In The Forest Of Harm (16 page)

TWENTY-THREE

They started from the willow tree, Joan wearing her own sweatshirt and Mary's jeans, Mary clad only in her sweatshirt, underpants and hiking boots. Before they left they both scribbled notes in charcoal on an Atagahi boulder. Mary explained what had happened and where they were going; Joan wrote an odd, disjointed letter half in Italian, saying good-bye to her parents in Brooklyn, her brother in Chicago, her sister in Washington, D.C.

“Here.” Mary opened her paint box as they started to follow the trail. She handed Joan a small silver tube. “I've got a job for you.”

“This looks like toothpaste.” Frowning, Joan uncapped the tube and squeezed out a dot of bright yellow pigment.

“It's oil paint,” Mary answered. “Cadmium yellow light. I want you to put a dot on the trees as we pass.”

“Hunh?” Joan wrinkled her nose as if the paint smelled bad.

“Dot the trees with this paint as we go.” Mary held the open end of the tube against the bark of a pine tree. “That way, if we get lost, we can at least find our way back here.”

“But I didn't think you ever got lost, Mary,” said Joan, her hostile side swiftly returning. “I thought you knew these woods just like I know Manhattan.”

“Not all of them, I don't.” Mary fought another flash of irritation with Joan. “Look, if you don't want to do this, just say so.”

“No.” Joan grabbed the paint. “I'll do it. God forbid I not help save your precious Alex.”

With Mary leading, they turned away from the spring and began to follow the narrow trail that twisted deep into the mountains. They trudged single file, Joan hobbling close behind Mary, complaining and berating her, until they came to a dirt path that snaked through a stand of cedars. Far beneath them to the right, Atagahi glittered through the trees. Mary stopped for a moment, as if she were bidding farewell to an old friend, then she turned and gazed into the forest. She was certain that Alex was still alive up there, somewhere. But who or what else was up there with her?

“Walk quietly,” she cautioned Joan as they started to climb. “You never know how close they might be. And be careful not to step on anything sharp.”

“If he catches us, he'll hurt me again,” warned Joan. “He'll hurt you, too.”

Mary closed her eyes. “I know,” she said wearily.

The sweat began to trickle between their breasts as they started their ascent through a series of switchbacks. Though Mary walked through the woods barely whisking the grass, Joan crashed along behind her, limping off the trail to dab paint on the trees, her breath wheezy as someone on a respirator. Every bird-chirp and twig-break made her jump, and sometimes, for no apparent reason, she would cry aloud.

“What was he like, Joan?” Mary asked softly, finally sitting down on a fallen walnut tree. Maybe if Joan caught her breath she would walk with less commotion.

“Who?”

“The man who hurt you.”

Joan slumped down beside her, gulping air through her mouth. “Tall. Filthy black hair and beard. Old Army uniform. Awful fingernails.” She shuddered. “He smelled like veal gone bad.”

Mary frowned. “What do you mean, old Army uniform?”

“Those green-spotted suits they wear in the jungle.”

“Did he wear anything besides that?”

She gave a thin rasp of a laugh. “Just his pet rattlesnake.”

“That's not possible.” Mary wiped the sweat from her brow. “Nobody keeps a rattler for a pet.”

“He did. The thing had diamond shapes on its back. And it swelled up like a cobra.”

Clever, Mary thought. Barefoot had commandeered Joan and Alex with a hognosed snake, a benign creature whose chief defense was its resemblance to the poisonous timber rattler. “Did he say anything?”

“He said
That's about enough from you
. Then he smashed my nose.”

“Did he say anything to Alex?”

Joan laughed as if Mary had told her a joke. “Sorry, Mary. I didn't eavesdrop. I was too busy trying to stay alive.”

A pine-scented breeze chilled their faces while the hot sun drilled into their scalps. As they hiked higher, the air grew bright and humid, and droplets of sweat clung like dewdrops to the ends of their hair. Though Joan dotted the trees with paint as Mary had asked, she still careened through the woods, sometimes sullen with anger, other times giddy, singing Italian songs.

We're thundering through here like a troop of scouts
, Mary thought.
I hope the barefoot man isn't nearby
.

“It really burns when I pee,” Joan complained when they'd stopped to rest beside a stream. “That man hurt me a lot down there.”

“Maybe we'll find a creek deep enough for you to sit in for a few minutes,” Mary told her. Wonder what the Cherokee remedy for savaged vaginas was? Something her mother had surely never dreamed she would have need of knowing.

