Dream With Little Angels (3 page)

Then again, until this summer, Carry had been a completely different Carry. She had been a sister I could rely on. Now I wasn't so sure that I could. When I was sick from school last year for them five days, it was Carry who would come home and make me chicken soup.

“Chicken soup for my little chicken nugget,” she had said as she brought it into my room. She was always saying stupid things like that to make me laugh. Even when I was sick, Carry had a way of making me laugh.

I didn't know if this new Carry would even care if I was sick or not. Since she now so readily ignored me on a regular basis, I had my serious doubts she'd be making me any chicken soup or calling me her “chicken nugget.”

So much had changed in Carry, it made me wonder about her school grades. She was normally really good at pretty near all her subjects, getting almost all As or Bs. I wondered if that had changed. Then I wondered if my mother had considered this at all. Maybe I should bring it up with her when I had the chance.

Then I realized this was one of those things where my mother would most likely tell me to mind my business. She was always telling me to mind my business. More and more, it seemed, as I got older. Maybe this was because the older I got, the more I cared about other people's business. There had to be
some
reason.

Whatever it was, I just knew all of this came from the same thing: Carry's sudden interest in boys. I hated that thing. I wished Carry had never noticed boys. They were obviously no good for nothing.

Then my thoughts went back to Mary Ann Dailey, and a thought struck me. “Hey, Mom?” I asked.

It pulled her back from wherever her thoughts had taken her and she looked down, eyebrows raised.

“Reckon maybe this is like when Isaac Crosby ran off and got lost in the woods behind Shearer's cotton farm couple years ago?”

“I don't know yet, honey.”

Isaac Crosby had run away from home, only he didn't run very far, just into the woods, where he managed to get himself completely lost. It happened in the spring, and Isaac was found at the breaking light of dawn the next day by one of the Mexican workers. The Mexican had gone into the woods to do his business when he found Isaac huddled beneath a cluster of maples, shivering, scared, and hungry.

The Mexicans came up every season to find work. Because of the acres of farmland wrapping the outskirts of Alvin, there always was lots of work available. They usually stayed on through the summer, going back home around October. Harvesting season was pretty near over now, so there weren't too many of them left. The ones that
were
still here would be leaving very soon.

This brought another possibility to my mind. “What if maybe one of them Mexicans snatched Mary Ann Dailey on his way out?”

Concern came to my mother's face, and I knew she disapproved of my idea, but I couldn't figure out how come. “Why would you say something like that?” she asked.

“Well, because they're always comin' and goin', so it'd be easy for them to just grab her and go. And some of 'em
are
just leavin' now, right? So I was figurin' this might make a lot of sense. Besides, Dewey told me in Mexico they use kids as slaves, makin' 'em do all the chores and whippin' 'em if they refuse. Sometimes even just whippin' 'em for fun.”

She crouched down, straightened my dirty blond hair, and set her hands upon my shoulders. I could tell she was collecting her thoughts on the matter.

“Abe, what you just said was a very racist remark. I don't want you sayin' things like that. Not about black people, not about Mexicans, not about anyone.”

“How is it racist, if it's true?”

“Because it's not true.”

“Dewey said—”

“Don't pay attention to everything Dewey says. Think about things for yourself and ask yourself if it makes sense before takin' it as the Gospel truth. If you still can't decide on your own, come and ask me 'bout it. But don't judge people by their skin or where they come from or how much money they have. Judge them by who they are individually and how they act. Okay?”

I thought about this. It made sense. Mr. Farrow wasn't black or Mexican and he was the only person in the town I
knew
was up to no good; I just had yet to figure out what it was he was up to. “Okay,” I said. Then I decided to take her up on her offer. “Can I ask you somethin' I'm not sure 'bout, then?”

“Of course.”

“Ernest Robinson said before old Newt Parker died, he rode his bike past the Parker place and saw him eating road-killed raccoon. Did Newt Parker really eat roadkill, do you think?” I knew I was on tricky ground here because Newt Parker was black, but I was pretty sure it was okay because I was judging him individually, and not on his color. Only his diet.

She laughed. “Quite honestly, Abe, I don't know. But I suspect on this particular point, the rumors may actually be true.”

“I see.” I nodded. Then I went back to Isaac. “Do you reckon Mary Ann Dailey maybe just ran away from home?”

