by Lisa Wingate
– Henrik Ibsen
(Left by a backpacker who stayed
overnight on the dock)
Chapter 14
Mart McClendon
The little girl was upset that I was taking her pet away, and she hung on the screen door, her cheeks wet and red as Len carried the coon kit out by the scruff of its neck. Birdie didn’t argue or yell or whine. She just watched with big tears rolling down her cheeks, like she’d learned not to raise a fuss. The raccoon was making more noise than she was, chattering and growling with all four paws stiff in the air as Len stuffed it in the cage, smacked the door shut, and shoved the cage at me.
Between Len looking at me like I just stole his best dog, and Birdie turning on the waterworks, I felt like a heel. But a wild-caught coon and a little girl don’t belong in the same house. We’d had a couple of confirmed rabies cases in the county this year.
Birdie sank down to her knees behind the screen door, her eyes as big and blue as robin’s eggs. One thing was for sure – she didn’t want me for a friend anymore. Right now, Len didn’t want me there, either. Birdie’s crying had him stirred up, and he was antsy for us to leave. Even the dogs in the backyard were growling, and the whole situation had the feel of a powder keg, about to blow.
Andrea took a step toward the house, like she was going to head inside and try to comfort Birdie. I caught her hand before she could pass by. “Well, we’re gonna leave you alone now, like I promised, Len. I want to thank you for doing everything I asked you to. I’m sure you’ll be headed out on the lake as soon as I’m gone. You can’t have Birdie near the water without a life vest on her. Not at all, you understand? Not even if she’s around shore while you’re working. A little child can drown quicker than you can let out a sneeze.”
Len lifted his chin, shifting a wad of tobacco in his lip. “Sss-she sw-swimmed ugg-good.”
I pointed a finger at him to make sure I was getting my point across.“It’s against the law to have a child on a boat without a proper life vest on. I’ve got a couple kids’ vests some campers left behind in the state park. I’ll set one there by your boat, and I want you to make sure she has it on and it’s buckled up tight. And don’t be letting her out in the yard with those dogs, either. I know they’re friendly to you, but you can’t ever tell when a dog might get upset or confused and jump on a child. I’ve seen some kids get pretty torn up by dogs that aren’t used to having kids around.”
Len seemed mighty confused now. He moved a step toward the yard, like he thought I was about to take his dogs away, too. Behind the screen, the little girl sniffled, her fingertips drawing wet trails in the grime-covered mesh. She looked like the most miserable little person in the world. I made up my mind that, after I’d delivered the coon to my volunteer wildlife rehabilitator, I’d take a picture, so I could come back and show her he was safe in a new place. Maybe when I got a chance, I’d stop by the souvenir shop at the state park and pick up a toy raccoon or a teddy bear – something a little girl could play with that wouldn’t bite. When Birdie’s mama, whoever she really was, had dropped her off, she hadn’t left playthings or supplies of any kind, as far as I could tell.
In the cage, the little coon was going crazy, sticking his paws through the wire, fishing in air, trying to grab on to something to keep me from taking him anywhere. He chattered out a high-pitched distress sound, crying for his mama, and every dog, puppy, mule, milk cow, and loose rooster on the place started making noise. I had to yell to be heard. “Some people might want to come back here and talk to Birdie.” As soon as the words were out, I knew I should’ve kept that piece of information for later. Bad timing.
Len went stiff as a rail fence, and his eyes turned hard and gray. “Unnn-nope. Unnn-no. Unnn-no. I ugg-got no trrr-red-pass.” He pointed to an old No Trespassing sign that had long since turned to rust. How in the world was I supposed to make Len understand the law, as it applied to child welfare? Listen, Len, there are people who are like … game wardens for kids. They come onto your place to look in after little girls, the same way I look after animals. They’re not here to hurt anybody… . That whole speech would probably go over about as well as moonshine at a tent preaching, considering that I was taking off with his pet raccoon right now. “Well, I’ll let you know.”
