Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

GARDE ÇA dug up a slope and got on top of a wooded promontory, where he stopped. Neither French nor English would get him going, so finally Sam dismounted and pulled on the bridle. The animal refused to take a step and bent to taste a weed. It was then he saw it, a wink of tin next to his brogan, and he looked out at the woods, knowing what it was before he picked it up: the can with the image of the red devil on its side. He called the boy’s name, his voice broken by the matrix of vines and trees. Putting his head down, he listened but heard only the mule’s rotary crunching.

He mounted and rode through a clattering brake of wild magnolias, then into a cloud of honeysuckle, and after a mile the mule again stopped dead for a long time, where the ridge started to descend. A good rein-whipping had no effect. He looked over the animal’s ears trying to imagine what he saw in the mat of pigweed woven with generations of wisteria and poison oak. He began to suspect a snake and got down to study the woods floor, then looked up to scan the trees for signs of a wildcat. He hoped they weren’t near a bear’s den, and the thought of a flying comb of claws made him tug on the mule’s bridle. “Allons!”

The mule closed his eyes and grew as still as a statue. Sam stepped back to give the bridle a jerk-to tear it off the sticker-matted head, if need be-and then he put his foot on something that was not solid ground. He looked behind him and jounced a bit, as if testing a gangplank for soundness, and the whole surface for fifty feet around moved up and down like a taut waxed tarpaulin. He dropped the reins, took another step, and his leg went through into nothing. Scrambling back to the mule’s hooves, he understood that a section of the ridge had washed out, leaving the forest floor of vines and leaves suspended over a chasm underneath. Both of them could have been killed had they tried to cross. Turning Garde Ça around, he opened a burlap pack and took out a round box of oats, feeding half of them to the mule in tribute.

Backtracking, he turned south down a trail of sorts. Near dark, Garde Ça stopped and looked off to his left. Sam listened to a hot breeze stir the tops of a line of sycamores, and in the distance saw a watchman crow give three caws and flit off a pine top like ink slung from a pen. Under him, the mule seemed to be holding his breath. Then he heard two metallic clicks and turned his head, knowing that hammers had been drawn back and fingers were tightening on the triggers. A dart of orange fire blasted out of the brush and the mule stood on his hind legs, braying. Sam slid behind the saddle and hung on until the forelegs slammed back down, then Garde Ça bucked and he arced over the long ears, impacting the trail like a mortar round. He lay there, his lungs flattened, his mouth open as if to ask why all the air had been sucked out of the world.

August stepped out of the brush while reloading a mottled double-barrel shotgun. “I want you to catch your animal and get back out of here.”

He tried to say something for a long time. His shoulder felt knocked out of its socket, and pinwheels of white fire spun through his vision. He wanted to say “Bastard!” but knew that wasn’t right, and that “Son of a bitch!” was even less true, so when he got a bit of wind he said, “I’m tryin’ to help, you fool.”

August stood over him, expressionless. “You can’t even help yourself.”

“Put up that gun. I didn’t come out here to hurt you.”

“I wasn’t sure who you were, exactly.” He brushed his hair out of his mosquito-stung face.

“Come on and pull this arm. It’s just out of its socket a little.”

August propped the shotgun against a sapling and grabbed Sam’s left hand. “You want me to yank on it?”

“Just turn it right when I tell you.” He took one breath, then another.

“Now?”

He nodded and cried out when the shoulder popped back in. “Damn it to hell!”

The boy took up his gun and stood in the trail. “Now you can ride.” He pointed down the trail to the mule, who stood sideways to the track, eating bright-green leaves of marsh alder.

“What you expect to do, boy?”

August’s face was still a child’s, but his eyes were fixed like a hawk’s. “I’m going to kill Mr. Ralph Skadlock, at the very least.”

Sam sawed his left arm gingerly, looking up at the boy, trying to figure how to reason with him. “I think you’ve heard this before, yeah, but if you do that, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

“I’ve got plenty to regret already, don’t you think?” He helped Sam to his feet.

“I’m not going anywhere. You mother told me to get you back safe.”

“Nobody’s stopping me.”

“One of the Skadlocks will put the brakes on you.”

August turned his back and walked off into the brush, and Sam tried to remember what he’d felt like at fifteen, when he’d already made up his mind to leave his uncle’s farm. Nothing would have changed his mind from the one thing it had focused on. He suspected such single-mindedness was both the best and the worst thing about youth.

Sam retrieved the mule and followed the boy to where he’d been building a campfire.

THE THREE OF THEM had arrived at the big house two nights before. Ralph was standing in the yard next to his brother, staring up at the roof.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Billsy said.

“You carry them shingles up to the window for her?”

“No. I guess she found ’em in the yard.” Billsy tilted his head like a dog. “She damn sure knows how to patch. Look how she’s lappin’ ’em.”

Vessy was on the roof in a worn pair of corduroys, copper nails stitching her mouth as she swung the hammer lightly to keep from splitting shingles.

Ralph nodded. “Makes me dizzy just watchin’ her.”

The men stood in the yard a long time. Now and then Vessy would call to the dormer window, and the child would put three or four shingles on the ledge.

“This one a whore?”

“Nope, just some kind of housemaid or cook.”

“How long you gonna let her hang around?”

Ralph spat. “Till we get rid of the kid.”

“I ain’t never seen a woman on a roof before. Not wearin’ pants, anyways.”

“You ready to hit the road?”

“I guess. You still want me to go all the way to New Orleans?”

“And use a coin phone to call Acy at night. I decided he better bring the money to us in Woodgulch.”

“What if he says he won’t pay?”

“Oh, he’ll pay, all right. I’ll keep that little girl and make a card-sharp out of her.”

“She’s bright as a cap pistol, all right.”

Ralph looked over at the tangle of trash woods behind the house. “We got to keep an eye out from now on.”

Billsy looked up in awe at the woman on the roof. “Breakfast was terrible good. I never knowed you could do that with cornbread.”

HE TOLD the boy to smear himself with citronella oil. They ate cheese and a potato roasted on the coals and said nothing for a long time until August looked at him over the flames, his eyes catching fire.

“Charlie Duggs told me about you.”

“That right? I hope it was an interesting story.”

“He said your whole family was murdered and you never even tried to find out who did it.”

“I think that must be the most interesting thing Charlie ever heard in his life. He never quits telling people about it.”

The boy’s face glowed with sullen disgust. “Well, why don’t you look them up?”

“Maybe I don’t want them to complete the job.”

“I’m not joking. Don’t you take anything to heart?”