17

Lost girl

My eyelids flung themselves open like a blind snapping up, afraid I might have forgotten even now what I’d been thinking before I went to sleep. So I checked everything over: Mr. Butternut, Silver Pear, silver hair, Dwayne’s shotgun, police, Donny swaggering around—check. Check. Check. Check. Yes, it was all there. (Of course, if there was something I didn’t remember, how would I know?)

I would go into La Porte as soon as the breakfast chores were done, which would have been a lot sooner had Miss Bertha not sent back her three-minute egg, not once but twice, complaining it was overcooked. My mother was holding a heavy frying pan and hefting it, and I hoped she was going to brain Miss Bertha. But she set it down, removed her apron (which meant she was going into the dining room!), picked a fresh egg out of the bowl, and marched out of the kitchen, me dancing behind her.

She smiled in that dangerous way she has of smiling, greeted Mrs. Fulbright kindly, then said, “Miss Bertha, this should be soft enough for you.” Whereupon, she broke the egg onto Miss Bertha’s plate, then turned and marched back into the kitchen, me pausing just long enough to catch Miss Bertha’s reaction, then again dancing out to hear Walter’s braying laughter back there in the shadows.

On that high note, my mother told me not to even bother with the damned old fool any more that morning and I almost sailed right out of the kitchen until I remembered my own breakfast. It was French toast and sausage and I ate it at the table with Walter, who was enjoying Miss Bertha’s two rejected three-minute eggs. Walter said, “Tastes twice’t as good, being the damned old fool’s.” Walter loves the way my mother puts things.

Delbert taxied me into La Porte and dropped me at the Rainbow Café. I had to find out about the police visit to Mr. Butternut and the woods. Since I wasn’t supposed to have been there, I couldn’t ask directly. The Sheriff generally stopped in the Rainbow midmornings to have coffee, so I would find out one way or another.

Maud was just taking her morning coffee break when I walked into the Rainbow and past Shirl, seated as always on her tall stool in front of the cash register. The morning coffee drinkers and early lunchers were there, including Ulub and Ubub (who must have walked to town, for their trucks were still in the garage). They gave me a cheery hello (though it came out “uh-o”). It was going on eleven A.M. Maud was just the person who would know about the White’s Bridge incident, knowing the Sheriff as well as she did. Also, she was one of the few people in La Porte who had a lot of sense.

“Want some chili? It’s just made.”

My French toast breakfast was still crowding my stomach, so I said no thanks. But I needed something to do with myself in case the Sheriff walked in, so I said yes to the offer of a Coke. Maud stubbed out her cigarette and went to get it. It was nice being waited on for a change.

After she’d set the Coke before me, with a straw, she settled back into the booth and said, “There was something going on over near White’s Bridge last night. In the woods there.”

“Did someone else get murdered?” I asked that to let her know how far from a lost child I was thinking.

“No. Some man out there—named Butterfinger, I think—called up Sam and said this young girl had disappeared. Or got lost, he feared.”

“No kidding? How did he know? I mean was she a relation of his or what?”

Maud shrugged. “I don’t know. That was all Sam told me.”

I wondered what Mr. Butternut had said to the police, whether he had played down his own role in this chapter of my life for fear he would be suspected himself of something awful. “Well, but did they find her?”

Again, Maud shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to wait—Good! Here he is now.”

She always sounded kind of joyful when the Sheriff appeared, no matter how she talked to him afterward. I kept my eyes down and sipped my Coke. My heart thudded, bumping around in my chest as if it only wanted a way out of its trouble. I still did not look up when I felt him standing by the booth.

“Emma.”

He was just saying my name by way of hello. My eyes felt fastened to my glass, as if I couldn’t raise them no matter what. I made a “hello” sound. Thank heaven Charlene was coming with his coffee and doughnut so that Maud didn’t have to leave the booth. I did look up then to where Charlene simpered and managed to brush her chest against his arm when she set the cup down. He thanked her. She swayed off.

The Sheriff was looking straight across the table at me, smiling, but was the smile exactly what it used to be? I blinked. He raised his coffee cup.

Maud said, “Well?” in that tone that suggested he was holding out on her, being deliberately secretive, which he wasn’t. She used that tone with the Sheriff a lot, and it was completely opposite of her earlier joy. I wondered a lot about Maud and the Sheriff.

