The World More Full of Weeping (3 page)

He turned quickly, almost losing his balance.

She stepped from the path into the clearing without a
sound. “I'm sorry,” she said, raising her hand in a half-wave.
“I didn't mean to scare you. I'm Carly.”

As she stepped toward him, she smiled.

You never really get a look at your own life
, Jeff Page thought,
until you're showing it to someone else.

Dean Owens was the first of the Search and Rescue to
arrive, parking his truck under the cedar tree at the side of
the driveway. As he climbed out of the cab, he straightened
his ball cap and grabbed a metal clipboard.

Jeff nodded as he approached. “Thanks for getting here
so fast.”

“I was on duty. The rest of the crew should be along
pretty quick. How you holdin' up?”

Jeff glanced over at Diane. His wife —
ex-wife
, he
reminded himself — stared at the edge of the woods like she
could will Brian to reappear. Her arms were folded tightly
across her chest, her jacket zipped to her throat against
a chill that wasn't coming from outside. “We're pretty
worried. It's gonna be getting dark soon.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “Let's get this out of the way.” He
opened the metal folio and clicked a pen to start.

As they ran through Brian's distinguishing characteristics, Diane drifted soundlessly, wordlessly toward them.

“And when did you last see him?”

“Maybe eleven this morning. I was working.”

“And you're sure he went off into the woods?”

Jeff nodded.

“And you've checked with all of his friends? Maybe he's
over at one of their places.”

Jeff glanced at Diana. “He doesn't . . . he's pretty much
a loner. He's mentioned a girl, Carly, a few times, but I don't
know her last name.”

“We'll look into it,” Dean said, making a note. “Did you
have a fight or argument recently?”

Jeff was startled by the question. “Why? What does
that — ” He glanced at Diana, who was staring at him.

“We're just trying to determine if maybe he ran away.
Maybe there was a fight, or some punishment . . .”

“Brian wouldn't run away,” Diane said. Her first words
in more than half an hour were calm, but there was an edge
of fear under them.

Dean looked at her. “You'd be surprised at the number
of kids we end up rescuing from the video store or the
arcade in town 'cause they were pissed off at their parents.
Husbands and wives, too,” he added, looking between them
and trying to lighten the mood.

“There was a fight,” Jeff said quietly. “This morning.
Brian didn't — he asked if he had to go to his mom's place
in Vancouver this week. He wanted to stay home.” He
avoided looking at Diane as he recounted their breakfast
conversation, but he could feel the force of her stare.

“Is that it?” Dean asked. “He just didn't want to go on
vacation in the city?”

“No,” Diane said flatly. “We . . . He's going to be moving
in with me in the summer. Starting school in Vancouver in
the fall. He didn't want to — doesn't want to . . .”

Dean stared at Diane for a moment, then back at Jeff. He
pursed his lips as he made another note on the clipboard.
Jeff willed himself not to look at his ex-wife.

“So what can you tell me about the woods?” Dean asked,
breaking the awkward silence.

“You probably remember,” Jeff started, finally daring a
glance at Diane. She had turned away, and was staring at the
ground. He recognized the biting of her lower lip, the way
she tried to keep from crying. “It hasn't changed much.”

When they were younger, Jeff and Dean and a bunch
of the other kids used to rule the woods behind the house,
building forts out of hollow trees, waging war on one
another, and building traps for anyone who might come
looking for them.

Dean half-smiled. “I've been in a lot of forests since
then,” he said. “They really do all start to look the same.”

Jeff felt fleetingly chastised as he turned toward the
forest. The air was dimming, growing heavy and thick as
the sun touched the horizon behind them.

“We've got about twenty-five acres.” He gestured. “From
fence line to fence line. But the woods keep going, down
past John and Claire's place that way, past young Tom's
over there. There's an old fence marking the property line
on both ends of our share. Brian's not supposed to cross
the fence.”

Dean looked at him dubiously.

“Yeah.” Jeff shook his head. “And the fence was in pretty
bad shape the last time I checked.”

In the quiet afternoon distance he heard an engine.
Engines.

“And how far back does it go?”

“All the way,” Diane answered, almost in a whisper.

“There's an old logging road a ways back,” Jeff clarified.
“But after that, it meets up with the bush at the foot of the
mountain.” His voice trailed off. “Brian's not supposed to
cross the logging road.”

Diane looked at him.

“He knows that.”

She shook her head.

“He wouldn't.”

There was a crunching of gravel under wheels as the
trucks turned into the driveway.

“Here they are,” Dean said, turning away.

“Hi.” Brian smiled back, a little awkwardly. Not only was he
surprised to have someone else in his own private world,
he felt a bit shy talking to girls at the best of times. “I'm
Brian.”

