The Missing (9 page)

“No.”

She looked up at the denim-clad son. “Ralph, do you recognize him?”

“I didn’t at first, but now I do.”

Sam turned around. “How is it you know me?”

“We never been innerduced from the front,” Ralph said, showing a rack of yellow teeth.

A phantom pain rose in the back of Sam’s head, and he stood up. “You about killed me.”

“If I’d wanted you dead you’d of been that way.”

The woman moved a hand as if she were shooing a fly. “Look, sit down, Simoneaux, or whoever you are. Ralph, you and your brother do a walkaround, make sure he’s alone.”

Once they had left, he decided that he might as well ask her, and he did. “Why’d you take that little girl?”

She stood and tended the little stove, which smelled of kerosene. “What exactly are you doing out here? Somebody payin’ you?”

“I got my reasons.”

She adjusted the sickly flame under the skillet and stirred the contents slowly. “You don’t see a little girl around here, do you? Any sign of one?”

“I work with that child’s parents. They’re excursion-boat musicians, and they’re sick with worry about her.” He looked at the back of her head as if there might be a little window there that his thoughts could climb through. “You’re a mother. Can’t you think about how that lady must feel?”

“I’m seventy-some years old, too old to fall for crap like that.” She shook the skillet over the flame. “You know, sometimes people seem one way on the surface. But inside, they’re different.”

“What?”

“Musicians? Those fine parents might be musicians, all right, the drifter kind that think they’re better than everybody else just because they can read squiggles on a set of lines. You know what I’m talking about. Rummies in the vaudeville orchestra, whorehouse bands, saloon singers.”

“The Wellers aren’t like that.”

She turned her doubtful face on him. “You really know them?”

He blinked. “Well enough to know you been told wrong if you think they’re trash.”

“Still, where will they be in ten years? They’re music players. If they can’t keep up with the tunes, they’ll be as out of work as a broke talking machine.”

“Well.” He leaned back in the chair and looked through the screen into the weed-choked yard. “And where will your boys be in ten years?”

She bristled. “Ralph and Billsy’s already there, mister. And you don’t have to know exactly where, neither. We come over from Arkansas with nothing, and now we’re doin’ all right. That kid’s parents, if I had to guess, can’t give her a thing except how to grow up singin’ dirty songs to dancing drunks.”

“Look, I’m not the law.”

A half-smile formed over the sizzling skillet. “I was worried you might be one of those Chicago boys hired to make some law on the side, if you know what I mean. But you ain’t nothin’ but a coonass that learned all his words.”

Sam glared at her. “Just tell me what you did with the girl.”

“I don’t know what we’re talkin’ about.” She raised the lid on a pot that was chattering on another burner and stirred the rice. “There ain’t no little girl around here.”

The two men came back into the room and sat with him at the table, leaving Satan on the other side of the screen, his eyes like two hot coals caught in the mesh. “You got vittles yet?” Ralph asked.

“Watch this one off the property. He’s just leavin’,” the woman said.

Sam remained seated. “I might stay around to sample some of that rabbit.”

The one named Billsy ran a hand through his iron-colored hair and looked worriedly at the skillet. “What’s he want, anyways?”

The woman sighed. “Hush up.”

“If you won’t talk to me, I’ll go back to the excursion boat and saddle up the Wellers and bring them in for a little chat.”

“If you can sober them up, you mean.”

“They aren’t drunks. Somebody’s filled your head full of lies about those people. The same somebody that paid you to steal their girl.”

“If you send anybody back in here, after we deal with them, we’ll come after you.” The woman turned off the stove, and a kerosene stink began to fill the hot kitchen.

Sam folded his hands on the table. “If someone was hired to steal a child, I’d bet it was by strangers who rode up from nowhere with a good story.”

“Nobody came back in here.”

“It might be faraway strangers, too,” he continued.

“Why don’t you just get on, Frenchie,” Ralph said, arranging his knife and fork next to his plate.

“He talked better than you do,” Billsy said.

Quick as a snake his mother rapped him twice on the skull with her spatula. “You are a ringtailed dumbass if ever there was one.”

Billsy raised his forearms above his head. “I didn’t say nothing.”

Sam could see how scrambled his thoughts were by looking at his eyes. “What did this nice-talking man look like?”

