One Came Home (14 page)

My legs would not hold. I sat down.

Was I truly expecting to get to the place where the body was found and find a
note
? Maybe. Yes. All right then, I admit it. People in stories are sometimes expected to possess sterling character, to act with courageous purpose, and, on top of it all, to be a smidge smarter than everyone else. Well, maybe if I were writing my memoirs, I’d polish myself up and forget a few things. But I’m telling the entire truth now. My story, as best I can tell it, is all I have to offer.

I sat on top of that bluff. That’s where I dried up and turned into jerky. It felt like that, anyway. Every bit of juice in me gone. My skin tightened and started to itch. I’m sure my lips went blue and my brown eyes took on the powdery quality of dried beans in a bag.

At first, my mind felt empty, as if a powerful wind had blown it clean. But little bits crept in: birdsong, leaves shushing in a breeze. I noticed clouds combed thin across a blue sky, and the odd red-purple boulders flecked with white. I
noted that grass was greenest at the point it came out of the ground.

In Dog Hollow, I had wanted to hear something that would make me think Agatha couldn’t be the body in the blue-green dress—a hint, the slightest mention, a whisper, an innuendo, anything at all. But instead, I heard that Agatha had been traveling with people of less-than-reputable character. The shopkeeper had concluded that the body on Miller Road was, indeed, Agatha.

The body wore a dress made from a bolt of cloth I’d seen in our store all summer and into the fall. I remembered running my hands over that cloth. I remembered Ma asking me if my hands were clean. That fabric was punctured by Ma’s needle and thread. I could read Ma’s stitching as easily as a book.
That
dress was worn by
that
body.

The body was of a young woman. The young woman had auburn hair.

The body
should
be Agatha. It would be
strange
if the body weren’t Agatha. Why wouldn’t the body be Agatha?

Agatha was—very likely, for the most part, probably, almost certainly, yes, surely—dead. That was a
d
at the beginning, a
d
at the end. No forward or backward. No breath either.

Why didn’t she write? If she wrote one solitary letter …
It was a thought from some younger part of me. But the voice was tiny and weak, barely a whisper. It petered to a squeak, and then was gone.

I howled.

I wasn’t crying. I was
howling
—like coyotes do. That’s the best I can describe it. I didn’t hear it—I
was
it. I became a high-pitched whine that rose and dropped, sometimes clear in tone, and sometimes a ragged, gravelly bark. I went on like that for some time. Minutes? Hours? Who knew? I did not care.

Then I walked down the hill on legs that felt as hollow as flutes.

Billy stood in the middle of Miller Road studying the sheriff’s diagram. I made my way to him, and he talked to me like I’d been there the entire time. He pointed at the rock with the fissure again. “That’s the spot everything is measured from,” he said.

I met his eyes and saw red in them. His face was streaked. (I couldn’t help but notice a full set of teeth marks swelling on his arm.) I took a breath to steady myself, nodded, and turned my body toward the rock.

We got to work. We used Billy’s strides (he’s about the same height as his pa) and measured everything out. There were three spots where parts of a body had been found. At each, Billy stopped walking and said the name of what was found. He spoke so softly I asked him to repeat himself more than once.

(I’d rather not repeat those words. It was enough to see that body and, later, to hear the words for each part spoken aloud at the place where they were found. There is no
one—not even you—who can force me to speak it out as well.)

Then we’d done it. We stood there for a moment and watched the river pass by. At some point, Billy looked at me. “Maybe we should search more generally,” he said.

“I’ll do the river,” I said.

Billy nodded and turned to walk toward the hill.

I said: “You don’t need to check the rocks. I did a thorough job.” It was a joke, but I was many miles from a smile.

“I heard,” said Billy. It was the only thing he ever said about my howl.

There is nothing so final as turning around.

Billy and I were back in Dog Hollow. It was noon. We were eating lunch on the banks of the Smoke River. I watched a train pull into the station and thought for the first time,
I am going home
.

We hadn’t spoken the words outright. They didn’t need saying. It was a foregone conclusion. There was no new evidence. Our search near the nowhere place hadn’t netted a thing: Billy didn’t find anything on the hillside and I didn’t find anything by the river. Billy said his pa would have done a thorough search, and anyway, it was half a month since Agatha had run off. We were too late.

What could I do but go home? I’d been to the nowhere
place. I’d questioned all the people I could in Dog Hollow. There was not a thing to find.

My lunch tasted like sawdust. The bread, cheese, and dried meat were of fine enough quality, but nothing
tasted
anymore. The only thing I wanted was the one thing I could not have: my sister’s companionship.

From here on out, I’d have to keep my own company. Trouble was, I didn’t like myself much. In the course of this journey, I’d made an unpleasant discovery. I had discovered that I willfully deny the facts, even when the facts are arranged before me in a pine box with the lid slid off.

Then I did taste something—bitterness. I hated how Grandfather Bolte, the sheriff, and Billy had used my plan to fashion their own. Worse, I hated how well it had worked: I
had
come around. I’d seen the light. Hallelujah, my sister was dead.

“Agatha is dead,” I called out. I threw a crust at the river passing beyond my feet. “Isn’t that what you want to hear? I am going home changed. I am a girl with a palatable attitude.”

