In the Heart of the Dark Wood

by Billy Coffey

  Zach tried his father next: “I can track it, Daddy. Probably just got blown down the street a ways, stuck under somebody’s tree. Won’t take me long, and our house’s right up the road from Allie’s.”

  Allie bobbed her pigtails and added, “We’ll be long done before Daddy gets back from the factory, Sheriff Jake. Zach’ll be home for supper for sure.”

  Kate looked at her husband, Jake at the children. In his eyes Allie saw much of what she’d been feeling ever since Kate gobbled her in a hug. It was joy at the remembrance of how things once were between her daddy and Jake and her momma and Kate. It was sadness that those times had slipped by and might never circle around again.

  Jake nodded. “I can drive you two and Sam back to your house, Allie.”

  “No,” she said, maybe a little too quick and a little too loud. “I mean, I got my bike outside.”

  “My old one’s still out back,” Zach said. “We won’t go far, I promise. It’ll be fun.”

  And Allie thought yes. It would be fun despite it all. She and Zach would be together for one day, and it would be like it once was. “Like Zach said, Miss Kate. We won’t go far. Promise.”

  Kate still wasn’t convinced. In the end she seemed to settle on something close to what Allie was thinking. “Bundle up and be back by supper. And don’t go getting into trouble. Santa’s watching.”

  Zach fingered the buttons on his thick green coat before his mother could change her mind. He said, “Just let me get my knife,” and ran back outside.

  “If it’s okay,” Allie said, “I’d like to use the facilities before we go. Bike’ll go faster on an empty bladder.”

  “Sure,” Jake said. “Just down the hall there, like in the old building.”

  She told Sam to sit and stay, then moved off slow.

  “Allie?” Kate asked. “You can leave your backpack here if you want.”

  “If it’s all the same, ma’am, I’ll just take it with me.”

  Kate nodded a little too late. “Sure.”

  Allie found the bathroom and twice made sure the door was locked behind her, then wedged a foot against it just in case. The book bag fell from her shoulders.

  She finished and scrubbed her hands hard with soap after flushing the evidence. Allie didn’t want to leave something like that wrapped up in the trash. Zach waited by the door with Sam as Allie came out. Seeing him there leaning against his old bike, wrapped up in his big hat and a camouflage coat, he looked the picture of gallantry.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Allie nodded. She was ready. And for the first time in a long while, she let herself smile.

  4

  She waited until they were across the street before daring to say, “We ain’t going to my house.”

  “I know,” Zach said.

  Allie halted at the edge of the square’s browned grass. Zach smiled and ambled on. Sam jogged beside him, tail wagging.

  “How’d you know that?” she asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders cool and manlike and coughed into his sleeve. “Easy. If your Mary really was gone, you’d be freaking out way more than you are. You’d be, like, bawling.” He stopped and turned, letting Allie catch up. “I don’t mean that bad or nothin’. But you wouldn’t come all this way to town on your own ’less something else happened. Something worse. You’re too scared to leave the house on your own, Allie. Ever’body knows it.” He paused again. “I don’t mean that bad or nothin’.”

  “She is gone,” Allie said. “And I did cry almost. Daddy took my Mary. I didn’t tell the sheriff because . . . I don’t know. Because he’s still my daddy. Most times, anyway.”

  “Your daddy took her?”

  Allie nodded and told Zach those parts of the story she’d left out while in the company of his parents: “I heard Daddy tell Bobby Barnes he was gonna get rid of it. I didn’t think he would—he’s always saying he’s gonna box that Nativity up, but he never does.” She considered what she said next something like a lie, but not entirely. “I think he dropped her somewhere. Someplace I’d never look.”

  “So we gotta go somewhere he wouldn’t think you’d go,” Zach said.

  “Yes. And I think I kinda know where. The general direction, anyway.”

  They’d reached the bench where Allie’s bike rested. Sam lingered for a bit, then plodded away to sniff the grass. Allie had not looked at the needle since going inside the sheriff’s office, too afraid that it had either gone stuck again or that Jake or Kate would see. The compass was her secret—Allie’s magic alone—and she hadn’t wanted to share it with anyone until the time came. Now it had.