Len chopped a hand in the air, like he might decide to really get difficult. When I left, I’d have to watch my back. Right now he was pretty emotional, and so were the dogs and the little girl. “Unnn … unnn-no! No-buddy! Birdie’s umm-mama say unn-no no-buddy.”
Andrea laid a hand on my shoulder, stepped forward and smiled at Len. “Thanks for letting me meet Birdie.” Her voice was soft and calm, the tone a mother uses when she’s quieting a baby. “We had fun building a little castle over there in the dirt.” She pointed, and Len sidestepped to see around the corner of the porch. “Would it be all right if I came back to play with her again? I don’t get to play with any little girls. I only have a boy. He’s a big boy, though. Fourteen.” She held up a hand, like she was measuring Dustin’s height against hers.
Len answered with a slow nod. “I ugg-guess … ugg-guess ohh-kay.” Looking befuddled, he turned around and headed for the house. When he got to the porch, Birdie ran out the door and clung to his pants leg. He laid a hand protectively on her shoulder, and she leaned her head against his hip.
I turned around and started for Andrea’s car, the raccoon kit running circles in the cage.
“Do you think it’s okay to leave her here?” Andrea muttered under her breath. “Is she safe?”
“Look over your shoulder and smile and wave,” I told her under my breath. “The best thing we can do right now is keep it friendly. If Len wants to disappear off into the woods with that little girl again, he sure could. For that matter, we don’t know where Birdie’s mama is, or whether Len could send Birdie back wherever she came from. I’m just going on a hunch here, but I’ve got a feeling that little girl was worse off before she got here. That dress and those boots she’s wearing – Len bought for her. That’s why they’re too big.
“When I first found him this morning, we sat down at the lakeshore and talked for a long while until he’d calmed down. Then we talked some more up here, after we made phone calls about the medical clinic visit and such. It isn’t easy, getting the full story out of Len. I asked him what shape Birdie was in when she got here, and near as I can gather, she was barefoot in a nightgown. Her mother showed up without anything, toting a kid with a fever and an earache, and driving a car that was on its last legs. Once she got what she needed – gas, money, and car repairs – she left Birdie here. You gotta wonder what kind of situation causes a mother to do that to a little child.”
“Or what kind of mother,” Andrea added, emotion making her voice catch. She hesitated, like she was thinking of going back to Len’s cabin. I pressed a hand against the small of her back and moved her toward her vehicle. We needed to head out before Len got any more shook up.
When we made it to the car, I opened the door for her. “Just circle around right here and drive on out, okay? It’s not like you’ll ruin the lawn. I’ll meet you at that picnic grounds you were talking about earlier – the one just down from Eagle Eye Bridge. Len doesn’t need to see us standing here talking about him, okay? If he thinks we’re planning something … well, that might not be so good. Just smile at me and say good-bye like everything’s fine, and I’ll catch up with you at the park.”
She checked her watch, then nodded. “All right. I’ll see you there.”
I could feel a steady gaze watching me from the cabin. “What’s Len doing back there?” I didn’t turn around – just let Andrea sneak a glance.
“He’s looking at us. He’s holding on to that little girl like he thinks we might try to snatch her.” Andrea’s eyes were round and unsure, a pulse fluttering under the smooth skin at the base of her neck.“Are you going to be all right when I leave? What if he changes his mind about the raccoon?”
“I’ll be all r
ight,” I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d left a place carrying someone’s contraband and keeping one eye over my shoulder.
Catching a breath, she nodded. “Okay, well … good-bye, then.” She pasted on a tense smile that I guessed was meant to convince Len everything was fine. Even Len could probably see through the act.
“Good thing you’re not trying out for the theater,” I said. “He has it in his mind that you’re my lady friend, remember? Act like you like me. You could give me a hug. It’ll make this look more convincing.”
Her eyes met mine, and for just a heartbeat, I forgot I had a coon kit in a cage hanging from one arm.
“Are you serious?”
“Sometimes, you know, in the line of duty, we’ve got to make sacrifices.” I shrugged, like it was a tough thing to ask, but for the sake of the job, I was willing to do it.
