The lieutenant ran out to the parking lot. People began to hurry past the open door.
Troy Dow gave me a toothy grin. “I want to see this.”
“I don’t think so.”
“The lieutenant said I was free to go. Do you want to come with me or not?”
I couldn’t stop him, and it sounded like Stacey might need my help. We followed the other curiosity seekers out into the sunshine. The sudden brightness blinded me. The breeze blew the froggy smell of the lake across the asphalt.
“Who is this person? What is she doing here?” I heard a man yell.
“Reverend, please!” another man replied.
If I squinted, I could make out a scrum gathered around the Salvation Army wagon. I picked out Missy’s mother first, the heavyset woman in the pleated green skirt. The distinctive gold pompadour of the Reverend Mott caught the afternoon light. I couldn’t see Stacey at all over the heads of the others, but I could hear her voice.
“No, I am not going to apologize.”
“Would everybody please calm down!” DeFord said. “Wes, can you help me out here?”
“Go back inside, everyone,” Wes Pinkham said. “Let’s get back to work.”
I circled the wagon to get a clear view. Except for Missy’s mom, who seemed borderline catatonic, everyone looked livid.
“It was just a simple question,” Stacey told the lieutenant.
“What is this woman’s position here?” Mott asked. He had a rich, resonant voice, as if his throat were coated with honey. “Are you her supervisor, Lieutenant?”
DeFord stood between Stacey and Mott, like a referee in a ring with two boxers. The reverend had removed his sharkskin jacket at some point since I’d last seen him. His handsome, haughty face was the color of an unripe tangerine.
“The families are already in anguish without being insulted, too,” he said.
“I’m sure Ms. Stevens didn’t mean to offend anyone,” DeFord said.
“Then she needs to apologize.” Mott seemed to expand in size as he drew in his breath. “And then she needs to leave.”
Pinkham raised his arm to block my way. “Go back inside, Bowditch.”
As the person who had brought Stacey to Greenville, I felt responsible for her, but I needed to know what was happening before I intervened. Not that she ever seemed to need rescuing.
“Stacey’s with me,” I said.
Pinkham’s high forehead shone with perspiration. “Then you need to get her out of here.”
“I am not going to apologize, because there’s nothing wrong with what I asked,” Stacey told DeFord.
The lieutenant hissed something at her.
Stacey turned to the families, her arms open, her tone pleading. She had a red mark on her cheek, probably from where the reverend had slapped her. “There’s nothing wrong with your daughters. They’re not sinners. They’re not going to hell.”
Suddenly, I knew the question she’d asked the parents—and why the reverend was so incensed.
Beside me, Troy Dow muttered, “This is awesome.”
I wanted to slug him, but DeFord caught my eye.
“Stacey?” I said. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She hadn’t noticed me until that second, but I was the only person present to whom she could turn for support. Her only ally. Her mouth tightened, and she began opening and closing her hands, working the blood into her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” she told the Boggses and the Montgomerys. “I hope you find your daughters. I will be praying for you.”
She put her head down and started off across the lot.
“That isn’t good enough!” Samantha Boggs’s father called.
I hurried to catch up with her. I hadn’t realized that one of the television camera crews had been photographing the confrontation from a discreet distance. A man dressed in a polo shirt and khakis was trying to press a microphone on Stacey, but she practically elbowed him aside.
“Get away from me!”
I followed her through the open gate. She stopped abruptly before she reached my truck, as if she’d reached the end of a leash.
“I don’t believe this shit,” she said.
“What did you say to them, Stacey?”
“I asked them if anyone had reason to hurt their daughters,” she said. “They said no. So I asked if there was somebody who might have hated them for being gay.”
“Did Mott actually slap you?”
She touched her rosy cheek. “Can you believe it? He acted like I was some mouthy kid. I would have slapped him back if I hadn’t been so shocked.”
I glanced back at the lunch wagon and saw Mott and the families glaring in our direction. I knew DeFord expected me to return Stacey to her vehicle back in Monson. It would be better for everyone, herself included, if she didn’t stick around the search area tonight. “I think we should get moving.”
