On Saturday morning I woke up in the dark an hour before my alarm, but thinking I could use the time to get the barn closed up the way Daddy wanted, I got out of bed, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, then crept down to the kitchen. While Rufus smacked his tail against the wall hoping for an early breakfast, I turned on the television but kept the volume low and listened to the weather forecast while I ate some cereal. I didn’t need sound to understand the threat of Dominique. It was still a tropical storm, but it was moving again, and now the TV weather map showed an arrow pointed straight at Leadenwah Island.
Everybody knows hurricanes are scary, but people who live on coastal islands really understand. Just your basic tropical storm can mean winds as high as seventy-four miles an hour. When that happens things like lawn chairs and branches start flying around, going as fast as cars on a highway. If they hit you, they can knock you out or worse. When you sit out a tropical storm or a category-one hurricane, which Daddy and I had done a couple times, the rain comes sideways and the wind howls like something huge and dark and evil that is tearing away at your house, ripping off shingles, trying to lift the whole roof, driving water into places where you never had leaks before. If a person wasn’t scared when they heard that sound, they didn’t have a brain. If a hurricane was going to be more powerful than category one, everybody went inland to higher ground and safety.
I knew that Dominique might turn out to be nothing, but the fact that it was sitting right to our east meant it could also get to be a big something and then come ashore very quickly. That was why it made sense to take all the precautions and get the horses and ponies off the property and headed west.
I turned off the television, and Rufus and I went out into the yard and headed toward the main plantation drive. The air was humid and only slightly cooled from the day before. The leaves of the live oaks and the Spanish moss hung dead in the unnatural stillness. The birds were quiet, which meant a lot of them had already flown inland, because animals know about storms. I saw stars in the west, but in the east the coming dawn was nothing but the barest smudge of light behind heavy banks of dark clouds.
Rufus didn’t seem to care about the storm. He gave a couple of happy barks then chased three wild turkeys out of the soybean field. The turkeys did what they always do and disappeared like magic. One second I could see them, and the next second they were nearly invisible. I couldn’t help but wonder what they would do in the storm and how they would survive.
Thinking about the turkeys made me wonder about Yemassee and where she was, whether she had decent shelter, whether her puppies had been born yet. I started to imagine her curled up someplace with a litter of baby Boykin spaniels huddled around her while waters rose and a hurricane lashed and tore at the world. I kept seeing all those horrible images in my head playing over and over.
Bee and I had checked out almost every inch of Leadenwah, but there was one place left where we hadn’t looked. The odds were probably lousy, but if I could get most of my work done before sunrise, I might have time to sneak away, take one more look for Yemassee, and still get back in time to help Daddy put the horses and ponies on the trailer. I was already grounded, but when I thought about Yemassee and her puppies trapped in a terrible storm, there wasn’t any amount of extra punishment that was going to keep me from looking one last time.
I went into the barn and flicked on the lights, then went around the outside locking down the covers on the stall windows.
When I finished and walked back into the barn, Bee was in the tack room moving all the saddles and bridles to the highest pegs in case we had flooding. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I woke up thinking about Yemassee.”
“Me too.”
We worked hard and fast, mucked out the stalls, got everything we could off the floor, and brought in every loose item from outside, like hoses, tools, and wheelbarrows. When we finished, the sun was just barely rising, and even then because of the heavy clouds in the east it looked like twilight.
“You know,” I said, saying what had been on my mind the whole time, “I think we have time for a quick ride to the other side of the island. We could take one more look.”
“We’re grounded. Besides, I need to help Grandma Em.”
“We’ll be back before they even have their coffee. They’ll never even know we left,” I countered.
“Abbey—”
“If the storm gets bad, what happens to Yemassee? What if she’s had her puppies? What’s going to happen to Judge Gator if they all die? He’ll be crushed.”
Bee let out a frustrated sigh. “This is crazy, and you know it.”
I knew she wanted to go as badly as I did. She just needed another push. “It’s not crazy. The reason we have to go is that I have hunches about all this stuff. Okay? That’s what happens when you’re a detective, you get hunches.”
Bee shook her head. “What hunches?”
“Okay, Mr. LaBelle tried to sneak around the law once already. Donna’s been telling people he’s going to make a lot of money on something, so I’ve got a hunch that she’s talking about Hangman’s Bluff. We’ve seen all the dirt trucks, and then the mean guard threw us out of there, so that gives me another hunch. Also we know there are strangers at Hangman’s Bluff, and strangers stole Yemassee. And,” I said, holding up a finger, “all that other weird stuff with Willie Smalls and the two robberies is like . . . like salt and pepper on the meat.”
Bee rolled her eyes at the last part, but she said, “You really think Yemassee could be there?”
“I don’t know, but think about how you’re going to feel when that storm comes in. You’re going to be thinking about Yemassee and her puppies, and you’re going to be feeling really guilty that we didn’t try.”
We saddled our ponies and rode out the drive, and we were just trotting down the dirt road toward the paved county road when we spotted Mrs. Middleton out in her yard. She was still living in her old trailer while her new house on Felony Bay was being fixed up. She was leaning on her walker and looking up at the eastern sky with a scowl.
“Morning, Mrs. Middleton,” we both said.
She looked at us and screwed up her face. “Now what in blazes are y’all doin’ out here on your ponies?” she demanded. “Don’t y’all know there’s a storm comin’?” She looked back and forth between us, and her eyes narrowed. “Your daddy and your grandma know you’re out here ridin’ around?”
“We already packed up the barn,” Bee said. “And we have someplace we need to go. It won’t take us very long, and I just checked the weather forecast. They say it’s still stalled offshore.”
Mrs. Middleton held up her arm. “And these old bones say they wrong. They say it’s coming fast and getting worse.” Her brow wrinkled, and she looked back and forth between us. “And by the way, where do y’all need to go?”
I shook my head. “No place really.”
“Y’all still looking for that dog?”
I shot Bee a sideways glance to warn her not to say any more.
“I asked you where y’all going.”
Mrs. Middleton is a little tiny lady and she’s old, but when she got that tone, we didn’t have any choice. “Hangman’s Bluff.”
Mrs. Middleton picked up her walker and slapped it down for emphasis. “Y’all stay away from that place!”
She said it like she knew something. Bee and I shared a look. “Why?” Bee asked.
“There’s spirits over there, and I think they likely be riled up with all the bad things that’s been happening around here. And now with this storm coming, they be even more upset.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, but Mrs. Middleton didn’t look a bit like she was kidding.
“What spirits?” Bee asked.
“From the gallows, child,” Mrs. Middleton said. “They used to hang people there.” Then she turned her eyes on me. “You don’t think there are spirits, girl, you go there sometime—not today, but sometime—and just listen. You tell me what you hear.”
“You think people are doing bad things over at Hangman’s Bluff?” Bee asked.
Mrs. Middleton shook her head. “I wouldn’t know ’bout what’s happening there now. They got it all chained off so you can’t go in, but probably both of us got people who were hanged there.” She nodded. “But what I do know is you girls need to get home. Right now. Don’t make me call your daddy and grandma.”
On a small place like Leadenwah Island, every old woman acts like your own grandmother some of the time. “Yes, ma’am,” we both said.
Mrs. Middleton turned away and started to hobble back toward her house, but then she stopped and looked toward us again. “I know how bad you girls want to find the judge’s dog, but y’all stay off that Hangman’s Bluff land, hear? I’m not kidding about things not being right over there. Y’all know that some bad things have been happening around here, and the spirits know that, too. They’re stirred up, and they’re angry. I can feel it.”