The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

by Jenny Wingfield

  Grandma Calla never had kept a cat. She’d always said she had enough to worry about from chicken hawks and weasels. She didn’t need a cat catching baby chicks (when she had baby chicks) and batting them around until they gave up hope and died. There’d never been a cat on the place.

  But there was one here now. Swan heard it.

  She heard it, but when she glanced around, she couldn’t see it. So she went searching for it. Outside the chicken pen, leaving the gate wide open. Around behind the back of the pen, not noticing that the chickens were following her, wanting their supper.

  The kitten (fluffy, gray, and needy) was under a stack of brush that Samuel hadn’t gotten around to burning because the weather had been so windy lately. Swan had to get down on her belly and scrooch along, reaching back beneath the brush. She knew there could be a snake in there, but she was determined to get that kitten.

  And she did. She pulled it out and marveled over it for a second—and then she heard that sound again. Another kitten crying.

  Well, of course, there wouldn’t be just one. Someone must have thrown out a whole litter, and this one got separated from the rest.

  Swan followed the sound along the fencerow—and there it was. Just sitting there in some weeds looking woebegone. She captured that one, too. Then she prowled along until she came to the first thicket, where she found yet another kitten. And now she heard more kittens crying. In the woods.

  Swan and her brothers knew how far they were allowed to get away from the house. They were not to get out of hollering distance. She told herself that the woods weren’t completely out of hollering distance. If someone hollered loudly enough, from the house or the yard, she could hear them. She didn’t wonder whether anyone would be able to hear her if she hollered, because she didn’t intend to make any noise that might scare those other kittens away.

  The thing she didn’t even consider was that she might need to make some noise, she might need to scream bloody murder—and not be able to. You can’t make a sound when, out of nowhere, somebody throws a gunnysack over your head and binds it around your mouth fast, so fast, with a long strip of cloth, and then you’re being carried at a dead run through the woods, and you know without a doubt that you’re on your way to dying.

  Willadee was not happy when she and Blade came home, and she found the fires under the pots of peas and mustard greens were turned down so low that nothing was even simmering. She had to feed Toy before he opened the bar, and she liked to feed Samuel when he came in from the field, and now there’d be hungry men passing through the kitchen and her with nothing ready to put on the table.

  She looked through the house, then went out into the yard, calling for Swan—and practically ran over her mother, who was huffing along behind half a dozen or so confused hens that were running every which way. Calla was shaking the tail end of her apron and shouting at them to “Shoo! Shoo!”

  Willadee said, “Mama, what on earth?”

  “My chickens,” Calla managed, “were on the road. Donna Furlough just ran over one of my Plymouth Rocks.”

  Donna felt just awful about what she had done. As soon as she’d realized, she whipped her new (to her) Chevy into the yard and stopped it so fast the For Sale sign fell out of the window. Now she was running toward Calla, wringing her hands.

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” Donna kept saying over and over. “Oh, Miz Calla, I’m so sorry.”

  Calla didn’t like to hurt anybody’s feelings, especially Donna’s, her being saddled with the likes of Calvin, so she got hold of herself and told her not to worry about it, it was just a chicken. Donna wrung her hands again, and got back into her car. She was still apologizing as she drove off.

  “I just don’t understand how they got out,” Calla said.

  “Samuel?” Willadee called out. “Do you know where Swan is?”

  Samuel looked over and shook his head, and kept on working.

  “She was feeding the chickens a while ago!” Noble yelled back.

  “Just before she got interested in something else and wandered off,” Calla muttered. By now, she’d herded her hens back into their pen, and she was angrier than ever that they’d been let out. “When we find that girl, I’m having a talk with her.”

  Blade had trotted out to the barn to look for Swan, and was now coming back, stopping at every outbuilding to peek inside. There was no trace of her. He wandered over behind the chicken pen and peered up into the mulberry tree, but she wasn’t there, either. He glanced around uneasily, a slight shiver starting up his spine.

