Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

The door of the market banged closed at my back. At the window, the sisters pushed together to watch. I hurried my steps. Our girls could be caught up with the trinkets at the shop. They could have taken refuge in the church, the doctor’s. I searched the streets, ducked into corners, peeked inside wagons, and opened doors. The streets were sodden, the walkways splintered under the morning rush. When I spied one of my siblings, we raised a hand to each other and shook our heads before running off.

“Well, look who it is.”

I stumbled to a stop. Dora, my old school friend.

“Don’t be so jumpy, Nan. I haven’t seen you in town in such a long while.”

“No?” I asked. Dora studied me down her nose. I had seen her in town often enough myself, and even more across our fields. She was an Elliot now, after all.

“My dear, you look terrible.”

I touched the back of my hair. “Have you seen Esther and Myrle?”

“Those two. Are you still after them like a mother?”

“If you know where they are. ”

“Why ever would I?” She drew close to me and took my arm. She’d grown fat, her stomach taut under her dress, and I thought I might reach out to touch her, three months along she must have been or more — though I knew she’d been married less. It was a game we had played as girls, pushing dolls underneath our skirts, but never did we imagine forcing the man to offer a ring. “They’re terrible, aren’t they? Especially Esther,” she went on. “I didn’t want to say, but Nan, you’ve gotten so thin. What do you have of your own?”

I drew in my chin. “If you haven’t seen them. ”

“No, I haven’t. But they must be somewhere.”

I pulled my arm from her and she almost fell. “I’ve got to get back.”

“Oh, Nanny, don’t be angry. I was just saying, isn’t it time you let go?”

“Thank you, Dora,” I said. “I hadn’t realized I didn’t have that, something of my own.”

“Nan,” she called again, but I was off. Still that swelling beneath her dress stayed with me, my feet on the stones seeming narrow and hard. We’d sat in the same grade together, Dora and I, the desks for the other children lined up at our backs. Only Carl McNulty sat in front with us, tapping my chair with his foot. In that single room, Carl needed the extra watching, or so the teacher had said. Dora and I had been the smart ones. The teacher had said that as well. Why, if not for the war, we might have become teachers ourselves. And Carl and I, we might have become more.

When I found our wagon again, Father sat alone on the bench, his chin to his chest. “Nan,” he sighed, wiping his face.

I took his hand. In the quiet between us, he squeezed my fingertips. “They didn’t come.” The morning was turning dark. Clouds thickened. Father dropped my hand. One by one, my siblings appeared without a word and climbed in. Ray snatched the reins and the horses lurched into the road.

“The deputy was in,” Ray said.

I started. “You talked to the deputy?”

“He’ll stop by in the morning.”

Agnes hugged her knees. “You think they won’t come home.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But not by themselves,” she went on. “You think we need someone to bring them back.”

I brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “Hush now. Hush.”

The way home was silent and hard. The horses thrashed under the wagon’s weight, the roads full of muck. We threw blankets over our heads and the clouds grew darker yet. On the way to town, we had stopped to knock on doors, but the townsfolk kept to their porches, hands on their chins. Now here and there, a house stood gaping at the end of a long lane of dirt, the fields rutted. The Michaelsons, the Roberts, the Coors. After the war, they had pulled up stake when prices dropped and the banks had called in loans. Soon even some of the banks closed. Farther off, Carl McNulty walked his rows with a plow horse. One of his sleeves hung loose, pinned at the shoulder. Agnes tapped my arm. I had not seen Carl since he’d buried his mother a month after shipping home. He lived alone on that farm. As we passed, he took off his hat, looking up at the coming storm. Agnes waved to him, but I kept my hands in my lap. In another mile, a wooden sign hung nailed to a fence post, the words carved with a knife:

EVACUATION SALE

FURNITURE

ALL MUST BE SOLD

A growing line of trees, and there was the riverbank. The water rushed with rain, the only sound on the road save for the horses. In the distance, our house stretched with its many rooms, all of them dark. The girls had not come back. They had not come. Somewhere out there our sisters were lost, and the house seemed an empty place, the one I had lived in my whole life.

The next morning, the deputy knocked on our door just as we were washing the breakfast plates. The blinds were drawn, the lamps dim. My brothers’ guns stood on their stocks in the hall. As if expecting an empty house, the deputy retreated down the steps before the first of us could answer.

Ray led him to the parlor and lit a fire, though we had never spent such fuel in the daytime. The parlor smelled of Mother, or the musty smell of something long past Mother. The man took the largest chair, crossed one leg over the other, and Ray winced. The rest of us sat perched close enough to the fire to sweat. Agnes pulled at her collar, her chin quivering. I rushed her out of the room at once.

“What could that man possibly do for us?” she sobbed. I put my arm around her, but still she shuddered. “Nothing, nothing.”

“Come now,” I whispered. She tore away from me and ran up the stairs. I thought to call out to remind her, but she swept into the girls’ room and rushed down again, out to her porch. I returned to the others, their eyes on the ceiling. The deputy’s Adam’s apple seemed sharp as a wooden heel.

“So,” the man broke in. “You have a missing girl.”

“Two,” I said.

“Two.” He straightened in his chair. “How old?”

“Esther’s sixteen,” I said, “but Myrle just turned fourteen. We haven’t seen any sign of them since the night before last.”

“They left nothing behind? No note?”

“There’s a trunk missing,” I said. “A small one, though we aren’t sure whether it’s newly gone or been missing a long time. Father might have taken it away.”

“Did you, Mr. Hess?” the man asked. “Did you take the trunk away?”

Father didn’t answer, his eyes on the man. Ray turned his face to the wall.

“There was a chair in their room as well,” I went on. “It was wedged against the door. I had to break it to get in.”

“You saw it blocking the door even though you were on the other side?”

“Well, no.”

“But you said. ”

“Nan found a hammer under their bed,” Patricia hurried in. “Isn’t that strange?”

“Is it?”

Patricia drew up her shoulders. “Nan saw Myrle late that night too. She was standing by the front door. Tell him, Nan.”

“She could have been sleepwalking for all I know.”

“And they left Myrle’s bed unmade,” Patricia said.

The man sighed. “You’re telling me that their door was wedged closed, a hammer was found, and a trunk is missing, and you saw the girls up and running about after their bedtime.”

“We’re not really sure about the trunk,” I told him.

Ray cleared his throat. “I don’t understand what all these questions have to do with anything.”

“It sounds to me as if the girls have run off,” the man said. “A night or two and they’ll be back.”

“But it’s already been two nights,” Patricia said. “This will be the third.”

“They wouldn’t run away like that,” I assured him. “Not our girls. They were terribly happy here.”