THE LAST BOY (31 page)

“I’ve really got to—” said Molly.

“
Please
,” wheedled Danny, wrapping his arms around her legs and looking up at her with his dream eyes.

“Oh… well…what the heck!” she said, finally.“Go ahead. Plant the stuff.”

Danny ran to get the shovel hidden under the trailer.

“Listen, I don’t want you to be disappointed,” said Molly as she helped, fluffing up the peat and spreading it as Danny worked it between the lumps of clay. If he were planning on leaving, she wondered, would he be planting seeds? “I just want to prepare you. This is not exactly going to be the Garden of Eden.”

“Oh, you just wait and see,” said Danny. “It’ll be just perfect! I know it.”

“It's going to take a long time to grow,” she said and watched for his reaction.

“Oh, no,” he said sweetly. “It’ll grow fast. You’ll see.”

A few weeks later, Tripoli invited himself over for dinner and made it clear that he wasn’t taking no for an answer.“I hardly see you any more,” he said as he washed the spinach that had come from Danny's garden. “I’m afraid we’re drifting apart.”

“I know. I’m sorry, but I have my hands full.”

He glanced out the window. Danny was in his garden, tying up squash vines and tomatoes. Vines? he thought. It seemed awfully quick. He had been so frustrated, so focused on confronting Molly
that he had walked right past the garden without paying attention. He tried to count the days since he’d given Danny the seeds and plants. It seemed like yesterday. Yet everything was already so big and lush.

Molly came and put her arm around his waist. “I’ve been neglecting you, I know.”

“I just wish we could get closer. I care for Danny, too, you know.”

“I know that. And we will get closer. It's just that I’m so exhausted. Give me some time. Some space.”

“And look, dragging Danny to the office is not helping things. It's not fair to him. And it's not fair to you.”

“Until you find the old man, I can’t let him out of my sight. Anyway, he's not always disruptive. Sometimes he's actually very quiet.”

Quiet, she thought to herself. Unnervingly quiet. Was he longing to go back to the old man?

“Look, we’ve got to talk,” said Larry as he stepped into her office. His lips were drawn tight and his eyes narrowed. It was the beginning of the third week of having Danny hanging around, and Molly feared that Larry was about to object. “Can you come into my office?”

“Of course. Danny, come on,” she signaled the boy as he stood leaning against the window, his chin cradled in his hand.

He didn’t react.

“Danny,” she repeated.

“No, no,” said Larry firmly, “I meant…
alone.
He can stay by himself for three minutes. Right, Danny?”

Once inside, Larry closed the door and offered her a seat, but she preferred to stand.

Larry sat down, but then stood up, came around and leaned up against the desk, putting himself at eye level to her.

“Hey, I know what you’re thinking,” she said, preempting him.

“Good, then you know what I’m feeling, too.”

“Larry, this is not just another mother trying to balance home and—”

“Maybe not, but—”

“I can’t leave him alone. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything. For Christsake, get some decent day-care. There are these wonderful places.”

“No way,” she said, holding her ground.

“Having him here is making you crazy. How can you work this way?”

“I’m working. I’m working!” she could feel herself beginning to lose control. “I’m doing as much as I can! There's not a night I haven’t taken tons of stuff home.”

Larry could see her mood shifting from defensive to combative, and he tried to soften his stance.“I know you’re trying hard. But I’m worried—and not just for the magazine's sake.”

“Well, I can handle it!” she snapped.

“Molly, Molly,” he said with a conciliatory note in his voice. “Please, understand. We’re trying to run a business here.”

“I understand that better than anyone else. Look, if you want, I’ll resign,” she said and felt viscerally sick at the prospect. Molly could hardly imagine looking for a job again, finding a position that paid a livable wage, gave her flex time, a boss halfway as decent as Larry. Jobless again? Well, if that's what needed to happen, so be it. She had faced worse before. And Danny came first.

“Resignation's never been the issue.”

“Then what is?” she asked.

“Don’t you see? You’ve grown to a point where you’re key to this operation. We
need
you. I need you. Need you desperately.”