“Again, I'm not sure yet,” she said. “Mrs. Dailey is quite adamant on the point that her daughter is a very happy, well-adjusted girl, who, as she would have me know, comes from a perfect balanced family environment full of positive support. The woman did everything but tell me she deserved the Mother of the Year award today.”

I didn't understand a lot of them words, but it sounded like my mother was making fun of Mrs. Dailey. “You reckon she's lyin'?” I asked.

With a soft smile, she shook her head. “I reckon she's very upset and wants her daughter back, is all.”

“Well, if Mary Ann ran off like Isaac Crosby, she's probably just lost,” I said. “And I reckon after what he went through, Isaac was taught a pretty good lesson. Reckon he never thought of runnin' off again.”

“No,” my mother said, “I reckon you're right on that.” She looked down at my plate of cold casserole. “What you say you let me take that away and make you somethin' real to eat 'fore I head back out?”

My stomach rumbled again. I told her I thought that was a great idea.

T
he next morning, when Mary Ann Dailey still hadn't turned up, Mr. Robert Lee Garner organized an all-out search for her. Mr. Garner owned the Holly Berry Cattle Ranch, and had, by far, more head of cattle than anyone in Alvin. For at least five miles, his farm stretched east from Tucker Mountain Road, following along the curve of the Anikawa River. On Mr. and Mrs. Dailey's behalf, he spent the last night's evening making phone calls, requesting that folks help out in searching for their daughter. Everyone was to meet in front of the library on Main Street at eight o'clock sharp, first thing in the morning.

Just as she was fixing to head out, my mother asked me and Carry if we wanted to come along and join in the hunt. Carry, who had been sound asleep before my mother woke her, declined. “I can't believe you'd even imagine in your wildest dreams that I'd get out of bed on a Saturday before eleven. Especially not to go traipsing through some ol' mud and creek beds.” The conversation stayed barely this side of civil before my mother finally just let Carry turn over and go back to sleep.

I thought it all sounded like an adventure and so I was more than eager to come along. On my mother's advice, I pulled on my galoshes and put on my rain jacket. The day outside looked as though it had the ability to turn sour on the drop of a pin.

Just before we left, I remembered Dewey. “Can we bring him along with us?”

“If he wants to come, sure.”

“ 'Course he wants to come.” I quickly phoned over and told him to get ready, mentioning the galoshes. We picked him up in the car on the way. He was waiting outside his house, wearing a puffy olive drab raincoat, looking ridiculous in black rubber boots at least four sizes too big for him.

“What are those?” I asked, laughing.

“I ain't got none myself,” he said. “So I took my pa's. Don't worry. I stuffed socks in the toes.”

“You look like a duck,” I said.

Shaking her head, my mother told him to climb into the back of the car.

As soon as we turned down Main Street, Dewey and I both gaped, saying, “Wow!” at the same time. Somehow, Mr. Robert Lee Garner managed to convince pretty much all of Alvin to come out and help look for Mary Ann Dailey. I couldn't remember seeing this many people in any one place before anytime in my whole entire life. They spilled all down the street, gathering around the steps of the library. There were so many people, we had to park a half mile away in front of Igloo's Ice Cream Parlor.

“There must be a thousand folks here,” I said.

“Well,” my mother said, “I don't think there's near a thousand. Maybe a hundred. I don't think there's even two thousand people living in all of Alvin, Abe.”

“Still a lot,” Dewey said.

When Isaac Crosby ran off, I couldn't remember anybody coming together to try to find him. But then, everyone knew he'd run off on his own volition. They reported him missing to my mother, but Mrs. Crosby even said then, “I wouldn't put too much effort into findin' him. He wasn't even smart enough to pack a lunch. That boy'll be back on this doorstep in one day. Two at the latest. I don't wanna waste any taxpayer's money.”

I reckon with Isaac it was more a case of just seeing how long it took before he figured out what a stupid mistake he made. I remember hearing that the first thing Mr. Crosby said when he returned was, “Guess that shows
you
now, don't it?”

Mary Ann Dailey was a different thing entirely. I was starting to realize folks were taking her disappearance very seriously. Seeing all these people standing around brought an uneasy feeling to my stomach. “How come some of 'em got rifles?” I asked as we walked through the crowd.