She yanked the pickup door open and slammed it shut behind her.
I circled around to the driver’s side and got in.
“Missy’s mom knows, Mike. She knows that her daughter is gay. I could see it in her eyes when I asked about them. The woman is horrified. She thinks Missy is going to hell.” She began fighting with the seat belt. “Goddamn it!”
I reached over and helped ease the strap across her torso. It snapped into place.
“It’s so sad and so infuriating,” she said. “Samantha and Missy had to hide who they were from their own parents, and now they’re probably dead and will never get to tell them.”
“I know.”
I found myself thinking about Stacey’s friend Kendra. She had ink black hair, tattoo rose branches circling her biceps, and a ring in her nostril. To my knowledge, she was the only woman with whom Stacey had ever had a romantic relationship.
“How did you know Samantha and Missy were gay?” I said at last.
“I just knew.”
“So you have some sort of gaydar?”
Seconds after the words had come out of my mouth, I regretted them.
“You can mock me if you want. I get a vibe from certain people. I can’t explain it, but it’s real.”
“I’m not mocking you. It was the wrong word. I apologize. I’m just having trouble understanding how you saw that in one photograph. Especially when no one else picked up on it.”
“Yeah, because male game wardens are so sensitive to the presence of lesbians in their midst.”
“Now who’s the one doing the mocking?”
She fell silent. We were climbing the road out of Greenville, passing the Indian Hill Trading Post. Then the forest closed in around the highway and became a blur again.
Black lines squiggled across the gray asphalt before us. Some of the tire marks were the work of hot-rodders who used their vehicles as paintbrushes. Others had been left by inattentive drivers who had lost control of their cars or had veered into ditches to avoid animals. An automated yellow sign sensed our approach and began to flash its amber lights. ATTENTION: HIGH RATE OF MOOSE CRASHES NEXT 6 MILES.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” Stacey said after a long silence. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at the whole fucked-up situation.” She gazed off through the dirty windshield at nothing in particular. “It’s just that I see so much of myself in them, you know?”
I wasn’t sure if this was a confession. “You mean when you were with Kendra?”
“Yeah. It took me a long time to find myself. I’m still not sure I have.”
“Join the club.”
“It wasn’t just the photo,” she said. “It was their trail names, too. A lot of the names people pick are based on private jokes. But the names they chose were just weird. Baby Ruth and Naomi Walks. Both biblical, both humorous. And then I remembered that some people believe Ruth and Naomi were actually lovers.”
“I thought Naomi was Ruth’s mother-in-law.” My knowledge of the Old Testament was spotty at best.
“Yeah, but some of the verses can be read in a way that suggests their love for each other went beyond that. I have no idea if it’s really true. I just remember some of my friends saying that there were passages in the Bible that condoned being a lesbian. My reaction was, why should it even matter?”
“The Bible matters to billions of people.”
She sighed and slid down in the seat. “My mouth has always gotten me in trouble.”
“You’re not afraid of speaking your mind.”
“Maybe I should be.”
Because of the incident with the reverend, I realized we’d never gotten lunch. I didn’t like the thought of saying good-bye again, either. “Do you want to grab something to eat?”
“Where?”
“There’s that good Cajun place.”
“You didn’t see the sign out front as we were driving by this morning? It said ‘Closed, Out of Food.’”
“I guess all the thru-hikers cleaned them out.”
“Fuck it, Mike. I don’t want to go home, especially now.”
“DeFord will castrate me if I let you stick around. You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, I don’t.” She reached over and rested her hand on my knee. “You can stop worrying about my orientation, by the way. That’s one thing I’ve figured out, at least.”
“What do you mean?” I tried to sound convincingly confused.
“I’ve seen the look on your face since we started talking about Samantha and Missy being gay.”
“Who’s worrying?”
“Men always worry. They just never admit it.”
Busted, I thought.