Eighteen

When Jim Leland and Ed Hammond reached the Coosawhatchie River, Jim fired two shots into the air. It was time to regroup. He stared at the river for a moment; in front of him a dead tree spanned it like a bridge. At his feet, beneath the shallow water but visible in the diffuse moonlight, lay a tangled network of underwater plants. Here and there bleached white tree stumps also protruded from the dark water like decaying skeletons, with vines snaking around them in necrophiliac embrace. Farther out the river was completely opaque, its surface sealed by a slimy green silt.

And that infernal buzz—mosquitoes. Jim itched all over.

Being in the swamps made him feel like a child again—unprotected, uninformed, unsure. The supernatural seemed frighteningly logical here. For a moment he remembered a black man who died when he was a boy; Jim and his parents attended the funeral because the man had worked for them. They arrived at the man’s small shack later, on the edge of the swamps, to pay their respects. Jim grasped the front doorknob to go inside, only to find that it had been reversed. The inside part was outside. “So old Sam’s spirit can’t get back in,” a huge woman who was standing at the door told him. “We done buried old Sam’s hat and his knife and extra clothes wid him too—so he don’t come back after them neither.” Later Jim would learn that after everyone left that day all the dishes and cooking utensils were emptied and scoured so Sam’s spirit wouldn’t have access to food and water and would go on where it was supposed to go. Which was also why an oil lamp had been left burning on Sam’s grave that night, so he could see his way to heaven.

In here—thirty years later—every bit of that made sense to Jim. In fact, if he lived in here, he’d do the exact same thing after a funeral.

Soon the other men began to straggle in, looking tired and anxious and itchy. The police chief and Buck Henry spoke to each group and then walked over to talk by themselves quietly. Several of the men, Stoney and Bill among them, sat down on fallen logs and tipped their water bottles back until water ran down their sweaty faces. Flashlights were doused, two of the Ashboro fellows and Ricky Gibson smoked in silence, and every so often one man or another would walk away a few feet and take a leak. No one said much, no one talked. The later it got, the more somber everyone seemed, as if such a long stay in this dark world had altered the mind, the senses, the perceptions. Even Heyward Rutherford, in his spiffy L. L. Bean outdoor clothes, didn’t have a single “great” thing to say.

Finally Jim walked over to where everyone was sitting. “Buck and I think we should split up again and follow the river. We’re bound to find the truck sooner or later.”

So the searchers teamed up again, this time moving in different directions along the riverbank. Silently Stoney and Bill headed south. The Coosa was narrow where they walked, filled with debris and dead trees. Looking into it, Stoney got the same crawly feeling along his shoulderblades he used to get in certain rough neighborhoods in D.C. He knew Leonard could be hidden anywhere: in the woods to Stoney’s left, farther up the river, anywhere. With an assault rifle aimed at them. Stoney stumbled abruptly and his right ankle turned in a muddy hole he hadn’t noticed. Slowly he withdrew his foot. Testing his ankle again, he breathed in with relief. The swamps had a distinctive smell—loamy, damp, elemental, almost sensual. The longer he stayed in here, the more he felt he carried that smell on him. It mixed with the sweat on his arms and seeped into his pores. Became part of him.

“Christ Almighty, my feet hurt,” Bill said after a while. Suddenly he shone his flashlight into the woods on his right, arced it from tree to tree.

“What’s the matter?”

“I dunno. Thought I heard something.” Bill moved forward, aimed the flashlight deeper into the woods. “I guess it was an animal—or something.” In a moment he turned around and rejoined Stoney. “That ‘or something’ is making me nuts.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Sorta seemed like a lark at first, you know? Go in the swamps like kids and get the bad guys. Doesn’t feel like a lark anymore.”

Stoney stopped for a minute and listened. “I keep thinking I’m hearing things.”

“We start seeing things, I’m going home.”

As they walked on, Stoney gazed at the live oaks submerged in the river like penitents wading toward baptism. He thought about Anna too, worried about her and Marian being alone in town. Then he stopped dead. He heard—something.

