The Missing (25 page)

“You got any money?”

“Cap’n, I ain’t got a cent. Can’t get one, neither.”

“Well, I tell you what. We come down from Louisville on these two and they’ve give out. We got to take the train, so if you want ’em, just haul ’em off to your place and let me have two dollars.”

The old man walked over, trailing the reins of his mule behind, and ran a hand down the neck and along the saddle of the tall horse. He felt all four legs. He did the same with the little horse, which kicked out at him and almost knocked him down. “Tack go, too?”

“Tack, too.”

The black face froze in thought and Skadlock interpreted the hesitation as meaning nobody would believe that any foreign white man would sell him two mounts and tack for two dollars. He would be charged with stealing. “Reckon I better not, Cap’n. But I thank you.”

He tried not to show his rising anger and looked around at the town’s simple buildings. “What if I give you a bill of sale? I can’t leave these animals in the street.” From three miles away he could hear the whistle of the southbound train.

“I don’t know.”

“Look, damn it, if you had all the money in the world, what would you give for the pair?”

The man looked down. “Well, the big fella old as me and the little one only got three legs. Them saddles feel like oven toast. I guess maybe nine dollars.”

He went inside the station and got a sheet of paper and a pencil, making out a receipt from a Mr. Walter Lee Copes, Louisville, Kentucky, for nine dollars, then went back to the road and put it in the man’s hand. “If anybody asks you about them horses, show ’em that paper. My street address is on it and they can write me a letter.”

The man looked at the sheet closely, holding it upside down. “How I know this paper don’t say, ‘Hang this fella for a hoss thief’?” He smiled to show he was joking, but they both knew he wasn’t.

Skadlock set his jaw. “How far out in the country you live?”

The black man stepped back. “’Bout five mile.”

He reached into his coat pocket and peeled a five-dollar note off his wad. “You think even a fool would pay five dollars to play some joke? These animals is going to suffer if I leave ’em here. This here’s a dollar a mile.”

The man folded the bill carefully and put it down in his shoe. “Okay, Cap’n. I can take these po’ boys off your hand.”

He slowly climbed onto the mule and received the reins of the horses. The mule turned around as of its own will, and the lame animals followed.

Skadlock watched for a while, furious at how he’d been out-smarted, then turned toward the tracks thinking about the train ride, which would involve two changes. He recalled that his brother would leave horses tied to the little station at Fault for the ten-mile trek back to their place. If he didn’t have Vessy helping, the girl would be screaming her head off the whole way.

But when he came around the corner of the station and sat on the bench, the child climbed up in his lap. He studied her warily, as though a possum had decided to perch on his right thigh and grab hold of his shirt pocket. The warm child-smell of her drifted up to him again, and he put a hand on her stomach as she leaned out to watch the locomotive smoke its way up to the station. She clapped her hands and leaned farther away when the engine bell rang, the air brakes hissed, and the cylinders bled bursts of steam. He put his other hand around the first and held firm, sharing with her this amazing sight.

GRAY DAWN. Mrs. Benton signaled for a tug to come out from the Baton Rouge levee. Sam could see commas of steam spring up against the bank, and a boat came out toward midriver with a coal flat on its hip. He climbed down and jumped aboard the tug, which cast off from its barge and chuffed back in. Crossing the levee, he came up behind the great redbrick expanse of the Y&MV station. An agent sold him a ticket on number 36 for Gashouse, where he could change for the mixed train into Woodgulch, putting him at the end of the line at 2:45.

He made the first connection with no idea of what he would do in Woodgulch, knowing only that it was ten miles from Zeneau, where he could begin tracking the boy. The one passenger car rocked at the end of a string of boxcars and three stinking chemical tankers. On a curve he saw the small locomotive, filthy with soot and forty years old, its mailbox whistle shrieking at a dirt road crossing. He sat next to a white-haired gentleman and asked him how he might get from Woodgulch to Zeneau.

He regarded Sam a long time before spitting over the window ledge. “Who are you, son?”

