Necessary Lies (25 page)

I hunted through the woods, hollering for Baby William. Nonnie told me I got lost once when I was real little. She said how they looked for me everywhere. My daddy and mama and her plus Lita and Lita’s mama and daddy. “Too many places to look,” Nonnie’d told me. “Just too many. So we waited for you to come home, and you did. Like a dog. We never did find out where you went or what you did.” I didn’t know, either. I had a lot of fits back then and they left big empty gaps of time in my head. Getting lost that day was just one more big gap. I didn’t remember being afraid, and I hoped Baby William wasn’t afraid, neither. He’d be okay in the tobacco, if that’s where he was.
He’s okay, he’s okay.
That’s what I kept saying to myself as I searched the woods. Mary Ella, though. She had to be scared. She’d be beside herself looking for him.

Coming out of the woods and walking across the pasture, I heard other people shouting for Baby William. Everybody was out looking for him, it seemed. I looked all around me as I walked through the wide-open pasture, but all I could see was the cows that was always there. I came to the patch of woods that led out to the road, and saw somebody walking through them toward me. Mrs. Forrester? I stopped walked. Sure enough, that’s who it was.

“Have you found him?” she asked when she saw me.

“How did you know about him being gone?” I asked.

“Mr. Gardiner called me,” she said. She pulled a hankie from her purse and pressed it to her forehead. “He said he’s been missing all morning.”

“Oh, it ain’t been that long,” I said, like I wasn’t worried. “I think he’s just messing with us. Sometimes he plays hide-and-seek in the tobacco, so I’m heading that way.”

She started walking next to me. “Has he run off like this before?” she asked.

This was one time I wasn’t happy to see Mrs. Forrester. I wished she didn’t come. I didn’t like her thinking we wasn’t keeping an eye on Baby William. Social workers took kids away for things like that. “Like I said, he plays hide-and-seek sometimes.” I wouldn’t tell her about the other time he went missing and Eli found him rolling in the dirt with a tobacco worm. “He’s probably hiding in the tobacco and just fell asleep.”

“He doesn’t know the meaning of hide-and-seek,” Mrs. Forrester said. “He really needs to be watched more carefully, Ivy.”

“We watch that boy good, ma’am,” I said. “I’m telling you. Wherever he is, he’s just fine.”

I hoped I was telling the truth.

25

Jane

Oh dear God,
I thought as Ivy and I entered the second hour of our search for William.
How do these people tolerate the heat out here?
I thought my office was bad, with the little oscillating fan blowing a hot breeze into the room, and I complained regularly at home that we only had one window air-conditioning unit in the whole house, but out here in the open, the sun was simply brutal. The day laborers were still working in the field, but Lita and the Jordan boys, the Hart girls and the Gardiner boy, Henry Allen, had all abandoned the tobacco to look for William. Everyone was searching, but no one was finding.

Ivy and I hadn’t spoken much. The heat was sapping our strength as we walked across the fields or down Deaf Mule Road or through parts of the woods I’d never seen before. Plus, I had a lot on my mind. Although I was upset that William was missing, I’d honestly been glad for an excuse to leave the office, where I was suddenly very unpopular. Word was out that I’d broken several rules by taking the Harts to the beach, and I guessed it had been stupid even though it had also been illuminating. Fred and Charlotte had nothing positive to say to me and I had the distinct feeling as I talked with them this morning that my job was in jeopardy. Paula passed me in the hall and said only “What were you thinking?”—a question I knew she really didn’t expect me to answer. Even Gayle, who rarely spoke to anyone, asked me if I was trying to get fired. I knew Fred and Gayle and Paula were overworked and tired and grouchy and that Charlotte was probably in a lot of pain, but I felt as though everyone was taking their frustrations out on me this morning.

I watched Ivy as we searched. A couple of times I caught her crying. She hadn’t expected William’s disappearance to become so serious. I was also watching her for another seizure, wondering if the heat and exertion had triggered the one she had on the dunes. How often did she have them? Mary Ella’s cavalier acceptance of it—
It’s a fit. It’ll be over in no time
—told me they were not all that rare.

