by Ninie Hammon
“Sheila, call the school and tell Miss Watson that I’ll be coming by to have lunch today with Bobby.”
He leaned back in the chair and wallowed the plan around in his mind. Sure, some people were going to get their feet wet, no doubt about it. More than a few of the residents of Sadler Hollow would likely be wading in their parlors real soon—not in ordinary floodwater either. The sticky, almost viscous black sludge behind the dam would be a nightmare to clean up. And he was sorry about that, he really was. But that was the price of doing business.
Chapter 17
Piper was preoccupied as she, Maggie and Sadie bounced down the steep, potholed road from Marian’s house toward Northfield Road, which wound through the valley first on one side, then on the other side of the railroad. The highway and the railroad hugged Turtle Creek; in some narrow spots there was room for nothing else. But in the places where the valley widened, coal-camp houses were jammed together like stands of mushrooms.
When they pulled into a parking space down from the courthouse, Piper looked at the two memorials and such sweet relief flooded over her that she wanted to laugh out loud. When they got around to erecting a Vietnam memorial, Addington would not be the first name listed. And after his thirty-day pass, he’d be doing nothing more dangerous than ministering to the soldiers at Fort Knox or Fort Campbell in Kentucky, maybe even Fort Hood in Texas—didn’t matter. He’d be safe!
“Hey, Piper, I hear Grayson’s home,” Ramona Richards said as soon as she saw Piper. “That a fact?”
Word traveled fast in Sadler Hollow.
“He sure is!” Piper beamed. “Came walking up to the house last night and liked to scare the bejeebers out of all of us. We didn’t know he was coming.”
Ramona looked at Sadie, who quickly buried her head in her mother’s shoulder. Maggie had fixed Sadie’s hair that morning in a ponytail, and it hung down her back in golden curls.
“I swear, that child gets purdier ever time I see her. Them big ole eyes and them curls. When she gets older, Grayson’s gonna have to beat the boys away with a stick.”
“Sheriff Cliff in?”
“No, he ain’t. Sorry. That daughter he went to visit in Pittsburgh—she’s pregnant you know, and she went into early labor. Had a premie. Little boy didn’t weigh but four pounds, and they’re all scared he ain’t gonna make it. I don’t know when the sheriff’ll be back.”
“Come on in, Piper.”
She turned and saw Deputy Higgins standing in the doorway of his office.
She handed Sadie to Maggie. “You sit out here with Sadie, okay? She’ll be good.” The into-everything toddler would make no effort to get down and run around in a room with so many people she didn’t know.
As soon as Piper closed the door behind her, Deputy Higgins sat down in one of the two chairs in front of his desk like he’d done when he spoke to Maggie on Friday. Piper’s heart sank. He had bad news! They’d found her family, and he wanted to break it to Piper gently.
Her heart tried to jackhammer a hole through the side wall of her chest.
“So?”
“Nothing,” Higgins said and held out both hands, palms up. “Couldn’t find a soul who knew a thing about her.”
The relief that instantly surged through Piper was so profound for a moment she was afraid she’d sighed out loud.
“Spent all afternoon Friday and most of Saturday going up and down Fearsome Creek Hollow, knocking on doors and asking questions. I wasn’t ’xactly a welcome sight, as you can well imagine.”
Piper could. Nobody in a uniform would be a welcome sight in Fearsome Creek. The only people welcome there were the ones who’d lived there for at least four generations.
“But I don’t think they was hiding nothin’. Once they found out I was there on account of a lost child, some of ’em—a few of ’em—even tried to be helpful. But nobody’d ever heard of a child named Maggie. They all trotted out their redheaded young’uns for my inspection. The McIntire’s have got four—two boys, two girls. And they got that orangey, carroty red hair. Can’t imagine they’d have a sister with hair’s pretty as hers.” He gestured toward Maggie, and they both looked at the child, who was keeping Sadie occupied with a rousing game of peek-a-boo.
