Old Wounds (9 page)

The second bowl of ice cream had been devoured; the teeth had been brushed—no bribe needed this time; the filthy clothes had been dumped into the washing machine. Calven had crawled eagerly into bed, docilely accepting Elizabeth’s assurances that they would take him to his mother and grandmother the next day.

As Ursa and Molly positioned themselves on the guest room rug, Elizabeth and Rosemary said good night to the child. Elizabeth left the hall light on and started for her bedroom, but Rosemary clutched at her arm, whispering urgently, “Mum, do you think it’s okay…I mean, just to leave him? Should we lock the doors or—”

Elizabeth laughed. “Sweetie, I couldn’t lock him in if I wanted to. The front door key has been lost for I don’t know how many years and I don’t think there ever was a key to the outside door in the guest room. And I’m not about to stand guard over him. The idea of taking him to see his mother and grandmother seemed to suit him. If they can’t take care of him…Well, we’ll talk about that in the morning.”

But in the morning the boy had vanished, leaving Ursa and Molly happily snoring on the bed where he had slept. His wet clothes were still in the washer, but a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter were missing from the kitchen. On the counter lay a paper towel with a note scrawled on it.
Thanks and plees don’t say nothing or I could get kiled.

7.

B
IB
M
AITLAND

Saturday, October 8

“Phillip, I feel
like an idiot.”

Elizabeth’s first move, on realizing that Calven was really gone, had been to call Phillip. Rosemary was still asleep; there was no point in awakening her just to tell her that she had been right, that someone
should
have kept watch. So it was Phillip who heard the first unchecked outpourings of Elizabeth’s guilty conscience. She quickly outlined the events of the previous evening, trying to present a coherent account. Soon, however, she felt a growing tide of anxiety washing over her and heard herself beginning to babble.

“I’m afraid he’ll be in danger…he’s just a little boy…and he’s barefoot and he’s afraid of this Bib. I should have made sure…. And you
warned
me not to go back over there and I should have realized—”

She broke off, hating the way she sounded.
Like a bloody fool—appropriately enough.
Forcing herself to breathe deeply, she struggled to reorder her thoughts.

“Elizabeth,” his voice was like a calming hand on her shoulder, “it’ll be okay. This isn’t your fault. Tell you what: I’ll get hold of Blaine. He’ll find the boy and get him to his folks.”

At last she put down the phone, feeling somewhat reassured, though still unhappy with her own negligence.
Now I have to tell Rosie.

Rosemary, just out of bed and in search of coffee, listened to her mother’s rueful tale. Elizabeth was folding Calven’s clothes, still warm from the dryer, and Rosemary watched as she smoothed out the camouflage pants, carefully aligning the inseams as if readying the ragged garment for careful pressing. She studied her mother’s worried face and seemed to see her clearly for the first time in many years.
This has really upset her—she looks tired and…and
older.
And she’s almost dithering. This isn’t like Mum.

“He left a note. It’s there in the kitchen. And he took some bread and peanut butter, not that it matters. The sheriff’s going to be looking for him. I called Phillip right away and he—”

Rosemary was amazed to see a blush creep over her mother’s tanned face.

“Well, I know I’ve mentioned him—Phillip Hawkins—he’s…he
was
a—”

“A friend of Pa’s—I know. From the navy.” Rosemary took pity on her parent, seemingly so incapable of explaining what had been a topic of great interest to both her daughters and her nephew. “Mum, I know all about him. He used to be a police detective somewhere over on the coast—was it Beaufort? He’s divorced and has a daughter at UNCA and you’ve been seeing a lot of him recently…. The miracle of e-mail,” she elucidated, in response to Elizabeth’s startled look. “Ben and Laurel are a lot better at keeping in touch than you are. They tell me it’s starting to look serious. So, am I going to get to meet this guy at last?”

It must be serious,
decided Rosemary as she hiked up the familiar slope toward the big rock Maythorn had called Froghead.
Mum’s eyes just lit up when she talked about him. The tiredness vanished and she looked like herself again…. I hope he’s nice. Laur and Ben seem to like him a lot, judging from their e-mails in the past year…. I wonder if…
But she abandoned that train of thought. Though she recognized that her mother was still reasonably attractive at the advanced age of—
what is it, fifty-one or fifty-two?
—and though she was well aware that, theoretically at least, sexual activity could continue unabated well past even her mother’s age, still, some things were just too weird to think about. She set her eyes on the granite outcropping above her and plodded on.

I have to go back to the beginning…and this is where I first saw Maythorn.
Rosemary stopped and looked up at the great rock. Her eyes were misty as she remembered.
It was like magic, like an imaginary playmate suddenly materializing in front of me. And she was an Indian. I remember how that seemed so incredibly cool. I had always wanted to be an Indian myself.

She stared at the rock’s rim, willing a dark face, black eyes shining below thick bangs, to appear, just as it had twenty-one years ago. Holding her breath and wishing, she waited, silently invoking all of childhood’s mystical powers. With the same deep faith, she had once fervently stared at the antique armoire in her grandmother’s house, convincing herself that if she believed hard enough, it
would
be the doorway into Narnia. Hardly breathing, she kept her gaze riveted on the unchanged loom of granite that hung dark above her.

Maythorn, come back.
The words were a plea, an invocation. Rosemary waited, feeling inexplicably
near
to something, as if she teetered on the brink of an unseen time and place, some parallel universe where two little girls who had once played and plotted together had never been separated. In an instant, a vision of an adult Maythorn flashed into her mind: the Maythorn that might have been. A sense of irretrievable loss swept over her and the vision blurred and vanished.

