I walked along slowly through the deepening twilight. Can one feel deeply perplexed and happy at the same time? I was trying to remember everything that had happened, and was trying, without the least success, to make sense of what I remembered. Emma had entered my life with such force; it didn't seem possible to me that so much had happened in the space of only a few minutes. I felt like I needed more time, that everything should have taken more time. I was sure I had a hundred questions to ask Emma, though perhaps, at that moment, I couldn't have formulated even one. I wanted to be with Emma. I didn't want to go home.
I gave a wide berth to the base of the ridge where the deer had been shot, where I last saw the poacher. I don't suppose I really thought he would still be around. There was a cloudiness in my mind, a mist that I thought Emma might be able to clear away; but I didn't want to go back to where that afternoon's events had begun. Still, I didn't want to go home either. It was starting to get dark, and very cold, but I continued to feel oddly warm. I walked slowly, looking around, listening. I didn't know what I was looking or listening for. Finally, I started to feel the cold, feel it sharply, and my pace quickened.
Thinking of home troubled me. My father always asked me about my day. I would be late for supper, I thought, and I was sure he would ask me about that. I didn't know what I would say.
I crested the hill that led to the open field at the edge of the little string of houses where we lived. We lived out in the country, but there were a few other houses around us. I could see the lights on in the MacCauleys' kitchen. No one was home at the Watsons' next door. Mr. and Mrs. Watson both worked at the grocery store in town, and I knew that they wouldn't be home for an hour or two yet. Seeing the MacCauleys' house lit up, and the Watsons' dark, was somehow a comfort to me; it was normal.
I was cutting across the wide field that climbed up to the back of our house. The lights were on inside. Mom was home. Just as I stepped over the narrow ditch that marked the back of our yard, I saw Dad's patrol car pull into our drive. I wasn't as late as I thought. I started climbing the slight incline, past my mother's garden, as my father got out of his car. I saw him wave to me. He was standing at the bottom of the drive, a good ways above me still. It was dark, but even so I could see the easy way he was standing, and it made me feel good, made me feel safe. How, in the dark, without him calling to me, could I tell that he was glad to see me, that I wasn't late, that everything was fine?
My father was an immensely practical man. He could fix cars, make end tables, cook breakfast. I suppose, really, when I was eleven it hadn't yet occurred to me that there might be things he didn't know, or things he couldn't do. He was strong and practical and friendly. It seemed that he could talk anybody into a peaceful, quiet mood, no matter how angry the person might have been to start with. He was a policeman, a sheriff's deputy in a large rural county. He was Deputy Singer, and I was Deputy Singer's son. Everyone, so far as I knew, liked him and respected him. I certainly did.
To me, it seemed that the things my father did were magic. How could he possibly know what was wrong with someone's car? I would stand beside my father, peering in at a dark, sooty, gray and black jumble of metal and tubing, mute with wonder. “Hmm,” he would say. “What do you think, buddy?”
I never had a clue. I felt at once ashamed of my inability to grasp so many things about the world, and proud and somewhat in awe of my father's complete knowledge. He was patient in teaching me, about car engines, about all sorts of things; and I was determined to learn.
Among other things, my father was a hunter, a responsible and careful hunter. Of all forms of carelessness, he was least tolerant toward careless hunters: hunters who fired their guns without being absolutely sure of their targets, hunters who did not know at all times where their hunting partners were. With my twelfth birthday approaching, we had been talking a lot about hunting and safety in the woods.
So, I was eleven going on twelve, and tried to be careful in all things. My father allowed me to roam the woods outside of hunting season, but still I knew he would be concerned to hear about the poacher. I didn't think I could tell him how near I was when the deer was shot. In a strange way, I felt as if I was implicated in the poacher's wrongdoing. And then, how could I possibly tell him about Emma?
When I reached the back door that led into the kitchen, I could see that my father was tired. He draped his arm around my shoulder.
“How you doin', buddy?” he asked.
I leaned in against his solid warmth. “I'm okay,” I said.
He just nodded. I went to change and wash for dinner. When I came back into the big kitchen where we usually ate our meals, my father was telling my mother about one of the deputies: he was leaving to take a job up in Goochland County. My father was concerned because the Sheriff's department was already understaffed, and now they were losing another man. That would mean longer hours and more work for my father, and he didn't like it much.
