Piper (28 page)

And that's how I slept, like a corpse, until the coarse tongue of a dog on my face woke me the next morning.

18

Three of the dogs had climbed up on the bed and were standing over me, probably wondering what I'd done with their master. I lifted the pillow next to me, leaned over and checked the floor, but there was just me. I could understand Willard fleeing; I couldn't understanding him doing it without his dogs. He must have been hit by a car or stumbled and broken his leg. Then it occurred to me the dogs weren't as interested in Willard's whereabouts as they were with breakfast, so I gathered up their rubber dishes and scooped a fistful of dry dog chow into each of them. I had no idea how much they were used to, but the sound of kibbles hitting the rubber put them on their best behavior.

While they were eating, I looked in Willard's drawers for a note or some clue as to what he'd done and where he'd gone. The dirty shirts had been wadded up and stuffed back next to the clean ones, none of the socks had been paired, and there were underpants in every drawer. At the bottom of a drawer full of sweaters and knotted neckties I found a rubber-banded stash of photos. One of them was a black-and-white, matte finish of Willard and Grandma Carol that must have been done by a professional because the background was all wispy and ethereal. Carol was pretty in a technical sort of way, but the irritation at having to hold the pose for so long showed. In Willard's easy grin, on the other hand, I could see Mom. There was no question whose daughter she was. The picture underneath was a little girl sitting on a pinto Shetland pony with one hand on the saddle horn and the other waving limp-wristed to the camera. She was in a ruffled taffeta dress that exposed her bare knees and the patent leather mary janes didn't even reach the stirrups. On the back of the photo it said in a woman's hand, “Kathryn, Easter, 5 years.”

Dad was already gone when I went upstairs, but I knew where he'd be. It didn't matter the place had burned; it was habit. He was like the expectant dog who waits by the front door for his master.

The fire was still smoldering when I arrived, emitting an odor akin to old tires burning. A fireman was hosing down the building in what appeared to be a case of overkill because there wasn't much left to burn except for the blistered panel sign on the brick facade:
Home of the Herald Stampede
. Firemen with gas masks, axes and flashlights wandered in and out of the front door while a small crowd huddled in the middle of the street behind a yellow tape strung from blocker to blocker around the building. I counted thirteen
Herald
employees, including Les Showalter, the smokeless tobacco-chewing driver of the doorless hearse I'd thrown bundles out of for the paper carriers. This would have been his delivery day.

As I got closer, I realized the crowd was watching Dad, who was being positioned in front of the rubble by a KZIT television reporter with a pink bow around her ponytail and a microphone in her hand. They must have come for the Carlisle trial and caught the fire as a bonus. I knew Dad didn't suffer TV journalists gladly. “They're ambulance chasers,” he'd told me. “They leave the heavy lifting for the print media.” He was as unyielding as a kid getting his face washed as the reporter turned him at different angles in response to the hand signals of her cameraman, but once the camera was rolling he seemed at ease with his words.

“With God's help, we'll have the
Herald
up and printing by the fourth of July.” He looked over at the gaggle of employees in the street. “If I have anything to say about it, nobody's going to miss a paycheck or send their kids to school without new cords and tennis shoes.” I had no idea where a shanty Irishman was going to get the lucre to back that promise up, but it didn't surprise me he'd said it. Last night he was bawling like the world had ended and this morning he was promising everyone safe passage. Listening to him talk like that gave me goose bumps and reminded me of the Yeats poem he used to recite for us:

I made my song a coat

Covered with embroideries

Out of old mythologies.

Of course, in the poem, fools stole the coat and paraded it around as if it were their own and Yeats said let them take it:

For there's more enterprise

In walking naked.

Well, that's about where we were. Naked.

When Dad was done, everyone congratulated him and patted him on the back. His reservoir still had something left because his eyes watered as he moved through the staff trying to shake everyone's hand or give them a hug. Seeing him this way helped me realize what the sadness in his phone call to Seamus meant. His job had become his life, so had these people, and poof, it was gone. We were either a gaggle of fools or charter members of Tom Scanlon's Optimist Club for wanting to believe it was all going to be as easy as he said it would be, but if I let myself just focus on his steady blue eyes and the easy wave of his inky black hair as he walked through his people I was transported too. Some folks blabbered, showing you everything inside of them, and it was easy to tell that the pieces spewing out were nothing but trinkets and costume jewelry. Dad shuttered his innermost thoughts and, like the sand working inside the oyster, added value to them, so that when he finally shared them you knew you had experienced something precious.