“Sam Simoneaux. I live in New Orleans.”

“New Orleans,” the man repeated, inching higher in his seat as if his seatmate were from New Delhi or some other foreign place replete with contagion and unspeakable ways. “What are you after in Zeneau?”

As Sam explained, an acne-scarred man in the seat ahead turned around. “This young’un you after, where’s he a-headed?”

“South along the river.”

The man snorted. “Ain’t nothing in there. Is he after black bear or something?”

“He’s kind of a runaway.”

The white-haired man also snorted. “His old man take a stick to him?”

“His daddy’s dead. I just want to catch him for his momma before he gets into trouble.”

“You say he’s fifteen year old?”

“That’s a fact.”

“You wouldn’t believe some of the crazy stuff I did when I was fifteen. One time on a dare I rode a bull and that devil carried me through a bob-war fence and a quarter-mile into town, where he and me went through a hardware-store window and took out a hundred dollars’ worth of sash work. I landed next to a Coats and Clark thread dispenser and the doc sewed me up with navy-blue number three right out the display box.”

The acne-scarred man pulled out a handkerchief and blew hard, three times. “Look here,” he began, “when I was fifteen I got up too late to milk and my old man told me to stay in our little feedstore and keep the stove hot all day. ‘Just keep the stove hot,’ he said. I sulked around and stoked that son till it was cherry red and the pipe was glowin’ all the way to the ceilin’. The damper melted and fell down into the firepot and I found some cokin’ coal in the back and dumped ten pounds of that in the door. That stove turnt white and run me out the door, and not long after that the attic caught fire. When my old man got back from Woodgulch, all that was left was a square lot of white ash and the stove sittin’ more or less upright in the middle of it. He looked at me and said, ‘Well now, I’ll grant you that son of a bitch is hot all right!’”

“What did he do then?” the white-haired gentleman asked.

“Not a thing.”

“That was the punishment.”

“Say what?”

“You’d of turned out worse if he’d a tooken a strap to you.”

The acne-scarred man gave him a startled look. “I reckon that might be true. I know I felt low as a dachshund’s nuts for a long time after that store burnt down.”

Sam leaned in between them. “I’ve got to get to this boy.”

“I don’t know about no boy,” the old man said, “but if you want a ride to Zeneau, a truck should be waitin’ for freight at the station. Ask the driver for a ride.”

A FAT MAN wearing red suspenders that disappeared under his belly was waiting at the station in a tan Model T truck. The white-haired man got off the train and shambled over, grabbed a gallus strap in a fist and pointed toward Sam, who walked up and introduced himself.

“Cost you a dollar,” the fat man said.

“All right.”

“I’m just joshin’ you. Help me get them boxes out the last car and we’ll get on down the road.”

There were only six boxes of stove parts and ten feed sacks and a crated Victrola, and soon the fat man was at the crank starting the Ford. He got in with a whistle and asked, “Can I sing on the way?”

“Sure.”

“Funny. I never could sing before.” He laughed until his face was crimson, then set the truck off across the ruts of the station yard.

They rolled through the six blocks of Woodgulch out into a countryside of washboard hills stippled with gum trees strangled by poison sumac and catbriers. He could see no houses, and after a while the road grew sloppy and plunged into an old-growth cypress forest, the trees fifteen feet through the base skirt, blocky trunks rising like factory smokestacks into a spongy canopy. He looked into these waterlogged woods and hoped the boy hadn’t stumbled far into such a terrible place.

The fat man fought the wheel over the bad road and couldn’t talk much, except once when a sack of feed fell over the tailgate and they were forced to stop. Sam got out and looked around. “That’s some timber. Damn, that’s some timber for sure.”

“Yeah, it’s been bought and paid for. A Natchez mill is finally gonna cut it all out next year.”

“How much of it?”

“All of it, I hear. Thirteen thousand acres, out on the river south of here down to the prison and beyond.”

“Down by where the Skadlocks live?”

