The Healer of Harrow Point (2 page)

“Here,” she said, “give me a hand.”

Somehow I could follow a direct instruction. I took her large knobby hands in mine and tried to help her to get up from where she sat. She nearly pulled me over on top of her, but, in stages, I helped her up to her feet.

“Stand still,” she said, and drew me a bit closer to her, taking my face in her hands. “Think of, oh, I don't know . . . strawberries.”

“Strawberries?” I thought. Then I had the oddest feeling of my skin retracting, tightening, tingling. I knew that all my cuts were gone. She seemed to smooth them away like someone brushing wrinkles from a crisp, clean sheet.

“What is your name, young man?”

I was touching my face, bewildered that the scratches were gone.

“Thomas, ma'am,” I said automatically, “Thomas Singer.”

“Don't ma'am me. My name is Emma.”

“Yes'm—Emma.”

“Well?” she asked.

I looked all about, a little frantic. I didn't know what she wanted from me.

“Out with it,” she snapped. She was quite brusque. I felt afraid of her.

“That deer,” I said, finally. “That deer was dead.”

“Surely not,” she said. “You saw it run off.”

“No,” I said. “No, you did something.”

“You think so?” she asked. “I don't see how.”

“You did,” I said, frowning.

So we stood there, at this first impasse, staring at each other; and I found in that moment that I was no longer afraid.

“I'm not sure what to do with you,” Emma said, just barely out loud.

I felt a surge of confidence. I don't know why.

“I want to know what you did to that deer,” I said emphatically.

She smiled. She might almost have laughed. “I'm sure you do, young man,” she said, with a certain sharpness in her voice.

She started walking away from the base of the low, bramble-covered hill where we had been talking. I followed
after her. I fixed my eyes on her boots, large, heavy hiking boots encrusted with red mud, and kept pace as best I could. I was tired and confused, but I was determined to stay with her. We walked quite a while, heading back toward where the deer had been shot.

“Do you walk out here often?” Emma asked me, in more of a conversational tone of voice.

“Yes ma'am . . . yes Emma,” I said, correcting myself.

“So you know how to get home from here?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” I said, nodding.

“Then go,” she said flatly. She was walking straight ahead, not looking at me.

I stopped in my tracks. That was not what I had expected her to say, not what I wanted her to say. She kept on walking. She was heading north; I would need to veer back the way we had come.

“Do you think he's still there?” I hollered after her.

She stopped, some thirty feet ahead of me now, and called back over her shoulder. “Who?”

“That poacher.”

She turned and looked at me. It was a ploy on my part. She knew it, I'm sure. The woods were very quiet. The sun was starting to go down, low against the trees, and the air seemed to chill second by second.

She walked back toward me, slowly, heavily, her footfalls loud in the quiet air.

She stood in front of me, looming over me.

“You'll be fine,” she said quietly. She reached out and touched my face again, lightly. Just as she pulled her hand away I felt a kind of shock, like she had shuffled across a rug and touched me. She was looking at me so intently, so gravely, as if inspecting me for construction flaws.

“If you walk out here some afternoon, we might see each other,” she said simply.

I nodded.

“Now go home, Thomas Singer.”

There was an emphasis in her voice that would brook no dispute. I nodded again and turned to go. I walked a while, up around the long, low base of the hill, pulling myself along. I looked back and she was still there, watching me, seventy yards away now, perhaps farther. I waved to her, sort of a broad, cheery wave. I felt odd. I didn't want to go home yet. I felt warm, deeply, uncomfortably warm on such a cool late afternoon. My hands especially felt warm. I kicked at the ground with the toe of my shoe. At that moment nothing felt quite right.

She was standing very still, watching me. I turned and took another few steps toward home and then gave her one last look back over my shoulder. She had her right hand raised, somewhere between a wave and a benediction. I waved again, quickly, briefly, and began the long walk home more in earnest, feeling slightly, slightly better, but still altogether too warm.

I walked along slowly through the deepening twilight. Can one feel deeply perplexed and happy at the same time? I was trying to remember everything that had happened, and was trying, without the least success, to make sense of what I remembered. Emma had entered my life with such force; it didn't seem possible to me that so much had happened in the space of only a few minutes. I felt like I needed more time, that everything should have taken more time. I was sure I had a hundred questions to ask Emma, though perhaps, at that moment, I couldn't have formulated even one. I wanted to be with Emma. I didn't want to go home.

I gave a wide berth to the base of the ridge where the deer had been shot, where I last saw the poacher. I don't suppose I really thought he would still be around. There was a cloudiness in my mind, a mist that I thought Emma might be able to clear away; but I didn't
want to go back to where that afternoon's events had begun. Still, I didn't want to go home either. It was starting to get dark, and very cold, but I continued to feel oddly warm. I walked slowly, looking around, listening. I didn't know what I was looking or listening for. Finally, I started to feel the cold, feel it sharply, and my pace quickened.

Thinking of home troubled me. My father always asked me about my day. I would be late for supper, I thought, and I was sure he would ask me about that. I didn't know what I would say.

I crested the hill that led to the open field at the edge of the little string of houses where we lived. We lived out in the country, but there were a few other houses around us. I could see the lights on in the MacCauleys' kitchen. No one was home at the Watsons' next door. Mr. and Mrs. Watson both worked at the grocery store in town, and I knew that they wouldn't be home for an hour or two yet. Seeing the MacCauleys' house lit up, and the Watsons' dark, was somehow a comfort to me; it was normal.

