Disembodied Bones (17 page)

It was difficult for Leonie to let Alexa’s
words out of her head. Underscoring the things ringing in her brain
she could hear Scott yelling after her, his deep voice growing
gruff and angry. But there was something calling to Leonie,
something she couldn’t let go. Jay Harkenrider was six years past
any pain; he rested with God, of that Leonie was sure, even if his
mother was not. But Douglas Trent hadn’t been past the pain that
Monroe Whitechapel could have inflicted, most certainly would have
inflicted upon the helpless child. Neither was Olga.

Digging deep within herself, Leonie found the
extra strength to run faster. The trail followed the creek through
the deepest copses; a hundred children had wound their way through
these woods to find the best hidey-holes to which to escape. Her
feet pounded through the dirt, her breath coming more and more
ragged in her chest, brushing winding ivy and tickling branches of
overgrown bushes aside without thought.

She rounded a corner and saw the largest tree
in the whole woods. A cottonwood towered over the rest. Three
people ringing its width couldn’t reach around its circumference,
fingertip to fingertip. Its bark was a dense pattern of deep
grooves like a bizarre maze drawing that flowed ever upward. The
tree itself was nourished by the creek, sitting on an outcrop of
earth and rock that had been undercut by the stream. Thick roots
twisted underneath the protrusion, where time and water had slowly
exposed them, a full dozen feet below where the tree’s base
originally had met the ground. A deep pool of dark water waited
below for the tree above to fall into it one day and become another
nutrient in the ever evident circle of life.

Tied to the thick trunk was Olga Rojas. Her
little wrists and tiny ankles were bound and connected to a length
around the tree. Her eyes were open and crying, but her mouth was
covered with green duct tape, and her body was jerking
spasmodically. Lying between two roots that disappeared into the
earth on either side of her, Olga was struggling with her bonds,
not realizing that the ground was dissolving beneath her, that she
was causing the dirt to collapse.

Leonie could see it all from where she was.
The earth was swiftly crumbling and Olga would fall into the pool,
she would drown in the deep pool of water before anyone else could
reach her or she would hang in space while the rope that was so
casually looped around her small neck strangled her.

There was noise from behind Leonie but she
ignored it. Instead she focused on making her body move as fast as
she could. Olga suddenly looked up and saw Leonie, relief evident
in her tiny features, but the earth was beginning to flow downward
underneath her slight figure. Leonie saw the relief on Olga’s face
turn to confusion as she began to topple.

Leonie resisted the shriek that would betray
the utter helpless rage that swept through her at the sight and
launched her body at Olga. One hand stretched out toward the little
girl in the red Mickey Mouse shirt, willing herself to fly like a
bird, to extend herself as if she could magically elongate her body
by merely wishing it to be true. Her fingertips touched Olga’s warm
flesh and it slipped away. There was another painful eruption of
emotion that threatened to choke Leonie as she slid against the
trunk of the tree, her feet spreading apart, seeking a solid
surface to stop her own inescapable plummet before she went in
after Olga, and then her hand touched material.

For a scant moment Leonie didn’t realize what
she had. Then she did and she clutched at it as if it would save a
life, as it was doing. She had tangled her hand in the back of
Olga’s little jeans and the girl was being held in midair, dangling
above a twelve foot drop. A racking breath of disbelief loudly
escaped Leonie’s throat. She was holding Olga by the waistband of
her jeans and Olga was twitching like a fish caught on a lure.

Leonie was lying on her stomach, pressing
against earth and roots, one arm bent over holding Olga in above
ground. She looked to her side and saw that she was a hair’s
breadth from falling in. The same shoulder she’d dislocated all
those years before in the struggle with Whitechapel on the stairs,
was the one that woke her on rainy nights with an aching fever that
only a heavy dose of ibuprofen could ease. The shoulder screamed in
painful protest now as she held the forty pound girl from
falling.