Drums. In the distance somewhere. Someone was beating a drum. Maybe two drums.

Stoney didn’t say anything to Bill, who was ahead of him studying the soaked ground with his flashlight, looking for footprints. The drums grew louder and suddenly Bill froze in his tracks. “Shit. What the hell is that?”

“Drums.”

Bill turned. “Whose drums?”

Stoney didn’t answer. His heart raced and sweat rolled down his forehead. It was dark and close and hot and the trees crouched over them like enemies, and it was so humid, so damp and wet. Snakes came instantly to mind. So did ritualized killings. Exorcisms. They had stepped back in time and their innate senses, so veneered with civilization and education, were dulled and useless. This was an alien world of water and earth and giant trees and anguish. He and Bill and all the others were intruders. They had entered a realm they did not understand, in which they were not welcome. Leonard had brought them here on purpose.

Stoney and Bill stopped by the river to rest and Stoney fidgeted with the nylon bag over his shoulder, and then he handed the bottle of brandy to Bill, who uncorked it and tipped it back. He coughed and gave the bottle back to Stoney. “If we keep going this way,” Bill said, “eventually we’ll end up in the Atlantic.”

“If we don’t get lost first.” Stoney drank from the bottle and recorked it.

They began walking south again, almost tiptoeing now. “What if we never find him?” Bill asked. “What if we never know?”

“We’re going to find him,” Stoney stated firmly. He moved ahead of Bill, striding resolutely into the darkness, his rifle tight to his side and his flashlight beam in front of him. They walked in silence for almost an hour, shining their flashlights on both sides of them and then down at the ground below, stopping to veer off into the brush once or twice. Stoney was so tired now his eyes glazed over and he swore for a moment that he saw someone in front of him. He jerked back—it looked like a woman. Blood. She had blood on her. Then the vision disappeared and Stoney picked up his pace, looking back at Bill from time to time to urge him on. They walked for another hour and twice more Stoney thought he saw the woman. He didn’t recognize her but now he was certain he could smell blood.

“Come on, Jenkins. Let’s find him,” he cried vehemently when the woman faded away again.

Bill Jenkins stared at his friend and wondered if Stoney hadn’t been out here too long.

They walked on.

Anna woke up because she knew someone was in the room with her. She could hear him moving around but in the darkness she could not see him. He was in the shadows, safely out of the way of the moonlight streaming through the window. Her first thought was to grab Stoney until she remembered Stoney wasn’t there beside her, then she thought about calling Marian, but she didn’t want the man to know she was awake. Right now he made no move toward the bed and as long as she was quiet and still, maybe it would be all right. Maybe he would leave her alone.

The man walked out of the room. Into the bathroom.

Oh God. Anna expelled a long sigh of relief. Stoney. Oh God, it was Stoney. He was home. It was okay. She sat up and called to him and he walked back in and sat down on the bed and held her for a minute. “Bill and I left at three—I was so tired I started seeing things. Some of the guys are still out there. Heyward Rutherford—of all people—found the truck. Jim thinks Leonard will just hole up in there until we quit looking. I’m going back after I sleep awhile.”

As he kissed her, Anna noticed the wild smell of the swamp on his skin. He rose to take his shower. When Anna heard the water running, she got up and walked naked into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. He didn’t say anything as she climbed in with him, just embraced her and leaned against her as though too exhausted to speak or bathe. The water ran down across them and Anna breathed in the swamp smell as it seeped inside her. For a long while they stood holding each other, letting the water run across their skin.

Down the hall Marian tossed fitfully. She had heard voices in Anna’s room and knew Stoney must be home. They had not found Leonard; one of them would have told her if they had. Would they find him at all?

