Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [42]
Lit gestured Stubblefield down into a chair across the empty desktop and listened blank-faced to the detailed story.
—Exactly where is this cabin? Lit said when Stubblefield finished.
Stubblefield gave all the numbers of the roads and the turnings, including his best estimations of distances from major landmarks and intersections.
—We’ve been knowing about that situation for some time, Lit said, nodding. But there’s not much we can do until there’s an actual crime.
—Somebody needs to do something to help her.
—I believe it would be helpful, Lit said, if you would go check on that girl. As a private citizen, you’re not as restrained as I am. Hands tied behind my back, if you understand me.
—Yes, I do, Stubblefield said.
—Report back, Lit said.
Stubblefield drove directly to the cabin. Pulled two wheels onto the grassy shoulder. The afternoon sun broke rips in the cloud cover and cast a yellow glare on the glass, obscuring the desolate girl. Stubblefield walked onto the porch and knocked at the door. Nothing from inside, not a rustle. He circled through the high grass to her window, set in checked logs. He cupped his hands around his temples to shed the glare. His nose mashed its print against the glass.
What stared back at him was a dummy, the unclothed top half of a mannequin. Its frazzled dark nylon hair blown out on one side, like a hard-used brunette Barbie. One arm was broken off at the shoulder. The other lacked a concluding hand but was cocked back as if in the act of throwing something through the window directly at Stubblefield’s head. Yet what beautiful smooth nippleless breasts. And blue eyes painted impossibly wide with thick lashes like a Venus flytrap.
Stubblefield drove back to the sheriff’s office. Lit was waiting at his desk. He sat pitched on his chair’s hind legs with his hands behind his head against the wall. Expressionless except for a quiver of tension around his pressed lips.
—Appalachian humor? Stubblefield said.
—Welcome back to the Lake, Lit said.
CHAPTER 11
THEY SAT WET-BOTTOMED on a big flat rock at the edge of the creek, swapping a mossy crawfish back and forth. Dolores let it clamp its pincher onto her lobe like an earbob, then pulled it off, her eyes watering from the pain. She passed it to Frank, who let it grip his lower lip with both claws until he yipped like a beagle. Then into the creek again to flee backward, tail-kicking. Frank lay prone, put his whole face in the creek and opened his eyes to a green-tinged world, mica-flecked sand and gravel. He breathed out, and silver bubbles rose toward the surface, tickling up his face and into his hairline.
Sprawled in the grass of the creek bank, faces to the sun, they communicated in their manner with each other, trying to remember Lily. The color of her hair, her eyes. Chilly mornings when they ran in and climbed shivering into bed with her. How warm she was. She smelled like wet grass, fallen leaves. The memory remained vague, just her presence and her absence. A ghost that doesn’t wish you harm but can’t do you any good either. A beautiful white haze. They held memories in their heads like boxes. Some they were happy to open whenever they wanted, and some stayed closed and dark.
They circled to the smokehouse, where Luce had stored the unopened box of Lily’s things. They ripped the cellophane tape with the point of a rusty nail pulled from the wall and sat on the greasy dirt floor in the dim pork-smelling air. They sorted through treasures. A white rabbit-fur muff, a blue leather jewelry box that opened in tiers of little empty blue velvet compartments, a green hat with a black wide-mesh veil inside a hatbox, a blue velvet handbag with seven identical thin silver bracelets inside. A lumpy fox stole with beady-eyed heads and dangling tails. Two hard-shelled