Bonnie Nadzam - Lamb

“You don’t get to make up the laws of the universe.”

“I thought that was the game.”

“Oh, my dear.” He stooped and reached into the cold water and pulled out a smooth stone. “This is not a game.” He held it out for her to kiss and skipped it down the river.

“Forget it, then.” She stooped to find a stone. “I don’t want any fish.”

Small drab birds hid in the red willow and tore upward in a flash of blue light. The embarrassing drip and splash of river water. Birds splitting open the quiet with clear and high-pitched calls. The hollow rush of wind. The ruffled hem of her nightgown lifting in the breeze, catching on the grass.

“Do you want to put your feet in the river?” he asked.

Alison Foster saw them standing like that, the knee-high grasses waving and billowing like yards of silk at the backs of their knees. He watched the man run his hand through the girl’s hair and tousle it on top. He watched her run from him, and he heard her high small laugh and the low hum of his response. Sunlight glanced off the child’s hair in a bright ring on the crown of her pale head. Foster cleared his throat. Lifted his trembling face at them. “This is private property,” he said.

The girl started, but Lamb, shielding his eyes with his hand, turned toward the skinny old man. “That’s my property.” He grinned.

Just as Lamb was about to put a hand on the child’s head, she slipped her hand into his. His heart rose in his chest and up into his neck. “My niece Emily,” he told Foster, who offered no comment on either the girl’s nightgown or the bruise on Lamb’s face. He looked down at her, indicating her bare feet. “That ain’t safe.” The girl said nothing. He turned to Lamb. “You here for a while? The place needs some maintenance.”

Lamb smiled. “We’re just here the week. At least, that was the plan. Em was just saying she’d like to stay forever.”

“Not much of a place for a girl.”

“I like it,” Tommie said.

“Well.” He gave her a thin smile. “Girl doesn’t get to choose where she lands, do she?” He looked at Lamb. “How old?”

“Almost twelve,” she answered.

Foster ignored her. Lamb looked at her and back to the old man. “She’s eleven.” Foster nodded. “Em, why don’t you give us a minute? Go on and give those city feet another good rinsing.” The girl nodded and went back to the edge of the river. “Don’t fall in,” he called after her, then lowered his voice. “She just lost her mother,” he said. “We’re just here for a while to. You know. Figure out what’s next.”

“I’m sorry. Your sister?”

“In-law. Thank you.”

“Cancer?”

“Drunk driver.”

“Well, I’m sorry. That’s a shame.”

“She’s having a tough go of it. Even here.”

“Like I said. No place for a girl.” They stood looking out at the river. “Terrible thing, a house in that kind of disrepair.”

“Well, I’ll need to come out sometime more than a week to get it all straight.”

“You’re taking her back east?”

“That’s our plan.” Lamb lifted his gaze from the river, to the nets of birch overhead. “How is Mrs. Foster?”

“We have a nurse coming twice a week from Casper.”

“Oh, good. Glad to hear it.”

The old man put his hands in the pockets of his Wranglers. “You-all need anything.”

“Thanks.”

“The place really needs cleaned. Inside and out.”

“I know.”

“Calhoun used to polish every beam.”

Lamb smiled. “So you say.”

“Gutter’s coming down in the back.”

“I know it. Thanks.”

They shook hands, and as Foster walked back through the grass and brush, the girl looked up at Lamb from the edge of the river where she sat with her nightgown tucked up between her thighs.

“He’s a jerk.”

“Watch your language.”

“Well, he is.”

“I’m sort of the new guy in this area. Best not to ruffle his feathers. You been in a place as long as he has, you start to feel entitled.”

“Entitled.”

“Like everything is yours. Your river, your grass, your business.”

“Since when are we staying forever?”

Lamb sat down beside her, his feet in the grass and his arms stretched out behind him. “We’re not. Four days to go. Then we turn around and deliver you back to your mother. All red cheeked and your hair full of wind and nineteen thousand new freckles on your neck and face.”

“What if I want to stay longer?”

“Too bad.”

“No fair.”

“A minute ago you wanted to go home right away.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Boy.” He whistled. “You’re keeping me on my toes.”

“Do I have to be Emily?”

“Don’t you want to be Emily?” The flowers on the hem of her nightgown were dark blue, wet with river water.

“What is she like?”

“Well for one, she’s extraordinarily beautiful. The wind and the river and open space did wonders for her complexion.” Tommie rolled her eyes. “No, seriously. And the more she ran around outside barefoot and washed her face in the cold spigot water and rubbed dirt into her hair, the more beautiful she became.”

“What else?”

“She also became really, really smart during her time out west. I mean wonderfully bright. Want to know why?”

“Why?”

“She had such brilliant company.”

Slow to get the joke, she smiled. “I’m hungry.”

“I know. I’ve been sitting here wondering how I’m going to feed you. Shall we explore the grounds?”

It was the most natural thing in the world. Days growing shorter, autumn on its way. Pretty soon breakfasts by the fire, rinsing out the mess kit in the river water. There’d be hot chocolate in the evenings. Hauling dead wood in off the riverbank and splitting it for the woodstove. He wishing they could fix her a whole Thanksgiving dinner by campfire.

“You could do that?”

“Of course I could do that.”

“With a turkey?”

“A sharp-tailed grouse. And trout from the river. And chokecherry wine.”

“Wine for us both?”

“Just a taste for you.”

And we should probably pause here to imagine too how things were going in Illinois. How Tommie’s mother would first think Tommie was at the mall or at a neighbor’s house. How then Tommie’s mother would realize she had not taken a breath for days. And she would start smoking, right away, to make every breath until she died a chore and a countdown until she could be with Tom again.

And how they would interview Jenny and Sid. Investigators, social workers, their parents all in a green-carpeted room with dry-erase boards, a coffeepot, chairs arranged in a circle. How one at a time the girls are questioned, how they cry after the same question. Was it a dare? How they’re apologetic and how when they’re flanked by their parents they seem like a couple of kids. How a social worker would ask if they understand how much danger their friend is in. How the girls will tell them every detail they can recall: how they made fake tube tops and stapled them and dotted their arms with blue-ink freckles. How they whispered their conversations about menstruating, explaining that they were talking about things Tommie wouldn’t understand. How they went bra shopping on the weekends, carried their gym clothes to and from school in Victoria’s Secret bags. Telling Tommie maybe one day she’d have a reason to go in the store too. How Jenny wrote a fake love letter from Tommie to her stepdad, Jessie, and read it out loud on the bus. How they pushed her in Sid’s basement closet with Luke Miller, then nicknamed her Prudie and told everyone she’d cried and covered her head with her hands and hid behind Sid’s dad’s raincoat. How that first day she was taken into that old guy’s car it had seemed, yes, unwillingly. The color of the Ford. The height of the man. His hair color. Who he looked like on TV. That Tommie wasn’t taking the bus anymore after that. That Jenny saw her trace the letter G on the floor with her shoe, over and over and over again, straight through a history class. How they would be looking for Geralds, Grants, Garys, Genes, Glens with registered navy blue Ford Explorers. How the social worker—with a long flat mane of strawberry blond hair graying at the temples—didn’t believe any of it. A handsome man who looks like some TV star befriends this unremarkable girl and takes her away? A man like that isn’t missed by his family? His boss? His wife, say? The whole thing told like a story made up by a child.