Whisper Hollow (29 page)

On Gabriel’s birthday, Danny was working the hoot owl shift, so he had the day off. Lidia packed a picnic of baloney sandwiches and potato salad and an apple pie. She tucked in some napkins and a change of clothes and the long, thin gift she’d wrapped in brown paper and tied off with a blue bow. Then they took Gabriel up to the stream and spread out a blanket and ate their lunch. As they picnicked, they talked quietly to him about the leaves and birds and the random creaking buzz of cicadas in the oaks and maples. After a while, Lidia put three candles into the pie — two for his age and one to grow on — and they sang “Happy Birthday” and told him to make a wish and blow out the flames.

As he did so, Lidia, with her eyes open, made one, too.
Keep it secret. Keep him safe.

Gabriel pulled at the bow and ripped off the paper, but there was no delight on his face when he saw the two halves of the pole. He reached out and touched the reel. “What is it?” he asked.

Danny laughed. “It’s a fishing pole. Just your size,” he said. “I’m gonna teach you how to catch a fish just like my daddy taught me when I was little.” He opened the margarine container he’d filled with dirt and night crawlers dug from the dew-soaked garden that morning. Then he showed Gabriel how to thread a squirming worm onto a hook and how to cast his line into the stream in the quiet spots near the bank where the trout would likely be. And how to hold on to the little cork handle and bounce the worm and watch for the bobber to get tugged under the water’s surface.

The first time he got a strike, Gabriel was so surprised he lost his balance and slipped into the stream before Danny could catch him. The trout got away, but Gabriel didn’t let go of the pole. “That’s my boy!” Danny said, and scooped him out of the water. Lidia used the picnic blanket to dry him off and changed his clothes for the spare set she’d brought.

Raising her older brother had taught her about being prepared for accidents.

Once he was dry and the stun had faded, Gabriel walked back to the bank and picked up his pole. He handed it to his father and said, “Again.”

And every morning since, he’d told Lidia, “I no need a nap. Take me fishing.” After a couple of days of resisting and insisting that he lie down, that they could go later after they’d both had a rest, Lidia finally gave up. She helped him dig up the night crawlers and bait his hook, and helped him cast his line, and stood behind him so she could take over when he got a strike to keep him from falling in.

They’d had rainbow trout for dinner three times that week already.

“Gabriel, baby,” Lidia said on Wednesday. “Let’s please not go fishing today.”

“I no need a nap.”

“Well, you might not, but I do.”

“Take me fishing. Please?”

It melted her, the way he looked up with those saucer eyes so full of hope. The way he used the word “please” correctly and, if she was being honest, manipulatively.

She sighed, balling the dishtowel, and tossed it onto the counter. “Fine,” she said, shaking her head and smiling with her tired eyes. “Go get your worms.”

They repeated their adventure identically. Picnic, worms, casting, waiting. The only difference was that today was Wednesday and the sun remained hidden beyond a blanket of clouds. A cool breeze blew off the mountain, whipping a few early-turned leaves off their stems. Lidia could smell the ascent of fall.

“Gabe, come lie down here with me a minute.” She lay back on a bed of leaves and patted her shoulder. Gabriel, who wasn’t tired, complied. He put down his pole and snuggled his overalled little body and Johnson & Johnson–scented head against her, and she wrapped her arm around him. For a moment, the sun poked from the clouds and radiated heat at them. Lidia closed her eyes.

Minutes or hours later, when she woke, she felt no heat against her face. Or her shoulder. The clouds were thick again; the sky revealed no sense of time.

She sat up quickly, smacking the stale taste off her lips. She looked around. The gagging sound of stream on rocks. The belly-up float of fallen leaves. A wavering V of geese against a pewter sky. How long had she slept? Where was Gabriel? She stood up, leaves sticking to her hand-knit sweater.

Lidia ran toward the stream, scanned the bank for any sign of him.

“Gabriel?”

Without hesitation she picked her way straight out into the middle, hoping to see his pole sticking out from somewhere along the bank nearby.

“Gabriel?” Louder now.

She sprinted from the stream and back to where they’d last been lying. His pole and worms were gone.

Standing, frantic and paralyzed, Lidia wanted to run but was unsure which way to go. Upstream? Down? Into the wood? How far would he go? What if he’d fallen in the stream and been carried away?