Marian closed her eyes again, trying to sleep. Her eyes opened. No. She would not think about it, she would not remember it, she would not open that window. She had nailed it shut years ago and it had stayed shut, even when she talked to Anna. Why now, why tonight, why here? She turned over and closed her eyes once more—and then the window stood wide open and she spiraled downward. Falling down faster and faster. A blinding white light burned behind her eyes and she blinked, but still it burned and refused to fade. She lay beneath it naked, her legs pinned wide. The smell of river and damp loam. And whiskey. A white boy holding a bottle up. He was grinning. “Come git it, Maarriooonnn.”

He always said her name like it was a joke. As if she had no right to it.

She lay there waiting for it to be over. Then his voice thickened. He unzipped his pants and drew out his engorged penis. “Lookit. You can’t wait, can you? You love white meat. That’s how you convince yourself you’re white, ain’t it?” Then he tackled her, yanked her legs farther apart, rammed himself inside. She vowed she would not scream. No matter how much it hurt. He would not see any emotion.

“You black bitch,” he whispered over and over again in her ear, his voice slurring, his eyes closed. He wanted her but he hated himself for wanting her; to want her was to want the worst thing in his world, black pussy. In a moment he withdrew again abruptly and emptied himself across her stomach.

Marian opened her eyes. Suddenly she knew what she had to do.

Slowly Anna began to bathe Stoney. She soaped up her hands and washed his face with a soft sponge; she took the shampoo from the windowsill and lathered his hair and ran her fingernails back and forth through it, then trailed them across his shoulders and back down his chest. His arousal was immediate, which amazed him given how tired he was. But he said nothing, just stood there and let her hands work on him. She kneaded his shoulders and his back and his chest, working the soap deep into the hair on his chest, and she wasn’t sure when she stopped bathing him and he started touching her. But suddenly they stopped and knew they had to have each other now, fast and quick, and deep.

He half picked her up and eased inside her and she cried out and then remembered Marian and didn’t care and cried out again every time he went deeper. He held her away and then pulled her back again and again, until she could not speak and he could no longer hold her.

In bed later they lay cradled together like spoons as he moved inside her, rubbing her back with his fingernails, up and down, up and down, until she shivered under his touch. Sometimes he just lay still, not even wanting to move. Inside her he felt safe, at peace. Filled, she felt completed, no longer alone.

They passed much of the night finding themselves in each other again. They lay in suspended intersection, searching for a fusion so complete nothing could endanger it. Sometimes he dozed but then he would awaken and feel her move, stimulating him in his sleep; she would shift to deepen their connection and he would move with sudden fervor. But they would deliberately slow again. She would reach behind her and stoke his thigh, he would rub the back of her neck or caress her breasts, her abdomen. Both thought of the eventual joy but neither moved toward it, because neither wanted to let go and part. Tonight their desire for each other was so intense that fulfillment lay in never satisfying it.

Marian felt exhausted the next morning and she didn’t feel much better when she got back to her own house.

Where was he? The man who raped her and took Harriet away.

She stared out her front window, still tired. She could not just go through this day like other days. There was no routine now. The normal world had ended with Harriet’s murder. Marian knew she ought to go out back and check on the new garden, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to find Leonard. She wanted someone to pay for the emptiness she felt.

Soon Marian walked into her bedroom and changed her clothes. Within minutes she was in her car speeding out to the swamps. When the trees closed in around her, however, she wanted to turn back. Coming out here wasn’t the same as when she had visited Maum Chrish before Harriet was killed—now everything was different. Now she almost regretted the days she’d spent here; she should have been with Harriet, she should not have divided her loyalties like that. But her life would always be split, wouldn’t it? Between what she was and was not, who she could be and who she couldn’t be. She slowed down and stared at a live oak tree along the roadside. The gods had sent her Maum and had taken Harriet away, leaving her incomplete again. Marian smiled with irony. At Maum Chrish’s hearing she had preached that completeness was multifaceted; yet she had somehow missed the point herself.

In a moment she zoomed across the bridge she and Anna had once walked over and braked to a stop. She got out, slid her purse strap over her shoulder, and took the path into the woods. It was daylight, she had the gun, Leonard would be sleeping now, waiting for dark. She hoped.