  She and Zach shared a bond far deeper and stronger than either of them knew, but even the deepest and strongest bonds could be stretched to breaking. School was all the two of them had together now. The small moments there were nothing compared to the times they’d once had, back when the Grandersons and Barnetts were so close they were near kin. Back then Zach would take anything she said on faith, no proof required. Just as Allie would for him. And yet life had shown them both (and for that matter, the whole town) that faith could be hard to come by.

  “I have to show you something,” she said. “You can’t tell.”

  “Okay.”

  “Siddown.”

  He did, leaving enough room for her. Sam trotted over from the Christmas tree and nestled himself at their feet. Allie watched for prying eyes. What people lingered were either too far away or too self-involved to notice two children off to themselves. She leaned in close. Zach backed away when her head nearly touched the brim of his hat. His eyes bulged.

  Allie punched him in the arm. “I ain’t trying to canoodle, you idiot.”

  “Well, then, what’re you doing?”

  “I’m trying to show you this.” She lifted the left sleeve of her jacket, catching the compass’s band before it could slip off. “Look at the needle.”

  Zach leaned in as sunlight glinted off the plastic bubble. He shook his head, not seeing anything at all at first, and wondered again if Allie really had been trying to kiss him. She shook her wrist. Then he saw.

  “Hey, wow.” Zach leaned in closer, watching as the needle floated and then settled into a gentle bob. “When’d that get unstuck?”

  “This morning. Right after I found Mary gone.”

  He looked from the needle to the sky. “It ain’t aimin’ north.”

  “I know,” Allie said. “But I don’t think it’s built to aim north. At least, not now.”

  She told him how the needle had worked that morning, spinning to her and the house and then to where the Mary had sat. How Sam was scared and she had been a little scared, too, but in a way that felt good. Zach reached down and rubbed the dog’s head as he listened.

  “So now I’m here” is how Allie finished. And when Zach didn’t say anything, she waved a bit of the leopard print on her rolled sleeve in front of his gaze.

  “I don’t get it,” Zach said.

  Allie shook her head and wondered how someone so handsome and brave could be so stupid. She held her wrist up. “It ain’t a compass, Zach. Not a regular one, leastways. I think it’s more like . . . I don’t know. An SOS.”

  “From who?”

  “From her,” Allie said. She spoke slowly: “Mary.”

  “What? Allie . . .” Zach stopped when he realized she wasn’t playing a trick. “That’s pointing clear to the other side of town. There’s plenty of places between your house and mine your daddy coulda dumped her. Or maybe he even took her to work in the back of his truck and dumped her there. Why would he take her east?”

  He didn’t understand. That stumped her. Allie had considered nearly every possible way Zach could react to what she’d just told him, but she hadn’t counted on confusion.

  “Because that’s where the needle’s pointing,” she said. “You have to help me, Zach. We gotta get going.”

  But Zach said nothing. There was no pledge to help and no encouragement given, only a deep silence that bot
hered Allie more than she could say. She stood and began pacing back and forth in front of the bench, searching for a way to convince him. Her eyes were drawn toward Main Street, past the town hall to where the road curved. A blue Honda crested over Miller’s Bridge just beyond. Allie blinked, trying to peer through the sunlight that glinted off the windshield.

  “Bless it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Bless it bless it bless it.” The car was closer now. “We gotta hide.”

  Allie bent behind the bench and scrambled to corral Sam, who saw the whole thing as an invitation to wrestle. Zach jumped over the bench instead of moving around it, nearly landing atop Sam’s head. He shoved a hand into his coat pocket.

  “Who we hiding from?” he asked. “I got my knife.”

  “We don’t need no knife,” Allie said. “Just sit here and be still.”

  They peered through the narrow slats in the back of the bench as the soft whine of the engine neared. The car slowed in front of the town square just long enough to cause panic, then continued on.

