Larkspur Cove (20 page)

Mart made a perceptive sound, honing in. “Is there a new culvert under the road?”

I leaned out the window, taking in the mound of fresh gravel beneath my car. “Well, yes, actually, there is. I’m sitting right on top of it.”

“You pointed east or west?”

“West.”

“All righty, then,” Mart’s voice faded as he talked to Len. “Len, can you tell me how to get here from where they just put in that new culvert at the crossroads down from Eagle Eye?”

I proceeded to get directions to Len’s place. The strangeness of that struck me, as I was jotting down turns and landmarks. Len was afraid of Social Services, and he wanted Mart to go away, yet he was helping to give me directions.Very odd.

“It’s about six or seven miles, judging by the map,” I said when we finished. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“As quick as possible would be good,” Mart replied. “I really only have jurisdiction here over the baby raccoon and the feather, if you know what I mean.”

“I understand. I’ll hurry.”

Len spoke to Mart again, and Mart added one last thing as I pulled away from the intersection. “Len says to stay over to the left when you get to the low-water crossing. It’s boggy on the right side. You’ll get stuck.” That final bit of advice left me not knowing what to think. On the one hand, Len was worried about anyone checking up on the situation with the little girl. On the other hand, he wanted to make sure I didn’t get stuck in the mudhole.

As I followed Mart’s directions through a maze of county byways, logging roads, and finally down a rutted set of tracks that had last been maintained sometime after Conestoga wagons traveled over it, I tried to imagine what I would find at Len’s house. If Len was as people described him, how could he possibly be caring for a child? What sort of life was she living? Why had she been left in such a dismal place?

After the past few days, the third question wasn’t so hard to sort out.There were any number of possible answers. Because the mother had a drug problem, because she was occupied with a new boyfriend, because she didn’t have the mental capacity to understand what she was doing, because she was tired of being tied down with a child and wanted the freedom to do her own thing, because she was out of money or patience, or both. Between my travels and the stories I’d heard at the office, many scenarios made sense.

I turned off the rutted path onto an even narrower trail and found myself bumping through a scrappy cornfield, then past a hedge of cedars that shielded an enormous vegetable garden. The garden was surprisingly lush and well kept, the dirt freshly tilled, all the weeds pulled, the tomato plants carefully tied up in wire cages, protected by crudely built arbors of cedar branches.

The garden faded into long scrappy grass, dirt, and weeds as I drew closer to the house. Mart jogged out and met my car in the driveway. When I rolled down the window, he leaned in, glancing back toward the house, where Len was waiting at the bottom of the steps, eyeing me suspiciously. “Act like we’re friends. He’s pretty nervous. So far, he’s been cooperative, but I don’t have a warrant, and there’s really no evidence that he’s not telling the truth about the little girl or that she’s in any obvious danger. For now, we’re just here on a friendly visit, as long as he’s willing. Once he turns over that baby raccoon and the feather from the live trap, he’s free to ask me to leave anytime. He’s skittish about anything having to do with Social Services, and it’s pretty hard to make him understand things. It sounds like this little girl has been here since the medical clinic visit the week before last. Apparently, the mom was around for the first few days, and then once Len got her car in working order and put gas in it for her, she left.”

“Okay,” I answered, trying to think through the situation. “Is the little girl all right? How old is she? Where did you find her? What else did he say about her?”

Mart held a hand up to quiet me. “I can’t really get a bead on whether he expects the mom to show back up anytime soon. Just guessing by looks, I’d say the girl is about five, maybe six years old. She seems fine, physically. The rest, I can’t tell too much about. It doesn’t look like she’s afraid of Len, but she doesn’t want anything to do with me. I found them this morning by the lakeshore. She was still half asleep. I guess he’d taken her from bed and carried her down the hill. He probably wanted to run his trotlines before the lake got too populated.”

I turned off the engine and grabbed the keys. “He was going to put a child in the boat asleep? With no life vest on?” That, in itself, was endangerment of a child.