My parents talked awhile, and I ate in silence, thinking about Emma, wondering where she was. I imagined her walking the woods, in the darkness, or maybe hunkering down somewhere to sleep. Where would she sleep? I thought of her like she was a bear, or some other creature of the wild. She certainly wasn't like any person I had ever met. I knew what I had seen Emma do, but I struggled to understand it. I set about imagining a world where Emma could walk the woods, healing injured animals with her touch. I wanted to be with her. I wanted to understand.
“How was your day at school?” my father asked. “I haven't said two words to you tonight, have I buddy?” “It was fine!” I said, and it must have sounded like a protest or a claim of innocence because my father laughed.
“It's okay, sport,” he said. “I didn't mean to startle you there.”
“I was thinking,” I said.
“What were you thinking about, Tommy?” my mother asked.
I shrugged. “I saw a deer today, in the woods,” I said quietly. “I was, I don't know, I was wondering where it is now, what it's doing.”
“Right now it is probably snuggled down at the base of some bush,” my father said, “getting ready to go to sleep.” My father sighed. “Lord, that sounds like a good idea.”
“Why don't you go change out of your uniform?” my mother said to him. “Tommy and I will clean up.”
“Do you mind, buddy?” he asked.
“No sir,” I said.
As he got up from the table he reached over and gave me light sock on the arm.
“You're a good man,” he said, a weary smile on his face. It was something he would say to me every now and then, and one thing about my father, I always knew that he meant it.
I helped my mother with the dishes and then went to my room to do a set of math exercises that were due in school the next day. I was already in bed when my father came into my room to say goodnight. He sat on the edge of my bed, and his weight, like it always did, tilted the mattress and rolled me toward him.
“You're too big for this bed, mister,” I said, which is what I always said.
He smiled, and pulled the covers up around me a bit more, which I didn't particularly need. I pushed them back the way they were, and my father chuckled.
“Want to go down to Parker's with me on Friday?” he asked. “I need to pick up some things.”
“Sure,” I said. I loved going to Parker's.
“Great,” he said. He leaned forward and gave me a light kiss on the forehead. Then he yanked the covers up over my head, and left the room with a quiet laugh as I howled in mock protest.
The next day after school I walked downtown instead of walking straight home. I had been thinking all day about Emma, about what I had seen, trying to think it through. I had some good friends at school, and one teacher, Mrs. Carlson, that I really liked, but I didn't feel like I could tell them about what had happened. It seemed special to me somehow, something that couldn't be talked about for fear of losing it or changing it.
Mrs. Carlson was my history teacher, a tiny, wiry woman who made everyone laugh. She was one of the smartest people I knew, but with a somewhat dubious logic I thought: what would a history teacher know about this sort of thing? What would anyone know?
And then I thought about Dr. Banks, the veterinarian. His office was downtown, just a few blocks from school. We had an old dog named Toby then, a little dachshund we had more or less adopted from my grandmother. Toby had never really been sick, but we took him to Dr. Banks for his shots and check-ups. Dr. Banks was somewhere in his sixties, I suppose, and that made him seem very old to me. I thought if anyone in town could help me right then, maybe Dr. Banks could.
When I reached his office I wasn't sure what to do. I had never before just dropped by there to visit. I didn't know Dr. Banks all that well. I stood on the sidewalk and thought for a few moments, and my resolve weakened. But when I walked past the side of his office, there was Dr. Banks, standing on the cement walkway that led back to the animal runs, hosing off a pair of large wading boots.
“Thomas Singer,” he said with a crisp nod.
I was surprised he could place me so quickly.
“Hi, Dr. Banks,” I said, and because it seemed the natural thing to do, I walked over to talk to him.
He was wearing a heavy pair of weather-beaten overalls. The boots he was washing had been covered with mud and muck.
“Being a country vet,” Dr. Banks pronounced, “is messy work.”
“Do you like being a vet?” I asked.
“Yes I do,” he said. He reached over and shut the spigot off, and put down the hose. “You thinking of becoming a vet?”
I had never thought of becoming a vet.
“Maybe,” I said, because it seemed the polite thing to say.
