Thief of Dreams (28 page)

After a while he got up and went on, but he found nothing else. As he climbed, the gully got more and more shallow until it ceased to exist, but somehow he felt sure the boy had come this way, never mind that he'd twice been sure the night before and been wrong both times. The evidence he had, slim as it was, signified. He felt it.

The tufted grass where the gully played out had been scorched by frost and teased by the wind and bore no sign that he could read, but it didn't matter. He turned back toward the Marshalls', thinking of the state penitentiary a dozen miles away and the dogs they kept to track down escaped prisoners. He didn't know how he was going to get them, but he meant to do it, and fuck the sheriff's office if they wouldn't cooperate. It seemed important that he get them at once because he'd already lost half a day and it was making up to rain or snow. He couldn't tell which, but the heavy clouds that had begun to gather didn't look as if they were going to blow away without trouble.

MADELINE:

When the police car pulled into the driveway, she went out to meet them at once. She told them she'd had no luck with her phone calls—she hadn't expected to, although she'd called more than a dozen households in Cedar Hill, and a few of them, to her embarrassment, had trouble remembering just who James Tally was and never did seem to understand why they should have been chosen for a call—but, worse, she realized the deputies didn't know what she was talking about either. The sheriff, it was clear, hadn't bothered to tell the deputies much of anything. One of them took out a notebook and began to ask her questions about how long James had been gone, whether or not she'd just punished him or had a particularly bad argument or fight with him, whether there were relatives close by that the boy might have gone to. She would have hated them if she hadn't been in shock and so exhausted and eaten up with worry she hardly knew what she was doing. Even so, she wanted to slap the notebook and pen from the deputy's hands, only Edward came walking up just then and changed everyone's focus of attention.

“I think I've found which way the boy went,” he told them in a voice that was calm, intense, and very tired all at the same time. “He slipped off into a gully at the end of the cow pasture and turned just about straight east, but we'll need to get dogs from the penitentiary.”

“Well, Mr.…” the deputy flipped back a page in his notebook with his clean, square, freckled hand, “Mr. Tally, we need to ask just a few questions here and gather some information.” He smiled politely at Edward and then at her. “I'm afraid we don't have any authority over the penitentiary people; they're state and we're county. But we'll look at what you found in just a second.”

“We need those dogs,” Edward said. “I doubt my son weighs much more than eighty pounds, and the ground was frozen yesterday.”

She heard what was in his voice, but apparently neither of the deputies did.

“Now,” the deputy said to her, “you say you've checked with all his friends?”

But before she could answer, Edward was standing almost on top of the deputy and had closed his hand over the deputy's, crushing the notebook. “Do you know how goddamned cold it was last night?” Edward asked him.

The deputy looked taken aback and Madeline thought she saw anger flare behind his eyes.

“Look at the sky!” Edward was saying. “If it snows, the dogs can't …” But he didn't finish. “We need to get started quick. We don't have any time,” he said and released the deputy's hand and the disfigured notebook.

Edward wasn't angry, Madeline realized, only urgent. Perhaps the deputy realized that too, but whatever Edward saw in the deputy's face didn't satisfy him because he turned, started back up the driveway, and said: “I'll call the damned penitentiary myself.”

“Rafer,” the second deputy said, “the warden's name is Rafer.”

“Bill Rafer,” the deputy with the notebook added. “We'll bring what pressure we can from the sheriff's office.”

EDWARD:

But when he told the warden the circumstances, what he'd found, his dealings with the sheriff, how long James had been gone, and his fears about the weather, Bill Rafer seemed to listen. How old was this boy? he wanted to know. What was Edward's relationship to him? Where had the boy disappeared from, and what direction was he headed in again? Each time Edward answered, the warden went silent, as though to ponder. “Well,” he said and sighed, “that will put him in Pisga National Forest pretty damn quick, and I've lost one or two in there.” He paused again as though thinking it over. “I'll see that you get your dogs, Mr. Tally,” he said, “but I fear it will take the better part of an hour.” Once more the warden asked him where he was calling from, and when Edward told him, he said all right, he had the Marshall place under his finger on the map, he just wanted to be certain there was no mistake.

