TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
PROLOGUE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
About the Author
Also by Sallie Bissell
Copyright Page
For Kate Bissell, my blue-eyed girl
No novel is a solitary achievement; many people aid and abet along the way. My heartfelt thanks to the following friends who were more than generous with their time and expertise.
To Larry Woods of Nashville, Tennessee, who advised me on legal procedure and legal practices; To Susana Vincent of Placitas, New Mexico, who translated the Spanish with great wit and sensitivity; To Lisa Lefler and Jenifer Ross of Sylva, North Carolina, whose sociological insights into the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians were invaluable. To Delores Dwyer for another superb job of copyediting; To Kate Miciak, who again held the candle through that spooky old forest of fiction; To Edith Hayes Comer and Betsy Comer Hester, for their love and unquestioning support. And finally, my thanks and love to Margie Lunsford, Sharon Sabo, Barbara Brockett, and Marilyn Meyers, my old Gale Lane pals who inspired much of this book.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Many of the characters in this novel bear well-known surnames common in the mountains of North Carolina. I did this to add verisimilitude to my story and to convey a stronger sense of place. No character in this novel is based on any real person, living or dead. I would further like to thank the residents of Haywood, Jackson, and Swain Counties, as well as the Cherokee Indians of the Quallah Boundary, who answered the questions of a nosy writer with kindness and generosity.
PROLOGUE
Hartsville, North Carolina
November 30, 1982
“Deke! Get your butt up in this truck! We need to help find that little girl!” Harold Craig, assistant scout-master of Boy Scout Troop 238, scowled at the wiry, redheaded boy who’d darted across the beams of his headlights.
“Coming, sir.” Deke Keener hurried to the rear of Mr. Craig’s truck. As he climbed into the back, he saw the rest of 238’s Wolf Patrol shivering together, their eyes wide with the urgency of their mission. No camping trip this; not even one of Mr. Craig’s beloved forest fire drills. This was real. At three o’clock this afternoon, eight-year-old Tracy Foster, daughter of the mayor and Deke’s own across-the-street neighbor, had gone missing from Firescald Campground, a skinny finger of cleared land between Tuckaseegee Creek and the five hundred thousand acres of the Nantahalah National Forest. Tracy had gone there on a cookout with her own Brownie Troop 112, and had not shown up when Mrs. Winston, their troop leader, took a final head count before leaving. Deke happened to be fishing right across from the campground when Mrs. Winston had started hollering like someone being skinned alive. He’d looked up to see the woman first gathering the girls inside her minivan, then directing them back out to the edge of the woods to call Tracy’s name. When Mrs. Winston spotted him on the other side of the creek, still calmly holding his line in the water, she waved her arms over her head and yelled, “You! Boy! Aren’t you Joe Keener’s son?”
Deke nodded, pretending that he hadn’t been watching them all along.
“Go call the sheriff! Tracy Foster’s lost in the woods!”
Dropping his fishing rod, Deke had done what the woman asked, furiously pedaling his bike to Ray Zimmerlee’s Texaco station and begging a free phone call off the cheap old bastard, telling him that it was an emergency. That had been six hours ago. The bright copper afternoon had slowly turned into a cold, bristly night, and Tracy had still not shown up. Now, where earlier just the Brownie-packed minivan had stood, the campground was crowded with vehicles and awash with flashing red lights. Police cars, two fire trucks, and an ambulance stood ready to receive the lost Tracy Foster. Deke felt a tingle of excitement as the scouts pulled up beside a police car and he caught a glimpse of the mayor himself standing beside the creek, his arms wrapped around his wife as they both gazed into the dark, rushing water.
“You boys stay put,” Mr. Craig ordered as he unfolded his long legs from the driver’s seat. “I’ll go find out what the sheriff wants us to do.”
The boys watched, wide-eyed as young owls, as Mr. Craig strode over to a picnic shelter where Sheriff Stump Logan and a group of Forest Rangers were shining flashlights on a map.