I didn’t know what I was going to do about that petition. It
was
finished. I’d written my sections as honestly and objectively as I could, although that hadn’t been easy. All I had to do now was put it in an envelope and hand it to Barbara to mail to the board. It was beginning to look as though I had no choice. Now, to make matters worse, William Hart had gone unsupervised long enough to vanish into thin air, and Charlotte would badger me to have him removed. Maybe she was right. Maybe they were all right.

We crisscrossed paths with the other searchers during the afternoon, and every time I saw Mary Ella, Eli was close by. We’d see Henry Allen or Devil or Avery and they’d always be searching on their own. But if I spotted Mary Ella or Eli, I knew that within seconds, I’d see the other. They didn’t touch each other. Not that I saw, anyway. But they seemed for all the world like two parents desperate to find their little boy. It made me uncomfortable, watching them together. Mary Ella was such an ethereal wisp of a girl and she’d only been fourteen when she conceived William. Had Eli forced himself on her? I shuddered. He was bigger than most men, with that broad back and those powerful arms. I thought of the way he could cut his eyes at me and make me look away. If he could intimidate
me
that way, what could he do to a delicate girl like Mary Ella? She didn’t seem afraid of him, though. Had she welcomed it, being with him? Maybe she even loved him.

Ivy and I were scouring a neighbor’s tobacco field across Deaf Mule Road from the farm, when I spotted Davison Gardiner walking through his front yard.

“I’m going to talk to Mr. Gardiner,” I said to Ivy.

She looked across the street in silence, a dazed expression on her face.

“You should get some shade and water, honey,” I said.

“I just want to keep looking,” she said.

I crossed the road. I hadn’t bothered with galoshes this morning, since the weather had been dry for so long, and I looked down to see my saddle shoes covered with dust.

Davison Gardiner was spraying water from a hose on the sparse shrubbery next to his house. “Hello, Mr. Gardiner,” I called, shading my eyes to see him better.

He turned the water off at the spigot on the side of his house. “Hey, Mrs. Forrester,” he said. “Any news on the Hart boy?”

I shook my head. “I think it’s time we called the police,” I said. “May I use your phone?”

He set down the hose and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Don’t want them out here,” he said. “This is private farm business.”

“Well, actually, it’s not,” I said. I felt my youth, talking to him. I was twenty-two and he was probably close to forty and had lived here his whole life. He must have thought I had some nerve, disagreeing with him about something that happened on his own property. “William could be anywhere by now.”

“That boy should be took away,” he said. “Charlotte once told me she was working on getting him fostered out. Someplace they’d watch him better. It’d be too bad, but he ain’t getting supervised, you know what I mean?”

“I do. I’ll have to look into it as well. I don’t like taking a baby from his mother unless there’s no other way.” I listened to myself with disbelief. I sounded like an experienced social worker who’d seen this situation many times before, but I sure didn’t feel like one.

“No,” he said, “that ain’t never good, but in this particular case, maybe for the best.”

I wondered if he was trying to tell me he knew Eli was William’s father.

“Mary Ella loves him so much,” I said.

Lita Jordan walked across the yard toward us, little Rodney running ahead of her. She looked worn out and I knew she’d been doing her part in the search.

“Hello, Mrs. Jordan,” I said. “Any sign of William?”

“No, ma’am.” She pulled her green kerchief lower over her hair. “That boy just plum disappeared into thin air.”

“Rodney.” Mr. Gardiner squatted down on the ground and Rodney approached him. “I heard you wasn’t feeling so good,” he said.

“I ate something that don’t agree on me,” Rodney said, and Davison Gardiner laughed. He put his hand on the little boy’s forehead and I was surprised by that gentleness in him. I didn’t know his son Henry Allen well at all, but I had the feeling he was lucky to have Mr. Gardiner as his father.

“He’s feeling better now, ain’t you, Rodney?” Lita said as Mr. Gardiner stood up again.

“They found him!” Devil ran around the corner of the house toward us. “He’s all right!”

“Hooray!” I said, clapping my hands together, and I realized I hadn’t expected a happy ending to this day. I put my hands to my mouth as a megaphone and called across the street. “Ivy! Ivy!” I had to call a few times before she heard me. She looked up from the field and I waved, and she started running toward the road.

“We got him!” Henry Allen shouted. He was walking next to Mary Ella, Eli not two steps behind her, and she cuddled William in her arms, covering him with kisses. William rested his head on her shoulder, looking exhausted.

