Wolf Hollow (21 page)

He tipped his head back and swallowed hard. “I kept thinking about what I was leaving behind. So I turned around and walked to the smokehouse. To get some pictures,” he said. “It was hard, both choosing them and working them off the wall.” He stopped abruptly and dragged the back of his hand across his forehead.

“And then I came back here to say good-bye, Annabelle. It was rude to leave the way I did.”

I liked that he had come all the way back to say a proper good-bye. But I didn't like the idea that he'd thought it rude.

“You don't need to feel obliged,” I said, looking at my feet.

He held up a hand again. “I don't. I don't feel that way.” He sighed. Gained his feet. Put his hat back on. Shifted his guns higher on his shoulder. “Annabelle, I would have liked a daughter like you,” he said.

He put out his hand and I shook it, as if we'd made a pact.

Then he climbed down the ladder, crossed the threshing floor, and walked out through the big open doors.

Two things struck me as I stood in that loft and tried to remember what I'd come for.

One was that Toby had not said good-bye after all, and nor had I.

The second was that he carried only two guns.

I had never once seen him without three.

I remembered what my father had discovered: that only one of those guns still worked, the other two long past firing.

Toby had never really said why he carried all those heavy guns and had for years and years.

But I knew. Toby carried those guns because they were heavy.

I just didn't know why he had suddenly decided to lighten his load.

Treasure Island
was waiting for me back behind the bales.

I spent a moment there, crying just long enough so I could breathe again, then I opened the hatch shutters wider and leaned out over the pasture.

I couldn't see to any great distance, but Toby was darker than the pasture grass, and I thought I saw him as he entered the woods. Or maybe I didn't.

Either way, he was gone, and I didn't expect to see him again.

I closed the shutters, tucked the book under my arm, and left the loft, the barn, heading home.

“Hey,” Henry said when he heard me come in through the mudroom door and saw what was in my hand. “That's my
Treasure Island
.”

“Yes, it is,” I said, handing it over.

He looked at it front and back. “What were you doing with it? Outside? In the dark?”

“I was reading to the dogs,” I said, taking off my boots. “They especially liked the part where Black Dog comes looking for Bones.”

“Very funny, Annabelle.”

James had come out to the mudroom to investigate the possibility of something more interesting than
Cavalcade of America
, which my parents listened to through the cold months. The radio warbled away from the sitting room.

“Hey, that's my
Treasure Island
,” James said, and in an instant they were tussling over the old book.

“You two make a fine pair,” I said, edging past them. But I stopped when something fluttered from the pages and landed at my feet.

“What's that?” James said.

“A note from the dogs,” I replied, slipping it into my pocket. “It says
Go to bed
.”

“You're a riot,” Henry said.

“
You
go to bed,” James said.

“I think I will,” I said.

After I brushed my teeth and washed my face, I spent a moment at the bathroom mirror. It was amazing, but I looked just the same as always.

“Good night,” I said to my parents, grandparents, even Aunt Lily, who considered
Cavalcade of America
“an example of fine programming.” Not like Red Skelton or
The Shadow
, though she sometimes sat in the kitchen at the end of the table nearest the sitting room when we listened to such “trash.”

Safe in my room, I pulled from my pocket the picture that had fallen out of the book and studied it in the light from my bedside lamp.

The photograph was marbled with rough handling and shadows, but I could still see the sunstruck surface of a fishing hole as if I were looking down from the bridge above it.

I wasn't sure at first why Toby would have taken a picture of still water, or why he would have left such a picture for me to find.

But when I flattened it out on the tabletop and tipped it just so in the lamplight, I could see a vague reflection in the water, of the man with the camera on the bridge.

A self-portrait. The kind Toby would permit himself. How he looked, but secondhand, transformed by the water.

There was nothing on the back but the scar from where he'd pulled it off the smokehouse wall. Perhaps, if he'd had a pen, he might have written something.

As I tucked the photograph under my mattress, I heard a car crunching on the gravel in the lane. A door slamming. After a moment, someone knocking at the door.

Officer Coleman had arrived.

The house trembled with a migration to the mudroom door, the entrance of the big trooper, the excitement of my brothers, who must have forgotten, in the fray, that Toby had never done them any harm.

I hoped they would remember soon.

My bedroom window did not face toward the barn, so I was spared the temptation to watch as the trooper followed the beam of his spotlight in that direction, my father surely with him.

It took me a long time to fall asleep, but they had not yet returned before I did.

I slept so long and hard that when my mother woke me the next morning I was a stranger to myself. Whatever I had dreamed had taken me out of my life, and I spent a long moment coming back.

“You sure were tired,” my mother said as my eyes cleared.

“I guess I was.” I yawned loudly and stretched my arms over my head. “Do I have to go to school today?”

She picked up a stray sock from the floor and tossed it in my hamper. “I would think you'd be happy to get back to school.”

“I will, when all this is over.”

“It is over, Annabelle. For you. You won't want to be part of what comes next.”

I didn't like the sound of that.

My mother sat down on the edge of my bed.

“What's going on?” I said.

“Officer Coleman checked the barn. He didn't find anything.”

“Of course not. Toby's long gone.” I had not told her about his return, and I wasn't sure I ever would. With his picture under where I lay, I felt a little like the princess and the pea.

“Yes, but then Officer Coleman went down to the smokehouse to have another look around. And he did find something there.”