“They won’t make us go in the woods, will they?” asked Jerry Cochran. Another neighbor of Deke and Tracy’s, Cochran was a skinny bookworm of a boy who was wary of the forest during the day, and feared it mightily at night.
“Probably.” Fat-faced Randy Bradley shined his flashlight under his chin. Though he attempted a Frankenstein-like grimace, he looked more like some demonic pumpkin. “They’ll probably make you point man, Cockroach.”
“No kidding.” Cochran pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “What do you think they’ll want us to do?”
Deke squelched a laugh. At home, from his bedroom window, he watched Jerry play with Tracy Foster all the time. Once the nerd had even climbed way up a hackberry tree to retrieve her stupid kitten. Now his precious little girlfriend was lost and Cochran was too chicken to go out into the spooky old woods and find her.
“Probably scoop up her body parts.” Butch Messer snickered as he unwrapped a piece of bubble gum. “My dad said a bear probably got her. Dragged her off to eat before he caved up for the winter.”
“Shoot, I bet she drowned.” Floyd Nations, a rangy boy who already kept a wad of tobacco between his lower lip and gum, stood up to scan the dark, hissing creek. “They’ll probably find her down in Sley Holler, all swelled-up and green.”
Deke was sitting there, relishing Cochran’s gaping reaction to all the speculation, when he noticed Mr. Craig give the sheriff a brisk nod and head back toward the truck. “Shut up,” he whispered to his pack mates. “Here comes Craig.”
“Okay, boys.” Mr. Craig hurried up, his usually sallow, hound-dog face now flushed with excitement. “They want us to post a picket line at the entrance of the campground. We’re to keep any unauthorized vehicles from coming in.”
“Will we have to go into the woods?” Jerry Cochran sounded like the star soprano in an all-boy choir.
“No. We’re just going to stand in a line across a slab of asphalt.” Mr. Craig, who often regaled them with tales of his European adventures with General Patton’s Third Army, sounded vaguely disappointed. “Bear Patrol will spell us at twenty-two hundred hours, unless someone finds that poor little girl.”
Minutes later, Mr. Craig had them lined up across the entrance to the campground, flashlights in hand. As the boys spread out, Deke took the end position, to keep the big bad woods away from Cochran. Hiding his smile, he worked hard at feigning concern for Tracy Foster and waited for his chance. It came about an hour later, when the novelty of their duty started to wear off. As the boys began fidgeting and passing
bad jokes down the line, Deke made his move.
“Hey, Jerry,” he called to Cochran. “Keep watch over here. I gotta go to the latrine.”
“Can’t you just go behind that stop sign?” Cochran whispered, as if the forest were some huge, living creature that might gobble him up.
“Not for this,” said Deke. “I’ll be back in five minutes. Get Butch to tell his elephant fart joke. It’ll keep your mind off things.”
Without waiting for Cochran’s consent, he turned and walked toward the latrine at the far edge of the parking area. After he’d gotten about twenty feet behind his friends, he turned left and slipped into the woods, his heart beating like a drum. He’d known the moment the frantic Mrs. Winston had called him that he was going to be the one who found Tracy Foster. After all, he was the one who’d gotten her lost—who better than him to bring her home?
He switched off his flashlight, making his way along a trail where rough pine fingers poked at his cheeks and the ground felt like a sponge beneath his feet. While nameless creatures rattled away through the leaves, he chuckled. Cochran would have shit his pants by now, but nothing underneath this dark lacework of leaves and branches frightened him at all. He felt at home in shadows that moved; in trees that whispered sibilant warnings on the hushed night breeze. No member of Troop 238 was better in the woods than he. Not even those older boys who strutted around with Eagle badges on their chests.
After he’d threaded his way a mile into the forest, he began following a sparkling, moonlit stream that led to a deep ravine guarded by two huge boulders. He’d stumbled upon it three years ago and as far as he knew, was the only person aware of its existence. He walked its quarter-mile length trembling with anticipation. At two o’clock this afternoon, he’d lured Tracy away from her friends with a wild tale about lost Cherokee gold. Now he wondered if she’d found any in the seven hours she’d had to look for it.
