The pig scarer gave a nod.
The cop studied the farmhouse, the barn, the chicken coop. “Any word from Aggie and Sophie?”
“I expect you got other people to notify.”
“All right then.” The cop got back into his car and drove away along the lane between the apple trees.
I quickly returned to the orchard, where Albert had climbed down from the ladder.
“Who was honking?” he asked.
“A cop. Came to warn Jack about us.”
“Jack? Is that his name?” He looked in the direction of the farmhouse and barn. “He didn’t say anything to the cop?”
“Nothing. That’s good, right?”
Albert shrugged. “Who knows?”
“That cop said the sheriff’s orders are to shoot us first and ask questions later. Jeez, everybody’s gunning for us.”
“Did you see Emmy?”
“No.”
“Here he comes.” Albert remounted the ladder.
All morning I mulled over the why of the pig scarer’s silence about us and figured his plan was probably to use us until the work was done and then turn us in. Maybe there’d even be a reward by that time. The whole while, I kept asking myself, Who are Aggie and Sophie?
We labored all that day, with only water from the bucket. The sun was low in the sky when the pig scarer finally called a halt and marched us back to the tack room. We lay down exhausted and hungry and miserable, and I was sure now that the pig scarer’s plan was not to turn us in to the authorities but to work us to death.
“Albert,” I said. “How much did you and Volz and Brickman charge for a pint of moonshine?”
He was lying on our thin bedding of hay, and he rolled his head wearily toward me. “What difference does it make?”
“How much?”
“When he was on his own, Herman sold it for seventy-five cents a pint. Brickman was going to sell all the new batches for a dollar. What are you thinking about, Odie?”
“Nothing,” I said, because my plan wasn’t fully formed yet.
An hour later, the tack room door was unbolted and opened, and the pig scarer stood there with Emmy at his side. She no longer had on the overalls she’d been wearing when we hightailed it from Lincoln School. Now she wore a pretty green dress.
I signed quickly to her, You okay?
She nodded but couldn’t sign back because of the big bowl she held in both hands.
“Set their food on the floor, girl,” the pig scarer said.
When she put the bowl down, I saw that it was filled with scrambled eggs mixed with the same kind of chopped up and roasted potatoes we’d eaten the night before. Emmy reached into a pocket of her dress, brought out three spoons, and handed one to each of us. We dug in right away.
“You going to feed her?” I asked around a mouthful of food.
“She’s ate.”
“Nice dress,” I said.
The pig scarer glared at me as if what I’d offered was the worst insult in the world, and I was afraid for a moment that he’d clip me across the face with the barrel of the shotgun in the same way he had Mose.
“He only meant she looks happy,” Albert said.
Which made the pig scarer relax. He took a pint bottle from the back pocket of his overalls and sipped. While he did this, the hand with his trigger finger was momentarily occupied.
Mose signed, Jump him?
But we were too busy eating, and the pig scarer recorked the bottle and said, “What’s all that hand stuff?”
“He can’t talk,” I said.
“What? Dumb?”
Which was a term I hated. I knew its meaning, but it always sounded like an insult.
“Somebody cut out his tongue,” I said.
“Who?”
“He doesn’t know. It happened when he was little.”
Then the pig scarer surprised me. He said, “Anyone’d do that to a child should be horsewhipped and hung.”
When we finished the eggs and potatoes, Emmy took the bowl and our spoons, and as he had the night before, the pig scarer set a hay bale in front of the tack room door, lit a lantern, and ordered, “Play that mouth organ, boy.”
“ ‘Red River Valley’?”
“Something fast,” he said.
I played “Camptown Races,” just about as snappy a tune as anyone could ask for. I followed that with a couple of more old standards. While I played, the pig scarer took frequent pulls off his pint bottle, and soon he was tapping his foot in time to the rhythm. And there it was again, the magic of music. This was a man who’d shown us nothing but harshness, had not smiled in all the time we’d been with him, but the music had found a way to slip beneath all that hard, bitter armor and touch something softer and more human inside him.
When I finished that last song, the pig scarer assessed his pint bottle, which was nearly empty, and slapped the cork back in the neck. I could tell he was ready to bring the evening to an end.
“How much did you pay for that moonshine?” I asked.
His one good eye studied me with suspicion.
“Seventy-five cents? A dollar?”
“Dollar and a quarter,” he finally said.
“Any good?”
“Might as well be drinking kerosene.”
I tapped the spit from my harmonica and put the instrument into my shirt pocket. “I know a way to get you the best corn liquor you ever tasted,” I said. “And it’ll cost you practically nothing.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING the one-eyed pig scarer put Mose and me to work in the orchard and left in his truck with Albert. He threatened to turn us over to the sheriff if we crossed him in any way. As soon as he was gone, I dropped my rake, told Mose to keep working that scythe, and started to leave.
He grabbed my arm and signed, What are you doing?
“I’m going to find Emmy,” I said.
He shook his head. He’ll hurt her, he signed. You, too.
“I have to make sure she’s all right. But you need to keep working or he’ll see that you’ve been slacking off.”
He shook his head vigorously.