“It's hard work,” Dr. Banks said. “It doesn't pay as well as some people seem to think, and the hours are long. But it has its rewards.”
This seemed a set piece on his behalf. I nodded, and then spoke quickly, before I had a chance to think.
“Dr. Banks, do you think someone could heal an injured animal just by touching it?”
Dr. Banks was a good man; he considered my question seriously a moment.
“The laying on of hands,” he said tentatively.
“Sir?”
“Part of the practice of medicine, the laying on of hands—touch, simple touch. You can calm an animal, a domestic animal that is used to being handled, by holding it, stroking it.”
I frowned. “I mean, take a deer, an injured deer. Could someone ...” and I simply stopped. On one level the question was consuming me, and yet I couldn't speak the words in a plain and direct way. On another level I already knew the answer; I had seen the answer myself.
Dr. Banks, who had a tendency to do or say slightly odd things now and then, seemed to hum or sing a snatch of a tune under his breath. I got only a muffled “that's for me” at the end.
“Sir?” I was confused. I didn't know if he was making fun of me.
“Have you ever been to one of those old tent revival meetings?” he asked me. “You know, I think they still have them now and then out at Meadow Falls. And they'll have some old time healings there, in the spirit of the Lord.”
“Do you believe in that?” I asked, quite earnestly.
“These are matters you should discuss with your parents,” Dr. Banks said, picking up his boots and turning to the side door of his office. “And I have patients to see.”
“Okay, but Dr. Banks, just tell me this ...” and again I was stumped. I just stood there, frustrated, feeling that I was close to something I needed to know. My fists were clenched at my sides.
Dr. Banks stood in front of me, impatient, forbidding. With a boot in each hand he swung them together lightly, so they just tapped, once, twice. Then he set the boots back down.
“I don't know how the body heals, Thomas,” he said quietly. “I wish I did. There are things I can do for my patients, ways I can help them, but I've been around long enough to know that most of the animals that get better here pretty much heal themselves. And then some don't, you know; they don't heal themselves, they don't get better. They just...” he waved his hand vaguely in the air. He didn't say “die.”
“And I've been to a couple of those tent meetings. Just to see, to watch. But I don't believe—”
I think I frowned. He shook his head, and continued, rapidly: “But that's not the point, what I believe. I think some of the people really are helped, really are helped to heal because they do believe. But I don't know how to make an animal believe, Thomas. It's a question I've rolled around in my head for some years. I try to be as gentle as I can with them, and confident, somehow, so they might sense that they are in good hands, but I don't know how to make them believe. So I don't know how anyone could help your deer. Not with only his bare hands.”
I nodded, slowly, solemnly.
“Does that answer your question, young man?” Dr. Banks asked me, a little sharply; but I sensed a rough kindness in his voice.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, and walked slowly away, and heard the side door of his office bang shut.
I walked down Main, looking at the sky. It wouldn't be light much longer. My pace quickened. I had about three or four miles to walk. It seemed I had more energy now, a lot more energy. I started to run, down where Main Street turned into Route 11 heading out of town. I plunged into the meadow land that bordered the town and led out toward the woods where I had met Emma what felt like years before. I was running as fast as I could, feeling as light and quick as a fast-moving stream.
I was laughing, my eyes tearing from the cold and from the run. I circled, at a slow, dizzy trot, the base of the bramble-covered hill, deep in the woods, where Emma and I had talked.
“Emma!” I shouted. Then I bent over, catching my breath. I didn't have to shout, I thought. She knows I'm here. I was certain she would show up any moment. I was grinning. I was grateful to Dr. Banks. I felt like now I had some very specific questions that I could ask Emma.
Of course, I was wrong. For all his generosity, Dr. Banks had not left me much wiser than I had been before. But I felt that I had broken through the husk of this question that had consumed me the last twenty-four hours. I felt elated. I looked around me. The light was starting to fade; the sky above me was a lovely deep cobalt blue, edging slightly deeper and darker, second by second. A light, cool breeze wrapped through the trees. An involuntary shiver passed through me.
“Emma,” I said quietly, imploringly.
I hugged my arms around myself. I listened, strained to listen, to feel . . . something. My heart was pounding. I was too keyed up. There was nothing that I could feel. I waited another ten minutes or so, but Emma never appeared.