After Eli (24 page)

Owen stumbled backward in his crouched position. He looked quizzically at Michael.

“Go!” Michael hissed.

Owen turned and slipped away, along the river, behind the row of buildings. Michael sat on the ground and watched until he disappeared, then he stood and began humming. He strolled to the river and waded into the cold water. He shuddered at the chill, then rolled his body beneath the water. The water covered him like ice and he lifted his head from its surface and gulped the night air. He swam to the shoreline and waded to the river bank. His body jerked with cold and he began to massage his arms with his hands. He stretched and shook his body like an animal. He opened his mouth and lifted his face to the sky and let the water run into his lips. It was time, he thought. It was working, all of it. Timed perfectly. He smiled broadly.

* * *

The doctor’s house was on a knoll at the end of town. It was a majestic frame house, painted white like a great shell. There were four brick columns across the front porch and the shrubbery that surrounded the home like a fur wrapping was trimmed to a sculptured perfection.

Michael stood in the driveway and studied the house. A thought amused him: The doctor had never invited him into his house. He wondered if the doctor had ever been married. No one had ever mentioned a wife. Probably not, he decided. The doctor was the kind of man who would take whores like a prescription medicine.

Time, Michael thought. It was time.

He broke into a run and bounded up the front steps and began beating heavily on the front door.

“Doc, wake up,” he yelled. “Wake up.”

He continued pounding on the door as he saw lights pop on in the house. He could hear the doctor stumbling through rooms.

The door opened suddenly and Garnett stood in the doorway. He had pulled a tattered robe around him and his face was red.

“Goddamnit, what’s the matter?” he snapped. “You’re tearing the door off its hinges.”

Then the doctor’s eyes focused on Michael, dripping with water, shaking uncontrollably.

“God Almighty, what happened?” he said in astonishment.

“The—the boy got away,” Michael stammered. “He—he shoved me in the river and run off.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He went south, out of town.”

“God Almighty,” Garnett muttered. “Come in. Come in,” he added quickly. “Get out of the cold.”

“Doc, I—” Michael swallowed the words and kicked hard against the doorjamb.

“What’s the matter?”

“Doc, he—he got my knife.”

“Jesus Christ. Jesus.”

THE TELEPHONE MESSAGE from Garnett was blunt, a simple command, and Curtis had asked no questions, though he knew immediately the trouble was Owen Benton. In thirty minutes he was standing in Garnett’s kitchen listening, as Michael, stripped of his wet clothes and wrapped in a blanket, sat at the kitchen table and retold the story of Owen’s escape.

Owen had awakened and complained of cramps in his legs and asked to walk for a few minutes outside the cell. He had been alert and more talkative than before, saying again and again how grateful he was for the care he’d been given, and then he had asked to walk beside the river, as he had done on other nights with the doctor. The night air had revived him even more and he had spoken of his sister in Atlanta, the sister named Elizabeth. He talked of how he had missed her, how they had been close, and how he yearned to see her again. And then he had asked Michael to cut him a twig from the cottonwood tree to chew on, to clean his teeth, and when Michael had pulled his knife, Owen had rushed him, striking him in the chest with his shoulder, making him drop the knife, and pushing him into the river.

“I saw him grabbin’ up the knife when I plunged in,” Michael reported regretfully. “And off he runs, like a deer, straight down the road and into the woods. And there I’m thrashin’ about in the water, freezin’, feelin’ the Devil’s own fool. It was
my fault, Curtis, and I’ll take the full blame for it. I trusted him. I truly trusted him.”

“You wadn’t the only one,” Curtis replied. “Nobody on earth could’ve made me believe that boy’d up and run. Nobody. I kind of thought Frank might’ve come back and talked him into leavin’. I been expectin’ that. I reckon I was wrong.”

Garnett poured a half-glass of whiskey from a jar and shoved it across the table to Michael.

“Drink this,” he ordered. He pushed more wood into the furnace of the kitchen stove and pulled the chairs draped with Michael’s clothes close to the rising heat.