God it was hot. That rain on the day Harriet was buried had hardly made a dent in the drought. Marian stared up at the sunshine. It stopped at the tops of the trees; the only thing that got inside here was the heat, the humidity. She began to sweat. She hated Leonard being in here. Again. Like all those years ago. Now the place was ruined for her again; Leonard had charged the atmosphere with something far more sinister than any water moccasin or voudou curse.

When Marian reached the clearing, the fire was burning and she heard the drumbeats. She recognized the discordant Petro rhythm; the sound was some distance away, maybe down at the Oyotunji village which practiced Yoruba voudou. They were using the exultant beat of throwing off slavery to pass a message down the river. That evil was in the woods. The white men didn’t know it but the black men were helping them.

Maum Chrish’s house looked empty as Marian strode up to it and called out. No one responded, so she climbed up the steps and peered inside the doorway. Then she walked inside. A ceremony had recently taken place. Cornmeal edged the vèvè on the floor and there was the distinct smell of blood. Marian’s heart tightened and then she said to herself, it was only a chicken, it was only an offering.

She walked back outside and suddenly Maum Chrish was there—just standing in the middle of the yard in front of the garden whose produce was overflowing despite the drought. She appeared so abruptly that for a moment Marian imagined she had simply materialized before her eyes. Marian shook herself and moved down the steps. Maum Chrish was all in white—white caftan, white agousséan scarf over her shoulder, white turban. Preparing for purification. Marian walked toward her.

“You are the one who’s come,” Maum Chrish said, exactly as before.

“Yes,” Marian said. “I’ve come for help. There’s someone in the woods. He hurts people.”

“The night of the Dark Satellite.” The other woman nodded, staring up at the sky as though the moon were above them at midday. Marian looked up too and suddenly she did see the moon—or was it really the sun? She couldn’t be sure but it looked more like the moon; the sunshine above the trees seemed to emanate from a white half-globe.

“They look in places where God is. He is where God has gone.”

Marian gaped at Maum Chrish. “Leonard? They’re looking for him in the wrong place? Where is he?”

“Where God is gone,” Maum Chrish intoned again.

Where God is gone, Marian thought. Almost everywhere. She walked closer to the other woman. “I don’t understand.”

Maum Chrish turned toward the river behind her. She pointed downstream. “The cemetery, the crossroads, Grans Bwa.”

Marian repeated. “The cemetery, the crossroads, and the spirit of the forest.”

And suddenly she knew. It was what he would do. They thought he would hide in the swamps. So of course he would leave them.

Marian turned to go, but Maum Chrish stopped her. Wordlessly the taller woman angled around and walked back to her house. Marian knew she should wait. In a moment Maum Chrish reappeared. She was carrying a black camera bag, which she handed to Marian with a long lingering look.

The men met again that morning at ten at the end of Mill Creek Road. Most arrived together, in twos and threes and even larger groups. By now everyone in the county knew that the Essex killer (as the Ashboro Times was calling him) was cornered somewhere in the swamps. People who had never even heard of Leonard Hansen showed up to help look for him. Before going into the woods there was an easy camaraderie among men whose paths didn’t often cross except in church or at the voting booths on Election Day. They showed up in jeans and khakis and overalls and greasy workpants, all anxious to help, men who weren’t about to be left out of the biggest thing to happen in Ashton County in two decades. They laughed and slapped each other on the back, the way men sometimes do when out in the woods without women, carrying guns and eating and pissing wherever they want.

But the minute they actually separated into pairs and began combing the woods, the jocular mood vanished. The swamps weren’t quite as forbidding in daylight but even so there was a preternatural suspense about the interior that suddenly quieted even the most boisterous. The swamps did that—unearthed some time-shared memory that both attracted and frightened men and, at the very least, unevened their footing. They stepped more cautiously, moved more stealthily.