“We didn’t find her,” he said, munching his doughnut. He liked plain doughnuts, not the iced ones or sugar ones. I didn’t much see the point of a plain doughnut.

“What could have happened to her off White’s Bridge Road?”

“Don’t know.” He sighed and took another bite out of his doughnut.

“You don’t seem awfully worried, Sam!”

“If I worried about everything that came over my desk, I wouldn’t have time to go out and search for people.”

Maud was offended. “But you’re the law!” There was that accusing tone again. You could almost see the words standing with their hands on their hips.

I was even more offended. After all, this poor girl could’ve been me. I almost said so, but thought better of it.

Maud asked, “How old was this girl? Did he say?”

“ ’Bout Emma’s age. He said around eleven, twelve, at most.”

At that, my eyes snapped up from my empty glass. I don’t look anywhere near eleven. My age has even been mistaken for fourteen by guests in the dining room.

The Sheriff regarded me with a bland expression as he polished off his second plain doughnut and picked up his coffee cup. “He said she could’ve been ten, even.”

Ten! I had to wipe the indignation from my face and replace it with my dumb look, the one I’d copied from Walter: mouth slightly open, eyes partly closed. Walter would stand near the dishwasher shadows like this, thinking (or not thinking, seeing it was Walter).

“But what about the child’s folks? Hasn’t anyone reported her missing?” Maud asked.

The Sheriff shook his head. “Nope, not so far. This Mr. Buttercup who called—”

“Buttern—” I nearly corrected him.

He raised his eyebrows. “Yes, Emma?”

“It’s just a funny name, that’s all.”

“Mr. Buttercup said he’d seen her near Mirror Pond, and that he’d talked to her and she wasn’t from around where he lived.”

“Then what on earth was she doing there?”

“I don’t know, Maud. He said she seemed interested a lot in the murder of Fern Queen.”

“Sam, this sounds very strange. It doesn’t sound quite right.”

“No, but it doesn’t sound quite wrong either. Can I bum a cigarette?”

As she slid the pack toward him, I wondered what he meant.

“Are you sure this man’s telling the truth?”

“No.”

“Then he might have ... done something to her himself and he’s throwing you off the scent this way. I mean by calling the police himself.”

“Possibly. But he sounded really worried.”

I was glad somebody was.

“He seemed to blame himself for allowing her to go into the woods in the first place.”

“Well, he damned well should!”

“He said she begged and begged just to see this derelict house.”

I did not!

“But why would she want to see it?”

The Sheriff laughed. “Maud, you keep asking me why. I don’t know. To me she sounded like one very curious kid.” He pinched the match out he’d used to light his cigarette. “This Buttercup did tell me she said she’d been at the Silver Pear. He said it just didn’t occur to him until they got separated in the woods that she must have been there with someone, her family or some adult. Little kids don’t ordinarily eat out by themselves in restaurants. Like Emma, here.”

“I’m not a little kid, anyway.”

The Sheriff smiled. “Did I say you were? When I asked them, Ron and Gaby, they said, yes, a girl had been there but they didn’t know her name.”

I’d forgotten I’d told Mr. Butternut I’d come from the Silver Pear. It was the truth, too, which was even more annoying.

“They should pay more attention to the customers instead of standing around.”

“You’ve been there?” He sounded mildly surprised.

“Me? No.” But then I thought, I might slip and say something that would show I’d been there, so I said, “I mean, not in a long time. Once I drove out to Lake Noir with Mrs. Davidow, and on the spur of the moment, she decided she’d like to have lunch there, and so I got to go too. The food is so—” What was Maud’s word for it?

“Pretentious,” she said.

“Pretentious, yes. Anyway, if this Mr. Butternu ... Buttercup ... murdered her and buried her, well, you’d have to get a lot more policeman out there searching than just four. I saw in an English movie where Scotland Yard got a whole long line of policemen—there must have been fifty or even a hundred—going over this field, and they all had to move forward at the same time. You’ll have to get the dogs out too. They can sniff out the grave.” I rather liked this scene as I was painting it, all of this trouble taken just to look for me.