Slowly they made their way up-country. Mary led by her instincts when the trail became hard to read; Joan laughed every time she dabbed the trees with paint. At midafternoon Mary spotted a cluster of oyster mushrooms growing out of a fallen limb.

“Oh, look!” she cried, tearing the fungi off the bark. “Slicks!”

“Ugh.” Joan sniffed the delicate pink underside of the mushroom Mary handed her. “What did you call these?”

“Slicks,” replied Mary, her mouth full. “Oyster mushrooms. They're delicious.”

“Aren't they poisonous?”

Mary shook her head. “It's the only mushroom I can absolutely guarantee. Try some. They won't hurt you.”

Joan took a tiny nibble. “
Funghi trifolati
,” she announced, starting to laugh again.

When they'd eaten all the mushrooms they could find, Joan tapped Mary on the shoulder. “Do you think we're on the right trail?”

“It's the only fresh one up here,” Mary replied, remembering a game she and Jonathan had made up. Search and Destroy, they'd called it. One of them would run through the woods for thirty minutes, then stop and hide. Then the other would start tracking. Jonathan was always much better at the game, but eventually Mary had become adept at reading the almost invisible signs that betrayed where a person had passed.

Joan chuckled. “You know what I can't figure out?”

“What?”

“Why he didn't kill me.”

Mary glanced at Joan's brutalized face. “Maybe he thought he already had,” she answered softly.

They pressed on, wading through a creek where yellow beech leaves floated brilliant against a dark mirror of water. Mary pointed to a spot higher up on the tree where long strips of bark had been ripped away. “Bears have been here. That's how they sharpen their claws.”

“Terrific,” shot back Joan. “Now we can worry about bears, along with everything else.”

“They shouldn't be a problem,” Mary explained. “They're holing up to hibernate now.”

Once when they crested a rise Joan grabbed Mary's arm.

“Did you hear that?” she demanded, her eyes wide and terrified.

“What?”

“Alex!” Joan cried. “Her cowboy yell. The barefoot man's coming! Hide!” Turning, she thrust herself into the cover of the trees.

Mary did not move. Had Alex escaped? Was she headed back to Atagahi as fast as she could, the barefoot man behind her? She listened carefully for what seemed like hours as Joan crouched fearfully behind a log, but she heard nothing that sounded anything like Alex's famous yee-hiii. Finally she realized that Joan had been tricked by the mountains—the faraway shrill of some hawk or even some tall sycamore branches, scraping together in the wind.

“Come on out, Joan. Alex isn't here.”

“She is, too, Mary,” Joan insisted fiercely. “I heard her cowboy yell. I'd know it anywhere.”

“If you say so,” Mary agreed, realizing that Joan had zoomed through three different personalities in the past three minutes. “But she's gone now. We'll have to keep following her trail.”

They hiked on in silence, Mary studying the grass, wondering which Joan was going to pop out next. At length they came to a narrow, overgrown track that cut across the contours of the land. Mary reached down and pried up a small dark rock embedded in the grass.

She remembered a long-ago afternoon when she and her mother had carved a pumpkin for Halloween. Her mother had sold one of her tapestries and splurged at K-Mart on a store-bought costume for Mary. Impossibly proud and resplendent as Wonder Woman, Mary had watched as her mother's sharp knife coaxed eyes and a grinning mouth from the blank orange face of their pumpkin.

“There's a place you must never go,” her mother warned, her
luminous eyes serious. “It's called Wolfpen, and it's where men
came long ago and cut down all the trees.”

“Is it haunted?” she'd asked, hoping for another of her
mother's crazy Cherokee ghost stories.

“No. Just dangerous. Rotten floors, rusty nails, broken glass.
You could get hurt.The place was falling down when my grandfa
ther was a boy. A man named Babcock built it.”

Mary looked at Joan, who now stood trembling beside her.

“See this?” Mary held up the black rock.

Joan nodded.

“It's coal. There's supposed to be an old logging camp up here,” Mary explained quietly. “This is probably the railroad bed that led to it.”

“Does anybody live there?” Joan's voice rose with hope.

“No. They logged out this part of the forest after the First World War.”

“Too bad,” Joan said glumly, but Mary didn't hear her. She'd just noticed a tall purple-headed thistle on the verge of the path. The stalk was bent. Someone who wanted to conceal their trail would never leave such an obvious marker. But somebody who wanted to be found would. She let the piece of coal fall from her hand. If the trail they had followed since morning really was Alex's, then they were still on it. Barefoot had made no effort to cover their tracks.
Figures,
Mary thought.
He feels safe. He doesn't
know about me and he thinks Joan is dead. Who else would be
up here tracking him?

