by T. Greenwood
I don’t tell her that the only editing I do now is freelance copyediting. That I am a glorified mechanic, fixing all the broken sentences. She had gripped my hand once and told me that I would make a difference in the world.
“It’s so good to see you,” I say. “But I wish it weren’t for this.”
She scowls. “I know.”
I go outside to get some air before we head back to the site to search. Outside the store, there’s a man smoking a cigarette. I cough as I walk through the cloud of smoke he is generating.
“Mornin’, neighbor,” he says. It’s the man who was here yesterday, the one ahead of me in line for the flyers. His face is red, his cheeks chapped. His thin hair combed over a freckled scalp. He drags heavily on his cigarette and blows it out of his long, thin nostrils.
“Excuse me,” I say, and push past him out into the dirt lot. I pretend to check my phone, though I am not expecting to hear from anyone. And then the rest of my team joins me.
I am the youngest person in my group; Mrs. Lund, Rose, must be in her seventies now. Her best friend, Ruth, the same. They link arms and walk slowly, as if they are headed to church rather than deep into the woods to look for a missing child. The two men are both my father’s age. Griff is a retired plumber and avid hiker, and Marcus is a professor at the college in the math department. He says he knew my dad. For some reason, their collective seniority makes me feel like a child instead of a grown woman.
It is easily ten degrees cooler in the woods, and each time we step into the shade, my bones feel hollow. I’m not sure what we are looking for. Is the hope that she’ll simply stumble out of the brush just as she stumbled out of the woods the other night? That she’ll come to us? Of course, the alternatives are worse: that we won’t find her at all. Or that we will, but not alive.
We get to a spot where there is a large moss-covered boulder.
“Okay,” Griff says, leaning against the enormous rock, and studying the map that another volunteer distributed this morning. (We can’t get a GPS signal here; those of us with smart phones have already tried.)
“Let’s stick together at first, and then we’ll break off into two groups. Sound good?”
We all nod.
Marcus adjusts the backpack he’s wearing (he’s volunteered to carry our supplies: granola bars, bug spray, sunscreen, et cetera). “You all have your water bottles?” We all nod and raise our bright yellow plastic water bottles, courtesy of the Dollar General in town. And as we stand there in a circle, it feels like we are giving a toast at some sort of grim celebration.
Lieutenant Andrews came and spoke to us this morning, gave us explicit instructions regarding what to do if we find any sort of “evidence” (don’t touch) and what to do if we encounter her: either living or dead. He asked us to assign a team leader to each group, and our group elected Griff. Griff has hiked the entire Appalachian Trail, and was also the only one to volunteer for the job.
Our area is in the woods just south of where I found her. I was under the impression that we’d do some sort of grid search, lining up in a row and holding hands like I’ve seen on TV. But Andrews explained that grid searches are less effective than you’d think, that our energies would be better spent simply combing through our assigned areas, looking under rocks and fallen trees, noting anything that seems suspicious: evidence that she was here.
We walk together through the woods, our eyes trained on the ground. Griff leads the way, followed by Marcus. Rose, Ruth, and I follow behind. I can hear Ruth’s labored breathing and wonder if she’s up for this. The last thing we all need is for one of us to have a medical emergency out here in the woods.
Something darts out in front of us, and Rose lets out a scream.
“It’s just a squirrel,” I say, touching her back. She presses her hand against her chest and takes a deep breath.
And I remember the time in the sixth grade when she read Where the Red Fern Grows aloud to our class. I remember sitting on the red square of carpet I’d been assigned. I hated sitting cross-legged (Indian-style in those days before crisscross applesauce), because my legs always fell asleep. All I wanted to do was stretch out, get the prickling sensation to stop. I was distracted, and so when Mrs. Lund began to cry, I was startled. I remember looking up at her in the rocking chair where she sat, and watching her shoulders tremble and her face flush red. Her voice cracked as she read. It was the first time in my life I’d seen an adult cry. And I remember thinking that all I wanted to do was to stand up and go to her, to give her a hug, to make her feel better. But instead, I just sat there. Just like all the other kids. Later, I remember justifying it to myself by thinking that my legs were pins and needles. I couldn’t have stood up. But I knew that I’d just been afraid. That weakness in others terrified me. And that in the face of other people’s pain, I would always fail.
We keep walking quietly, the only sound the leaves under our feet, the urgent call of the hermit thrush, and Ruth’s labored breaths.
“So, Rose says you live in New York,” Ruth says.
I nod and smile. “Brooklyn.”
“And you’re a writer?”
“No, no, I’m an editor,” I say reflexively. “A copy editor. Freelance.”
“Does that mean you work from home?” she asks. Her face is the powdery pink of a plastic baby doll.
“Yes,” I say, smiling. “In my pajamas if I want.”
“That must be so nice,” she says. “And a wonderful way to be able to stay home with your children.”
It feels like a blow to my chest. Every time.
“I don’t have any children,” I say.
“None?” she asks, as if this is inconceivable.
I scowl. No, none, not even one.
“I can’t,” I say. And I don’t know why I am telling her this. Why I feel compelled to explain. “I mean I’m not able. My husband and I . . .”