“My God, Emma! Don’t let your imagination run away with you!” said Maud.

“Always has before,” said the Sheriff.

I didn’t like the way he regarded me over the rim of his coffee cup. Just those blue eyes. And I didn’t like some of the things he said; it was as if there was something underneath it, underneath the words he was saying. There was a phrase for this kind of thing, but I couldn’t remember what.

“We did find some fresh footprints near that derelict house. There’s been poaching going on in those woods.”

Dwayne! Would the Sheriff find Dwayne if he really looked into this poaching? I don’t think I was worried about Dwayne all that much, just how well he could describe me if the Sheriff talked to him. I must have groaned a little, for Maud asked me if something was wrong. I just shook my head.

“What are you going to do now?” Maud asked.

“There’s hardly anything we can do, except maybe Emma’s right. We could get up more men—get some from Cloverly if they can spare them. Trouble is, that would be pretty presumptuous when no one’s reported a missing girl. I mean no family member. Without any evidence—” The Sheriff shrugged.

I was glad he wasn’t going to bring anyone else in. For if he went to even more trouble to find out who the girl was, I hated to think how he’d react if he ever found out it was me and I let the police do all that for nothing.

“Wait,” said Maud. “There’s the owners of the Silver Pear. They must have described her, too, and at least if their description was like this Buttercup’s, that at least would tell you he wasn’t making it up.”

The Sheriff had a studious look. “The description doesn’t amount to much. She could’ve been a hundred girls. There was nothing to set her apart. Light hair, hazel eyes. But you’re right, of course, they described the same person.”

I looked down at my straw wrapper, ashamed there was nothing memorable about me. I was really disappointed. My eyes, that I liked to think were green, were only hazel. I rolled up bits of the wrapper and considered spitballs.

The Sheriff continued, “Now, one thing I did think might help is a composite drawing—you know, where the witness describes the subject and the artist draws him or her accordingly. Then show it around.”

Well, I couldn’t help myself; I looked up wide-eyed. But I quickly dissolved my fearful expression and looked down again.

Maud gave him a little punch on the arm. “That’s brilliant. Only, you don’t have a police artist, do you?”

“La Porte doesn’t, no. But I’m sure I could find one if I want to proceed.”

Imagine: my face, or near enough my face, shown all over kingdom come, maybe even pasted up on windows or tacked on poles, maybe in the Cold Flat Junction post office, next to the Drinkwater brothers who’re still wanted for armed robbery.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS PERSON?

Just imagine what Ree-Jane would do with that! It was then I remembered Bunny Caruso: why, she didn’t even need a picture. She knew who I was and what if she just happened to mention in passing to the Sheriff (who I think she had a crush on) that she’d driven me to the Silver Pear? I kept my head down for I knew I was blushing furiously. I started tearing up the straw, having finished with the wrapper. All I seemed to be doing was getting in deeper and deeper; it was like a snowball rolling downhill that I didn’t know how to stop, except by telling the truth, and I didn’t want to do that, obviously. I heard the Sheriff say:

“... in the Conservative.”

That made my eyes snap up. “What?”

Maud said, “Sam says they could run something in the paper about this girl—”

“Wait a minute!” I said, coming to my rescue. “Remember the Girl that I saw in La Porte?”

The Sheriff frowned. He was thoughtful. “I remember something about that but I never saw her.”

I hated doing this; I hated “using” the Girl. I’m surprised I even brought her up, for I didn’t want to let other people know anything about her. She was very mysterious and I was part of the mystery, I think. Not only that; I’d be endangering her, and Ben Queen too, which was unthinkable. I’d almost even rather tell the truth than that. “No, no. It couldn’t be her. She’s nearer ... she’s too old. But there’s something, someone ...” My hand gripped my forehead; my eyes were closed, and I must have looked like Mrs. Louderback over her tarot cards. “Listen: I remember now. I saw a girl walking the highway to Lake Noir. She was around my—she was eleven or twelve, I think. The only reason I noticed is she was alone. I mean, it’s strange to see someone that age alone, isn’t it? They’re always with a gang of kids or a grown-up, at least. Someone.” This made me wonder about myself. How must I appear to people? I saw her in my mind, walking along the highway by herself and she looked not so much lonely as left behind. Unclaimed, like a suitcase left in the Lost and Found. I set to wondering what her family was like. She had a family of sorts, it was just the wrong family. But I came to the conclusion family had little to do with her reason for walking out there by herself. No, it was something else.