  “It’s not like her to take off by herself,” Willadee worried aloud. Then she noticed Blade on his hands and knees, poking around in the weeds at the base of the fence row.

  “Blade,” she said, “stop playing around in the dirt and help me find Swan.”

  He pulled something out of the weeds and brought it over to her. A kitten.

  “For pity’s sake,” Willadee said. “Where’d that come from?”

  And Calla said, “We’re not keeping it. I’ve never had a cat around here, and I do not intend to—”

  “My daddy catches cats,” Blade whispered. “Usually, he throws them to the dogs.”

  Willadee and Calla froze in place, staring at him, fear flaming up in their eyes.

  “God in Heaven,” Calla said.

  “Samuel!” Willadee screamed. “Come here, come here, come here! Samuel!”

  Samuel and the boys dropped their tools and raced toward the house. Toy tore out of the shed. Willadee stood there babbling like a crazy woman.

  “Swan’s missing. Already looked. Everywhere. Ballenger. He catches cats. We found a cat. Blade did.”

  “Maybe somebody dumped it—” Samuel began.

  “No,” Willadee said. “No. You find her. You find her, Samuel.”

  Toy took off like a shot, and he didn’t slow down until he hit the woods. If Swan was back there, he’d find her. Samuel roared off in the car. Everybody else fanned out over the farm yelling Swan’s name. Only Blade couldn’t move. He just stood there holding the kitten and watching the world fall apart.

  Samuel drove with his foot to the floor, careening around curves and fishtailing, spraying gravel. All the way to Ballenger’s house he was praying to God and hating himself. If he hadn’t failed in so many ways, he was thinking, this would not be happening. If he still had a church, he and his family could be safe in some parsonage, on some quiet street, in some small town in Louisiana, miles and miles away from here. If he hadn’t lost God’s favor—but he knew he had. Knew it now. Why else would this be happening?

  Please God, please, let Swan be all right. Let me find her. If You never answer another prayer for me as long as I live, answer this one. In his heart, and in his gut, he was terrified that Swan would be at Ballenger’s—and just as terrified that she wouldn’t be. The worst thing would be if he couldn’t find her at all.

  Chapter 38

  Swan was in a dark place. A deeply dark place, with a dirt floor. She couldn’t be absolutely sure about the darkness, because the gunnysack was still over her head—and she couldn’t scream for help, because that sack was still tied in place with those strips of cloth that bound it over her mouth. Her clothes were ripped and soiled but were still on her body. A man doesn’t have to strip a little girl naked to do the things that he had done to her.

  She knew who he was. Just knew. In her mind, she was calling him “the man,” because somehow that wasn’t as horrible as acknowledging who he was.

  There was something lying beside her. Something she’d found back there by the willows, when Everything Was Happening. (She’d found it with one of her hands. One of her two hands that were both flailing and clutching at dirt and leaves.) She hadn’t known where she was before, but she knew then, because of what it was that one of her hands had found.

  Actually, it was two somethings, one inside the other. A cowbell, with its clapper wrapped in rags. And wedged in among the rags—was a duck call.

&nb
sp; Once she’d found the cowbell, she’d held on to it, and the man must not have noticed. He was too occupied with other things. Hard, hurtful things. Finding the cowbell had carried her out of what was happening. A little bit. Gave her something to focus on besides the rough ground and the tearing, and the way the man kept calling her “little pretty” while he did those ugly things. She’d thought, wildly, of hitting him with the cowbell, but she couldn’t, couldn’t do anything, couldn’t writhe out from under him, couldn’t stand what was happening, couldn’t stop trying and trying to scream, couldn’t make her arm rise up to hit him.

  Even then, a part of her knew that hitting him with that cowbell would be the worst thing she could do. What if she missed her mark? What if all she did was make him so mad that he went ahead and did what he was probably going to do anyway, what she was so sick with fear that he’d do anyway? What if he killed her?

