Chapter 25
The second day passed. Desperate, Papa took off to Tucker’s Branch to report Laci missing to a sheriff with the last name of Baker. Sheriff Baker started coming every day, poked around, made notes, then left and, in Papa’s opinion, was about as helpful as a cat on a squirrel hunt. After a week passed with no sign at all, the search slowed. It was like everyone got discouraged. If we’d found a scrap of material, a shoe, anything, it would have been something to keep folks going. There won’t a single solitary thing found. Like Morty the Magician’s rabbit, they’d vanished. If it hadn’t been for her clothes, her beloved fiddle, the rumpled cover on her bed, I’d have wondered if she’d ever been here at all. Yet, when I closed my eyes, she was everywhere. I felt her hand in mine, heard her music in my head, caught the red gold of her hair in the setting winter sun.
I missed her more than I could explain.
I regretted everything.
Workers trickled back to work again, and performers drifted off to practice routines.
Bright and early one morning, a little over a week after their disappearance, Mr. Cooper come by looking uncomfortable.
“It’s high time for us to move on. Crowds thinned out considerably, what with the cold weather and the holiday season here.”
Papa offered no comment.
Mr. Cooper said, “We’re going down south to Florida, a place called Gibsonton, and winter there.”
Papa was stony faced, and Mr. Cooper, hands in his pockets, didn’t have much else to say.
He walked off, then turned back, and said, “No hard feelings, I hope, on how things was here?”
Papa watched a bird fly over.
Mr. Cooper cleared his throat. “Hey, look, keep them tents here. They’re yours to do with what you want.”
Papa conceded that one gesture. “Thank you.”
Mr. Cooper said, “Well.”
He glanced around, then took his leave. The noise of the tents, rides, and sideshows being dismantled, the shouts of men and clanging of tools echoed around the woods and beyond filling the air for the rest of the day. I watched from a distance for a little while, but when they went to take down the high dive platform, I hurried back to our tents. Papa was gone, off to Sheriff Baker’s yet again, and in the meantime Big Bertha was there and handing Momma more soap as a parting gift.
“It ain’t much, but everything else is packed, and I seem to recall you liked it.”
Momma said, “You don’t need to do this, but thank you. We do appreciate your thoughtfulness.”
Big Bertha said, “I sure hope your girl turns up. Can’t imagine what it’s like for all of you.”
Momma’s face was pale and set. She held the soap, appearing to not know how to respond. Meanwhile, Big Bertha won’t in any hurry. She settled in, chattering on like we didn’t have nothing to do but sit around and answer silly questions.
“Reckon your husband will have the sheriff look in Walhalla? Or one a them other towns? Reckon she might a gone that far? No tellin’ with them long legs a hers how far she could have got.”
Momma studied Big Bertha with an expression like she was talking in a foreign language. I stepped forward to spare her any more well-intentioned comments.
I said, “Thank you again, Miss Bertha. Momma and I was getting ready to . . .”
Big Bertha lumbered to her feet. “Yes, yes, shoot, look at the time, I got to finish getting my own stuff together.”
That worked to get Big Bertha on her way, only here come Trixie with Mr. M, barely missing Big Bertha’s exit by about five minutes.
Trixie said, “Hey, Mrs. Stamper.”
Momma said, “Hello, Trixie. You girls talk. I’m going to go lie down.”
Mr. M rode Trixie’s shoulder, and I stood next to her so he would crawl onto mine. I give him pieces of biscuit from breakfast, which he ate in delicate small bites, chewing in his human like manner. Mr. M was more skittish than usual, and he went from my shoulder to hers, to mine again.
Trixie said, “He knows we’re getting ready to leave. He sees all the commotion, hears things banging, and I think it makes him feel unsettled, confused.”
“I know the feeling.”
Trixie said, “She’ll be fine. Laci is liable to turn up any day now, hungry perhaps, but fine.”
I appreciated Trixie’s words, but Laci had never been on her own before, without me, or someone in our family to watch out for her. She was likely afraid. She could be hurt. I couldn’t bring myself to think of anything worse.