“Mose, we have to know about Emmy. And if we’re going to get ourselves out of this, we need to know everything we can about him, too.”
What if he comes back? he signed. Catches you?
I kicked over the water bucket so that it emptied. “I’ll tell him I had to fill it.”
I could see he wasn’t happy and probably not completely convinced, but he finally let me go.
The farmhouse door was locked, but the windows were raised and the pig scarer hadn’t bothered to latch the screens, so I slipped inside easily. I’d expected the place to be a pigsty but was surprised by its neat appearance. I suspected that in the same way we’d been put to work in the orchard, Emmy had been put to work here. The large main room was situated around a big potbellied stove, the primary source of heat for the farmhouse in winter. I stood in the kitchen nook next to a table and three chairs. A divan served as a divider between the main room and a little sitting area with a couple of old, upholstered wing chairs. Between the chairs, on a table whose finish was worn almost down to the bare wood, sat what in those days was called a farm radio, powered by a battery pack. Herman Volz kept one in his carpentry shop and let us listen to music while we worked. And there’d been one in the Frosts’ farmhouse, and sometimes when we’d finished our labors, Mrs. Frost had let us listen to Death Valley Days or The Eveready Hour or The Guy Lombardo Show with Burns and Allen.
There were two doors off the main room. I tried the first. Inside was a bedroom, sparely furnished—an unmade bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand with a big enamel bowl and a straight razor, and hanging on the wall above that, a simple, round mirror. Atop the chest of drawers sat a photograph in a fine wood frame. It showed the pig scarer and a woman, sitting side by side on the divan in the other room. Nestled in the man’s lap was a little girl with pigtails, who appeared to be about Emmy’s age an
d who, in fact, resembled Emmy a good deal. The pig scarer and the woman looked deadly solemn, but the little girl was smiling.
I tried the door to the second room. Locked. I knelt and peered through the keyhole but couldn’t see much. “Emmy?” I said quietly.
At first, I heard nothing, then a rustling, like I used to hear when Faria was scurrying across the floor of the quiet room.
“Odie?” came Emmy’s voice from the other side of the door.
“Are you all right?”
“Get me out, Odie.”
“Give me a minute.”
A keyhole lock was one of the easiest to get around. I rummaged in the kitchen drawers and came up with a long finishing nail and a piece of stiff wire, which I bent at one end. I inserted the nail, then the bent wire, and, in a minute, had the door open. Emmy burst out and threw her arms around me. She was still wearing the dress from the night before.
“Did he hurt you?” I asked.
“No, but I don’t want to be here. Can we go?”
“Not yet, Emmy. It’s not safe.”
“But I want to go.”
“Me, too. And we will, just not yet.” I knelt down so my eyes were level with hers. “Is he mean to you?”
She shook her. “He’s just very sad. He cries at night, and when I hear him, it makes me want to cry, too.”
I stood and walked into the room where she’d been locked up. The bed was small and neatly made. The room was stuffy, and I saw that the pig scarer had nailed the only window shut. The work looked recent, and I figured it had been done to ensure that Emmy didn’t escape that way. A little chest the color of a green apple sat on the floor, and when I opened it, I found that it was half-filled with girls’ clothing—dresses and whatnot—neatly folded. There was also a child’s chair in one corner from which a Raggedy Ann doll stared at me with black button eyes.
“He took Puff away, Odie. He told me the doll was mine, if I wanted it,” Emmy said. “But it scares me.”
Outside Emmy’s room was a ladder that led to the upper story.
“Stay here,” I told her and began climbing. As I’d suspected from the beginning, what I found was the attic, a long low-ceilinged space containing mostly junk. Half the room was curtained off, and when I pulled the curtain aside, I found the rudiments of a living area—bed, chest of drawers, chair, washstand and mirror, and a chamber pot. There was nothing that gave me a clue about who had lived here, but one element of the scene disturbed me greatly. The bedding had been thrown to the floor and the cover of the thin mattress had been cut to shreds so that the cotton stuffing inside spilled out like the entrails of a gutted animal.
Downstairs Emmy was holding herself, frightened. “Odie, I want to go away from here. Please, I want to go now.”
“We can’t, Emmy. Not right away.” I made my voice silk soft, calm and soothing. “He has Albert, and he might hurt him if we leave. For sure, he’ll turn us in, and the sheriff will catch us and send us back. We need to wait a little while longer.” Then came the hardest part. “I have to lock you back in the room.”
“No, Odie. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”
“I have to, Emmy, just for now. But we’re getting out of here, all of us together. I promise.” She stared at me, her eyes little white buttons of fear. “Do you believe me?” I said.
It was hard on her, so hard it hurt me to see, but she finally nodded.
“All right, then. But, Emmy, if he tries anything with you, anything you’re afraid will hurt you, you take off running and you don’t stop until you’re as far from here as your legs’ll carry you. I want you to promise me that.”
“I don’t want to go without you and Mose and Albert.”
“If he tries to hurt you, promise me that you’ll run. You need to promise.”
“I promise,” she said at the edge of tears.
“Cross your heart.”
She did.