Despite herself, Molly was flattered and knew she was probably blushing. “Look, right now I don’t dare take my eyes off Danny. Once they catch this hermit, I’ll be able to relax. And then at the end of the summer, Danny starts school and everything will be—”

“The
end
of the summer?” he exclaimed. “That's two more months!”

“What caught her eye,” said Sisler on the other end of the phone, “was that it looked like a human hand sticking out of the ground.”

“Where’d she find it?”Tripoli, in his kitchen making dinner, was
already on his feet. He knew a break in the case would emerge sooner or later, and here it was, finally.

“Right there in the woods. Like in a stream bed. Must have been washed down in the rains. It's hard for her to say how long it was sitting there, but—”

“So who's got it?”The ancient refrigerator in his kitchen came on with a clank, and started vibrating noisily. He gave it a kick and it settled down.

“It's over at the Hinkley Museum. But they’ve got to be closed at this hour.”

“Well, tell the curator—or whoever is running the show—that I’m on my way and I want to see them there in twenty minutes.”

“No problem.”

And I need to talk to the woman who found it. What's her name?”

“Tillson. Marge Tillson. The realtor. You know, the one who's always running those big ads in the paper.”

“Well, see if you can set up a meeting for me. It's too late now, it's going to be dark soon, but…Well, just tell her it's important and we need to go back tomorrow to the place where she found it. God, I hope she can find it.”

“You want me to come back in?”

Tripoli checked his watch.“Nah. I can handle things from here. Go enjoy your dinner. Hey, you’ve certainly earned your day's keep.”

Sisler laughed. “I wouldn’t get too excited yet. I mean it's just a long shot.”

“No, no. This sounds perfect, right on the money to me. It's the old guy for sure.”

Molly took her eyes off the road and glanced up at the soupy sky. “Maybe we should turn around. We’re going to get caught in a downpour,” she said as they drove up the west shore of the lake.

“No,” said Danny.“It's not going to rain.”

“No?”

“Not till later. When it's really dark,” he said with assurance.

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

Amazingly, Danny was always on target. He’d predict a cold front or rain shower and, sure enough, there it was, right on schedule. You could pack an umbrella according to his forecasts.

“But how do you always know?” She pulled in at the parking area at Taughannock Park.

“Oh, just by listening.”

“Listening? But to what?”

“Just the clouds. And the wind…and stuff.”

“Could I do it?”

“Sure!”

“Then I could quit my job and work for the weather channel.”

“Really?” he asked sincerely. And she just laughed and kissed his cheek.

She had hardly cut off the engine before Danny had slipped free from his seatbelt and was out the door. A minute later he was running up along the stream. Molly hurried after him as he pranced over the flat-rocked bottom of the gorge.

Though the evening was unbearably hot in town, as they moved ever deeper into the chasm, the damp walls of the narrowing canyon towering high above their heads, it turned cool and moist, the earth was covered with ferns and moss and the air smelled of primordial mold and vegetation.

“Be careful!” she called ahead.“It's slippery. And boulders sometimes fall from the cliffs. So stay away from the sides!”

“Don’t worry, I’m watching!” he shouted back, his high voice echoing up and down the canyon.

The stone floor, shaped by eons of rushing spring floods, was
wavy and slippery and Molly had to tread carefully in her slick shoes and office clothes.

“Mother, look here!” Danny exclaimed when she caught up with him. He was pointing up into a tall tree.

Molly stared upward into the dimming light, but couldn’t see anything.

“No, there. There. Higher. Higher.” When she crouched down next to him, trying to catch the same angle, he took her head and positioned it. Finally she saw what he was looking at: a mother raccoon half hidden in the trunk of the tree with four tiny babies huddled close.

“Boy, you’ve got good eyes!” she said. And it was true. On their hikes he could find the concealed nest of a grouse or a spotted fawn lying camouflaged in deep grass.

“Look at this,” he said a little later, showing her a perfectly formed trilobite fossil he found on the floor of the gorge. “Once these animals lived everywhere. Then they died. Like dinosaurs. Lots of things died. And never came back. Because the Earth changed,” he said, placing the fossil in the palm of Molly's hand.

