turns to the Bouffant Lady: So what does Donnie think, I mean about where—

Just then, the bell above the door tinkles and in walks an older gentleman, sixtyish, tall and thin with a full head of silver, slicked-back hair. He's wearing neatly pressed chinos, a pale green knit shirt, and a light jacket. He smiles at Charlotte when he first enters.

Gentleman: Afternoon, all.

Cindy: Jack. How's the flower business these days?

Gentleman: Bright and blooming.
(To Bouffant Lady)
But never as lovely as you, Maggie.

Bouffant Lady
(pats his arm on her way to the door)
: Sweet as sugar, same as always.

Gentleman proceeds to the meat counter and orders two skinless chicken breasts. Cindy looks at him, looks at Charlotte, gives her a wink, and jerks a nod toward the gentleman. Charlotte scowls and shakes her head no, though the truth is she noticed him at the search that morning. Even in her ruined state, she couldn't help but admire his poise, his aplomb, the dignified carriage she used to consider her own but lately found impossible to muster.

Now she has a pained look on her face as she considers how tasteless her role in this play is, how tasteless this play and all of its players are.

Gentleman
(to Charlotte)
: Damn shame about that boy. I was really hoping we would find something.

Charlotte: It breaks my heart.

He nods, then faces the display case again, stares at the meat. Now Cindy reaches over the counter, gives Charlotte's sleeve a tug, and jerks her head at the gentleman again, all with a hot adamant gleam in her eye.