“One thing I don’t want,” Garnett said. “I don’t want a bunch of crazy damn fools after that boy. First thing people’ll be thinking is that Frank was right, that the boy did that killing. And this running off may not be that at all. It just may be that he was scared. By God, I’d be. I’d be terrified if I knew I’d been accused of murder.”

“But he got the knife, Doc,” argued Curtis.

“So what? It fell, he picked it up. That’s a natural reaction, if you ask me. What’s that supposed to prove?”

“Maybe nothin’ in court,” answered Curtis, “but it could mean a lot to people around here.”

“And that’s why you’re not to say anything about it,” the doctor countered. “We make that known and somebody’ll kill him on the spot.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Well, goddamn, Curtis, thanks for the confidence,” Garnett said incredulously. “There’s no right or wrong in this. There’s just no reason to inflame people, that’s all. Now, where do you think he’s headed? Back to his home?”

“I don’t know,” Curtis mumbled.

“I’d be doubtin’ it,” replied Michael. He stood and circled the table to stand close to the fire in the stove. He could sense Curtis and Garnett watching him intently.

“I’d say he’d be off to where his sister lives,” continued
Michael. “He’d not be goin’ home, not the way he was talkin’. I’d say he’d go where he thought he could get some protection, him not havin’ much experience outside the home.”

The sheriff nodded agreement.

“Well, by God, it’ll be a trick if he can get to Atlanta on foot with men after him,” Garnett said.

“And why is that?” asked Michael. His voice was edged in nervous surprise.

“Why? There’s only two roads out these mountains, and you have to take one of the two no matter if you’re headed for the next continent,” answered Garnett. “Going over the mountains wouldn’t work. Some of those hills are about as straight up and down as a fall to Hell.”

“That don’t mean much,” Curtis replied slowly. “He knows them woods, Doc. Them people know ways of gettin’ around they don’t even tell one another about.”

The doctor smiled. He had been gently reminded that he was an outsider.

“Just find him,” Garnett said. “And do it with as few people as possible.” He paused, then added, “And try to keep from killing the boy.”

Curtis pulled his hat into a snug fit on the crown of his head.

“We’ll do it,” he mumbled. “I’ll go get Tolly Wakefield and let him get up two or three more men. Don’t see how the boy could’ve got too far. He wadn’t that strong.” He turned and left the room and the house, and Michael and Garnett listened until his car left the driveway.

“Curtis is a strange man,” the doctor sighed. “He won’t sleep a minute until Owen’s found, but you’ll never hear him complain.”

“I’ll join up with him as soon as my clothes are dry,” Michael said.

“No. I’ll take you home.”

“But Owen got away from me. I could at least help find him.”

“Irishman, let me tell you something,” replied Garnett. “You’re just like me in one way: You weren’t born here. There’s some things they do by themselves, and you wait and see what happens. Believe me, the future of that boy is out of your hands now.”

* * *

Owen dropped to his knees in the cover of the island of trees below the Pettit house, breathing hard, trembling, cowering at the sudden, scurrying sounds around him. His face twitched. He realized that he held the knife in his hand. His palm perspired around the handle of the knife and he threw it on the ground and stared at it. He could not remember carrying the knife as he ran. He wiped the palm of his hand across his trousers, then cautiously picked up the knife and slipped it into his belt.

Since he had left Michael at the jail, he had not stopped running, and now he was spent. His lungs ached and his eyes burned. He did not know if he was at the right place, where Michael had said the provisions would be hidden. He wondered what time it was. It was dark but he could feel morning rushing like an army over the eastern hills, pursuing him with its dangerous light. In the deep black forest above the Pettit house, he heard an owl. The voice of the owl was an omen, was it not? He remembered stories of the ancient, demented Indian, the last of his people, who spoke to the owls as if they were his brothers. The Indian had wandered the woods at night, hooting, chasing after sounds like echoes, and weeping for the sad messages he had heard from those secretive, seeing birds. It was part of the lore of the mountains that the Indian had died and had been swept away on the wings of owls, which had buried him in the nest of a tall beech tree. A woodsman had found the bones in the nest, as soft and white as chalk, covered with feathers. There were those who believed, for all those years, that the Indian was still alive in the voice of the owls.