“You know,” he said as they walked now hand in hand, “this gorge and all the other ones were scooped out by ice. Just like the lake.” Molly listened in awe as he explained how the small, circuitous creeks and tributaries merged in their flow to the big lake; how in prehistoric times huge glaciers had traveled across the land, gouging out deep rocky gorges and depositing rock and soil that would become the hills encircling the town. Danny even knew about the Indians, how they had lived in the area for centuries, roaming the hills and valleys and tending their orchards—which was news to Molly. She had never realized that the Iroquois had actually grown fruit. Obviously, the old man had taught him a lot. And Danny had retained it.

“Oh, yes,” said Danny,“Apples. All along the lake.”

As they crossed the bridge of the rushing stream, Danny told her about the infamous General Sullivan and his soldiers. How the peaceful Indians were driven from this land, their crops and long houses burned, how they were ultimately starved and slaughtered.

This was terribly heavy stuff coming from a little boy. “But, Honey, people do good things, too.”

“Of course. But now they’re destroying our Earth.”

These were not the words of a child.“Who's
they?
”

“We.”

“You mean everybody? Do you mean me and you?”

Danny shrugged. “I don’t know…I didn’t find out. But unless we do something, something terrible is going to happen to us.”

The way Danny said it, the way he looked at her wide-eyed and worried, frightened her.

“Little boys are supposed to be happy. Carefree. Just have a good time. Play. Have fun.”

“Uh-uh.” He shook his head.“Not me.”

Sisler really was a piece of work, thought Tripoli, navigating his car down the winding country road leading from his house. There were times he moved so slowly you just wanted to take hold of the guy and shake him. Then, unexpectedly, he’d make the most improbable of connections—something like this that verged on brilliance. One day he’d make a first-rate detective.

As Tripoli descended into the valley, the evening air became thick and he was glad he lived in the hills outside of town. He squeaked through two lights on State Street, then took a quick turn onto Seneca where the Hinkley Museum was housed in a spiffed up old Greek Revival. The curator, a wiry guy with gray goatee and spectacles, sat on the front steps waiting for Tripoli.

“Marge Tillson—you know, the realtor over at Remax Associates—brought it in,” he said unlocking the door.“It's a pretty
amazing bit of craftsmanship. She thought she had found this real old relic, but…this way,” he said, snapping on lights as they went. They passed through the main display room housing a collection of farm and household implements that looked to be from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Tripoli followed his guide into a large workroom at the rear. As soon as the lights came on, he saw what he was looking for.

“Oh my God,” uttered Tripoli, approaching the bench where it lay.

“Yes. Beautiful, isn’t it. We’ve kept it even though it doesn’t belong in our collection.”

It was a wooden pitchfork, but unlike any Tripoli had ever seen. Carved from a single piece of ash, the shaft was as big around as a child's wrist. The tines had been created by making four splits which separated the shaft into five distinct pieces. Each tine had been individually steamed and bent, forming a graceful curve.

“Anthropomorphic, isn’t it?” added the curator.

Yes, thought Tripoli, it did look just like a human hand. Four slender fingers and a thumb. There were even knuckle joints as well as nails carved into the back of the tines. “Extraordinary,” he whispered in awe.

“And just look at this handle,” said the curator. He shifted a lamp closer, his glasses glinting in the light. “Whoever made this had remarkable skill—not the kind of thing you see these days.”

The handle had been created by splitting the wood down the middle and bending the two pieces into a U. Holes had been drilled and a dowel inserted.“The dowel was made of cured wood, but the body was still green when it was made so that, when it dried, it shrunk and fit tightly. Look, there's no sign of any glue.”

Tripoli could hardly take his eyes off the graceful tool. He picked it up. It was light and perfectly balanced, ideal for forking hay or leaves, or any dry material. “So how did she find this?” he asked finally.

“You know Marge. She's a fanatical birder.”

Tripoli nodded. He had seen her weekly column in the paper.

“Well, she was out in the woods, crossing a stream bed. It lay completely buried except for this end. It was really dirty and soaked when she brought it in—which is why she thought it was very old.”

Tripoli's eyes went to the window. Outside it was slowly starting to get dark.“Which stream are we talking about?”