Andrea’s pretty brown eyes rolled a half circle. Stretching onto her toes, she pinched the brim of my hat between two fingers, pulled it to one side a little, and kissed me on the cheek. “There. That good enough?” She slipped her arms around my shoulders and smacked me so hard on the back that Len probably heard it.
“Guess it’ll have to be,” I coughed out, and set my hat to rights again as she stepped back. She was smiling, and for just a moment, all I could think was that those were the kind of eyes a brown-eyed girl oughta have.
The coon rocking his cage jarred my brain back to life, and I stepped away. Man, I’d been out on the lake too long. “See you at the park.”
“It’ll take me a while to get there.” She slipped her keys out of her pocket, and suddenly we were all business again.
We parted ways, and I headed around through the broomweed and the tall grass back to the woods. I made the walk at a good pace, just in case Len changed his mind, but I was also getting my head clear. It wasn’t like me to get distracted by a pretty girl when I was working. Actually, it wasn’t like me to get distracted at all, not in the past few years, anyway. I didn’t need the complication. Getting involved with somebody only meant bringing up the past, eventually – talking about Aaron and Mica, and trying to explain why Laurie kept calling. For the last few years, it’d seemed like there was too much muck in my life to drag someone else into it. It was easier just to work, and not think about it, and not have to talk about it.
Especially not to someone who did therapy for a living. Somebody like that would have a field day with me. She’d want to dig down to the core of everything – figure out the meaning of it, decode it and decide how to cure it. I wasn’t interested in ending up as an emotional ball of goo on someone’s couch. I’d been through enough mental warfare in the past three years to last me a lifetime. Coming to Moses Lake was all about moving on, letting that go, leaving it behind. I shouldn’t have told Andrea the Robin Hood story, either. Not only did it make me look like a sap, but also it pointed out that I was one of four back then. I didn’t want anyone here bringing up the kinds of questions you answered at class reunions, or when you ran into a high school girlfriend at the Dairy Queen – where’ve you been, how’s life been treating you, how’s your family?
I was upriver long before Andrea rolled into the little picnic area across from the cliffs at Eagle Eye. The park was usually empty during the heat of the day. Toward evening, a few fishermen and maybe a picnicking family or two would show up, but for now, we had the place all to ourselves. Andrea looked down the row of stone tables as she got out of her car, seeming surprised there was no one else around.
“Guess I should find a little more populated place to stop off and do my paperwork in the future,” she said. “The last time I passed by here, half of the spots were full.”
“Depends on the time of day and the day of the week.” I slid off the picnic table where I’d been waiting. “When it’s this hot, you won’t find many people at a day-use area like this, especially since there’s no real swimming beach here. The park headquarters has a nice picnic grounds by the gift shop and the caverns, if you’re looking for someplace where there’s a little population. That might be a better choice. You’ve also got a church camp a few miles upriver in that direction, and then a few miles farther upriver, in my partner’s end of the county, there are a couple bakeries and a café in the little Mennonite settlement. Good eatin’ there. There’s the artist colony about six miles south of here, down on 2300. The artist colony has a decent little coffee shop – never know what you’ll see hanging around there – artists, weavers, quilters, hippies, beetle-bug cars and all manner of exotic pets. It’s interesting, anyway.”
Her forehead narrowed, like she was trying to picture those places. Then she seemed to leave off the idea. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll watch for those spots while I’m making my rounds. To tell you the truth, right now I’m lucky just to find my way to appointments. Even with the county road map and the GPS, I’d be completely lost if I didn’t have directions from my boss with valuable tips like, turn by the tree with the big knothole that looks like a face, and go until you see the orange fence post.” Walking closer to the picnic table, she rolled her eyes. “You know how many orange fence posts there are around here? That is not a landmark.”
“That’s the way navigation’s done in the hills, cowgirl,” I said, just playing with her a little. “Knotholes and fence posts. It’s a different kind of work environment.”
“Truly.” She stopped by the picnic table and braced her fingers on the small of her back, looking over the four-foot drop to the riverbank. “By the way, I almost got stuck in the mudhole coming back. I forgot to stay to the side.”
