Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [93]
TWO IN THE MORNING, a stand of tall red oaks in a peninsula of forest interrupting a big hay field. Unexpected light rises under the trees. A Coleman lantern hanging by its bail from a tree limb projects a harsh white dome across the ground and up the tree trunks and into the brown dead leaves overhead. A group of men stand together in the blaring light like actors on a stage, their eyes dark under hat brims. The shadows of the people and of the trees stretch long across the ground.
Luce stands apart, gathered into herself and fatal.
Stubblefield is with the group of men. They’re looking at a green canvas tarp covering a small body.
The sheriff says, There’s no need for her to look. We have his wallet. It was still in his pocket.
—How was he killed?
—Hard to say at this point. When the searchers found him, it was already dark. A lot of animals around here. Plenty of wear and tear. We’ll get him out in the morning and see what the coroner says.
Stubblefield holds his cut hand to catch the light, looks at the bandage. He says, I’m betting knife wound.
—We’ll see. Like I told her, there’s a lot more than one suspect. Need to keep an open mind.
—Have you talked to him since Lit’s been missing?
—Of course. He seemed pretty broken up. Said they were tight. Never had such a good friend in his whole life. Said he didn’t believe for a minute that Lit had taken off on his own without a word. Something bad must have happened. I believed him.
—You believed him? The end?
—I’m not as big an idiot as Luce thinks. He has an alibi for the night Lit went missing. A couple of men saw him at the Roadhouse until late.
—Two drunks hanging at a beer joint can’t remember one night from the next.
The Sheriff says, Everything doesn’t have to be connected. Most of the time, something happens and then some other things happen. Usually the simple answer is the right one. I’m keeping an eye on this guy. But it’ll turn out to be somebody with a grudge against Lit. There’s plenty of those around. It won’t be a friend. And, by the way, I don’t think of it as a beer joint. I think of it as your beer joint.
Luce looks up and comes fuming over. Says, Lit’s dead. He’s been dead. The children might not be yet. Why are we all standing around?
Luce and Stubblefield ride in the backseat of the patrol car like criminals. A smell of Pine-Sol and vomit. Back at the Lodge, dawn is still a ways off. Maddie waits for them in the kitchen, and to kill the time, she has coffee going, cat-head biscuits browning in the wood-oven, and a pot of grits, yellow with butter and speckled throughout with coarse black pepper. As soon as Luce and Stubblefield and the sheriff come through the door, Maddie scrambles a dozen eggs in a huge iron skillet left over from the days of Lodge hospitality.
Maddie repeats what she said on the phone last afternoon. If the children and the mare are still together, they might be heading for the highlands, the peaks and balds, which Sally might remember from summer grazing in the long grass many years ago.
—Ifs and mights, the sheriff says. My thinking is, if you lose your car keys, the best place to start looking is on the kitchen counter and in your coat pockets before you head up a foot trail to the top of a mountain. Might be coincidence that your mare wandered off the same day as the children.
—I doubt she’d have carried her bridle with her, Maddie says.
—Well, I’ll keep that in mind, and we might find ourselves up there eventually, if we don’t get results down here. Normally, we find lost kids in the first six or eight hours. This time of year, by the second night out in the cold, we’re just trying to find something for the parents to bury.
—Good Lord, Maddie says.
—Luce likes straight talk, the sheriff says.
BY THE TIME the partial moon slides down the sky and disappears, they are far up, pretty high. Creeks becoming thin enough for Sally to step over without getting her feet wet. The woods have slowly quit being jungle and have started to become alpine. Firs and balsams, and heathery stands