The Rosewood Casket (29 page)

She wasn’t worried about finding her way back. The tombstones on the hillside were her landmark. The pines were thick and dark on the fringes of the wood, but the other trees were just beginning to leaf out. She should be able to see the burying ground from a good ways off, she thought.

She looked around her as she walked, hoping to find a wildflower or a bird’s feather or some other curiosity to take back to Clayt, so that he could spin her a tale about her discovery, but all she saw was pine needles and dead branches—nothing worth taking back to show Clayt.

Suddenly in the shadows farther on, one of the trees seemed to move, and Kayla felt her heart make a fist. She stood still for a moment, staring at the shape until her eyes could make out legs and an arm propped against a tree trunk.

“Hello!” Kayla called out. “Don’t shoot me if you’re hunting! I’m a little girl.”

The figure came toward her, and Kayla could see that it was a lady. She had dark hair and blue eyes that were red-rimmed as if she had been crying. “What are you doing out here by yourself?” the lady asked her.

“Playing Pocahontas,” said Kayla promptly.

The lady smiled as if Kayla had told a joke. “Pocahontas,” she said softly. “Pleased to meet you. Then I guess I’ll be Nancy Ward—again.”

“Who’s Nancy Ward?”

“She was a Cherokee lady who lived in these parts a long time ago. She tried to help the Indians keep this land. She was friendly to the whites—like Pocahontas.”

The little girl considered this for a moment. The lady’s eyes were very bright, and she sounded funny. Finally she said, “If you’re so friendly, how come you got a gun?”

*   *   *

Charles Martin Stargill inspected his fingers for blisters. “This carpentry work is playing hell with my hands,” he said. “I’ll be lucky if I can play an A chord by the time we’re finished.” He brushed the sawdust off his black-fringed western shirt. “I should have been wearing gloves.”

“You say that at least once a day,” said Clayt. “Why don’t you take your charge card to Kmart and buy some gloves?”

“We’re almost finished now. No point in taking care of myself now.” He grinned. “Anyhow, it’ll make a hell of an excuse if I flub a note at the next concert.
I tore up my hands building my daddy’s coffin.
”

“You care so much about what other people think that you never have time to worry about what you actually want, Charlie. Anyhow, if you’ll put lotion on your hands, they ought to be better in a week or so,” said Clayt. He was sanding the coffin lid by hand, sending showers of fine dust into the air.

“Well, Daddy would like it. He always loved it when I mentioned him onstage. A vicarious fame, I guess. ’Course the farther away I was, the better he liked me anyhow.”

It was a cold day. The workshop window was fogged with moisture, and the portable heater was turned as high as it would go. Over Charles Martin’s objections, the radio had been turned on, tuned to the AM station in Hamelin. The coffin was nearly finished.

Robert Lee was pressing a handkerchief to his nose, snuffling. “I wish I’d borrowed a surgical mask last time I visited Daddy in the hospital,” he said. “This dust is killing me.”

“It will be worth it,” said Clayt, stepping back to admire the smooth strip of rosewood that he had just sanded. “Isn’t this a beautiful thing?”

Robert Lee looked up with allergy-reddened eyes. “I guess so. If you don’t think about the almighty waste of it all. Taking valuable wood and spending time and money to build it, and then slinging it in the ground to let it rot. People will think we’re crazy.”

Garrett Stargill smiled. “You want it for a coffee table, Robert Lee?”

“No. I just hope the old man appreciates it, that’s all. It wouldn’t be like him, though. You ever notice that every time you gave Daddy a gift he’d smile in that funny way.”

“What way?” asked Garrett.

“You know—as if he were amused that you could ever have thought he’d want such an outlandish thing as whatever you were giving him. But he’d thank you solemnly, and set it aside, and you’d never see it again.”

“Well, he’d be grateful for this,” said Clayt. “It’s what he wanted. And, besides, we’re not doing this solely for Daddy. At least, I’m not. It’s like a ritual to me. The last Stargill ever to live on this farm should be laid to rest with great ceremony in the family burial ground. It’s the end of something fine, this is. From here on out, we’re going to be rootless. In two generations, maybe our descendants will have forgotten all of it.”

“It’s just an old farm, Clayt,” said Robert Lee. “It’s not Monticello.”