I thought again of that day in Cold Flat Junction when I waited for the train back to Spirit Lake. I guess I was waiting for the Girl to turn up again. In that great stillness, I looked out over the flat empty land across the tracks, off to the line of dark trees where the woods began. I had seen this several times since, and it had never lost that look of land far away, unreachable, as far as imagination or the moon.

But all of Cold Flat Junction is like that. I remembered the small girl inside the empty schoolyard that I played Pick Up sticks with who had not said a word the whole time. On another day, there was a boy shooting a basketball by himself, and when he saw me, he stopped. Then there was the woman in black who I later learned must be Louise Landis, standing on the top step outside the rear door of the schoolhouse, shading her eyes with her hand and looking off toward that far horizon that surrounded Cold Flat Junction. What was she looking for? Ben Queen, perhaps. But way out there in the same emptiness I saw from my bench at the station. I had moved from that bench to the one directly across the tracks, for I was going in the opposite direction. Sitting there looking at the bench opposite, seeing myself still sitting there. I had felt either desolate or afraid, or perhaps they were in this case the same thing.

“Emma?”

I started, as if waking, surprised I was in a booth in the Rainbow Café. Both Maud and the Sheriff were looking at me.

“You seemed to be thinking so hard,” said Maud.

“I guess I was in a brown study.”

She smiled. “Well, I have to get back to the counter.”

The Sheriff said to me, “Come on. Let’s check the meters.”

I was suddenly flooded with happiness. It was what we used to do before the Ben Queen business came up. I had arranged my spitballs on the table and now wiped them into my hand and dumped them on the empty doughnut plate.

But as I followed him to the front of the café I felt a little of this joy slip away. I thought it would never be exactly the same between us, me and the Sheriff, and this wasn’t his doing, it was mine. It was the price I had to pay for keeping quiet about Ben Queen, and now maybe even for Dwayne.

I followed the Sheriff through the door, hardly bothering to do more than glance at the pastry display. But my eye did land on a Boston Cream Pie that I might come back for.

We walked down Second Street and had no sooner ticketed Dodge Haines’s shiny new truck for parking in the loading zone of McCrory‘s, than I saw Bunny Caruso coming out of Rudy’s clothing store right across the street. She was trying to balance one of the Rudy’s bags with a load of dry cleaning from Whitelaw’s, trying to hike one up with her knee to get a better grip.

No! I thought. As she was on the other side of Second Street, I might be able to get the Sheriff’s attention so he wouldn’t see her.

“Looks like Bunny needs some help,” he said, making to cross the street when I caught his sleeve.

“Oh, she’s a lot stronger than she looks and we’ve got nearly all the meters to do.”

“I’ll just give her a hand. You can go on ahead for a minute.”

So, of course, I had to follow him to try and stop Bunny from saying anything about giving me a ride. This was all becoming such a load on me, a lot heavier than the cleaning bags. I guess when your conscience bothers you it’s like bags filled with bricks.

“Well, hi, Sam! Hello, Emma. I swear, Sheriff Sam DeGheyn, you are the absolute last gentleman left on this planet.”

I said, “He sure is. My mother and Mrs. Davidow always say so.” Then I launched off on an account of Sam’s changing a tire for Lola Davidow. Just taking up talking space. The Sheriff looked at me quizzically, as I was being pretty effusive.

Then, as I feared she would, Bunny smiled at me. “Did you have a nice dinner? I know the Silv—”

I jumped all over “Silver.” “Oh, yes. There’s nothing like my mother’s fried chick—”

Bunny jumped all over “chicken.” “No, but I mean with your—aunt? Was it an aunt?”

The Sheriff was holding both the dry cleaning and the Rudy’s bag. “You both seem to be talking at cross purposes.”

Bunny squinted up at him; so did I. It’s one aspect of our nature we have in common, Bunny and me: our squints.

“Maybe if you’d stop interrupting each other—” He smiled.

Bunny laughed, opening the door of her truck. “Oh, it ain’t nothin’, just small talk.”