He loaded the sack and left his hand on it. “How you know about the Skadlocks?”

“I’ve run into them.”

“You ain’t no kin, are you? I’ll leave you here in the road if you are.”

“No. What’d they do to you?”

“None of your business.”

“Fair enough. You know how to get to their place from Zeneau?”

“Boat.”

“Is there a place to rent one?”

“No.”

Sam sighed and shook his head. “Horse?”

The man walked around to the front of the truck and leaned against the steaming radiator. “If you go overland, it’s about seven, eight miles due south, and you’d have to rent you a gorilla to tote you up and down them gullies. I hunted back in there when I cared about it, and I’m tellin’ you it’s a miracle I’m standin’ here.” He turned the crank, climbed in the cab, and let off the brake.

Sam got in. “How you know about them at all?”

“I deliver for the sheriff. The west deputy has a office in Zeneau. I seen that biggest Skadlock come in there and talk to him. Him and his dog.” The fat man looked over at him, and there was a sudden longing in his eyes. “I used to have me a little black-and-white rat terrier rode in the truck. Sat right where you’re at. He was smart. Like a little fuzzy person, he was. I was down deliverin’ a chair and box of supplies to that one-room deputy office when I seen Skadlock’s horse and his dog next to it. I went into the office and didn’t think a thing about it, but from inside I heard a squeak. When I went out my dog was dead under the truck and that German police was pissin’ on my front tire. I told Skadlock off when he come out, but he just dug in his pocket and give me a dollar. Then he got on his horse and rode off. I was mad as hell, but later I thought, you know, somebody like that can’t do no better.”

“You get yourself a new dog?”

He shook his head and geared down for the next hill. “Naw. That was the one dog.”

“Can’t replace him?”

The driver turned slowly. “Can you replace your mom?”

Sam rolled his head away and looked down the awful road. “Doesn’t seem like the same thing, exactly.”

The fat man shifted gears. “Bud, the older I get, I think ever livin’ thing is one of a kind.”

ZENEAU WAS A STORE, a deputy’s office the size of a big privy, five wood houses, and a mud landing. The driver let him off in front of the unpainted office, and he looked at it doubtfully before deciding to move on through the mosquitoes to the store, breaking sunbaked, puckered mud as he walked. It was after three o’clock, the day’s heat at its zenith. Inside the dim store three graybeards were sitting around an unlit stove, their feet propped on the fenders. The clerk was busy on the back landing, taking delivery off the truck.

“Hey, bo,” one of the old men said, a fellow wearing patched overalls and a long hound’s face.

“Hi. I’m looking for a big kid, fifteen years old. Anybody seen him?”

“Where you from?”

“New Orleans.”

“You don’t talk like New Orleans.”

“I was born in west Louisiana.”

“A Frenchieman,” the hound’s face called out. “Hey, talk some of that palaver to us.”

“Comment ça va? Brassez mon tchou, têtes de merde.”

A red-faced man dropped a foot off the stove skirt. “Ha, ha, listen to that! Sounds like a monkey with a mouthful of olives.”

“Have you seen him?”

“What you wantin’ him for?”

“His mamma sent me after him. He’s run away.”

“Oh!” the hound’s face exclaimed. “Whyn’t you say so? You know, I run away when I was a kid.”

The red-faced man slapped him on the knee. “But you never went back.”

“You know, you’re right.”

The conversation stalled at that point. Sam looked at the first man and said loudly, “The boy?”

“Oh. Yeah, he come in here yesterday, said he wanted to hunt turkey. Bought a huntin’ vest and some eats.”

Sam looked at him. “He doesn’t own a gun.”

“He didn’t when he come up on the porch. Talk to the clerk about it.”

After a while, the bald clerk came back inside, sweaty and sour-smelling. “Hep you?”

“I’m looking for a boy.”

“Who you, then?”

“Aw, he’s all right!” yelled the red-faced man.

“Well, sold him some cheese and potted meat and crackers and a toy compass. And a used shotgun.”

