Time sometimes folded together like the front end of a vehicle driven head-on into an oak tree. How long since the young man last visited? Janie tried to hammer the time passed flat while searching his peculiar face for a clue.
“Buckshot went missing,” she said.
“Excuse me Miss Treeborne?”
“Don’t you Miss Treeborne me.” She hushed as if she’d say no more. Of course Janie Treeborne could no more be silent than a flower could become a rifle. “That was the last time Lee visited poor-old Ricky in jail though. Some of the used-to-bes set up a trap down below the ballfield and it did not a lick of good. Peach pickers were always claiming dog sightings. One Sunday afternoon Watson ran into Buckshot in a field up yonder above the old cannery. Not only did the devil escape, but he took four of them pretty little-old birds Watson had blasted out the air! Ain’t your daddy told you any of this?”
“No ma’am.”
“Well,” Janie said. If she didn’t know better she’d wonder if the young man sitting before her was a Treeborne at all. “My daddy, he figured Buckshot was traipsing wherever him and Lee used to hunt. So they went to walking The Seven. Searched all over it, I mean. When’s last time you been out yonder?”
“I never have Miss Treeborne.”
“Lie,” she said. “Why would you lie to your old grandmomma thisaway?”
The young man frowned. He started to say something. Instead he shifted in the wicker chair and cleared his throat. “Can you show me where they saw him?”
“Saw who?”
“The dog.”
“I don’t like to be out after dark,” she said.
“No. On one of those.”
Took Janie half an hour to find the map she wanted folded among newspapers that seemed to the young man of no consequence. He cleared the kitchen table of dirty dishes and laundry, trying not to balk at the old woman’s considerable white bloomers lying among a pile of nap-worn dresses and gowns. They pinned down the map with a glass ashtray and pieces of sandstone. Janie put a kettle on the stove then scooped coffee grounds into a press. Took her another moment to situate herself, then her finger raced across the paper. She stopped on The Seven and traced its borders two-three times. She wrote with a pen The Seven. She marked places Buckshot was seen with a small cross. Then, with a little prompting, she began writing the names of other places not marked on the map: Birdsong houseplace, The Washout, Livingstown, Prince’s Peach Cannery, Dismal Creek.
“Daddy did the best he could,” she said, putting down the pen. “But I was mad, buddy. Sometimes still am. Piece of paper just didn’t mean squat to him, I reckon. And look here, he was right. Piece of paper don’t mean squat, does it?”
She leaned back and gazed at the map as if she could take the entire valley into her mouth, like some great-beaked bird, and carry it away from where it set.
“My buddy Thomas Dale took me up in his airplane once,” she said. “Thomas Dale had him one of them little-old Mexican dogs. Awful things, shaking and yapping all the time. That’s ugly in me, but oh well. Anyhow, he brung it with us. Took off from a pasture out yonder at the lake. That dog was just carrying on, I mean. When we got up there it felt like we hit a pocket of nothing. The dog hushed. My innards come plumb up my throat. You could see clear down to Bankhead. Thomas Dale, he tipped the wing and I thought I was fixing to spill out! It was, well, it was just beautiful, you know. That was my fifty-sixth birthday. Lord.”
“Miss Treeborne, can you point out the dam for me?”
“Dam?”
The kettle whistled. Janie poured boiling water onto the grounds then replaced the lid on the press. The young man took two green cups from a cabinet next to the fridge. Janie thought she used to keep a special cup for him. This cup had on it the Conquistadors’ logo—a glowering bearded man wearing gold armor and wielding a spear—and the young man, when he was still a boy, still her grandson, he would drink cold chocolate milk from this cup while flicking his earlobe and turning sleepy-eyed in her arms. He’d nap and she’d whisper, The Good Lord’s got a plan for you son. The untroubled innocence of youth enough to cause Janie Treeborne to utter such foolish words against her better self.
“I ain’t got cream,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
“Used to you liked cream in yours.”
The young man smiled. “That’s right,” he said. “I did.”
“They called it a security problem.”
“Called what one?”
“You know they threw MawMaw May a retirement party down at The Fencepost, don’t you? Fixed her a yellow cake with chocolate icing. She ate the thing with her hands, like a baby. I didn’t think too much of that at the time. ‘Retire, foot,’ she said—just laughed and laughed and laughed while Daddy and them posed next to her for a picture they run in the paper.
“She held on to them keys though. Folks would find letters stuck up in the crooks of trees, scattered down underneath the bridge, set out on rocks by the dam, placed in De Soto’s very outstretched hand. Most folks knew who done it and just give the letters back to the mail carrier when he came around on his route. I reckon they realized what was going on with her. How could I? But the postal service found out and all hell like to broke loose. Started talking felonies and foolishness like that. They called it a security problem. Foot.”