Before his mother could hit him again, Billsy blurted out, “He just had a little mustache and talked about his wife a lot. Rode a horse in a suit.”

Sam made a face. “A horse in a suit?”

Ralph suddenly pulled a big sheath knife and banged it on the table boards. “You about ready to leave, ain’t ya?”

“What do you know about the killing in Troumal?”

“I’ll tell you about a killin’ right here in a minute. Now get out.”

Sam glanced at his eyes and stood up. “Can I get past that dog?”

“You can get past him goin’ out,” Ralph Skadlock told him. “But I wouldn’t try it comin’ back. He’ll eat you like a meat grinder.”

IT WAS ONE O’CLOCK when he climbed on Number 6 to ride back to St. Frank, a slow trip through the spiders and snakes.

The shadows were long when he reached the bayou, and he was so hungry and stuck up with briars that he galloped Number 6 into the water before the horse could think about it too much, hollering him across and up the bank toward town.

The man at the livery stood watching as Sam rode up and tied off.

“Here’s your animal. I’ll take my deposit.”

The man looked at Sam’s clothes. “Looks like he got his money’s worth out of you.”

“It’s hard to keep him in a straight line.”

“Well, I guess you did good to even get back.” He grabbed the reins and began to lead the animal.

Sam gave him a hard look. “Say.”

The man stopped and let Number 6 roll on like a shoved wagon.

“Some time ago, maybe two months, did you rent a horse to a little man wearing a suit?”

“No.”

Sam looked down the road toward the river. “How come you can answer so quick?”

“I ain’t rented nothin’ to nobody wearin’ a suit coat in five years or better. Nowadays, if you wear a suit you got a Ford.”

“Somebody was up there wearin’ one.”

The liveryman crossed his big arms and spat. “Could of rode in from Woodgulch to the northwest. They’s more than one point on the compass, you know.”

He started walking in the direction of the boat feeling not only tired but thick-headed. More than one point on the compass. He wasn’t cut out for the wilderness, was damn lucky he hadn’t got lost or killed. And if he could help it, he’d never climb on another horse.

* * *

HE GOT to the stage plank five minutes before the boat cast off and was squeezing through the crowd when the captain grabbed him by the arm.

“By God, Lucky, you smell like a sardine. Get cleaned up and out on deck in ten minutes. We’ve got a load of country boys on with the rest and I don’t think some of ’em have ever seen electricity.”

Sam put a hand on his lower back. “I’m about half dead, Captain.”

“Well, the half that ain’t dead better work twice as hard.” He gave Sam a shove toward the stairs, and he went up to wash and change into his uniform. The upper decks and companionways were reeling with excursionists, some well dressed, some in khaki cotton work clothes, a few wearing blue jeans belted with strips of blond leather. Up on the roof he checked the fire buckets, then opened the pilothouse door.

Mr. Brandywine, who seldom used the new steering levers, was standing on a spoke of the ten-foot wheel, waiting for castoff, and he turned halfway around. “Knock before you come in here.”

“I’m looking for the Wellers.”

“Mr. Simoneaux, I am not in charge of the musicians.”

As Sam retreated down the steps, Mr. Brandywine hung half his weight on the whistle cord and set the big three-bell chime to roaring. The deckhands cast off lines and the boat backed out full speed, the decks shaking as the paddlewheel beat down the water.

The café was jammed, and Ted Weller was pinned at the back of the room by a party of eight dandies examining the one-page paper menus with exaggerated care. The sun was going down and young couples were thronging the open area on the hurricane deck, most of them good natured, smoking and sneaking sips from their pocket flasks. He checked in with Charlie Duggs, who was blending with the crowd at the edge of the dance floor, where perhaps a quarter of the paying customers stood in awe of the black orchestra, of the bounce and surprise of the music, the sass of the trumpet. Most of them had never heard anything like it, but knees began to bend, hips to slide, feet to rise like boats lifted on a freshet of notes. Sam moved downstairs and found the main deck jammed, people tossing cigarette butts in sparking pinwheels across the wooden floor and ordering tableloads of ice and soda.