“They're gonna be searchin' in the woods,” my mother said. “Never know what you might find in the woods.”

“You mean like black bears and cougars an' all?” Dewey asked.

She nodded. “You never know what you're gonna find. Just always better to be prepared.”

The day was overcast and gray, with a chill breeze on the air. One of those days where you could almost taste the rain wanting to shower down from some of the black, heavy clouds hanging overhead. Mr. Robert Lee Garner climbed the concrete steps in front of the library, carrying an apple crate. His brown leather jacket almost blended into the red brick building behind him in the dull light. Even the American flag, snapping violently in the wind above his head, seemed colorless this morning. He set the apple crate at his feet.

Mr. Garner was sixty-eight years old and was one of them men who looked like he fought for each and every one of them years, barely winning every time he did. He was a stocky man with a large square head and barely any neck. He always reminded me of one of them army sergeants you see in the movies, especially on account of Mr. Garner liking cigars so much. Only, Mr. Garner had never been in the military. The military had a definite effect on his life, though. His father was a U.S. Air Force pilot during World War II and died during the bombing of Dresden. Then he lost his son somewhere in Beirut. Killed by a suicide bomber. Despite all that bad luck with the army, Mr. Garner was probably the single most patriotic person I ever met, with nothing but pride for our country's military forces, and I never understood why—after how the military killed his papa and his son. My mother tried to explain it one day, saying that pride sometimes
is
the only way you can keep going after something like that, but it still didn't make much sense to me.

I gave up trying to understand it.

“First o' all,” Mr. Garner said. He spoke with a deep, powerful voice that once again made him seem like an army commander. As soon as he started talking, everyone in the crowd went quiet. “I wanna thank y'all for showin' up so early on such a cold and miserable morning. It means a lot to me, and I know it means a lot to the Daileys. This is a terribly frightening thing for anyone to go through, as I'm sure you can all imagine. It's especially terrible when it happens to folks as nice as the Daileys. When my Martha was sick all them months before the cancer finally took her, they were there for me, and now I hope that all'a you can join me in bein' there for them. Right now, we just have a lost little girl on our hands. Nothing more than that. Let's hope that together we can change that and bring her home today.”

Elbowing Dewey, I quietly pointed out the Daileys standing near the front of the group. Mr. Dailey put his arm around his wife as Mrs. Dailey burst into sobs, burying her face into her husband's chest. I did a quick scan for Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow, but didn't see him anywhere. Not that I expected to. He didn't seem like the helping type to me.

“Now there's a lot of folks here and a lot o' potential for this to all dissolve into anarchy unless we keep things organized,” Mr. Garner said. Bending, he took a stack of squares cut from construction paper out of the apple crate at his feet. He removed the thick elastic band they were bound together with. “What I've done is made up these colored cards. There's five different colors. Red, blue, yellow, green, and black. Everyone should take one and pass them on. If you're wantin' to stay in a group, just take one color per group.” He handed them to Mr. Dailey, who began passing them around.

“Okay, now listen up,” Mr. Garner went on, reading from a sheet of paper. “Red cards will set out and search down around Cornflower Lake. Don't forget to check the woods and the wetlands.” He paused, frowning as though he was trying hard to think of a better way to add the next part: “Yes, even the lake. Try to be as thorough as possible. Blue cards, same thing only Willet Lake. Yellow cards will be going through the woods in and around Clover Creek and the Old Mill River area. Green cards will take the grounds around and including Tucker Mountain. Don't forget to check along the Anikawa and the valley running between it and Old Highway Seventeen. Finally, black cards will be searching the area on the other side of Tucker Mountain Road, following along the Anikawa, the Painted Lake area, and the swamp buttin' up against my ranch.” He held up his card and I noticed him pause slightly, almost gravely. “I've got black.”

Someone passed my mother a card. It was also black. “We're on Mr. Garner's team!” I said excitedly, but my mother shushed me.

“Now,” Mr. Garner said. “I want to further thank Police Chief Ethan Montgomery and
everyone
at the Alvin Police Station for the loan of five of these high-powered walkie-talkies. Every group should take one. This is how we're gonna stay in contact. The minute anybody finds anythin', y'all let the rest of us know immediately. I don't wanna be wading through Skeeter Swamp any longer than I have to.” I felt a tension ripple through the crowd following his last sentence that I didn't understand. I made a mental note to ask my mother about it later.

