The Wonder of All Things (23 page)

“Just take care of her,” Macon told Brenda. “I’ll find the kids.”

It was all he had left inside of him to say.

* * *

The search party swept out from Stone Temple like a great, calamitous fog. Their number was difficult to count. They were town locals, people from Reverend Brown’s church, newshounds, the curious, the confused, the hopeful and they were even those simply concerned about a pair of young teenagers who had disappeared in the midst of horror and tragedy. It did not matter to them that they were strangers to the town, unaware of the intricacies of the mountains into which it was believed the children had fled. All that mattered to them was the return of the boy and girl.

Seeing that he would be the only one able to stem the tide of people heading off into the mountains on their own to search for the children, it was Macon who came up with the idea of pairing one local with a group of visitors. At least then the groups would have some means of navigation and, when the night ended, there would be fewer people lost among the trees and rocks and bracken and deep places of the mountains. If they were lucky, they wouldn’t have to send out search parties to find the search parties.

Heading south, the country was harsh and the last thing he needed were strangers unfamiliar with the mountain stumbling through the darkness. There were pitfalls and precipices enough on the mountain to guarantee a tragic outcome. So he sent the majority of the searchers off to the south. The mountains were smoother there and it was the direction that led, soonest, to civilization. If the children were heading toward another town, hoping to catch a bus or to hitchhike away, that was the direction they would most likely go. He still wasn’t sure exactly why they had disappeared. There was still the possibility that they had been taken by someone, but he doubted that.

With so many searchers combing the south, Macon took the more treacherous stretch of forest and headed north. He had a feeling that, if his daughter had escaped to the woods, she would probably have gone in this direction.

Ava was headstrong, and if she truly had it in her mind to run away, it would not be impossible for her. But she was sick, too. Sicker than he wanted to admit to himself. She had been dying, little by little, with each healing she performed. And he had pushed her into it.

This was the thought that haunted Macon, even as he watched the town burn around him. There were still fires to be put out, still people that needed tending to, and no help or emergency support had arrived yet. The fire department was doing what it could, but they were few and most of them too old and out of shape to be doing the work of putting out the massive blaze. This was the problem with being in a town where the worst emergency was a brawl at a barbecue. When you really needed help, it was hard to come by.

“Macon!” someone shouted. “Sheriff!”

Macon turned to see Reverend Brown racing over to him. The man’s clothes were dirty and his face was riddled with worry. “Have you seen Sam?” Reverend Brown asked. His jaw was clenching and releasing and he was sweating. His breaths came fast and haggard. “Have you seen him? They found the man that takes care of Sam unconscious. Sam must have hit him and then ran off somewhere. Have you seen him?”

“No,” Macon said, “but we will. If he’s out here somewhere, we’ll find him.”

“You don’t understand,” Reverend Brown said. “He wanted to help. He wanted to help me.” His voice trembled.

Finally, Macon was beginning to understand. “Jesus,” he said.

“I don’t want to believe it,” Reverend Brown said. He placed his hand on the window of Macon’s car. His hand was red with the force of it, as if he were holding to a life raft in the middle of the ocean.

“Just stay calm, Reverend,” Macon said. “We’ll find your brother. But, right now, I’ve got to find Ava. She and Wash have disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Ran away, from what I can gather,” Macon replied.

“Where might they go?” Reverend Brown asked. The confidence came back into his voice. “I’ll take some people and I’ll go,” he said.

“You find your brother,” Macon replied. “I’ll find the children.”

* * *

The ridgeline led the children to Rutger’s cabin. It was nestled in the grip of dense pines and overgrowth, on a flattened section of the mountain. The cabin was hidden, but it was there, the imprint of the life left behind, enduring through all the years of neglect. The yard surrounding the cabin was wild and overgrown, but not impenetrable. There was a sense about it that it was being maintained by someone.