To his credit, Billy did not reply. He simply bit off another hunk of bread.

After four or five feet of river had ambled by, Billy reached out and touched my cheekbone. “None of my brothers ever managed one that good. Does it hurt?”

“Now that you mention it,” I said. I had noticed the heat gathering around my cheekbone. My left eye had difficulty opening. Billy’s fingers on my face caused the most pleasant
feeling I’d had in hours. When he ran his hand through my hair, sorting it out in a most caring manner, I could not meet his eyes.

I knew Billy was only doing what he’d do for his younger brothers. “You’re a mess. You should clean yourself up while I put lunch away,” he said. He stood.

I grabbed his forearm. “I murdered her. If I hadn’t told Mr. Olmstead …”

Billy turned quickly. “
Don’t
. I’m warning you.”

“I know I didn’t shoot her. But if I had let it be. Or talked to Agatha. Or done anything other than talk to Mr. Olmstead …”

Billy gripped my shoulder and squeezed
hard
. “I will not listen to this. Clean yourself up. We’re going home.”

Billy let go and, without a backward glance, walked toward our mounts.

His anger hushed me. Perhaps he was right. Who could endure listening? I felt ashamed. I resolved to be made of sterner stuff.

My reflection alarmed me (and I’m not one to set store by appearances). Nearly everything on the left side of my face blazed blue, purple, and red, like leadplant in full bloom. My left eye was swelling shut. I put my hand on it tentatively. The rest of me wasn’t much better: ripped and soiled clothing, bits of everything trapped in my hair. I splashed river water on my banged-up face and on the sullied parts of my clothing.
My hands shook, so it took double the time to undo my hair and braid it up again.

As I did this, all that I had found out about Agatha bobbled vaguely in my mind. Suddenly I realized something—something that I had not asked about. I needed to do it. Right now.

I marched past Billy, who stood by our mounts.

Billy mentioned getting going.

I held out my hand. “Give me a moment. Wait here,” I said.

I did not mean to push open the door to the Dog Hollow General Store with such force, but I did enter with a purposeful momentum. That door hit the wall and rattled.

“You,” came her voice. “What happened to your face?”

I saw the owner slowly stand upright. I walked to the counter, talking as I went. “Those people with my sister—the ones that sold you the quack cures—”

“I observed their beneficial effects myself,” she said quickly.

“The medicines—yes,” I said, putting my hand on the counter. “Where do you think the pigeoners went
after
they sold those bottles to you? I work at a store too. We know where people tend to go. We get an idea of who consorts with who, even if we’re not told outright. You can’t own a store and not know what’s what.”

Her eyes narrowed. “That man was completely unknown to me.”

“I’m sure you can guess. Those people that sell medicines and the like travel on a circuit. They buy something here, sell it over there. If those pigeoners were to buy something to sell, who would they buy from? You
told
me you
hear
things.”

“You think that man gave me his confidence? He didn’t say more than a dozen words.”

“But what about a person
like
him? Someone that straddles the fence of legality.”

She looked at me close. “You are begging for trouble. Have you seen your face? Yesterday you looked like a girl. Today you look like …” She did not finish her sentence. “Young miss, you should walk out of this store right now.”

“There is no rest until this is settled. I
will
endure anything.” I gestured at the one thing that seemed to be moving her—my face.

The store owner sighed. “You must give your word not to mention my name. Or my store.”

“I give my word,” I said.

“The Garrows. Up on the bluff. I don’t know what they do, or what they sell. I don’t
want
to know. But people of certain reputations seem to be acquaintances of the Garrows. Those people traveling with your sister were the type.”

I asked for directions.

Billy thought I’d lost my mind. He screwed his hat on. “Fry, your
ma
stitched the dress found on the body.”

“It’s only a half day out of the way. Isn’t
half
a day worth
it? The Garrows may know where those pigeoners went. Think of it as tying up loose ends.”

He locked his eyes on me. “Your sister was
shot
.”

“I won’t accuse them! I’ll ask if the pigeoners have been there and which way they went. I will not bring my sister up at all.”

“No.”

“If we do not find anything, I will go home willingly. I can’t take much more anyway. I’m wrung out.”

Billy adjusted his stance.

“It will
only
take
half
a day.”

Billy crooked a finger at me. “You’re not harboring any notion that your sister is alive, are you? Tell me now: Is Agatha dead or alive?”

“She’s dead,” I said.

Finger jab. “After this we head home?”

“Yes sir.”

“A half day out of the way?”

“That’s all I need,” I said.

We stopped by the telegraph office. The telegram read: “At DH. Garrow lead, then home. Billy.”

The store owner had described the Garrows as people who kept to themselves on a land “riddled with rocks and caves.” I thought about those rocks and caves as we rode away from Dog Hollow and into the bluffs that embraced the Wisconsin River. It was a landscape Agatha would relish, which sparked hope that Agatha was indeed alive. I knew this was a silliness. It was like what I’d done at the nowhere place when I’d pushed aside rocks to look for notes. I will also admit that when I considered going home, I imagined a letter waiting. This was my third day gone—a letter
could
arrive in three days. It was hopeless because surely Agatha was dead. Yet I persisted in thinking these things, hoping where I should not hope.