When he reached the edge of the crowd, he saw me and winked. I thought we were going to have a chance to talk, but Louise Mead was clinging to his arm. “Did you hear what he said, Piper?”

“Yeah, that's great news.”

Because Louise pretty much controlled his whole right side, there was no way Dad could give me a hug so he stuck out his arm and brushed me around the back and shoulders like we were in-laws that didn't care that much for each other. Somebody else cut in and hugged him, leaving just me and Louise standing there.

“Have you seen your grandpa?” she whispered.

“This morning?”

“This morning, last night. They're looking for him.”

I felt panicky and looked up at Dad to make sure he wasn't listening. “Maybe he went fishing or something with one of his buddies.” I knew I was way off on this one—his buddies were dead, it wasn't fishing season, and he'd left without his dogs—but it was the first thing that flashed into my head. “He'll show up. You know how he likes to wander.” Worrying about Willard had always been Mom's job.

There was a commotion over by the entryway. Two firemen emerged from the building carrying a stretcher. The heavyset one with a helmet pushed up on his forehead signaled to Dad. “Scanlon! Come here.”

Dad disentangled himself from the crowd and stepped over the yellow tape. I followed. He'd said
Scanlon
, hadn't he?

The two firemen were kneeling down next to the lump in the middle of the stretcher, picking at it, and shining their lights on it. “I guess we weren't as lucky as I told you last night, Tom.”

Dad tried to push me around behind him, but I could see everything. The body was in a fetal position with the fists in front of its face, the skin shriveled onto its emaciated frame, and no hair. Around the waist I could make out a leather belt that had been grafted onto the torso like a strip of pepperoni. I didn't want to look, but at the same time I couldn't not look. Something in the back of my mind registered the thought that I was glad Mom had died by water and not by fire. The feet were crossed and I noticed a blackened metal medallion embedded into the shoe leather. I recognized the medallion. I'd seen it on a pair of Frye boots with stacked heels.

“Lookit here,” one of the firemen said, holding a string of shells he'd pulled away from the neck.

Dad knelt down next to the stretcher, practically touching the corpse, his shoulders caved and his back rounded. He put his hands over his face and I could see from the rocking of his body that he was weeping for the second time in less than twelve hours.

“Who is it?” the fireman asked.

The first time I'd seen those boots and the pukka shell necklace was in the hallway of the hospital just outside the emergency room where they had Mom. They belonged to someone I thought I hated, someone it was clear I'd never understood. Staring at those sunken, browless eye sockets, a whole new and equally gruesome picture was starting to form and my heart sank. Willard hadn't just killed the town's newspaper, he'd killed its nobility.

“He's the owner of the paper,” I said glumly. “John Carlisle.”

I only half-assimilated what Dad was saying to the employees after we crossed back over the yellow tape because my head was buzzing with fear of what was going to happen to Willard. This wasn't just the nursing home; this was hard time. Without his dogs, he'd die. Maybe we could prove he was insane or temporarily deranged. I could testify as to his memory lapses and the time warps. My God, he was the gentlest man I knew, he crossed streets to help people carry their groceries home. Didn't there have to be malice aforethought to convict someone of murder? Whatever malice Willard might have once possessed had spilled onto the asparagus fields a long time ago.

The women on the staff were bawling on each other's shoulders, dabbing their eyes, buckling at the knees, and stealing glances at the ambulance that had come to take away the remains of John Carlisle. Even the TV people seemed hesitant to aim their cameras directly at the corpse. I was feeling weak too, both out of shock for John Carlisle and fear for what his death was going to do to my family. He'd already taken Mom. Now, by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, he was going to take out Mom's father as well. I couldn't let it happen. The axe was still in midswing. There was time to pull Willard's neck off the block. If only I could find him.