“Bet you won’t forget again.”
She answered with a smart-aleck twist of her lips, and I decided that even if we had gotten off on the wrong foot to begin with, she was okay. “I’ll mark the artist colony and the church camp on your map for you, if you want. The state park HQ’s probably already on there.” I sat down on the edge of the table again and rested my feet on the bench.
“That would be helpful. Thanks.” Squinting against the reflection from the river, she took in a long breath and let it out, her mouth straightening like she was thinking about something – getting down to business, I figured. All of a sudden, she looked like a woman with something on her mind. “What’s that sound?” she asked absently.
I listened for minute. There was a mockingbird overhead going through a couple dozen birdcalls, one right after the other. “Mockingbird. They’re always nested here at the picnic grounds where they can scavenge people’s leftovers. You come here night or day in the summer, you’ll hear mockingbirds. Earlier in the spring, there was a pair nested in a branch right by the restroom. It was pretty good entertainment, watching them take strafing runs at the tourists. They’re gutsy little birds. Pushy.”
She glanced toward the squatty limestone restroom. “Actually, I meant the other sound – that moaning sound. What is that?”
“That’s the mockingbirds, too. They’re copying the Wailing Woman.” I pointed to a sign down the hill by the water – one of those points-of-interest markers that told the legend of the Wailing Woman. “Not too much wind in the cliffs right now, so she’s kind of quiet, but those mockingbirds have heard her enough that they do a pretty good imitation. They’re probably the only mockingbirds in the world that know how to cry.”
Andrea cocked her head to one side, listening.“That’s the strangest thing. You know, in a million years, I wouldn’t have known what that was.”
“Oh, sure you would, if you’d been here a few times,” I told her. “Every place in the woods has its own sound, if you stop and listen.The river has a sound, and the hills have a sound, and the rocky draws have a sound, and the cliffs have a sound. Folks wouldn’t get themselves so lost in these hills, if they’d stop and listen.”
Andrea smirked at me. “Easy for you Daniel Boone types to say. Some of us feel like we’re wandering blind up here. It all looks the same. It’s no wonder hikers get turned around.”
I couldn’t help
it; I laughed. “Well, here’s a free tip – if you’re ever lost, head for the water. In the summer, there’s plenty of traffic on the lake, and if we’re hunting someone in the cold weather, we’ll have boats and a helicopter out.”
“I don’t think I’ll be doing much hiking.” She moved to the edge of the drop-off, where she could take in the historical marker. I waited while she read the legend of the pioneer woman whose baby daughter had disappeared from the wagon train. Even after days of searching, the woman wouldn’t leave her daughter behind and travel on with the wagons. Legend had it that she wandered those cliffs and the river basin still, trying to find her baby. According to Burt and Nester, that tale had scared many a Boy Scout and kid camper, and kept them from roaming into the woods at night.
“That’s really sad.” Andrea came back to the picnic table. “My dad told us about the Wailing Woman, but he never brought us to see the sign. My parents didn’t like to come to this side of the lake.”
“Most people from Larkspur stay around Larkspur.” I probably could’ve skipped saying that. It sounded like criticism. “Thanks for showing up today,” I added. “I had myself in something of a bind, there. I figured it’d really send Len into a panic if I got the sheriff ’s department involved, and you were the next person I thought of, since you already knew what was going on. I didn’t want to leave Len there with that little girl until someone looked things over. I’ve got to admit, I haven’t come upon anything quite like that before.”
“Me neither.” She slid in on the other side of the picnic table, so that there was just a little space between us. “The question is, what happens now?” She seemed to expect me to come up with an answer.
“Shoot if I know,” I admitted. “I deal in displaced animals, like that fella down there in the crate.” I motioned to my boat, which was tied up in the shade, with the little bandito finally all worn out and asleep.
Andrea braced her elbows on her knees, pressed her hands together like she was praying, and blew a long breath through her fingers. “If you had to guess – you know more about Len than I do – do you really think she’s safe with him?”