  “She’s gone,” Allie said in a long exhale. “That was close.”

  Zach stood and adjusted his hat. “That was just Miss Howard. What’re you doing hiding from her? Ain’t no school today.” He shook his head. “And you call me an idiot.”

  “That ain’t why I hid.”

  “Then why did you?”

  Allie stood up and said, “It don’t matter right now. What does is if you’re comin’ along. I don’t know how long my compass is gonna work.” Her book bag leaned to the right. Zach reached out to center it again. She slapped his hand away. “Never mind that, either.”

  “I was just tryin’ to help,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What’s wrong is I don’t know if you believe me or not.”

  Zach said, “You ain’t gotta ask me that,” though Allie noticed he couldn’t look her in the eye. “’Course I do. We’ll find your Mary. And even if we don’t, we’ll get to spend the day together. Just like we used to.”

  “So you’ll come?”

  “Somebody’s gotta keep a watch on you. It’ll be like a quest.” Zach lifted his hat and bowed, sweeping it across his body. “Sir Barnett the Bold, at your service.”

  Allie rolled her eyes. She said, “You’re such a dork,” even though Zach Barnett was no such thing, and she said, “I hate you,” even though she loved him most of all.

  “So where we going?” he asked.

  Allie pointed to the mountains. “That way. And we’ll go as far as it takes.”

  5

  The few hundred people or so who made up Zach Barnett’s world could be divided into two groups: those whom he could trust no matter what, and those whom he would trust not at all. To his credit, the pool consisting of the latter was shallow and for the most part included only those who gave his father trouble. Zach had added Allie’s daddy to that list in the past year, and not only because Marshall had come to hate Jake Barnett more than he hated anyone else in the world. The reasons why were simple enough for Zach to state even if difficult to understand. It had been Barney Moore and Zach’s father who’d led fifty or so people to safety when The Storm hit on Carnival Day. Allie had been among them. Mary Granderson had not. She had left to look for Allie just before the heavens opened. The tornado took her sometime after, and to a place Zach believed no compass could point. Allie had not been the same since. Nor had her father. Zach’s daddy often said he didn’t think ill of Marshall for his hatred. He said people needed to blame something for the bad things that happened, and Marshall had just put that blame on him.

  Zach, however, felt no such mercy—not because of Marshall’s newfound hatred for the Barnetts, but because of stuff Allie had told him. It wasn’t much, broken pieces mostly. All of which always seemed to be cut midsentence by either a shrug or the ringing of a school bell. But the little that got through was enough for Zach to believe the Marshall Granderson he’d once known and even loved wasn’t around anymore—that maybe he’d died right along with Allie’s momma.

  The list of people Zach could trust was much longer and included most everyone else in town to varying degrees, each of whom jockeyed up or down on some sliding scale of his own devising. But the names at the top of that list were never altered. In Zach’s mind, the whole world would fall away before his parents and Allie ever let him down.

  That Allie had largely gone missing from his life since The Storm had no bearing on that trust. Zach still believed in her. That made what he felt now all the more worrisome. There they were, biking through Mattingly’s streets with Christmas on one horizon and a full sun rising over another, but Zach felt neither joy nor excitement at the prospects such a day held. What he felt was doubt.

  He carried Sam as best he could, pinning the dog to his chest with his left hand. It was awkward and uncomfortable, especially when Sam got it in his head to rear up and nip at the brim of Zach’s hat. Already his left shoulder burned from the weight. His right fared no better, aching from the constant adjustments to the handlebars to keep them balanced and moving. The exertion pressed in on his lungs, forcing out a series of thick coughs.

  It was enough for him to look at Allie with no small measure of annoyance. Zach didn’t think she’d stopped once on the long ride from her house to town. Not only had she carried Sam that whole way, she’d shouldered her backpack as well. Such knowledge would be enough to dent the pride of any man, and a boy who fancied himself one especially. He gritted his teeth and pedaled harder. So far, what they were doing didn’t feel like a quest at all. It felt more like work.