“Well, if she’s not from there, where—?”
“I checked with the elementary schools in Fayette, Nicholas, Greenbrier—even Pocahontas counties. Classes don’t start for another couple of weeks, but no redheaded kids her age named Maggie or Margaret were enrolled in any of them county schools last year. I called the sheriff’s departments, too, and the state police. There’s been only one missing child case in the past three months in the whole state. A little boy in Charleston and turns out his daddy run off with the kid ’cause Mama had custody. They found him twenty-four hours later and threw his papa in the iron house. I even went to the FBI.”
“The FBI?”
“It ain’t like there’s some national list of all the missing kids in the country—and if you ask me, there dad-gum sure oughta be!—but the FBI gets called in if there’s a ransom demand or the kid’s transported across state lines. They don’t have nothing that matches that little girl sittin’ out there.”
“Then…what…?”
Piper hadn’t really let her mind play with the possibilities. She’d assumed the little girl was from Fearsome Creek Hollow or somewhere equally remote, and that people mean enough to beat up a child were such sorry human beings they wouldn’t bother to report her missing. Piper hoped the state would take that into account along with the beating and not return her to her family. She never considered any alternative scenario.
“I have a theory,” the deputy said, “I think she mighta got dumped on the highway, on Route 50, maybe 119 or even 19. Some family traveling through, could be from anywhere. They stop by the side of the road to answer a call of nature, and she seen that as a chance to run off.”
“But why wouldn’t they…?”
“Maybe they figured when folks see how beat up she is, they’re gonna have to answer for it so they just kept going.”
“Route 50? That’s…what? Forty, fifty miles from here?”
“Not as the crow flies.”
“Over the mountain? You think she—?”
“Or maybe she hitched a ride with somebody or hid in the back of a truck. And there’s another possibility, too. Maybe she wasn’t beat up at all. That’s the first thing you think when you see a black eye and a split lip, but there’s lots of ways a kid could have got injuries like that. An accident, maybe, and—”
“She was in a car wreck? And soon’s the dust settled, her folks drove away in their dented-up car and left her by the side of the road?”
“I don’t know what to think. Alls I know for sure is ain’t nobody laying claim to that little girl.”
“I do. I’ll claim her, keep her, I mean.”
“It ain’t that simple, Piper, and you know it. I gotta call the child welfare people in Charleston.”
“No! Please don’t do that. Not yet. What’s the hurry if nobody’s looking for her?”
“What’s Grayson think about coming home and finding he’s done become a daddy again?”
“He only got home last night. He’s still got jungle rot on his hands and a leech on his back. He doesn’t know what to think about anything yet.”
She hadn’t meant to say all that, to raise her voice.
“I’m sorry Mr…Deputy Higgins. It’s been a real emotional rollercoaster at our house. We didn’t even know Grayson had got leave until he showed up. And I’ve been so worried that the people who beat Maggie…” She paused, took a deep breath. “Seriously, why on earth would this child be better off in some orphanage or foster home in Charleston than right here in the mountains where she belongs? At least until you can find out…what happened to her.”
“I done thought about that Piper. And I tend to agree with you. Now, if Sheriff Cliff was here, he goes by the book. But me…shoot, I’m just a coal miner who
don’t have to go down no more. And I’m inclined to let well enough alone for the time bein’. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But all that could change when the sheriff’s back. Likely will change when he gets back.”
Piper stood, anxious to get out of the deputy’s office before he changed his mind.
“You know where to find me—and Maggie—when you want us. But right now, I got to get to the grocery store. I got me a man at home who hasn’t had real fried chicken in so long he’s forgotten what it tastes like.”
“How is Grayson? He doing all right?”
No, he most definitely wasn’t doing all right. But she didn’t intend to share that fact with every man, woman and child for thirty miles in every direction. Though they would hear about it eventually, she supposed. They heard about everything else.
