Nobody's Child (3 page)

Tears welled as she opened the book to the flyleaf, fingers running down the sharp edge of leather that defined the binding. She'd longed for this book, a sacrifice too dear in their rough months making medical payments and sustaining life. Daddy's scrawl adorned the first page and Laura Ann choked, closing the cover for a moment to seal him in her treasured gift.

He called to her, reminiscences of strong hands holding her through long cries about clueless boys or the pain inflicted by petty girls. His memory beckoned her to open and read. She lifted the cover of the trilogy a second time, anxious for Daddy's resurrection on the page. Shaky letters penned by an unsteady hand adorned the leaf.

Laura Ann drew the book to her, closing it slowly as she inhaled the perfume of ink and leather binding. She held Daddy's favorite escape from farming — and her imagination quest — bound up in one volume. Within these pages lived their nightly travels together, experiences in distant lands, in wonder at the fantastic exploits of hobbits, warlords, dwarves, and elves.

The second package beckoned her. Wrapped in the colored newsprint of a
Wheeling News Register
Sunday comics, and bound with baling twine, this would have been one that Daddy wrapped — his annual joke about her “ridiculous thrift with
wrapping paper.” She straightened up and pulled the second parcel into her lap, tugging at coarse hemp wrapped about it, then curling the baling twine into a ball.

A second leather-bound book fell open, this one a journal filled with blank lined pages. An envelope dropped on the floor with her name penned on the front in Daddy's hand. It was a steady cursive, handwriting like the kind he'd used before the bedridden phase of his sickness. Laura Ann picked up the envelope and pulled out a simple card. The words stole her heart.

Cold gripped the motor of the old pickup, icy tendrils wrapped around cylinders that screamed their complaint when she engaged the ignition. After feeding the cows, she'd planned to take a ride around her land. Not now. Laura Ann kept her eyes focused on a truck parked on the ridge above the farm and the trespasser who stood beside it. Poachers. Her ears pricked for the telltale moment when she needed to pump the accelerator and urge the old truck to life.

“Please start!”

As the first cough of an engaging motor gave her hope, she saw a man move back toward the vehicle. In the rising sun she could see better now. A
blue
pickup.

Uncle Jack?

Before her engine warmed to a semblance of reliability, the trespasser was on the move. He'd heard her truck start, no doubt, and had the advantage. She determined to catch him.

Laura Ann jammed the truck into first gear and broke the tires free of their frozen grip in red clay. As she sped up the hill, the mysterious pickup pulled out of sight. A blue truck, for certain. If it
was
Uncle Jack, he'd never wait on her, and if confronted, he'd never admit to visiting the farm on Christmas morning. That was his way. Once she heard him refer to his little lapses in honesty as “white lies.” “Don't hurt nobody,” he'd said.

She bounced up the farm road toward the top of the pasture, frozen ruts jarring the ride as tires dropped into steel-like gullies, then jerked back out again. Minutes after the trespasser pulled away, she passed the spot where melted snow showed in a perfect rectangle beneath the missing warmth. Five minutes further down the road, she'd driven the length of The Jug, their unique farm locale in the midst of a creek-bound island. But no sign of the intruder, and no proof it was her uncle.

Laura Ann gave up the chase at the low water crossing, the creek's unique geography where it doubled back on itself. Crushed white ice in frozen potholes proved the passage of the visitor. Undisturbed snow meant that no one pulled off the farm road into the wood to avoid her. The more she thought on it, she was sure. It was Uncle Jack's gaudy Ford, the only showroom-new electric-blue vehicle in a county full of dented red or white pickups.

Laura Ann stopped when she reached the creek and turned off the ignition. Frigid greenish-grey water tumbled along the Middle Island Creek, flowing around her farm, the creek's largest island. She walked out on the low water bridge where the creek turned hard to her right. Three miles downstream, it would pass the farmhouse. Four miles farther, after its loop about their unique hilly island known as “The Jug,” the stream would return to a place only twenty yards to her left, but thirteen feet lower in elevation. Laura Ann moved to the downstream edge of the bridge and sat on mud-stained ancient concrete, watching icy water wind its way to the tiny hamlet of Middlebourne, two miles away.

How many times had she floated this loop of the creek? A hundred? She'd toss hay for a day in the summer, or work with Daddy in the shop, then pull the canoe into the stream. Pick any spot on the farm to start, go downstream, and eventually she had only to portage the low water crossing and jump to the upstream
portion and float back to her point of origin. An endless circle of solo canoeing, the ultimate solitude.