He climbed around a big rock he called the mushroom, then turned left. He saw her immediately, lying on a boulder, exactly where he’d left her. She was small and doll-like, her corn-silk hair glowing like foxfire in the dim light. For an instant, he felt a ripple of real fear. Maybe he’d gone over the top, scared her to death with all his bullshit. Then he heard a bawl that sounded like a newborn calf. His heart soared. It was okay! She was still alive! He started to move toward her casually, as if he were just taking a nighttime stroll through the deep woods. Inside, he could barely breathe, he was so excited.
“Hi, Tracy,” he said, his voice ringing hollow among the rocks. He had a pins-and-needles feeling in the pit of his stomach and his penis had grown so hard, it hurt. “Find any gold?”
“Deke?” The little girl startled, lifting a tearstained face to peer into the darkness. “Deke, is that you?”
He laughed. “Who’d you think it was? A ghost?”
“Don’t say that, Deke. It’s really scary out here.” Her voice was high and breathy; he could tell she was trying hard not to cry.
He stood still, watching her, savoring her agony. A whole person, right there, totally in his power. He could make her do anything he wanted. Anything at all.
“Have you seen the bear yet?” he asked.
“What bear?”
“The one they call Claw.” He quickly invented a new demon to torture her as he took a step closer. “He’s the last one to go to his cave. He likes to wait and see if he can get any last morsel of food. Claw has a taste for human blood. Cougars are up here, too. And that maniac who hacked up those kids in Virginia—”
“Stop it!” She clapped her hands over her ears and began to cry for real, tears spilling from her eyes. “Please don’t say any more! Please take me home!”
He smiled, wondering if his penis might burst from the sheer pleasure of watching her. “Sure, Tracy. I’ll take you home. If you do one thing for me.”
“What?”
“Remember last month? That little game I wanted to play in your garage?”
Snuffling, she looked up at him, unspeaking.
“I still want to play that game,” he whispered. “I want to play it now.”
“But that game isn’t nice,” she protested. “That game scares me.”
“Being left out here to die would scare me more,” he said. He stepped closer. “If you ever want to see your parents again, you’ll play that game with me, now.”
She looked at him like some small trapped animal. He caught a sudden strong whiff of urine and realized she’d wet herself. Jesus, he thought, taken aback by his own power. She’s so scared she pissed herself. Right here in front of me.
Crying soundlessly, she got to her feet. “If I do it, will you take me home?”
He looked around. The rocks stood jumbled around them, but he knew of a clearing beneath some pines that would work. He grabbed her hand. “Come on.”
He pulled her toward the trees, feeling as if he might explode, wondering if he was going to wind up like those people he’d read about who caught on fire and burned up from the inside out. What a shame that would be, he thought. He’d worked hard at planning this all day, ever since he saw the Brownies drive up this morning. No, he decided. He might well burn someday, but it wouldn’t be tonight. Tonight he had Jerry Cochran’s precious little playmate to do with as he pleased. He would have to burn up some other time.
Two hours later, he brought her back. As they neared the picnic area, they stopped on a fallen log and surveyed the activity below. The ambulances and fire trucks were still there, only now he could hear distant voices calling his name. He took his official Boy Scout whistle from his pocket, but turned to her before he blew it.
“If you tell what we did up there, you’re going to get in tons of trouble. Your parents will really be mad. They’ll make you quit the Brownies, and they’ll put Mrs. Winston in jail. Then they’ll send you to a special school and not let you live at home anymore. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
The little girl gaped at him.
“You’ve got to promise not to tell, Tracy,” he said, giving her wrist a hard squeeze. “If you do, I’ll shove a firecracker up your cat’s ass.”
“I won’t tell.” Her chin was trembling. “Please don’t do anything to Buttons.”
“I won’t, as long as you keep our secret.”
Lowering her eyes, she nodded.