Next to me, Davison Gardiner sighed. “One of these times, they ain’t gonna be this lucky,” he said, loud enough for me alone to hear.

Everyone seemed to get the word at once. Avery came running from one direction, almost falling when he tripped over a tree root he couldn’t see with his tunnel vision. He was his usual bright-eyed, happy self, though. “They found him, they found him!” he said, to no one in particular.

“Where was he at?” Lita asked Mary Ella.

“Down the crick a ways,” Eli said, pointing toward the woods on the other side of the fields. “Trying to catch them little fishes.”

How deep was the creek? I wondered. I’d read that a child could drown in a few inches of water.

“I’ll take him home,” Mary Ella said. “He needs a good nap.”

“He needs a good
scrubbing,
” Lita said, holding up his grubby arm. But she was smiling. Everybody was smiling, myself included. I’d worry about William’s future later.

“You boys go help Mr. Gardiner now,” Lita said. “He done lost a day of work here. I’ll be right behind you.”

I watched Eli and his brothers and Henry Allen follow Mr. Gardiner to the path leading to the barn. Then Lita and I looked after Mary Ella and Ivy as they walked toward the woods and home. At one point, they turned to face each other, Ivy brushing something off William’s face.

“I better be gettin’ to work myself,” Lita said, “I’ll have to take over Ivy’s loopin’, I guess.” But she didn’t move. She stared after the girls, then dusted off her hands, and gave me a pointed look.

“That Ivy,” she said, “she sure has packed on a lot of pounds, now hasn’t she?”

26

Ivy

Nonnie cried when we brung Baby William home. “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus!” she shouted when she saw us come out of the trees. She always acted like she didn’t care about him and he was nothing but a bother, but she loved him like we all did. She grabbed his little face between her swole-up hands and kissed him all over his cute little pudgy cheeks. He smiled, but he was too tuckered out to laugh. Mary Ella was right. That boy needed a nap.

“Don’t you go putting that filthy baby in that clean bed,” Nonnie said.

“I’ll take him.” I could see it was Mary Ella needed a lie-down the most. She’d been running all over kingdom come all day looking for him.

Usually I’d just wash him in the kitchen sink, but he was getting too big for that now, and with him being this dirty, I thought I’d better use the tub outside. I pumped water into it and then took off his filthy clothes and sat him down in the cool water. He splashed his hands up and down, but only for a second. He was too tired to play.

“Ivy?”

I turned to see Mrs. Forrester walking across the yard.

“Hey,” I said. “I thought you left.”

“I was going to, but then I realized I need to talk to you. Are you alone?”

“Do I look like I’m alone?” I laughed. I rubbed the soap through Baby William’s black curls.

“I mean … where are your grandmother and Mary Ella?”

“Nonnie’s inside and Mary Ella’s taking a nap.”

“Good.” She was talking real quiet. “I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“Why?” I soaped Baby William’s grimy neck. He was a mess.

“Ivy…” she said, “when was your last period?”

“Just last week,” I said, as usual.

“Really?” She looked relieved and I suddenly felt bad for lying to her.

“Nah, I don’t rightly know,” I said. “They’ve always been all over the place. I always got to be ready for it. It’ll come on at school, and one time on the bus.”

“I’m worried you’re pregnant.” She blurted it out like she couldn’t hold it in no more.

“I
ain’t
pregnant,” I said, talking as quiet as her now. The kitchen window was open and I sure didn’t want Nonnie to hear none of this.

“I noticed today that you’ve put on weight. Here.” She touched her own stomach, but she was looking at mine. “Haven’t you noticed that?”

“I just been eatin’ too much. I try to eat the biscuits so Nonnie don’t get to ’em.”

“Please tell me the truth, Ivy,” she said. “This is so important. Have you had intercourse—sex—with someone? That boy you told me you liked, maybe?”

I looked down at Baby William, who was nearly falling asleep in the tub. It would have been easy to lie to her if she didn’t look so serious and if she wasn’t so nice. “Yes, I done it,” I said, “but I can’t be pregnant because he always pulls out except one last time when I used that spermicide jelly Nurse Ann give me.”

“I see.” She reached over and started rinsing the soap off Baby William’s back, using her hand like a cup. “Maybe he forgot one time? That’s all it would take.”