These High, Green Hills (59 page)

“Yeah,” said Lace.

“I need to know everything you can tell me about Poobaw, and I need you to tell me now.” He spoke gently, but he meant it and she knew it. “Let’s sit down.”

She sat in a chair, looking suddenly awkward in her new clothes. Odd, but he’d gotten used to the rags she’d worn.

“Pauline Barlowe is going to improve, but soon she’ll go away for a long stay to a place where she’ll learn to use her arm again and care for herself. She’s just seen her oldest son, Dooley—you met him.”

“He’s a creep. I hate redheads.”

“Some of my best friends are redheads, so I’ll thank you to be kind. What she needs now is to see Poobaw, to know he’s safe and taken care of.” He let that sink in. “So tell me. Where is he? How can we find him?”

She looked at him.

“Listen to me, Lace. You don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you because you don’t know me. But you’ve got to believe that no harm will come to Poobaw. We need to locate him and take him out of that place, and find someone for him to live with until Pauline is well and can take care of him herself.”

She shrugged. “I told ‘im t’ go t‘ Harley’s trailer if I didn’t come back from gittin’ us somethin‘ t’ eat.”

“Who is Harley?”

“Harley’s crazy, but he’s all right. He wouldn’t tell nobody that Poobaw was there, an‘ if they come lookin’ for Poobaw, I told Harley t‘ shoot their brains out, it’s th’ only kid Pauline had left. I didn’t know about Dewey, or whatever ‘is name is.”

“Where does Harley live?”

“Down there where people dump stuff off th‘ side of th’ hill. He’s got a blue trailer and three dogs that’ll eat your butt up, so you better step easy if you mess around there.”

He was going to need Scott Murphy before September ... way before September.

Why did she have to tell Harley to shoot somebody’s brains out if they came looking for Poobaw?

Every time he raised the courage to go get the boy himself, he thought about Harley and sank back. Blast, he hated cowardice. He had nearly lost Cynthia through a type of cowardice, and here he was a grown man in a free country, perspiring—no, sweating like a field hand—at the thought of stepping up to a door and knocking on it.

Rodney Underwood would be of no use—it wasn’t his county. And social services, by their own admission, could take days to get the wheels turning.

Right. But better them than him staring down the barrel of what had, in his mind, become crazy Harley Welch’s twelve-gauge shotgun.

The urge to do something would not let him alone; it was now on his heart constantly. This morning, Pauline had searched his face as she asked again, “Poobaw? Is he all right?”

Worse still, he recalled the anguish on Dooley’s face, the kind of anguish he’d believed time would erase, and remembered how he and Dooley, long ago, had held hands and prayed for his sister and brothers, with a special sense of concern for Poobaw.

Why couldn’t they call Harley and ask him to drive the boy to the hospital in his truck, for Pete’s sake? He and Cynthia would take it from there.

He rang Olivia and asked to speak with Lace.

“Harley ain’t got a phone. He ain’t even got a toilet.”

Was there any way she could get a message to Harley?

“Th‘ only way is to go up there.”

“Up there?”

“Acrost th‘ creek and up th’ bank. Hit’s steep but I been up it a million times, don’t anybody use that trail but me an‘ Granny Sykes.”

“What about the dogs?”

“They know me pretty good, but anybody else goin‘ in there better tote a sack of meat.”

When he hung up, he realized he was perspiring again. He thought he had hidden the idea from his conscious mind, but he had not.

He suddenly knew very clearly that he was going in there to get Poobaw.

“We can’t leave that boy in these circumstances,” he told Olivia. “I know it’s a crazy idea and there could be tremendous risk, but I feel we must do it. Would you agree?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” she said, her violet eyes dark with concern.

“How many you feedin‘?” asked Avis Packard at the meat counter of The Local.

“Three,” he said. “But they’re plenty hungry.”

“Three pounds ought to do it, then.”

“Better make it six pounds,” he said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief. “And it doesn’t have to be your best.”

Avis winked. “Must be entertainin‘ your vestry.”

He laughed. “I’m not entertaining at all. This is ... ” Should he tell? Why not? It wouldn’t reveal anything. “This is for dogs,” he said.

“Six pounds of beef for three dogs. Must be some dogs.”

“Oh, they are, they are.”

The large, wrapped parcel seemed so conspicuous as he hit the sidewalk, he wanted to shove it under his coat.

Be back soon,
he wrote. Should he say, “Don’t worry?” Of course not. That would make her worry.
Important meeting.
Wasn’t that the truth?
Love, Timothy.

He kept the beam of the flashlight low to the ground.

“You better catch on right here if you don’t want to bust your butt.” Lace had gone up the muddy bank ahead of him, as nimbly as a squirrel.

“Slow down!” he whispered. The shoe treads he had envisioned the other night would sure come in handy....

“You don’t want t‘ lose y’r step along here or you’ll end up some‘ers around Leesville.”

His heart was pounding—thundering, in fact. If somebody named Granny could negotiate this bank, so could he. However, somebody named Granny was not likely to have six pounds of red meat swinging in a sack lashed to her back.

“Git m‘ hat!” said Lace; keeping her voice low. “That bush knocked it off.”

“Keep going,” he said. “I’ve got it.”

He jammed it on his head and hauled himself up by grabbing onto the exposed root of a tree.

What was he doing out here in the dark of the night, scrambling up a bank like some chicken-poaching thief? He had put Lace Turner and himself at senseless risk, and in a foolish and impetuous way, to boot. What if her father saw her? What if Lester Marshall was hanging around Harley’s trailer? Not a living soul would be likely to forgive the local rector if anything happened.

However, if God’s love had made Scott Murphy invincible, why wouldn’t it do the same for him and for her? When it came to loving His children, God didn’t pick favorites.

“We’re gittin‘ there,” she said. “You OK?”

“I’m hangin‘ in.” He was so out of breath, he might have run a 10k. If he could only rest a minute....

“Don’t be settin‘ down,” she hissed. “I can see ol’ Harley’s TV shinin‘ th’ough th‘ winder.”

The stench of garbage and mold had assaulted his nostrils all the way up the bank. In the moonlight, lining the trail to their left, he saw the pale, abandoned hulks of refrigerators and stoves, half-exposed in mounds of rain-soaked debris. That day in Omer’s plane, he had looked down on this very place, never dreaming—

He heard skittering noises in the dump, and shivered.

They reached the top of the bank, where the ground leveled off. “Set!” she whispered. “Git that sack out an‘ give it t’ me.”

He did, noting that his hands shook.

“They ain’t nothin‘ t’ be skeered of,” she said. “I done this a million times. When we git beyond here, th‘ dogs’ll start up. I’ll th’ow down th‘ meat and you hit Harley’s winder with these little rocks. Here.” She handed him two pieces of gravel she had picked up from the creek. “That’s m’ signal f‘r’im t‘ let me in.”

“What if he’s sleeping?”

“He don’t sleep ‘til ’way up in th‘ night.”

“What if he can’t hear it hit the window?”

“He’ll hear th‘ dogs start up an’ listen f‘r th’ rocks.”

He hoped her plan worked as well as she seemed to think it would. Six pounds of meat wouldn’t last six minutes. If Barnabas Kavanagh was any indication, three seconds, maximum, was what they could count on.

“What about the dogs when we leave?” he whispered urgently. The sack of meat might work up front, but what strategy would they use to protect the rear?