They were covering the lower end of the Coosawhatchie today, which was where Leonard’s truck had been found. The river virtually ran in circles here. Today they had dogs and the dogs ran in circles as well, plunging after various scents that so far had led nowhere. Miles were covered more quickly in daylight and several footprints were spotted, sending the dogs into a frenzy which ended on the other side of the river. The dogs lost the trail there, sniffed in a dozen different directions but always circled back.

Bill and Stoney joined Heyward Rutherford and Jim Leland sometime in the afternoon and the four of them fanned out, checking the riverbank like miners pawing a pan of gold. Heyward was grumbling about how Essex would never recover if this didn’t end soon, how it would hurt business, how no one would move into town (and presumably buy his houses and use that new car wash he was still determined to build).

Stoney got tired of listening to Heyward and angled around to face Jim. “What if he didn’t follow the river?”

Sweat rolled down Jim Leland’s face. He felt like punching Stoney. “He had too. Nobody but an animal could find their way around here without it.”

“Jim, we have to think like Leonard. He knows this country, he’s almost a bird dog himself. He can get in and out of here by smell.”

“Then which goddamn way did he go?”

“I agree with Jim,” Bill said to Stoney. “If Leonard’s that much at home here, he’s even more likely to stick with the river.” Bill leaned down and rubbed his sore right calf, thinking about how hungry he was. “I mean, the river affords protection, cover. Walk away from it in any direction and you become more exposed. Before long you’ll end up in a town. Most likely one of these poor-as-dirt black towns. I don’t think Leonard would deliberately go in one of those. Do you?”

Stoney, against his will, had to agree. He and Bill walked on, ahead of Jim and Heyward.

When Stoney and Bill were beyond hearing, Jim mumbled under his breath, “I’m damn tired of Stoney’s shit. He thinks I won’t do anything. Well he’s wrong. I’ll do what has to be done and I’ll do it my own way.”

Suddenly all four men looked up. They stared at each other as the shot rang in their ears. They waited, each man barely breathing. They waited for the second shot.

Marian pounded on the door of the McCloskey house. Where could Anna be today of all days? Not that the other woman had looked very rested at breakfast. Marian smiled. The walls of even old houses were but so thick. And the way Stoney and Anna kept looking at each other over breakfast, well, there was no mistaking that look.

Marian beat on the door again. Where was she?

Then the door opened with a jerk. Anna stared at Marian. “Sorry. I was in the darkroom.”

Marian strode through the door, whirled around, handed Anna a black camera bag. “Your Nikon. I went to see Maum Chrish and she gave it to me. How can you work today?”

Anna stared at her camera bag, then looked up. “You went out there? Alone? Are you crazy?”

“Anna, when is Stoney coming back?”

“I’m not sure.”

Marian paced up and down the hall. “Surely he’ll come back later—they’ll need more food and water if they don’t find him before dark.” Marian stopped, sighed. “How long can this go on?”

“Come on back to the kitchen. Have you eaten anything today?”

Marian shook her head and followed Anna. They made a tuna sandwich and split it, ate it standing at the kitchen counter. Sitting down would have seemed too normal, too everyday. “Anna, I think they’re looking in the wrong place. I don’t think Leonard’s in the swamps.”

Anna paused in midbite, her eyes wide. “Why not?”

“Maum Chrish told me he wasn’t there. What she said was sorta—abstract. But I believe I know what she meant. I think I know the place she was talking about.” Marian gazed at the kitchen doorway, toward the hall. “I should tell the men what she said. I should tell Stoney and Jim. Do you know where they’ve gone to look?”

Anna shook her head. “They went back to the same place, I think.”

Marian nodded. “Mill Creek Road. I’ll go out there then.”

“You’ll never find them. Stoney said they were spreading out all over the place. You better just stay here. We’ll hear something. He said he’d come home before dark if they hadn’t found Leonard by then.”

Marian looked at her watch. “That’s hours from now. Leonard might get away by then.”