“Gabriel!”

Somewhere to her right, there was a rustling in the brush. She couldn’t see if it was him, but it was enough to catapult her from her bewilderedness. “Gabriel! Gabriel!” She launched forward, screaming his name over and over as she ran into the wild.

Lidia crashed across fallen branches and ducked under low boughs, coming to the place where she thought she’d heard something, but found nothing there. Dizzy with fear and panic, she turned around. The next time she called his name, it came out garbled.

There were stories she’d heard all her life of mountain people who lived out in the woods in tar-paper shacks. Vagrants and crazies and moonshiners and all manner of nearly feral beings who refused to live in a civilized community. What if the stories were true? What if one of them had —

“Gabriel!”

Another rustling nearby. She sprinted to a pair of red maples and yanked back a handful of scrub brush, already imagining her serious little boy, crouched down and peering at some interesting creature.

She was partially right. Four or five speckled brown cottontail rabbits burrowed together, their long ears touching. The
sight of them was so unexpected that for a second she forgot herself. She felt the urge to reach out and stroke their fat little backs, their little white tails.
Gabe
,
look at this!
she wanted to say. But Gabriel wasn’t there.

Panic rushed back in and she let go of the brush, which snapped into place over the sleeping rabbits. She looked this way and that, trying to decide. Then she saw his fishing pole lying in the dirt just a few feet away from where she stood. It was unbaited and unbroken, just tossed aside as if forgotten. Gabriel had wanted his pole next to his bed at night. He wouldn’t have thrown it down like that. The worms had been dropped too; the lid on the margarine container had come off at impact, and a small mound of dirt spilled out. The night crawlers were gone, either fished away or already digging under unfamiliar earth.

As she scanned the ground for clues — which way, how long ago — she realized that a path had been cut into the sedge and clover. She decided that Gabriel would go up and not down the mountain, so she took off running, calling his name as she ran.

It wasn’t long before she crested an incline and saw a garden and a cabin next to it. Even from within her adrenaline-fueled hysteria, she noted the neat rows of vegetables, the lack of weeds, the tended dirt. A line of smoke threaded toward the sky and blended into it. An odd comfort. She slowed down and could smell something cooking. Familiar and fragrant, like a meal her mother might have made once upon a time. She moved steadily forward, but as she approached, she began to wonder if she was moving backward instead.

Mama?
she thought. But her mouth said, “Gabriel?”

She walked around the southern border of the garden toward the front of the cabin. The windows were open. Amid the smell of food, she could also smell paint.

“Gabriel?” she called.

“Mama?” His voice was muffled. She sprinted around to the front porch.

“Gabriel!”

There he was, sitting cross-legged on the porch, his mouth full, a half-eaten cookie in his hand. “Mama!” he cried, and smiled wide. “Look!” As he pointed to something in the near distance, she cleared the steps without even touching them. When she got to where he sat, she scooped him up, burying her face in his neck that smelled of baby shampoo and stream water, loamy dirt and sugar cookies. She burst into sobs.

After a moment, she pulled her face away and peered into his. “Are you all right?” His eyes were bright and fine. “You’re not hurt?” He shook his head and smiled. “Why did you run off like that? I didn’t know where you were! Don’t ever do that again, Gabriel! You hear me?” Then she yanked him through her anger to hold him close again.

“He only got up here about ten minutes before you did.” Alta’s voice behind her was calm and warm.

Lidia jerked her head up. She’d only had eyes for her son; she didn’t notice anyone else was there.

“He was chasing after this little rabbit here.” She held up the tiny thing. It looked just like the ones Lidia saw back near the stream. “I gave him a cookie, and was trying to get him to tell me where he lived. I was just about to take him down to town to see if we could find his parents.”

“I’m his parent.”

“So it seems.” Alta smiled. “You look a mess. Must have been frantic. Come sit up here and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.” She patted one of the two rocking chairs moving on its own in the September breeze. Then Lidia carried Gabriel over and sat down and leaned back into the slats. She could have been a little girl again curled up in someone’s lap for how comfortable it was. Gabriel wriggled in her arms and she let him down.

“Can I see the rabbit?” he said.

Alta put it down in front of him. “Remember what I said. He’s little and probably scared.” She glanced at Lidia. “Kind of like your mama is right now. So you be gentle.”