She said, “Will you stay and keep looking?”
“That’s what Papa wants to do.”
She reached out to hug me, and Mr. M let out a screech of protest.
Trixie said, “I hope we all meet again someday, Wallis Ann.”
“Me too.”
Trixie give me a little hopeful smile, but I think we both had the sense once they left, we’d never see each other again. Towards evening, after Papa come from the trip to Sheriff Baker’s looking like he always did, Paulie appeared with a box of food. He’d brought the things what could be stored without spoiling. Salted pork, dried beans, rice, cornmeal, grits and taters. Coffee, flour, salt, sugar. Matches. He set the box down with a thump.
Momma peered into the box and said, “Thank you so much, Paulie.”
Paulie’s face was red, and he was a bit out of breath having carted the box all the way from across the other side of the carnival.
He managed to say, “Hope this’ll do for a while.”
Papa said, “This is too much. You’ve got a lot of folks to feed, and we don’t want to take from your supplies.”
He stood with his big hands folded in front, still wearing the dirty apron he always had on. “I ain’t worried about them buzzards. They get a plenty. All I hope is you find your girl.”
“We hope so too.”
“How long will y’all stay?”
“I can’t say. Till we find her.”
“I’ll keep hoping.”
“Thank you.”
As Paulie went to leave, he give me a final wink and nod, the kindest thing anyone had done towards me in over a week. I would miss Paulie, I thought. Soon as he was out of sight, Papa sat down, looking beat and dispirited. Momma waited for him to tell her any news. She wouldn’t ask, she was too afraid, and I was too.
He sighed heavy after a minute, and said, “Sheriff Baker said longer it goes without them finding something, less likely our chances are.”
Momma blanched, and when she spoke, her voice shook. “I don’t know why you told us that. You could a gone all day, all week, all month, and not said it.”
Frustrated, Papa said, “If I hadn’t a told you, you’d have asked!”
“And you could a said, he’s working on it. You could a spared me.”
Nobody spoke after that. We moved about the campsite like we was strangers, like we’d each gone up a different mountain and stationed ourselves far apart.
It got on towards suppertime, and though I won’t really hungry, I asked, “Is anybody hungry? Should we go on to the cookhouse?”
Papa snorted like a bull, irritated by my question. “I ain’t in the mood to see all them people again. Fix something from what Paulie brung. Might was well get used to doing the cooking again.”
I dug out the skillet, and set about fixing a meal, using the campfire like in the old days. Momma come over to help, and we worked side by side, not talking. She made biscuits, while I put on the side meat to fry. She boiled some beans. We didn’t cook much, thinking ahead to how long it might have to last. It was going to be like Momma always said, back where we started, only worse. After we ate, we went to bed. It was hard with Laci’s empty cot beside mine. I sat on it, then lay down and turned my head on her pillow, hoping to catch her scent there. That was how I fell asleep.
* * *
Morning come with a deep quiet all about and none of the usual noises I’d growed accustomed to. I sat up, sensing something different. I slipped outside in the early dawn and was met with the sight of bare, flattened grass all around us. Sometime in the middle of the night, while we slept, the traveling show had moved on. I’d heard none of the big wagons moving, none of the animals, not even a whisper. Muddy, trampled areas, where hundreds of visitors had walked over the past weeks, could now be seen. It was very odd looking in that I could also now see mountains clearly as well as the farmland what had been hidden behind rides, and tents and wagons.
It was like being abandoned.
The barren fields left me gloomier than ever. I wandered over to where the arena tent had been, looking at the impressions left in the ground, like ghost prints. The high dive platform area had icy patches where the water had been dumped onto the ground. Where the cookhouse tent stood, scraps of leftover food was left in the dirt, and a flock of crows flew into a tall pine nearby, cawing in protest at my intrusion of their meal. I moved on to where the sideshows used to be, and then on to where the Ferris wheel had stood. I drifted through all these spots like I was lost and looking for something I couldn’t find. I looked across the acreage to where our lone tents stood. They looked so tiny, so deserted against the vacant surroundings, like they didn’t belong.