He walked to the rail and saw that Mr. Brandywine had brought the Ambassador out into a skein of dead water and was letting the boat loaf with its bow upstream, more or less staying in the same pocket of river. The point of the trip, he realized, was not to go somewhere, but only to seem to go somewhere. It was a sad passenger who knew what was happening outside the vessel on a night cruise. The whole point was to stay in the breezy bubble of comfort and music and forget the dark and airless shore.

The cruise brought three fistfights and a bad screaming match between a woman and her boyfriend. One man refused to quit fighting, and Sam had to drag him down to the little brig in the engine room and lock him in. He banged the man’s head with the door when he slammed it shut because he was angry at his own exhaustion. There were still unpulled stickers in his legs, and the insides of his thighs ached from the saddle.

Passing through the main-deck lounge, he watched the bracing of the dance floor jounce over his head, as if an army were doing jumping jacks, and the captain, who was rushing through to the engine room, stopped and listened to the rumble. “Lucky, run up and tell the band to slow their tempo ten beats per minute on the fast numbers if they don’t want the damn boat to fold in half.”

At last came the race of unloading and policing the boat, and he worked asleep on his feet, moving people along, killing cigarettes, counting deck chairs to see how many had been thrown overboard from the dark upper deck. It wasn’t until he’d climbed into his bunk that he thought of the Wellers, and he let out a groan.

“I hear you,” Charlie Duggs said. “Tired as I am, I got the headache so bad I can’t go to sleep.”

“What’s up for tomorrow?”

“We’re pullin’ out in a bit, bud.”

“Where bound?”

“Natchez. I expect old Brandywine will run on a full bell all night and have us there by eight o’clock.”

He put an arm over his eyes. “God, not a morning cruise.”

“It’s Sunday. First run is two-thirty. Captain Stewart lets anyone who wants to walk to church get sanctified. You a churchgoing man?”

“Catholic.”

“Well, then, I’ll walk up the hill with you.”

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING he washed up, brushed out his clothes, and they set off for ten o’clock Mass, walking in a group with a fireman, Captain Stewart, two white porters, Nellie Benton and her nephews, the engineers. At the top of the hill one group split off for the Methodist church while Sam and Charlie walked straight for a spire in the distance. He stopped on a street corner and looked back.

“What’s up?” Duggs asked.

“The Wellers ever go to church?”

“I don’t remember. Don’t start looking down your nose at folks for not goin’ to church. Both of them pulled double shifts yesterday and likely won’t knock off till midnight tonight.”

“That right? And all I did all yesterday was sit in a bubble bath running a silk brush between my toes.”

Duggs made a face. “Maybe they ain’t as tough as you French boys. Come on, we’ll be late.”

“For a war veteran, you got a soft heart,” Sam said.

Duggs stepped into the street. “Sure.”

“Did you shoot anyone?”

“None of your business,” Duggs said. “Are you really a Catholic?”

“So, you don’t want to talk about it.”

“Just answer my question.”

They both turned to go up the church steps. “Well, ‘Introibo ad altare Dei.’”

Duggs pulled open the arched oak door on incensed air, stood aside, and bowed. “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.”

They sat in the rear of the echoing church, and after the priest sang the Gloria, Sam heard the door open and turned to see Mr. Brandywine and two busboys come in, one on each side, watchful, as though they’d been propping him up all the way there. Sam prayed for the Wellers and their little girl, and for the old pilot’s judgment. He then questioned his own reasons for going out on the great river grasping at straws. What propelled him, he wanted to believe, was the awful diminished feeling he suffered whenever he thought of his dead child or of his taken family. If he could make another family whole, maybe that would help. Help whom, though? Then he remembered that if he found the girl, he’d get his job back and once more cruise along the gleaming floors of the finest department store in New Orleans. Was that the main reason he was doing this? Was he just along to retrieve his floorwalker’s salary? On the walk down the hill to the boat, he shared these thoughts with Charlie, whose only response was, “Lucky, self-interest is better than no interest.”

VESSY CLEARED the dishes after the noon meal and then brought the bedsheets and covers upstairs in her wiry arms. She was a mountain girl and used to steep walking, so at the top of the stairs she wasn’t winded at all. Mrs. White, in her bedroom pulling on fine gloves and checking items in her purse, didn’t look up when the cook came through the door, just said, “Mrs. Hall won’t be able to tend Madeline today. You’ll watch her for us.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Vessy had wanted to go to her rented one-room house to boil her own laundry in the yard. Usually she was off between one-thirty and four, when she came in to start supper.