Gabriel offered the rabbit a bite of his cookie and it stretched out its neck and twitched its nose before declining. It turned away and hopped on long feet a few steps across the porch. Gabriel giggled and clasped his hands over his mouth.

The other rocking chair was halfway painted a cherry-blossom red and resting upside down on a flapping issue of
The New York Times.
A few drops of paint splattered the headline: “U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote.” The pungent paint smell mixed with the food — cabbage soup, perhaps — and fresh coffee made Lidia want to cry again. It was as if she’d gone back to the home her mother had made, or someplace even better.

Then Alta was standing next to her with a handkerchief and a steaming mug. “I’m Alta Pulaski. Gabriel already told me his name. What about you?”

“Lidia Kielar. I mean, Pollock. Lidia Pollock.”

“Stanley Kielar’s girl?” Lidia nodded and Alta smiled. “How long you been married?”

“Just over two years.”

“Takes a while to make the name stick.” She nodded, searching Lidia’s tired eyes. “I can understand that.”

Lidia looked down at the coffee. Smoke came off the top in a veil, as if it were trying to hide something underneath. She had a sudden desire to tell this stranger everything she couldn’t tell anyone else.

“I fell asleep. We were having a picnic. I didn’t think …” Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry.” She laughed once, a hiccup, and settled back into the crying.

“Shhh, now.” Alta stepped closer and patted her on the arm.

“I’ve just been so tired is all.”

“It’s hard,” Alta said, still patting her in long, gentle strokes, the way she had the cottontail rabbit. “Being a wife and a mother. And you so young. I know it’s hard.”

“I shouldn’t have fallen asleep, though. Something could have happened to him.”

“Something’s always going to happen to people. Good and bad. You’re trying your best, I can see that. But you can’t always keep things from happening. Sometimes they just do.”

Lidia tipped her head up, slow enough not to discourage Alta’s motherly hand. Now that even her mother-in-law was gone — died the year before of heart failure — this stranger was the closest thing she had. She sniffed and used the handkerchief to wipe her eyes. Then she took a long sip of coffee. “Do you know what time it is?”

Alta turned her wrist and checked her watch. “It’s almost three o’clock.” She glanced at the sky. “Hard to tell on a day like this.”

Lidia gasped. “I didn’t mean to be out so long. I have to go get dinner started. I haven’t done a thing.”

Alta laughed. “I remember feeling like that back when. Always having to be on somebody else’s time.”

She shook her head. “Danny doesn’t demand anything. He’s good to me.”

Alta looked at her with a sad sort of smile. “I believe it.” Then she stood up straight and took a deep breath. “Does Danny like cabbage rolls?” Before Lidia could answer, Alta winked and lifted an index finger, then disappeared behind the slam of the screen door.

Gabriel chased the little rabbit around the porch, crouching down each time it stopped, mimicking its twitching nose and occasionally reaching out to stroke its fur. Lidia watched from the rocking chair and felt both very old and very young. She couldn’t decide if she should get down and play with
Gabriel, or let herself into the cabin and offer to help this utter stranger. Her kitchen clanging and tapping clearly meant that she was dividing her dinner to send with Lidia back down the mountain.

Alta returned a few minutes later with a full sack. “I always make too much food. Old habits. It’s nice to be able to share it.”

Lidia stood. “How can I thank you for this?” She lifted her palm toward her son. “For …” She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“You just come back for a visit, that’s how. I don’t get a lot of visitors and I’d be happy to have some company.”

Lidia nodded and tried to smile.

“You’ve had a time of it today,” Alta said. “There’s cabbage rolls here, and some asparagus from my garden. Now where exactly did you leave your picnic things? I’ll walk you back and help you get situated.”

Lidia reached out to take the sack, but Alta waved her off. “You take the baby. I’ll carry this.”

“Gabriel, it’s time to go,” Lidia said. Gabriel must have heard the reluctance in her voice, for he didn’t even lift his head in response. Lidia and Alta stood side by side, looking down at him. Neither of them seemed too hurried to force the issue either. After a moment, she leaned toward Gabriel and said, “You know, I think I might set that rabbit up here for a pet if it’ll have me. Then you’ll have something to play with when your mama brings you up the hollow to see us.”