I walked close to the area where the Friesians had been staked out. There was bare spots on the ground where the animals had grazed. I gazed about, my eyes passing over a patch of bushes near the woods, an unassuming gray and brown cluster of branches, and it was there I seen a spot of color what looked out of place. My breath caught in my throat. I hurried over and as I drew closer, a scrap of lavender material fluttered on the lower branch of a thick bush. I bent down, snatched it up, and looked closely at it. It was torn from Laci’s dress, I was certain, but what caused me to run back to our tents fast as I could was what was on the material.
I hurried into their tent, and said, “Look. Look at this,” while flapping the piece under their noses.
Papa narrowed his eyes and took it saying, “Where’d you find this?”
“In the pasture near the woods where they put the horses, and the zebra.”
He showed Momma, and said, “I’m going to get Sheriff Baker.”
Momma gaped at the material, at the dark brownish stain smeared on it.
I felt I ought to say something. “It could be just dirt.”
Momma shook her head. “I know what dried blood looks like.”
I went back out and stoked the fire, putting a pot of coffee on while I waited for Papa to get back. It was the quickest Sheriff Baker ever come. Papa come bumping along across the emptied carnival spot with the sheriff directly right behind him. He got out of the truck and motioned for me and Momma to come. Then we all got into Sheriff Baker’s car and I showed them where I’d found the cloth.
I pointed. “There. It was hanging on that lower branch right there.”
Sheriff Baker looked at the branch first, then he carefully went along, staring at the ground, moving some of the debris aside every now and then. He went around the bushes and come out again.
“I don’t see nothing more. Let me go have a better look this a way.”
We stayed by the car as he walked into the woods, poking along here and there, until he was out of sight.
Papa said, “He ought to see if he can’t get someone to get one of them hounds back over here. Let’em see if they can scent her from it.”
Momma stared at the woods with a mixture of fear and hope on her face.
He come out after about half an hour. He had more of the material in his hands, another piece smaller than the one I’d found, but it also had the same color stain on it.
He said, “How well did you know these here carnies?”
Momma and Papa looked at each other.
Papa said, “You insinuating they had something to do with it?”
Sheriff Baker said, “Well, it’s kind of odd how quick they left after she went missing, don’t you think?”
Papa said, “They helped us search for her. It don’t seem like they’d do that if they had her.”
Sheriff Baker said, “Pure speculation, but I got to consider everything. This don’t mean she’s come to harm. If they took her for the show, I doubt they’d want to hurt her. There won’t any more blood found on the ground. Look, I’ll see if I can’t reach out to some of my contacts down in Florida. How’s that sound?”
Such a tiny thing, yet we had hope now. Sheriff Baker drove us back to our tents, and took off. And then we waited. And waited. Days later he come back, his expression grim. He parked his car, propped a foot on the bumper and pulled out a cigarette. He lit it and let a plume of smoke blow from his mouth to hover over his head before he began.
He said, “I called down to Florida. That traveling show arrived and the sheriff ’s office down there conducted a, what’ll I call it? A secret search. Turned all them wagons they use upside down, inside out. No sign of her. I’m sorry.”
He might as well have said Laci had passed. An emptiness come with his words, and my stomach felt like a giant fist dug into it and wouldn’t let up. It was strange how someone so quiet could be so loud in my head, how someone who’d taken up no more space than any other human could seem as large as the entire universe. Momma and Papa didn’t speak. They accepted what he said, like they’d come to some conclusion. Sheriff Baker kept coming every few days, only to say there was still no sign of Laci. Momma got more despondent. I’d never seen her so torn apart. Having no answers, no finality, I began to see, was much harder than a finite end like with Seph.
We couldn’t leave, not when we was stuck, expecting something, while receiving nothing. Papa got to where he didn’t want to see Sheriff Baker coming no more, unless he had news, and he told him so. We didn’t see the sheriff none after that. We hovered around the tents, wordless, and lost. I heard distant church bells chiming “Silent Night” and other songs for about a week, and then “Auld Lang Syne” and that told me Christmas season had come, and was gone.