“I'll leave it up to you to organize yourselves within your own groups, but I strongly suggest assigning one person to be leader. This isn't a popularity contest, this is a manhunt to find a missing girl. So let's all put any egos we may have aside and work as diligently and efficiently as we can. Are there any questions?”

There weren't none.

“Okay, then. Everybody in the black group, gather with me and Dixie down at Hunter Road. We'll walk our way from there down to the Anikawa. Everybody else, make sure someone from your color group grabs a walkie-talkie.” He stepped over the empty apple crate and came down off the stairs with his rifle strapped over his shoulder.

“Guess we know who our leader is,” Dewey said.

My mother shushed him. Putting her hands on our backs, she turned us toward Hunter Street and we began walking, separating from the rest of the crowd as everyone figured out where they should be going. Mr. Garner swung his rifle into position while he whistled for his dog, Dixie, who was sitting patiently next to the library steps.

Dixie was a mottled brown coon dog. Mr. Garner had her for as long as I could remember, and even though she was getting on in years, she was still as fast and alert as ever. I'd once seen her chase down a jackrabbit from a standing start a hundred yards away.

By the time we broke apart, I realized my original estimate of a thousand folks was off considerably. Turned out to be twenty-two in our group, so my mother's calculation was probably much closer than mine. I felt like part of a platoon of soldiers as we marched north down Hunter Road, continuing past where it turned into a dirt trail and then ended altogether at the grassy bank that rolled down into the Anikawa River. We crossed over using an old wooden footbridge made of six logs strapped together with steel ties. The bridge was much older than I was, but nobody doubted its safety as the river chopped and raged in the narrows beneath us.

We stepped off right at the edge of the thick, tangled woods that ran along this side. How deep those trees went in the northerly direction, I didn't know. I did know we would come to Bullfrog Creek if we kept going maybe half a mile that way, and continuing on that path led roughly the same direction as the Anikawa, eventually taking us to Painted Lake.

There was a lot of dense forest to cover here. Much more, I realized, than twenty-two people could easily do in the course of a few hours. Then there was the whole area up past Painted Lake: the tree line that opened onto Mr. Garner's ranch, and the wetlands we called Skeeter Swamp bubbling back across the river, where gators—
big
ones—regularly were spotted. Maybe that's what made the crowd seem to react to Mr. Garner's mention of the swamp earlier on.

“Let's spread out and all head through the forest toward the lake,” Mr. Garner said. He gestured to my mother. “Leah, you take half the group and walk through until the creek, then follow it up to the lake. I'll take the other half this way along the river. We'll cover more ground that way.”

My mother nodded. “You two stay with me,” she said. “I don't want you by yourselves.”

“Why?” I asked.

“In case somethin' happens.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know. But I have a gun.”

“So does Mr. Garner,” I said. “Can we go with him?”

She considered this, then called out. “Bob, do you mind if my boys tag along with you?”

“Not at all,” he said. “Come on, you guys, you can walk up front with me and Dixie.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, beaming. Dewey and I raced through the woods, ducking under pine branches and dodging the thick trunks of oaks until we caught up to Mr. Garner. We fell in close behind him, stepping on a soft bed of fallen leaves and undergrowth, occasionally climbing over the odd fallen log.

Mr. Garner happened to glance at Dewey. Without even a smile, he asked, “What's with them boots, son?”

Dewey's face flushed red. “They're his pa's,” I answered. “He ain't got none of his own.” This seemed to satisfy Mr. Garner's curiosity, for no more was said about it.

We had now separated from everyone else and, far as I could tell, were roughly following the Anikawa that was only a few hundred yards in. I sometimes thought I could hear it splashing off to our left, but I wasn't sure. Mr. Garner seemed to know his way all right though, so I wasn't afraid of getting lost or nothing.

As we walked, he scanned the forest around us, looking like some sort of eagle. His strides were so long, Dewey and I spent more time struggling to keep up than we did looking around the woods, but I reckon Mr. Garner did a good enough job searching for all three of us. Dixie trotted ahead a few yards, stopping here and there to sniff out a tree or stare down a squirrel that got her attention.