“Did you hear Madeline singing with the music teacher this morning?”

“I was out back stackin’ stovewood.”

Mrs. White’s gloved hands worked like mourning doves as she picked at a spray of pills on her dressing table and placed them one by one into a little nickel-plated box she kept in her purse. “Well, this morning Mr. Stover said she sings just like a little bird and has a natural sense of timing.”

Vessy pursed her lips and slid them to one side of her face. “That so? Like she already been taught.”

Mrs. White gave her an appraising look. “Well, I’m going into town to shop at Welford’s.”

“Yep.”

“Listen for her when she gets up from her nap. Don’t let her over-sleep because she’ll be hard to put down at eight.”

Vessy placed the sheets in the bedroom armoire and listened to Mrs. White’s slow tread on the stairs. When the car started up in the drive and backed toward the street, she bent to pick up a cream-colored pair of gloves discarded in the wastebasket and pulled them on. They were a short style that betrayed her freckled skin. Vessy was twenty-seven years old, had taken care of herself, and still had her teeth, except for a molar knocked out when her father punched her for leaving a saddled horse in the rain. She’d wanted to get married more than anything, but being a bit plain and more than a bit plain-spoken, it took her a long time to get someone to court her. She might have stayed in the eastern Kentucky mountains forever, but one Sunday her mother served an old, undercooked pork roast and killed the whole family with food poisoning, except for her, and she lay on the back porch and puked for two days before a neighbor found and rescued her. The man courting her stopped the relationship, believing she was a bad-luck woman, and that had hardened her outlook on life. Vessy admired her hands for a moment, then pulled off the gloves, dropping them back into the can. She might ask for them later but couldn’t bear Mrs. White thinking that she’d been stealing out of the trash. Then again, what need did she have of dress gloves? To handle stovewood? She spat into the can and went down to wash the dishes.

At two she walked into the child’s room and frowned at the ruffled bed, the expensive small furniture, the assembly of dolls lined up against the wall. Pulling a chair next to the bed, she studied the girl, narrowing her eyes at the flawless pink fingernails that showed no splits or coarse cuticles, no signs of roughness. She turned the sleeping child’s palm into a beam of sunlight and examined the skin. She woke up and pulled her hand back to rub her eyes.

“Little miss, you want to put on your nice new sundress?”

The girl sat up and smiled at her. Vessy pulled off her short stockings and ribboned pinafore. The child’s knees were what she wanted to see, and the skin there was smooth and white as milk. She dropped the sundress over her easy as a lampshade and then sat her on the bed to buckle on a pair of brown sandals, cupping the feet in her rough palms and feeling the soft bottoms. “Let’s see those toes.” Vessy flashed a playful smile and the girl giggled, drawing back her feet and sitting on them.

“I bet you want Vessy to play little piggy with them tootsies?”

“No,” the girl said, but she still held out her feet for the sandals.

Vessy wiggled the big toe and saw not a callus, dirt stain, or crookedness. She examined her ankles for scuffs and little scars. She held and turned the feet the way she would examine sweet potatoes at the market. Then she put on the sandals and led the girl downstairs for a glass of milk and a slice of sugar bread. They sat at the little porcelain breakfast table set by a window, where Vessy usually enjoyed the view down the hill toward the river. But now her eyes took in every detail of this child, sensing that something was badly wrong. Suddenly, she jerked up her right arm and feinted at the girl’s head as though she would strike her. Madeline looked up at the open fingers, but did not flinch.

“Orphanage my foot,” Vessy said under her breath. She knew orphans, white and black, and every one would jerk back and cower if anybody raised a hand to them. Orphans wore no shoes, or wrong-sized shoes in which their feet grew crooked. Their feet bore calluses, craters of sores, bite scars, toenails stobbed black, orange dirt stain, ankle meat clipped to white bone. Knees were crosshatched from working in crops or playing in common dirt, fingers stretched out by bucket or firewood chores. When Vessy rested her hand down on the fine hair, the child leaned into her touch and smiled. “Sweet Jesus,” Vessy whispered. “Where’d they find this baby?”