The staff followed Dad in a ragged formation across the street to Marge's while I peeled off in the general direction of school, where I was supposed to be for a second period trigonometry exam on the properties of cosines and arccosines. Nobody at the paper would miss me; they weren't used to seeing me until after school.

A familiar black four-wheeler, with a coat of splattered mud like a waterline across the lower portion of the side panels and wheel covers, was parked in front of our house. I peered in at the seats as I went by.

Dr. Miller was sitting at the kitchen table with Willard, who had a blanket draped over his shoulders and a cup of hot cocoa and a plate with a short stack of toast in front of him. His shoes and pants cuffs were as muddy as Dr. Miller's four-wheeler.

“Where you been?” I yelled. “I've been scared to death for you.”

Willard blinked, bowed his head, and sort of pointed with a clump of fingers toward Dr. Miller.

“What's the matter? Why won't he talk to me?”

“Sit down,” Dr. Miller said. I scooted out the chair at the end of the table, keeping an eye on Willard, who was nibbling on his toast but leaving the crust, something I'd never seem him do before. “I found him out on Horse Heaven Highway sitting under a tree with his dog. I gave the dog some chow and put him downstairs with the others.” Dr. Miller's voice was strong and slow and forced me to put the brakes on my panic. “Think he's had a little exposure. His temperature was down a bit. Right now, he needs blood sugar.”

This was going too slow for me. “What were you doing, Willard?”

Again, Willard just fidgeted with his toast and muttered something.

I looked over at Dr. Miller.

“He's gonna be okay after some food and rest,” he said, blanketing Willard's forearm with his hand. “Told me he was going to Bonnie Holliday's, didn't you big guy?” Willard rubbed a spot on his chin real hard and nodded in agreement. Not again. This was nuts. “Going there for Kitty's birthday,” he told me. That was a new one. Usually, it was to fix the Studebaker.

“Did he say anything else?”

Dr. Miller stretched his long arms toward the ceiling and clasped his hands together for a yawn. “'Scuse me.” Then he put his hands behind his neck and bent his elbows back. “He didn't say much else really. Didn't have to. I could see he'd had a rough night.”

It sounded as if Willard had kept his mouth shut. Maybe the confusion was cover. He always seemed to snap out of his little spells when it was time for supper. I'd even wondered if it wasn't sometimes a way for him to give his mind a recess. “He's done this before.”

“His wanderings are legend.”

I made a counterfeit chuckle. “I guess they are.”

Willard had passed the first test. Dr. Miller was at the fire and even he hadn't put two and two together. There weren't very many people in Stampede as smart as Payton Miller, although Dad was certainly one of them. If Dr. Miller was fooled, maybe everyone else would be too, at least until Bagmore's testimony received official sanction.

I'd already decided on the walk home what I had to do, worked out the itinerary in my head. The only unknown was when I'd be able to put the plan into action, but now that Dr. Miller had brought him back, it could start as soon as Willard finished his cocoa and toast. It had to; we didn't have that much time. While Willard blew on his cocoa, Dr. Miller made small talk about the dogs, which seemed to draw Willard out of his daze as he interjected simple but disconnected comments in response. Dr. Miller and I nodded intently each time Willard chimed in as if he were explaining the laws of thermodynamics. I asked Dr. Miller if there was any special medicine Willard needed and he excused himself to go out to his four-wheeler and brought back a brown plastic bottle with pills.

“I use 'em for animals that are going to be shipped,” he said. “Give him half a one tonight after dinner. It'll help him sleep.”

“These are okay for humans?”

He laughed. “You think I'd poison your gramps?”

Willard and the dogs snuggled on the bed while I searched through the closet and drawers for everyday clothes and stuffed them into his hard-shell Samsonite with the broken hinges. There was room for a few luxuries too, like the Burlington Northern brakeman's hat one of his bowling buddies had given him with Willard's name stenciled on the side, a pack of Roi Tan cigars, and the cache of family pictures. I made him write the combination to the safe on a page in a magazine and, on the third try, I was able to pull out the brown paper sack with his stock certificates and bonds. I threw a clean pair of khaki pants onto the bed together with dry socks and a pair of shorts turned blue from laundering them with the darks. Willard saw no need for separate loads, told me it was wasted water. “Put these on,” I said.