Tim Gautreaux - The Missing

“You don’t want to do this,” he whispered.

The boy fixed his wounded eyes on him. “You don’t know what I want.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I saw him walk into the house. The split second he comes out again, he’s a dead man.”

“You’ll be nothing more than a murderer. You can think you’re a musician all you want to, but for the rest of your life you’ll look back on this here with nothing but shame.” Sam saw that the hammers were drawn, the boy’s fingers set on both triggers, and he imagined the buck and roar, the stink of smoke and the twin pattern of coarse shot splintering apart the door frame and anyone in it.

“I’m no murderer,” August said, his voice trembling. “I’m getting even for my father.”

With a glance Sam saw there was no way he could wrest the ten-gauge away without it discharging. “Look,” he whispered, “Skadlock’s maybe fifty years old. He smokes, he drinks rotgut, God knows what kind of women he goes with.” Sam scanned the rear of the house, deperate to think of the right thing to say. “He drinks cistern water full of bugs. He probably won’t be around another five or six years. You won’t be taking much from him, and you’ll be giving up a whole lot more.”

“Just shut up,” August hissed.

“And down the line, when he does die, he’ll have to pay up then. I don’t know what will happen, exactly, but it probably ain’t good.”

“I don’t care about that stuff.”

“Well, you’d better care, because when you die you’ll have to answer for this. You might not believe that, either, but consider if you’re wrong, boy. Consider if you’re wrong. And you know what else? Whatever you say about Ralph Skadlock, he let your father live after he came here against him with a pistol and knife.” He kept his eyes on the door frame, praying for it to stay empty. “Another thing, I’ll bet Skadlock never hid in a bush and killed another man.” Watching the boy’s eyes, he saw something there that made him go on. “Believe me. You’re not doing this for the reason you think you are.”

August turned to him as though he’d suddenly appeared out of thin air, then looked back at the house and down at the shotgun. The plum-brown hammers reared back like snake heads, but he let down the left and then the right, and lowered the gun, defeat he didn’t understand showing on his face.

At that moment the side door to the big house squalled on its hinges and Ralph Skadlock stepped through, carrying a child on his right arm as his boot heels knocked along the walkway. The steamboat blew its whistle, and he stopped and pointed in that direction. When the child turned its head to look, both Sam and August could see who she was.

After the kitchen door closed behind them, Sam laid a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s back off a little.” The boy’s face contorted toward crying, and Sam pulled him along.

They found the mule and led him north along the tree line, then turned into a blackberry thicket and stopped. The boy was mortified, unable to speak, but Sam finally got him to look up.

“I almost-”

Sam took him by the shoulders. “Shut up. Knock that out of your head.”

“She would’ve-”

He pushed him, and the boy fell in a heap. “You can beat yourself up later. Right now we got to think about this from every angle.”

He tramped down a flat spot and they sat and ate crackers out of the saddlebags, washing them down with coppery water from the canteen. They talked a long time and sweated in the noon sun, trying to understand what Lily was doing here. Sam kept after the boy with questions, not letting him think about what he’d almost done. After nearly an hour, they decided it was all about transit. Skadlock hadn’t taken her out of loneliness, and the cook wasn’t running off to start an instant family in the hulking mansion. Given what he’d seen in the graveyard, Sam guessed the old woman was dead.

August seemed confused. “You think he’s shaking down the Whites?”

“They’re shaking down somebody. Why else would they take her again?” He looked around and lowered his voice. “When they first made off with your sister, the old woman took care of her. They need that Vessy woman to do the same.”

“The Whites are as much at fault as anybody,” the boy mumbled.

“More. And you just think about that.”

August jerked his head sideways. “You think they’re going to deliver her?”

“Where, and to who, that’s the question. I know it won’t be in Kentucky. Ralph’s liable there, even though the Whites probably won’t risk setting the law on him.”

“It could be anywhere.”

“I don’t know about that. Let’s ride back to Zeneau and hang around the store, maybe find something out by accident.” He stood and looked up at the sky. “Come on.”

The boy remained on the ground, sitting cross-legged. “Lucky, I’m sorry.”

Sam studied a cumulus shaped like a horse, a blue hole about where the heart would be. “So far, there’s nothing to be sorry about.”

DOUBLED UP on Garde Ça and backtracking north, they spent the afternoon losing and finding the trail in the vine-tortured gullies. For a whole hour, the mule stood like a steaming boulder in the middle of a washout for no reason they could discern. They dismounted and sat on the ground, watching him shake off flies.

The sun was low in the sky when they broke out of the woods and rode up the one street that was Zeneau. At the store they greeted the same old men and chatted their ears off until they rose one at a time and went home for supper. Sam bought two bottles of soda and pigs’ feet wrapped in wax paper, and they lounged on the front landing, eating and looking around at the board-and-batten buildings as if they’d grown up in this sorry place and knew every tick-haunted dog under every porch in town.

The storekeeper came out shortly before sundown and padlocked an iron bar across the slantboard doors. “You boys goin’ to ride the station truck out tomorrow?”

Sam took a draw of soda. “If the driver’ll let us and we can sell the mule.”

“They’s no place to take a room here. If you want, spend the night up on these cotton bales like the boy done before. Just don’t smoke if you do.”

“All right. Does that deputy make rounds?”

The storekeeper put on his fedora. “When he’s chasin’ his tail. He won’t bother you.”

“Drinks a bit?”

“A bit.”

“His cousin keep him supplied?”

“You know Ralph?”

“We’re not exactly friends, but I’ve dealt with him.”

“I’m sorry for you.”

Sam was waiting for such a signal. “Seen his old mom lately?”

The man put a hand against a post. “She comes in town maybe four times a year, loads up two horses, and heads back south. I was kind of expectin’ her last week when the weather wasn’t so hot.” He spat and looked them over. “You didn’t get down as far as the old house?”

“We did. Nobody was there.”

“The hell you say. I saw ’em all, even Billsy, plus a woman and some little cousin’s child. They rode down there four, five days ago.”

Sam turned his head toward August. “We didn’t stay around there long. When’s the last time you saw the old woman?”

“Like I said. Maybe three, four months.” He hitched his baggy pants up over his belly and cinched his belt.

“You see her pass through here last year with her little niece a second time? Comin’ out?”

“Cousin’s child,” the storekeeper said. “Told me later it was her cousin’s child from over in Arkansas. Pretty kid to spring out of that bunch.”

“Where were they going from here?”

The storekeeper shrugged and seemed aggravated. “This is last year, and they was headed north to Woodgulch. There’s a train there, as you know.”