Peter Leonard - Quiver

She thought about chasing him after his bath when he was four or five, running through the upstairs of their first house, saying, “I’m going to get your fanny,” and Luke laughing and saying, “No, Mommy.”

She thought about telling him the facts of life when he was eleven. He was going to have a sex education class at school the next day and she wanted to prepare him. They were in his bedroom. He was at his desk doing homework. Kate sat on the bed. She said, “Do you know how babies are born?”

He turned and looked at her and said, “They grow in your stomach.”

Kate said, “Dads are part of it, too. God gives moms and dads the power to make babies.”

Luke said, “You mean like a robot?”

He got up and came over and stood in front of her.

“The dad’s penis goes into the mom,” Kate said, “and that’s how babies are conceived.”

He gave her a puzzled, innocent look.

“Does he take it off and give it to you?”

Kate had to bite her lip to keep from smiling. “No, he lies down next to me.”

“Why haven’t I ever seen this?” His voice and expression full of surprise.

Kate said, “It’s a private thing between a mom and a dad.”

She could see Luke trying to grasp the concept, and when he did, fell on the floor and said, “I’m never growing up and I’m not going to school tomorrow.”

She remembered telling Owen when he got home that night and laughed about it for weeks.

She thought about the time Luke climbed the maple tree in their backyard, spying on the dinner party she and Owen were having. Luke fell out of the tree and landed on the brick patio. He cracked his head open and Kate took him to Beaumont emergency, head wrapped in blue and white dish towels that were blotted with blood. She dozed off, thinking about spending the night in his hospital room, sleeping in a chair next to his bed, and woke up for real to the sound of someone knocking on the door.

Bill Wink’s shift ended at midnight. He checked his messages and-he couldn’t believe it-there was one from Kate McCall, but it sounded like she was in trouble. Bill decided not to call, just drive out there and see her. His heart was thumping he was so excited. He’d been thinking about her his entire shift. Bill saw himself with her, pictures in his head like snapshots: sitting at a table having a romantic dinner at Windows; cruising the bay in his Boston Whaler, snuggling on the couch in the big room at her place, watching a movie. Bill’d show her what a fun guy he was. He wished he could change, get out of the uniform, put on some Levi’s and a comfortable shirt, but it would take too long. His place was in the opposite direction and it was already late.

There was no one on the road so he pressed it, doing seventy most of the way, and pulled up in front of the McCalls’ fifteen minutes later. He got out and left his hat on the seat. He was off duty. He knocked on the door, waited, and Kate opened it, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She invited him in and offered him a beer. They sat at the kitchen table and she told him Luke had taken off that morning. He walked in the woods and never came back. To Bill it sounded strange any way he looked at it. How’s a kid who knows the woods disappear? Bill thought the likely explanation was the kid ran away. Isn’t that what Luke did when he came up north? Of course, Bill could be wrong. He’d try to get a couple experienced trackers and come back before sunup. He finished his beer and Kate walked him to the door. There was no point hanging around. He could see she wasn’t in any mood to have a conversation.

She’d been awake since Bill left, pacing around in the dark, worried about Luke. She heard the police car drive in at five thirty and went out to greet them in a parka and jeans, no makeup, nerves frazzled, eyes heavy, breath smoking in the cold air of morning. It was still dark but she could see light breaking over the horizon on Lake Michigan.

Bill and two other men got out of his sheriff ’s deputy cruiser: Del Keane, unmistakable with his heavy gray beard and long hair and buckskins, and an Indian Bill introduced as Johnny Crow, a tribal cop from Peshawbestown. He was lean and dark with black hair that had a shine to it and a blues patch under his lower lip. Kate thought he looked like a roadie for a rock band, dressed as he was in Levi’s and a dark green barn jacket with a dark blue collar. Johnny was quiet, low-key, which made him seem almost shy. He was in charge of security at the Leelanau Sands Casino, Bill said, and owed him a favor, Bill saying he’d helped a friend of Johnny’s out of a DUI. Bill said Johnny knew the woods and was the best tracker in the county and probably the state. Del was no slouch either, Bill said, but Johnny was part critter. “If Luke’s out there, these boys will find him.”

Bill was dressed in camo with an orange vest and a Red Wings cap. It was the first time she’d seen him out of uniform. He looked like an ordinary guy.

Kate thanked Del and Johnny for coming to help and offered them coffee and breakfast. They declined and said they were ready to get to it.

Kate said she wanted to go with them.

Bill said, “You better stay here, case he comes home.”

Kate said, “If Luke’s not home by now, he isn’t coming home.” She knew he could’ve been in a motel in Suttons Bay or on a bus back to Detroit, but her gut told her he was still out there somewhere.

They entered the woods, four of them, where Kate had watched Luke go the morning before, moving through heavy ground cover, breath condensing in the cold air. They’d gone maybe thirty yards when Johnny stopped. He saw something on the ground and hunkered down to take a closer look. Del hunkered next to him, turned to Bill, and said, “Found a boot print.”

Kate and Bill went over for a closer look. Johnny pushed some leaves aside and she could see the pattern of the boot tread in the dirt.

Fifteen feet upslope, Johnny found another one, made by a different boot.

“There’s two of them,” Johnny said.

“They together?” Bill said.

Johnny said, “Could be, but I doubt it. Prints are too far apart.”

Kate looked back where they’d entered the woods; she could see the lodge, a small section of roofline and a trail of smoke rising out of the fieldstone chimney. She scanned the trees and saw something that caught her attention, something that seemed out of place: a platform, it looked like-attached to a giant maple that had a full plume of green leaves. She moved toward it for a closer look.

Bill said, “Hey, where you going?”

Kate said, “Come here, will you?”

They walked over to the tree. It looked like a chair strapped to the trunk about forty feet up. “What’s that?” she said to Bill.

“A tree stand,” Bill said. “Hey, Del, what do you make of this?”

Del and Johnny came over now, Del squinting, looking into the rising sun, fixing his gaze on the upper part of the tree. “It’s a tree stand,” he said.

“I know that,” Bill said. “Odd place to hunt, don’t you think?”

Johnny said, “If that was their purpose.”

Bill glanced at Kate. “You’re sure it’s not yours?”

“We don’t own one,” Kate said. “Owen was a bow hunter.”

“Somebody setting up there watching the lodge,” Del said. He spit a gob of tobacco juice, brown-colored spray landing in the heavy curls of his beard. “I sold one just like it to a feller the other day. That and climbing spurs and a pair of binoculars.”

Kate said, “What did he look like?”

“Sturdy build,” Del said, “dark hair, mid-thirties. He wasn’t a tourist, I can tell you that.”

That sounded like the guy in the bar. “Did he have a mullet?” Kate said.