“Where do you think he is?”

“There’s this place he mentioned to me once when we were”—she didn’t want to say when we were kids, it made them seem too innocent and chummy—“he mentioned it a long time ago. When I first knew him. The old Sheldon Church ruins. His parents punished him once and he ran away from home and hid out there for a few days—because there was a place to sleep and a water pump.” Marian turned to Anna. “But the Sheldon Church is outside the swamps, damn near to Beaufort.”

“Could he get there on foot?”

“Hell yes. Go down the Coosawhatchie until the swamp turns into marshes and you’re there. It’s shorter following the river than going by the highway. But you have to turn at an unmarked intersection to get to the church.” Marian remembered Maum Chrish’s voice. “The crossroads.”

“But wouldn’t somebody notice him there?”

“It’s not a real church, Anna. It’s the abandoned ruins of a church built in the 1700s. It was burned by the British during the Revolution and rebuilt only to be burned again by Sherman in 1865. It’s an historical site but it’s so out of the way nobody ever goes there. And there is an old cemetery. Which is surrounded by woods,” Marian said to herself. “The Grans Bwa.”

Anna trembled. At both Marian’s tone and the look in her eyes.

“Everything around here,” Marian said suddenly, thinking of the rebuilt and reburned church, so like the town, “happens twice. Whatever happens comes around again.”

Then she grabbed Anna. “Don’t you see? Where God has gone?”

“What?”

“That’s what Maum Chrish said. Leonard was—where God has gone. Like a church no longer used. Or abandoned.”

In a few minutes Anna called Buck Henry’s number but there was no answer. Marian called several other people around town, talking to wives and mothers mostly, asking for information about where the men were, if any of them had returned home, if any of the women had heard anything. The rest of the afternoon, to get their minds off the waiting, Anna baked a walnut cake with an obscene amount of butter and sugar in it. Afternoon shadows fell across the backyard and still Stoney hadn’t come back. Anna stared out the back kitchen windows and said softly, “It’s going to be dark soon.”

When Stoney walked in the front door an hour later, she ran into the living room and threw herself at him. “Thank God, you’re home. Did you find him?”

Stoney shook his head and leaned into Anna, smelling her hair. He held her tight against him; every time he breathed in, he breathed in her; she filled his senses so deeply his head ached. Then he looked up and saw Marian and smiled, without releasing Anna. The three of them walked into the kitchen and Stoney ate two piece of the cake. Then he said, “Thought we had him at one point. Someone was shooting. Only when we got there it was just Ricky Gibson killing a copperhead.” Stoney hunched over the kitchen table. “The longer it takes, the more I’m scared he’s gone. And we’ll never know for sure.”

“Yes we will,” Marian exclaimed. She told Stoney about her visit to Maum Chrish’s house and what the other woman had said. Stoney listened carefully and Marian noticed how tired his eyes looked. The men were worn out. They needed help. “I’m going back with you,” she said. “You can take me with you, or you can make me stay behind. In which case I’m going out there on my own.”

Stoney didn’t argue. Instead he went upstairs to wash his face and lie down for half an hour. He’d just close his eyes for a few minutes and he’d be ready to go again.

An hour later Stoney called Bill Jenkins’ house. Anna and Marian had refilled the water jugs and made more sandwiches. Quietly Stoney spoke to Anna while Marian finished packing up the food. “I want you to go over to Bill’s house until I get back. I’ve called Diane and she said she’d appreciate the company.”

“I’d rather go with you.”

“I know that. But that’s not a good idea. And I don’t want you in this house alone.”

At the Jenkins’ split-level a few minutes later Stoney walked Anna to the door and kissed her so fiercely she was left breathless afterward. And frightened. She had to be sure things would be all right and so she held him a moment longer; she asked no questions, now she just sought reassurance in his touch.

He backed away with his solemn eyes still on her. Anna wanted to beg him not to go. But instead, she stood and watched as he and Marian disappeared into the fading evening sun.