She leans toward me and whispers, “I had three miscarriages before we finally had our son. Sometimes you just need to keep trying.”
I feel like I am being scolded. She’s questioning my efforts, as if this is because I simply gave up. But I don’t know what to say to make her stop. To shut her up. I fear that even the truth would not faze her.
“I’m forty-five years old,” I say.
“Oh, dear,” she says, as though I’ve just told her I’m dying. “I’m sorry. It’s just that you look so much younger.”
I take a deep breath, and feel my heart sputtering. I try to take deep, calming breaths, but it skips again, and I need to get away.
“We should maybe fan out,” I say, loud enough for the guys to hear. If I have to stay here for even one more minute, I may pass out.
Everyone stops.
Deep breaths.
“I mean, if we’re in two groups then we’re covering a lot less area than we could be covering if we were each on our own.”
Even Marcus the Mathematician can’t argue with this.
“And I’m actually okay by myself. I know these woods,” I say, nodding. “I grew up here.” My ridiculous refrain.
Marcus shakes his head. “We’re supposed to stay together.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Ruth and Rose, maybe you ladies should stick together. But I’ll be okay on my own.”
“You really should stay with us,” Mrs. Lund says. “It’s safer if you stay with us.”
“It’s okay.” I try hard not to sound exasperated.
Griff looks at his watch, a complicated affair with all sorts of knobs and buttons. A compass even.
“I have a compass app on my phone,” I say brightly. “I’ll be fine.”
They look at me dumbly. None of us have any experience with this. And despite Andrews’s helpful little lecture, nobody really knows the rules. But somehow, I am suddenly the dissenter, the renegade.
“I’ll meet you back at the big boulder in a half hour,” I say, and start to walk away before anyone can stop me.
I stumble through the brush,
following a vague path mottled with sunlight. I am both purposeful and aimless. The bugs are so thick, I wish I’d sprayed myself with the Off! in Marcus’s backpack before abandoning them. I swat at the mosquitoes that are relentless this deep in the woods. But still, they bite, and welts raise on my skin like a disease. I X them out with my thumbnail, this habit a relic from childhood. I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt, wishing I’d worn something to cover my apparently delicious skin.
I try to imagine that I am a child again, feel the wild abandon in my legs and arms as I push and push, almost running through the woods now, the voices of my search group fading into the thrum and hum of the forest’s other noises and the sound of my own breath. I try to think like a child. Where would she go? What would she be drawn to? Where would she go to feel safe?
I have only been lost in the woods once, and I was with Effie, not alone. When she and I were twelve or so we decided to hike the Nature Conservancy trail, the trailhead about halfway around the lake from her camp. It was impulsive. We saw the sign as we were riding our bikes one day and decided to stop. We did that all the time back then: rode around looking for adventures, dropping our bikes at the first sign of one.
That day we had been searching for wild blueberries, but all the usual spots had been ravaged by animals, the bushes plundered for their delicate fruit. We were wearing sandals and hadn’t even brought water bottles. Still, we jumped off our bikes and made our way from the road into the forest.
There was a wooden pedestal with a laminated map of the trail, a roughly hewn bench. We studied the one-mile circular trail on the map, and shrugged. We could probably walk the whole hike and be back to our bikes within an hour.
It was hot that day, and I remember thinking we should have brought some water. That we were probably pretty stupid not to have some with us. Then again, we were close to the lake. But fairly soon, the path curved far away from the water, and the woods grew cold.
“Are we still on the trail?” I said. Because now, the well-worn path was not so well-worn; instead it was riddled with branches and roots.
“I think so,” she said, but I could sense just a little bit of fear in her voice as well.
“Well, let’s keep going,” I said. The hike was a simple loop. Soon we’d be back at the map and the bench. And then we could make the short hike back to the road.
But the bright red arrows that had been appearing on trees at regular intervals earlier had stopped.
“How long since you last saw an arrow?” I asked.
Effie shook her head.
“Are we lost?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve hiked this trail before. It takes a while to get back around.”
And so we kept walking, trusting that we were headed in the right direction. But as the sky darkened, I knew something was wrong. Effie could sense it too. She reached for my hand, and I squeezed it. We stopped and stood still. I remember thunder rumbling in the distance, and my entire body flushing with the heat of fear.
“Let’s turn back,” I said.
But Effie shook her head. “No,” she said. “We should keep going. I swear this is the trail. If we just keep going, we’ll get back. It’s a loop.”
I nodded, even though I worried that we had somehow gotten off the trail, or maybe somehow onto a different trail altogether. One that had nothing to do with the Nature Conservancy loop. What if this was some other trail, some ten-mile trail? Part of the Appalachian Trail that wandered all the way from Maine to Georgia?
We had no water.
And it was starting to rain.
We didn’t speak for the next twenty minutes as we forged ahead, hoping, praying that we would wind up where we had started. That the promises made on that map would be kept.