He didn't know if he should try to shake her hand or what.
“What are you doing?” she asked, stepping closer to him.
“Collecting samples,” he said, as if it should have been obvious. He was a bit confused by how she was dressed: her
long, dark dress didn't seem too suited for tramping around
in the woods. “Do you live around here?” he asked, thinking
that she reminded him of the Dutch girls from the bigger
farms he had seen walking to the Christian school from the
bus window, all of them wearing grey dresses, their heads
covered with white cloths. She didn't have anything on her
head, but Carly had that same old-fashioned look, the same
pale skin.

“No, I'm just staying here for a while. What do you do
with your samples?”

He remembered the long spoon in his left hand. “Here,
I'll show you.”

Leaning against the mossy side of a fallen tree, Brian
unzipped his backpack and pulled out the wooden case. He
set it on the log and flipped open the catches.

“What's that?” Carly asked, looking over his shoulder.

“It's a microscope,” he said, setting it mostly flat on the
log. “My dad gave it to me. It's pretty old.”

“What do you do with it?”

“I'll show you,” he repeated. He slid a slide from the
package and prepared it with a drop of the scummy water.
He moved quickly and confidently: he'd been doing this
for several months. He'd broken a few slides at first, but
he'd gotten the hang of it. “Then you just slip it in here,”
he muttered, mostly to himself, as he positioned the slide
under the lens. “And you adjust the mirror . . .” Looking
through the lens, he adjusted the focus. “There.” He stepped
to one side, still holding the microscope. “You look.”

Holding back her long blonde hair, Carly leaned over the
microscope. She looked for a moment, squinting her eyes,
then straightened up.

“What is that?” she asked, her face wide and open.
“What did you do?”

He had to suppress a laugh. “It's water,” he said. “Just a
drop of water from the pond.” He gestured.

“But there are things . . . creatures.” She seemed to be
drawing away from the microscope.

He nodded. “They
are
creatures,” he said. “That's what . . .
They live in there.”

Her face slowly broke into a smile. “They must be very
small,” she said.

“The microscope magnifies them so we can see them.”

She looked at the microscope with what he thought was
curiosity.

“Do you want to look again?”

She stepped forward slowly and bent over the microscope.
“How did you find them?” she asked. “How did you know they
would be there?”

“They're everywhere,” he said, excited to be talking about
it. “They're all around us. Inside us. In the air and the water.”

“Everywhere?”

He nodded.

“Then why haven't I ever seen them?”

“There's a whole world of them, a whole universe, all
around us. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean
they're not there.”

When she looked away from the eyepiece, she was
smiling. “Is this what you do in the woods?” she asked.

He nodded, suddenly shy, suddenly unsure of his
decision to show the girl his microscope.

“Do you want to see more hidden things, Brian?” she
asked. “I could show you. There's a whole hidden world in
this forest I could show you, if you wanted.”

The first truck parked behind Dean's. People spilled from the
cab and cargo bed, mostly men, but a couple of women, too.

Jeff knew everyone, at least in passing. Frank and Jim
from the Henderson Press hopped out of the truck's bed,
along with Michelle Coombs and Phil Hardie. They drifted
over to form a group around Dean.

Moving more slowly, Charlie Ellroy slid from the cab of the
truck and walked toward Jeff. He extended a hand, a formality
Jeff found oddly disconcerting. He shook it anyway.

“Been a while since we seen you in at the Horseshoe,”
Charlie said, shifting his mouth around his false teeth.

Jeff nodded. “I've been pretty busy with Brian since . . .”
He trailed off as Diane stepped toward them.

“Hi, Charlie,” she said.

“How you holdin' up?”

She shrugged, and Jeff could see how much the façade
of calm was costing her.

“So you got a little boy lost,” he said to Jeff.

“Yeah. Looks that way.”

“Like father like son.”

It was the second time that cliché had been used that
afternoon, and something about it niggled at the back of
Brian's mind. He was about to ask Charlie what he meant
when a second truck pulled into the driveway.

“That'll be the cloggers,” Charlie muttered, watching
the driveway.

The
truck
was
driven
by
Pieter
TeBrink,
Martin
TeBrink's oldest son, now probably in his late twenties,
and was loaded with men who looked like they might have
been brothers or cousins. All shared the same straight
blond hair, the strong chins and white teeth, the broad
smiles.
TeBrinks
and
VanLeeuwens,
VanderPols
and
VanWycks. Scions of the Dutch farmers who owned most
of the land surrounding Henderson, all wearing the same
battered jeans and boots, well worn from use.