When Will the Dead Lady Sing? (10 page)

I shoved my way through the little pines muttering things I’d learned from Bo. When I got to the gravel road, I didn’t know which way to turn. The horse might have gone on back to the barn, or it might have headed for the highway. I saw some scuffs on the side of the road like it had headed toward the highway, so I decided I’d walk as far as the house at the corner. It stood empty now, but used to belong to old Amos Pickens, an ornery, smelly old geezer and a dreadful neighbor. I doubted he was playing a harp where he’d gone, for he didn’t have a kind bone in his body. He would never have permitted me to walk up his drive looking for a lost horse.

I walked wary of snakes in the tall weeds. “Starfire? Starfire!” No answering whinny came from the back, and the weeds were too high for me to go farther. The place had stood vacant since Amos died, except for a few months when a hot-shot young doctor bought it with grand ideas he couldn’t carry out. He hadn’t even gotten around to removing the galvanized stove pipes Amos had attached to his roof. They were beginning to come loose and leaned crazily in all directions. Poor Amos. He’d spent his last years terrified that alien forces were massing on Venus for an imminent attack on earth and had believed the pipes would mess up their radars if they planned to land in Hopemore.

I headed back up the road toward our place. If I hadn’t been bone tired and scared for my grandson, it would have been a pleasant walk. Birds were twittering to each other about northern summer vacations. A rabbit wiggled its nose at me from the verge. This far from the fire, I could smell hay and cotton dust, and it wasn’t smoke that made my eyes smart. I remembered walking down that road with Joe Riddley on moonlit nights after the kids were asleep, walking down it with two tiny boys to see if blackberries were ripe, and strolling down it with various dogs just for the exercise. I also remembered how often I’d thought about taking a walk, then given up the idea to do something else. I wanted to shout at somebody, “Wait, I can’t move away yet—I haven’t gone for enough walks!”

Just as I reached Hubert’s pasture between his house and ours, I heard a whinny. Whether it was Starfire or not, I couldn’t see until I’d got through the barbed wire and climbed a little rise, because the pasture rose from the fence, then dipped again to a small cattle pond. Down near the pond, a black stallion grazed. He lifted his head and whinnied again when he scented me. Heaven only knew what I smelled like by then.

I knew him at once by the blaze on his nose. “Tad?” I called. “Where are you, honey?”

A clump of trees stood just beyond the pond. The child had to be there, unless he were in the pond. I refused to think that. I’d jumped in that filthy pond to save somebody once and didn’t want to repeat it. “Tad? Come here!”

I saw a motion beyond a thick oak trunk; then Tad came out wearing dust-smeared sneakers and cut-off jeans. In his arms he cradled Lulu’s pup Feisty.

Tad was a slender, almost delicate child, with his mother’s dark brown eyes and her daddy’s blond hair. He was striking now and would be a real heartbreaker when he grew up—especially since, like his mother, he always looked good. Even with his hair tousled, dusty, and stuck to his forehead with sweat, his chest bare, and his arms scratched with bloody welts, he looked ready to pose for an upscale kids’ magazine.

Until he got closer. His face was coated with what looked like a mixture of dust, snot, and tears, and his eyes looked so sorrowful, I wanted to hug him forever. I figured, though, that if I was sympathetic right away, he’d bolt. I let him come closer, then held out his shirt. “So,” I said in my most matter-of-fact voice, “you set the barn on fire?”

“I didn’t mean to.” It was Walker’s quavery voice, Walker’s whine. This kid might be part of our family after all. He handed me the pup and pulled on the shirt, muttering, “It wasn’t
exactly
my fault.”

“Whose fault was it?”

“I—uh—I had a match and Lulu jumped up on me, and I dropped it into the hay.”

“Don’t you blame this on Lulu. You were smoking in the barn and set it on fire. Let’s keep that in the forefront of this conversation, all right?”

“I didn’t mean to do it,” he protested, reaching again for the pup and cradling it under his chin.

I gave him the look I send down from my bench when a prisoner is trying to make excuses and we both know he’s guilty. “But you did cause the fire.”

He looked at his filthy sneakers like they were the only interesting thing on his horizon. “Yes, ma’am.” He swiped his eyes with one arm.

I forced my voice to be stern. “And you were smoking again.”

“Yes, ma’am.” That was almost a whisper. “But I won’t anymore. I’ve quit.”

