Karen Harper - Deep Down

Even when they climbed to the crest of the open hillside and Cassie pointed toward Big Blue’s massive gray-and-purple shoulders shrugging off the crashing waters of the falls, Tyler Finch kept looking at her for a long moment.

“This takes my breath away,” he said as he finally turned to see the sights stretched out before them.

“I feel like we didn’t find a darned thing,” Jessie told Drew as they headed for Mariah’s door. She’d added one of her mother’s jackets and a pair of hiking boots to her jeans and sweatshirt. They had found no clue about where to start looking for a needle in this massive haystack of trees and hollows and hills.

Jessie’s feet and spirits were dragging now. Earlier, she’d been on a roller-coaster ride of emotions as she’d searched through her mother’s things in her metal box. The deed to this land, records of income tax returns. A large, dried ginseng plant—a five-pronger—pressed between pieces of wax paper had somehow gotten stuck in the big envelope with her parent’s marriage license. There had been old school photos of herself, skinny and gawky. “Man, you have changed!” Drew had said, looking over her shoulder. They had also found faded pictures of her parents in their courting days, a few of her father she’d never seen.

Also, copies of past ginseng counts, which had been pulled from another large envelope, then half-stuffed back in. But to their dismay, nothing hinted at particular sang counting sites, past or present. In haste, had her mother pulled what she needed from this envelope, then thrust the rest back in?

Jessie could tell Drew was upset, too, though he promised they’d spend days looking for signs of Mariah if they had to. His words echoed in Jessie’s head and heart. Signs, as if her mother had left a message behind, but wasn’t around herself anymore …

“What’s this behind the door?” Drew asked as he opened it for her to go outside ahead of him. He reached down to pick up a calendar that was wedged on its side, standing upright against the wall.

“Oh, a calendar I gave her for Christmas,” she told him as he handed it to her. “I thought she’d like all the photos of the flowers for each month. It must have been tacked on the wall behind the door and got bumped off.”

“Check it to see if she listed places she was going to count sang.”

She flipped back a page to Mariah’s major counting month of August and skimmed the entries. Vern Tarver’s name was listed about twice a week with the name of restaurants in Highboro. Mariah’s scrawling handwriting recorded a church covered-dish supper to raise money for Widow Winchester. “Look,” she said, pointing at a Wednesday in August. “This doesn’t say Sang but Sung —Peter Sung’s name!”

“Your hunch about talking to him sounds right on. I’ll have to check if he was in town then. Anything under the first few September dates?”

She flipped to the current month. Since her mother had disappeared on the fourth, not much was filled in but for Vern’s name—this time crossed off heavily, jaggedly, on the third. On the fourth, scribbled in light pencil, was Semples OK.

“Does that say samples?” Drew asked, reading it upside-down. “Maybe Peter Sung wanted some samples of wild ginseng to know the quality he could expect to buy this year.”

“No, see—the S is capitalized. Semples.”

“Junior and Charity Semple? They’re the only Semples in the area, and he grows raised sang up in the woods above his place. But would she count sang that’s not wild but cultivated?”

“I’m pretty sure she always kept an eye on his crop—technical name, virtually wild sang. The crop’s health is a valid indicator since, once he plants the seeds, Mother Nature takes over. He used to have a couple acres of sang, scattered throughout the woods above his house.”

“It’s worth a try, a place to start. And that notation is on the day she disappeared.”

“You’re sure she got that far—that is, left the house that day and wasn’t somehow taken from here?” she asked.

“A couple of people spotted her walking along the highway that morning—come to think of it, in the direction of the Semples’. I’ll go check on this at their place.”

“You?” she challenged, stepping ahead and turning to face him as he tried to pass her to head out the door. She raised her chin to look him in the eye. “I thought we were working together on this.”

“Jess, you remember Junior Semple. Believe me, he’s gotten more cantankerous and off-the-wall over the years.”

“Is he the one who tied copperhead snakes around his sang patch?”

“No, but he’s paranoid about poachers. He’s been in trouble before for his belief that the best defense is a good offense. I’ll take you with me whenever I need help finding a sang site, but not out to the Semples’.”

They faced each other squarely in the doorway, half in, half out. She didn’t budge. “I realize the man used to be trigger-happy,” she conceded, “but he might tell you more if I were there. It would be like a daughter just looking for her mother with your help, not some official investigation. You’d probably spook him, now that you’re sheriff here.”

“I don’t want you getting hurt. You should be here, in case word comes about Mariah’s whereabouts.”

“You mean I’m allowed to stay here now?”

“Yes, but don’t make this—”

“Difficult? It is, Drew! I’m going with you. Please, or else you can just lock me up in your jail cell!”

He opened his mouth to say something else, then just shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. “All right. You just might be of help. But if Junior pulls anything, you do exactly what I say.”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

He cocked his big head and squinted down at her. “You been around marines, ma’am? Then you know the chain of command is not something to mock or ignore. Let me have that calendar,” he said, taking it from her and glaring down at it instead of her. “It may just be our first piece of evidence, not only because of Semples being listed here. Her crossing out of Vern Tarver’s name, after this long string of dates, looks really angry. And if she was upset, maybe he was, too.”

No one answered Drew’s “Hello!” or knock at the Semples’ one-story clapboard house back in Crooked Creek Hollow. Jessie hadn’t been here for years, but the place boasted a typical scattering of buildings—not as ramshackle as she recalled—with deep forests hunkered above. Actually, the house looked newly painted, so maybe raised sang had paid for that. Her eyes took in the chicken coop with no chickens, the old rundown, roofless barn, sturdy smokehouse, and a work shed, all strung up a narrowing valley. Tombstones like broken teeth guarded a small family graveyard, the kind not allowed anymore. She couldn’t read the dates on the mossy limestone markers, but the pioneers buried here had probably known Daniel Boone and Seth Bearclaws’s ancestors, when all of this territory was their hunting ground.

“You got any memories about where Junior’s sang patches are?” Drew asked her in a low voice. He kept shifting his narrowed stare, especially up into the deep shadows under the trees where a ragged dirt path zigzagged upward.

“No, but the patches will be on the northern exposure side of a gully, steep hillside or cove. Ginseng loves its privacy and leaf litter intact. Maybe in a woodlot with a beech or maple canopy overhead and maidenhair ferns and goldenseal to tip us off. I’ll spot it if we walk up in there a ways. See, you do need me.”

He turned and gave her a look that made her knees go weak. She hadn’t meant to goad him. Was he just ticked off, or was that fierce look something else? He put a finger to his lips to signal silence as they went on.