American Boy - Larry Watson [5]
We walked on, down through the treeless depression we called the Boulders, past the spot where Russell Marsh blasted an owl out of a hollow tree with a twelve-gauge, leaving nothing of the bird but a blizzard of feathers, and through the stand of willows whose wandlike limbs we used to swing from. As we searched for Louisa Lindahl, Johnny and I were the source of most of the noise in the forest—twigs snapping, leaves crunching, and clumps of snow falling, brushed from branches and shrubs.
Then I heard something, and I shushed Johnny. We both stopped and stood unmoving, our heads raised as if, like hounds, we could detect scents in the chilly air. We stood there for a moment, breathless.
After a long silence, Johnny whispered, “What was it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“She could be hiding. For all she knows Lester Huston is out here looking for her.”
I hadn’t thought of that. I’d assumed she would want to be found.
Johnny asked, “Should we call out or something?”
Before I could form a judgment, Johnny cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “We’re here to help you! Is anyone out there?”
When no response came, he tried again. “Hello! There’s no need to be afraid!”
After the sound of Johnny’s voice died away, the forest’s silence seemed amplified, a snowy day’s version of an echo.
“That’s just what someone who’s after her would say,” I offered with a smile. “‘There’s no need to be afraid.’”
“What should I say—‘Ollie, Ollie, in-free? Come out, come out, wherever you are?’”
Once we stood there motionless for a couple minutes, the cold was able to wrap itself around us. I clapped my gloved hands together and stamped my feet. “Jesus. If she’s hiding in here, she could freeze to death.”
Johnny pinched snot from his nostrils with his mitten. “Freeze or bleed to death. Some choice.”
“Well, I don’t think she’d choose either one.”
“Smart-ass. Maybe I should howl like a wolf,” he suggested. “Scare her out of hiding.”
“Give it a try.”
But he didn’t. And both of us just stood there listening. After another moment, Johnny asked, “Could it have been a squirrel?”
“It wasn’t like that. Not scurrying. More like starting and stopping. Like someone limping maybe. Or hunkering down in the leaves.”
After a few more minutes passed, I began to convince myself that it must have been a squirrel I’d heard. Or possibly a branch, falling by stages from the top of a tall cottonwood. Then I heard it again. And this time Johnny did, too. It sounded like something scuffing slowly through the dry leaves, and we both turned around in the direction from which it came.
Why had that antlered buck not been frightened into flight? Had he sensed all along that we were no threat, clumping through the forest unarmed? Had he seen us for what we were, boys pretending that they knew his territory as well as he did, boys who thought they had powers greater than men? The buck stared at us and we stared at him for one more long moment, and then he moved on, pausing every few paces to scrape at the leaves in search of food, a being with a real purpose in the woods.
I looked down. If I hadn’t been standing in snow the outline of my foot would have been hard to see. In late November, cold and snow hastened days to a close early in our part of the world, limiting what could be usefully done with the hours. And in the thickening gloom of Frenchman’s Forest, it was already too dark to find footprints or traces of blood.
“We should probably head back,” I said in the reluctant voice of a sensible big brother.
“And just leave her out here?”
“We don’t even know that she’s still out here.”
“We don’t know she isn’t.”
“Come on. In a few minutes we won’t be able to see our hands in front of our faces.”
Johnny kicked back and forth in the snow, perhaps testing my theory.
After another moment, he conceded. “All right.”
As we walked back to the car, I felt discouraged and even humiliated. We had set out with