“He’s still shook up a good bit. And he’s way too skinny. But other than that…”
The deputy put out a hand and laid it on Piper’s shoulder. His face was solemn and sincere. “You tell him we’re real proud of him, hear!”
Piper left Sadie and Maggie in the car with the groceries while she called Carter from the pay phone outside Bennett’s Five and Dime. What with Grayson showing up out of the blue last night, she’d totally forgotten to confirm that Carter was still on to go with her to Marian’s doctor’s appointment Thursday. He always went to the appointments, then took them all out to lunch afterward.
But it was more than that, and she knew it. She wanted to call him. She wanted to tell him what the deputy had said about Maggie because she knew he’d be thrilled.
His distant, professional, “Hello, this is Carter Addington, how can I help you today?” changed to warm and concerned as soon as he heard her voice. She felt a little thrill in her belly at that, which sent her mind reeling so it was hard to stay on topic to tell him what the deputy had said.
She watched the girls playing in the car while she talked. Maggie pushed in the lock button on the car door, then Sadie pulled with all her strength to unlock it, loved the clunking sounds it made, did it over and over again. Maggie never tired of the game. Piper had never seen a child as patient with younger children as Maggie was.
“Higgins thinks Maggie climbed over the mountain?” Carter was incredulous. “You’re kidding!”
“You got a better idea?”
“No, I assumed…well, she’s here now and she’s with you where she belongs. That’s what we need to focus on right now. Let the future take care of itself.”
Oh, how she loved that about Carter. He was positive and encouraging. And practical. No sense in worrying until they had to.
She confirmed Marian’s appointment time and then told him Grayson wouldn’t be coming.
“Oh?” His voice was a shade chillier.
“He needs some time alone. You know, to readjust, so he’s going to take the day and go squirrel hunting.”
Carter had no response.
“Carter, are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here. Squirrel hunting, huh. Sounds like just the kind of relaxation he needs. Well, I’ll see you girls on Thursday.”
Piper left the grocery store and drove to the Dollar General store. She bought a couple of pairs of size ten shorts, two T-shirts and two pairs of underwear for Maggie. The child had to have something to wear besides the dress she’d come in and a borrowed pair of overalls.
But the whole time she was in the store, she was anxious, as she had been in the sheriff’s office and the grocery—anxious to get back home to Grayson! She planned to fling herself into his arms the moment she saw him.
When they turned on Turtle Road, she caught Maggie looking intently up at the top of the hollow at the dam. Her face was troubled.
“Something the matter?” Piper asked.
“It’s dark up there,” Maggie said, her voice so soft Piper could barely hear her. “Dark and scary.”
***
Carter hung up the telephone from his conversation with Piper wearing a grin so wide it split his face like an ax stroke, almost cleaved the top of his head off altogether. He picked up the receiver and placed another call. When the proprietor of Duffy’s Tavern answered, Carter said he wanted to leave a message for Jesse McCullough.
“I sound like Jesse’s secretary to you?” Amos Burdette said.
Amos always made protesting noises when Carter called, which he did at least once a week. Carter didn’t know if it was for the benefit of some audience in the bar who might have overheard or if he was just making sure Carter understood that the communication service he was rendering was worth the weekly five dollars Carter paid him.
“Who took a leak in your Cheerios this morning, Amos?”
“I got better things to do than yap on the phone, that’s all.”
“Well, this message is short. Tell cousin Jess that Carter said the number is twenty-one.”
“Come again?”
“A number. Twenty-one. Legal drinking age. The number between twenty and twenty-two. Twenty-one’s the message.”
“Okay, if he comes in, I’ll tell him.” He hung up.
Jesse would come in all right, to find out the date of the ambush, when he was to hide out somewhere along Blood Creek and shoot Zeke Campbell. That was the plan that had formed in Carter’s mind last night. Oh, Jesse wouldn’t hurt the kid, only wing him, but it would indeed send a message. To Zeke and his older brother, Riley, that it might not be a plan to try to horn in on McCulloch shine. It’d send a message to Piper, too, once she found out that her shell-shocked husband had plugged a hole in her precious little brother!