Mart opened the door and waited for me to slip from the seat. “I don’t know, exactly. I caught up with him before he got to that point. He did have a couple old vests in his boat – probably found them washed up on the lakeshore somewhere. He’s been ticketed enough times, no doubt he knows enough to keep vests in the boat. He may not understand everything, but he knows that citations cost money.”

Closing the door, Mart walked with me toward the porch, where Len continued eyeing us suspiciously. Repositioning his baseball cap nervously, he spat a plug of tobacco, then crossed his arms over a long-sleeved shirt that was too thick for the day. As we came closer, I could see that he was sweating, beads of moisture drawing narrow trails down the gristly coating of dirt and stubble on his neck. He didn’t come out to meet us, but he didn’t back away, either. When we cleared the corner of the porch, I realized that the little girl was nearby, playing in the shady patch of dirt where I’d seen the dishes and mud pie before. She’d turned her back toward the adults, her long, dark hair falling in uncombed tangles adorned with bits of grass and leaves.

Mart and I halted, and Mart made introductions. “Len, this is Andrea. I thought maybe Birdie might like to talk to her for a minute while we take another look at the things you’ve got in the barn.”

Tipping his head to one side, Len squinted at me, and then glanced at Mart. “Dis y-y-you gul-friend?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What h-h-her unn-name?”

“This is Andrea,” Mart offered, and Len turned an ear toward him. Old burn scars pockmarked his other cheek, and his earlobe had healed with a crescent-shaped piece missing.

Len regarded me again. “She a p-p-purdy ulll-lady.” He smiled at Mart, revealing a row of stained and partially missing teeth, dotted with bits of tobacco. The scent of foul breath and body odor wound up my nostrils, and I swallowed a swell of stomach acid.

“Yes, she is.” Mart slipped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. “But you remember she’s my lady friend, so don’t be flirting with her, now.”

Ducking his head, Len laughed bashfully, then spit another plug of tobacco. “She unnn-nice?” He looked at me again.

“Sometimes.” Mart caught my eye and winked, and for a moment, I forgot where we were and why. “How about we let her talk to Birdie while we go look around the barn some more? Now, you know that trapping or keeping nongame birds is illegal, right? An eagle is a federally protected nongame bird. You can’t just catch coons out of the wild and keep them, either.”

Len shifted uncomfortably, stuffing his hands into the pockets of jeans that hung shapeless on his stooped-over frame. “I ain’t uhhh . . . uddd-d-did . . . unnn-nothin’ bad. Ugg-got them f-feathers ulll-last year. Off a turkey.The c-c-coon mama ugg-got dead . . .” He paused, clearly struggling for words. “Ull-lightnin’ ugg-got her.”

Mart pushed up the back of his cowboy hat and scratched underneath. “Len, the thing is, you can’t be keeping a wild animal, even if you did just find it wandering. You understand? It’s against the law. Raccoons carry rabies, for one thing. You understand what that is – rabies? You’ve got that little coon in the house with Birdie. It could make her sick. You understand that?”

Squirming, Len nodded. “Lil’ c-c-coon, him just a ubb-baby. S-s-somebody ugg-gotta feed-um.”

Mart cast a sympathetic look toward the house, where a masked face peered through the corner of the screen.“You can’t keep a wild animal for a pet, Len.You find something like that, you have to bring it to me, and then I’ll take it to somebody who can feed it. I won’t let it die, I promise, but you can’t keep it.”

Len’s lips pushed together and pursed outward, and he scratched the dirt-etched wrinkles on his chin. “I c-can uff-feed it. Umm-my mama udd-done it.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Mart sighed. “I’m sure your mama did, but this isn’t the old days. There’re laws against keeping wild animals. It’s against the rules. You understand? You’ll get a ticket for that. And besides, you’ve got Birdie in the house. It could bite her.”

“He uddd-don’t bite unn-nobody. Him’s all urrr-right. Bbb-Birdie likes um.”

When Len said her name, the little girl stopped playing for a moment and turned her head the slightest bit, as if she were trying to catch a glimpse of us without being noticed.