MADELINE:

Much of what went on around her, she was too exhausted to acknowledge. People had begun to come and go about her like figures appearing and disappearing in a dream, and even when they spoke to her about James or tried to offer comfort, the person they thought they were speaking to, this James they spoke about, seemed curiously and strangely removed and separate. Even the guilt she felt seemed thin, although she affirmed her culpability. One of the deputies stayed to help in the search and two men from the forestry service came to help, although she wasn't clear how they knew about it. Somehow she learned her father was also going to join the search party. And Edward seemed to be everywhere she looked. But for a long time only her mother seemed to come vivid and clear in her vision, as if everyone else were a bit out of focus; but even her mother seemed somehow dreamlike, as though she had been drawn across many years from Madeline's childhood memory of her.

“I want you to sit down and eat something before you fall,” her mother said, so bright and clear there seemed to be light around her. She led Madeline to the table and set a plate in front of her. Oh Momma, she wanted to say, doesn't anyone ever own themselves? Do we always give ourselves away? And does it always cause such injury when one of us tries to get ourselves back again? Only she didn't say anything at all. Her mother had gone away to try and make Edward come and eat something. And just as her mother said, she realized she
was
close to fainting because even her plate had a halo around it. Still, she poked at her food listlessly, not even quite sure what it was; and she managed a few bites only after Edward was made to sit down and eat.

When they could get away, Edward led her off to the trailer, where, numb and wordless, they looked at each other for a long time.

“We'll find him now,” Edward told her at last. “I'm pretty sure I got hold of which way he went.” He took her hands in his and gave them both a squeeze. “I'm satisfied I did,” he told her, “and we'll get him back.”

Tears spilled over her eyelids without warning, broke in her throat, and she began to sob. There were so many things to say, but they were so tangled in disillusion and sadness, in vain hope and regret, they couldn't come out. He held her while she sobbed. “I promise I'll find him,” he told her and held her and laid his cheek against the top of her head.

“Do you love me?” she asked him at last.

“I love you,” he said.

“Do you love me?” she insisted.

“I love you,” he told her.

She sat up and looked him in the eyes. “But do you love me?”

“Yes,” he said.

It wasn't any of the things she'd wanted to say; it had nothing to do with what was so tangled up inside her. She considered his face while he looked back steadily, but outside someone was calling, “Mr. Tally? Mr. Tally?” and in the next minute began knocking on the door.

Men were standing about the pasture, their breath steaming in the damp cold, the tall, stooped figure of her father among them. Two more men were trying to get dogs on long leads through the fence by the stile. “Do you have some dirty clothes your boy has worn recently, missus?” the man who had knocked on the door was asking her. In the hamper back at the house, she started to say, but then she thought of James's blanket and tilted up the couch, only to see that it was gone.

Edward saw it too, and deep, deep in his eyes, almost too faint to notice, the missing blanket seemed to light a spark, as though of confirmation. “Get the sheet,” he told her; “the dogs can take a scent from that.”

Two of the dogs, although large, had slithered under the bottom strand of wire, and their handler, wiry, bow-legged, and not young, had managed to slip through the fence and pass their leashes from hand to hand under the bottom strand, so that man and dogs were free. But one of the other two dogs had gone through the fence while the second went under, and one of them had hurt itself or was tangled because she heard impatient yelps and some of the other men had gone off to help.