“We're going to follow this road from along the bank on the other side,” she told Joan. “That way we'll be going in the same direction, but still stay hidden.”

They darted across the exposed roadbed and scrambled up the bank, plodding on.

As the afternoon shadows grew long, a feeling of dread began to churn in Mary's stomach. She felt as if every tree or bush or fallen log might reveal something she didn't want to see—Alex raped, Alex strangled or Alex dead, gutted like a field-dressed deer. But the forest held no such surprises. All she and Joan saw were trees and leaves and an occasional bird. The only sign of Alex lay twenty yards to their right, where the thin trail of trampled grass continued to bisect the old narrow-gauge railroad bed.

“Shouldn't we stop soon?” asked Joan, her face wan in the shadows, her swollen nose angry and purple. “Won't we need to find a safe place to stay before dark?”

Mary looked up at the fading sun, then nodded. “You're right. Look for a fallen tree, or one with big roots. We can dig a trench like we did last night.” She ignored Joan's complaints.

They walked on, scouring the forest, when suddenly Mary's gut shriveled. She dropped to the ground, pulling Joan down behind her.

“Is it the barefoot man?” Joan cried. “Do you see him?”

“No! Hush!” Mary pointed. “It's Alex's shirt!”

In a small clearing in the old road below them, a red plaid shirt lay rumpled beneath a blackberry bush. Alex had worn a similar one yesterday, laughing about how garish it had looked against her orange safety vest.

Joan frowned through the shadows. “Are you kidding?”

“No. You stay here and be quiet. I'm going to go have a look.”

“Wait! It might be a trap!” Joan grabbed Mary's sweatshirt. “What if this is just a way to get us someplace where he can hurt us some more?”

“I don't know,” Mary replied bluntly. “You stay here and watch. If anything happens, run like hell back to Atagahi.”

“And then what?” Joan snarled. “Call 911?”

“You insisted on coming with me, Joan.”

“Just go and see if it's Alex's shirt.” Tears leaked from Joan's eyes as she shrank back timidly into the weeds.

Mary crept down to the road. Shafts of hazy sunlight slanted through the silent forest. Nothing seemed to have followed them, and nothing seemed to await them ahead. From where she crouched she could see no lifeless body pulled behind a rock, no shadowy figure in camouflage waiting to pounce upon her. She took three deep breaths, then sprinted across the roadbed, dropping to her knees beside the shirt. The soft flannel still bore the faint aroma of sage; the faded label read “Abercrombie & Fitch, Size 10.” Alex's size from Alex's favorite store. Mary pressed the shirt against her face, inhaling Alex's smell, her alive-ness. For once she'd guessed right. They had found Alex's trail. This was her shirt, and maybe, just maybe, Alex might still be alive.
Thank you
, Mary whispered to the Old Men as she held the shirt aloft and motioned for Joan to join her.

TWENTY-FOUR

The screech owl perched on the lower limb of the oak tree, as two men and a dog came crashing through the dark woods. It eyed the trio, its saffron-yellow pupils dilating into enormous black orbs, then it spread its wings and soared a foot above their heads, whistling a quivery
skreeeee
as it passed. This thundering trio had frightened the tiny vole the owl was about to pounce on; now the bird would have to fly on to quieter hunting grounds.
Skreeeee
, it trilled, again voicing its disgust.

“Shit!” Mitch Whitman ducked. “That damn thing's flying low.”

“They do that in the fall,” explained Billy. “Close to where all those ground squirrels are digging up acorns.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.” Mitch peered up into the night sky as he pulled his jacket closer around his neck. “Gotta go where the game is.”

The men and the dog trudged on. They hiked for a time in silence, then Billy spoke. “You about ready to stop for the night?”

“As long as we've gotten a good start on the trail for tomorrow,” Mitch replied.

“We're about a third of the way there,” Billy told him. “I know a place we can camp, just a little ways away.”

They'd made better time than Billy had expected. This Mitch Keane was in good shape. He followed along up one mountain and down another without complaint, breathing heavy only as they clambered to the tops of the highest ridges. When he took his sunglasses off, Billy had expected to see the usual jittery look of people who weren't used to the deep woods, but Mitch didn't appear nervous at all. He just took it all in, his gaze cold as a winter pond.

The hike, though, seemed to have spoiled him for conversation. He'd barely grunted when Billy had tried to tell him about Michael's ears and his own fiddle problems, and when he started talking about taking Tam to Gatlinburg, he'd yawned right in his face. Billy had taken no offense, though. Mitch was probably pondering on Mary Crow, and didn't want to hear about his little pissant problems.