In the center of a stump near a small stack of old firewood, a rusty ax sprouted and pointed toward the sky. There was an old, rotted plow propped against the base of a tree as if someone had placed it there in a rush a long, long time ago. On another tree dangled what looked like animal traps. Wash studied them as he and Ava passed. She walked sure-footed and confidently through the yard, hardly noticing so many of the things that fascinated Wash.

He wanted to walk up beside her and take her hand, like a couple. It felt like the correct thing to do. But the thought of holding her hand that way was electric to him. It made his lungs tighten and created a buzzing in his ears like the hum of a thousand songs all playing at once: an infinite loop of tinny words and crescendos. It was enough to make him slightly dizzy, enough to make his stomach clench as if he had not eaten in years.

But maybe that’s what love was.

There was a sprawling, almost feral growth of mint near the front of the cabin. Mingled in, somehow—straining and nearly choked to death—he could see sprigs of sage and what was, perhaps, thyme peeking up from among the mint. The mixture of the smells was hypnotic and he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply and imagined how the world would be if this one moment, this one aroma, covered it all.

“Watch your step,” Ava said.

But already Wash was in the process of tripping over a tree root and tumbling to the ground.

“Smooth,” Ava said with a grin.

Wash stood and brushed off his clothes and followed Ava as she went to the front door and opened it without hesitation. “Shouldn’t we knock?” Wash asked.

Ava chuckled. “There’s no one here but us,” Ava said.

The old cabin smelled of dust and mildew. Inside, it was even smaller than it seemed from the outside. It was only four walls placed far enough to contain a bed and a wood-burning stove and a small table that sat beneath a broken window, covered in leaves and debris that the wind had deposited there over the years. On one of the walls, near an empty bed frame, there was a large hole in the wall through which the wind came. It was large enough for an animal—or a small adult—to slip through and Wash wondered how it came to be.

The place seemed built for a single person. It was never meant to hold more than one. It was, in many ways, the house that Ava had always wanted, somewhere where she might live alone and have her dogs and her silence. He wondered if this was where the idea had found its roots. And he wondered why she had never told him about this place before.

They went directly to the stove and opened it. Inside were a few small logs—old and burned through. “We could find wood,” Wash said.

“But we don’t have any matches,” Ava said. “And I’m cold.”

“I can make the fire,” Wash said. “My dad taught me.”

His father’s lesson had not fallen on deaf ears. Just as Tom had done, Wash walked around outside of the cabin and collected the smallest twigs and kindling he could find. It was difficult and slow work, and there was always, in his mind, the thought of how long this was all taking. There was a persistent feeling that time was not on his side. Every now and again he would hear the sound of Ava coughing from the cabin. The sound was a spur in his side.

He folded the bottom of his shirt up into a pouch and collected the kindling there. He picked up what rocks he could find, hoping that he might have good enough fortune to find some that he could strike together to make sparks. It was a foolish thought. It would take luck and fortune to have it happen, but he had hope.

When he came back inside Ava was curled up on the floor in front of the stove, shivering. She opened her eyes to look at him as he entered and she did not seem to recognize him. She closed her eyes again and seemed to tighten in on herself, like a frightened child. Wash emptied his collected items onto the floor and sifted through them. There was wood enough for his purposes, but the rocks were still uncertain. So he took his time and tried out different rock combinations he thought would work. After several failed attempts, there came a spark.

“It’s gonna work!” he shouted. He turned to see if Ava had heard him, but she did not stir. Her eyes were closed and her breathing was slow—slower than he had ever seen before. “It’s gonna work,” he said again to himself.

Starting the fire took longer than he had expected. The kindling was easy enough to organize into the small stack that his father had demonstrated, but lighting it with the spark made by the rocks seemed a matter of luck more than planning. Again and again the sparks glimmered and darted through the air and landed atop the kindling and, again and again, nothing else happened. With each clap of the stones the frustration grew inside Wash. He noticed the cold more and more. Ava coughed, as if to remind him of what was at stake.

But he was relentless. Relentless until it finally produced results.