The spell was broken. Shaking off irrational hope, Rosemary climbed to the back of the rock outcropping and crawled out onto its surface. The smooth granite was warm from the sun and, as she had done countless times before, she flattened her palms against it, feeling its bulk as a thing alive beneath her. Above and behind her, there was a clatter and cawing in the woods as raucous crows roused a sleeping owl and harried it from its perch. She watched as the big bird, imperturbable amid the scolding crowd, flew on soft, silent wings over her head to the deep woods on the farther side of the hollow.

Rosemary crept to the end of the rock and stretched out so that she could look down at the house and garden.
We would stay up here for hours, watching Mum and Pa and Uncle Wade and Laurel. She said we were spies, gathering information.
Rosemary watched as her mother moved through the garden below, cutting back dead asparagus stalks and pulling off the lower leaves of some tall collard plants.

Her mother had been relieved that Rosemary had not demanded to begin her research at Mullmore. “Phillip says”—there had been that extraordinary light in her mother’s face—“Phillip says the sheriff is keeping an eye on the place but that I—that
we
should stay away till he…till Phillip can go back with us. And the little boy
did
say that this Bib character is mean.”

Rosemary lay on the rock, feeling the sun beat down on her back. The air was chilly, though windless, and the warmth stored in the granite felt soothing. She watched her mother moving to and fro as she had watched so many times. In faded blue jeans, an old blue corduroy shirt, a quilted cherry red vest, and a disreputable straw hat, Elizabeth looked much as she always had. Not remarkable, just Mum, a fixed point in the universe. From this distance, the gray was not apparent in the long braid that hung down the back of the red vest.

As her eyes drifted shut, Rosemary let her thoughts wander at random.
Maythorn…short for Mary Thorn…her grandmother’s name…and her real father was named…what?…Blackwolf…no, Fox, Blackfox…and Maythorn kept a notebook that she wrote stuff in…she wouldn’t ever let me see all of it, but I got one of my own and she showed me how she wrote up “reports”…we were so serious…stuff like “10:22 a.m.—WG takes truck to mailbox——12 noon——LG rings bell”…I wonder if that notebook of mine is still in our secret hidey-hole…if I could find it….

Rosemary rolled over and tugged her baseball cap low to shade her eyes. She stared out from under the brim up at the sky.
It’s really working…just being here…letting myself remember…but there’s so much…and I’m not sure
—

The roar of a big truck laboring up the hill shattered her reverie and she turned back over to see who it was. The vehicle had not yet come in sight, but her mother was emerging from the chicken yard, where the hens—red, white, brown, and speckled—were greedily pecking at the culled collard leaves. Rosemary watched her mother walk to the edge of the road, head cocked curiously. At last, around the bend came a large white pickup truck, its sides heavily spattered with mud. An even more mud-spattered four-wheeler rode in the pickup’s bed.

Elizabeth waited apprehensively as the big truck came to a stop beside her. She noted the four-wheeler in the back and the big, rough-looking man in the driver’s seat.
Oh, shit. I’ve got a real feeling this must be Calven’s mama’s boyfriend—the guy Phillip warned me about.

Trying to project an assurance she did not feel, as well as an ignorance of who the man was and what he wanted, she smiled as she walked around to the driver’s side.

“Can I help you?” She raised her voice and spoke at the closed window, keeping her expression and tone neutral. It was not unknown for strangers to come up the road. It happened several times a year. They came in search of lost hunting dogs; they came to take a look at the old Baker place where their Aunt Lulie had grown up; they came to offer a
Watchtower
and invite Elizabeth to do Bible study with them; they came by mistake, having turned too soon or too late; they came, openly curious about who lived up here. There had never been a bad experience with a stranger in all her years on the farm and she fervently hoped that her luck was not about to change.

The man at the wheel cut the engine and rolled his window down. “Well, now, maybe you can do that very thing. What it is, I’m lookin’ fer my boy. We was out huntin’ over yon.” His head jerked in the direction of the ridge that separated Full Circle Farm from Mullmore. “We was headin’ back to Bear Tree and he took off on his own. Reckon he could of got turned around and come down in yore holler.” His thin lips sketched a smile that revealed a mouth of snaggled, brown-stained teeth. One was missing and its mate seemed to have been half broken off. Dark stubble covered his gaunt cheeks and greasy black hair straggled from under a dirty orange hunting cap. The man’s gray eyes were close-set and seemed to miss nothing. Even as he spoke, they ranged over the chicken house, the barns, the house itself.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.” Elizabeth smiled, hoping she looked both innocent and unintimidated. “No lost boys here. If he turns up, I could give you a call.
The operative word being
‘could.’
Not that I would.
Do you want to leave your phone number, Mr….?”

“Name’s Maitland. And I ain’t got no phone just now.” The smile was replaced by a glare of distrust. “You sure you ain’t seen him? I done tracked him along the top, and looked to me like he come down this way.” The penetrating gray eyes bored into her and she had to struggle to maintain her composure.
God, I hate lying. But I
can’t
say that I saw the boy. The best defense…

She assumed a look of interested concern. “So, do you think he’s lost, or was he running away for some reason? Maybe just playing around? I can see how you’d worry, though. What age is this boy? He’s your son?”
Over to you, Mr. Maitland. Let’s see how
you
do at telling the truth.

Bib Maitland’s scowl relaxed briefly and he made another frightening attempt at a smile. “Aah, you know how kids is—tell ’em they cain’t do this or that and they git their noses out of joint. Little Cal, he’s as butt-headed as his mama and he’s bad to sull up and run off everwhen he cain’t git his way. He’s probably headed back home right now. I just thought, bein’ as I was up this way, I might try and find him, give him a ride back to Bear Tree. But long of you sayin’ as you ain’t seen him, I reckon—”