OCTOBER 31, 2011
Vale drives to the barn on Cedar Street every day. The note she left is gone. There are no messages on her phone. She checks the pillows and blankets for body heat, for strands of dark hair—there are none.
Vale rips another small piece of paper out of that water-damaged Bible. Draws a heart in its center. Writes: Bonnie?
She leaves the barn and goes to the river’s edge. Lifts a large brick from the bank, hoists it above her head, and heaves it into the water. It crashes into a rock, splits in two.
THE DAYS BLEED INTO ONE ANOTHER. LENA AND MARIE’S photos, pinned to the wall, keep her company on the nights she does not go to see Neko. The storms hit and you think the world is over, Vale thinks, and then the storm passes and the world is not over. The riverbanks heal. The houses that were destroyed are torn down. The people that disappeared are still missing. The people they left behind get by.
Vale brings more bedding from Hazel’s attic. Obsessively scans news headlines on her phone. Drives the back roads and backstreets daily in Deb’s truck.
How long does one stay in a place looking for a body that will not appear? No Word for Time: Time is relative and elusive in nature.
She asks again at the drop-in center. At the homeless shelter. At the police station, where the woman behind the desk turns, busying herself, when Vale walks in. When Vale asks if she’s seen anything, the woman glances up quickly. Shakes her head. “No.”
VALE GOES TO THE TOWN OFFICE AND ASKS TO SEE THE marriage license of Henry and Marie Wood. The town clerk brings her into the vault, pulls out a thin sheet of paper, and hands it to Vale. Vale sits down at a small table and reads it. Married: 1901, the year the photograph was taken. Marie’s DOB: 1885. Place of birth: Mallets Bay, three hours north, along Lake Champlain. Her father’s name: Pierre. Her mother’s name: Louise. In faint pencil, along the edge of the page, barely legible: INDIAN.
“Holy,” Vale whispers, there by herself in the back room vault. A cool sensation along her spine.
AT THE CAMPER VALE PUTS ON HER COAT AND LENA’S hat and tucks a bottle of wine into her jacket pocket.
“Indian,” Vale says to Marie’s photograph, and Lena’s, grinning, on her way out the door.
She walks across the field and toward the woods.
She wants to find Lena’s cabin, that one-room shack at the top of the hill, overlooking the swamp, no doubt falling in by now. Vale hasn’t seen it for years, and even back then it wasn’t much—moss-covered, broken windows, the door swinging open in the wind. She hadn’t gone inside—Danny had been with her, had turned at the sight of it, said: “Hell no.”
Vale turns north and uphill along an old logging road. It might have been passable by truck or car forty years ago in good weather, but now it’s grown up in blackberries and hemlock saplings, is crisscrossed with fallen pines.
Maybe this is where I’ll go for the next great storm, Vale thinks, heading uphill, swiping the thick and low-hanging branches out of her face.
And then there it is. A roof at the top of the hill, nestled between the tall trunks of maples and birches and pines, overlooking the swamp.
I love the rain. I fucking love the rain! Bonnie calling out, standing in the middle of the river, rain dripping down her hair and shirt and legs. Vale, baby, come get wet with me!
Always courting the water’s edge.
Bonnie used to call Lena’s cabin “Stephen’s spot,” also refusing to go near it.
It looks like a body or a creature, there tucked into the hillside, rising out of the afternoon sunlight. One room, three windows, and one door. Asphalt roof shingles, green with moss. A few of the windowpanes cracked or missing.
Vale walks closer, thinks of that photo tacked to her wall—Lena standing here in her fedora, Otie on her shoulder.
The wooden door, green paint flaking, has blown open in the wind. She walks toward it and looks in. The floor is covered in leaves, pine needles, the abandoned homes of mice, squirrels, skunks, porcupines—who knows what other creatures.
Vale steps inside and takes a deep breath. The room smells like decay—a den, a lair, a part of the woods. But the light in here is lovely—slant light through the spider-web- and dust-covered windows. There are things on the windowsills. Vale steps closer to look. A glass jar full of feathers—turkey and owl. A parade of animal bones Vale can’t name. A collection of river stones—round and smooth, shades of cream, slate and iron, covered in cobwebs and dust. Vale picks up a round stone, polishes it with her sleeve, holds it in the palm of her hand. Takes a deep breath.
Lena’s things. All this time. Her grandmother—Bonnie’s mother—has been up here on the mountain, within these walls.
Vale looks to her left. There are some photos, cut out of magazines, tacked to the pine wall to the right of the window. Curled, mildewed, but the images still legible: a mountain lion in a stricken clearing, a Native American woman seated on a stump outside of a wigwam, a hawk on her knees. Vale touches the woman’s face with her fingers. Whispers, “Hello.”
There’s a single bed in the corner—the mattress full of mouse nests and holes. There’s a small, hand-built table with two chairs. A potbellied stove. A counter made of rough-cut pine. Above the counter are two china teacups hanging from two bent nails. Vale slips one off its nail and holds it in the palm of her hand—a dust-red rose in its center. Vale cleans it with the hem of her dress, sits down at the table, pulls the bottle of wine out of her pocket, and fills the teacup to the brim.
She holds the cup out in front of her.
“Lena,” Vale says out loud, her hands shaking slightly, toasting the other cup still hanging on the wall.
Her voice sounds strange within the empty walls. “Who are you?” Vale says. There’s a crow call from outside. The racket of Deb’s rooster down the hill. “I’d love to goddamn know.”
Vale sips her wine, looks around at Lena’s things. The cabin still. Eerily quiet. Dust lacing the sunstruck air.