“Aw, hell. I was afraid of that. What kind?”

“A old double-barrel wore-out Parker. Ten-gauge with rabbit ears.”

“What kind of shells did you sell him?”

“Feller that traded it to me give me the shells, and I passed ’em on with the gun. About a dozen.”

“What size shot?”

“Hell, I don’t know. They was old goose loads. Maybe number-two shot with black powder under ’em.”

“Good lord.”

“It was none of my business, but I knew he wasn’t no hunter, least not much of one. Kind of a city-lookin’ kid.”

“Well, when did he leave?”

“I let him sleep on the porch out on the cotton. He left about a half hour after I opened up at six. Give him some syrup and bread for breakfast. I saw him start off due south into the woods.”

“Is there a trail?”

Everybody laughed, and the third man’s feet fell off the stove’s fenders. “Not much of one. We all pretty much stay out of the south woods. Louisiana’s got a state prison a few miles in there against the river and there ain’t no tellin’ who you could meet up with, if you know what I mean.”

One of the men said, “You goin’ after him?”

“I guess so.”

“You own a compass?”

Sam reached into his khakis and pulled it out. “I’ve been back in there before.”

“You got my sympathy,” said the hound’s face.

“I was on a horse.”

“Well, well,” the red-faced man said and spat into a box of sawdust next to the stove. “You got him now?”

“I’m on foot.”

The man stood up. “You need to see my brother, then.”

Sam looked at the clerk, who shrugged. “What for?”

The man lay a spotted hand on his arm. “Come on, he’s down the street.”

Sam followed him half a mile to a dog-trot house, and the fellow who came out had the same sun-botched face as his escort.

“Buzz. Who you got there?”

“Fellow needs a animal.”

“I got a pig he can have.”

“Does it come with a saddle?”

The brothers smacked hands and chucked shoulders and then stood side by side looking down off the unpainted porch to where Sam stood in the chicken-bald yard.

“I don’t have a lot of money,” he began. He explained what he wanted to do and the horse trader gave his brother a doubtful look.

“I should of knowed you wasn’t bringin’ around somebody with cash in his jeans.”

His brother shrugged.

“I can only sell you a animal. I don’t rent, there ain’t no sense in it. But when and if you get out of that terrible country”—he nodded his shaggy head to the south—“I’ll buy it back less what you skint off him in there.”

Sam tried to remember how much was in his wallet, how much a pair of train tickets would cost to get him and the boy down to New Orleans. “What can you sell one for?”

“I got an Appaloosa that’s tough and is good on short hills and mud. He’s thirty-five dollars.”

“God, I can’t afford that.”

The horse trader blinked. “Somehow I thought not. Well, I got a old mare, then, slow, but she won’t spook. You can’t make no time through those woods nohow. She’s twenty dollars cash money.”

“Maybe. What else?”

“I got a couple trained mustangs, but if you ain’t a real good horseman, they’ll kill you dead, ’cause they’ll do what you tell ’em even if you spur ’em into quicksand or off a drop. Now, I got a retired dray horse with heart trouble you can have for fourteen dollars, but once you get in the woods he won’t fit between trees.”

“Let me see him.”

The trader looked at his brother and shook his head. “Let’s us go around back, then.”

On the way to the barn, an animal in the pasture caught Sam’s eye, an oversized mule a hand and a half taller than most and gray as fog. “What’s the story on that one?”

The horse trader looked everywhere except at the mule. “What one?”

Sam pointed.

“Oh. That’s a hinny. Biggest I ever saw. I got him in a trade last year and done sold him and took him back three times. That one’s too smart to ride.”

“How’s that?”

“Aw, he just knows better than anybody that gets on him. If you could just figure out how he thinks, he’d be a good animal. But you can’t make him do a damn thing he don’t want to.”

“He’s sort of white.”

“Yeah. Folks around here think that means bad luck.”

“Can I try him out?”

The man turned and looked at him. “Why would you want to?”