I remembered that Toby had gone back to get his photographs.

“He left one of his guns behind. And it definitely wasn't there when Officer Coleman looked the first time, after Betty went missing.”

I sat up.

“But here's the really odd part, Annabelle. The gun he left behind is a working gun, still loaded. The only good one Toby had. He took the other two broken ones, but he left the one that worked. Which makes no sense at all.”

I wondered if he was afraid that he'd use it if they caught up with him. Or maybe he was just laying down part of his load.

I didn't believe in either answer. But I didn't have a third.

My mother was watching me curiously.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. “Did he leave anything else?”

“No. In fact, he took something. Photographs from his walls.”

“That part makes sense.”

She worried the edge of my blanket. “So now they know that he was in our barn at some point, because he left his camera and his hat there. Which, by the way, is another problem, since the hat wasn't in the barn anymore when they searched it last night.” My mother ran her hands through her hair. “This is crazy, Annabelle. It's getting harder and harder to remember what we're supposed to know and what we're not.”

“Why do you think I went to bed before Officer Coleman got here last night?”

She nodded. “I feel sorry for your father. He had to go out to the barn and act surprised that the hat wasn't where he'd left it. So now Officer Coleman is convinced that Toby's still right close by. And disturbed. And dangerous.”

“But we know he's not,” I said.

“We do. Which is why your father told Officer Coleman that Toby's other two guns are broken, so they wouldn't consider him armed.”

“And shoot him,” I said. I lay back down. “I hope he's miles from here by now.”

“So do I. But they'll have bloodhounds.” She didn't need to say anything else.

I pictured the dogs straining against their leashes, braying frantically, as they dragged their handlers through the woods.

“You're right,” I said. “I do want to go to school.”

My mother sighed. “Annabelle, I wish you could. But Officer Coleman has issued an order that everyone stay inside with their doors locked until Toby's found.”

I sat up again. “What?”

“They don't want anyone to get hurt, by Toby or by accident. And they don't want him to have anywhere to hide.”

“They can't lock every henhouse and oil shack, can they?”

“No, but they're not worried that Toby will take a bunch of chickens hostage.”

“Hostage?” I scrambled out of bed. “They're the ones who are crazy. Mother, this all started because Betty lied about Toby hurting Ruth. And then about him pushing her down the well. Everyone's acting on her say-so. That's just not right. You know it's not.”

“Annabelle, you can stand there in your nightie and make all the proclamations you want, but I don't see what we can do. It's out of our hands. Betty's not going to change her story. Why should she? Everyone thinks she's the victim. And I really can't blame them. She looks like one. And Toby looks like a villain, whether he is or not.”

“So we just have to sit here in the house with the doors locked and wait for them to catch him?”

“I'm afraid so. Women and children inside. Men in the hunt.”

I didn't know if I could take one more lousy surprise.

“Men in the hunt? You mean Daddy has to go hunt for Toby?”

My mother nodded. “He doesn't really have to. But he's the one who insisted that Toby's not armed. Dangerous, maybe, but not like he would be if he had a good gun. So they're asking any grown man to join in. We know these woods better than the troopers do, and the hounds are going to have a lot to sort out before they get it right. So in the meantime, it's a few policemen and a volunteer army, with whistles instead of guns. Nobody wants a shooting. And nobody wants Toby to get his hands on a proper weapon.”

“Whistles?”

“So they can let the others know if they see him.”

I tried to picture it. A bunch of farmers with whistles.

I was sure at least a few of them would arm themselves with something more, no matter what the trooper said.

Every year, some deer hunter shot his buddy by mistake, so I found it easy to imagine how a hunt like this might end.

“I'm glad that James and Henry are too young to join in,” I said. “And boys like Andy, who would shoot anything that moved.”

“And your grandpap, too old for anything but sitting in his truck with a thermos of coffee.”

I pulled some pants and a sweater from my closet. “Maybe they should put Aunt Lily on a leash and let her snuffle one of Toby's gloves.”

“Annabelle, hush,” my mother said, trying not to smile.

And I did hush then, to listen to the echo of what I'd just said.

“You know . . . we should hide Grandpap's coat. The one Toby wore. And the gloves, too. They'll smell just like him.”

This time my mother did smile. “You think the bloodhounds are going to be in our mudroom?”

I shrugged. “Who knows? They might. A bloodhound can track through water,” I said. “Even a flood. And it can pick up the trail of someone who's not even touching the ground, being carried by someone else.”

“How do you know that?”

“Toby told me.”

My mother frowned. “I wonder how he knew that.”

“I have no idea, but he was in our kitchen just yesterday, so there's a trail from his smokehouse, to the barn, to the house and back, and then off into the woods.”

My mother stood up. “Good grief,” she said. “This gets better and better.”

Neither of us said anything more as I got dressed. Brushed my hair. Began to make my bed. “They'll figure it out,” I finally said. “They'll figure out that Toby was Jordan.”

“You think so?” My mother straightened out my bedspread. “I suppose they will. If the hounds come to our door. But the freshest trail is from the barn and away, into the woods. They shouldn't come near the house.”

“I'm still going to hide Grandpap's coat and gloves up here in my closet.”

“All right,” she said. “I suppose it won't do any harm.”

And we both went downstairs to start one of the oddest days we'd ever spent, locked inside the house like prisoners ourselves.