Satisfied about Tracy’s cooperation, he blew three sharp blasts on his whistle and started down the mountain. Mr. Craig was the first to reach him, hauling up through the trees like some old coon dog, hot on a trail.
“Where you been, boy?” Mr. Craig’s face was ashen. Deke couldn’t tell if he was really mad or really scared. Not that it mattered. He’d come back from the forest, holding little Miss Tracy Foster by the hand. “Where’d you find her?”
“Over that way.” Deke pointed in the opposite direction from which they’d come. “Near where we camped last winter. I was on my way to the latrine when I heard her calling. She was stuck in a tree. It took me a while to get her down.”
Mr. Craig scooped Tracy up in his arms, as if she might disappear all over again if he didn’t hang on to her. He frowned at the boy standing in front of him. “Deke, last winter we camped a good mile north. You couldn’t have heard anything that far away.”
“That’s where I went, Mr. Craig. And that’s where I found her.” Deke’s tone brooked no dispute, not even from his scoutmaster.
Mr. Craig frowned at him longer than Deke liked, but then returned his attention to the little girl. “Are you all right, darlin’?” he asked, holding Tracy close. Deke glared up at her, silently reminding her of the terrible consequences the wrong response would carry.
“I’m cold,” Tracy whimpered, burying her face in Mr. Craig’s plaid shirt. “I want my mama.”
“Well, she and your daddy are both waitin’ right down there for you, darlin’,” said Mr. Craig. “They’re gonna be mighty tickled to see you.”
Five minutes later, Mr. Craig handed the little
girl back to her parents. As Deke’s fellow Scouts gathered to congratulate him, a dizzying rush of triumph roared through his body. He’d just broken every law of God and man and the BSA, and everybody was treating him like a hero! He, Deke Keener, had played every one of them as if they were all instruments in his own private orchestra!
Sheriff Logan walked over and shook his hand, as did Mayor Foster and the Forest Rangers. A flashbulb popped as a photographer took a shot of him with Tracy, the mayor, and the rest of the Scouts. When it came out in the paper the next day, his mother wept with pride, and his father peeled off a crisp twenty-dollar bill and told him to go buy something he wanted.
He cut the picture out and framed it, and now keeps it on his office wall. Most every day he leans back in his soft leather armchair and looks at that picture with great longing. Though he’s played his game with many others, and even more people now regard him as a hero, he lives for the day when another Tracy Foster will come his way—another innocent, cotton-haired little girl who will follow him deep into those dark, piney woods and do absolutely anything he tells her.
1
Hartsville, North Carolina
June 2004
The Confederate stood on the seventy-first of the one hundred and five concrete steps that led from Hartsville’s Main Street to the Pisgah County Courthouse. Rifle at his side, he’d kept a weatherbeaten watch for any encroaching Yankees for as long as Mary Crow could remember. Passing him on her fourth-grade civics field trip, she’d cowered at his towering bronze fierceness. Six years later, as she’d rushed past to apply for her driver’s license, she’d found him an embarrassing symbol of the unreconstructed South. Today, nearly twenty-five years after their first acquaintance, the old boy seemed as comforting as a childhood friend. Not much else about Pisgah County did.
“Hey, Johnny Reb.” She paused for a moment to look up at the carefully wrought figure of a young private in the Confederate Army. Having been erected in front of the courthouse, he truly faced east, but cut his eyes northward, ever vigilant for an enemy approach. Though birds had roosted on his shoulders and one long strand of spiderweb dangled from his rear, he still looked ready to face whatever challenge the blue bellies might throw at him. Mary wondered if she was in such good shape. Already she was breathing heavily from her climb, and she still had thirty-four steps to go. She’d forgotten how hot the early June sun could be in the Carolina mountains, and she’d foolishly worn Deathwrap, her prosecutorial black suit. Comfortable in the relentlessly air-conditioned courtrooms of Atlanta, here sleek Deathwrap felt like a portable sauna, too close, too heavy, too tight against her skin.
Legacy of Masks Page 1