“Your daddy’s insurance company is going to have to pay a lot of money to build Uncle Ridd a new barn. Do you know that?”

His eyes flashed. “Daddy had nothing to do with it. I’ll pay Uncle Ridd back. I’ve got lots of money in the bank.”

“That’s your college fund,” I reminded him. “Insurance will pay for the barn, but your daddy isn’t going to be happy.”

He stuck out his lower lip and sulked.

“And Uncle Ridd’s going to have to repaint his house where the fire hoses have knocked off the paint. He may want you to help him.”

The lower lip jutted out a little more. Work and Tad had never been friends. He scuffed the grass with one toe and didn’t look at me. The pup reached up and licked his chin.

When I saw a tear glisten and fall to the toe of his sneaker, I relented a little. “But thank you for saving Lulu and the pups. And Starfire. That took a lot of courage. Horses are generally scared of fire. How’d you manage it?”

He looked up with a flicker of pride. “I took off my shirt and covered his head; then I led him out. I tied him to the railing by the steps while I called 911, but then—then—”

“Then you got a little scared of Uncle Ridd and decided to ride off into the sunset.”

“I didn’t get scared! It was Starfire. He was real jumpy because of the fire, so he was plunging all over the place. I was afraid he’d pull down the porch. I untied him to ride him across the yard, but he jerked the rein away and bolted into the field. I been looking for that dratted horse all afternoon.” His eyes were stormy, not the least bit repentant. Before I could reply, he added, “Mama would die if I lost her horse.”

His daddy would have said, “Mama would kill me if I lost her horse.” I gave him points for that distinction. “So what did you do then?”

“I took off after him, but I tripped over Feisty, who was waddling across the grass. I didn’t have time to put him in a safe place, so I dropped my shirt, grabbed him up and took him with me. It took ages to catch Starfire, and by then we were lost. We must have walked a hundred miles. I thought we’d never get out of there!” His eyes flickered with the memory of what must have been very real fear. Tad had never ridden tractors like Bethany and Cricket. I doubted if he’d ever been in the cornfield before, and ten acres can seem like the whole world to a child.

“How did you get found again?”

“Starfire finally got calm, so I led him to a rock and climbed on his back. I didn’t have a saddle or bridle, so I rode bareback.” Again, that flicker of pride. “We rode around for a while until I saw trees that looked like the ones beside your road and headed that way. It was hard getting through them”—he looked ruefully down at his scratches—“but when we came out, we were across from Mr. Spence’s pasture. Starfire was real thirsty, and I knew the fishing pond was over here, so I brought him for a drink. We were coming back as soon as he’d rested a little.”

I didn’t say whether I believed
that
or not. I had another worry right then. “You didn’t drink that water, did you?”

He screwed up his face. “No way. It’s full of cow poop.” He sighed. “I sure am thirsty.”

“Let’s go back, then.” I nodded toward Feisty. “Hollis is out looking for him. She rounded up Lulu and the others, but she’s worried that Feisty got stuck in the barn.”

“Is the barn real bad?”

“It’s gone. The roof caved in before I left.”

He took a step back, eyes wide. “I can’t go back there. Uncle Ridd will kill me!”

“I doubt that. He’ll be mad, sure, but Pop and I won’t let him kill you. My guess is you’re in for some serious weeding and paint scraping in the next few days, though.”

“I’m not going back! I won’t!” He flung the pup at me and dashed toward Starfire, who was taking a drink down beside the dock. Tad pelted along the dock, clutched Starfire’s mane, and flung himself on the horse’s back. The next minute, horse and boy were galloping toward the far horizon.

“Tad! Wait!” I was calling to the wind.

Furious and exhausted, I headed home. I wasn’t sure I could walk another quarter of a mile in my fancy shoes, but I sure couldn’t walk a foot on gravel without them. I was relieved to hear a vehicle tearing down the road.

Barely able to lift my arm, I flagged down Ridd’s truck, plopped the pup on his front seat, and climbed up after it. “Are you just getting here?”

“No, I’ve been here for an hour. There’s nothing more we can do right now, and since I was blocking his car, Daddy sent me looking for you.” He frowned.“Where the Sam Hill have you been? You look like you’ve been through the wars.”

“A couple,” I agreed, slamming my door. “I was looking for Tad.”

“You couldn’t find him?” Ridd sat there without putting the truck in gear. He looked real worried, and no wonder. This was the first time Walker and Cindy had ever gone off and left their kids with anybody except her parents.