When they came to a deep waterfall that plunged thirty feet into a narrow creek, Billy stopped.

“Mind your step,” he warned as he led Mitch down the weedy creek bank, then along the slippery rocks that lay like huge flat turtles at the base of the falls. “We'll get a little wet here, but it won't be too bad,” he called over the roar of the falling water.

He jumped from rock to rock, Homer splashing haunch-deep in the creek behind him, then they leaped behind the curtain of water, landing on a wide rock ledge. Billy stood waiting for Mitch to follow, but the sound of footsteps did not reach his ears. “Come on, Mitch,” Billy called. “Just do what I did.”

A moment later Mitch appeared, squinting into the darkness between the rock wall and the falling water.

Billy grinned. “Come on in. It's a nice place for a fire.”

Mitch hesitated, then stepped inside the hidden cavern.

“See?” Billy's voice echoed as if coming from the bottom of a well. “It's downright cozy back here.”

Mitch glanced around the dark, wet walls. “I'll be damned. I once camped in a spot like this in Mexico.”

“What were you hunting down there?”

“Poontang, mostly.” Mitch laughed. “Latina girls are nice.”

A little while later, as he was nursing some dry pine twigs into a fire, Mitch unpacked the slickest equipment Billy had ever seen. He set up a propane stove that lit on the first try and then unrolled an all-weather aluminum sleeping bag that looked like something you'd roast an ear of corn in. Billy felt almost shamed by his own threadbare bedroll and the soggy chicken and cornbread he'd brought for him and Homer, but Mitch had seemed happy to share the fancy freeze-dried stew he'd cooked on his stove. Homer had turned his nose up at it, but Billy thought it tasted as good as anything he'd ever eaten at Shoney's. After they'd washed their plates in the waterfall, they sat across from each other by the fire.

“Ol' Homer's confused,” Billy said as the dog paced back and forth, panting. “He thinks we're going coon hunting.”

Mitch studied the rangy hound. “Is coon what you hunt up here?”

“That and boar. Wild turkey and whitetail, if you go down to the flats.” Billy pulled his harmonica out of his pocket. “Maybe if I play some music he'll calm down.” He played a scale, then launched into several verses of “Old Joe Clark.” Homer finally lay down with his head on his paws as notes bounced off the dank walls like chips of bright sound. After Billy had run through “Pretty Polly” and “Columbus Stockade,” Mitch held up one hand.

“Enough. The dog's calm now.”

Billy frowned. “Don't you like harmonica music? It cheers most people up.”

“I'm topped off with cheer as is.” Mitch stretched his long legs out by the fire.

“This thing's kept me company ever since I was a kid.” Billy stole a glance at Mitch's black Colt rifle. This fella might be a lawyer in Atlanta, but he carried hunting gear Billy had seen only in Jonathan's magazines. “I guess I'm used to it.”

“I wouldn't want Mary Crow to hear it.”

“Oh?” Billy cocked his head. “We're not trying to sneak up on her, are we?”

“Nah.” Mitch's face cracked into a grin. “I'd just hate to wake her up if she's asleep or something.”

“Well, unless she's got ears like a bat she isn't gonna hear us. Atagahi's still about six hours away.”

“I see.” Mitch poked at one fiery log with a stick, then he looked at Billy. “So you're a Real Life Cherokee?”

“Yep.”

“And you grew up with Mary Crow?”

“Went all the way through school with her. She's one brainy gal. It was a shame about her mama and everything.”

Mitch cocked his head. “Her mama?”

“Yeah. The way she got murdered at the store. They never could catch who did it.”

Mitch gave an odd smile, as if he'd just learned a secret that gave him pleasure. “Never did, huh?”

“Nope.” Billy peered into the falling water. “They finally decided some drifter must have killed her, but you never know. It might have been a maniac who could still be out there right now, just a-waitin' for another throat to slit.”

Another moment of silence passed; Billy said nothing as Mitch stared into the crackling flames.

“I don't reckon he's out there, though, what with all these Hell Benders around.”

“What's a Hell Bender?” Mitch looked up.

Billy nodded toward the water. “That old river dog over there, a-givin' you the evil eye.”

Mitch turned. A long, squat four-legged shape stood just inside the falls, looking straight at them. Tiny pig eyes glowed with pinpoints of firelight as the creature grinned the soulless smile of a lizard.

Mitch laughed. “That thing looks like something you'd flush down a john.”