  After he’d stopped—when he’d finally stopped—he’d just laid on top of her, gasping and jerking, and she’d pulled her arm slowly to her side. Her hand holding on to that cowbell. That silent cowbell.

  She didn’t realize the significance of what she was holding on to even when the man pushed off her and she could hear him zipping and buckling, and he still didn’t take the thing away from her. So he must not have seen it. He still must not have seen it.

  It was only when they were walking—when he was hustling along and dragging her by one hand (not the hand that was holding the cowbell), and she was wobbly-legged and broken and trying to keep up and trying not to trip over roots, or fall into holes, and she didn’t trip, and she didn’t fall, and nothing whatsoever happened to make her lose her grip on the bell—it was only then that she understood that what she was holding in her hand was a Miracle.

  By the time that they got to the place where he left her, she knew he wouldn’t see it. Knew without doubt that God wouldn’t let him see it. God had him blinded to it. That was the only explanation.

  Still, when they’d gotten here and the man had pushed her inside this place—she had fallen. On purpose. On purpose, because Something Told Her that he’d tie her up, and that, if she were holding the bell when he reached for her hands, the Miracle would be ruined. So she’d fallen on the bell and had turned loose of it, and—when the man had started tying her, hands to feet—he hadn’t found it. He had crisscrossed this space (whatever space this was), back and forth, doing more tying, anchoring her on all sides so that she couldn’t move in one direction or another, couldn’t do anything besides lie still and cramped and suffocating. And even then. Even then. He. Still. Did not. Find it.

  Now the man was gone, and the Miracle was lying beside her. She didn’t know how it could help her. She couldn’t untie the knots that were holding her. She kept trying, fiddling with her fingers, desperately trying—but she couldn’t.

  She was afraid that even a Miracle couldn’t save her. So afraid that her churning stomach wanted to come up through her throat, but she couldn’t afford to let it do that. If she let that happen, that would just be another way of dying, because she’d choke, and everything would be over.

  So she held it all down. And she tried to hold on. To some kind of hope. To anything. There wasn’t much to hold on to. Thinking about home just made her feel more helpless, because what if she never got back there? And thinking about family just made her feel more hopeless, because what if nobody found her in time?

  Probably not many men have ever built a feedlot on top of a septic tank, but not many men need to have a piece of ground that can be dug up and tamped back down without somebody wondering, if they should happen to come around and notice, why there’s no grass growing in a particular spot when there’s grass aplenty everywhere else. Feedlots are known for not having any grass, because the livestock that are shut up in there will eat every last sprig, right down to the roots. And ground that has been dug up doesn’t look dug up for long, because thousand-pound animals can tamp it down overnight to where it looks like it hasn’t been disturbed in years. That is, if you keep them agitated, so they don’t just stand around in one spot for hours on end. The trick is to keep them moving, but that’s what dogs and whips are for. One thing Ras Ballenger was good at was making a horse go where he wanted it to go, and he could do it all night, if that’s what it took.

  He had already dug down and taken the lid off the septic tank and had covered the hole with a big piece of plywood. Then he had stacked bales of hay on top of the plywood and on top of the lid, to hide them from view. All this he had done early in the day, just as soon as he got back from taking Geraldine and the kids over to her mama’s house.

  Now there was nothing left to do except wait. Somebody would be coming around pretty soon, he felt confident. Confident that they would come, and confident that he could handle it. They would come around asking questions, just as if he was automatically the guilty party, but they wouldn’t find anything, because where the girl was now was a place they couldn’t figure out, and where she was going to be later, after he was done with her, was a place they’d never suspect. Then, by the next time he cleaned out his septic tank, the lye would have done its work, and there wouldn’t be anything left of her at all.