“Let’s go look in the barn.” Mart’s voice held a patient tolerance I hadn’t imagined he would possess. I’d guessed him to be hard-nosed, in terms of law enforcement – the unforgiving sort he’d been when he showed up on my dock to talk about Dustin.“You’re going to have to give me the raccoon, Len,” he added as he started toward the barn. Hands pushed into his pockets, Len followed, darting apprehensive glances over his shoulder toward Birdie and then toward me.

I waited until they’d disappeared before I moved to the corner of the house, where the little girl was playing. In the backyard, a white dog flattened its ears and charged the fence. I recognized it as the one that had wanted to eat me alive the day Len and Birdie passed by in the truck. This little girl was in more danger from that dog than she was from the baby raccoon chattering behind the screen.

“Hi, Birdie,” I said, squatting down, so as to be eye level with her. “Remember me? I saw you the other day when my car broke on the side of the road. You and your grandfather went by in your truck.”

Birdie continued playing, cocking her head to one side as she scooped dampened dirt into a dented measuring cup. Her eyes narrowed in rapt concentration as her fingers, stubby and round like a toddler’s, packed the soil carefully into the container.

“What are you making?”

No acknowledgment. I knew she could hear me, because I’d seen her react when Len said her name. She’d been listening to our conversation even though she didn’t want to participate.

“It looks like a cupcake.” I duck-walked a little closer, out of sight of the dog. Birdie seemed oblivious to the barking and growling, but it had me on edge. In the back of my mind, I was planning escape routes, in case the dog got out. “A chocolate cupcake,” I added.

Birdie swallowed, then licked her lips, as if she were thinking of chocolate.

“I wonder if we could find some frosting for that cupcake?” I took note of her clothing, which would have played well in a production of
The Grapes of Wrath
. Her oversized brown cotton dress still had the plastic string from a store tag hanging off the collar, but it was so soiled that the tiny blue flowers were almost invisible in places. The dress had been paired with incongruous red cowboy boots. A blue knee sock rose from the top of one boot, but there was no evidence of a sock on the other foot.

The boots looked to be at least three sizes too big, more suitable for a ten- or eleven-year-old. Someone had wrapped a piece of twine around the ankles and tied it tightly in an attempt to snug up the fit. Birdie’s legs protruded from the jury-rigged footwear, thin, sun-browned, and dotted with bug bites. Altogether, she looked like a little girl playing an odd game of
let’s pretend
in someone else’s clothes. Her hands and knees were soiled from digging in the dirt, and she had leaves and grass in her hair, but I’d seen more unkempt kids in my travels thus far. She also appeared to be well fed and comfortable with her surroundings, with the exception of my presence there.

“You have very pretty boots,” I said and touched the toe of one. “I think I’d like to have a pair like that. Do you know where I can get some?”

Pausing in her dirt-packing operation, Birdie cocked her head to one side and observed my finger touching her toe. Sliding the boot away, she pressed her feet together and wrapped an arm around her legs, then looked toward the barn, hoping to find Len, I guessed.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that I wanted to take
your
boots. I don’t think they’d fit. Do you?”

Birdie studied her boots, then the sensible loafers I’d put on for the day’s fieldwork. Lifting a hand, she swiped wisps of dark hair from her face, her gaze moving back and forth between her shoes and mine, as if she were making an acute study of both. Whether or not she was willing to fully engage in our communication, she seemed to have no problem with cognition. She understood exactly what I was asking.

Sliding my foot across the space between us, I matched it to Birdie’s. “I think mine are bigger, don’t you?” Actually, there wasn’t a huge difference between my shoes and hers. There should have been, but there wasn’t. “You’d look pretty funny in mine, don’t you think? You’d be like a clown at the circus, with big, big feet.” I forced a laugh to see if she would react, but she only studied the shoes a moment more, then went back to packing dirt into the cup.

I returned to discussion of the mud cake. “I know how to make a castle in the dirt – like a princess would live in. Do you know how to make a castle?”

Her shoulders moved up and down the slightest bit, an answer . . . or perhaps she was only shrugging away the hair that had bunched in the neckline of her dress. Resting her chin on her knee, she packed the last bit of dirt into the cup, then slid it across the space between us, folded her hands over the top of her boot, and waited for me to build a castle.