Then Leonie’s body began to slide forward.
She was losing her bout with the physical laws of gravity and if
she didn’t let go of Olga, then she would go with her into the
pool, or worse, cause the little girl’s neck to be snapped with the
weight that would suddenly be brought to bear on the rope. She
fought to pull away from the edge yet kept sliding closer and
closer.

Someone grabbed the back of her overalls in
much the same way that Leonie was holding onto Olga’s waistband and
Scott Haskell said in a panting voice, “Well. Well. Well. Look what
we have here.”

-

A lot of bark,

But no one notices.

A lot to bite,

And everyone cares.

I’m not a dog,

If anyone notices.

And there’s a lot to me,

But I don’t have hair.

I stand up straight,

If you’ve noticed me.

I’ve got lots of limbs,

If anyone cares.

I can give you shade,

If you’ve noticed it.

And I do even more,

I give you air.

What am I?

I am a tree.

Saturday, July 20th

You can see nothing else,

When you look in my face.

I will look you in the eye,

And I will never lie.

What am I?

Dacey sat in the shade of an ash tree. Its
leaves created an aura of serenity in a mass of confused action and
the seemingly tranquil expression on the mother’s face only
enhanced that perception. Her back was against the tree, reminding
Leonie of how Olga had been tied to the cottonwood on the precipice
of falling away to her death. But Olga was alive and healthy lying
in between her mother’s legs, half-draped across her lap while her
mother slowly stroked her shining black locks and looked away
toward the Chautauqua auditorium. If the din of the activity died
away Leonie was sure that she would hear Dacey softly humming a
lullaby to her daughter.

Leonie was sitting on a picnic table, her
feet propped on the seat while she reclined across the top. After
looking toward Dacey and Olga, she glanced down and saw that a
hundred people had vandalized the wood of the table. Initials there
had been left from the early nineties. Some proclaimed their love
for another. Others invited crude vulgarities.

Looking at the picnic table was a simple way
of ignoring the reality of the situation. Leonie knew it in her
heart and she wasn’t happy. In front of a group of outsiders, she
had exhibited her erratic, fitful gift that only seemed to emerge
when it wanted to appear, a time opportune for Olga, but ill-timed
and poorly handled for Leonie. The family would be having screaming
meanies in response to Leonie’s actions. Another write up in the
newspaper would probably bring a visit by some of the elders who
would warn her again of the level of her responsibilities. A member
of the family who lived among the outsiders, as many of them did as
was necessary and as they desired, needed to keep their secrets as
surely as if they lived with the group. Perhaps even more so.

Even the argument Leonie had used years
before seemed to repeat mindlessly inside her.
The child needed
help. The child was going to die. I had to find the missing
child.

The headache that had speared through her
brain like a broken off shaft of a javelin was diminishing with
every moment, although Leonie couldn’t help the sudden renewed bout
of nervous anxiety when she looked up and saw the way the group of
law enforcement officers were looking at her. The pain spiked for a
moment and then began to recede like an inevitable tide at the
moon’s waning.

Scott Haskell had pulled Leonie back from the
edge of the creek, and in turn Leonie had pulled Olga up. She
cradled the little girl in her arms while prying the tape from her
mouth and Olga’s crying wails had brought Dacey and Elan to them at
a dead run. A half hour later and Olga was only beginning to calm.
She was still quietly snuffling into Dacey’s shirt and tucking her
head in between her mother’s arm and body as if that would protect
her from all evil.

An army of police officers descended upon the
park accompanied by a fire truck and a unit of paramedics. Olga
wouldn’t leave her mother’s arms while she was examined by one. She
was proclaimed bruised but healthy. The paramedic had whispered
into Scott’s ears and Scott’s unerring eyes had found Leonie as she
waited by the picnic table. Elan stood silently in the shade
nearby, his suit a little crumpled, the jacket lying over one arm,
his designer tie loosened. His face was inscrutable at the moment.
He had been on his compact cell phone, discussing why he wasn’t
going to be where he needed to be and when he expected he might be
there. But it had fallen silent and with the silence, Elan had
become almost motionless, his cool brown eyes carefully gauging the
situation.

