Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [95]
Before he starts walking, he has to decide which way to go. He wants to turn around and go home, and has to give himself a pep talk about going forward and doing the necessary. Get it over. Put the past where it belongs and start the new.
He squats beside the creek and scrubs the rust from the machete with glittery grit from the water’s edge. He tries to sharpen it on a smooth creek rock, spitting on the rock and then stroking the long edge back and forth in the lubrication. Spitting again and swapping sides. All he knows about knife sharpening is that you hold the blade at such angle as to mimic taking a thin slice out of the stone. He rubs and rubs, and his breath clouds around his head. Thinking, when I’m done up here, I’ll bury this son-of-a-bitch deep deep in the ground and it will rust away year by year. When I’m an old man, it probably won’t be anything but a reddish stain in the soil.
A BUNCH OF MIDDLE-AGED MEN in the cold light of morning, all bleary-eyed and uneager to get moving and continue the search. Happy to keep stoking the fire and spiking their mugs of coffee with Wild Turkey and Black Jack that they mostly either bought direct from Bud or at one remove. One of the men looks at the sky and sniffs. Says the air smells like snow.
The sheriff looks especially busted up by his few hours of sleep on the ground. But voters have a way of holding it against you if you go home instead of sacrificing a night in bed to find two lost kids. Now his hair hurts when he tries to smooth it down. He keeps taking his hat off and rubbing his head and looking into the hat like the band is what’s causing his trouble.
They’ve not made it into the woods more than shouting distance from where their vehicles are parked along the lake’s back road. Partly out of laziness, and also because they cannot imagine two children, even if they are riding a worn-out mare, going far before they give out. Like when they, themselves, go hunting in November. And also, the mountain gets weird and dangerous and scary when you climb way up on it, especially if you’re the manager of the grocery or the guy that works the recap machine at the tire store.
The sheriff finally says maybe everybody ought to get off their asses and start finding the poor kids. And then he and his number one suckass, Carl, bid the others adios and head back to their black-and-white. Can’t everybody be out in the woods at the same time.
The sheriff and Carl ride around in the patrol car. Stopping at houses at the edge of the deep woods. Carl sits in the car listening to the radio while the sheriff knocks on doors, takes his hat off, walks in, and asks, Seen two retarded kids wandering loose? Might have a horse with them?
Late morning, the sheriff swings back by the Lodge to check if the kids have come home, see if there is any cooking going on. See how Luce acts.
Not like he hasn’t given it a passing thought that she and the boyfriend might be behind the children’s disappearance. He doesn’t believe it, but that’s where you look first, close to home. A wife disappears, you look to the husband. And maybe Luce inherited some of her father’s crazy streak. There isn’t a lawman rule book to learn this stuff from, and the sheriff hasn’t been to police school. Being an elected official means you don’t need any training or qualifications. Nor even common sense. All he really knows how to do is build roads on padded State contracts. Also how to make voters feel comfortable or uncomfortable, peaceful or excited, whichever is more useful at the moment.
After eating a big plate of Maddie’s pinto beans and cornbread and collards, the sheriff hasn’t come up with any clues. Luce seems genuinely broken up by the disappearance of the children, and the boyfriend isn’t any kind of killer. The sheriff tells them to be patient, let the professionals do their jobs. Everybody is doing everything they can to bring the children home safe. Stay by the phone.
Luce says the obvious: