The Rosewood Casket

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “Posse,” Dovey almost smiled. “You been watching cowboy movies?”

  “Sometimes. Charles Martin likes them. He has a whole bookcase full of videos. All of Clint Eastwood. Some John Wayne. It’s the right word, isn’t it? When cops are chasing somebody, doesn’t that make them a posse?”

  “I guess.” Her captor sighed. “We used to play games like this when we were kids, me and Charles Martin and his brothers. Never thought it would really happen to me, though.”

  “What did you do?” asked Kayla with interest. The lady hadn’t hit her or anything, and she hadn’t even pointed the gun at her lately, so Kayla wasn’t particularly afraid of this new grown-up. She was sober, anyhow. Some of Kayla’s mama’s boyfriends had been a whole lot worse, even when they were trying to be nice. Besides, this lady was a friend of Charles Martin Stargill’s, she’d said so herself. So she must be all right. And she seemed pretty scared. Kayla wished she could help.

  Dovey shrugged. “Some bad men were trying to take my land,” she said. “I shot at them to make them go away.”

  “You didn’t kill one, did you?” Kayla’s eyes widened.

  “I—I hope not.” She stood up. “No sense talking about it. We’d better get moving.”

  “Is that how come you took me? To keep them from shooting at you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Dovey. “Mostly that, I guess. A hostage was better than nothing. And maybe I did it to hurt Charlie Stargill, too. He could have stopped all this, and he wouldn’t.”

  “How could Charles Martin have stopped it?”

  “He’s rich. I asked him to give me the money to save the farm, and he wouldn’t do it. So—whatever happens to us—let him live with it.” Dovey pointed the barrel of the pistol at the ground, and helped the child up with her free hand. “Let’s get going.”

  Kayla’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, but she had to move slowly. She couldn’t see the rocks or branches in deep shadows, and now and then she stumbled. “It’s pretty dark,” she said, dusting off the knees of her jeans after a fall. “You didn’t bring a flashlight?”

  “I didn’t bring anything. I just—I ran.”

  “You know where we’re headed?”

  “Sort of. If I can find it again. Look out for this mountain laurel. It’s pretty thick, and the branches can scratch you up good.”

  Kayla stood still and listened. Far off she could hear the baying of tracking dogs, and she thought she heard an occasional shout from one of the searchers. She wondered if her mother had missed her yet, and whether anybody had figured out where she was. Clayt would probably come looking for her. He was her friend. Charles Martin was nice enough, but Kayla couldn’t imagine him ruining his custom-made Lucchese boots traipsing through the woods in the dark. Clayt wouldn’t care, though; his clothes were beat up already. And he talked to her like she was a real person. Besides, trailing her through the wilderness was something Daniel Boone might have done, and Clayt would love it on account of that.

  That thought stirred something in her memory. Daniel Boone had tracked a girl through the wilderness. Clayt had told her the story the day she’d gone with him to take the coffin wood to the shop. The Indians had kidnapped Daniel Boone’s daughter, and he’d had to follow their tracks to get her back. Boone’s daughter had helped him find her by stalling the Shawnees at their rest stops. She picked lice out of the old chief’s hair. Well, that wouldn’t work. The lady with the gun looked clean enough, just sweaty and scared. She wondered if she ought to make it easy for him to track her. She didn’t want to get the lady in trouble, but she figured it would be okay if Clayt found them. He’d never shoot anybody.

  Kayla fished a jelly bean out of the pocket of her jeans, and dropped it on the ground. “Want to play like we’re Indians?” she asked the lady.

  Dovey sighed. “I reckon that’s what we’re doing, child. Playing Indian.”

  “How come?”

  “We’re being hunted through the woods by men with rifles who have taken our land. You can’t get much more Indian than that.”

  “I had me a Pocahontas dress for Halloween. They only let me go to four houses, though. What was the name of your Indian?”

  “Nancy Ward. She was a great chief. Cherokee.”

  * * *

  Kelley Johnson kept blinking the tears away from her eyelashes so that she could see the seam she was sewing for Randall Stargill’s coffin lining. They had cut up some of Randall’s old neckties and bits of old clothes they had found in the trunk, and Lilah had used almost all of the Italian shawl, scattered piecemeal throughout the design. Its silky sheen and the fine embroidery work brightened the quilt until it was almost too festive for a burial.

  It was nearly finished now: seven feet long, five feet wide—soon she and Lilah and Debba would sew their three portions together, and lay it aside to wait for Randall Stargill to die and have need of it.

  Around her in the parlor, all the Stargills—except Clayt—were sitting stiffly in little pools of light from the table lamps. The television was on as always, but the sound had been cut off, so that the people on the screen moved and gestured in helpless silence. Kelley felt as if she were one of them: screaming without uttering a sound.

  The Stargills were making desultory conversation, and trying to seem natural. Kelley wanted to put down her sewing and throw her coffee cup against the wall. Anything to make them stop pretending. Her baby was out there somewhere in the night, and they were all acting like nothing was wrong. They had said how sorry they were, and they’d assured her that Kayla would be home safe by midnight—all, that is, except Debba, who stared at her with round, frightened eyes, anticipating tragedy, and transfixed by it. The others had seemed callous in their optimism. Kelley sewed in silence and hated them.

  Lilah had tried to be helpful. She kept bringing Kelley cups of tea, and she’d wanted to call Dr. Banner to come and administer a sedative to the distraught mother, but Kelley refused. She didn’t want to be numbed; she wanted to wait, and she wanted to be awake enough to pray as hard as she could that Kayla would be all right.

  “I just can’t believe Dovey Stallard would have shot anybody,” said Charles Martin, for maybe the tenth time.

  “That’s the trouble with guns,” said Lilah, peering through her reading glasses at the eye of the needle she was trying to thread. “You can do something in a split second, and regret it forever after. I’m sure she’s very sorry about it now.”

  “It’s the culture up here,” said Robert Lee. “It’s violent. Always was. We’re well out of it, all of us.”

  Kelley looked over her needlework at Charles Martin. He had been avoiding her eyes for the last half hour. He sat in the wingback chair, cradling the Martin guitar in his arms, and picking a dozen notes of first one melody and then another. Kelley recognized the tune to “Footprints in the Snow,” an old Flatt and Scruggs number about a fellow who finds a lost girl in the woods by tracking her steps in the snow. Charles could sing about it, but he couldn’t do it.

  He looked up suddenly and met her gaze. He looked away first. “Kayla will be all right,” he mumbled. “Dovey wouldn’t hurt a kid. She’s hot-tempered, but she doesn’t mean any harm.”

  “She shot somebody this morning,” said Kelley.

  “Well, that was over the land, honey. She was desperate to keep that farm. Don’t ask me why. She’s the last of the Stallards, so it’ll go to strangers sooner or later anyhow, but—” He shook his head. “Dovey Stallard. I can’t believe it.”

  “I can,” said Robert Lee. “People around here are not sane on the subject of land. I get the feeling that Clayt would do the same thing, if it came to that.”

  “Well, at least it has drawn attention away from that box of bones you took to the law,” said Lilah. “Maybe they can just gather dust in the sheriff’s office, and we can bury your daddy in peace. Perhaps that’s the silver lining in this terrible cloud.”

  “I think Dovey and Kayla are a damned sight more than
distractions from an old family scandal,” said Charles Martin. “That skeleton won’t matter to anybody except the tabloids. Tabloids! I can’t believe I used to worry about them—and now I … I guess when you’ve got real trouble, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. I just can’t believe that Dovey would do such a thing.”

  Kelley’s stare told Charles Martin that he had been talking too much about Dovey Stallard. “I hope Kayla’s all right,” he said a little too loudly. His strumming pattern changed. He looked down at the Martin for a moment, and he began to pick out the melody to a different song. Kelley recognized “The Bounty Hunter” by North Carolina folksinger Mike Cross. “And Clayt, too, if it comes to that. Imagine him hightailing out of here to track down the fugitive! He’s been playing Daniel Boone too-oo long, boys. Reckon he’ll be back soon, though. Last thing those police officers want is some damn fool loose on the mountain when they’re trying to find somebody. He’ll be lucky not to get himself shot out there in the dark.”

  “I should have gone with him,” said Kelley.

  “No, I should have.” Garrett Stargill stood up. “I’m the one with commando experience. I’ve probably done more night tracking in a combat situation than all those men out there put together. I should offer to help.”

  Debba Stargill grabbed at her husband’s wrist. “You can’t go, Garrett! It’s dangerous.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” said Lilah. “Surely that young woman is more frightened now than anything. She doesn’t want to harm anyone else.”

  Garrett laughed. “Frightened people are the most dangerous folks on earth. Isn’t that so, Debba?”

  She hung her head. “I guess so,” she whispered.

  “Debba ought to know,” said Garrett, twisting his arm to make her let go. “Debba’s an expert on the hazards of fear.”

  “Stop it.” Her voice was expressionless. She stared at the floor.

  Lilah looked nervously at them, then at Kelley, who was taking shallow deep breaths, and looking about an inch away from hysteria. “Maybe we should call the hospital,” she said. “We could check on Daddy Stargill, and see how the poor sheriff is faring, as well.”

  “I expect he’s gut-shot,” said Garrett. “When a frightened woman shoots, she usually aims for the belly. Or maybe she aims for the heart and misses, because she’s such a lousy shot. What would you say it was, Debba, intent or bad aim?”

  She shivered. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I’m sure that’s a lot of consolation for the corporal’s family, Debba.” He turned to the others. “Debba here gets nervous when I’m away. She thinks the whole of west Tennessee is conspiring to abduct her in my absence. She keeps a baseball bat by the front door, and a can of Mace on the nightstand. A regular suburban terrorist is little old Debba Stargill.”

  Garrett stopped talking, but no one interrupted him. His stare said that he wasn’t finished.

  “So two years ago when I was gone … Haiti? Somalia?” He shrugged. “Somewhere. I was supposed to be in peril, and the people back at Fort Campbell were supposed to be safe and sound, but Debba Stargill never feels safe. So one afternoon she heard a noise. One afternoon. Not three o’clock in the morning. Not a dark and stormy night. One sunny, peaceful, goddamned afternoon. So she goes outside to see what monsters of depravity have come to ravish her. And there’s a kid in the yard. He’s maybe twenty. He’s looking for one of our neighbors. About the kitten ad. About the goddamned kitten ad in the newspaper. Which house. So he starts walking toward pretty, tiny Mrs. Stargill to see if she can give him directions, and that’s when she puts a .44 slug into him, all the while screaming that he’s trying to rape her.”

  Debba buried her face in her hands. “He shouldn’t have come to our back door. He—”

  “He was gut-shot, and he died before the ambulance could get there. Debba didn’t call 911; she just stood there and screamed until the neighbors found her. So maybe we deserve each other, Debba and me. I get paid to kill people for Uncle Sam, and Debba works for free.”

  “I hate you,” said Debba Stargill from behind the palisade of her fingers.

  “I’m going now,” said Garrett. “I’m going to try to get Kelley’s little girl back. The rest of you stay with my lovely wife here. Keep her away from the kitchen knives and from Daddy’s shotgun. I don’t want her mistaking one of the policemen for a hundred-pound woman, and killing him in ‘self-defense.’ Of course, she’d probably get off. The Tennessee legal system seems to be awfully sympathetic toward delicate women who cry a lot at the inquest. She didn’t even go to trial. Maybe Dovey Stallard can try that tack when they catch her. It might work. I doubt it, though.”

  He turned and walked out of the room, and no one spoke.

  * * *

  The hills were dark, but the search continued.

  Joe LeDonne had begun alone at dusk, looking for the trail up at the barn, where Dovey Stallard had last been seen by the eyewitnesses. He was trying to locate a recognizable shoe print, or signs of bent grass and broken twigs that would lead him in the direction she had fled. The trail could still be followed at night, but it would be slower, and much more difficult to discern. The trackers would use high-powered flashlights. Crouching close to the ground, they would search for blades of grass bent at odd angles, crushed out of symmetry by a running foot. It could take hours to go a few yards. To speed up the process, the members of the search team were stationed great distances apart, each looking for the same thing: signs of disturbed earth, showing that someone had passed that way not too long ago. The first tracker began his search a mile from the starting point. The others were spread out behind him, slowly, painstakingly looking for the slightest hint of a trail. When one of the searchers found that trail, he would signal to the others, and those behind him would move ahead from their old positions and fan out from this new starting point.

  It was slow going in the darkness. Sometimes the trail that had been carefully followed for an hour would halt in a patch of soft bare earth—at the hoofprint of a deer. Then the searchers had to backtrack to the last known position, and begin again.

  Joe LeDonne was farthest out in front, praying for daybreak. The tedium of following a trail an inch at a time made his jaw ache from clenched teeth, and his legs were sore from hours of unaccustomed stooping to see faint signs in the frosted grass. He had not eaten since breakfast, but he was damned if he was going to stop now.

  The trail had to be located tonight, because when another eight hours had passed there would be no trail. Bent blades of grass would spring back into place, and night-roaming animals might dislodge twigs or obscure footprints with their own tracks. When the trail became cold, there would be nothing to do but wait for the fugitive to make a mistake: break into an empty cabin or steal a car. Then the search could begin again from that new location.

  One of the state troopers approached LeDonne, careful to stay behind the light, away from any possible trail. “They sent me to give you an update,” he said. “The dog’s about ready to quit.”

  LeDonne straightened up, scowling. A cold wind bit into him, and he wished he’d remembered his gloves. “The dog’s quitting. Already?”

  “Those tracking hounds are only good for about an hour. Apparently it takes a lot of effort to read a trail with your nose, and they just burn out on it real quick.”

  “So we can bring in another dog.”

  “If one’s available. Your people are on the horn now trying to locate a K-9 squad that can be brought in to help. No luck so far. And the ATF plane is on its way, but there’s a storm system between them and us, and they may not make it until morning.”

  “Fat lot of good they’ll be then.” He sighed. The trail was getting colder than the night wind. There were a couple of thousand square miles of Cherokee National Forest for Dovey Stallard to disappear into. If she were allowed to slip past the trackers on this mountain, the hunt could take weeks, not hours. Then there might be nothing for them to do but wait until the fugi
tive herself felt like quitting the chase. If she didn’t get help from unsuspecting hikers, if she didn’t rob somebody or steal a car, then she might get tired of being cold and hungry and hunted, and she’d give herself up. But if she managed to hitch a ride to Knoxville, say, or Charlotte, then she could disappear forever. LeDonne thought it was worth forgoing food and sleep for a couple of days to prevent that from happening. Because if Dovey Stallard did get away clean, he thought he might never sleep again.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Many dark and sleepless nights have I been a companion for owls, separated from the cheerful society of men, scorched by the Summer’s sun, and pinched by the Winter’s cold.

  —DANIEL BOONE

  Clayt was walking along an old logging road bordered by a marshy thicket of alders. Beyond it a hayfield lay in darkness. He wondered if the dew was heavy enough to show footprints in the dry grass. If he shined his flashlight close to the ground, he thought he might be able to see the traces of indentations worn across the wet field by someone walking. But could he tell deer tracks from human ones in the darkness? Probably not. And turning on the flashlight might be dangerous. The woods were full of gunmen tonight. They might mistake him for their quarry and open fire. He wondered if he should risk it. He had to find Dovey before they did. He stood still for a moment, waiting and listening, as he always did in the wild. A full moon was low on the horizon, and the air was beginning to take on the chill of night. He held his breath, listening.

  The sound of the searchers did not carry to his ears; they were too far away. For a few moments, all was silent.

  March was a quiet time in the hills. No crickets were serenading. Only a few night moths fluttered around in the moonlight. From the shadows of the hayfield, he heard a bird’s cry, a peeb that always made him think of a telephone busy signal. If it were daylight, and later in the spring—say, April—he’d have said the call was that of a nighthawk, but he had never seen one return to the mountains this early in the year. A woodcock, then. The old-timers called them snipe, much to the annoyance of local ornithologists, who reserved the term for a similar looking long-billed bird of an entirely different species. Snipe hunt: another term for a wild goose chase. Was he on a snipe hunt tonight?