My entire body was buzzing with all of the possible disasters. I thought about our parents waiting for us at home. How long would they wait before they started to get worried? I wondered about our bikes, hidden in the foliage so that no one would steal them. How long would it take them to find the bikes? Thunder rumbled again, and I imagined what would happen to us when the rain came. When the breakfast we’d eaten no longer filled our bellies. I thought about dying out here. About Effie and me suffering slow, painful deaths.
I could barely breathe when all of a sudden Effie started running, motioning for me to follow her. And there was that damn bench. That map. And I felt so foolish. So relieved.
It took all afternoon for my body to stop trembling. I could barely pedal my bicycle when we finally emerged out of the woods. Effie and I didn’t talk about that afternoon again. I know her mind must have traveled the same places mine had. Must have considered, maybe even for the first time, the possibility that we were not impervious to danger. We’d been wild kids, careless kids. Carefree kids. But after that day, there was a certain caution that informed everything we did. I always had water with me after that. And we always left our bikes where they would be seen. And I noticed Effie almost always checked in with her mom to let her know where we were going.
I remember that panic now, that hot flush of fear that I felt. And I hope that this little girl is not yet old enough to speculate about all the terrible things that can happen to her. That she still trusts that someone will find her. That the world is a safe place.
I come to a small cavern and realize I have been running. I am breathless, my heart beating hard in my chest. I bend over at the waist and put my hands on my knees, waiting for my body to calm.
When I stand up again I feel dizzy, disoriented.
A dragonfly flitters in front of my face and I am momentarily mesmerized by its iridescent wings, by the way it hovers, suspended in the air.
“Pretty, huh?”
I whip around at the sound of his voice, my eyes wide.
The man is standing by a tree about ten feet away, smoking a cigarette. His face is in the shadows, but I can see that he’s wearing an orange vest. Another one of the searchers.
“Jesus Christ,” I say. “You scared the shit out of me.”
He emerges from behind the tree, and I realize it’s that creepy guy again. Is he following me?
He takes a drag on his cigarette and then drops it to the ground, grinding it into the mucky leaves.
“Know why they call ’em darners?”
“What?” I say, already assessing how far I have gotten away from my group. Listening for the sound of their voices, of anyone’s voices.
“Dragonflies. They’re called darners in some parts.”
“No,” I say, backing up a little as he walks toward me.
“When I was a little boy, my daddy told me that if I was bad, the darners would come in the middle of the night and sew my ears shut. Sew my mouth shut too.”
“What a terrible thing to tell a child,” I say.
He laughs then, and his chest rumbles like it’s full of wet leaves.
“Maybe if you follow the darner, it’ll lead you to the little girl,” he says. “If she’s been naughty, maybe it’s looking for her.”
I back up again, and start running.
I can hear him hacking behind me. As if his body is turning itself inside out. I don’t glance back; I just keep running until I see orange through the trees. Until I see Mrs. Lund and Ruth standing together, drinking from their bright yellow water bottles. I hear Griff’s low voice and see Marcus scratching on his pad of paper. I could cry; I am so relieved. It feels exactly like that time I was lost with Effie. Because the relief I feel now is tempered by fear. That man is out here in the woods, looking for her. What if he finds her before I do?
We search all morning, emerging from the woods at noon as though waking from a dream. The bright light blinds us, and we stumble from the foliage onto the dirt road. One after the other, the rest of the volunteers materialize in the road and silently climb into the waiting vehicles, which will bring us to Hudson’s for lunch before we return and keep looking.
No one speaks, but it is obvious. No one has found anything.
She is still lost.
When we pull into the parking lot at Hudson’s, I see the news vans that had been parked at the site are now here. The police cars are also here. There are state police as well.
Huddles of people in orange vests congregate outside, smoking cigarettes, stretching, waiting for whatever is about to happen. I push through the crowd, go into the store, and head straight to the back room, where Effie and the girls are laying out sandwiches on a long folding table. Plum is carefully arranging the napkins like this is a party, and Zu-Zu is lining up cold sodas in tidy rows.
Devin and Billy Moffett are standing together, talking, in the back of the room.
“What’s going on outside?” I ask Effie. “Did they find her? Did somebody find her?”
“I have no idea,” Effie says. She hands me a brown paper grocery bag filled with wrapped sandwiches and motions for me to put them out on the table. “I don’t think anybody knows. Somebody said they’re going to have another press conference at one fifteen.”
“Where’s Jake?” I ask, glancing around, as if I could have missed him somehow in this small room. He promised to meet me here at lunch. That he’d come with us to search this afternoon.
“I think he might have gone into town? He said he needed to send out some e-mails,” she says.
“He could do that from here on his phone,” I say angrily. As if this is Effie’s fault. As if she’s the one who’s jumped ship.
She ignores my raised voice and nods. “He was doing something on his laptop. I told him there was Wi-Fi at the library. I think he might have gone into town.”
I take a deep breath. And she reaches out and squeezes my hand.
“Are you hungry?” she asks, motioning to the sandwiches. “There’s tuna.” Effie and I lived on tuna sandwiches when we were kids. Tuna sandwiches with salt-and-vinegar potato chips crumbled up inside. Comfort food. If she had a can of Country Time lemonade and a foil-wrapped Ding Dong too, this could be the summer of 1976.
I shake my head.