I agreed eagerly as the Sheriff stowed the bags and shut the door. “I just remembered, Bunny, you live out on Swain’s Point. There’s a young girl was reported disappeared in the White’s Bridge area.”

“How terrible.” It was not empty words of concern; Bunny sounded sincerely troubled. “When did that happen?”

“Last night, sometime around eight, nine o’clock.”

“Well, who was she?”

“That’s just it. We don’t know.”

I had stepped back into the shadow cast by Rudy’s awning, creating the scene which I feared was coming: Bunny would say, Why, last night’s when I drove you out to the Silver Pear. They both look at me. I put on my dumb expression; the Sheriff mightily surprised/angry/disappointed. He demands to know: Why didn’t you tell me you were near the scene of the crime?

None of this happened, except I did put on my dumb expression, which turned to sheer amazement when nothing like this took place.

Then the Sheriff and Bunny said Good-bye, be seein’ you, and we went back to walking our beat. My mouth still must have been open, for the Sheriff asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing, nothing,” I said. I vowed to go immediately af ter the meter walk to St. Michael’s and kneel down before whatever was there, and tell Father Freeman that now I believed in miracles. He might suggest I join a convent later on, and I’d probably agree, for joining would be many years away and by then he’d have forgotten I agreed. (It would certainly be preferable to making any promises to the camp-meeting Christians, for I’m sure they’d suck you right in and not give you a chance to change your mind.)

I said, “I guess it’s going to be nearly impossible to find this girl. I can’t imagine nobody missing her.” Actually, I could. I could imagine it six ways from Sunday.

The Sheriff nodded thoughtfully. “It’s sad, really.”

“Why?”

He was slotting change into Miss Isabel Barnett’s meter. He never ticketed her because I’m sure he realized how forgetful she was. “To think a girl could go through all of that, and no one ever know about it.” Sadly, he shook his head.

It was easy for me to pick up on her trials and tribulations.

“And she’d have been scared to death. There’s hardly anyone lives out there excepting Mr. Butternut—”

“Buttercup.”

“Buttercup. And those woods are really dark, I mean really dark. Not just your average night-dark, electric-out-dark, cave-dark, or even blind-dark—”

“You know a lot about the dark.”

And suddenly, I remembered that I was not supposed to know a lot about the woods. “Will told me. Will and Mill, you know how they like to nose around whenever something happens. They went out to Mirror Pond after the murder.”

“They shouldn’t be doing things like that. Tell them.”

“Uh-huh.” That didn’t interest me at all. “But getting back to this poor girl, why, a lot of things could have happened. She could have starved or died of exposure.”

“Oh, I doubt she’s dead. There’s more than one way out of the woods. She sounded smart, the way Mr. Buttercup talked about her. He said she was as stubborn as Abel Slaw’s mule.”

I was not! I stopped and put my hands on my hips. “Something wrong?”

“Well, no!” I shrugged and walked on. “But it doesn’t make any difference. No family’s reported any missing girl.”

“Um. There is a good reason why they wouldn’t have.”

“What?”

“She’s not missing anymore.”

Once again, I stopped dead. “Not missing?”

He nodded. “She might by now be right back where she came from.” He’d stopped and was writing out a ticket for Helene Baum’s canary-yellow car. Above the law, she thought she was. He ripped it from the book and stuck it on the window, making a little rubbery twang with the windshield wiper.

“But—well, wouldn’t you be furious if that’s so?”

“No. No harm done.” He smiled. “Would it be better if the poor girl was still missing?”

“But all the trouble she caused you! Getting the state police out there and having to talk to Mr. Buttem—Buttercup, who’s probably a hundred and talks a blue streak about his family—I mean he sounds as if he does.” (That was close!) “I mean, you would have to be awfully disappointed after all of the trouble you went to.”

The Sheriff stopped and adjusted his black glasses and looked skyward. “The only thing that disappoints me is I’ll never know her. She sounds like a girl worth knowing.” He sighed.

I gaped. I felt like a firecracker sent sparks of its hot self racing through my veins.

Then we walked on, left Second Street for Oak Street, walked and walked in our old friendly way, with me trying to figure out a way to let the Sheriff know the girl was me.