Tim Gautreaux: The Missing

He heard the girl come into the house and he went to her. She turned and saw the bullet holes glowing like electric lights with the winter glare flowing through. She glanced down at the floor, and he was glad that it was dusty.

“This is where it happened?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t remember anything about them at all?”

He turned his head. “Not one second.”

Then she said something that was unusual for her. “I’m really sorry. It’s awful, isn’t it?”

The statement opened a door that had been locked between them, and he walked to where she was standing next to the stove. “I’d say so.”

“Is this rusty thing all that’s left?”

“Yes.”

Her face brightened. “We could take it back to New Orleans and put it in the backyard. Think how it would look with ivy growing out of the top and hanging down.”

When she reached to open the fire door, he bent over suddenly and pressed both hands against it. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” he said, his voice trembling. He kept his hands on the metal as if testing it for warmth. She stepped away, her clear eyes watching him carefully, and after a moment she walked toward the back of the house. His hands still welded in place, he listened to her move through the place and realized that her guess was as good as his as to what life and death had happened inside these plain walls. When she had passed through all the rooms, he heard her push open the back door. Only when he heard her cry “Look!” was he able to move away from the stove.

She was on the back landing pointing up under its overhang. “Look at that. Could you get it down?”

He reached up with both hands and lifted a medium-sized washboard from a galvanized nail. His mouth fell open for a moment.

“You could take that home as a souvenir,” she said. He began walking slowly back inside, turning the washboard in his hands.

He paused by the stove again, aware that what he had in his hand his mother had held a thousand times, that his clothes had been scrubbed clean over its metal ridges, and he didn’t know whether he should smash it against the stove in a weeping rage or take it home and hang it on his kitchen wall to see for the rest of his life and sometimes hold in his lap, as though it contained the phantom touch of his lost family. Hearing Lily come in behind him, he set it down and leaned it against the stove. “Maybe not.”

“Well, can I take it?”

He put a hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the door. “What would you do with that?”

“I just want it.” She darted back around him and tucked the washboard under her arm.

“What for? That thing’ll just keep me looking back.” He glanced past her toward the kitchen, not understanding.

Her blue eyes were reddening and brimful. “I think we should keep it. It doesn’t have to make you think only about the bad things.”

He reached out to her. “Just leave it. I don’t remember any good things.”

She clamped her arm against the washboard and stepped back. “You came here to find something. Here it is. It’s to imagine what happened before those.” She pointed to the bullet holes.

He turned his head up and stared at the shafts of sunlight blazing through the wall. In a small voice, he said to the dust-haunted room, “I found something from before the shooting.”

She walked up and stood close. “ We found it,” she corrected, and for a heartbeat she leaned into him.

Outside, they saw that the horse had sidled up to the porch and was scratching his head against a post. Sam swung Lily into the saddle, untied the reins, and got up behind her. “Your turn to drive.” She handed him the washboard, and he stood it up on the saddle between them. “Now your seat’s got a back.”

The horse began to whinny and sidestep away from the house, and she yelled, “I don’t know how to work the reins!”

He rested his chin on the top of her head. “Lily, if anybody can figure it out, you can.”