“Oh, I found him, over yonder by the pond. We had a nice little chat. But he refused to come back to your place. He’s run off on Starfire.”

Ridd shrugged. “He won’t go far without somebody to wait on him hand and foot.”

“Honey!” I chided him. “Granted he hasn’t grown up as rough as you two did—”

Ridd snorted. “I doubt if he’s ever had to lift a finger for himself. He has to be reminded every morning to make his own bed and hang up his clothes, and when I asked him to weed the garden this morning, he told me he’d rather not, he doesn’t like getting dirty and he’s ‘a bit nervous, ’ ”—he sketched quotes—“around bugs. How can any boy of ten be scared of bugs? And when I told him it was an order, not a request, he pulled up a whole row of leaf lettuce and told me he thought lettuce only grew in balls.” Ridd pounded the steering wheel in frustration. “Face it, Mama, the kid’s sweet, but he’s a loser—and now he’s burned down my barn!” He laid his head on the wheel and sobbed.

I touched his shaking shoulder. “You’re scared and worried, and that’s okay, honey, but don’t take it out on Tad. He’s scared, too. Scared you’re gonna kill him for burning the barn, scared Walker will kill him because he carries the insurance on it.” I peered across Ridd toward the pasture. “I just hope he comes back.”

Ridd put the car into gear and started down the road. “Oh, he’ll come back when he gets hungry or sleepy. I can’t see His Highness scavenging food or sleeping rough.”

But Ridd was wrong. Tad did not come home.

7

We hung around Ridd’s kitchen drinking iced tea and discussing what ought to be done about the barn, but we didn’t start worrying about Tad until it began to get dark. That’s when I got ready to call Buster and have the entire sheriff’s department scouring the county for my grandson.

Ridd, Joe Riddley, and even Martha voted me down, willing to wait a while longer for him to come home on his own. “We don’t want to embarrass him any more than we have to,” Martha reminded me.

“Nail his hide to what’s left of the barn, maybe, but not embarrass him,” Ridd agreed sourly.

You may be wondering why we weren’t frantic. An out-of-state friend assures me, “If my twelve-year-old granddaughter disappeared for several hours, with or without a horse, I’d have the police, the National Guard, and the Royal Canadian Mounties out looking for her, and her parents would never forgive me if I didn’t involve them.”

If it had been one of our granddaughters, we’d probably have done the same. If we’d lived in a city among strangers, we’d have been terrified. And if Tad had disappeared without the horse, we’d have worried that he would thumb a ride with the wrong person.

As it was, three of us around that table could remember that Ridd and Walker had each taken off in a huff around Tad’s age. Ridd slept all night in the cornfield and crept in to make breakfast as an apology. Walker bedded down with a friend, then called us the next morning to demand, “Are you ready for me to come home yet?”—having given
us
time to straighten up our act. We all figured Tad was just running off his temper and putting off the time when he’d have to come home and accept his punishment.

Still, even though he had Starfire with him, I kept picturing him trying to jump a fence and breaking his neck, the horse stumbling in a hole and falling on him, or a stranger trying to steal that gorgeous horse and child. When I mentioned each of the possibilities, Joe Riddley reminded me that it’s hard to kidnap a child with a horse; Hope County is small, rural and basically still a safe place; and Tad has ridden horses since he was six and was a good, careful rider.

Joe Riddley was ready to call Walker, however, until Ridd disagreed. “You know what would happen, Daddy. If we tell him Tad’s run away, we’ll have to explain why, and you know exactly what Walker would do.”

We certainly did. Walker would hop the next plane so furious that Tad burned down the barn, he might forget that the boy was ten years old and scared. Walker was just learning to be a good daddy to Tad. None of us wanted Tad coming home to a furious father who’d say things he would later regret.

“We could at least go out looking for him,” I suggested. So Martha started putting together a scratch supper while Ridd and Joe Riddley went driving up and down logging roads and tractor trails. I drove over to Walker’s, thinking maybe the boy had gone home. He wasn’t there, but I did see crumbs on the counter and a smear of peanut butter that indicated he’d swung by for something to eat. The pantry had no bread or peanut butter, so I figured he’d taken them with him. I hurried upstairs to his room and saw that his sleeping bag was also missing from the closet shelf. The little rascal—his whole family were seasoned campers. He had come home long enough to provision himself for at least one night of sleeping rough.