Jodie Picoult - Songs of the Humpback Whale - A Novel in Five Voices

Oliver raises his free hand, probably to punch me, but I stand up. I’m a good four inches taller than him, and both of us know that now I’m awake I could kill him. He puts his hand down. “Shut up,” he says between his teeth. “Just shut up.” He walks a few feet in front of me all three and a half miles back towards the car. He won’t speak to me, and frankly I don’t care. The sooner he’s out of here, the sooner Jane and I are alone again, the better.

It costs Oliver sixty-five bucks to get his car released from the garage where it’s been towed. We’ve had to walk another five miles because of this, in the other direction. It sets us back about another two hours. It is after three when we leave, having cleared the ticket with the police station in Goffstown. The attendant is an old guy with white hair that sticks up in tufts all over his head. He rubs his palm up against the windshield, which is filmy with dust. “Looks like you’re outta gas,” he says. “I’d do something about that if I were you.”

Oliver pushes past the man. He empties the can he’s been hauling around most of the day into the gas tank. It chugs, like it’s gulping down a good imported beer. When he finishes he throws the can into the back seat and stares at me. “What are you looking at? Are you going to get in or what?”

“I’ve been thinking,” I say. “You ought to let me drive.”

Oliver leans across the hood of the car. “Give me one good reason.”

“So we can find Rebecca tonight. We’re going to be getting off the major highways really soon, and I barely know where to go. I can do it by feel but I couldn’t really direct you.” I shrug; it’s the truth. I want this to be over with as soon as possible, so that I can call Jane and hear her voice on the other end of the line. Hear her tell me to come home.

We reach Carroll, Hadley’s hometown, just after dinnertime. I’m driving,-like I suggested. I take a couple of wrong turns, but I get us to the Slegg house. “Why, hello, Sam!” Mrs. Slegg says when she answers the door. “It sure is nice to see you. Hadley’s enjoying his vacation.” She gracefully sweeps her arm towards the hallway. “Won’t you come inside?”

“I’m afraid I can’t, Mrs. Slegg. This is my-this is Oliver Jones. We’re trying to find his daughter, and I think she may have come here to visit Hadley.”

Mrs. Slegg pulls her bathrobe tighter around her neck. “Hadley isn’t in some kind of trouble, is he?”

“Not at all.” I give my best happy-go-lucky smile. Hadley does it better,I think. “They’re just good friends, and well, we figure she came up this way.”

Mrs. Slegg flicks on the porch light from inside. “He’s not here now. He went out to a bar with a friend. Someone came to the door, I don’t think it was a girl but I can’t say for sure. And he said he was going out.”

Oliver steps in front of me. “Ma’am, do you mind if I take a look around? You can imagine what it’s like . . . your own child running away, wondering if she’s in some terrible danger.”

Mrs. Slegg nods with Oliver. “Oh, please, heavens, yes. I understand. Really I do.”

Oliver gives a quick grateful smile. “Do you know the names of the bars your son might frequent?”

“Oh,” Mrs. Slegg says, surprised. I’m not even watching Detective Jones anymore. “I don’t really know, exactly. I don’t get out much myself into town. Come to think of it, Sam, I don’t believe Hadley knows of any bars around here.” She turns to Oliver again. “You see, ever since I moved, Hadley’s been working with Sam back in Stow. I just came to live here after Mr. Slegg died; before that we had a farm too. Right near the Hansens, isn’t that right? Hadley comes up here but a couple of weekends a year, and at Christmastime, so he’s usually at home with his brother and me. He’s a quiet boy, you know, he’s not one of those rowdy types.”

Oliver nods. “He’s not at a bar,” he tells me.

“How do you know that?” I say, more to disagree with him than anything else. “Why would he lie to his own mother?”

“If you can’t answer that you’re more stupid than I thought. Check inside. See if there are any traces of him leaving, or of my daughter. I’m going into the backyard.”

Reluctantly, I trudge to the back end of the little ranch, to the room Hadley uses when he’s home. Mrs. Slegg stands behind me. “I’m sorry about intruding. We’ll be out of here very soon. And when Hadley gets home, maybe you can ask him to-” I stop, watching Mrs. Slegg run her hands over the bed.

“Isn’t this the strangest thing?” she says. “I gave Hadley an extra blanket just last night because it was so cold up here in the mountains. It was a really old one, from my grandma, and I told him to take good care of it because it’s an antique. And here it’s gone.”

I check under the bed, and in the closet and the empty drawers. Nothing.-Running to the next room over, Hadley’s brother’s, Mrs. Slegg tells me the blanket’s missing on his bed too. “Oh, Sam,” she says, her voice wavering. “My boy’s not going to get hurt, now, is he? You’ve got to promise me that!”

She reaches out to me. I’ve known her all my life. How can I tell her that her son’s run away, with a minor, and we haven’t a clue where they are? “Nothing’s going to happen to Hadley. Trust me.” I kiss her lightly on the cheek and dash outside, to where Oliver is crouched near the rocky wall that abuts the backyard. It’s the bottom of a mountain, actually: Mount Deception. Hadley and I climbed it once when we came up here for a long camping weekend. I remember it being steep, with few places for good strong footholds. And beautiful. Once you get to the top, if you ever do make it, there’s quite a view.

Oliver dusts the edges of some of the rocks that make up the looming-wall. “See this? Dirt. Mud. And it’s fresh. I’ll bet you ten-to-one Hadley and Rebecca have climbed up there.”

“There are two blankets missing from the house. I don’t know if that proves anything.”

Oliver cranes his neck. From this angle, right at the very bottom, it’s impossible to see to the top of Mount Deception. It hurts to just think about it. He anchors one leg in the crevice of the rocks. “Give me a lift up.”

“Oliver,” I tell him. “You can’t go climbing this mountain right now.” He is pulling himself up, and the remarkable thing is his agility, given the fact that he’s wearing street shoes instead of boots. “It’s getting dark, and you’re going to be stuck halfway up this mountain in the freezing cold. We’ll get a ranger; we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

“She’s going to be up there the whole night. God only knows what sort of shape she’s in, and how she got here.”

“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I say. And I don’t. I wasn’t planning on spending the night in the company of Oliver Jones. By now the sky has turned a milky color, like the background on blueprints. There are a few stars here and there. “Let’s go find a ranger. The sooner we get there the better.”

The nearest ranger station is at a campground about ten miles south of Hadley’s place. When we get there two rangers are inside the little log shack, cooking a can of Heinz beans.

Oliver just walks right in without being invited. He sits down at the kitchen table and starts to tell the rangers about Rebecca and Hadley. I interrupt him after about five minutes of extraneous background history. “Look, I know we can’t get up there tonight, but we’d really like to go there first thing in the morning. Maybe you can help us; a trail or something.”

The ranger who is just coming on duty takes out a relief map of the area and asks me to show him where the Sleggs live. I mention that I’ve hiked the mountain once with Hadley; I might remember things as we go.