Here sat once-proud milldams over two hundred years ago. Generations of water wheels churned in this perfect place for waterpower, each destroyed by flood and rebuilt by sturdy folk. Daddy's people. The McGehees, and the Greggs who came before them to build those mills, were the stuff of lore, hidden in time. All of them — along with their industrious handiwork — had long since departed. Now, muddy brown logs jammed themselves into disheveled piles above the deep hole to her left, a churning hairpin turn in the creek that gathered flood trash when waters raged over the concrete crossing. Like matchsticks piled up by a wet hand, they endured wintry cold, waiting on spring and the next flood. Every curve in the Middle Island had its share of logjams, a sight so commonplace that it never turned a head.

Seated on the concrete dam, Laura Ann pulled her legs up close, wrapping her arms about her shins. The trespasser forgotten, she buried her face into her knees, desperate to shut out the world, determined to bottle up her pain. Daddy's passing only added to her guilt, a discomfort so deep and so sharp that it would not pass.

Words bubbled up in the cauldron she'd sealed inside. Daddy's words about “letters to my grandchildren.” Preacher Armstrong's words, Sunday after Sunday — and again last night — stern warnings that screamed “don't mess with God's design!” And Pastor Culpeper, in his caring way, reminding her at the funeral that “the Lord will provide.” But here she sat, huddled against the cold, pinned in a desperate corner of her own making, her secret far too terrible to share.

Deserted in the back of beyond, Laura Ann closed her eyes in prayer.

“Are you a troll?” a voice asked sometime later.

The question jarred her out of another world, the mysterious twilight of deep prayer. Laura Ann looked up from her cold seat on the causeway, blinking against the sun. A man in green and khaki stood over her, lit up with smiles.

She wiped her eyes, self-conscious about any wet in them. “Ian?”

“I asked you a question,” he said, his smile brimming ear to ear. “Are you a troll?”

She dusted her pants as she stood, tilting her head.

“You know,” he said. “Guarding the bridge. From the Brothers Grimm? We read those stories when we were kids.”

Laura Ann smiled. “What's the password, Officer?” she asked, crossing her arms and staking a claim to the middle of the concrete.

“That's easy. Hot biscuits.”

Laura Ann shrugged with a shake of her head.

Ian put a finger to his temple, then replied. “Biscuits and gravy!”

“Got it. But you're early,” she responded, extending a hand. His grip was strong and warm. Inviting.

“Been out since five. Most poachers can't wait to hit the woods with their new rifles on Christmas morning. Probably figure I'll be home snoozing on a holiday.”

“Any luck?” she asked, remembering her reason for leaving the house. The intruder.

“I wrote three tickets before seven. So, what's got you down here? It's too cold to be out watching the creek.”

“Thinking,” she replied, hands shoved into the pockets of her coat. She looked away for a moment, sure her expression would give her away.

A hand touched her shoulder. “I'm sorry, Laura Ann. For
your loss. Your dad was the best.” Ian faced the ground, perhaps to save her the embarrassment, perhaps because he felt her pain. “I wish there was something I could do.”

Laura Ann watched him, a tall drink of water with tousled brown hair under a West Virginia Department of Natural Resources ball cap. His badge rose and fell with the deep breaths of a man who didn't know exactly what to say, a man who exhaled deep with each frustration.

“Thank you, Ian,” she said, moving toward him. She put a hand on the forearm of his brown official coat, squeezing through the insulated sleeves. His eyes met hers, and understanding flowed in the silence between them.

A long moment later, Ian motioned to his truck. “I'm starving. Biscuits and gravy?”

Laura Ann smiled. “I saved some. Hoped you'd drive by.”

“Every Christmas. Are they still warm?”

“They were when I left,” she replied, climbing into his vehicle.

As they drew abreast her pickup near the bottom of the hill, Laura Ann touched Ian's forearm a second time. “Let's ride to the farm in your truck.”

“Suits me,” Ian said. He shifted down a gear to climb out of the low water crossing and head up the first hill of The Jug.

Laura Ann turned and looked out the back window at her truck, aside the road near the bottom of the grade. “I want to leave it there for a while. As a warning.”

“Warning?”

“Someone was in here this morning, Ian. Taking pictures, I think.”

His countenance changed like summer weather. In an instant he was serious, his law enforcement face. He stopped the truck and turned in the bench seat to face her. “Pictures?”

“I saw someone up on the ridge above the farmhouse forty-five minutes ago. I took off after him, but he got away.”

“Any idea who it was?”

“Uncle Jack, I think.”

“You're sure?”

“No,” she confessed. “But I saw his blue truck. It had to be him, right?”

“Not because of the truck. But I'll bet it
was
Jack.”

“Why?”

“Saw him up the road. On my way back from Big Moses.”

“You saw Uncle Jack?” she repeated, incredulous.

“Yep. And he had company. Two of ‘em, plain as day.” Ian laid his arm on the seat back, turning her direction. “Had a gun in the rack, and Jack was wearing a tie.”