The Hell Bender eyed the two men for a bit, then waddled along the ledge, its tail slapping wetly on the moist rock.

“Take it out of here, Homer!” Billy commanded.

“No, wait!” Mitch reached behind him and grabbed his rifle.

“Hold on!” Billy cried. “He's not worth—”

But before he could finish his sentence, the cave erupted in a roar that made Billy squeeze his eyes shut and cringe down into his clothes, his ears ringing as if he were sitting on the inside of a bell. When he opened his eyes, the spot where the Hell Bender had been was just a smear of bright red blood. Mitch's bullet had disintegrated the thing. Billy clapped both hands over his throbbing ears, while Homer ran around the cave like a dog gone berserk.

“Good God, Mitch!” Billy cried. “Don't you know better than to fire a gun inside a cave? That old lizard didn't mean you no harm!”

Mitch's mouth moved, but Billy couldn't hear what he said. Mitch leaned his rifle back against the cave and both men sat for a long time staring at the fire, waiting for the ringing in their ears to subside. When Billy could finally hear Homer's whimpering, he put the harmonica to his lips again. The mournful notes of “Wayfaring Stranger,” his Daddy's favorite song, began to float through the damp air. This time Mitch made no complaint about the music.

When he came to the end of the tune, Billy slipped the harmonica back in his pocket.

“Sorry about the lizard,” Mitch said gruffly. “I haven't fired that rifle since I hunted elk in Montana with my dad. I guess I wanted to see if she still shot straight.”

“I'd say she does all right,” grumbled Billy. He sighed. He was surprised that Mitch would do such a stupid thing, but he'd known other people who'd gotten trigger-happy in the woods with much worse results. He guessed there was no point to getting all huffy about having your head rung like a church bell.

“So how come you're fetching Mary Crow back to Atlanta?” he asked, changing the subject.

Mitch's mouth drew tight. “There's a problem with one of her convictions.”

“Oh? Did somebody escape from prison?”

“Not exactly.”

“I bet y'all have some right fierce criminals down there,” surmised Billy with a wink.

“Some are.” Mitch's voice took on an edge. “Most are just fuck-ups.”

“You hunt a lot on your off-time?”

“I go with my dad.”

“Sounds like y'all have tracked some pretty exotic stuff.”

Mitch looked at the fire. “Elk in Montana. Moose in Maine. Once we even tried brown bear in Alaska, but we didn't get anything.”

“I hear those brown bears are crazy. They'll even kill their own kind.”

Mitch shrugged. “So would most of the human race.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Mitch turned to Billy. “I once knew a man who set up his own brother after he killed his girlfriend.”

“Really?” said Billy, his eyes wide. “What happened?”

Mitch laughed softly. “Nothing. The asshole brother got caught. He's rotting in jail right now.”

“What about the other fellow?”

“He took some heat on the witness stand, but the DA couldn't put it all together. Guy's a free man now. Builds dams in South America. Goes hunting every chance he gets.”

“So one's in the pokey and the other's free as a bird.”

“Just about,” Mitch agreed.

Billy shook his head. “That doesn't make for a right happy family, does it?”

“No.” Mitch gave a careless shrug. “Guess it doesn't.”

Billy stood up and walked to the edge of the falls. The moonlight shone through the falling water like a liquid silver curtain, and the soft, constant gurgle of the water soothed him like the tide of the ocean he'd never seen. A fine, cool mist dampened his face and the smell of iron laced the air.
This creek is probably full of sapphires
, he thought, watching as the moonlight danced on the water.
Rubies, too. If anybody had the time and the equipment to dig
them out, they'd probably wind up a rich man
. He smiled, then wondered how Tam had done at bingo. Maybe she'd won the coverall. If she'd come home with fifty dollars in her pocket then she might not be so disappointed about him coming up here with Mitch. He touched the five hundred-dollar bills that lay curled deep in his front pocket. Mitch would give him the rest as soon as they found Mary. That would get him his fiddle back, and he would never tie up with Zell Crisp again.

He turned and walked back to the fire. Mitch had already tucked into his corn-roaster sleeping bag and pulled the flap over his head.

Billy unrolled the old flannel bag he'd used since he was a kid and wrapped it around him, curling up close to the flames. Bathed in the silver glow of the waterfall and the golden glow of the fire, he felt as if he were sleeping in some great hall that blazed with the colors of the stars. He closed his eyes, feeling content. Tomorrow they would find Mary. Tomorrow he would get the rest of his money. Tomorrow his life would begin to take on the richness of the colors that surrounded him.