The More They Disappear (38 page)
Read The More They Disappear Online
Authors: Jesse Donaldson
During his rare hours off, Harlan would walk the riverbank with Mattie and her mutt, pretending to search for the body. In truth, it was just an excuse to be away from other people. He'd done all this before. He'd been about Mattie's age when his daddy fell in the river, had searched the riverbank without end until one day the sheriff came by asking for someone to identify the body. His mother refused, saying she wanted nothing more to do with the man, so Harlan had gone. He could still see the red splotches where fish had nibbled his father's flesh, the cuts from branches and rocks, his father's dead, yellow eyes and bloated neck. He remembered wondering why he needed to be there at all. The sheriff had arrested his daddy enough to recognize him. All Harlan said was, “That's him.” The sheriff said, “I know, son.”
As the days passed, Harlan and Mattie's search for the body moved farther and farther into the woods. Mattie liked to point out birds and woodland creatures. They rested for long stretches, and Harlan let Mattie use his knife to whittle sticks into nothing. She rolled him loose cigarettes that burned too fast, and he built small campfires that she tossed twigs into just to watch them burn. Sometimes he left her and hiked down to the river to swim in the stills. The cold water seemed to remind him he was alive.
The election came and went. There was record low turnout but Harlan managed to eke himself a win. Almost immediately he named Paige his second-in-command and deputized Lewis after he promised not to get involved with his father-in-law's case. Lewis seemed perfectly content writing speeding tickets and patrolling county roads before the roosters cried at dawn. He was actually good company around the office, a bridge between Harlan and the other deputies. He liked bantering with Frank and Del, treated Paige with deference, picked Holly's brain about what makes a good deputy. It had to have been a strange time for him. Lewis's wife had moved back into their house to get away from her father, but Lewis and the girls were living with his mom. Lewis and Harlan met every couple of days to chat about how he liked the job but it always turned to more personal matters. Lewis explained that his marriage was on hiatus, but whenever he dropped Ginny and Stella off to visit their mom, Sophie would invite him in for coffee. Her life was in shamblesâher brother in jail, her father out on bail. She didn't know what was happening or why. Apparently his daughters liked to ask when they were moving back home with Mommy, and every time they did it threatened to break Lewis's heart, but he claimed that Sophie was becoming a better woman and that maybe he was becoming a better man, and in time maybe they could be better to each other.
Harlan talked about retiring even though he'd won the election, thought about handing the reins over to Paige. He'd lost his faith in the law. The law hadn't been able to save Angeline from her father or save Lew from himself or save Mark and Mary Jane from whatever darkness haunted them. All the law could do was punish after the fact. At best it could keep the town from destroying itself, and it could barely manage that. Harlan thought maybe he'd go back to school, get a social work degree, start trying to save people before they did wrong. At least it would give him something new to believe in.
Eventually, he called in a diver to search the river for Mary Jane. He thought that, at least, might give the town some closure. The search turned into a long day of setting the trawler, releasing the diver, and watching him come up empty-handed. A bunch of Staties sat around the boat trading dirty jokes and dropping nips of whiskey in their coffee. No one spoke to Harlan. Despite a cold misting rain, a pack of locals watched from the bridgeâlined up like birds on a wire. At some point Harlan began to wonder if Mary Jane's body was in the river after all, if it wasn't just another trick. He wanted to believe that she was out there somewhereâaliveâbut late in the afternoon, the diver surfaced and gave a thumbs-up. Harlan stood among the Staties and listened to his report. “She's caught on a rock with all these initials carved into it,” he said. “Damnedest thing I ever saw.” The Staties threw out a wide net and the diver went down once more. People on the bridge cheered.
Harlan knew the rock. When he was a kid and the river was low, it rose like an island above the surface. People boated out and carved their names and the names of their loved ones into it. And then when the water rose again, the rock vanished. It had come loose years before and sunk to the bottom. Harlan's own initials were on the rock. And who knew how many others? And who knew how long it would be before all their symbols were worn away?
Harlan looked up at the bridge and saw Henry Dawson standing among the birds. Mattie was nowhere to be seen, and he had a sudden urge to find her, to jump from the boat and swim to shore and search her haunts to make sure she was okay. The anxiety crippled him and he took a seat just as the sun peeked out from behind the clouds. The mist from the boat's spray danced before him like a million atoms of space and time, like all the world's chaos and possibility. One of the Staties put a hand to his shoulder and said, “It's okay, Sheriff. It's over now.”
Dredge the bottom of any river and you'll find things forgotten, things left behind, things pitched over the rail or fallen from the sky, things carried by the wind and worn down by time. Dredge these things up and you'll have more questions than answers, but the river will keep moving, keep changing, keep pushing so that nothing has its final resting place, so that nothing is ever finished or complete but just sitting there, trapped in the mud, waiting for some swell to lift it, to carry it along some new current, waiting for some hand to loose it from its snag, so it can float weightless to the top, new and pale and clean again.
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This book has brought me into contact with many amazing people, and whatever this novel's charms, they are indebted to that community.
Thank you to David Hale Smith for boarding the ship and Will Anderson for bringing it into port.
Thank you to Liz Parker, Katie Gilligan, and Jamie Levine for guidance along the way. And to the team at Thomas Dunne, including Justin Velella, Paul Hochman, Emily Walters, and Susannah Noel.
Thank you to the Michener Center and all the writers I met there. To Artcroft and the VCAA, which gave me time and space to work.
To my friends and confidants: Gregory, Smith, and the Billy Goat; Kevin and Jessica; Mac and Tate; Adam, Aja, and James; P.F. and Peter; Dan and Ronnie; Yaakov, Scott, and Nick.
To kind strangers like Sheriff Patrick Boggs and his father, Bill, who taught me so much about the place that was once called Limestone.
Thank you to my family: John, Marty, Emily, and Sarah. I'm a fortunate son.
To my spiritual adviser, the Right Reverend Parker.
And finally, to Becca and Poe. Love. Always.
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Jesse Donaldson
was born and raised in Kentucky, attended Kenyon College and Oregon State University, and was a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. His writing has appeared in the
Oxford American, The Greensboro Review,
and
Crazyhorse.
Among other things, he's worked as a gardener, copywriter, teacher, and maintenance man. He now lives in Oregon with his wife, daughter, and a dog named Max. You can sign up for email updates
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Contents
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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin's Press.
THE MORE THEY DISAPPEAR.
Copyright © 2016 by Jesse Donaldson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Cover design by Rob Grom
Cover photograph by Jade Farr / Millennium Images, UK
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donaldson, Jesse, author.
Title: The more they disappear / Jesse Donaldson.
Description: New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016002482 | ISBN 9781250050229 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781466851337 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: MurderâInvestigationâFiction. | Drug trafficâFiction. | Drug addictionâFiction. | KentuckyâFiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Crime. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3604.O5344 M67 2016 | DDC 813/.6âdc23
LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2016002482
e-ISBN 9781466851337
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at
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First Edition: August 2016