  With his cur dogs for company, and his best friend the bullwhip coiled around a fence post, Ras was right now grooming a couple of horses in the holding pen, over by the barn. Not customers’ horses. He didn’t have a lot of customers these days. He had bought these two animals at the sale barn. A mare and her colt, both with the look of good horseflesh. He could make something out of them, with a little effort. And make money at it, too, not to mention they’d come in handy today. Them and the other four head that Ras had brought in from the pasture and was keeping in an adjoining lot.

  He was feeling good, Ras was. Smug and content and well tended. A little bit ago, after he’d left the girl, he had come out into the good, sweet air and had gone over to the faucet to hose cool water over his head. Just what a man needed to feel fresh.

  He was going to go back in there, where the girl was, in a little while. As soon as her people had come over and done their nosing around and satisfied themselves that she wasn’t there. This was what he’d been waiting for all this time, what he’d been thinking about since that first day at the store, back on old John Moses’s funeral day. He’d waited until she started sprouting. He gave himself credit for that. The way he looked at it, his behavior had been downright honorable.

  When Samuel’s old rattletrap car roared into view, Ras lifted a hand in greeting. Samuel leapt out of the car and ran across the yard. Ran hard. The cur dogs raised their hackles briefly, then moved out of Samuel’s path. Ballenger was surprised at that, but he looked over at Samuel and smiled.

  “How do, Preacher. Where’s the fire?”

  Samuel said, “I’m looking for my daughter.”

  His voice was shaking, and so was he. He was shaking all over, inside and out. Ras came out of the holding pen and latched it behind him and walked over to face Samuel. His brow was furrowed in a show of puzzlement.

  “Your daughter don’t play over here, Preacher. My son don’t, either, for that matter. I thought you was keeping up with both of ’em.”

  “Have you seen her?”

  Ras shook his head, and scratched his neck, and blew out a regretful breath. “I sure wish I could help you, but I’m afraid you’ve come to a goat’s house after wool.”

  Samuel had no idea that Ras was parroting Toy Moses, but he sensed that the man was enjoying this.

  “Could I speak to your wife?”

  Ras cocked his head, just slightly, as if to say that he didn’t appreciate being called a liar. His tone was civil enough though. “I reckon you could if she was here, but she’s at her mama’s today. They’re giving each other permanents.”

  Samuel was looking around now. Casting his eyes in all directions. Searching for signs and hidey-holes. It was all he could do to contain himself. All he could do not to tear this place up.

 
; “Do you mind if I have a look?” he asked.

  Ras said, “I do mind. I damn sure do.” And then he said, “But I’ll let you put your mind at ease.” He waved an arm, indicating the whole place. “Help yourself.” Then he asked, generously, “What’s your girl’s name?”

  “Swan,” said Samuel. “Her name is Swan.”

  Ras put his hands to his mouth, and yelled the name. “Swan? Are you here someplace, Swan? Your folks are worried about you, Swan!”

  Samuel was shouting, too, at the top of his voice. “Swan! Swan, can you hear me? Swannnnnnnnnnnn!”

  Of course there was no answer.

  Swan heard, though. She heard both voices, and she strained against her bonds, and she tried to scream “Here I am! I’m in here,” but there was no sound. No sound except for her heart, which was pounding out a joyous chorus. Her father had come for her! Her father, who always tried to do the right thing, and trusted the Lord for the outcome, and walked every day in God’s favor.

  But then she had a horrible thought. Used to. He used to enjoy God’s favor. God hadn’t been smiling on him much lately, and the outcomes he’d kept trusting God for hadn’t exactly been coming out wonderful.

  Ras Ballenger shrugged, and went back to grooming his horses.

  The man’s nonchalance broadsided Samuel, making him more sure than ever that Swan was somewhere nearby. He dashed around like a wild man, still calling her name—calling her name and looking for anything, anything. In the barn. In the feed room. In the tack room. In the feedlot. In an open shed. Under the house. He even went inside the house, and rushed from room to room. There was nothing, nothing, nothing.