“Hush up!” said Garrett, leaning close to the radio. “I caught a word just now.” He turned up the volume. “Something about a shooting … They said Wake County…”

They crowded around the black boom box, a Christmas gift from Charles Martin to his father a few years back. In a shaken voice, the announcer was giving sketchy details of a morning shooting incident on a farm in rural Wake County. Sheriff Spencer Arrowood was hospitalized in critical condition.… The suspect was not in custody.… No further details available at this time.

When the announcement ended, replaced by the blast of a local commercial, Garrett Stargill looked up at his brothers. “The sheriff of Wake County. I met him,” he said. “He seemed all right.”

Robert Lee shook his head. “It’s as bad as Cincinnati. Seems like no place is safe anymore.”

“It’s safe enough,” said Clayt. “Five percent of the people cause ninety-five percent of the trouble. Wonder who it was this time? One of the Harkryders?”

“Kayla! Are you in there?” They heard Kelley’s voice echoing through the barn. “Kayla!” A moment later she appeared in the doorway, shivering in her sweatshirt. “I can’t find that kid anywhere. Is she in here with you, Charlie?”

“No. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of her all day. When did you see her last?”

Kelley frowned. “I don’t know. She’s always in and out. Independent as a hog on ice. Half the time she slips in and makes herself a jelly sandwich, and then goes back outside with it. Only way I know she’s been in is the dirty knife on the drainboard.”

Clayt laid aside his sanding tool. “She’s probably roaming around the woods, Kelley. Why don’t I go out and look for her?”

Kelley smiled. “I hate to put you out, but it’s starting to get colder out here, and I don’t want her getting sick on top of everything else.”

“Of course not.” Clayt smiled down at her. “She can’t have gone far. You go on back to the house, and let me look.”

He walked back through the barn with her, and out into the backyard. The wind had started to pick up now, and the afternoon sun did little to warm the day. Clayt glanced around the yard, and up into the old maple tree, in case Kayla was hiding out to play a joke on the grown-ups, but there was no sign of the child.

He was about to send Kelley into the kitchen to make cocoa for her wandering daughter, when he saw the uniformed trooper coming up the drive from the front of the house. Highway patrol. Nobody that Clayt knew. He saw Kelley stiffen beside him, and raise the back of her hand to her mouth, as if to stifle a scream. “It’s Kayla!” she cried. “She’s been hit!”

The trooper hurried toward them, his calm expression unchanged. Clayt wondered what it would be like to have a job that made people dread the sight of you. “What is it, Officer?” he said. “We’re looking for a little girl who may have wandered off. Have you found her?”

The uniformed man hesitated. “A
little
girl?”

“She’s nearly seven,” whispered Kelley. “She knows not to play near the road. I’ve told her a million times.”

The trooper shook his head. “Well, ma’am,” he said. “I haven’t seen her. I was taken aback for a moment there, because the fact is that I’m looking for a girl, too. A young woman, that is to say. She’s a lot older than six, though.”

They stared at him, still preoccupied with their thoughts of Kayla.

“There’s a search party going on in this section of the county, and I’m doing a house-to-house to warn folks that the suspect is armed and considered dangerous.”

“This has to do with the sheriff getting shot, doesn’t it?” asked Clayt. Seeing the officer’s look of suspicion, Clayt added, “We heard it on the radio. How is he?”

“He made it to the hospital, sir. That’s all we know so far.”

“And you’re looking for a
woman
?” asked Kelley.

“Dovey Stallard. She’s in her late thirties, dark-haired—”

“We know,” said Clayt. “We’re the next farm from theirs. But she wouldn’t shoot anybody.”

“She did. It was an eviction.” The officer looked uncomfortable. He wasn’t supposed to be gossiping about the case, and he knew it, but their disbelief had galled him. “Anyhow, according to my information, she is still armed, so if you see her, do not approach her on your own, no matter how well acquainted you are with her. Just call the sheriff’s department and report her whereabouts.”

Kelley looked stricken. “Dangerous.” She clutched Clayt’s arm. “We have to find Kayla. She might be off in the woods somewhere. And there’ll be people out there with guns…”

Clayt nodded, but his thoughts were elsewhere. “I’ll go,” he whispered.

