One Came Home (12 page)

With good customer service you expect a little huphup, one, two, three. Old Pin Eyes, though? She didn’t even straighten up out of her lean. In fact, she leaned farther forward, and her rather significant ruffled chest nudged a jar of butterscotch candies to a precarious position at the counter’s precipice. “Let me see your money,” she said. She held out a hand.

Asking for money first? I sent her a flinty look in reply.

“I don’t know you from a darn hole in the wall,” she said.

That burned me up. I could feel those five gold dollar coins stitched into the waist of my skirt. I sure would have liked to show her a couple. I settled on dangling my two dimes in front of her face.

She made to take one.

I jerked both hands back. “I need to
see
your cheese and bread first,” I said.

“I’ll come by tomorrow,” said the spectacled woman to the woman behind the counter. As she left, she cinched up
her purse and her face at the same time. She made sure I saw it too.

The unpleasantness went on like that. There were heaves and sighs, eyes rolling like marbles, and much trundling back and forth. Pin Eyes brought out farm cheese and two-day-old bread. I took it anyway, along with two licorice sticks for me and a box of sugar cubes for Long Ears. (I planned on working on the mule’s affections.) At the end of our transaction, I had to
tell
Pin Eyes to wrap it up. When she asked for twenty cents, I pointed out I’d only bought
fifteen
cents’ worth of goods. She replied that if I didn’t care for the price, there was another store in Owatonia—only thirteen miles out of my way.

As I gathered my parcels in my arms, I paused to consider whether I should ask Pin Eyes about Agatha. Ask the rudest woman in Wisconsin? Why? I wanted to wash my hands of her.

But I knew I had to do it. If you only talk to nice people, you won’t find out the half of it. Nice people either keep their noses so clean they hardly know a thing, or they conveniently forget what they know and fill their heads with daisies. You’ve got to talk to the rude ones as well.

“Excuse me. One more thing,” I said.

The look on her face told me turning had taken significant effort.

I held out the framed photograph of Agatha. “I’m looking for a young woman. Her name is Agatha Burkhardt. She’s eighteen. A little shorter than you. With auburn hair.”

Pin Eyes took the photograph. She ran her finger around the edge of the frame.

I continued: “Agatha came through here two and a half weeks ago. She was traveling from Placid, Wisconsin, with three pigeoners—a married couple and a single man.”

I paused, and then added: “Also, if you know anything about a body found on Miller Road about eight miles outside of Dog Hollow, I’d like to hear about it. The body was difficult to identify.”

Pin Eyes handed the photograph back to me. “Who is this girl to you?”

I could see in her eyes that she would not talk unless I told the truth.

“My sister,” I said. I did not want to say that. Every time I said “my sister” out loud, water gathered in my eyes. It happened then too. I could not control it.

Pin Eyes looked away (a kindness I noted). Then she spoke: “I hear things now and again. What I heard was that the Placid sheriff took that poor girl’s body back with him, saying he thought he could identify her. Our sheriff said that given the rough condition of the body, it was difficult to say what happened.”

Pin Eyes gazed out the plate glass window. In the light, her eyes were walnut brown. “I lost both my brothers in the war. A friend delivered a letter from Josiah, the youngest, telling us that if he died, we should know he’d made peace with his Lord and Savior. But Luke? We never found out what
happened to Luke. I hope someone buried him. It is not right for someone to die in service to their country and have no one tell their family.”

“You’re
assuming
my sister died,” I said.

She looked at me incredulously. “Has she written?”

I pressed my lips together.

She reached out and touched my elbow. “Maybe she’ll write,” she said.

I saw in her eyes she
meant
it.

“Thank you, ma’am.” I blotted my eyes, gathered my purchases and the photograph, and quickly left.

I glanced back at her one last time and saw that plank-hard face again. I did feel bad, though, about calling her Pin Eyes, and I suddenly realized that her girlish ruffles made sense if you thought of her age at the time she lost her brothers. It seemed likely that after hearing about the death of
two
brothers, a person might lack the desire to consider clothing. In addition, I was beginning to understand how the past can seem more alive than the present. I thought of Agatha all the time.