Leonie lowered her eyes again, shutting out
the world at large. It was hot, even in the shade. Accompanying the
Texas heat was the inevitable Texas humidity and mosquitoes were
buzzing her head even while she used the sleeve of her T-shirt to
wipe away the errant dribbles of sweat. When she had finished
mopping up the perspiration she slowly looked up again, trying to
be as casual as possible.

Scott was consulting with the other officers.
Some of them Leonie recognized. They lived in Buffalo Creek and
periodically came into the store, either on duty to make sure all
was well or dragged in by their antique-mad spouses. They were
huddled in a group by his patrol car and all of them cast sporadic
surreptitious glances at her. Several gestured with flying hands
and one was shaking his head slowly.

Beyond the police cars that packed the park
were the group of curious neighbors who gathered in the shade of
the Chautauqua building to watch the goings on. They had followed
the sirens to the park or saw the widespread activity and assembled
to watch the show, despite that they didn’t really know what the
show was about. On the east side of the park, the birthday party
had ceased their festivities and was waiting collectively in the
shade of a dozen trees to see what would occur next. A patrol man
was wandering through the various groups of people taking down
names and addresses.

Scott abruptly marched away from the group
and over to where Dacey and Olga were sitting. Leonie’s lips
flattened. She tried to put herself into the shoes of the sheriff.
The chain of events could be replicated in simple, concise
sentences that would demonstrate guilt. Child disappears. Woman
says she knows where child is. Woman takes sheriff and mother
directly to where child is located. Sheriff is suspicious. Sheriff
concludes woman is the perpetrator or an active accomplice. Woman
is arrested.

What a wonderful scenario
, Leonie
thought, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her mind.
My mother’s
going to kill me when she hears about this.
Merde. Several feet
away from Dacey and Olga, Scott had hunkered down to talk to them.
Leonie could tell he was trying to be gentle as he questioned Olga
about how she had come to be tied up a half-mile down a trail in
Headrick Park. Beyond them, Leonie saw a news station van pulling
up, its antenna and transmission equipment noticeably visible as it
tried to negotiate through a crowd of people standing around
.
Getting arrested might very well be the least of my
problems.

How is Dacey going to treat me from now
on? Is she going to think that I was an active participant? Is she
going to think I did this for publicity? Is she going to spit in my
face because I didn’t get to Olga before she fell?
Leonie’s
face crumpled. She’d made a life here for herself. It wasn’t
perfect. She had a business, a house, and a black and white
tailless cat named Vinegar Tom; he’d come with the house, refusing
to move with the previous inhabitants. She dated. She had a life.
She felt normal. She didn’t look over her shoulder expecting to
feel something about a thing that was urgently missed. And she
didn’t have to endure those sad glances of family members who knew
she couldn’t quite measure up to the rest. Sure, she was known as a
little strange, a woman with an active imagination when it came to
restoration of antiques, but the colorful flair only added to the
provenance of the pieces she worked on. It was only Dacey and she
who knew that Leonie was deadly serious. It was as Dacey had
pronounced to Scott: Leonie knew things, but only about things
missing.

Scott was showing something to Dacey. He held
it out with a tanned arm and Dacey looked at it briefly. Then her
head came up and her eyes connected with Leonie. Leonie was taken
aback for a split second. Then Dacey’s eyes went back to Scott’s
and she shook her head briefly. Leonie didn’t hear the words she
said, but she didn’t need to hear them. Dacey was defending Leonie.
Her voice got louder and then Leonie heard what she said, “Olga
said it was a man. A man with something on his face. Does Leonie
look like a man?”

A few feet away Elan moved uncomfortably.
Leonie caught the motion out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t
sure but this might be the end of this relationship. He liked her
but he didn’t want a potentially crazy woman as a girlfriend. It
was the same thing that Scott was having a hard time swallowing;
Leonie couldn’t possibly know where Olga was, unless she was
involved
. A plus B equaled C. Not A shoots directly to C by some
incomprehensible telepathic link. No mistake about that.