“Okay, back into your room. He’ll probably let you see us again at supper.”
She went, head down, and I suspected that as soon as I locked her back in, she would throw herself on the bed and soak the sheets with her tears.
Outside I picked up the water bucket and started back to the orchard. Before I’d gone a dozen steps, I heard the drone of an automobile engine approaching on the dirt lane that split the orchard. I ducked behind the chicken coop. A dusty Model A came to a stop in front of the house, and a woman got out, a straw basket in the crook of her arm. She shaded her eyes, glanced around the farmyard, and called, “Jack?” She waited a moment, then walked to the door and knocked.
“Jack?” she called again.
She turned back to the farmyard, looked everything over carefully. I could see in her a kindred spirit, because the next thing she did was reach to open the door of a house where no one was home. When the door didn’t yield, she started peeking in at the windows.
I stepped from behind the chicken coop. “Can I help you?”
She was clearly startled, her face awash with guilt. “I was just . . . I . . .” Then she scowled. “Who are you?”
“Uncle Jack’s nephew,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Frieda Hines. A neighbor. I came for my weekly eggs.”
“Uncle Jack didn’t say to expect you.”
“No? Well, he’s forgetful sometimes these days. Especially since . . . well, you know. I didn’t realize he had family here,” she said, warming to my presence. She walked toward me. “But it’s good he’s not alone. Where is he?”
“In town. Supplies,” I said.
“Nephew.” She scrutinized me in the same way she had the farmyard just before she’d tried to trespass. “He never mentioned you.”
“Never mentioned you either.”
“What’s your name?”
“Buck.”
“His side of the family or hers?”
“Who do you think I take after?”
She laughed. “You’re Aggie’s kin, I can tell. Is she all right?”
“Fine,” I said.
“We were all so worried when she took off that way, in the middle of the night. I heard she went back to Saint Paul. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“How’s little Sophie? It’s been almost a year.”
“She’s not so little,” I said. “Shooting up faster’n a weed. But she’s still got her pigtails.”
“Of course.” She tried to hide the sly look before she asked her next question. “And Rudy?”
I wasn’t quite sure about that one. I’d learned a long time ago that in uncertain situations it was best to assume an attitude of secret knowledge and keep my mouth shut. So I did.
“Deserted her, didn’t he? Men.” She practically spat the word.
“You want me to tell Uncle Jack you were here for your eggs?”
“Thank you, Buck. I can come by for them tomorrow morning, if that will work for him.”
“I’m sure it will, ma’am.”
“Well, you just go right on with whatever. It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”
She got back into her automobile and drove away, waving a hand at me as she did so.
When I returned to the orchard, Mose was still hard at work, swinging his scythe. He looked relieved to see me and signed, Find Emmy?
“She’s all right,” I said.
Find out anything about him?
“Maybe,” I said.
I took up my rake and spent the morning trying to imagine the pig scarer’s sad life and wondering what had really happened to the woman and the little girl in the photograph, and thinking about someone named Rudy, and worrying over that ruined mattress.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
WHEN THE SUN was directly overhead, the pig scarer drove up the lane and parked near the barn. He sent Albert to fetch us, and we unloaded the materials from the truck bed while he held his shotgun and directed our labor. Into the barn we carried a three-by-five sheet of copper, a two-foot length of rigid copper pipe
, ten feet of copper tubing, a sack of metal brads, several pounds of cornmeal and sugar, a thermometer, and yeast.
When the last of it was unloaded, I said, “A woman came by looking for you.”
The pig scarer stopped dead still. “Woman? You talked to her?”
“She said her name was Frieda Hines. She came for her eggs.”
“Eggs, goddamn it.” He squeezed his good eye shut in disgust at his forgetfulness. “What did you tell her, boy?”
“That I was your nephew and you were in town buying supplies.”
He thought a moment. “She come all the way out to you in the orchard?”
“I was filling the water bucket at the pump.”
“You didn’t say anything else? About the others maybe?”
“Not a word, I swear. She asked about Aggie and Sophie.”
A look came over his face, as if a hard wind had just hit him.
“She asked about Rudy, too.”
His next words came out like slivers of ice. “What did you say?”
“Didn’t have to say anything. She had it all figured out on her own. Believes they’re in Saint Paul. Well, Aggie and Sophie, anyway.”
“And Rudy?”
“Seemed pretty clear to her that he deserted them.” I gave a shrug. “Sounded good to me.”
The pig scarer thought this over, then offered me a satisfied look, as if he approved of how I’d handled things.
“Aggie and Sophie. Your wife and daughter?”
He considered whether to answer, then gave a simple nod.
“She’s coming back for her eggs tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll be ready for that biddy,” he said.
Albert and Mose went to work. It was going to be a small operation, only a gallon still, so I knew it wouldn’t take any time at all to put together. While they worked, I made the mash for the corn liquor. The pig scarer stood by, shotgun in hand, watching with silent interest.
After a while, I ventured, “That’s a cider press in the corner.”
He looked at the machinery broken into pieces against the back wall. “Was,” he said with a note of regret.
“Looks like a tornado hit it. What happened?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
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