When the small thread of smoke began to rise from the kindling Wash held his breath. It was like watching a life being born, and the thought of all the ways it could be ended overcame him. His hands shook, but he forced them to form a wind barrier around the kindling—the way his father had that day—and he whispered, softly, into the ember, “She’ll die if I don’t make this work.” Then he pursed his lips and blew as gently as he could manage and he prayed.

The fire caught.

The boy wanted to scream. He wanted to stand and dance and to pick Ava up and spin her around the way people did in movies. But, instead, he gently lifted the kindling from the floor and placed it into the stove where he had already stacked the wood. Now was not the time to get carried away.

For the next few minutes he sat in front of the stove and watched the fire grow. It danced at the occasional draft, and the fear that it might be extinguished rose up inside the boy each time, but the flame continued to grow until, finally, it was a steady, crackling fire in the belly of the cast-iron stove.

He laughed then—deep and heartily. “I did it, Ava,” he said. She was still asleep on the floor, unaware of what he had done. For a while, Wash watched her sleep. Her breathing was slow and deep, but still she shivered. So he went over to lie down on the floor behind her and placed his arm around her and pressed his body against her and held the girl tightly. Almost immediately, the trembling stopped.

“I hope you’re okay,” Wash said, his words brushing against the back of Ava’s neck. And, even though she did not reply, Wash decided that he had done the right thing. He decided that she would be okay. And the knowledge of it was enough that he could fall asleep.

Beneath the roof of the old cabin, among the dust and the cold night wind that came in through the broken window, carried on the legs of the moonlight, beneath the gentle crackling of the fire and the warmth that was filling the cabin more and more, beneath it all a boy held tightly to the girl he loved and a girl slept in the arms of the boy she loved and the rest of the world did not exist.

* * *

Brenda sat on the edge of Carmen’s bed and held her hand and refused to leave her side. She was surprised by how quickly they made it to the hospital. She thought back to the day she brought Wash home after Ava’s first healing. There had been so many people and reporters and cars lined up along the road with no way for a person to get through. Her fear, for Carmen’s sake, was that the crowds would be far worse now, and they would not make it to the hospital. But the roads were mostly clear—only a few other cars, and very nearly all of them heading into town rather than out of it. Police cars, ambulances, news vans, all of them racing into the town as Carmen and Brenda raced out of it. But even though she was thankful on Carmen’s behalf, she still worried about her grandson.

Yes, she trusted that he was old enough and smart enough to survive a night in the mountains. But she also knew that nothing was the way it had been. The worry formed a ball in her chest that made it difficult to breathe at times. It was only because of Carmen that she did not give in. “How would it look if I went to pieces now,” Brenda said to herself as they reached the hospital.

“Any word on the children?” Carmen said as they brought her in.

“Macon’ll sort that out,” Brenda replied. “You got other things you need to see to.” Then she squeezed Carmen’s hand and walked beside her as the pregnant woman was rolled through the corridors of the hospital.

For Carmen, it was difficult keeping up with what was going on around her. The pain came quickly and it lingered, exhausting and terrifying her. She drifted in and out of consciousness. She could remember being placed on the stretcher at Dr. Arnold’s, but the time when they loaded her into the ambulance was an empty place in her mind. She remembered Brenda talking to her about Wash and Ava as they rode to the hospital, but what was actually said was foggy.

Carmen smiled and nodded when the nurses came for blood samples and ran back and forth from doctor to doctor with the results. They medicated her and it made everything seem far away and woven from cotton. She lay in bed, holding her belly, sweating and breathing at an uneven pace and thinking to herself about Ava. She pitied the girl. She pitied everything that her life would become from this point forward. Whatever chance there may have been for Ava to have even a modicum of normalcy, it was gone.

Then someone took her hand. She hadn’t heard anyone come into the room. The medicine had made her vision blurry and he appeared distorted to her.

“Carmen?” Dr. Arnold said. “Carmen, I just wanted to let you know that I’m here. Everything’s going to be okay. There’s a proper obstetrician here. I’ve discussed your pregnancy with him many times, and he’s going to make sure everything is okay.”