*   *   *

Joe LeDonne felt as if he were back in the war. It would be dark soon—days didn’t last long in March—and the suspect had not been apprehended. He had thought she would be. Women, in his experience, were not violent lawbreakers, and if they had managed to shoot the boyfriend or otherwise run afoul of the law, they usually stayed put, sobbing as often as not, while they waited to be taken into custody. They usually spent the ride to jail trying to explain what they’d done. Women always tried to talk their way out of trouble. LeDonne had not expected this one to run. She had a clean record. She ought to have been waiting for him on the porch, with a box of tissues in her lap, and her lawyer at her elbow.

This was better.

He didn’t want to have to be polite to the person who had gunned down Spencer Arrowood. She was an animal; now he could track her like one.

He had set up headquarters in J. Z. Stallard’s front room, partly because it was close, and partly to keep Dovey Stallard from sneaking back home while they searched the woods for her. After an interview punctuated with gasps and choked sobs, Frank Whitescarver had phoned his wife, and was on his way to be examined at the Erwin hospital. The old man had been treated for shock, and taken to Reverend Bruce’s house to be looked after—and to be out of the way while the searchers gathered.

It was going to get down to freezing out on the mountain tonight, but it wouldn’t be peaceful out there. So many officers from half a dozen jurisdictions would be combing the area with so many spotlights and walkie-talkies that she’d think she was in a football stadium. LeDonne was coordinating the effort, but he didn’t intend to stay in the Stallards’ living room, giving interviews to the local news media and sticking pins in a map. He had put out a call for help from all the law enforcement agencies in the area, and then he had telephoned an acquaintance, a Carter County deputy named Stansberry, who had a reputation as an efficient officer. LeDonne had asked him to get leave from duty in Johnson City, and come to the Stallards’ farm to coordinate the search teams. LeDonne could not keep pacing the living room if so, waiting for backup, and feeling like he was going to explode.

He was going out there to see if he could pick up her trail in the fading light. Later he would lead the searchers himself. He wanted to find her. And he wanted her to fight back.

*   *   *

Nora Bonesteel was playing hide-and-seek with the little girl in the woods. She was always “it,” but she didn’t mind, because there wasn’t anyone else around to play with. Her mother had wanted her to stay in the yard because she was only five, and might get lost out on the mountain, but Nora was tired of feeding the chickens and chasing the wild barn kittens. The grown-ups were busy baking today, and they made it plain that they didn’t want her underfoot near the hot stove. She must find her own amusement today. She wandered across the pasture and down into the deep woods, looking for May wildflowers to take back to Grandma Flossie.

She hadn’t been very far from the edge of the meadow when she caught a glimpse of a small white face, peering at her from behind an oak tree. Nora had smiled and waved at the little girl, but she hadn’t waved back. She was about Nora’s age, with big dark eyes, hair so blond it was almost white, and a dress that looked dark and raggedy. She was barefoot, as all mountain children were as soon as it was warm enough. Nora had never seen the little girl before, but she was delighted to meet another child in such a solitary place. She waved again at the stranger. As an only child, she didn’t get many chances to play with other children.

The little blond child looked startled, as if she hadn’t expected to be noticed. Nora dropped the wild violets she had collected, and ran toward the girl, but she slipped into the laurels and headed deeper into the forest.

“Come back!” called Nora. “I won’t hurt you!”

She ran as hard as she could for a hundred yards or so, but the stones and fallen branches hurt her feet, still tender in May from a winter spent in shoes. Nora sat down in a clump of pine needles, and began to speak to the child who had vanished. “I wish you’d come back here. I sure am lonesome. It’s no fun playing by yourself all the time.”

The pale face peered out at her from behind a locust tree, a dozen feet away.

Nora saw that she was listening, but she seemed frightened. “I’ll just talk,” said Nora. “I won’t try to chase you. I can be your friend.”

The girl was still staring at her, unmoving, but her expression softened.

Nora went on talking, soothing the frightened stranger with the sound of her voice. She talked about Grandma Flossie, and the barn cats, and about the garden patch that she had been allowed to tend all by herself. She sang all that she could remember of her favorite hymn, hoping that the girl would join in, but she only watched silently from a safe distance.

“You want me to sing some more?” asked Nora. “Grandma Flossie’s favorite hymn is ‘Abide with Me,’ but I can never get the tune quite straight. Do you know that one?”