  Allie rode ahead, her jean jacket fluttering around the edges of her pack. They’d traded the square for the two-lane Main Street that cut at an angle beside the town hall. Traffic in both directions was light—a good thing, considering Allie didn’t seem to care what lay behind or around, only ahead. That dented Zach’s pride, too, knowing he was being led around by a girl. Yet even that was better than the alternative, which was that he was being led around by the busted compass on the girl’s wrist.

  He called, “Hey, you wanna slow down? I thought this was a search and rescue, not a race.”

  Allie looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Ain’t my fault you can’t keep up with me.”

  “Well, maybe you can carry your own dog, then. If you ain’t heard, I got a cold.”

  She rode on but slowed enough for him to catch up. Miller’s Bridge loomed ahead, marking Mattingly’s downtown boundary. The slow churn of the river beneath echoed as they rode over. Past that lay the town’s outlying neighborhoods, where the lane widened enough for Zach to come alongside. Allie studied her compass, making sure they were still going the right way.

  “Still east,” she said. “I think it’s stronger now. We might be close.”

  “I hope so. We’re about to run out of town.”

  What homes they passed stood as fragile monuments to the human will to move on despite it all. Piles of wood and brick remained here and there, covered with remnants of snow from the night before. Much of the wreckage had been cleared and hauled away in the last year and a half, though not all of the houses had returned. The months since The Storm had been a time of hard lessons for everyone in Mattingly. The one that stuck closest to Zach was how quickly lives could be upended, and how long it took to restore them again. In many ways, he supposed that was why a morning he’d thought destined for play around the sheriff’s office had turned into riding across town with his best friend. Zach didn’t think they were looking for Allie’s plastic Mary at all. They were just trying to find a way to fix Allie’s life.

  They passed the last of the homes at nine thirty that morning. By nine, Marshall Granderson had tried to call his daughter twice. The answering machine had picked up both times. The messages he left were as calm as he could manage, asking Allie again not to bother looking beneath that old tarp, everything under there was fine. He hung up and stared at the clock above his head. Allie was a go
od girl; she wouldn’t look if he told her not to. Still, a growing panic brushed over Marshall as he plugged his ears and ventured back into the clamor of factory machinery. He should have done a better job of covering the Nativity. But looking out the window at first light and seeing Allie’s Mary gone had panicked him, and rushing around the neighborhood and not finding it had panicked him more. What else could he have done? He told himself it would all be fine; Allie was probably still in bed.

  Actually, she’d just passed the wooden Welcome To Mattingly sign some eight miles from home, and that was when Zach decided it was time to settle on exactly what they were doing.

  “Hey, let’s rest a minute,” he said. “I think Sam needs to go.”

  He thought she would protest, maybe say they’d stop around the next curve, a man should at least be able make it that far. But Allie eased her bike off the road and onto the shoulder without a word, happy for the break. Zach pulled beside her and sat Sam on the ground, wincing as he flexed his left arm in and out. Sam bounded off just inside the long line of trees at their backs, sniffing for the bathroom. The morning stood clear and bright, the road silent. Allie found a stump that made a serviceable enough chair and sat. She shrugged off her pack and placed it against her leg, then checked her compass again.

  “You okay?” Zach asked.

  She nodded. “Looks like we’re still heading the right way. Making good time too.”

  “You eat breakfast?”

  “Weren’t no time. I packed us a lunch, though. Candy bars.”

  “We could go back if you want. BP’s right back down. I ain’t got no money, but I bet Andy’d give us some biscuits on loan.”

  “I ain’t hungry,” Allie said. “’Sides, that’ll mean going the wrong way. It’ll take time to get back here, and Daddy’ll be home before I know it. He finds me gone, I’ll be in trouble.”

  “We got hours yet,” Zach said. “Even if we don’t get no food, we should use Andy’s phone and call my folks. Tell them where we are.”

  Allie looked up from her compass. “What exactly is it you’re trying to tell me, Zach Barnett?”