* * *
One morning in early January, when hoar frost turned everything white as snowfall, and our breath sat heavy in the air, Papa said, as if to himself, “We done what we could. We’ve looked, and we’ve looked. Sheriff has looked and ain’t been back. We lost her, and we ain’t getting her back.”
Momma cried out as if in pain. “Don’t say it! We will get her back. We will!”
Papa didn’t argue. He let what she’d said go.
An hour later when it seemed Momma had got ahold of herself, he said, “We’re going home. I don’t know what else to do, Ann.”
Momma pressed her hands together as if praying, and shook her head.
Papa said, “Sheriff Baker will get word to us there. It ain’t like we’d not keep in touch.”
Momma started doing what Laci used to do, rocking. I couldn’t offer any comfort, because what would I say? I’m sorry all over again? Papa set about taking down the tents and I helped him. Like in the old days of working side by side, we went along fast and efficient. Now he’d made a decision, it seemed he wanted to get on with it. Momma quit rocking, and sat frozen, she didn’t even look like she breathed. I worked around her, gathering the camp stools and carrying them to the truck. I folded mine and Laci’s clothes, got her fiddle, and wrapped it in her blanket. I set all those things aside and helped Papa take our tent down. By dinnertime, the sun was as high as it would get, and we was packed, ready to go.
Papa didn’t even have to tell Momma. She got up and stumbled towards the truck. There was a heaviness to mine and Papa’s steps as we carried the last remaining items. Momma got in the middle like she always did, and then me. It struck me how, as we’d gone through these last few months, it was like all we’d been doing was traveling down a road towards this bittersweet ending. Nothing could change what we’d been through. As we rolled across the pasture slow, I looked out the window, remembering every moment what led us to this point. The night of the hurricane, my time alone in the tree and at Stampers Creek. My joy at seeing my family safe, our despair and misery at losing Seph, the desolate days of hunger, meeting Clayton at the waterfall, the carnival as it had looked when we’d first come to it, Laci playing fiddle, Laci in her new dress, Laci and Clayton. The memories repeated, flickering like heat lightning in the summer, until I wished I had a key like what got used with the truck so I could switch them off.
Momma said, “Are we stopping at your brother’s?”
Papa said, “No.”
Momma made no noise, but her eyes closed in relief. It would only take us half a day to get to Stampers Creek. The idea we would be home before nightfall didn’t seem real. We stopped once for fuel, and Papa bought me and Momma a drink and some peanuts. Under any other circumstances I’d have enjoyed that, but we only ate to keep from going hungry, not for enjoyment. Off Highway 28, he stopped again at a general merchandise store.
“I’m getting some tools to replace what was lost. Won’t take but a minute.”
He went in and come out with a chiseling tool, a bow saw, a draw blade, and some nails. Eventually, we turned onto Highway 107 and studied the still flattened trees what hadn’t been cleaned up. We was lucky the northbound lane and the bridge to cross over to the road home hadn’t been washed out like some others further north. Despite the storm damage that still lay about, familiar territory spread before us, and soon we come to the two poplars. Papa slowed down at the clearing between the trees so we could look for a moment on Cherry Gap, and Cullowhee Mountain, and beyond to distant familiar valleys. I felt a big lump coming into my throat, and it was as if I’d been gone for years instead of a few months.
Papa lowered the gear on the truck, and we climbed the winding hilly path. I leaned forward, looking this way and that. Everything was gray, barren, and with not a hint of color, but it was beautiful in my eyes. It was an unlikely time to come home during the coldest time of year, but I no longer cared. It was home. We rounded the last bend, and there was the yard. The collapsed barn. The leftover stone foundation. I seen movement near the foundation, and I could hardly believe my eyes, old Pete, looking a little thin, was hanging around, his coat full and thick with winter hair. He turned his head, and when the truck stopped, he lifted it and drew his lips back from his teeth. I got out of the truck and hurried over to him. He sort of shied away, until I held my hand out, and he got a whiff, and then he brayed long and loud.
It seemed to me he might have been telling us, Welcome home.