Laura Ann took a deep breath, trying to remember. There could have been two of them. But Uncle Jack in a tie? Never.

Ian smiled, lowered his arm, and put the truck back into gear. “Let's go grab those biscuits,” he said with a chuckle, “and we'll figure this out together.”

Eight hours later, the farm kitchen brimmed to overflowing with food. Auntie Rose's turkey simmered in a pan of blistering hot drippings, fresh from the oven. Salad, cornbread dressing, pole beans, fresh-baked bread, and mashed potatoes all waited to be heaped into serving dishes. Laura Ann surveyed the feast and cooking utensils, then joined her aunt at the window.

Laura Ann broke the silence with the question that no doubt hung on Auntie Rose's mind. “Do you think Uncle Jack got your note?” Laura Ann asked, certain she didn't want him here for dinner, and hopeful her aunt would say “Let's eat without him.”

“I called twice, Laura Ann. He won't answer his cell phone.”

“Should we start without him?”

Auntie Rose lowered her head and shook it slowly. No words needed.

“Fine,” Laura Ann replied, pulling her in the direction of the living room. “Then come see what Daddy gave me for Christmas. It's amazing.”

Auntie Rose brightened and dusted her hands on an apron, then followed.

Together, they squatted at the foot of the Christmas tree and shared stories about the leather-bound book, Laura Ann's favorite. Auntie Rose told stories about her brother Angus and his love of reading to his daughter. Stories about his experiences traveling the world through books.

Daddy lived again in her words. She could see him in Auntie Rose's face, shared genes expressed in her aunt's cheeks and eyes. Daddy's laugh mirrored hers, and it felt good to giggle again. To share the living room floor as family. To hold someone close, warm skin embracing hers. She relished every one of Auntie Rose's stories, tales of Angus McGehee, and his conquering ways as a young man in a post-Vietnam America. The farm boy whom every girl pined for, but only one woman captured. Stories of Hope and Rose, sisters in spirit and marriage. Idyllic times.

Uncle Jack might not have entered the story had he not arrived at the door. The bang of a fist meant he came to be served, not to dine.

Auntie Rose stopped in midsentence, sharing another memory of Hope and their youth together as schoolgirls, the tender middle-school years long before Angus proposed marriage. The first bang on the door stopped her and she cowered, eyes wide, moving where Laura Ann's body shielded her from the sound. Just a fraction of a moment, a brief retreat, but it spoke dark secrets of her dread of Uncle Jack. She turned to embrace her
aunt, but too late. Rose stood and walked to the door, stoic. A lamb headed to slaughter.

When his wife opened the door, Uncle Jack stepped into the home without a word, eyes on the prowl. Like he was searching for something, scouring every tidbit, leveraging for an angle. His way.

“Hello, Laura Ann,” he said at last.

She nodded. “Merry Christmas, Uncle Jack.” She stood and faced him, her quarry. He'd eluded her once today. Would he confess?

He didn't respond to her greeting but dusted snowflakes off his jacket, a brown outdoorsman thing like the ones that hung in rows at the hardware store. Not a stain on it, still stiff with factory sizing. He headed straight for the kitchen, avoiding Laura Ann's gaze.

“We'll get dinner set,” Auntie Rose said. “We were just waiting for you.” She moved quickly, but more like a robot on fast action than a woman proud of her kitchen skills. She made small talk, he responded. She ladled food, he sat down. She prayed, he bowed a head, then ate in silence. The spirit of Christmas died in the compress of their unspoken tension. Uncle Jack, the joy thief.

“Shoot anything?” Laura Ann asked, tired of hearing him chew.

“No. Why?”

“Saw your truck up on the rise earlier. With a gun in the rack.”

Auntie Rose snapped her head up from its characteristic slump, her eyes pleading with Laura Ann “don't.” No talk of guns or game laws — or wardens on the prowl.

Words burned on Laura Ann's tongue and she swallowed hot spite. “Ian stopped by earlier,” she said, determined to make her point. “Mentioned he saw you this morning out near West Union.”

“Might have,” Uncle Jack responded, watching his plate.

“He said to tell you hello,” she continued. “Comes by every Christmas to check for poachers.” She watched for some response. He reached over the table to pull the pie in his direction.

“You don't have to head up to West Union to hunt, Uncle Jack,” she continued, standing to gather up his plate and her own. Laura Ann could see Auntie Rose shaking as she lifted a hand to finish her last bite. “You're family. You can hunt here.”

That comment got his eye. Uncle Jack regarded her for a long moment, then looked down to lift a wedge of pumpkin pie onto his plate. She headed for the sink, an ear inclined back toward the table.

“Thanks. I might do that Friday. Buck season's back in.”