I was cutting across the wide field that climbed up to the back of our house. The lights were on inside. Mom was home. Just as I stepped over the narrow ditch that marked the back of our yard, I saw Dad's patrol car pull into our drive. I wasn't as late as I thought. I started climbing the slight incline, past my mother's garden, as my father got out of his car. I saw him wave to me. He was standing at the bottom of the drive, a good ways above me still. It was dark, but even so I could
see the easy way he was standing, and it made me feel good, made me feel safe. How, in the dark, without him calling to me, could I tell that he was glad to see me, that I wasn't late, that everything was fine?

My father was an immensely practical man. He could fix cars, make end tables, cook breakfast. I suppose, really, when I was eleven it hadn't yet occurred to me that there might be things he didn't know, or things he couldn't do. He was strong and practical and friendly. It seemed that he could talk anybody into a peaceful, quiet mood, no matter how angry the person might have been to start with. He was a policeman, a sheriff's deputy in a large rural county. He was Deputy Singer, and I was Deputy Singer's son. Everyone, so far as I knew, liked him and respected him. I certainly did.

To me, it seemed that the things my father did were magic. How could he possibly know what was wrong with someone's car? I would stand beside my father, peering in at a dark, sooty, gray and black jumble of metal and tubing, mute with wonder. “Hmm,” he would say. “What do you think, buddy?”

I never had a clue. I felt at once ashamed of my inability to grasp so many things about the world, and proud and somewhat in awe of my father's complete knowledge. He was patient in teaching me, about car engines, about all sorts of things; and I was determined to learn.

Among other things, my father was a hunter, a responsible and careful hunter. Of all forms of carelessness, he was least tolerant toward careless hunters:
hunters who fired their guns without being absolutely sure of their targets, hunters who did not know at all times where their hunting partners were. With my twelfth birthday approaching, we had been talking a lot about hunting and safety in the woods.

So, I was eleven going on twelve, and tried to be careful in all things. My father allowed me to roam the woods outside of hunting season, but still I knew he would be concerned to hear about the poacher. I didn't think I could tell him how near I was when the deer was shot. In a strange way, I felt as if I was implicated in the poacher's wrongdoing. And then, how could I possibly tell him about Emma?

When I reached the back door that led into the kitchen, I could see that my father was tired. He draped his arm around my shoulder.

“How you doin', buddy?” he asked.

I leaned in against his solid warmth. “I'm okay,” I said.

He just nodded. I went to change and wash for dinner. When I came back into the big kitchen where we usually ate our meals, my father was telling my mother about one of the deputies: he was leaving to take a job up in Goochland County. My father was concerned because the Sheriff's department was already understaffed, and now they were losing another man. That would mean longer hours and more work for my father, and he didn't like it much.

My parents talked awhile, and I ate in silence, thinking about Emma, wondering where she was. I imagined
her walking the woods, in the darkness, or maybe hunkering down somewhere to sleep. Where would she sleep? I thought of her like she was a bear, or some other creature of the wild. She certainly wasn't like any person I had ever met. I knew what I had seen Emma do, but I struggled to understand it. I set about imagining a world where Emma could walk the woods, healing injured animals with her touch. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to understand.

“How was your day at school?” my father asked. “I haven't said two words to you tonight, have I buddy?” “It was fine!” I said, and it must have sounded like a protest or a claim of innocence because my father laughed.

“It's okay, sport,” he said. “I didn't mean to startle you there.”

“I was thinking,” I said.

“What were you thinking about, Tommy?” my mother asked.

I shrugged. “I saw a deer today, in the woods,” I said quietly. “I was, I don't know, I was wondering where it is now, what it's doing.”

“Right now it is probably snuggled down at the base of some bush,” my father said, “getting ready to go to sleep.” My father sighed. “Lord, that sounds like a good idea.”

“Why don't you go change out of your uniform?” my mother said to him. “Tommy and I will clean up.”

“Do you mind, buddy?” he asked.

“No sir,” I said.

As he got up from the table he reached over and gave me light sock on the arm.

“You're a good man,” he said, a weary smile on his face. It was something he would say to me every now and then, and one thing about my father, I always knew that he meant it.

I helped my mother with the dishes and then went to my room to do a set of math exercises that were due in school the next day. I was already in bed when my father came into my room to say goodnight. He sat on the edge of my bed, and his weight, like it always did, tilted the mattress and rolled me toward him.

“You're too big for this bed, mister,” I said, which is what I always said.

He smiled, and pulled the covers up around me a bit more, which I didn't particularly need. I pushed them back the way they were, and my father chuckled.

“Want to go down to Parker's with me on Friday?” he asked. “I need to pick up some things.”

“Sure,” I said. I loved going to Parker's.

“Great,” he said. He leaned forward and gave me a light kiss on the forehead. Then he yanked the covers up over my head, and left the room with a quiet laugh as I howled in mock protest.

The next day after school I walked downtown instead of walking straight home. I had been thinking all day about Emma, about what I had seen, trying to think it through. I had some good friends at school, and one teacher, Mrs. Carlson, that I really liked, but I
didn't feel like I could tell them about what had happened. It seemed special to me somehow, something that couldn't be talked about for fear of losing it or changing it.

Mrs. Carlson was my history teacher, a tiny, wiry woman who made everyone laugh. She was one of the smartest people I knew, but with a somewhat dubious logic I thought: what would a history teacher know about this sort of thing? What would anyone know?

And then I thought about Dr. Banks, the veterinarian. His office was downtown, just a few blocks from school. We had an old dog named Toby then, a little dachshund we had more or less adopted from my grandmother. Toby had never really been sick, but we took him to Dr. Banks for his shots and check-ups. Dr. Banks was somewhere in his sixties, I suppose, and that made him seem very old to me. I thought if anyone in town could help me right then, maybe Dr. Banks could.