Outside, I put the purchases in a saddlebag, reserving a sugar cube for Long Ears. I planted it in my palm and let his snout snuffle in my hand while I wrangled my emotions.
I cannot do this
, I thought. I wanted to sit down on that porch and avoid mankind all together.

But the main street of Dog Hollow bustled with people.
This is your one chance to ask them
, I told myself.

So I got to work, starting with a line of three men sitting on a bench outside the sawmill. I marched up to them like I was all business. (Though men rarely take someone of my age or stature seriously, they
will
be taken by surprise.)

The oldermost seemed to have grown on that bench, slumped some, and then stuck. A toadstool would have been more responsive to my questions. But the other two took the photograph from my hands most willingly, and peered closer when they heard my sister’s hair was auburn.

The one with the pencil-thin mustache whistled.

The man next to him tittered away. “Myself? Never gone over for carroty hair. But he likes it.” He pointed a dirt-encrusted finger at his friend. “You like the Garrow girl. All that Scottish red hair. But where she been? Not missing you. She’s not been a-visiting.” The man barked a laugh, showing a row of tiny, sharp teeth.

“Shut up,” said the mustached man.

The sharp-toothed one kept on. “He notes if there’s a redhead in town.”

“Shut up,” said the mustached man again.

I took the photo from the sharp-toothed one and put it under the other man’s mustache. “Well?” I said.

“You’re young to be trampousing about,” interrupted Sharp Tooth.

“That’s neither here nor there,” I said to him before turning again to his mustached friend. “Tell me if you’ve seen her. Please.”

The mustached man put his hand on the photograph.
“Maybe. Maybe with another woman and a man in a wagon? After the nesting broke?”

“Did you talk to her? Or did you see anyone else talk to her? Do you know where she might have gone? Or who might know?”

“I observed her. She may have talked to those people she was with. I did not speak with her.”

The sharp-toothed man set to rocking back and forth, sniggering all the while. “Oh, miss, he wishes he could talk to these gals. All he can do is look. Has to
pay
for his company. If you take my meaning.”

The oldermost, the toadstool, glanced over, set his jaw, and stilled.

The mustached man gave the sharp-toothed one a direct look. “I
told
you to shut up.”

“I appreciate your time,” I said.

I spoke with a good handful of people. Some refused to talk. One—a flush-faced woman with a rooster clamped under an arm and a stride brisk as scissors—put out a hand. “No nearer—I’m liable to snap you instead of this rooster’s neck. Tonight all his cock-a-doodling becomes chicken-noodling.”

Others took their time: for instance, the cowboy with as pronounced a parenthetical gait as I’ve ever seen. He held that photograph so long that I thought he’d fallen asleep standing up. He startled me when he handed it back. And after all that wait, what does he say? “Sure did.” It took me two minutes of questioning to find out that he’d seen Agatha
with the two men and one woman. When I asked where she might have gone? He pointed at the road.

Finally, I sat back down on the Dog Hollow General Store porch for a breather. I pulled out one of those licorice sticks and let the sweetness melt on my tongue.

Long Ears watched me. I glanced at him and saw him thinking,
Sugar cubes
.

“Sugar is for when you’re good,” I said.

Long Ears snorted, and put his muzzle back into the water trough.

Agatha had been here. She’d been noticed. People had even noticed the pigeoners with her. But that was it. They didn’t seem to know anything more, like where Agatha or the pigeoners might have gone, or who else the pigeoners knew (if they did know anyone). The people in Dog Hollow had simply noticed strangers passing through town.

I needed to do better than this. Much better. If I could not have a lead on my sister’s whereabouts, then—at the very least—I wanted to find something that made it
impossible
for my sister to be the body wearing that blue-green dress.

I had not done that. I had not even come close.

“Girl?” I heard from behind me.