Carter had been at his desk at 6:00 a.m. to ensure the “report” about Sadler Hollow was on Nelson Warren’s desk when he got to work. It had been thorough, detailed and totally bogus, full of made-up information and fabricated interviews—a pile of the warm, sticky substance you find on the south side of a horse going north. But writing it into the wee hours of the morning had kept his mind off Grayson and Piper. It also kept him from worrying about the one big hole in his scheme—how on earth was he going to make sure Grayson didn’t have an alibi for the time when Zeke got shot? Then Piper handed him the whole thing on a silver platter. With cranberry sauce on the side.
Grayson had no alibi for Thursday, when everyone else in the house would be gone all day. He was also going squirrel hunting. Could you beat that!
Carter leaned back, flipped a cigarette out of the pack he’d bought on his way to work this morning, lit up and inhaled deeply. Grayson would be using their father’s .22 rifle that hung in the rack over the mantle. Jesse’d be using a .22 to shoot Zeke, too. Perfect!
Chapter 18
Piper didn’t fling herself into Grayson’s arms the moment she saw him. When she got home, she found Grayson sound asleep, lying on his side, almost curled in a fetal position on the bed. She didn’t wake him. About six o’clock, she reluctantly put the chicken away in the refrigerator rather than frying it. He awoke about sundown, and she forced some vegetable soup down his throat before he was out again. He stirred around midnight, came partially awake, obviously in the grip of some monster nightmare. He flailed at the covers and called out so loud he woke Sadie. Maggie was instantly there to soothe her this time, though. Maggie had moved her pallet off the back porch to the floor of Sadie’s bedroom, offering an odd “I need walls around me” by way of explanation.
Grayson slept through until ten o’clock the next morning, waking groggy and disoriented. He ate breakfast, apologized for conking out the way he’d done, and made a manful effort to be cheerful and energetic, but was asleep on the couch by the time Sadie went down for her afternoon nap.
He was still asleep when Sadie awoke and that was arguably the best thing that could have happened to their relationship. He lay unmoving on the couch, and for half an hour Sadie refused to go anywhere near him. But eventually she relaxed and began to play on the floor at his feet. Piper watched her carefully check him out, timidly get a little closer and a little closer. By the time
he began to stir late in the afternoon, Sadie was accustomed enough to his presence that she didn’t shriek and run away when he sat up and dug his knuckles into his eyes like a sleepy child.
Again he apologized. During supper, per her whispered instructions, Grayson pretended Sadie wasn’t even there. The technique paid off. When he unexpectedly burst out laughing, the child was startled by the loud noise but then went back to her mac-and-cheese.
Grayson took a long, hot bath while Piper got Sadie ready for bed. She could see how he ached to take the child in his arms, but he didn’t even try to kiss her goodnight.
“See you in the morning, sweetheart,” he said.
And to everyone’s surprised delight, Sadie responded, “Night-night, Daddy,” and gave him a gnat-snatcher wave.
Piper luxuriated in a hot bath, too. Her heart took up a staccato rhythm as she dried herself on the lone bath towel and slipped into her white cotton nightgown.
How she had ached for him, longed for him all those long months he was gone. Now they would be together, make beautiful love and fall asleep in each other’s arms. She stepped into the bedroom where Grayson had left a single lamp burning on the bedside table. He lay in his boxer shorts, propped up on pillows. Sound asleep.
Piper swallowed the bitter taste of disappointment, went to the bed and sat down quietly beside him. She reached out and touched his chest where his ribs were clearly visible, then leaned closer and examined him. His chest, arms and legs were a patchwork of healing scratches and bruises in various shades of purple, green and yellow. The jungle rot sores were beginning to heal on his hands, but something was wrong with his left foot, too. There were larger healing sores on it and a clear ooze had formed on them—probably because the bath had washed away crusted scabs.