Owen was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been. Afraid
of the owl and the night and the house where he must hide. He crawled on his hands and knees to the center of the island of trees. The rock was there, as Michael had promised. It was the size of a wagon body and dull white in the bare light of the quarter-moon. He stood and made his way quietly behind the rock. He saw a mound of limbs covered with pine straw and he began carefully to uncover the camouflage. The sack was there and he opened it and found that it contained a blanket and biscuits and potatoes. The food was fresh and he wondered about Michael’s story of replenishing the supplies: Was it true, what he had said, or had he planned the night of the escape? Owen tied the top of the sack securely into a knot and lifted it over his shoulder. He knew he could not rest; he had four miles to go before the house, perhaps six. He could travel the road by night, but if he waited until sunrise he would have to slip through the woods and it would be risky, even on a Sunday morning. He stepped quickly into the road. He heard the owl, far off. He looked once at the Pettit house. It was a blot, a silhouette, against the skirt of the woods.

The blue steel of morning was beginning to seep over the mountains as he passed hurriedly by Floyd Crider’s house. He heard a dog bark and another answer and he broke into a steady run until he was far from the house. He wondered if the dogs had awakened Floyd.

He was hurting inside. His nose had begun to bleed and he wiped at it absently with the sleeve of his shirt. He tried to set the distance to the farmhouse where Lester and Mary Caufield had been murdered. He had been to the house once with his father, when he was very young, before his father had begun to punish them for their unknown sins. The house had then belonged to a man named Alton King, who was Lester’s grandfather and who had outlived three wives and six of his ten children. Owen remembered the story he had heard from his father about Alton King. His third wife was only thirteen when he married her, more child than woman, and she still played
with dolls. To please her, Alton King, who was nearing seventy, had built a dollhouse for her in the backyard—a dollhouse with doll rooms and doll furniture. In the daytime, when Alton was in the fields working, she would play in her dollhouse, and at night she would be his wife. The girl had died at fifteen in labor. The child was stillborn.

Suddenly, Owen felt the seizure of a chill.

He stopped in the road and looked around him. To his left, above him, was the house. He could hear the water-song of the stream that ran into Deepstep Creek and the soft crush of sand as he turned slowly in the track of the road. He imagined that he heard a wind, but there was no wind, only the early yawning of the day as it unfolded like the sleepy opening of an eye. He took two steps and stopped. He thought of Lester Caufield. They had been friends. They had talked of going away to work together. Lester was always laughing. Always.

The house seemed to grow larger as Owen approached it. It was gray and silent. There was a look of waste about it, like any abandoned thing. He looked at the windows that had been coated with the frost of cobwebs. Under one window, at the front of the house, there was a windowbox containing one dead flower stalk.

He circled the back of the house to the porch stoop, and mounted the steps. The board that had been nailed across the screen door was loose—Michael, he thought—and he pried it off easily. He stood at the door, his hands poised inches away from the smooth knob of mountain laurel. The house seemed to resist him, to warn him. He knew it had been cleared and boarded quickly by men who were frightened and he knew it was a house no one would ever live in again. It would decay like a buried thing and the roof would fall around its chimneys and people traveling along the road would not stop to look at it, but would rush past as though skirting an evil that could never be put to rest. It was a house of murder and a house of murder was an ominous place, with screams that had been driven into the walls like hidden nails.

He touched the knob and opened the screen door and then turned the handle of the wooden door. It was unlocked. Owen opened it and stepped inside the kitchen. The room was empty and he could feel his breathing and his heartbeat echoing, thundering in his temples. He moved slowly into the house, his arms outstretched before him, groping blindly. The house was the same as the house he had lived in all his life, the same as dozens of other houses in the mountains: the kitchen, the sideroom off the kitchen, the living room with its brick fireplace, the bedrooms along the back of the house.