“Girl?” I heard again. Two fingers rapped my shoulder. I shifted around from my seated position on the porch, looked up, and saw the store owner. Out in the open, she was even more impressive. I stood.

“Yes, ma’am?” I said.

“Come with me,” she said. I followed her back into the store. She handed me a bottle labeled
GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU
. I read the small print:

I met the store owner’s gaze.

She started: “Your sister traveled with the man that sold me these. I believe he said his name was …” Here, the store owner tugged at a pile of papers spiked on a banker’s stake. She sorted through them. “Metcalf?”

I glanced at the receipt and handed it back. There was nothing of note upon it, other than the name at the bottom.

The store owner nodded. “Your sister was pretty. I noticed her outside waiting in the wagon. Including your sister, there were four of them—two men and two women.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“I didn’t ask. He did not look like somebody that would tell me his plans.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean, he was the type that does a little of this and a little of that. I doubt Metcalf is his name. Your sister did not fit with those people.”

“They were dangerous?”

The store owner paused before answering. “You’re young. I do not want to pain you. But you came all this way. That man was the type that takes to fast, easy money. Those kinds will do anything—legal or not. People like that mix with the wrong sorts.”

She set her hand on mine. “It would not surprise me if your sister came in harm’s way.”

It was not what I’d been hoping to hear, and I stepped onto the porch with a heavy heart.

Then I saw something. From the corner of my eye, I saw Billy McCabe coming out of the telegraph office. It was the tiniest office and barely visible from where I sat. But I saw him leave and I leapt to a conclusion. I watched him cross to the butcher shop. As soon as he stepped inside, I raced down the street to the telegraph office.

I pulled open the door and skidded to a stop in the middle of the wood floor. “Who was that telegram for? The one done by that blond boy. He just left? Tell me who he sent word to. It’s urgent. Life and death!”

The door slammed shut behind me.

A tiny man, all bones and knobs, and in a mostly clean shirt, sat behind a large oak desk. To his right stood the
telegraph machine. He took off his glasses, wiped the matter out of his eyes, and squinted at me. Then he set the glasses back on his nose and wrapped their wire temples around his ears one at a time.

“Your name?” His voice creaked, as if it had run out of sound like a pen will of ink.

“Show me the telegram,” I said. I put my hands on his desk and leaned to read it.

A bony hand slipped the piece of paper and the logbook into a drawer. “Your name?”

“Agatha Burkhardt,” I said loud and clear.

He giggled. He did! What was left of his hair bobbed about his head like some sort of angelic nimbus. “Well, Miss Agatha, you can still catch that young man if you’d like to ask him. He said he was going to the butcher’s. That’s what I
can
tell you. Otherwise, Western Union is not in the habit of divulging private communications.” He peered over his fingertips, which he tapped together in anticipation of my next move.

“Fine,” I said.

I disliked that man. I did not give him the courtesy of a good-bye.

I waited for Billy on the store porch.

When he appeared, waving a package of pork sausage over his head and asking if I’d gotten the bread and cheese, I walked at him with purpose.

I grabbed a clump of his shirt. “Who did you write a telegram to? Who was it?”

“It wasn’t any secret.…”

“Tell me the
truth
, Billy. Did she answer you? Where is she?”

He stopped. “She? It wasn’t she. It was my pa. Now let go.”

My hand unclenched. His shirt fabric slipped from my fingers.

Then his eyes got wide. “Did you think I telegraphed
Agatha
?”

I stared at him.

“Agatha is dead, Fry. I thought that’s why we came out here. So you’d see sense.”

“I came here to
find
my sister,” I said. My eyes felt damp. I could not believe this. “You sent a telegraph to your pa? Grandfather Bolte knows too, doesn’t he? What
is
going on?”

He stood there, mute.

It came to me: “I asked you for a horse—paid good money too—
and
for privacy, and you went to them! All of you decided that this trip would be good for me. If I went, you
all
thought, I’d finally understand that my sister was dead.” A stunned numbness overtook me.