Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [91]
A WATCHER WOULD think Sally knew hidden paths through the dark woods. But she is just aware of her riders, and steps slow and steady to balance the load. Not fooled by the thick layer of new-fallen leaves, feeling for the hidden slick rocks underneath. And not going straight at all. Going the way the land requires, so that curves are the shortest distance between two points.
They climb a steep damp trail along the bold creek of a cove. A canopy of hemlocks and maples all the way, black as midnight underneath. Then they contour around a dry shoulder of mountain with oaks and hickories, their limbs bare enough to show stars and the slice of moon scooting along in the breaks between clouds. Look up and glimpse Orion and his dangling sword, the Seven Sisters fleeing before him.
They keep contouring, bending back into another identical cove with its own canopy of maples and hemlocks and its creek, and then around to another shoulder. Over and over, that slow sinuous movement into wet dark and out to dry bright. But all the time, climbing.
Dolores and Frank rock along for hours, warm from pressing against each other and also from Sally, who steams in the moonlight. They doze a little but stay awake a lot, because of the importance of looking where they want to go. Up and far away.
LUCE AND STUBBLEFIELD find a blue-and-white De Soto coupe pulled off the dirt road at the edge of the lake. The water flat, and the same shade as the night sky. The car windows are fogged opaque, but it is a known vehicle to Luce. Inside will be the artistic man who teaches music at several mountain schools many miles apart on twisting roads. Like a Methodist circuit rider from two centuries previous, roaming the revolutionary hills on a weary gelding. Presumably, the musician has an actual place to live at a less remote radius of his circuit. Low pay from the State, though, sometimes requires that he overnight in his car near the lake, sharing the backseat with his wardrobe of two suits, navy and charcoal, three whitish shirts, and one red necktie. Also his professional clutter. Envelopes of sax reeds, little vials of oil to lubricate the pistons and slides of brass, white plastic flutophones for teaching younger kids the basics of fingering, crushed packets of Viceroys, and several bottles of cheap Scotch at various degrees of empty.
Luce raps a knuckle at the driver’s window and then steps back. The teacher rolls down a rear window and sticks his head into the night. All that shows clear is his dark hair and his blinking eyes.
—Yes? he says, with the precise pitch of annoyance due someone whose telephone has jangled at midnight.
—Little kids, Luce says. A girl and a boy. Yea high.
She makes a leveling motion with her hand at her hip.
—Sort of blond-headed, she says. Maybe with a pony mare. Seen them?
—With a what?
—A blackish pony mare. White socks in front.
—Seen them when?
—Anytime from afternoon to right now.
—Not at all, he says. No children seen whatsoever.
—How long have you been parked here?
Instead of gesturing his response with a middle finger, he flicks three fingertips under his salt-and-pepper chin whiskers with great aplomb. When he rolls the window up, the sweeps leave parallel tracks in condensation on the inner side of the glass.
After that, Luce and Stubblefield wander for what seems like hours in the night, flashing their feeble light on black trunks and humped stones, startling small animals, which skitter through the downed leaves. Luce singing out Dolores’s name in three rising syllables every minute, and in between, Stubblefield barking Frank. And at some point in the night, they hear off in the coves and along the ridges other searchers calling too, echoing out the same two words like simple-minded spirit voices of the green world. In the silences, floating thin in the air from a great distance, coon dogs bay as they work the high mountains on an entirely different mission.
TOWN DARK AND EMPTY, the three streetlights flashing yellow,