The dogs were big and rawboned and clumsy looking and didn't seem to pay as much attention to the sheet she offered them as they might have, except to smear it with their muddy noses, but then Edward was beside her with James's Sunday jacket, which he'd turned wrong side out to offer them too, and then the second pair of dogs was there, the four of them filling each other with excitement and impatience, going from sheet to jacket, inquiring of each other's presence and the presence of the gathered men, tangling their leads, plodding about. And then Edward had handed her James's wrong-side-out jacket, given her a long, fierce, wordless hug, with his cheek pressed hard against the top of her head and her arms crushed awkwardly against her. And the next thing she knew, she was watching men and dogs negotiate the fence at the end of the pasture; and some indeterminable time after that, she was all alone and very cold, stooping to gather up her son's good Sunday jacket, lying wrong side out on the trodden earth, where she didn't know she had dropped it.

EDWARD:

Seeing that his son's blanket was missing allowed him to know absolutely what he knew already, and he didn't need the firm tracking of the dogs for further proof. But he feared the weather, and he wanted the handlers to turn them loose. The old one, Miles, had told him that it was raining already to the northeast at the penitentiary; but he wouldn't let the dogs off their leashes. They were ordinarily gentle creatures, these half Plott, half bloodhounds of his; but prisoners didn't like being run down by dogs and often tried to kill them, had killed some; and the best dog of the four, an eight-year-old bitch, had turned right vicious. So the dogs scrambled up the gully on their leads, occasionally talking James over among themselves in their baying, croupy voices, while the men, seven of them in all, labored behind. But just as they came up on the highway, a cold rain started to fall.

“Shit,” Miles said, “hit don't
never
fail.” He turned up the collar of his jacket and zipped it shut. “But don't you worry,” he said to Edward. “Trust ole Sal. It'll take more than this here to wash a trail so clean, she can't follow.”

At first he thought it was squirrels cutting something high up in the trees and letting the debris fall, pattering, through the leaves. He was only partly awake, and he could almost see the squirrels rolling hickory nuts between their nimble claws while tiny pieces of the outer green hull rained down. Perhaps in a little while, when he'd rested more, he'd take up his slingshot and try for one. His stomach was an empty space, and its lining was spiced with hunger. But he was tired and quite stiff and cold, and he didn't wish to stir from his blanket just then.

Yet after a while, when the pattering had reached such a volume it pressed against his ears, he raised his head and looked dumbly about, but he didn't see anything that would account for it. The only strange thing in sight was a hemlock off to his left and not as tall as he, which was jittering. There wasn't any wind, but the little tree trembled and danced as though a hand had taken hold of its roots beneath the ground and was shaking it. He watched, fascinated.

Even after he smelled rain, it took him another moment to connect the small, dancing tree and the din of pattering with what he smelled. Of course, it was raining. He was lucky to have built his lean-to under a wonderfully big, thick hemlock, and he was smart to have covered his roof well. The woods were so dim, he still couldn't see the rain fall, but it pleased him somehow that squirrels weren't making all that racket, because there was no need now to take up his slingshot and try to kill one for food. He could worry about food later, and he could worry about gathering firewood later too. It would be a silly thing to try and do in the rain, and he'd been bothering himself on and off about it. He could go back to his dreams, which seemed pleasant, if he could remember where he'd put them.

But while he was searching around for his dreams, he came across Earl Carpenter, who was trying to look as goofy and sad as Lester. He'd got himself one of Lester's ridiculous haircuts, and his shirt was too small and out at the elbow, like some of Lester's. Also the smirking cruelty was gone from his face, as though he were no longer the heartless bully James knew. “You're not fooling me any,” James told him. But he could tell Earl was trying to be invisible and watching his chance to jump out the schoolroom window and make his escape. It was just an evil trick, this transformation, and James resented it. Who would have thought that Earl was clever enough to imitate someone who was better than he himself could ever be?

But then, wrapped in his blanket with something cold crawling through the roots of his hair, he saw the matter inside out and was even more astonished to realize that Lester and Earl were built of exactly the same stuff. Fear and failure and trouble. The only difference was that Lester kept all the bad things he'd been given to himself, while Earl gave them a cruel twist and tried to pass them on to everyone else.